I'm not yet done with the final touches.
Four important questions:
1) What about my RCC? ;-) Do I getty-getty-get one?
@Jack: You're more firm when it comes to rigging rules. Do I actually need a RCC or can I do all the magic with my deck without any drawbacks. I haven't yet found a good reason to buy a RCC. If you agree, forget question number 1.
2) Who is the one who tracks down our AVA 12 gear? Krestov? Do you want me to upload a list of gear I am/we are buying?
3) What do you guys say? Shall we buy the 100,000 nuyen robocop?
4) We were discussing the possibility of having a proper spellslinger enter the group. If you think we should go looking for one, I offer a character. Take a look at him, if you want:
January 7th, 2053. That’s my birthday. And about the only data you’re going to get from me. Data drains life of every event the way a vampire sucks blood from a human being, leaving behind but a dead, meaningless shell.
That’s a better way to start my story: One freezing morning my mum woke up and immediately felt the time has come. She would become a mother. My dad was already at work – supplements department at DocW’s, a job as boring as he is. As far as I know it was our neighbour (the mean one, with the kittens) who brought her to the hospital. She laboured for almost three days until she finally gave birth to Fitzgerald McConnan (a name I thought was her revenge for my making her suffer) in the middle of a cruelly cold winter night. This tells you two things about me:
a) She could have had the doctors do an emperor’s cut, but her will never gave in. She passed this attribute on to me.
b) I tend to hurt people who are close to me.
I’m a Dwarf. That said, you know everything about my childhood. I was teased by the long ones (that is, until they found out that Dwarves are stronger than humans or pixies). I was forced to excel in maths, handle computers, live a boneless life. Things became interesting, however, when I reached puberty. Or so I thought. It was most classic. My father, prone to synthowhiskey (which made me furious) told me off. Bad marks, I s’pose. Maths would be my guess. I had had a real bad day. A fight with some friends, problems at school – adolescence stuff. Mum was going to stand up for me, but that only made things worse: Dad was already drunk. I was close to tears already, just about to scream when Dad made the mistake: He started yelling at my mother. A roar of fury burst out of my lungs – and the whiskey glass shattered into a thousand pieces (a trick I was never again able to pull off). The scene froze. And my ordeal began.
A Dwarf. A corpses‘ brat. You guess: mage or shaman? Right. I was moved to a magical highschool quite immediately. Geometrical formulae, hypothetical interplanar maps, statistics and Awakened rates, biometrical functions of auraless bodies, theories on the reciprocal influence of mana tides and radiation. It killed me. Every exam on Alchemical Analysis, every page of our Hermetical Heritage textbook, every word spat out by our Lex Arcana professor took away a quantum of my passion, my lust for magic. This was not my life. But funny enough, it was school as showed me my path.
I remember it as distinctly as my first kiss: the moment when I turned the page of Hermetical Heritage, yawning, and saw the chapter headline: The Shamanic tradition. In that instant my life changed. I thought it a myth, Howling Coyote a legend (I was still a kid, mind you, chummer). I got focussed again, passionate as only a Dwarf can be. I spent my whole time reading: research an shamanism, magical history books, silly novels about Red Indian shamans and Spanish witches, esoteric manuals. There was more drek than not, but still, it helped me find my way. And it felt right.
I became obsessed by the search for my totem. What would it be? Serpent? Gator? Hopefully not Rat! I fast-forward to when I found Him. I was sitting on the terrace of the school canteen, feeding pigeons, lost in thoughts. Not Pigeon, please not Pigeon. Is Pigeon even a totem? I watched these plump, ugly creatures with disgust, looked into those hollow, red eyes with contempt. Then a crow appeared and stole some crumbs. It was beautiful, black and perfect. I smiled, but then a movement shattered the kindling thought. Some pigeons had stirred, my crow fled. Not Crow then, I thought, sighing. Then I paused. Finding your totem wasn’t about turning a cat into a lion, it was about finding yourself. I remembered those greedy, clever eyes and imagined it reflecting my image. I haven’t been a fighter my whole life, except when I had to. When bigger boys bullied me, I decided to flee rather than fight. I grew restless. Whenever I saw one of those beautiful birds, it was like Crow greeting me.
I can’t remember how I met Wiz Wes. He was some uncle’s friend or so. Still reckoning my fascination to be just a boy’s fantasies, they allowed me to meet my future mentor, a Raven shaman. Talking to him was just incredible. He understood me. He was so wise and everything he said made perfect sense. And, better still: He accepted me as his student, for ¥ 500 an hour, to be paid later, and a favor, should he ever need one. In the meanwhile my payment was symbolic: a crow feather in the 2nd week, a comic book in the 3rd, a grain of orichalcum in the 4th, a good story in the 5th. I only realized later that my first one was more than symbolic: a ring, woven from my hair – in case I should forget to honor our trade. I was in Wiz Wes‘ hands, and there was little I could do about it.
The case was different for Jerry, though.
I fled home as soon as I was able to cast one or two spells. My hope of living with Wesley turned out to be an illusion. He was my teacher, but he was not going to adopt me. So I laboured on construction sites to pay my soyburgers and cokes. Of course I used magic to lift heavy stuff. And of course such a thing can’t go unnoticed forever. A workmate fingered me on my boss, Jerry.
He altered my payment. Halved it, that is. If I quit or caused any trouble, he’d blow the whistle on me. Luckily, I already knew how to change into my totem’s bird, a crow. So I began to steal to earn my living. And swore revenge. I’m not a cliché Dwarf, but there’s one thing that is true to most of us, including me. We’re stubborn. And patient. My revenge came, when Wiz Wes taught me the Crow’s Voice spell, which allowed me to manipulate a person’s thoughts. It would not yet work on people with a strong will. Jerry, however, was prey.
I traced him home, using my Shapechange spell. I dropped the spell, sitting stark naked in a side alley, peering through his window, when I wove the spell. I forced him to transfer all the money he owed me to my account, doubling the sum. And I made him set fire in his living room before I left.
Next day in the morning I made sure he understood I would come again should he do something funny. And we talked about my salary. I might have lied about my capacity of calling spirits to hunt him down even in jail.
I used the money to pay Wiz Wes. After a year or so I quit my job and started to do shadowy magic stuff. Another two years later I quit my apprenticeship and became a full-grown shadowrunner. In the meantime I had a lot of Firsts: my first run, my first spirit, my first preparation, my first sex, my first kill, and so on. Nothing you wouldn’t expect my type to do, and nothing worth wasting your or my time any longer.
So, this is me: MacC, or just Mac, Dwarven Crow shaman, shadowrunner and a pain in the ass for everyone who thinks they can fuck with me. That is, except they can, really. I know when to peck, but also when to just spread my wings…
