What about a thread for useful NPCs?
Here is a signature NPC I have used a number of times, mostly to rain doom upon the PCs. A bit of a munchkin/Marty Stu character, but effective.
James Kong
James Kong (born Hemi Hetaraka) is one of Firewall’s more trusted Cleaners. He is sent in when some situation has gone bad enough that it needs to be wiped out with plasma fire or worse. He is also occasionally used by proxies as a threat: “James Kong is on the way. If you do not resolve the situation quietly within 8 hours, his team will take over.”
James was born on Aoraki Cluster, a culturally New Zealand habitat in Mercury orbit, socially aligned with the Argonauts and various uplift corporations. Trained for power engineering, he rebelled at an early age against “being forced into becoming a solar farmer” and left for the asteroid Belt. There he joined some gangs/militias, getting himself into all sorts of trouble. Everything changed during the Fall: he helped rescue a refugee barge at Fortuna, he saw action against TITAN systems, and was among the survivors from the 20880 Yiyideng evacuation. He emerged a veteran, and with some ties to groups that would soon form Firewall.
Since the Fall he has officially been a mercenary of vaguely autonomist leanings, drifting around the solar system wherever there is work. In reality he has been doing dirty jobs for Firewall, quietly moved into place if needed. His reputation within Firewall is solid, if slightly mixed: great at applying brute force where needed (and even recognizing when it is needed), willing to face down seriously scary situations, but also a little bit too ruthless.
The disaster at Galápagos Station 5 AF is widely remembered: the local Argonauts had experimented on something exsurgent-related and the virus got out. James dealt with it by vaporizing the entire station: probably the only way out, but killing hundreds of people. Firewall might have accepted it as regrettable and necessary, but the Argonauts consider Galápagos Station a terrorist action and are still on the lookout for the perpetrator.
James likes to style himself as a suave secret agent, especially when he is not on the job and playing his persona of the wild scum mercenary. He does look good in a suit, he is a literal party animal, and as his partners can attest, a great lover.
On the job he is coolly rational, making use of his smarts. Growing up as a big gorilla surrounded by puny microgravity transhumans and always told not to break things, James really enjoys when he can let go of caution and just destroy things and people. But he applies brute force methodically and with intelligence: he particularly enjoys having opponents underestimate him because he looks like a big violent gorilla. That is typically when the shaped charges hidden in the reactor casing detonates.
Experience and stability: James has seen it all: exsurgent outbreaks, renegade sentinels, seed AGIs, hypercorp social engineering gone wrong, TITAN worshipping death-cults, asyncs using petals, even a possible case of demonic possession. He is unlikely to be shocked and tends to think well on his feet, but usually insists on getting all known data before the mission. He has undergone regular psychotherapy and memory editing to maintain ego integrity. His “carpe diem” attitude/James Bond persona appears to balance or shield the existential despair often experienced by many veteran field agents.
Loyalty: James is reliable. Strongly motivated to fight existential risk. Relationship to Argonauts problematic: James claims he holds no hard feelings, but probability mapping suggest a certain reactance.
Big 5 personality traits: Openness to experience: high. Conscientiousness: normal. Extraversion: above average. Agreeableness: above average. Emotional stability: high.
Skills: Various weapon and defense skills, demolitions, some engineering. Practical physics background.
Tactics: James typically carefully gathers more than enough firepower and other destructive resources before going in. “A fair fight is a mistake and a gamble: maximum overkill is safe and reliable.” Sometimes he quietly infiltrates another site or target in order to take control over suitably destructive equipment, whether it is spacecraft, antimatter, or asteroid defense grids. However, once things are in motion he is quite willing to improvise. In a direct fight James exploits his amazing freerunning skills to for 3D fighting.
Associates: James often leads a team of sentinels or non-Firewall assets. He has worked much with Little Boy, an async with complex delusions of persecution from a (likely) imaginary twin brother.
Quotes: “Fancy habitat you got. Do you know what happens if somebody blows up the main and reserve flywheels? Let’s find out. By the way, this exercise requires you to wear a spacesuit…”
“No, I will not wait. My payload is incoming. Any complaints, you can tell them personally to Sir Isaac Newton in 2 minutes.”
“This is the last time I work with children.”
Adventure ideas
James Kong is a useful NPC to keep PCs in line, get them out of trouble – or nuke them from orbit if they mess things up. He is unlikely to make much of being a rather senior Firewall member with a lot of experience: he is more likely to point out that he brought the big guns to the battle.
The Medeans are on the trail of James, and he needs some help to avoid them. The PCs will get a nice rep boost from Firewall for doing it. But during the mission they might get a nasty suspicion that maybe the Argonauts have a point. What really happened on Galápagos? In fact, if James were a bit unhinged, wouldn’t he be in a great position to just annihilate any evidence of wrongdoing?
Where does he get all those wonderful toys? James needs somebody to do a bit of shopping for him in a corner of the solar system where he cannot easily go. The PCs will be buying equipment, blueprints and materials (or having cut-outs do it) for later smuggling to Firewall. It might be normal weaponry, or near-existential risk alien artifacts. Except there are some annoying law enforcement people doing their best to stop arms smuggling at the same time.
The spy who loved me: James has found a problem he cannot handle with his usual methods: after a wild party he has gained a romantic stalker. Normally, disappearing from sight would be enough, but in this case he needs to remain on site for a future mission. And besides, it would be cowardly to run away. Maybe the PCs can help? Sure, the stalker could be a Jovian spy trying to derail the mission, but that would make things simple. This might be particularly interesting if the PCs have mostly encountered James’ serious scary side before.
By chance James encounters Moana, another exile uplift from Aoraki Cluster. Comparing stories they realize that there seem to be a surprising number of “delinquents” who have left and turned to exotic careers – gatecrashing, radical uplift politics, piracy, and so on. It is easy to shrug off as a response to a stifling home society, but something of the pattern seems off to James. Drawing on some Firewall probability mapping his hunch pays off: it almost looks like there is some deliberate memetic – or genetic – engineering going on to seed the solar system with wandering, competent but rebellious uplifts. Why? What is really going on back at Aoraki? And James, based on past experience, immediately begins to suspect that he might not be trustworthy. This is deeply disconcerting, and he wants to resolve the situation one way or another now.
Stats
(This is James sleeved in his optimized “work” morph and with full mission equipment; from time to time he uses less extreme and conspicuous neo-hominid morphs.)
Name: James Kong (born Hemi Hetaraka, known aliases Grant Simeon, Nnamdi Amaechi, “The Maori Masher”)
Background: Uplift
Faction: Anarchist
Morph: Neo-Hominid (Gorilla)
Gender Identity: Male bisexual
Actual Age: 28
Current Moxie: 3
Motivations: +Hedonism (après nous, le déluge), +Destruction (naked merciless force!), -Cowardice (especially people not helping people in need)
Aptitudes: COG 20, COO 20, INT 20, REF 15, SAV 20, SOM 40, WIL 15
Stats: TT 6, LUC 30, IR 60, WR 13, DUR 65, DR 98, MOX 3, INIT 7, SPD 1(1), DB 4
Armor: Energy Armor: 20, Kinetic Armor: 19
Rep: @-Rep: 30 G-Rep: 30 I-Rep: 60
Ego Traits: Brave, Danger Sense, First Impression, Information Control, Addiction (Party drugs) (Level 1), Black Mark (Argonauts) (Level 3), Edited Memories (Firewall edits of past missions), Neural Damage (Finger agnosia: unable to distinguish the fingers on the hand)
Morph Traits: Striking Looks (Level 1), Tough (Level 3)
Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack, Direction Sense, Bioweave Armor (light), Endocrine Control, Muscle Augmentation, Neurachem (L1), Anti-Glare, Hardened Skeleton, Medichines, Nanophage, Oracle, Respirocytes, Facial Nanotats
Skills: Academics: Physics: 40, Beam Weapons: 60, Blades: 40, Climbing: 40, Clubs: 40, Deception: 20, Demolitions: 60, Flight: 40, Fray: 65, Freefall: 65, Freerunning: 90, Gunnery: 60, Hardware: Aerospace: 50, Infiltration: 60, Infosec: 50, Interest: Partying: 60, Interest: Ancient comics: 50, Interfacing: 30, Intimidation (Haka): 70 (80), Kinesics: 50, Kinetic Weapons: 60, Language: English: 90, Language: Māori: 50, Networking: Autonomists: 70, Networking: Criminals: 50, Networking: Firewall: 60, Perception: 60, Persuasion (Seduction): 60 (70), Pilot: Spacecraft: 45, Profession: Energy engineering: 50, Programming: 40, Protocol: 60, Research: 20, Scrounging: 20, Seeker Weapons: 40, Spray Weapons: 60, Thrown Weapons: 30, Unarmed Combat: 90
Muse: Kazanda. Academics: Nanotechnology 40, Language: Mandarin 40, Profession: Security Ops 40
Unarmed fighting: Skill 90, DV 1d10+4, AP 0
Plasma Rifle: Skill 70, DV 3d10+20, AP -8, SA, Range 20/50/100/300, 10 Shots
Seeker Armband: Skill 50, DV 2d10+10, AP -6, SS, Plasmaburst Micromissile, Range 70/180/600/2000, 6 shots
Automatic Rail Rifle: Skill 70, DV 2d10+6, AP -14, SA,BF,FA, Zero Armor Piercing Rifle Rounds, Range 225/375/750/1350, 45 Shots
Torch: Skill 70, DV 3d10-4, SS, Range 5/15/30/50, 20 shots
Underbarrel Seeker: Skill 50, DV -1d10, AP 0, SA, EMP Micromissile, Range 70/180/600/2000, 9 shots
Thrown grenade: Skill 30, 3d10+10, AP 0, SS, High-Explosive Grenade, 8/20/40/120, 4
Gear: Covert Ops Tool, White Noise Machine, DNA Chaff, Lens Crazer, (4x) Liquid Thermite, Cleaners, Disassemblers, Guardians, Saboteurs, (4x) Superthermite Charges, Anonymous Account, Backup Insurance (mod), (2x) Fake Ego ID, Active ID Protection, Exploit, Tactical Networks, Standard Muse, Nanobandage, Spindle, Spindle Climber, (5x) Speck, Helmet (full), Body Armor (heavy) (w/ Fireproofing, Immunogenic System, Faraday Mod), Plasma Rifle (w/ Smartlink,Safety System, Gyromount, Shock Safety), Seeker Armband (w/ Smartlink,Safety System, Extended Magazine, Gyromount), Automatic Rail Rifle (w/ Smartlink,Safety System, Extended Magazine, Gyromount), Torch (w/ Smartlink,Safety System, Gyromount), Underbarrel Seeker (w/ Smartlink,Safety System, Extended Magazine, Gyromount), (100x) Zero Armor Piercing Rifle Rounds, (10x) EMP Micromissile, (10x) Plasmaburst Micromissile, (10x) High-Explosive Grenade, (100x) Torch Gel
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