So, I was reading this pretty awesome blog post about women in Shadowrun
Thanks for that praise. Much appreciated.
when I caught mention of Hard Exit, specifically Hard Exit being female. Now, I haven't read War! so perhaps I'm a bit late on this, but I'd always pictured Hard Exit as a guy with a crew cut, because that's how he was described in some fiction that I'd read a while ago (IIRC, it was SR4 or something....extraction run, I think s/he was trying to get the target to the roof for aerial evac).
Am I crazy/misremembering the fiction, or was that some kind of typo?
No. She was described as a man in the opening story for the "Company Towns" chapter of
Corporate Enclaves.
She has an entry in
Street Legends Supplemental.
However, she was always supposed to be a woman. As Critias said, we had a long discussion about how far I should go in dealing with that one description. One thing I noticed when I went back and re-read everything she ever posted (Thanks FastJack!) was that she also has a recurring theme of engaging in (voluntary) extractions. Given that the context of the story was that she was masquerading as a faceless goon for MCT Security voluntarily extracting a senior exec from what was probably
the Corporate Court Terrestrial Headquarters that there were logistical considerations (I doubt a lot of MCT Security personnel are women) and safety considerations (Her false identity was going to be known to a lot of dangerous people), and having a background in low-intensity warfare and extractions where stealth and subterfuge are keenly important, it made sense that the description would be of a disguise. Now, there was a question of how far we wanted to go, especially in light of Pistons' joke in Runner's Companion. I threw out the idea that she has had the sex-change (and other major) bionetic mods. More importantly as how it applied to SLS was that I was going to leave an Essence Hole in her stats to reflect that*.
That was universally considered "Not a good idea" and the info was nixed. The language describing her disguises was made more vague, and frankly I think that if you want her to have a cyberpenis and be running around biosculpted as a man then so be it. IIRC, she's got the Essence (barely).
I also made some other changes from the original author's ideas for her. No offense intended, but ... I became enamored with how she earned the nickname (if you've read SLS, then you have to admit that is definitely a "street legend."). Bill's origin for her name was based on her appearance in the opening fiction of the "Vehicle and Drones" chapter of
Arsenal where immediately after Operation Hard Entry begins it goes FUBAR. I did keep Operation Hard Entry, but it's not the reason for her nickname.
So she and Pistons met and became close while Hard Exit was in DeeCee.
As for Pistons, her behavior is what it is. I should also mention that in
Conspiracy Theories FastJack admits to knowing, but it is not clear if she or anyone else (specifically Hard Exit and Kay St. Irregular) knows, that Haze has tried to have Pistons killed.
*As an aside, yes, I know she has two empty Capacity points in her cyberarm. I built her stats so that everything is equalized between the cyberarm and everything else, including giving her smartskin armor to match her cyberarm's armor so that even naked she has the same armor values across her entire body. Same with the attribute mods. I left it open so that something can be added if a new toy is introduced later, and also so that a GM can modify her as they see fit to relate to their campaign.
