ELIAS RYKER

Independent RP blog for Elias Ryker, canon character from Richard K. Morgan's & Netflix's Altered Carbon. Triggering and NSFW material common place. 18+ only. Written by Penny. Activity level varies.

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PLEASE LIKE or REPLY to this post if you are ACTIVE and still interested in writing with Ryker!

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Just FYI any starters that were previously unanswered will be reposted on the new blog on the off chance you’d like to continue them now.

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in the book, during the course of the investigation into Bancroft’s death, Takeshi also discovers things like, a cab that dropped someone off in the middle of the field beside Bancroft’s estate, footsteps leading to the security wall that disappeared after that point... I don’t remember what else but yeah, they probably skipped those parts for time crunching purposes but there is far more detail in the first book about the investigation - I’ll try to remember to update this when I’m re-reading with whatever I’ve forgotten.

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I can’t remember the exact context, but like I mentioned before about the ads for brothels etc providing an immersive experience of pleasure & the shops using influential white noise and so on, there is one occasion where Takeshi encounters a drug dealer who has a machine that snags the passerby and dumps them into a nightmarish experience of darkness, eyes, tentacles I don’t even remember what exactly but like, utterly horrific, though I can’t remember why, if it was an advert for his wares (????) or a way to keep people from coming near him if they weren’t his clients or whatever but yeah, just another example of how prevalent such manipulations are used constantly.

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Oh, and also, in the books, the ai hotel that Kovacs ended up staying in was called the Hendrix, with the host of course being based on Jimi Hendrix.  Personally, I very much prefer the show’s adaptation, being the Raven & Poe, not just out of personal favoritism to all things Edgar Allan Poe related, but because of the personality of Poe and the relationship that develops between Poe and Kovacs which is far more developed and personable than the relationship between Kovacs & the ai hotel in the books. 

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Also, Ryker worked his way through the BCPD from the bottom up.  While he wasn’t often considered entirely reliable (mainly bc of his addictions that could end in some pretty bad episodes), he managed to scrape his way up the corporate ladder bit by bit.  He became involved with Ortega while working in ... uh, I think it was called Acquisitions but I don’t remember exactly (basically catching bad guys and seizing their finances and belongings and receiving a percentage of the value of the seizure as a bonus to their paycheck) and after a particularly successful forfeiture that landed him in the public eye and with, what is believed to be a nudge of influence by Ortega, he was finally promoted to organic damage.  

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Another fact that is only kinda implied in the show but is explained in the books is that Abboud has known Kristin’s family for a long time and was, in fact, the partner of Kristin’s father, a detective in the BCPD who was killed on the job.  As often is the case in such scenarios, Kristin become something of an adopted daughter to him, hence his protectiveness - like his confrontation with Kovacs - and him opting to become Kristin’s partner in organic damage.

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Personally, I find some of the Quellist’s beliefs to be just as bad, in some ways, as the Protectorate, and find that they were often ‘glossed over’ by Quell and her followers in their fervor and their belief of doing whatever it took, for the greater good.  The biggest thing I found to be questionable was their ‘take what is offered’ premise - leading to the deaths of many innocents that the Quellists used to gain information, incite revolutions, or use in some way that made them a target for the Protectorate. 

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The last mission Kovacs was on with the Quellists before their mass deaths via the data plague (the one that made them all go insane and become both suicidal and homicidal, effectively killing each other off without the Protectorate raising a hand) was an attempt to break into the site where the data core/storage/base code that all stacks run off of and introduce a virus / override that would limit everyone’s lifespan to 100 years exactly.  The show does touch on some of this in the flashbacks but doesn’t give all the relevant details.  Quell had come to see how the divide between rich and poor was just becoming wider and wider as the upper echelon of people hoarded more and more money and power.  The rich were becoming richer, the poorer were becoming fodder, starving, reduced to a life of crime or even more of a desperate struggle to stay afloat with very little help from anyone outside their communities.   She wanted to bring that to an end, and believed that introducing this override was the only way to make that happen.

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Miriam’s maternal instincts might be kinda skewed by her long lifespan, but her protectiveness of her (many) children is even more so in the books.  

As far as her relationship with Laurens, there’s pretty much a don’t ask, don’t tell in regards to whom they sleep with, but with the caveat of Laurens not fathering any children with anyone outside of Miriam.

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Miriam in the books is also known for being that weird combination of overt/subtly sensuous in her body and outfits like she’s shown in the series.  

         Sidenote, she is sleeping with Curtis in the books.  I think they kinda infer it in the series but I don’t think it’s like, outright stated.

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So what I can tell you is that there are some major differences in how religion, especially Catholicism (the religion that says if you are spun up after death, even to testify against your killer, your soul is damned for all time) in the show versus the books but

          honestly I can’t remember the details at the moment so I’ll come back to this one more when I’ve had a chance to reread the books again.  I think that Ortega was not religious and considered Catholicism more of a ‘cult’ than anything else buuuuuuut I could be wrong so ... yeah, gonna have to come back to this one.

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Oh, another thing about the resleeving of convicted criminals AND OF PROTECTORAGE SOLDIERS (and victim restitution etc) is that most of the time it’s utterly random and is generally picked from the bottom of the barrel - aka those sleeves that are way less likely to ever be rented out or held in mortgage by family, etc.  The soldiers are given a slight preference to the middling level but it’s extremely, extremely rare that a soldier of convict ends up in the same sleeve as when they left for service / were put on ice.  Ryker was exceptionally lucky that his sleeve wasn’t being actively used when his terms of service in the Protectorate military was up.  

Even those that do end up in their own body often find that body to have been modified or injured in some way that makes it less viable for selling/renting.

Ryker (pretty sure it was Ryker, might’ve been Tak but uhhhhhh I honestly can’t remember now that I think on it) has vivid memories of waiting in the room where all the resleeved convicts are released, holding his mother’s hand and waiting for hours and hours to meet his father on his release day.  After all the resleeved convicts etc. had been released, he remembers the warden coming out to explain, and try to comfort, his mother, letting her know that Ryker’s dad had been released that day... he just didn’t come to them, instead, just taking off past them and disappearing into the dank depths of Earth to never be seen or heard from again, at least by them. 

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The bill that the protestors are marching against when Takeshi leaves the prison with Ortega is the main propellant of the behind the scenes plotting that takes place for book & season one.  Reileen Kawahara is dead set on not letting the bill pass to keep her criminal empire afloat and will do just about anything to see that the bill does not pass.  

Also worth noting that Mary Lou was a childhood friend of Ryker, one of the few in his class that seemed to give a damn about him, to the point that her grandmother would often invite Ryker over for dinner and make sure he had whatever clothes she could scrounge and so on.  He lost contact with Mary Lou when her grandmother died and she was sent to live with (???? I honestly can’t remember who but it’s not entirely relevant).  He learned later on that she’d taken a job as a sex worker and was back in the same general vicinity of him / Bay City but had just never managed the time to go say hello to her again.  The news of her death, and the fact that she couldn’t be revived/put in a new sleeve sent him into a sharp spiral as he began to suspect conspiracies everywhere and fell back into old habits of extreme alcohol and drug use.  He knew that she was not religious and would never have a ‘do not resleeve’ code on her stack and it was the desperate need to discover what was going on that made him a major target for those involved in trying to keep the bill from passing and led to him being framed for the murders that had him put on ice.

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So I, for one, see a whole lot of flaws with the concept of prison that is used in the book / show, though I do think it was intentionally made to be flawed in the series so that fits.

What isn’t touched on a lot is that when a sleeve of a convicted criminal is put into cold storage loved ones / friends/ family, whoever, has the opportunity to ‘rent’ the sleeve and thereby keeping it on ice so that no one can use it, risking damage or death before the convict’s stack sentence is up.  Much like renting a car, etc., or a  pay to own deal, if you miss a payment or are late on a payment there is a high chance that you’re out of luck and the sleeve will be put into circulation for renting.

I do believe that the price for renting is based on the severity of the crime as well as a general estimate of what that sleeve would be worth to someone.  Ryker, for example, would be on the more expensive side.  While he doesn’t have things like ‘gecko hands’ and other things that we see in elite designed sleeves later on, he does have a very physically fit, capable, and attractive body, he has military grade combat wiring, software/hardware in his nervous, musculature and other systems, and has a great deal of actual combat experience so all in all would go for somewhere on the higher end.

Ortega had been paying the mortgage on Ryker’s body, but when Bancroft swept in with his much higher bid / purchase, Ryker was released to him instead, despite the active ‘mortgage’ that Ortega had.  

The legality of all of this is never really explained, but this is one of the major flaws that exists in this penal system: as we see a lot in our own current world, if you have enough money, the rules don’t always apply.

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In the books, a microchip / tracking device is implanted by a doctor in residency at the prison’s hospital.  She was coerced into doing this by blackmail & a promise of financial reward (without a whole lot of room to say no) & I think she’d done procedures like this before on stacks/sleeves of criminals on loan but I can’t recall exactly. 

When Takeshi does find out about the tracker he tracks down the person responsible and confronts her.  She shows him how to disable it and regrets having done it in the first place.    (I do have an OC, Felicia Adams, who would work well in a swap out for this character btw.)  

I believe the order to implant the device came from Kawahara.

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While it’s briefly touched on in the scene with the prison’s warden in the beginning of S1E1, while Takeshi is considered the property of Laurens (this does go for everyone) this does go both ways.  Laurens is held responsible for any illegal actions, crimes committed, etc. that Takeshi commits (and is convicted of) while on ‘lease’ to Laurens because he is, in effect, guardian / the responsible party meant to be monitoring and controlling whomever he had on lease.