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characters:freespacers:groundbreaker_eight-four_4242-4286

Groundbreaker Eight-Four 4242-4286

Groundbreaker 'Queenie' Eight-Four 4242-4286 is a player character played by Navian.

Groundbreaker Eight-Four 4242-4286
Species & Gender: Type 3 Freespacer Female
Year of Birth: YE 18
Organization: Shravana Hive
Occupation: Civil Engineer
Current Placement: Shravana Hive

Physical Description

5'10“/178 cm, 150 lbs/68 kg. Mature adult build, in good health for her age. Waist-length, nearly straight blue hair, silvery skin, blue-green cybernetic replacement eyes, and matte black, antenna-like replacement ears with matching ultrasonic emissions collar. She has a pleasant, but not terribly memorable face, with a greek nose. The symbiont she wears has the appearance typical to those of her group, providing a full-body reflective counting. Her voice tends to sound warm and pleasant, even when she isn't.

Personality

Though Queenie is charismatic and sensitive on the surface, this persona belies her calculating and critical nature. Her goals in life change often, as a Groundbreaker, her role is to commit herself fully to each new endeavor, only to hand it off and never look back as soon as it becomes routine. She starts projects she can never complete, and leaves them in the hands of others. All her free time is spent on daydreaming and exercise, side projects and hobbies of construction and destruction are not acceptable so long as she has her true calling to focus on. Her demeanor is generally calm, sometimes to an unnerving degree.

She is firmly bound to the people of the Shravana Hive and their network, and consults with them daily, no matter where her ambitions may take her. Thus far, she's been distant from non-Freespacer humans, and downright icy in attitude toward Freespacers of differing ideologies, who she prefers to pretend are another species entirely. Non-humanoid aliens and their habitations are one of the few things that make her anxious.

History

Groundbreaker Eight-Four was born in YE 18 aboard a Freespacer mothership, one destroyed during the genocide. At the time, she worked in starship engineering, but nothing she built before the attack survived. The fleet largely dissolved, and she became part of a movement to rebuild The Free State under new terms, with less 'Free' and more 'State'. The result was the Shravana Hive, an interplanetary commune and mining fleet, of which she became a founder in high repute. It is not significant on the galactic scale.

Once the situation was stable, she grew dissatisfied as her role seemed to shift from 'colony founder/city planner' to 'mining/industrial fleet engineer'. This drove her to seek a fresh challenge, and new allies, while she still had time to make an impression beyond her new home star system. Her travels brought her to the Null and Void system, where she worked for some time as a maintenance tech while investigating some odd local events. In the end, she discovered a group known as the Iconoclasts were behind them, and indeed, a plot to steal old ships from their graves, and she was recruited by a member of this group known as 'Sham', assisting them with their heist.

In the chaos that followed, Groundbreaker Eight-Four was able to escape unscathed to the White Lament, but was unsatisfied with merely escaping. Instead, she proposed a broadcast of a museum file taken off of the Shravana Hive network in the hopes the living memory of the vessels interred on Void and their histories would reduce the clamor of those rushing to the graveyard's defense. With the help of Codebreaker Arccos Two Three 52-9683-7587 and the equipment she stole, this was far more successful than any of the Iconoclasts suspected, Groundbreaker Eight-Four included, and the fighting immediately ceased almost entirely.

Arccos hired Queenie on for her skills, and told her of ambitious projects she had for the future. Unfortunately, they were destined for the planet Planet Osman, under the rule of Uso of OSO, and the desert world did not prove to be anything like Groundbreaker Eight-Four had bargained for…

Events of Osman

GB84 is dropped off on Osman after being hired by Arccos at Null & Void, without instructions or resources. She makes Uso an offer to rebuild Osman Palace as a gesture of goodwill, and somehow obtains at least enough electronic equipment to wire and survey the site, which allows her to eavesdrop on the Operation Bright Venom briefing.

GB84 arranges to speak to Uso from the White Lament, and attempts to form a pact where the Hive would participate in Operation Bright Venom in return for salvage, goods, and possibly military or trade agreements. Uso's attention is short and unfocused, and the meeting is hardly productive; still, Arccos refuses to discuss Uso with GB84.

GB84 manages to keep the 'alliance' on track for the Hive to participate in Operation Bright Venom, despite what little she has to work with, but their response is late and disorganized, as most of the short window of time before the mission was spent on their leaders making arguments and assurances, leaving little attention remaining to gather the troops and put them in capable hands. They have little effect on the battle, though they still obtain enough salvage that those who despise OSO after their first impressions are willing to give the organization a second chance.

GB84 returns to Osman after another clipped and unproductive debriefing aboard the White Lament, and is greeted by Aashi Nath Werner. The Iromahuanke invites GB84 to her tower to discuss a more ambitious idea for the palace reconstruction project, and in the end, GB84, having recieved no instructions from Uso, acquiesces to something entirely different, the construction of a large pyramid on top of the original palace site.

GB84 begins work on the new palace for Uso, for Aashi, cursing the project with every other breath, and trying to think of ways to subvert it to some better purpose, though her only true act of rebellion is preserving the old palace to use as the centerpiece of a garden within the pyramid. She continues with the foundation work until the end of the year, receiving little contact at all from any other member of OSO during the intervening month; even Aashi gives her short shrift.

GB84, housed in the top floor suite of Nath Tower, is caught off guard by Aashi Nath's year end party, and is convinced to attend, against her better judgement. She has a brief, mildly productive meeting with Arccos on the subject of how to diminish the effect of sandstorms on the city, though Arccos leaves very quickly, as she had been tricked into attending far more blatantly. GB84 is left with Akemi, and has her worst conversation in recent memory, which drives her to drink, at least virtually. She discusses a potential bunker project with an even more drunken Corgan, though the deal is never concluded.

GB84 is invited to a casino party by Uso, also to celebrate the new year. Though she has moderate success in enjoying herself, Arccos does not, and communications between the two Freespacers break down entirely after a lecture. GB84, not thrilled about responding to Arccos on her terms, and Arccos even less willing to try a different angle, become so cold toward one another that GB84 is either unwilling or unable to return to the White Lament after the party. She instead returns to the Shravana Hive.

GB84 rejoins the Hive's inner circle, at least temporarily, to help calm factions that have been upset by the Hive's military assistance to OSO, the contents or subtext of the 'ship full of artwork' OSO sent as advance payment, the sudden influx of wealth in certain sectors from the salvage the Hive recieved both from Operation Bright Venom and from the YE 38 SCSC Salvage Giveaway, and the poor experiences Hive traders had with Osman when trying to exchange their goods and some of the salvage they received with the locals on Osman, due to the local lawlessness, corruption, disorganization, and inadequate starport facilities. The Hive is somewhat reassured.

GB84, aboard the SHS Jessitha, meets the YSS Heartbreaker to discuss the NMX in the I'ee home star system who remain to cause trouble even after Operation Bright Venom. Although OSO is also present, and theoretically meant to lead the discussions, its representatives appear to be ad hoc, unaware of the purpose of the meeting or how to conduct it, and in some cases, outright insane. The Shravana Hive decides with an overwhelming majority, albeit without an official vote, to cut off all contact with OSO, and a list of demands begins to be drafted for GB84 to deliver as very likely her last missive to OSO.

Before this is done, however, an alien superweapon clasped by a Megamisshu in the outer system blows a large chunk out of a nearby planet, and Jessitha remains to gather more information. Meanwhile, the Hive's Inner Circle decides that despite popular sentiment, relations with OSO are still worth some risk–not of a folk hero, but of someone they would rather be rid of–and delivers Trendsetter Three-Nine to the star system, to swap places with GB84. T-39 is distracted by the battle, however, and disappears into the Megamisshu.

To be continued…

Skills Learned

Groundbreaker Eight-Four has the following notable skills:

  • Engineering: Designing and building things is Eight-Four's life. Her main focus is new colonies, which included those of the Hive itself. With time to prepare, she can design almost anything, though building things–including her own prototypes–is something she struggles with.
  • Biology and Chemistry: Eight-Four is adept at creating viable, closed-system ecologies for habitats, and can also diagnose and fix problems with them. This is not applicable at a planetary scale, nor does she know how to work with organisms more complex than those found in starship gardens.
  • Construction: Habitats, industrial complexes, offices, bunkers, water systems, mass transit networks–Queenie has built all of them, and is a more than capable electrician, besides. She has certainly never built a bridge, however, and the only buildings she's built that were unpressurized were built inside something pressurized. She uses the most advanced techniques available–construction robots. Doing any work at a scale larger than a square meter using muscle power strikes her as insane.
  • Leadership: Queenie is used to being in charge, and being surrounded by others who are used to her being in charge. Being part of the ruling clique comes naturally to her… when the rest of the clique is composed of Freespacers, that is. She's adapted to paradigm shifts before, but this one might be a doozy. In any case, her experience mostly has to do with oversight, intelligence operations, faction politics, fleet movements, and construction crews.
  • Starship Operations: Queenie can get a starship around as well as any seasoned 'spacer.
  • Technology Operations: Eight-Four's senses are fully integrated with her design and planning software. Hypothetical structures can be made fully real in her mind, modified and tested to her whims, long before they're constructed. She also knows how to wire new networks, for a building without a network is only a hollow shell, so far as she's concerned. She tends to accumulate precise survey data useful for future construction just by moving around and looking at an environment.

Social Connections

Groundbreaker Eight-Four is connected to:

  • The Shravana Hive (as a semi-retired member of its 'inner circle')
  • Naffie (her earlier pet project)

Inventory & Finance

Eight-Four has the following:

  • Bivoac Sack
  • Rations, 3 days
  • Voidwalker Suit
  • Sanitizing Wipes
  • Basic Filter Mask
  • Electrician's Toolkit
  • Field Communicator
  • Computerized Bodysuit
  • Radiothermal Generator
  • Construction Microbot Hive

Eight-Four currently has 4840 KS.

OOC Information

In the case Navian becomes inactive:

  • Can this character be used as an NPC by a GM or FM? YES
  • Can this character be adopted after I've been gone for a year? NO
Character Data
Character NameGroundbreaker Eight-Four 4242-4286
Character OwnerNavian
Character StatusInactive Player Character
Current LocationShravana Hive

Quality:
characters/freespacers/groundbreaker_eight-four_4242-4286.txt · Last modified: 2023/12/21 00:53 by 127.0.0.1