Chuck Dee

#rpg #gaming #writing #characteraday

It's been a while since I did one of these- I started working on that hack I was referring to for my campaign, and wanted my next entry to be a character for that hack of Fate, Eclipse Phase, and Gumshoe. I'm taking my Eclipse Phase Character, and remaking him in the Penumbral Shadow hack rules I created.

Character Idea

Name: Damien Kinnear

Background

Damien grew up in what passed for a middle class- his parents were corporate wage slaves for a Martian hypercorp, and had him as a perfunctory act. They made enough that he grew up with a series of nannies, going to perfectly good schools, living in a perfectly good middle-class apartment. It was a good life, but he didn't particularly like it. He always felt something was missing, and when he was shuttled from school to home, looked down into the city with more than a little longing.

He soon found out that the life he'd seen wasn't necessarily as clean as he'd thought, for one day when he came home, all of that had been ripped away, and he found out that the life of a corporate climber was only as secure as your last delivery. At the time, he didn't know what happened to cast him down out of the towers of the affluent, but later, he found out that his father had attached his star to what seemed like a high profile project that he could land easily, but it turned out to be a sinking ship. His father was terminated because of the project's failure, and his source didn't leave it to any imagination that it was anything but literal. His mother was a casualty also, and they found themselves living on the dole in the dirty streets.

His mother resented the fall, and having to eke out a life, and was always trying to find her way back into the company- or really any company. Damien, on the other hand, found out how to negotiate his new life, and put what he'd learned to use, networking and doing favors. First small ones- running a package, checking a drop point- but later more serious courier jobs. Though he never let his mother know, he nurtured his former contacts among the kids, and made it known that he was able to get them things that weren't necessarily available at their ages in the arcologies. Through this, he found he had a talent for reading people and finding people- it was a lot deeper than the things that he found for them; he was able to figure out what they actually needed and prey on these desires.

When he was able to leave, he parlayed the favors he had received into a way to get his certification as an investigator. He didn't want to be a cop- it was too restrictive. But an investigator- or more like a troubleshooter- it wasn't too far from his hustle on the streets. He found that he was able to find things that others overlooked or missed, constructing narratives that led to results for his clients, finding people that didn't want to be found, and removing 'obstacles' for his clients, cleanly and quietly.

But when working for one client, you always run the risk of raising the ire of another, and so it was he found himself persona non-grata. He left the Martian soil he'd called home for the belts, taking odd jobs in order to make the hop from one dive to another. In some ways it was another fall from grace, and in others it was freeing. Being able to explore the various stations in the belt, gaining berth where ever he could- it was that same thrill he'd enjoyed when first exploring the city where he'd spent his life. And he found, more than the money from the jobs, it was the risk and intellectual challenge that spurred him on.

–> On To Day 2