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From the highest high to the lowest low, a life path

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Fri, 2014-03-07 18:19

Genomita

From the highest high to the lowest low, a life path

Yesterday I used the life path system to roll a bunch of characters just for the sake of seeing what I'll get. One character that struck me as interesting started out as hyperelite: Scion (3PP) before switching paths and becoming an indentured bot jammer (1PP) followed by rolling faction paragon, sifters (3PP) and thief (1pp), followed by survival training and activist (both 1pp). The same chara also managed to gather no less than 5 moxie (the last from the firewall table)and made it through all of this unharmed, aside from falling on hard times, leaving him 10k less credits, which was immediately countered by rolling the max amount of credits. He also managed to keep his Exalt morph through the entire thing! Now I can't help but wonder. Is that even possible? isn't indentured servitude usually inflicted on people who died or had to leave their morph behind? After determining arabic as his mother language. I imagined him as the child of some super-rich but unloving oil sheikh or something similar who sold him off because he didn't meet his expectations or earned his ire. But I wanted to ask if that is really a satisfying explanation for this turn of events. I rather like how this character turned out and I appreciate the fine irony in him becoming a proud member of the sifters after working as an indenture. Still, if you think anything needs changing to make sense, please let me know.

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Your friendly neighbourhood biotech lover and space nomad

Fri, 2014-03-07 18:44

ShadowDragon8685 ShadowDragon8685's picture

At the risk of being

At the risk of being egregiously politically incorrect, that sounds entirely plausible. If he was, say, a Saudi Prince or whatever kind of absolute middle-ages-mentality-and-modern-super-wealthy-arabic family existed in the pre-Fall times, if he wound up massively displeasing his father/disgracing his family, then "Sold offworld as an indenture" sounds like a fairly modern, progressive alternative to an old-school familial honor beheading. Especially since, if he had backup insurance somewhere independent of his father's control, simply beheading him would be an ineffective measure, but stripping him of all his money and inheritance, disowning him and selling him? Now [i]that[/i] would be effective as a means of punishing him.

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Fri, 2014-03-07 19:56

ORCACommander ORCACommander's picture

people are not as

people are not as monolithically black and white as the faction write ups would has us believe. he could in fact been an activist within the hyperelite ranks and when called an hypocrite decided to give it all up and live by his ideals. or he simply did very poorly in business and risked to much and fall into massive debt

Fri, 2014-03-07 20:07

Genomita

Either that, or he was sold

Either that, or he was sold as an indenture after his father found out he sympathized with the indentures, the very people that made their comfortable lives possible. I like that. He probably thought to knock some sense into his son's head and give him a taste of what life outside the walls was like. Too bad it didn't work the way he thought. When his son refused to come crawling back to him but stuck to his ideals his father sealed the deal and disowned him for good, after which the son went and made some friends among the sifters. How does that sound?

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Your friendly neighbourhood biotech lover and space nomad

Fri, 2014-03-07 22:44

ShadowDragon8685 ShadowDragon8685's picture

It's your character, innit?

It's your character, innit? Anything goes. That's no less plausible than anything else.

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Sat, 2014-03-08 10:10

Lilith

Life paths

Crazy stuff like this is why I like life paths. A friend of mine ended up with a character that survived the Fall in his original (Flat!) body, apparently dealt in super-illegal (probably TITAN) tech at one time, currently lives in Earth orbit, and has something like 80+ i-Rep. Shit's [i]wacky[/i].

Sat, 2014-03-08 13:47

Undocking

Genomita wrote:

Genomita wrote:
How does that sound?

Pretty good. I like it. I can even imagine a father saying, "Since you like the indentures so much, I took the liberty of making you one!" I espically like that it was only to prove a point. Maybe a contract for a year, that the son extended. Life paths are a great creative structure to work through. The dice are also hilarious. I just did one and ended up with a split youth: Almost human AGI created before the fall with a silver nanoswarm in his blood. Then she lost all her friends and is Not a Team Player. Being in her 30's, she became an icon on Earth but lost a limb in a terrifying accident before the Fall. Apparently she found out how vulnerable she was to the exsurgent virus during the Fall. She switched gears and became an ego hunter exhuman with a covert ops focus. Post fall she spent a lot of time around AGI, and joined firewall by stepping into the middle of a fray and picking the right side. She is being persecuted for her nature (AGI). All the while, she kept her Exalt. An AGI was made for a rich family on Earth to inhabit a geneswap clone of the parents (since they couldn't have kids). She became quite popular on the music scene, but being betrayed by her girl group made her a loner. Some stalker/fan injured her in an attempt to forknap her, but he was unsuccessful and she made him an indenture on Mars. When the Fall happened, she made it off world early and settled in New Mumbai. She escaped the quaruntine but had a brush with exsurgents, learning from her dying mother that she is an AI but they still loved her as their daughter, because she was. Spending time getting to know her 'roots', she decided that Mercurials sought for recognition by transhumanity when they had already moved beyond it. Having her inheritance locked by the LLA due to her being an AGI, she became an Ego-hunter on a whim. When one of her targets turned out to be a Firewall target, she helped the sentinels retreive the asset from Oversight.

Sat, 2014-03-08 17:34

Genomita

Glad to hear you like my idea

Glad to hear you like my idea. Also, that character sounds really interesting. Sometimes it's the really weird results that result in the most memorable character. I'm also thinking about swapping swapping the 50 rep my chara gained from @-rep to c-rep, not because he likes dealing with them, but because the fact of the matter is that mercury is deep in consortium territory and his sifter buddies need someone who can negotiate with the corporate bastards when they come a-knocking, try to negotiate fair terms for mercurian indentures, keep the expectations for mining turnouts reasonable, make sure the new guys don't get their backups wiped for accidentally breaking the mining equipment, stuff like that. Enter my character, who is by now the foreman of his sifter group, and thus in a position where he has to deal with stuff like that. The fact that he's pretty good at it since his background as a hyperelite scion and activist helped him develop the skills required to beat the hypercorp guys at their own game, or at least perform damage control.

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Your friendly neighbourhood biotech lover and space nomad

Sun, 2014-03-09 03:16

DivineWrath DivineWrath's picture

You wanna swap reps? Go for

You wanna swap reps? Go for it then. I think the life path stuff work a little bit better when you are willing to make changes to what it produces. I don't want to be locked into playing a character that I would be uncomfortable to be playing, so a few minor changes can fix that. Also the life path system generates characters without putting any thought into the process, so maybe swapping a few things around would make a better character.