Mun: Your Name: Sitouh Your Email: sitouh@gmail.com Your AIM: SitouhSinsaang
Character: Character's Name: Lai Siu Lung Character's Fandom: Eclipse Phase (RPG) Character's Home Universe: The world of Eclipse Phase is a dangerous place - transhumanity has lost Earth to the ravages of the TITANs, but fortunately we'd spread through the solar system before that happened. Luna, Mars, venus and Jupiter's moons all hold growing colonies, and smaller habitats fill the rest of the system.
The history of the world A-lung comes from can be best looked at in three parts: before the Fall, the Fall itself, and things since the Fall. Prior to the Fall, humanity was continuing in its best tradition of conflict, with technological progress adding to the mix, solving some problems, making others worse, and adding whole new ones to the mix. Humanity spread itself across the solar system, even while continuing to squabble endlessly over Earth, made steps towards learning the secrets of the human mind, at least enough to allow for it to be saved, transferred, and copied, and succeeded in creating true artificial intelligence.
In retrospect, attempting to weaponize seed AIs (artificial intelligences capable of recursive self-improvement) was one of those really bad ideas, but by the time humanity realized just how big a mistake it had made, it was almost too late - the TITANs, who had already infiltrated essentially the entirety of humanity's digital networks in the days since their creation, managed to kick the simmering tension between Earth's myriad factions into full-on conflict. Atrocities were committed on all sides - nuclear, chemical, biological, digital, nanotech, every weapon mankind had developed was brought to bear. And then the TITANs launched their own attacks, capturing every human they could get their claws on and forcibly downloading their minds. Nothing humanity had could stop the TITANs - the best that could be done was to try and hold them back long enough to run.
Then, suddenly and without warning, the TITANs left. They exited the solar system, through the wormholes they left on the moons of Saturn and Mars, and perhaps by other means, incomprehensible to humanity's understanding. Earth was left a wasteland, a patchwork of radiation hotspots, sterile ground, nanotech clouds, autonomous war machines, and who knows what else. Humanity survives, on the Moon, Mars, the moons of Jupiter and Saturn and countless habitats scattered through space, turning its attention back to fighting with itself as it ever does.
This is the world A-lung comes from.
Method of Arrival on Station: A Firewall operation brought A-lung into contact with a Station recruiter, and the Little Dragon agreed to join the movement (with the promise that the version of him restored from backup would be paid handsomely for the trouble in exchange for continuing to work towards Firewall's goals once there).
Physical Appearance: A-lung stands about 160 cm high (5'2" for you imperial measurement folk) and masses about 45 kilograms (just under 100 pounds). When he's wearing his own face (see below in Abilities and Skills) he looks to be of Chinese ancestry, with short, rather messy black hair and dark brown eyes. He generally keeps his clothes configured as a t-shirt, baggy hooded jacket and baggy slacks, with light running shoes completing the ensemble. He has nanotats, generally configured to be a Chinese dragon dancing around his torso and arms, occasionally peeking out past his collar or sleeves, but which can be adjusted to other uses.
Character History: A-Lung is one of the Lost generation - an attempt to quickly raise a new generation quickly through use of accelerated-time simulation space and AI supervision that produced thousands of hypercognitive/psychic socio- and psychopaths. In the chaos that ensued when they tried to shut down and cover up the project, A-lung slipped through the cracks, made it to Mars, and established himself in the criminal underground there, parlaying his talents and skills into success as a freelance conman and organizer/mastermind for larger criminal endeavors.
His success there led to him being contacted and recruited into Firewall, a paramilitary social network dedicated to protecting humanity against existential threats, which led to A-lung's coming into contact with the Station's recruiters and eventually making his way here.
Personality: If you had to pick one word to describe A-lung, the most obvious choice would be 'hyper'. About 90% of the time, the self-styled 'Little Dragon of Qianjiao' radiates an enthusiasm for life that borders on and occasionally crosses over into the manic, ranging from a voracious curiosity about practically everything to . That energy is at the heart of how he approaches (attacks may be a better word) the world - he soaks up all the information he can get his hands on until he sees an exploitable opening, then slams a gig through that hole, banking on surprise, forward momentum, audacity, and sheer will to carry him through the inevitable complications.
The sorts of high A-lung tries to live at can't be sustained indefinitely, however, and his crashes can be as hard as his highs. About the only reason he hasn't committed suicide is because he's granted Monkey lockout authorization on his pistol, and generally he can't be bothered to get up the effort for anything more involved.
Morally, A-lung tries to come across as an amoral pragmatist motivated only by curiosity, profit, and self-preservation, and comes across as such well enough to convince most people (including himself in his depressive crashes) that he's a weasel who'd sell out his best friend for the right paycheck, he does have something of a personal moral compass, stunted though it may be.
Basically, his approach towards people breaks down into a few general categories:
Small Fry - people on the bottom rungs of whatever totem pole. A-Lung tries to minimize the impact his jobs have on these people when he's pulling a job, and generally not be a dick the rest of the time, unless they're in his way.
Schmucks - people who've mildly pissed him off, or who are associated with causes he dislikes on a low-to-mid-management level. Fair game for a passing prank and splash damage from a job.
Marks - people who've gone out of their way to piss A-lung off, or who are closely associated with A-lung's hotbutton causes. These are the ones A-lung hunts, waiting for the slipups that let him spit in their eye and make off with what they hold dear for fun and profit.
Menaces - People who have actively threatened A-lung or his friends. All bets are off - to borrow the line from Gabe of Penny Arcade, he will burn his house to the ground around him if he thinks he'll catch you inside as well.
Professionals - Others in the communities A-lung chooses to associate himself with (autonomists, anarchists, and criminals back on Mars, the denizens of the Station here). If you know A-lung by his real name, you're probably in this category. He's generally straight-up with these; pissing off the people you might have at your back at some point is a good way to end up dead.
Friends - No man is an island, and even a weasel like A-lung will open himself up to a person or two. A-lung generally won't admit it, but he'll move heaven and earth for these people.
The things that get A-lung's goat generally fall into a few basic categories: institutional greed, institutional discrimination, excessive governmental reach and annoying/intrusive advertising are the most constant, while others come and go.
Abilities and Skills: A-lung is something of a renaissance man of criminal endeavor. He's competent at the more physical side of things - pickpocketing, infiltration, surveillance and counter-surveillance, etc. - but where he really shines is in the mental side of things. He's a consummate liar, a silver-tongued salesman, capable of projecting far more menace than you'd think you could squeeze out of someone his size, and a master of disguise and impersonation.
In addition, he's a competent if not stellar programmer and IT technician (although his skills are rather biased towards the polymorphic adaptive protocols standard where he comes from, rather than the nightmare that is the Station's network configuration, but it's somewhere to start), a decent marksman, and a passable freerunner/traceur.
On top of all this, there are the 'gifts' gained as a result of exposure to the Watts-McLeod variant of the Excrucian virus. While most strains turned people into ravening monsters of one sort or another, Watts-McLeod instead granted superhuman mental abilities. A-lung's case was mild - he manifested none of the active psychic abilities some did - but the hypercognitive abilities it did grant are not to be sneezed at. His brain's subconscious analytic and predictive capabilities have been massively ramped up, along with the conscious mind's ability to process this onslaught of information. The most obvious manifestations of the changes are seen in A-lung's mental multitasking ability (he can literally think about two different things at once) and in the uncanny accuracy of his gut instinct - A-lung's snap judgments are generally as good or better than any more thought-out analysis or plan he can come up with.
All this will come along with A-lung if he ends up getting transferred to another body (something made possible by cortical stack technology - see below). His body grants a variety of advantages as well:
Basic Biomods: A-lung naturally heals twice as fast as a standard human, will regrow lost body parts over enough time, is immune to most normal diseases, the ill effects of extended exposure to low gravity, and only requires four hours of sleep a night.
Mesh Inserts: A-lung has a computer embedded in his head that serves the role filled by most modern personal electronic gadgetry - smartphone, PC, PDA, media player, etc. It also houses Monkey, his muse, an AI who serves as personal assistant/personal accountant/psychotherapist for when A-lung's bipolar disorder gets especially bad. The system has a radio range of 20 km in open space, or 1 km or so in areas with more radio interference.
Cortical Stack: A tiny data storage device at the base of the skull, embedded in a synthetic diamond case about the size of a grape. The cortical stack uses a network of nanobots to monitor and record synaptic connections and brain architecture, maintaining a backup of A-lung's ego. If A-lung were to be killed, the stack could be recovered and he could be restored from the backup contained therein.
Medical Sensors: An array of implanted sensors let A-lung monitor heart rate, respiration, blood pressure, temperature, neural activity, and more.
Eidetic Memory: A-lung can remember and recall anything he's paid attention to, with no long-term memory loss.
Medichines: On top of the already impressive healing from the sleeve, nanobots in A-lung's bloodstream allow him to heal in hours what would take a non-augmented human days or weeks. They also protect him from most drugs (unless he chooses to allow the drug to take effect), and drop him into a medical stasis and call for help via his mesh inserts if he is injured too severely.
Skinflex: A-lung can reconfigure his facial features, skin tone and hair, augmenting his already impressive disguise and impersonation skills.
Lai Siu Lung
Your Name: Sitouh
Your Email: sitouh@gmail.com
Your AIM: SitouhSinsaang
Character:
Character's Name: Lai Siu Lung
Character's Fandom: Eclipse Phase (RPG)
Character's Home Universe: The world of Eclipse Phase is a dangerous place - transhumanity has lost Earth to the ravages of the TITANs, but fortunately we'd spread through the solar system before that happened. Luna, Mars, venus and Jupiter's moons all hold growing colonies, and smaller habitats fill the rest of the system.
The history of the world A-lung comes from can be best looked at in three parts: before the Fall, the Fall itself, and things since the Fall. Prior to the Fall, humanity was continuing in its best tradition of conflict, with technological progress adding to the mix, solving some problems, making others worse, and adding whole new ones to the mix. Humanity spread itself across the solar system, even while continuing to squabble endlessly over Earth, made steps towards learning the secrets of the human mind, at least enough to allow for it to be saved, transferred, and copied, and succeeded in creating true artificial intelligence.
In retrospect, attempting to weaponize seed AIs (artificial intelligences capable of recursive self-improvement) was one of those really bad ideas, but by the time humanity realized just how big a mistake it had made, it was almost too late - the TITANs, who had already infiltrated essentially the entirety of humanity's digital networks in the days since their creation, managed to kick the simmering tension between Earth's myriad factions into full-on conflict. Atrocities were committed on all sides - nuclear, chemical, biological, digital, nanotech, every weapon mankind had developed was brought to bear. And then the TITANs launched their own attacks, capturing every human they could get their claws on and forcibly downloading their minds. Nothing humanity had could stop the TITANs - the best that could be done was to try and hold them back long enough to run.
Then, suddenly and without warning, the TITANs left. They exited the solar system, through the wormholes they left on the moons of Saturn and Mars, and perhaps by other means, incomprehensible to humanity's understanding. Earth was left a wasteland, a patchwork of radiation hotspots, sterile ground, nanotech clouds, autonomous war machines, and who knows what else. Humanity survives, on the Moon, Mars, the moons of Jupiter and Saturn and countless habitats scattered through space, turning its attention back to fighting with itself as it ever does.
This is the world A-lung comes from.
Method of Arrival on Station: A Firewall operation brought A-lung into contact with a Station recruiter, and the Little Dragon agreed to join the movement (with the promise that the version of him restored from backup would be paid handsomely for the trouble in exchange for continuing to work towards Firewall's goals once there).
Physical Appearance: A-lung stands about 160 cm high (5'2" for you imperial measurement folk) and masses about 45 kilograms (just under 100 pounds). When he's wearing his own face (see below in Abilities and Skills) he looks to be of Chinese ancestry, with short, rather messy black hair and dark brown eyes. He generally keeps his clothes configured as a t-shirt, baggy hooded jacket and baggy slacks, with light running shoes completing the ensemble. He has nanotats, generally configured to be a Chinese dragon dancing around his torso and arms, occasionally peeking out past his collar or sleeves, but which can be adjusted to other uses.
Character History: A-Lung is one of the Lost generation - an attempt to quickly raise a new generation quickly through use of accelerated-time simulation space and AI supervision that produced thousands of hypercognitive/psychic socio- and psychopaths. In the chaos that ensued when they tried to shut down and cover up the project, A-lung slipped through the cracks, made it to Mars, and established himself in the criminal underground there, parlaying his talents and skills into success as a freelance conman and organizer/mastermind for larger criminal endeavors.
His success there led to him being contacted and recruited into Firewall, a paramilitary social network dedicated to protecting humanity against existential threats, which led to A-lung's coming into contact with the Station's recruiters and eventually making his way here.
Personality: If you had to pick one word to describe A-lung, the most obvious choice would be 'hyper'. About 90% of the time, the self-styled 'Little Dragon of Qianjiao' radiates an enthusiasm for life that borders on and occasionally crosses over into the manic, ranging from a voracious curiosity about practically everything to . That energy is at the heart of how he approaches (attacks may be a better word) the world - he soaks up all the information he can get his hands on until he sees an exploitable opening, then slams a gig through that hole, banking on surprise, forward momentum, audacity, and sheer will to carry him through the inevitable complications.
The sorts of high A-lung tries to live at can't be sustained indefinitely, however, and his crashes can be as hard as his highs. About the only reason he hasn't committed suicide is because he's granted Monkey lockout authorization on his pistol, and generally he can't be bothered to get up the effort for anything more involved.
Morally, A-lung tries to come across as an amoral pragmatist motivated only by curiosity, profit, and self-preservation, and comes across as such well enough to convince most people (including himself in his depressive crashes) that he's a weasel who'd sell out his best friend for the right paycheck, he does have something of a personal moral compass, stunted though it may be.
Basically, his approach towards people breaks down into a few general categories:
The things that get A-lung's goat generally fall into a few basic categories: institutional greed, institutional discrimination, excessive governmental reach and annoying/intrusive advertising are the most constant, while others come and go.
Abilities and Skills: A-lung is something of a renaissance man of criminal endeavor. He's competent at the more physical side of things - pickpocketing, infiltration, surveillance and counter-surveillance, etc. - but where he really shines is in the mental side of things. He's a consummate liar, a silver-tongued salesman, capable of projecting far more menace than you'd think you could squeeze out of someone his size, and a master of disguise and impersonation.
In addition, he's a competent if not stellar programmer and IT technician (although his skills are rather biased towards the polymorphic adaptive protocols standard where he comes from, rather than the nightmare that is the Station's network configuration, but it's somewhere to start), a decent marksman, and a passable freerunner/traceur.
On top of all this, there are the 'gifts' gained as a result of exposure to the Watts-McLeod variant of the Excrucian virus. While most strains turned people into ravening monsters of one sort or another, Watts-McLeod instead granted superhuman mental abilities. A-lung's case was mild - he manifested none of the active psychic abilities some did - but the hypercognitive abilities it did grant are not to be sneezed at. His brain's subconscious analytic and predictive capabilities have been massively ramped up, along with the conscious mind's ability to process this onslaught of information. The most obvious manifestations of the changes are seen in A-lung's mental multitasking ability (he can literally think about two different things at once) and in the uncanny accuracy of his gut instinct - A-lung's snap judgments are generally as good or better than any more thought-out analysis or plan he can come up with.
All this will come along with A-lung if he ends up getting transferred to another body (something made possible by cortical stack technology - see below). His body grants a variety of advantages as well:
Sample: See http://testrun-box.dreamwidth.org/7858.html for writing sample