Who are those guys in my header? Short answer: My main characters, that I reuse in various games and settings.
Find out more in this post (longer) or in this or this one (short)!
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Who: Enki (He/him), 40+
Franchises: The Sims (2 and 4), Detroit: Become Human, Star Wars (mainly the sequel trilogy) and occasionally Fire Emblem.
Sims 2 masterpost | Detroit masterpost | Star Wars masterpost
Paralives (sideblog)
Other concerns:
I use the tag non sims for content that isn't The Sims, except if that content relates to my ongoing sims story.
This blog is visually Safe For Work, but under the colorful hood of my sims and amidst my jokes some serious stuff takes place that may not be everyone's taste.
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Some of my text-only stories (links go to AO3, all sfw):
The wrecking of the Steadfast (Hux & the rebels teamup after Exegol)
A spy trapped (Rose and Hux have to pretend they are a couple)
Mutiny on the Steadfast (The First Order brainwashes Poe Dameron into thinking he is one of them)
The man who shot Connor Stern (Daniel PL600 goes to prison)
Belle Isle Secure Center for incurably deviant androids (Failed revolution AU with Daniel and the Jericho androids)
One of the minor FO characters I adopted for my fics is Masir Trach, scanner officer of first the Finalizer and later the Steadfast. His one line in canon is "They are not using speeders" and later the Visual dictionary gave us the character description that he tries to stay out of the Hux/Pryde feud.
WELL, Masir, with the gang color shoulder strings introduced in Fall of Kylo Ren that isn't possible anymore. You have to visually represent your team now.
(Yes, we got Quinn for that role in TroS and I'll defend Quinn teeth and nails, but Hux can do those lines just as well!)
Spoiler:
Motti in more than this speech bubble. During the second battle for Hetzal, Hux' position would have been the reasonable one, the time window for an attack being indeed too small for anybody without Jedi reflexes and the willingness to take a chance. Hux is way too calculated to ever utilize Kylo to the fullest.
"Welcome back" with obvious, unveiled fist making. (Well, not so obvious for Kylo standing in front of him, but for every random onlooker.), meanwhile it's Pryde now who stands in Hux' iconic hands on the back pose. Things are falling apart.
I hadn't expected Hux' and Pryde's animosity to be so in the open already at this stage. It's, what? Couple of weeks after Crait?
(Also them basically wearing gang colors is genius, red and grey respectively, is genius. The "color of power" according to Brendol and the old fossil.)
I love Pryde getting screen time. Didn't like him when I first saw TroS, just because he was an OC when they could have used a minor imperial that people maybe didn't remember, but who at least had a Wikipedia entry. That was, of course, before I learned about the whole Brendol/Enric/Maratelle/Armitage/Cardinal family situation.
The little yelp when Kylo touches them both!
I don't think Hux is comfortable with getting touched at all, let alone spontaneously.
Also: gloved hand for Hux, ungloved for Pryde - interesting choice. (In-universe of course this is just the result of how they are standing in this moment.)
Kylo's whole speech in this scene is so reminiscent of how Snoke treated Hux and Kylo. Now Kylo replaced Snoke and Hux is STILL in the same role he was before while ONCE AGAIN being stuck with a rival.
Not all smuggled goods are illegal, some traders simply prefer to, let's call it "ship cost-efficiently".
With a trunk full of scientific equipment, our heroes enjoy a lazy trip across Lake Huron. But then they get stuck on the ferry when their fake IDs aren't deemed good enough to enter the Algonkin-Manitou council, but not terrible enough to warrant an arrest.
Plot:
The second "run" was another smuggling gig: Transport BTLs hidden in legal lab equipment to an archaeologist camp in the AMC and return with "misplaced" artifacts to sell at your leisure back home.
They boarded a ship using fake rating 3 IDs provided by their client. Rose' and Finn's got flagged as suspicious - Hux to the rescue:
"No, of course these aren't actual SINs. They are so-called Employee SINs, good only in service of the firm. Issuing those halfway SINs to the sinless scum is cheaper than paying a real person, y'know?"
Poe immediately jumped to the hook and expressed how happy he was for that chance and that he was hoping for a permanent work contract should he do well in this. He fast-talked everyone's way out of trouble and onto the ship.
At this point Rose still had her Middle Class lifestyle from character creation, so she invited the other three to all the cafeteria goods they could want on the ferry. It was real cosy and the foursome bonded a little. They also spotted Narkina from a distance, Ares' high security prison on Lake Huron - I specifically added this in case my characters get captured some day.
In Thunder Bay the "employee ID" ploy worked again, but with the caveat that the holders of it were not allowed into the country. They had to wait for their return trip. This time Hux and Poe had made their rolls, Rose and Finn had to sneak off the ship in a freight container.
From there on it was smooth travel, rescuing some of the archaeologists from hungry wolves and exchanging the equipment and BTLs for archaeological artifacts. Those artifacts were meant to be the group's primary payment, but the trip ended with a spirit of the land harassing the group badly and re-burying the stolen artifacts. Mind you, I have a dedicated ghostslaying character and one with the Guts/Courage advantage at my disposal, but, nope, the dice said no deal.
The group tried to recoup their loss by offering locals a ride to Thunder Bay and got paid in herbs that have similar effects as stim patches. They also met Beaumont Kin, a future contact, for the first time, but they have no idea how to pay their rent next month.
Naturally I wouldn't start any sort of story without including Daniel and Gavin in some capacity.
In Shadowstory they are employees of Knight Errant, the company Detroit outsources policework to in the 2050s. For now the duo are those re-occuring villains that you know when they appear you "win" by escaping. But in time the runners will have leveled up...
In the face of his highly cybered up co-workers Connor and Daniel, Gavin is afraid to fall behind, but he must not get implants lest he ruins his rudimentary magic talent. Like his totem he likes to arc his back to appear taller, but really wants lots of cuddles.
Daniel has the reputation of being the DPD's resident cyberzombie, although compared to the average street samurai his chrome is paltry. Lightning fast and with a keen aim, his job is actually to intimidate, not shoot, the opposition because at the end of the day lethal shots fired mean paperwork and trouble.
Smuggling isn't glamorous. Sometimes to put polystarch puffbread and soycaf on the table you gotta liberate contraband kitchen appliances from a warehouse.
Plot:
The first run I played with my brand new characters was to get a feeling again for the game mechanics (2nd edition) and decide on houserules.
They got informed by Han that there were reject goods sheduled to get destroyed and that they could buy some for cheap to re-sell, but not what exactly those goods were. The list I put together started with slightly bent out of shape fruit and ended with exotic critters, but I managed to roll the most boring result: household electronics.
After failing stealth and deception both, the runners entered the target warehouse through the adjacent one, in which a wizz gang was initiating (as in: admitting to the gang, not the Grimoire initiation) a newcomer. He failed to summon a street spirit, but the others took the characters for not just one, but four spirits manifesting in the shape of shadowrunners. ("Oh, yes, those are mine! Very urban!")
They had to perform a service each before they could "dissipate" through the wall: Scare the gang's runt (Hux aced this with his Intimidation skill), have the warehouse guards suffer an accident (Poe and Finn both failed on account of not being spirits and were rated "lame") and kiss the gang leader (Rose bit him into the nose instead - conjure an anima if you want believeable human romance, idiot!)
Rose unfortunately got spotted during loading the goods into the car. (What the heck, ROSE? The only one with an actually serviceable Stealth skill?) Later whenever an adversary could feasibly have dug up dirt on my characters, they'd bring up the thirty-three microwaves incident with a sneer.
Going forward, the posting format will be a comic cover with a plot synopsis and then a long text under the textbreak, that is a condensed version of my handwritten notes.
You are not expected to read that wall of text (but you can, of course!). It might be of interest if you played the same module or if you are me in the future.
Yesterday's screenshot, but with height slider applied!
Rose is the shortest I can make her, what is a shame, because she's supposed to be a dwarf mechanic in this reality. Hux as an elf I think I should make taller still. The other two are the height they're supposed to be (a little below and a little above average).
A smuggler trio hopes to break into the lucrative shadowrunning business with little more than their car and a sunny disposition.
Their first job is to kindpa a CAS military engineer so that their employer can auction the man off to the highest bidder on the job market.
But you know how it is with a stray - after a while you don't want to give it back anymore.
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Aiming to make one cover per run.
Plot under the textbreak.
The year is 2050 and then some. The SINless dwarf mechanic Rose dreams of owning and running a garage. One day she talks her friends, Finn the adept and Poe the rigger, into trying their hands at a shadowrun and, lo and behold, a Fixer by name of Amilyn Holdo, who operates from her yacht Raddus on the Great Lakes, gives the trio a chance.
Names sounding familiar? They should! These characters aren't fully OCs, they were all adopted from Star Wars VII-IX. Holdo is Rose' contact and the original campaign goal was to amass the 100,000 nuyen to buy an automotive workshop with the stretch goal of having a permanent lifestyle attached to it. Edition played is 2e with some houserules, but that doesn't matter in this post, because it just chronicles the team's backstory. No dice were rolled at this point.
"Stormpilot", "Stormtrooper" and "Heatherflower" get by quite well as smugglers between Detroit and the Iroquois federation (that I houseruled into the lore to cover territory south and east of Lake Ontario), until they score a shadowrunning job. They are to snatch an engineer from a vacation resort at Lake Erie.
The deed is almost faster done than said, and now they have the man along with an insanely expensive tactical computer prototype in his brain on the back of their Citymaster, leading to him wondering why the fuck Knight Errant has arrested him?! Those rental cops are so full of themselves...
Soon after, the trio learns that their guest isn't just any engineer, but designs weapons for the CAS military, pretty much nothing smaller than a cannon, ideally something closer in size and devastation to the Death Star. Disgusted, they still have to carry out the job, that is keeping Mr. Hux captive until the free market has decided who may name themselves his new employer or, in case of Hux failing to cooperate, the owner of the digital contents of his brain.
While Holdo is organizing the auction, the trio gets closer to their captive as a person. Hux in turn is both appalled and fascinated by their carefree, open-hearted ways. As an elf from a legacy military family, he grew up in the awareness of being frail and useless and even now isn't really respected. Hux is certain of one thing, though: That he won't work for a foreign nation and even less for a filthy little private entrepreneur (what in his worldview includes everything up to and including the largest megacorps).
As part of the transfer, the trio is to plant "evidence" that Hux deserted the military. Momentarily unobserved, he tries to kill himself with his implanted spur, that the trio didn't expect and therefore didn't check for. Stormtrooper has a military background, too, as combat medic he is versed in First Aid and manages to save Hux' life. The trio then tells Holdo that Hux is dead (but later have to reveal the truth because Holdo demands the computer implant).
With his motherland thinking he is a traitor and his inventions still being thought after, Hux has no place to go for now. He upgrades from living in the citymaster's back to couchsurfing with the trio, more or less successfully telling himself that this is a temporary setback only, all the while taking a liking to this new lifestyle.
After the failed run, the trio foursome returns to smuggling.
