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Solitaire

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Dawn.jpg
Solitaire
aka Dawn
Street Samurai with magic
Magician with cyberware
From the New Orleans campaign
She is a psyhological mute, communicating via sign-language
Career Highlights
Involved actively in the killing of John Edroe
Shot Megan Cross in the head

>>>>>[Husband and wife.. got to complete the set and get Amy?]<<<<< - Solitaire - 12:10/19-04-2062

Characteristics

Skillwires(6) and a 4-slot Chipjack allows Solitaire to have a wide range of skills available in a moments notice. DIMAP enabled skill-chips and a Chipjack Expert Driver allows Solitaire up to 13 dice for skill tests (skill at rating 6, +1 for customisation, +6 from task pool if skill is DIMAP enabled, +6 from combat pool if relevant - up to a maximum of skill*2 +1). This gives Solitaire an extraordinary ability to provide a wide range of unusual skills to the party and to fill gaps - with sufficient warning to purchase the relevant skill-chips. Solitaire's obvious drawback is her inability to communicate efficiently with the party. Sign-language and writing notes is possible in some circumstances, but in the middle of a mission when the part is divided and communicating via microtranceiver, Solitaire has to rely on predetermined coded messages, which can be a liability when the unexpected occurs. While Solitaire's main contribution to the party is her 'street samurai' abilities, it can not be overlooked that she is actually a highly powerful mage at initiate grade 4. She does not possess a wide range of spells, and is certainly not an all-out combat mage, but the few spells she does have can provide a suddenly unexpected thorn to her opponents, and her ability to provide shielding against opponents magic and throw elementals into the fight can turn the result of a battle.

Favoured Weaponry

Background

Dawn was born into a corporation to dutiful parents that led a safe if boring life, a life that Dawn would have been more than content to emulate if only given the choice. First Tier Mega Corporations are able to buy in the necessary resources for all manner of operations, smaller corporations have to make do with whatever they can get. The corporation Dawn was born into was of the latter sort, and yet just as greedy and ruthless as the likes of Aztech or Ares. Corp policy was that any child born with magical skills was given beneficial treatment, a perk that extended to the parents, which made Dawn's mother and father all too ready to accept the 'enhanced' education that Dawn was subjected to. With a fairly pitiful budget for black operations, the corp decided to blend the best combination of magic and cyberware to manufacture as efficient an operative as they were able to. If abilities could be provided with magic, she was taught the spells, where magic could not perform, cyberware was implanted. With resources low, progress needed to be made, and made fast, and so short cuts were taken wherever possible. Why wait 10 years to develop highly trained operatives if the skills can be slotted? Why send operatives on training missions all over the world, if you can plug them into simsense and simulate the experiences? From an early age Dawn was barraged with 'training' simulations and simsense experiences that made her grow up fast. Cut off from the real world (friends were an unnecessary distraction and not allowed) Dawn lived in a haze where the lines between reality and simsense were blurred - blurred deliberatly by those training her, who wanted her able to perform whatever operations they required without thinking for herself or being obstructed with morality. Dawn was a success, she undertook many simsense missions without realising they were not real, and demonstrated her ability to follow orders, never being squeamish or hesitating before a kill. Dawn was a success... but those 'creating' her never looked at the flipside of the coin.. or chose not too. Unable to adequately relate to others on a social level she became shut off from reality, becoming a machine that existed only to perform her missions. Only when sent out on her first /real/ mission did it truly become apparent how much of a failure the whole process was. The first time on a real run didn't feel real to Dawn, the structure and predictability of simsense missions was not replicated in the real world, and this only made her slip further from being able to face reality. Everything was a problem that could be solved by killing, and moving on. Yet at the same time the freedom Dawn was experiencing to move outside of the normal mission structure was liberating. She could not comprehend what was different, it was impossible for her mind to grasp that this was really the first time she was out in the real world.. but subconsciously she knew this was something she wanted to keep, and so she simply never returned back to the corp. However the only lifestyle Dawn had known had been black operations, and so she naturally fell into shadowrunning. She fell in with a team of little more than thugs with delusions of grandeur that saw in her their ticket to the big team - serious missions for serious payout. At first thier hopes and dreams were realised. Dawn helped them with ever more difficult jobs, and while it was obvious to them that she was a bit of a loner, never sitting with them for before/after mission drinks, she performed admirably on the job, but earned herself a nicknamed of Solitaire. Her lack of social skills ran deeper, which the team were to learn at their own cost. Harder and harder jobs came their way, until finally the team was out of its depth - all but Solitaire that is. The mission went to hell, and the team had to fight themselves out of a trap, and screamed to Solitaire for assistance. Weighing up the odds as she had done so often in the simsense missions, she simply turned and continued running, not putting herself at risk, and it was only afterwards that the full impact of it hit her. When the world didn't fade to black, and the mission didn't replay, she was forced to face reality, and ended up climbing deeper into the shell that had been created around her. It was at this time that she stopped speaking, and has been a psychological mute ever since. Jobs still came her way.. slowly at first, and over time Solitaire found herself another group to run with. Being little more than a child mentally, and certainly not much more than a child physically, Solitaire regarded the new group she ran with as her family. She had seen first hand what could happen to a group, and determined never again to let herself lose those around her. Attempting to relate to her group as something more than mission colleagues was hard for her, she hadn't developed social skills and found it impossible to understand the moral viewpoints expressed. Currently Dawn is a blend of a socio-pathic (yet softening) exterior, shielding an inner lost and confused child.

During Extreme Ways the assassination of Ryan Novak of Elysium Inc was pinned onto Solitaire as a witness on the scene claimed to have seen her there. Solitaire however did not do it - and the name of the man and the company seemed vaguely familiar to her - though she could not place them. She asked Mark to mind-probe her to see if he could unlock the relevant information - and it revealed a scene in which she was in a car with a man - then exited the car and broke into a building, into someone's office to steal something from their safe. During the theft someone walked into the office and caught her - and she killed them, and then a few others who were drawn to the disturbance. The trauma of that event sent Solitaire running away. This revelation gave her some insight into the trauma that must have sent her into the shadows. Later in Extreme Ways she discovers that she must have been part of Elysium Inc's Project Songbird which was supposed to have been shelved - but was kept going by Robert Denman in secret. One of these secret version-II assassins was the perpetrator of Ryan Novak's assassination - and also attempted the assassination of Solitaire (an attempt that was foiled as Miguel Escobar accidently stepped into the path of the bullets and got injured - which left the team believing the attempt was against him). Later in Extreme Ways the three version-II assassins attacked the team in Bo Ordell's bar Simones and were killed. Robert Denman tried to drive away - but was stopped by Speedy and when Solitaire saw Robert Denman she recognised him - deep memories dredged up - and she took him prisoner without knowing what she wanted done with him.

Ran In


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