I'm primarily intending this thread to be reference material for my character in Noise king's wonderful RP Clan, Rosetta. Critique, however, is still welcome.

Also, keep your eyes on here - I'll be adding various fluff to this character over time in the form of short stories.

Name: Wesley "Wes" Magnusson

Race: Human (non-psychic) (Also a "blunt" by psyker slang, a mild derogatory term)

Title: "Scavvie" (Scavenger term of respect, a portmanteau of "savvy" and "scavenger")

Appearance: Wes is as beat-up as the wastes he scavenges - a side effect of the dangerous occupation of scavenger.

His skin is weather-beaten and tanned, and he has flat, neutral features - up until your eyes see the bionic eye protruding from his left eye socket. It resembles the fore-end of a telescope, and extends about three inches from the face. His hair is salt-and-pepper colored, and he has a thick goatee.

His right arm is also fully bionic, as is about a third of his chest cavity, and both are equally crude - the bionic lung in his chest makes a wheezing sound when he inhales or exhales, and his mechanical arm ends in a crude, three-fingered hand.

Clothing wise, he wears a tan ballcap with a set of goggles strapped to it, patched-up tan fatigues, suede boots, and a olive-drab flak jacket as an attempt at personal protection - cover is always the best way to survive gunfire.

Ascension Form: none
ESP/Psychic specialty: none

Biography: Wes was about twenty-five when the tower vented its radiation - and wasn't doing well; he grew up an orphan, and at the time, was currently unemployed. He lived pretty rough on the outskirts of Avalon - he simply couldn't afford more solid residence in the interior of the city. After the rad venting stopped, Wes managed to make it to Erbest before the fallout settled fully - but nevertheless, he still got severe radiation poisoning, and passed out in an Erbest medical facility for several weeks.

He awoke to an entirely different world - one recovering from severe violence. He poddered around for several years, scraping by as an unskilled laborer, but he was soon taken under wing by an extremely skilled scavenger by the name of Nadia - he learned quick. Soon, he was making extremely lucrative - and dangerous - tech raids into the Outer Ring, and these were the missions that cost him various parts of his organic body.

He paid off his medical bills (and the ludicrous cost of scavenged bionic limbs) with his equally ludicrous accumulated wealth.

He probably would've stayed a neutral scavenger for the rest of his natural life had it not been for the Blank Faces of the Liberi Deus - the notorious police force of thugs that regularly makes captive raids into the Outer Ring. They often carry out their cannibalistic rituals ad hoc in the Ring itself - and Wes happened to stumble upon one of these. He was horrified. Unfortunately, the Liberis Deus involved happened to stumble upon him as well, and a fierce firefight raged for the better part of an hour - Wes would've probably died had it not been for the timely intervention of a Rosetta patrol.

He accompanied them back to their Outer Ring territories, and when he finally weasled their organization's purpose out of them, he offered to sign up on the spot as an exclusive staff scavenger and occasional warrior.

That probably represented the only other spur-of-the-moment, emotionally charged descision Wes has ever made in his life - the first being to become a scavenger. He's not prone to passionate displays, and often comes across as slightly aloof. He's not cold by any means; but he doesn't open up to people quickly, and rarely talks about himself.

Weapons: His first and foremost weapon is his bionic self - the mechanical parts allow for superhuman strength and endurance, meaning that any punches he throws with his right, bionic arm are capable of crushing bone or snapping limbs.

His bionic eye also doubles as a highly advanced targeter, able to pinpoint heat signatures and mark them on a heads-up display. As for conventional weapons, he carries a simple laspistol, a sawn-off shotgun, and several frag grenades.

Combat style: Despite his bionic right arm's impressive strength, Wes has little to no skill when it comes to close-in fighting. However, for a man whose clumsiest punch can still break a joint or shatter a rib, this isn't as big a detractor as it seems.

His bionic arm is far more useful for it's ability to "lock" in place, eliminating the bothersome bouncing around an organic limb does when it's held out straight, allowing for pin-point aim, even with a short-barreled weapon, like a laspistol. Coupled with his targeter eye, he is a formidable marksman.

Interests: Wes is fascinated by old, military suits of power armor - he owns several pairs of it, but, they aren't currently functional, and Wes hasn't found anyone with the expertise or resources to repair them.

He also likes cats, but they have a nasty habit or running away or dieing when in his care.

Here's the first in those short stories I promised y'all - this one here concerns itself with the events that led up to Wes joining Rosetta, specifically, the firefight. It's written in first-person because I prefer to write like that, and because this is some character-expanding fluff, not an RP.

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"Remember, Wesley. The rewards for our work, the perks, the loose women, free booze, the money - it means nothing. It lets us live comfortably, sure. It means our bellies are full, our lust satiated - our throats never parched."

Nadia paused, resting her hand on the gnarled oak bar, the ice in her glass of whiskey rapidly melting. I faintly worried about that - water and alcohol were both precious commodities in New Jericho, but Nadia was in one of her philosophical moods - the whiskey merely a casualty of her far more valuable advice.

"But the true goal of the scavenger, the reason we do our work, is not to amass wealth - many other professions do the same thing, and far more safely - it is to vouchsafe humanity's survival - to safeguard our claim here in the Wastes. Without us, we'd quickly descend to the level of the tribals that live deep in the Maavi desert - no technology, no permanent homes, no hope."

She picked up the glass on the bar, and drained it.

"We can't afford to be shunted back to that of the primitive hunter-gatherer, Wesley." (She called me Wesley when she wanted me to listen - I hated the name.)

"Some say we pick clean the corpse of New Jericho." Nadia paused, glowering at the water-ring on the bar. "That's true. But, like nature, the corpse decomposes in order for something new to grow. Remember that."

Twelve Years Later ...

It was a fine time to remember the advice Nadia gave me twelve years ago - the bit about the corpses. More specifically, I was GOING to become one if I kept standing behind this sheet of corrugated tin as cover.

I glanced around - surely, there was somewhere better to hide - and found a place; it was some sort of concrete barrier, perhaps a traffic divider. No time to dither, the shots were zipping by my head and bouncing off the floor in front of me.

I un-pinned a frag grenade, and donated it to the bad men who were shooting at me - no charge. I dashed out, scragged two of the shooters above me with locked las-blasts, and made a dive behind the barrier. Phew.

By then, though, the fire grew pretty thick, thick enough to light a cigarette by holdin' it in the air, and still thick enough to promptly blow off your hand if you tried something that dumb. I couldn't get a good look at my shooters by sticking my head up, so I did the next best thing - switched my bionic optic to thermal.

The place was lousy with heat-sigs - I stumbled upon a hell of a Blank Face hornet's nest, and it seemed every one of the daffy bastards was packing heat - not only were these guys well-equipped, they were probably veterans of countless captive raids too. Shucks and other comments.

Well, regardless, I was gonna have to supress them, or they'd charge me - a bad day happenin'. I stuck my pistol above cover, and wired my eye to track two Faces who were slowly advancing towards me. I pulled the trigger twice - the left Liberisian had a neat hole in his head, and the other had one in his heart - two kills.

On the walkways above me, a Face held a primed grenade in his hands - he was gonna try to drop it on top of me. I brought my pistol up, and snapped off a shot - which hit the grenade. Threat eliminated - the leg that landed in my cover testified to that.

They still kept coming though - those three I killed were promptly replaced with fresh bodies. The building I was in must've been some fancy lobby at one point - big, with pillars all over the place, and a network of walkways perched atop them. There must've been some beautiful windows here before, but they were all smashed and boarded up - welcome to the Outer Ring.

Enough about architecture. I needed to break out, and I needed to break out fast, I thought to myself. There were no doors near me, but that's not nessecarily an insurmountable obstacle - a hole in the wall works about as well. I crawled over to the wall behind me, punched a hole in the cracked drywall with my bionic arm, and shoved an un-pinned frag into it.

It blew. The noise and light was blinding and deafening, but my bionic eye could still see, and that was all I needed. The flak vest I wore and my bionics saved me a lot of damage, but I had some minor shrapnel cuts. I stumbled through the hole.

I was in an alleyway, and it wouldn't be much longer before the Faces would be in pursuit - I had to book. I took my last two grenades, wedged them into the wreckage of the hole, and stranded a line of wire from the pins to an exposed piece of rebar. A little deterrence.

I dashed out of the alleyway, and turned left - that would take me past the building I just got out of, but the right was blocked by rubble - and sprinted. Sprinted like my butt was on fire and only the wind could put it out. I heard a muffled BANG, and some screams - and another bang, I guess, as a door was kicked open - I had company. Shots zipped past me.

No time to return their greeting - shooting in an empty street is a remarkably effective way of requesting to die. I cut through another alley to my right, dashed down it, and turned right -

I was back at the building, this time from the rear. Dammit. More shot rang out, still behind me. I quickly stepped behind a corner, and stuck my pistol out of cover again - tracking my potential assailants by thermal, of course - and squeezed off shots until the las-cell ran dry. The fire from there stopped.

I tried to find an exit - I realize now that I probably bumbled into a Blank Face permanent outpost in the Outer Ring - and found one. I just had to follow this street, and there was a left, away from this accursed building.

I "just" had to cross a half-mile on foot without being shot and killed. Shucks. I popped a new las-cell into my pistol, and started booking again. Foolishly, I had thought I had managed to kill all of my opposition.

My my, how stupid that seemed in retrospect.

I was hugging the left side of the street, the side farthest away from that accursed place. I was now at more of a jog, lulled into a false sense of security by the oh-so-temporary lack of rude people trying to bother my mortality. I turned around, to check my six, and then turned back - and nearly crapped my pants.

In the old Jericho, military bases had a general or something who ran things - the Old Man, the Skipper, whatever. Point is, there's always someone on the top-end of the chain of command.

I found the Old Man. He was big, muscle-big - he seemed to barely fit in the robs he wore. His Face mask was gold instead of blank white. On his chest, he held a bandolier of frags, and in his hand, he carried a huge, two-handed executioner's axe - one that had seen a lot of use.

"What's this?" the man said, faintly mockingly, "A guest who leaves without asking permission? My my, how rude."

He didn't give me time to respond to his cliche`, he charged me, bringing his axe back for a swing that, if it hit me squarely, would certainly kill me instantly. I snapped off some shots before he closed, but they didn't seem to do anything - even the one that burned a hole in his mask. I just managed to bring my bionic arm up as he swang, and even though I blocked (clumsily), the blow still threw me several feet backwards.

I landed badly - the back of my head smacked against the pavement, and I felt a tooth crack. My vision swam - did my life just flash before my eyes? - and the man loomed over me, with his axe held above his head. I briefly wondered how he got there so fast - everything felt so slow.

Then he toppled. My concussion was just starting to take hold then, and I remember thinking - what an odd thing for a Blank Face commander to do. Took me several more seconds to realize the man was dead. How?

That was the last thing I thought before I passed out.

I've finally read over this for a second time, and I have to say, Nadia's opening monologue really grabbed me. You've always seemed to go for the more "human" characters in a world of the animu-superhuman, and Wesley really stands out among the warped fiends left behind in the aftermath of Rosetta's setting. All in all, awesome job, and I hope you make more short stories (or that we at least get enough chances for you to add some based on Clan stuff).

Well, thank you. I've always looked at any world that has people with spectacular powers as having two population bases - the ones with, and the ones without. For some reason, I always choose the second, but, hey - not everyone can be a Jedi.

And, I've had some speculative Rosetta fluff floating around in my head for a while - I'll post it here sometime, since it seems like you want to see it.