Character Writeup 5: Vallie, Human Vehicle Rigger/Drone Specialist

Details:


Technical School Education allows only a 1-2-3 defaulting modifier to background knowledge skills instead of 2-3-4.

Vehicle Empathy grants -1 to all TN's for handling tests(no effect on remote controlled vehicles.)

Hunted simply means an enemy is after her(in this case, her ex partner from the corp, who is a level 3 enemy.)

Day Job(2) requires that she spend 20 hours a week(earning up to 2500 nuyen a month) at her job; in this case she works at a Seattle garage. Staying undercover is important. She works early afternoons.


Appearance and Personality:


Vallie is a human woman in her mid twenties who can blend in with the crowd easily; with medium-length, straight brown hair and hazel eyes, her 5'4'', 130 pound frame does not stand out too much. Skipping most makeup as there isn't time for that when working with vehicles, she takes on a much more utilitarian style of dress; sneakers or work shoes, jeans or cargos(often with a tool belt), t-shirts, flannels, and the like. She wears a brown armored bomber jacket when outdoors and it's cold. She is quite pretty and personable though, being fairly easy to get along with, much like Jolt-so long as you don't mistreat your vehicles like some sort of heathen.

Most of Vallie's cyberware is internal; besides the requisite headware, she has two datajacks(one behind her left ear, one on her right temple), and a multislot chipjack(under her right ear). However, she has a certain massive aversion to getting limbs replaced(it's why she only got her eyes modified and not replaced, too.) While she doesn't care if others do it, and she doesn't think twice about getting a new piece of 'ware shoved into her brain if it helps her do vehicle stuff better, she can't abide by the thought of getting full parts replaced. 

Occasionally she is seen with a modified cane; this is due to a knee injury in a terrible car accident a couple of years back. This is usually only once in awhile and in certain weather(ie; very cold and wet), but she would rather this than get the limb replaced(and it's not serious anyway, and doesn't particularly get in the way of anything she does.) The cane, naturally, has a gun in it. Mostly she defends herself with a large stun baton if someone gets close to her, and a handgun if she's out of her vehicle; generally she prefers to do her fighting via drones(which she can remote control like an expert), or while on the road(her vehicle is outfitted with various weaponry. She does have a pistol-sized Armtech mini-grenade launcher she keeps on hand if things really go down.

The wrench she keeps in her glove compartment is a last resort, as she hates to mistreat good tools.

Vallie tends to try to not leave too much in the way of casualties(having worked for a corp, she knows some of those people are just trying to do a job and go home; she wishes them no ill will and tends to load gel rounds in her guns and equip her drones with taser-like or flash-style anti-personnel weapons), though she makes no promises about co-lateral damage in the form of other vehicles or buildings(she's also fairly skilled in demolitions, though not as good as Sullivan, who is actually been showing her so long as she promises not to blow up anything too heavily if they're trying to stay quiet.) 

Being a former corporate Rigger/vehicle specialist, she has knowledge of the inside and how it works; between her, Silver, and to a lesser extent Sullivan, the team has a fair handle on how to take care of things socially. Vallie's a bit rough around the edges and curses like a sailor, though she can tone it down for serious meetings.

In her spare time, when she's not tweaking vehicles and drones, or hunting for spare parts in garages or even junkyards, she enjoys prog rock and metal music(Opeth is a particular favorite when she's in a more upbeat mood, and Rush to settle down, though she does appreciate new bands too; she finally found one whose songs could reach two hours apiece), or she's playing racing games which she's of course unfairly good at. She also spends undue amount of times in conspiracy theory chatrooms which occasionally make her a bit more paranoid than one needs to be in her situation(her safehouse is highly guarded and maintained, several levels underground in an undisclosed are of Snohomish, and she keeps a bugout bag even in that.) That being said, she's not insane about it, and is smart enough to tell fact from fiction, though in this day and age with corporate shenanigans at an all time high, it of course pays to be a little paranoid. (Jolt sometimes joins her in these chatrooms, and they're known to troll some of the really crazy ones.)

Politically she tends to wash her hands of stuff and votes for whoever's making sense that year, and religiously she's always been atheist, explaining ghosts in the machines through scientific means(to her.) When it comes to cuisine, she's happy to eat or drink whatever keeps her running during her mechanical pursuits, and this means Bucket-burgers, stuffers, or whatever comes her way(though Downfall and the rest have gotten her to at least consider splurging for real coffee more often.) She enjoys beer and will often spend a little extra at Spanky's pub for a few.

Vallie these days lives in a fairly secure city-center part of the Everett district; probably the furthest from Downtown as any of the group but having easy vehicle access makes this not an issue(and she'll just take the tube or something in to make things fast sometimes and skip traffic.) It's a fairly lucrative part for her; being under control of the Mafia, and having other organized crime things, she finds a lot of work doing no questions, no comments chop jobs for certain clients. (Due to the heavy Mafia presence, neither Downfall or Talon like to visit here, particularly the latter, though they usually can find themselves in the more Yakuza-controlled sections fairly easily.) She picked the place out that she wanted because it had a large warehouse below ground(with a driveway leading down), that she turned into her vehicle facility.

Her primary vehicle is a heavily modified GMC Bulldog step-van(useful for carting around teams or smuggled goods); it barely resembles the original anymore, is colored dark gray and has subtle, but solid armor. 

She has a 'day job'-about twenty hours a week(four hours a day, sometimes she'll put in four five hour days or a heavy couple of days depending, her boss is fairly relaxed in the scheduling so long as she does her time) in a mechanic shop on the very southern tip of the district. There are a few workers there and they're a low-to-middle class establishment(and the boss isn't above taking on a couple of mildly shadier jobs though he DOES try to run a mostly clean establishment. Mostly. While she says nothing about her shadowrunning, she wonders if anyone at the place has any idea. The extra money(not much, only about 2500 nuyen a month) goes to supporting her fairly decent middle lifestyle, and money earned from chop jobs and shadowrunning goes the rest of the way, though given her ties to vehicles and drones, this money can be eaten through very quickly, and being a vehicle expert is expensive.

It's part of the reason why she hasn't gotten something like enhanced articulation yet; while she has the aforementioned 'squick' about having whole limbs replaced, she would get that treatment(which is basically a bioware treatment that coats joints in a certain material that makes them move much more fluid and makes them more resistant to injuries and arthritis), but at around 40,000 nuyen legal(likely higher on the down low), that's quite a chunk of cash she could use for building bigger and better toys. Since she's often either driving, or off to the side controlling her drone army, she's not too concerned. The knee only really bothers her in certain weather, and off-the-shelf painkillers can knock it back enough, and she has her 'gun-stick' if she absolutely needs it, but she usually doesn't.


Quotes:


patting a particularly nice vehicle that has been through hell: “What have you done to him?!”

So you want the shock alarm to look like a Pikachu on the dashboard? Sure, I've done weirder things.”

Once you get back the backstabbing, attempted murders, coverups, people disappearing and required servitude, corporate life wasn't so bad.”


History:


Janie Valeria was born to a middle class family on the outskirts of Seattle; her mother dying before her first birthday meant her father mostly raised her solo, with the help of various nannies and the like(being relatively well-off, he was able to afford them.) Her death hit him hard, naturally, but he was very much a 'get the job done' type who eventually moved on, for his only daughter's sake. He worked as a technician for a small company that soon got picked up by an AA-corporation, though Janie doesn't recall her father ever telling her who.

She lived a fairly bland childhood, truth be told, compared to some of the other team, to the point where she was surprised she even ended up in this situation. She took an early liking to technical things(her father having a lot of books around, though he was more into the electronics aspect, she took a liking to vehicles), and her dad said she was free to go to a technical university out of high school, as her natural extreme smarts(she was valedictorian) and general easy to get along with attitude mixed with her skills would likely net her a well-paying job very quickly. Her relationship with her father was friendly, almost casual; he was so busy he never got a chance to dote, but she was easygoing enough to understand the situation.

Moving onto a technical school, a recruiter there saw her potential and decided to proposition her; she would be able to get cyberware in trade for a simple two year contract with a blossoming new tech company out of Seattle by the name of Integral Industries; they were on the fast track to possible A-hood at the rate they were moving. They specialized in the design of vehicles and drones, and somewhat mounted weaponry as well. Janie would be a field tester for a lot of the stuff. So she agreed to get some implants; she refused the cybereyes(stating that she'd rather have modifications), but got a decent Vehicle Control Rig installed and some of her other headware. She then began her work; even getting a partner; another young human woman by the name of Lorraine(at the time.) She was more into the electronics aspect of the builds and tests(while Janie was good at this, she was more into the mechanical part of it rather than the microtronics), also examining how the human mind reacted toward vehicles.

For two uneventful years she carried on; it was more fun to test, though over time, being a corp trying desperately to climb the ladder and get that A status, they would, of course, dip their hands into seedier business. She shrugged it off at first, but when a young man she knew was brought in for experimental cyberware and never came out again, she started to get a sinking feeling. As with many corporations, to pull ahead, they usually ended up dealing with heftier and heftier drek to get the edge and the funding.

Her and her partner decided to team up to snoop. Lori(the electronics expert's nickname) was also a fairly decent decker, so started poking around; it turned up that the corp were experimenting with actual transference of human brains to machines, and she reckoned the person she knew ended up in one of the combat robots they had there. Or fused to one, or something horrible.

Janie wanted to bail, but Lori had second thoughts. They were more workmates and acquaintances than actual friends, so Janie bid her well wishes and made her own plans...but they had tracked down Lori's signal, and caught on to what she was doing. In order to save herself, she sold Janie out.

It came to a head when Janie was doing a standard field test, when her vehicle lost control; this was unheard of, as she was an excellent driver(even though they told her this was an 'unrigged run', so she could not actually rig into the vehicle, but only plug in via datajack to a port. She thought it strange but went with it.) It resulted in a crash that nearly killed her; indeed, she was badly injured, her right leg in particular.

It was only due to the fact Huginn and Muninn-Spanky's bouncers-happened to be nearby, and they used their power to rip her from the vehicle the best they could, though they had no way of healing her. Her helmet saved her head from any horrible trauma, so they were able to speak to her upon taking it off; she was fuzzy, thinking she saw two ghosts(the brothers are albino), and the next thing she knew, she was waking in Dr. Douglas' intensive care unit. Thanks to the excellent care of the clinic(it is Beta grade at least), she was able to heal quickly, though the knee would continue to bother her on the colder, wettest days.

Thanks to the contacts, she was quickly assimilated with the team who at the time consisted of Downfall, Silver, Wind, and Sullivan, who were in desperate need of a good Rigger/drone specialist, where she carries on to this day, getting on well with the team and supplying a rather dirty sense of humor along with her mechanical specialties.

Integral was soon after eaten up by Fuchi; they never did become AAA, though apparently some of their higher-ups are now in spots on Fuchi at the moment, possibly due to some sort of trade. She keeps tabs on them just in case...


Contacts:


Besides the usual bunch(Spanky, Mama, Huginn & Muninn, etc), Vallie knows:

Kyra: The J-Rock and K-Pop fanatic that Jolt knows; due to being really good with electronics, they managed to get on well too.

'Theo' Logan: Theo is a young troll mechanic at the shop she has her actual legit job at. Barely scraping 20, he has messy hair and trends toward rock music, gaining his nickname from an old flatvid movie of the 1980s by the garage owner who has a liking for such things. He's not above a few chop jobs and Vallie will sometimes tap him for help if she has a particularly large vehicle to strip.

Corrine: An elven corporate secretary, and not above taking a bit of cred to accidentally leaving behind some information. She was 'traded' from Vallie's old corp to Fuchi, but she still has enough contacts.


Future Plans:



Replace Vehicle Control Rig 2 with a Beta grade VCR-3

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