Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Gamemasters' Lounge => Topic started by: firebug on <09-04-16/0446:43>
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So, I'm putting together a game for a new group and I'm thinking to myself "Since I've decided to give the group a fixer, what kind of character should I make?"
And I was wondering how others have done it.
In your games, whether you GM or not, what kind of interesting Fixer NPCs do you guys have?
What kinda quirks do they have? Are any Awakened? What about stuff like an AI Fixer? Or a Free Spirit?
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In the short fiction piece I wrote for Street Legends, there's a reference to a DeeCee fixer who was based on Monsieur Zenith.
http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http://www.geocities.com/jessnevins/zenith.html&date=2009-10-26+22:36:42
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Here are a couple of mine:
"Chao, aka The Weasle" - ( goo.gl/EqwKnR )
Chao is a Korean/Indonesian refugee who ended up in Hong Kong some 15 years ago. From small beginnings (+ sheer damn luck and his sleazy charisma) he managed to build a moderate "Shadow Empire" by providing Runners, small time criminals and other low-lifes with shelter, an opportunity to sell almost anything and easy, street-level jobs in the community.
He juggles multiple girlfriends at a time, is usually on the way to some place or other, and almost always short on cash.
Therefore he usually calls the runners (or they call him) from his rusty Americar or while walking through the endless hallways of "his" appartment complex. This gives me the opportunity to paint "colorful" pictures of the scenes happening in the background.
As mentioned before, he is sleazy and can be a nuisance, sometimes - but he is reliable and will always help out his runners, no matter what. Quirks: His AR-Cockatiel, the rotating girlfriends and constant offers to the runners to buy random stuff.
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The Tall Man (https://de.pinterest.com/pin/415457134347706690/)
The Tall Man is an illusive shadow character and not really a single NPC, more like a Fixer network/joint venture - with a twist.
He (or they) have concentrated their biz on everything magical - be it jobs, equipment or - primarily - personnel. He, or they, appears mundane, does have light Cyberware (sometimes) and no magic items to speak of. Even though the runners rarely deal with the same "Tall Man", they all seem to know all the important details about the team, are well-informed about former jobs and the needs of every runner. And while that might still be easy to explain aways by excessive briefings and a good AR software suite, the disconcerting thing is, ath they all talk and act in the exact same ways:
Rubbing their earlobe while distracted, straightening the collars and sleeves of their shirts (right hand, first, left hand afterwards), repeating the phrase "be that as it may" multiple times in a conversation... Runners who work with him/them for a while will start to notice these things.
The truth is, The Tall Man is a free spirit calling himself Nix (after the fairy tale "Nix Nought Nothing") with the possession power. Nix has, as they always do, a rather complex plan, and he uses the runners (and others of their creed) in order to achieve it. I'll spare you the details here. His possession targets are usually tall, low-level corp execs of small to A-Corps that he picks at random - usually at the airport. He "uses" them for about a day, before letting them go, usually in a shady establishment.
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One of my personal favorites, just because he's fun to RP.
Handle: Grandfather
Real Name: Hansuke Sato
Birthplace: Hong Kong
Age: 60's
Metatype: Human
Grandfather was born in Hong Kong in the year 2009. He is a short and portly man, standing at a mere 5' 4" and weighing in at around 190lbs, with a top knot hairstyle and a full beard. His formerly black hair has turned silver with age, but his brown eyes glimmer with kindness and wisdom. He is soft-spoken and charismatic, but tends to go off on seemingly random tangents during conversation. His tea house, The Jade Phoenix, acts as a cover and provides funding for the safehouse he runs in Seattle. He can usually be found in his tea house, playfully flirting with the womenfolk, handing out flowers to anyone he thinks looks sad (so, everyone), or playing his Biwa while singing (badly).
What many don't know is that he awakened in his early 20's. He was on the run from various corporations, forcing him into the shadows. He currently keeps his aura masked, and helps other awakened individuals hide from those who would seek to take advantage of them. When forced, he can unleash a fiery hell on his opponents, but he prefers to avoid letting things escalate to that point. He's more likely to knock you upside the head with his cane and send you on your way with nothing but a headache and a bruised ego.
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For me, I generally don't do too much pre-scripting of NPCs for my campaigns. I blame this on my group's ability to always pick the fourth lane in a 3 way hallway :( Like sharks and blood, my players can smell which NPCs I have invested time in and then either:
A: Shoot them in the face.
B: Play a game of "hot pants" with them. (put a live grenade in their pants)
C: Melt them with fire/acid/chemicals
D: Avoid them like they have the plague.
So I generally take a read on the mood of the group and then wing it for most NPCs until they survive the first few encounters and the players actually show an interest in them beyond a 'do mission, get paid' level. This isn't to say they don't have personalities, just that I have nothing written down in stone, other then their location (which is usually tied to the Run some how) and the name that I thought of usually 5 minutes before they got introduced.
Some Fixers that have been memorable that has come out of this approach are:
Father Desmond,
Dwarf physical adept of the Warrior Way. (retired Runner)
Extremely crazy and often violent Evangelical preacher located deep in Barrens in an abandoned Church. Great source of neighbourhood 'Robin Hood' jobs (usually with violence involved) against Barren gangers and criminal organizations. Known to have contacts with and easily procure magical supplies, religious texts, and fine quality melee weapons (foci-able). If you're looking to unload some ill gotten gains, Desmond is always looking for basic medical supplies, clean water, fresh foods, and other hard to get items in the Barrens.
Juan Ortega,
Troll, (Rigger). Owner of 'Juan's Tacos' located just inside the Tourist Zone of Redmond. Known for it amazingly fresh and authentic aztlan style food, Juan still greets everyone personally with a warm toothy grin and a wave of his huge hands. Those who are in the know, and have no love of Aztechnology can find steady employment through a long list of raiding and sabotage jobs that Juan seems to know about.... And that's not to mention all the Aztech arms, tech, and mojo he seems to have for sale, almost like they fell off the back of a truck. You need to know something about Aztechnology, Juan is a good place to start. Juan doesn't do a lot of buying, unless it happens to paydata on Aztec or Aztechnology, then he's willing to pay very well indeed. Don't forget to try a Taco too!
Chester.
A being that only ever appears in the Matrix, and then as a animated orange and black striped cat with a bawler hat and monocle, completed with a cane. Chester seems to have his fingers in many pies, and seems to act as a middle man for those seeking sellers and buyers of paydata. If you got the info for sale, Chester can link to a buyer, if he doesn't buy it himself. Looking for some intel on a client? Chester can usually point you in the right direction. Those looking for employment have been know to find the Johnsons work for a wide range of interests in the corporate and financial world, often against the interests of organized crime.... Yet when the purchase of goods is set up, this is often through criminal back channels... Attempts to trace his location has lead to Moscow, Dubai, Seattle, New York, Lagos, Tokyo, and Montreal. Speaking manners and personality has been know to change wildly, yet knowledge of events remains the same, leading some to suspect that the handle of 'Chester' is used by more then one person who work together for some greater purpose...
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These are all really interesting concepts! Creative and good ways to establish NPCs with personality. It's a shame your players are such dinguses, Reaver.
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I also have a drake fixer who usually hires runners to extract drakes from various places and bring them to the Draco Foundation. Unfortunately I can't find the notebook that has all of his info in it, so that's all I can recall.
I've been working on a post-2090 SR kingdom in what is currently Bavaria. It's not nearly the land of promise it started out as, and there is PLENTY of shadow work to be found, which a whole fraggin bunch of fixers to hand out that work. I've been trying to play test it a bit by dropping players into it and asking "Ok, what kind of game do you want this to be?". Their answer decides which fixer I send their way.
You might get Billy the ghoul, and get hired for an organ legging job. You might get Councillor Geoff for a smuggling job. You could get Councillor Michael who pretty much does the same thing the drake I mentioned above does, except you're bringing them to the queen. If you really want drek to get weird, you might get Harlequin and go "varmit hunting".
I have over a dozen fixers, but I'll be damned if I can find that flipping notebook!
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Oh! How could I forget about Shade! He was actually a PC to start out, but became an NPC. He's a raven shaman, and utterly bat drek insane. (Actually my future brother in law's NPC, but he's just so terrifyingly fun that I've pulled him into my games on occasion, with permission of course.)
He's a spike baby (elf) who awakened pretty much immediately after the Great Ghost Dance. He was kidnapped and experimented on by a megacorp (the reason for his insanity) until he was rescued by a team of shadowrunners who he then fell in with. He never cared for them much, and when faced with the reality of his torturer getting away, he slaughtered his entire team and used their life force to kill the scientist who had experimented on him for 20 years and destroy his lab. His singular goal is destroying anyone and everyone who experiments on metahumans (especially unwilling metahumans). If your team's goal is similar, he will come to you and supply your team with whatever you need. Weapons, 'ware, ammo, armor, reagents, etc...Best not to ask where he gets them.
He won't approach you directly, but your team should find him on a random street corner in whatever city they happen to be in. He will be levitating above a cardboard box and singing in a high falsetto voice. He will be dressed in all black, with a genuine leather trenchcoat, leather pants, turtleneck sweater, and combat boots. His hair is long, and looks like it's actually long raven feathers. He wear sunglasses at all times (even indoors or at night), and speaks in an obvious but nondescript Asian accent. It's likely he's from Japan, but I really wouldn't ask him about it. Better yet, avoid any questions about his past entirely. It's a bit of a touchy subject.
He sees everyone else as tools to be used, but an offering of beef jerky might just convince him to help you. Key word: Might. He might also take the jerky and vanish.
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A fixer I created for a story arc was Father Matthew, a priest who runs a church and an orphanage/ homeless dormitory.
He is a human, tall and muscular. Seems to have a tic on his right eye.
Don't be fooled: he is no more close to God than the average runner. In fact, he IS a retired runner (street samurai). His name in the shadows was Strike.
He tries to make the world a little better.
The story arc was about some of the orphans being kidnapped for experiments with blood magic.
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Jason "Arclight" Richards
Background
Jason Richards was born in Montreal in May 2015, the third child of a middle class family whose father was a high school teacher and mother was a nurse. However, despite the relative comfort of his family home, Jason was always quite rebellious but blessed with the boyish good looks needed to talk his way out of trouble. Realising quite early on that his charm was an effective means of doing small deals to supplement his meagre pocket money, Jason quickly progressed in his teens to selling drugs to others at school, before dropping out of sight and entering the Montreal underground.
Richards quickly established himself as a “face man” for a small shadowrunning team based in Montreal during the early 2040s, fronting the team when dealing with various fixers and Johnsons across the north eastern UCAS region, in areas such as Boston and Quebec, and forming a solid reputation as a capable crew. His skill at charming people, and extracting information from them, was put to great use, and Richards – now running under the moniker Arclight – built an impressive number of contacts over a relatively short amount of time.
This all changed on the night of 14th November 2046. A small datasteal job against a small Ares site went desperately wrong, based on faulty information acquired by Arclight. As the team attempted to access the site, the team were disabled by a virulent gas and apprehended. Arclight – on overwatch at the time – was mortified, as he had been utterly duped and this had led to the loss of his team. Fleeing the site, he effectively dropped out of sight for 72 hours, acquiring false travel documents and a significant quantity of cash, before buying a second hand car and driving out of Montreal towards the other side of the continent.
Arriving in Seattle after several minor “incidents”, Arclight drifted back into the shadows within days, using a few remaining (and trustworthy) contacts from his Montreal days to get him introductions into Seattle’s circuit. Again, using his boyish good looks and charm to distract, deceive and gain information, Arclight began rebuilding his damaged reputation, eventually earning enough to purchase a set of cybereyes and some headware. However, something in Arclight had changed, and he had become a little more cynical and hardbitten. Seeking thrills on his down time, it was in mid-2047 that Arclight started his love-hate relationship with gambling, that would later come to dominate his life. Often using casinos and gambling dens as legitimate meeting places for other fixers, Johnsons and team members, Arclight would often place a wager or two. However, as with most gamblers, his luck was usually bad than good, and he started to run up some fairly significant debts, leading him into a number of scrapes with casino heavies and to take on riskier jobs for higher pay. Only through his charm and his use to certain mobsters did he walk out of several casinos at all.
Operating Style
Arclight is a human male in his early forties with short blonde hair that's starting to go white at the temples. A well trimmed goatee adorns his friendly face, which is often found wearing a smile. A pair of blue chrome cyber eyes harking back to his days of running the shadows, something that gives a striking contrast to his otherwise impeccable dress and appearance. For all his boyish good looks, a few wrinkles have still managed to creep into his features, tell tale signs of the all too constant stress of being in debt to one mob boss or another.
Arclight's one of the pros, a fixer at the top of his game, with connections all over the Seattle area. Unfortunately, he also has a gambling problem, something that has kept him in debt a little too often for comfort and has also hampered his otherwise great street rep.
Fixers like Arclight are a diamond in the rough, a fixer that's willing to stick his neck out for his runners, go that extra mile, dig around a little and do what he can to keep the teams he finds work for from becoming next weeks special at the local chop shop. This comes from the fact that Arclight used to work the other side of the fence, was once the runner on the other side of the table, getting paid to do the corps dirty work. He still does in a way, but as time wore on, his connections grew, and his age started to creep up on him, he decided it was time to sit back and pass the work forward. He's also sharp as a tack, extremely resourceful, and always tries to stay one step ahead of the game with connections that tend to give him the heads up on what's going on in the shadows.
Arclight tends to go through small time teams when doing biz, having them drop off gear, run errands, and so on. The small time stuff will tend to be errands he needs run and generally won't pay much. He also uses such jobs to get a feel for new teams, test out their capabilities as well as professionalism before giving them the bigger gigs. Unless he trusts who he's working with, expect most business to go through third parties or to be conducted over the phone. Arclight's not one to generally do face-to-face meets. When he does though, Arclight will be accompanied by an ork bodyguard by the name of Stone, highly trained, cybered out, and absolutely professional. Stone's also liable to be the one sent out on high risk errands where expensive gear is at stake.
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Diarmid "Cosmo" Dalton
Background
Hailing from an “old money” Boston American-Irish family whose fortunes were revived during the “boom or bust” era of the 1980’s, Cosmo was born to a lifestyle of wealth and privilege receiving a good education in a number of subjects. Excelling at an early age in the fields of electronics and programming, Cosmo studied at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology and graduated Magna Cum Laude at the top of his year, before establishing himself in an up-and-coming technology firm.
However, this all changed with the onset of the UGE phenomenon, where Cosmo metamorphosed painfully into a dwarf in the middle of his office. Surrounded by those who were horrified by his change, he fled back to his family home, only to be rejected by them as well. Cast out into the world at 22 without the comforts of his privileged background, Cosmo was only able to rely on the skills that he had learnt and the few friends that accepted his new form.
Initially setting himself up as a freelance programmer, Cosmo took full advantage of the burgeoning matrix and began occasionally working the shadows as a decker, forming a reputation as a solid and dependable addition to any team requiring an electronics specialist or access to the matrix. Leaving his home city of Boston far behind due to the prejudices of that city, Cosmo relocated to the Seattle sprawl and his reputation soon followed.
However, after several disastrous runs, where he felt the fixer had not matched the skills of his comrades and himself particularly well to the needs of the Mr Johnson, Cosmo decided to establish himself as a fixer. Already feeling that the challenge of decking was wearing thin, Cosmo felt that the contacts that he had made within the Seattle sprawl would benefit from his expertise and experience. Working with a small stable of trusted runners, and a wide number of local fixers, Cosmo successfully leapt from runner to fixer and has proved himself to be very, very capable at matching the abilities of runners to the needs of their prospective employers, amassing a small fortune in the process which he has invested wisely.
Operating Style
Cosmo is a young-looking and rather rich man, with a number of trust funds and other legitimate incomes allowing him to focus on his chosen profession. Now middle-aged, Cosmo is established as one of the better fixers in Seattle and has a wide-ranging network of contacts, friends and associates. When it comes to contracting talent for jobs, Cosmo prefers to work through other fixers that he trusts, rather than keeping a large stable of runners himself. Those few veteran runners who do work directly for him are mostly old friends who've been with him since he was a young up-and-comer, although he does keep a few young and enthusiastic teams on hand just to be on the safe side.
Cosmo works out of his home in Bellevue, a lavish dwelling with exceedingly tight security (including complex networks of laser tripwires, various HVARs in ceiling ports, gas delivery systems and plenty more). Although no security is impenetrable, Cosmo works on the theory that anyone good enough to break into his house is experienced enough to know better. In any case, Cosmo mostly operates by Matrix conferences, scrambled phone calls and courier deliveries.
Cosmo is known as the man to see when it comes to technical and microtronics equipment, and in fact he's a proficient decker himself. He also has good sources of supply for general runner equipment (weaponry and protective gear), but doesn't tend to focus on more specialist areas. For such requests, Cosmo tends to rely on his network of contacts, but is more likely to direct the enquirer (provided he trusts them) to one of his associates.
Strangely, Cosmo has managed to avoid being linked to one organisation or another, managing to remain politically neutral. Often this has worked in his best interest, by being able to provide runners to all sides in a conflict.
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Dutch "Darwin" James
Background
Darwin definitely knows how the street works. He should, given his prime viewing position from his home in the gutter. Described as "low-class" by the charitable, Darwin is half pimp, half fixer. He may not epitomise the professional side of shadowrunning, but he knows people – and lots of them. When it comes to street buzz or getting in touch with low-lives of all stripes, Darwin is the man to see.
Born to a large Afro-Caribbean family from Haiti, Darwin was born human like his six brothers and sisters, but went through the UGE process at the age of twelve and transformed into a particularly robust ork. Banished from his fearful family, Darwin swiftly fell in with the wrong groups of youths within the Barrens, before being “adopted” by a small group of independent prostitutes. As he grew, he became their protector, defending them from the many crazies and predators on the streets, before eventually becoming their pimp.
By knowing the needs of the people that came to him for “services”, Darwin rapidly became able to the “man to see” if people needed a variety of goods that are illicit or difficult to acquire – mostly drugs, BTLs, weapons, and information. Darwin found that he had a talent for introducing people that need certain activities undertaken to those who have the necessary skills. By making himself indispensable to the local communities within the Barrens, Darwin ensured that very few people messed with him – only the truly desperate are willing to try, and many of them are rarely seen again.
Operating Style
Darwin doesn't have access to great talent, though; most of Darwin's runners are either jumped-up gangers without the professional mentality required to succeed as real runners, or beginners and new teams without the connections or experience to attract the attention of more authentic fixers. As such, Darwin doesn't tend to get his hands on high-grade work; most of Darwin's jobs are courier runs, standover work, and other low-rent gigs. Likewise, he's not the greatest source of supply, unless you want BTLs or drugs or flesh; most of his gear comes from very unsavoury sources and is probably exceedingly “hot”. On the upside, Darwin's always happy to buy if you want to sell, although he doesn't always have the cash to pay top dollar.
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Tyler "Deacon" Wells
Background
In 2029, Roger Wells created Wells Industries, cornering a small niche in Seattle’s local technology/manufacturing business – creating short-run custom items for other companies, especially custom elements in cyberware. Wells Industries has expanded steadily, managing to remain unaligned from any of the major corporations and staying too small and specialist to expend effort in taking over.
As the business expanded, his son Tyler entered the business at 23 after completing a master’s degree in Accountancy, Economics and Corporate Business Strategy, from the University of the City of London. Capable, handsome, well-connected and astute, Tyler swiftly managed to generate several high profile contracts and garnering a large amount of profile for Wells Industries, rising steadily through the corporate rank of Wells Industries.
Tyler, now calling himself “Deacon”, has expanded into being a fixer as the best way of succeeding in legitimate business, and Deacon now plays both sides against the middle – his resources as a fixer are helping him in his business career, while his position as a Wells Industries executive allows him to cover up his shady activities under a veneer of legitimacy.
As Wells Industries expanded and its fortunes expanded, Deacon's biggest liability at this stage is his father Roger, who has become an egomaniacal control freak busy running Wells Industries into the ground. Roger is incapable of delegating authority to his executives, yet consistently makes poor decisions thanks to an over-inflated sense of his own and his company's importance. Deacon is aware that it won't be long before his father's arrogance gets Wells Industries obliterated, and may wind up taking steps to save the family business – if not the family.
Operating Style
Most of the jobs Deacon supplies to his runners are on behalf of Wells Industries and its business allies; in effect, Deacon acts as both Johnson and fixer. Most of his regular runners know this, which keeps him honest – if the runners get screwed, they know exactly where to exact their vengeance. Likewise, most of the gear that Deacon sources for his runners is actually “surplus production” from Wells Industries, or written off as “test rejects”, “prototypes”, or similar. Deacon is also involved in a shadowy cabal of a dozen Seattle businessmen who share information about their small companies' activities in order to mutually profit from insider trading; this alliance is tentative at present, but appears to be sustainable, and Deacon can also source equipment, resources and occasional work from these allies.
Deeply religious, Deacon often has difficulty reconciling his catholic faith against the needs of the business world, but this has led to a number of unique situations – Deacon occasionally undertakes “business” for the Catholic Church’s interests in Seattle and the neighbouring regions.
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Jorge "Domino" Mendoza
Background
Jorge Mendoza was born sometime in the early 2020s into a rural community in Aztlan. His parents were persecuted remorselessly for being unwilling to leave their traditional farming lands, and after the execution of his father and other men in the village by an Aztlana kill-team, his mother fled with the infant Jorge and travelled north, to the CAS and relative safety from the persecution of the Aztlan regime.
Growing amongst the poorest communities in Houston, Jorge and his mother were forced to work long hours in the sweatshops of the city that profited immensely from the cheap labour that trickled over the border. Seeking to supplement their meagre income, the young Jorge often ran “errands” for local criminal gangs – delivering packages of drugs to local street dealers, delivering small packages of money to safe houses, and so on. His mother, grateful for the extra income, learnt not to ask too many questions about where the extra money came from. However, through luck more than judgement, he managed to avoid tumbling into gang life whilst staying on the fringes of street society.
This status quo changed the night of his mother’s death. Jorge, aged 17, came home to the two-room property that they called home and discovered the beaten, violated, tortured and badly mutilated body of his mother, an Aztlan calling-card placed over her eyes. Shocked and deeply traumatised, Jorge packed a few belongings and fled into the night.
Taking the small quantity of cash that he still had, Jorge hopped a freight train out of Houston and just kept going, eventually arriving in Seattle. Dropping out of sight, he drifted into the Redmond Barrens, and formed a close friendship with a brutish troll named Wasp and an aspiring drug dealer named Banya. Working out of an old and exceedingly two story decrepit pharmacy in Redmond, Banya – a disgraced research chemist – taught Jorge chemistry. Finding a knack for chemical formulae, and improving on several “traditional recipes”, Jorge (taking the street name Domino) and Banya began to cook up significant quantities of drugs which they began to market to local dealers in the vicinity of their home. Deals were made, and favours were owed, allowing them to gain a moderate degree of success and strong local connections to a number of other significant individuals within Redmond.
This state of affairs continued for a decade – carefully walking the line to earn a steady income, without attracting the attention of larger criminal groups looking to take over their operations. They also formed a close affiliation with the Rusted Stilettos gang, who frequently acted as test subjects and hired muscle in return for drugs and cash. However, in late 2048, Banya collapsed from a massive brain haemorrhage, brought on from exposure to many of the chemicals that he used to cook batches of drugs.
Domino, dreading this day but knowing it was inevitable, ensured that Banya was buried respectfully, then simply took over the whole operation.
Operating Style
Domino is still primarily a drug dealer, but is now expanded into a small-time fixer and fence, still running operations out of the shattered remains of a stone two story pharmacy of yesteryear that smells of sulphur and medical chemicals. Many of the windows of both floors are boarded up, giving the impression of the building being utterly deserted and providing excellent privacy. If there is too much attention in the site, there's always either Wasp or a few bribed Rusted Stilettos lingering on or around the site to keep the rabble away.
Domino is a fellow of medium height and build of Hispanic extraction, with tanned skin and brown eyes. His ebony hair is kept short, but not particularly well-kept or neat. He isn't outright deceitful, and takes the responsibility to his underlings seriously, but is constantly looking to make a buck.
Domino knows most happenings on the local turf, which encompasses the run-down strip mall opposite to the “pharmacy” and a few blocks surrounding his home. He can acquire most small-arms, but most are extremely “hot”, having been used in previous crimes elsewhere in the city, and some cheap equipment. He tends to keeps tabs on gang politics within Seattle, as well as the politics of some criminal groups. Through this he knows a few low-key Johnsons, and can occasionally provide distractions and some back-up muscle when they are need on a job, but they do not come without a price.
He provides mostly low-level work, such as acquiring raw materials for his “day job” by less than legal means, distribution of the finished product to a number of dealers with whom he has “an arrangement”, collection of debts from those same individuals and occasionally arranging “accidents” to those who threaten his work. However, now that he has the means, he reserves a great deal of personal vehemence to the Aztlan government and Aztechnology (which he considers, probably rightly, to be effectively one and the same). Thus, he provides a modest stream of currency and equipment to the rebels in Yucatan, and will always seek to harry and disrupt Aztechnology’s operations in Seattle, all of which he will offer to trusted teams of shadowrunners.
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Benny "Finger" Kampowski
Background
Finger is one of the oldest fixers in the business, if not the oldest – in Seattle, at least. He's been involved with the criminal fraternity for most of his life, starting his career as a pawn shop owner and general fence and fixer. As extraterritoriality made proper shadowrunning feasible for the first time, Benny's career developed with it. Now well into retirement age, and still working mostly to avoid having to spend too much time with his wife, Finger (so called because he's missing the index and middle fingers on his left hand) operates a very high-class stable of runners, working on the very cream of the jobs.
Born in 1997 to a lower middle-class family who ran a number of gambling establishments throughout Seattle, Finger’s family managed to remain relatively independent of the many crime syndicates growing up in the city. However, tragedy struck in 2019 when, at the age of 22, Finger’s family were slain in an apparent robbery gone wrong, in which he lost his fingers to a shotgun blast. Finger only survived through having worn discreet body armour, and no small amount of luck.
Carrying his family’s business on, he began to hear snippets of information about the individuals who had rained random death upon his family. Maintaining a private dossier of information, he eventually hired a highly recommended yet unorthodox private investigator to validate the information he had received. Determining quickly what was fact and what was fiction, the private investigator identified four individuals and their employer. Finger made some discreet phonecalls, and all five had disappeared within 34 hours.
Finding that he enjoyed solving such problems, both for himself and others, Finger gradually drifted into the fixer business, using his legitimate gambling clubs as a means of meeting clients, determining their needs, entertaining them then laundering his fee through the card games. Owning a series of gambling establishments means that many people owe Finger money and/or favours, which he regular calls in to enhance his business. Finger has a significant quantity of information stored within his headware and his highly encrypted pocket secretary, ensuring that he never forgets who owes him.
Operating Style
Finger has contacts everywhere throughout the shadow business – if he can't get it for you, he almost always knows someone who can. The only goods he doesn't deal in are BTLs and drugs; a runner who asks him to acquire (without good reason) such has probably just wiped any chance he has of working for Finger in the future. It's not a moral issue, Finger just figures that substance-abusers are unreliable and unprofessional – and he can certainly afford to be picky about who he works with.
Thanks to his high-talent, big-name crews, Benny has his pick of high-paying jobs, and hence has runners beating down his door to work for him. Working for Finger is almost a status symbol in some runner circles; it says more than words could about your rep and ability. Finger is very picky about his regular runners, however, and those who screw up are rarely given a second chance. For the competent professionals, though, Finger is a delight to work for. His jobs are well-researched and he's adept at sniffing out double-crosses; he supplies high-quality gear and good intelligence. Finger is, in many ways, the model fixer that everyone wants to work for. Unfortunately for newcomers, if you weren't running when Fuchi was a world power and Novatech wasn't, he's not interested.
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Harry "Flamboyance" Brown
Background
Harry “Flamboyance” Brown was born in Atlanta in 2021, and became the one of the earliest THD students to be employed by the newly emerging megacorporations. Working for a number of smaller specialist organisations he was eventually snapped up by Geatronics to manage a number of research projects on the use of alternative conjuring materials, as well as the production of quantities of oricalchum. He gained his nickname sometime in the late 2040s or early 2050s, as he was known for the extra “special effects” with his offensive spells.
Approximately six years ago, Flamboyance was ambushed by a hit squad in his own home. It is still not known who sent the squad, but Flamboyance blamed his employers – Geatronics – as the security in the company arcology failed to adequately protect him. Not taking his life, they did something far worse; they beat him to within an inch of his life, then smothered his body in stim patches. The use of the stim patches nearly destroyed his mastery of magic, losing much of his mana within minutes.
The loss of his magic led to him being fired by Geatronics, and rapidly becoming homeless. It has taken him six years to find a niche in the underground shadowrun community, and earn enough status and nuyen to undertake a number of initiations to recover his lost mana, skills, spells and magical ability. It is now at the stage where Flamboyance has almost recovered to the level he was before his attack.
Flamboyance also owns and manages Dirty Rikki's bar. Not the most welcoming of establishments, it caters primarily to the niche magical community, especially the elven magical community – as such it is often regarded by those outside the community as elitist, a reputation that Flamboyance is willing to maintain.
Operating Style
Flamboyance is very bitter about his treatment by Geatronics and the loss of his magic and status but still loves magical gossip and shop talk, and is a valuable contact for this kind of information. He makes it his business to know who is doing what to who, where, where and how often – especially amongst the relatively small magical community. He can also be convinced to undertake the occasional shadowrun, especially is he is presented with magical research or the opportunity to gain revenge on Geatronics or one of its subsidiaries, especially where it cannot be directly linked back to him. Occasionally, he has also been known to broker the odd magical deal, working primarily as an intermediary and placing his establishment as neutral meeting ground.
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Juan "Maddox" Sanchez
Background
Juan Sanchez was born in Argentina in 2006, the son of an accountant and a tailoress. The oldest of three brothers, he was blessed with a business savvy that led him into business with his father as a junior partner, after graduating from the University of Buenos Aires with a degree in Accountancy and Business Studies. After his father was arrested for helping to launder then legitimately invest money from a local crime syndicate, the young Juan transferred encrypted documents and a quantity of the newly laundered cash – in the form of stocks, shares and bonds – into his own name, selling them and skipping town. Buying tickets for his family, his mother and brothers were sent to the United Kingdom to be schooled and freedom from persecution from both the Argentinean authorities investigating his father, and the crime syndicate that they ripped off. Meanwhile, Juan dropped completely off the radar, for several months, by staying with a number of friends before eventually making enough contacts to buy a new name.
Able to fit into his new persona with aplomb, Juan initially flew into the UCAS, before taking a train journey to Seattle. Setting up a salsa club, Juan’s Place, Juan dropped his temporary persona, decrypted the documents he had carried in his headware and sent them to the UCAS FBI. Days later, Argentinean news had reported that the crime syndicated that threatened his life was destroyed – its leaders dead or arrested due to an anonymous tip off from outside the country.
Throwing himself into building and running his salsa club, Juan invariably made acquaintances of individuals from exceedingly shady backgrounds, either requiring or offering individuals with particular skills. It became a natural extension of his business to ensure that these individuals were introduced in the relatively secluded offices of his club.
These individuals were asked to refer to him by the name Maddox, which became both his nickname, and a codeword that the individual sought to buy or sell skills of dubious legality. In a career that has now spanned over twenty years, despite a few glitches in his early career, Maddox has turned the business of a fixer into an art form, proving to be decidedly adept at introducing street talent to prospective employers – both short term and long term. Maddox has also been relatively adept at remaining clear of the influence of organised crime syndicates in Seattle, helping them achieve their aims without pandering to their machinations. Requiring a steady pool of capable shadow talent with which to further their aims elsewhere, Maddox and Juan’s Place were quickly identified as “protected neutrals” by the major players in the city, ensuring that they were clear of unwanted and overzealous syndicate attention, as well as a good place to do business.
Operating Style
Maddox operates out of the rundown Seattle salsa club "Juan’s Place", which he owns and operates. He is perhaps a stereotypical fixer; he has fingers in every pie and contacts in every area, though he specialises in none. Maddox is a busy man and doubtless would lose track of his business were it not for assistance from his son Jose, otherwise known as Ajax, who's a drek-hot decker and long-time runner. Ajax’s girlfriend Blink, a whiz accountant and cryptographer (and a sterling decker in her own right), is responsible for keeping Juan’s Place books looking legitimate, which allows Maddox to launder a lot of money through his club.
Maddox maintains links with a large body of professional runners, from beginning teams to established professionals through to veteran groups who are semi-retired. He keeps almost all his runners at a distance and considers very few of them to be friends; he does have quite a few friends in the runner community, but considers it bad business practice to befriend those who actually work for him.
Juan’s Place is one of those places where you can get just about anything you want; dealers and pushers constantly circulate the floor and one of the most commonly-heard phrases in Juan’s Place (after "Hey baby, how about it?") is "So, whaddya need?". These low lives operate with an unofficial sanction from club management, although they're expected to return the favour by donating a proportion of their take.
Healthy bribes to Lonestar keep law enforcement officers out of Juan’s Place except on urgent business, so club security is very assertive about stopping any trouble that might attract the attention of the authorities. Local gangs and wannabes have learnt the hard way about targeting Juan’s Place over the years, with no small numbers of troublesome gangers having been found washed up in the harbour, that now they tend to steer well clear.
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Kiniver "Quint" McCullough
Background
Kiniver McCullough was born in Edinburgh in 2006, the only daughter of a British Army junior staff officer based in the divisional headquarters there. A period of years followed as a “pad brat”, a child of a military family who followed her father from posting to posting, until his retirement in 2027. Accepting a permanent technical liaison posting to the UCAS Army after his formal retirement, Lt Col McCullough settled his family in nearby Seattle, and threw himself into his work developing infantry tactics around key pieces of military equipment.
Kiniver, knowing no other life than the life of transient military family, spent a number of years trying to fit into jobs, but continued to find herself drifting back to the military, and eventually signed up into the British Army in 2030. Fitting like a hand to a glove, Kiniver undertook a number of postings around the country and around the world, volunteering for a number of combat roles with the Army, NATO and the United Nations. However, during a combat role fighting the Islamic forces that had invaded southern Europe, Kiniver was badly injured by a cluster submunition that had been dropped on an enemy position nearby, and was medically evacuated back to the UK. Eventually losing her left arm, Kiniver’s mental scars took much longer to heal, and she was eventually reinstated with a limited role as a training platoon sergeant. Although she excelled in her position, bringing much needed realism and experience to her recruit training, Kiniver eventually cracked under the pressure and nearly beat one of her recruits to death.
Honourably discharged from the British Army, thanks in no small part to the dual influences of her war record and her father, Kiniver returned to her family in Seattle. She then spent several months in rehab, allowing many of her mental wounds to be treated. Kiniver began working in Club Eden around this time, and made a good circle of military friends – most of whom were colleague of her father. Working the bar at Club Eden, she quickly formed a larger circle of non-military friends from amongst the regulars, many of them in different types of uniform – merchant seamen, Lonestar officers, paramedics, and the like. In fact, her accent and her looks, as well as her “rough and tumble” attitude when things got tough drew many back time after time. In one famous incident, the feisty 5’4” petite barmaid battered two fighting merchant seamen into submission so quickly, and cowed their cheering friends into embarrassed silence with such a torrent of verbal abuse that club security were required to restrain her for her own protection. Needless to say, she won much respect from the staff team, as well as many of the regular patrons, and soon found herself promoted into an assistant manager’s role.
Nineteen weeks after the promotion, she won ¥350,000 on the local lottery, and immediately led a buyout of Club Eden. Throwing herself into role as the new owner, Kiniver quickly improved the quality of Club Eden, and found that patrons – both old and new – agreed with her vision. Popular with the traditional “uniformed clique”, the club became more accessible to other professionals as well. Only once did the club receive untoward attention from organised crime. The mafia muscle men sent to threaten Kiniver never made it across the club to her office – her loyal security and several significant patrons intercepted the thugs, and left them battered and bloodied outside the nearby Lonestar police station, begging for protection. Kiniver has never been bothered since.
However, she has built up considerable links within certain communities – especially Lonestar, Ares and the military – and although she isn’t “owned” by any of them, she began to make introductions a few years ago as a favour to a few friends. This escalated naturally, and Kiniver – taking the pseudonym Quint – found herself making a steady side income from such introductions, which flowed into the coffers of the club.
Operating Style
Quint is a petite blue-eyed blonde with a lilting Scots accent, who is 100% pure drill sergeant. She runs Club Eden, a relatively classy bar in Auburn, mostly as a cover and money-laundering operation. She no longer works personally as one of the waitresses (much to the dismay of the regular patrons) though she's provided jobs for a few of her regular runners when they've been down on their luck. Quint is very tough and no-nonsense, but thoroughly trustworthy. She takes good care of her employees and regulars at the bar, treating them as an extended family, and her favorite shadowrunners are offered the same treatment.
Quint's greatest asset is her network of friends; although her connections within the shadow community are not the most extensive, she has a significant number of civilian friends who return the loyalty she shows them. Club Eden regulars include Lone Star officers, UCAS military personnel, merchant seamen, doctors and dentists, auto mechanics, university staff, and so on. This gives her a big support network and allows her to carry on a perfectly normal life; any minor infractions that get noticed by the authorities tend to get “fixed” by her friends. Quint also handles a significant number of military-related jobs and is definitely a preferred contact for several Johnsons based out of Fort Lewis.
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Tommy "Slick" Spinelli
Background
Born in Queens, New York City, Tommy “Slick” Spinelli grew up amongst the tougher neighbourhoods. Never academically gifted, but both agile and slender, he excelled at sports (especially gymnastics) and a life on the street led to him being streetwise from a very early age.
His natural talents swiftly led him to become a burglar – specialising in breaking and entering into corporate warehouses on the docks, appraising the goods and then removing the most valuable items for a quick sale. On the fringes of the Italian community, it comes with no surprise that Tommy quickly became noticed by the local mafia lieutenant, who regularly put Tommy’s skills to good use – removing or planting evidence, planting small electronic items in hard to reach locations, so on and so on. Tommy thrived on this work, and the introduction to his future partner Vapour – whose skills mirrored and complemented his own – only improved the amount of work he received.
It was not until Vapour got sent to jail that Tommy decided life would be more fun as a legitimate businessman than languishing in a cell. Upping sticks, he bore a letter of recommendation to Maurice Bigio’s capo. Naturally, he was received as a friend, and spent several months providing “technical advice” to an upcoming generation of B&E specialists, all the while maintaining the image of a legitimate businessman building up a bar/brasserie.
Operating Style
After Vapour was jailed, Slick hung up his balaclava and grapple gun, and finally went straight. Sort of. The Five-Tone Bar was born, a legitimate bar and brasserie popular with the lunchtime crowd. Slick also runs his sideline business from the Five-Tone Bar and it's a popular hangout with some of the more relaxed runners of Seattle. The security is discreet, as Slick has strong ties to the Mafia (being close to a few trusted men in the Bigio Family) and few people want to hassle a Mafia-related establishment. Visible security is provided by Patrick and Yuri, two bouncers (an Irish fomori troll and a Russian ork respectively) who are even more effective than one might expect. Both are very experienced adepts, a lot smarter than they look, and formidable in a fight. Slick’s old friend Orlaith tends the bar and she knows half the business-related faces in Seattle.
Slick has no ambition to expand his business significantly, being happy as a mid-level fixer with a comfortable establishment. He does handle quite a lot of jobs; he has a few talented runners on call, and he specialises in burglary, breaking-and-entering, datasteals, and so on. Although not a shining light in any major area (and he absolutely refuses to deal in contraband that might get the Robbery Department of Lonestar on his tail, as he has a few enemies there already), Slick does know a lot of the B&E specialists in Seattle and is often a good source of information for those tracking down burglars (although, as a good businessman, he'd never rat on one of his own runners). The equipment he supplies is usually sourced from the Mafia, and his operation is convenient for them to launder gear and occasionally money.
Most people who work for Slick are working for the Mafia, whether they know it or not. Tommy isn't an “official” Mafia fixer, but most of his jobs come from the Family, and his regular runners are known to the Mafia by extension. This isn't necessarily a handicap; more than a couple of Slick’s runners have gone on to very profitable careers within the Bigio Family. And despite Slick’s loyalties to the Mafia, he knows how to be discreet, and is well aware that his survival (both business and otherwise) depends on his probity and trustworthiness.
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I'm considering an idea, of having an fixer named Sera, in Chicago, who's actually an AI (SoftwarE Recovery Agent) who is drawn to Chicago because her original programming instilled her with a strong desire to go to places with poor matrix connection and attempt to repair them. However, as Chicago's issues are more hardware than software, Sera began to reach out to physical people to get work done. Since purely benevolent beings cannot exist in Shadowrun, Sera's goals are extremely narrow. She only cares about the connection strength and "overall health" of the matrix, not the people using it. If illegal activity is required, or if people need to die for a piece of hardware to be recovered, Sera cares not.
At the start, Sera will likely not be known by the Quantum Princess or others who work to maintain the NooseNet, but with her reckless behavior, she will likely be found out soon.
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"Smiley" is a "starter fixer," a skinny runt of an ork who arranges street-level shadowruns and contacts. He likes to meet outdoors near Seattle landmarks, and he always begins each meeting by telling a really bad joke. He cracks himself up. He's friendly and helpful and reasonably honest, but strictly small-nuyen.
"Dominion" is a corporate fixer. He only meets in the Matrix, where he pretends to be an artificial intelligence, using a shifting neon fractal pattern for his icon/persona, always doing business in flawless Japanese. In fact he's a middle-aged black dwarf named Dwight Wilson who's an executive at a major Seattle bank (his business card says "director of market research"). In person, he wears impeccably tailored three-piece suits. He's a good source for information about corporate players in the pacific northwest, and he has a wide range of contacts in the Seattle shadows. He can set up some lucrative shadowruns, but he always reports in full to his masters at the bank, and information about the players' activities can leak to a variety of concerned parties if it's in the bank's interest.
"The Twins" are Joseph and Josephine White, human siblings who always finish each other's sentences without noticing that they do it. They always use the pronoun "we," never "I." One is a magician and the other a hacker, but they try to conceal which is which. They have extensive connections in local magical and Matrix communities, and the international black market. They seem young for the business, but sharp and well-connected all the same. They wear eurotrash fashions and have different hairstyles at every encounter. They prefer meeting in museums or restaurants with decent security and surveillance.
"Wagner" is a large troll with extensive underworld connections. He was a Spike back in the day, then a successful shadowrunner for a while. Titanium bone lacing and cutting-edge bioware made him practically indestructible. He made his rep as a fixer by brokering truces and deals between warring gangs and syndicates. Those things never last, but they seem to last a little longer whenever Wagner's involved. He discovered culture late in life after he slotted a ballerina BTL (he tells the story as a sort of test; it's more than your life is worth to tease him about it), and nowadays you can usually find him Downtown at the symphony, theater, opera, or ballet, where he gets private box seats -- a compromise negotiated with the house after he started buying front-row tickets, obstructing the views of half the theater. Where does a 500-kilo troll sit? Anywhere it wants to. He likes to play dumb, but he's a lot smarter than people give him credit for. He's fluent in Russian, Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean, as well as Cityspeak and Or'zet. For those able to blend in, he prefers meeting in his box during a show. For those who can't, he'll meet later in the alley or parking garage and charge double for the favor.
Charlotte Charlemagne (a.k.a. "Charlie") is a retired runner, a former "face," who keeps an ear to the ground and a hand in the biz. She's an elf, but with the human-looking quality. She's a smooth operator, cautious, intelligent, and reliable. Players hear about her first by reputation when she organizes a contract through their regular fixer, later when she approaches them directly with a job offer, but she won't share contact information until after their third meeting. She knows every shadowrunner archetype in the book, and can arrange introductions for a modest fee. She always meets in obscure bars or clubs, and at least one other person in the place is an old chummer watching her back, but good luck figuring out who it is.
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The Tall Man (https://de.pinterest.com/pin/415457134347706690/)
The Tall Man is an illusive shadow character and not really a single NPC, more like a Fixer network/joint venture - with a twist.
He (or they) have concentrated their biz on everything magical - be it jobs, equipment or - primarily - personnel. He, or they, appears mundane, does have light Cyberware (sometimes) and no magic items to speak of. Even though the runners rarely deal with the same "Tall Man", they all seem to know all the important details about the team, are well-informed about former jobs and the needs of every runner. And while that might still be easy to explain aways by excessive briefings and a good AR software suite, the disconcerting thing is, ath they all talk and act in the exact same ways:
Rubbing their earlobe while distracted, straightening the collars and sleeves of their shirts (right hand, first, left hand afterwards), repeating the phrase "be that as it may" multiple times in a conversation... Runners who work with him/them for a while will start to notice these things.
The truth is, The Tall Man is a free spirit calling himself Nix (after the fairy tale "Nix Nought Nothing") with the possession power. Nix has, as they always do, a rather complex plan, and he uses the runners (and others of their creed) in order to achieve it. I'll spare you the details here. His possession targets are usually tall, low-level corp execs of small to A-Corps that he picks at random - usually at the airport. He "uses" them for about a day, before letting them go, usually in a shady establishment.
Sounds like Slenderman.
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I've found that while coming up with an elaborate backstory for fixers is fun, it also tends to be a lot of work for sometimes(often) very little use. I like having the main outline for their history because that can explain personality quirks, friends and enemies, and what type of contacts and jobs they tend to have for the Runners, but it's a very rare thing that the players will want to know or even actively look into the detailed life story of their fixer. Having said that, I'll post some brief examples of ones I've used or am actively using in my game.
Spencer Craig, AKA "Psycho Skydive"
Based out of Atlanta, Psycho Skydive got his street name in the combat biking scene of the 2050s-2060s, where as the star player for the Lightning Riders, he got knocked off his bike mid-air and somehow managed to dive-bomb one of the opposing players off their bike in the final moments of the game, a move that is still talked about decades later. And while a number of injuries and replacement parts from his career have left him unable to play the sport anymore, he's still involved as the hands-on owner of his team, training the Riders and scouting for new talent.
With feathered platinum-blonde hair, a mile-wide smile, and a constant smell of cologne and motor fuel, Psycho Skydive is an adrenaline junkie and motorsport enthusiast for life, heavily involved in the Atlanta racing, combat biking, and urban brawl circuit. He turned to using his connections with various teams, players, and managers/owners to part-time fixing(and being the occasional Johnson) when he saw that a LOT of nuyen was trading hands behind the scenes, and some of it should be used to help out up-and-coming talent instead of lining the pockets of people who barely had any involvement or interest in his beloved sports. With a wild personality and slightly crazy, "Hell yeah balls-to-the-wall" attitude, Psycho Skydive's jobs tend to revolve around motor sports and fast-paced pursuits. However, he has a good heart and good intentions, and will never actively try to screw over a team or hide info from them, and if they do well for him they'll have a solid friend and Fixer in the CAS shadows(and maybe he'll even get you season tickets to the Lightning Riders' games).
The Baroness
With a low southern drawl, expensive tastes, and even good looks(for a troll), the Baroness seems the very essence of CAS charm, hospitality, and refinement. However, very observant Runners or those who do a fair bit of digging may notice that her accent slips just slightly every now and then, or that it almost seems like she's going out of her way to make sure everyone knows how fancy she is. The reason for this is simple; being a troll in the CAS, she grew up poor and without many of the opportunities that the prettier(or less savage-looking) metatypes took for granted. She's done a lot of things she'd rather not speak of to get where she is, and has made a very concerted effort to forget about her checkered past, even if she can never completely erase it entirely. However, she does a job of hiding who she is and where she came from; as far as anyone who matters is concerned, The Baroness will do.
If Runners work for the Baroness, they'll be meeting her in fancy restaurants and clubs around the Atlanta Metroplex, and her jobs will take the team all over the CAS and southern half of the continent, though rarely in Atlanta itself("You should never work from home, Dahhhling, it confuses business and pleasure."). The other thing is her ruthless climb to the higher echelons of society carries over to her taste in jobs and relationships with Runners. She prefers professionalism, but if that means a heavy body count or collateral damage, then so be it. Whatever it takes to get the job done is acceptable. Failure is not, and just as she'll treat her main teams VERY well with nuyen, favours, contacts, and other opportunities, she won't hesitate to burn anyone and everyone to the ground if she finds out they've been double-dealing or otherwise failing her high standards.
Timothy Dean Hollins, AKA "Titan"
If you you were in the shadows of the UCAS, PCC, or Sioux Nation in the 2060s, you might have run across a Shadowrunner called Titan, known for being a juggernaut with a troll-sized combat axe. If you looked up the name Timothy Hollins in the mid 2050s, you might find a professional bodybuilder that went from up-and-coming star to disgraced and disqualified competitor due to a scandal involving experimental muscle-fibre gene treatments. The truth is both are one and the same, and after his name becoming synonymous with cheating on a genetic level, Titan fell off the grid and into the shadows. After a decade of running, he and his fellow runner turned best friend Sal finally hit that elusive big score, earning enough to get some rejuvenation treatment and sink the rest into a little Runner bar in the Redmond Barrens.
Now, after Sal's recent death, Titan finds himself restless with retirement, and while he doesn't want to go back to getting shot at(or stabbed, or fireballed, or that one time with the Pixie from Hell), helping get jobs for new Runners, and maybe teaching them a few things to help them survive in the shadows scratches that itch just enough to keep him busy. He doesn't get the highest-paying jobs in the world, but the work is steady and mostly honest. And, if a Runner needs some help with physical conditioning or building muscle, Titan has a personal gym and years of experience to will whip any would-be musclehead into fighting shape.
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I have my teams know "Jimmy the Rat" (James Dean Ratzenberg), one of Seattle's best fixers. He is known for always dealing straight with everybody he works with, contrary to the opinion his street name appears to have. Somewhere in his forties (fifties?), Jimmy is among the top 5 fixers in Seattle. A human who has some cyber and bioware (datajack, eyes with all the mods [still human looking, though], chem sniffer [avoided a couple of poisoning attempts], toxin extractor, tailored pheromones, and sleep regulator), Jimmy bills himself as a "social engineer" for tax purposes. He operates at the center of a huge network of "friends" that he can introduce to each other "because they might work well together". This allows LEOs at all levels to ignore him when things get all legally complicated, like trials and that sort of thing. This means that his "friends" that go by the name of Johnson wind up paying him about 15% more than whatever they contract with his scruffier "friends" for, and then he pays the runners what they contracted for, which makes everyone involved happy. Always on the lookout for new talent, he leads a mostly mobile life in his Nightsky limo or Stallion helicopter (both run by riggers). He has about 3 deckers on his payroll, so that he can have verified info about his "friends". He is very busy, making a deal about every 15 minutes for around 18 hours a day. He sleeps for 3 hours a day, and the other three are eating, cleaning and dressing, though he will readily do meal meetings. Most of his "friends" are at a loyalty of 1 or 2, though he does have some at 3 or 4. His actual connection is 9, though he usually takes some time before he will use that for his "friends". (He usually starts off as a 1/5 or a 2/4 contact for runners new to him)
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Here's my favorite home-grown fixer: Forge
Forge is a shadowy info broker, and no one can ever confirm meeting him in the flesh. He always meets digitally, or uses agents in his employ as proxies. Though he does work as a fixer, he also seems to have an agenda of his own, and those in his stable of shadowrunners can expect a higher-than-usual number of jobs involving technomancers, AIs, or experimental Matrix programs. He seems to have Neo-A sensibilities, so jobs from corporate Johnson's are usually going to involve some personal agenda of Mr. Johnson, as Forge isn't the sort of person that boards like to deal with. He does a fair bit of muckraking, and most of his more amicable relationships are with those in city politics. During digital meets, forge appears as a 7 foot tall anthropomorphic figure wearing robes appear to be made of translucent plastic scrolls with LED runes moving all over them, depicting complex lines of code, and wearing a featureless black helmet.
As for Forge's real identity, "he" is a 14 year old girl who is both a technomancer and autistic to the point of being non-functional. She lives beneath a bar owned by one of her agents, who attends to her basic needs, keeps her clean, and feeds her. Her virtuakinetic abilities make her autism seem especially sever because she prefers to spend the vast majority of time in VR, where the world takes a form that simply makes more sense to her, and her thoughts are made manifest so that she can express herself eloquently in a way that that other users will also relate to. Many of her friends are e-ghosts and AIs, and she is terrified by the prospect of Deus's return in Boston, hiring runners to uncover as much information about this as possible.
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My current Fixer.
Faronda "Dynah" Dietre
A husky, but beautiful Oni Ork Vodou shamaness; with deep gray skin, bright silver hair (with just a twinge of red highlights), short, finely honed and polished tusks and a deep Caribbean accent.
Known as a woman as collected as the sea itself; capable of soothing hospitality one moment, and anger of a relentless intensity the next. She welcomes those into her home with open arms, and keeps them in her fold through tactful use of reward, fear and implication (being a known Vodou devotee certainly helps).
As a friend, Dynah is tempers her demeanor and intentions with southern hospitality, and deflects personal interrogations with ease. In business, she is forward with what she wants and will not suffer fools.
BACKSTORY:
Faronda is a native of Alabama but spent most of her formative youth on boats bound for the CL member states and Aztlan.
Despite her unusual heritage (an Oni born to two humans), Faronda enjoyed a worldly perspective and developed a grasp for reading others at an early age. She regularly chatted up the locals, looking for mischief and opportunity while her parents conducted business and trade.
During the lapse of trade between the CAS and Aztlan in 2061 (the Azzies were righteously pissed due to shenanigans pulled in Denver), Faronda and her family found themselves with little regular work, and begrudgingly turned to smuggling. Assuming the alias she used in the Caribbean League, "Dynah" took to the new role with ease, eventually taking over the family business by 2067 (when her father became too ill to continue). Her friendly but intense mannerisms, deep reverence for the local Caribbean traditions and existing knowledge and connections to underworld talent-trade made her a fairly successful smuggler.
In 2073, Dynah was poisoned by a Zobop competitor, and had a near-death experience that changed her life. In the throes of her sickness, a powerful Loa patron approached her, and struck a deal. He would possess her body, giving her the strength to endure the poison as it ran its course, but in exchange she had to leave her existing life behind and do a long-term service for him, directing her to New Orleans. Faronda agreed, recovered, and sold the shipping business to a wealthy man in Atlanta. (much to her family's protest)
Shortly thereafter, she took up residence in New Orleans and encountered a man simply named "Riverstrider"; who took her in as a partner and magical student. In early 2075, the two used their collective pull in the shadows (and Dynah's capital) to purchase a flagging waterfront jazz club, re-branding it "Fonce' Mar'ee" and reopening within the same year. (the club was a known Tempo distributor, up until a CAS federal raid finally closed it down)
Today, it's an open secret among New Orleans residents that the club operates as a sort of underworld nexus...and that's just how the local corporations and the organized criminal fronts want it.
While Dynah is a joint owner of the club, most of the revenue goes back into maintaining it and the rest to Riverstrider. Her main source of personal revenue comes from establishing and maintaining cover identities for any "free agents" (Shadowrunners) looking to live and work in the area. Meaning, she acts as a sort of "Shadowrunner landlord", and keeps her SINless clientele's public cover clean and living spaces secured, in exchange for their exclusive services and a monthly fee.
To facilitate this, Dynah creates and quietly distributes Govi to her client shadowrunners' homes. (astral security, also lets her know when they are around)
Additionally, she employs a few "pest control" specialists to keep tabs on those who might be investigating the runners, or snooping around their neighborhood(s).
Most of her revenue from this gets re-invested into underworld deals for material and information. Through this process, she has (over time) acquired a reputation as a very reliable fixer.
If she can't broker your deal herself, she can certainly find the person who will.
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I think Fancy Derek, the 9 CHA Scandinavian Looking Pimp Daddy Troll some people were kicking around in the forums properly fleshed out would be an interesting fixer...
Fancy Derek: Dig this man. Someone once said: "To err is human, to forgive divine."
Jake Armitage: Tch. What deckhead said that?
Fancy Dereck: I believe that was god -well, no god from the pantheon I worship, but never-the-less, a god.
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Jason "Arclight" Richards
Background
Jason Richards was born in Montreal in May 2015, the third child of a middle class family whose father was a high school teacher and mother was a nurse. However, despite the relative comfort of his family home, Jason was always quite rebellious but blessed with the boyish good looks needed to talk his way out of trouble. Realising quite early on that his charm was an effective means of doing small deals to supplement his meagre pocket money, Jason quickly progressed in his teens to selling drugs to others at school, before dropping out of sight and entering the Montreal underground.
Richards quickly established himself as a “face man” for a small shadowrunning team based in Montreal during the early 2040s, fronting the team when dealing with various fixers and Johnsons across the north eastern UCAS region, in areas such as Boston and Quebec, and forming a solid reputation as a capable crew. His skill at charming people, and extracting information from them, was put to great use, and Richards – now running under the moniker Arclight – built an impressive number of contacts over a relatively short amount of time.
This all changed on the night of 14th November 2046. A small datasteal job against a small Ares site went desperately wrong, based on faulty information acquired by Arclight. As the team attempted to access the site, the team were disabled by a virulent gas and apprehended. Arclight – on overwatch at the time – was mortified, as he had been utterly duped and this had led to the loss of his team. Fleeing the site, he effectively dropped out of sight for 72 hours, acquiring false travel documents and a significant quantity of cash, before buying a second hand car and driving out of Montreal towards the other side of the continent.
Arriving in Seattle after several minor “incidents”, Arclight drifted back into the shadows within days, using a few remaining (and trustworthy) contacts from his Montreal days to get him introductions into Seattle’s circuit. Again, using his boyish good looks and charm to distract, deceive and gain information, Arclight began rebuilding his damaged reputation, eventually earning enough to purchase a set of cybereyes and some headware. However, something in Arclight had changed, and he had become a little more cynical and hardbitten. Seeking thrills on his down time, it was in mid-2047 that Arclight started his love-hate relationship with gambling, that would later come to dominate his life. Often using casinos and gambling dens as legitimate meeting places for other fixers, Johnsons and team members, Arclight would often place a wager or two. However, as with most gamblers, his luck was usually bad than good, and he started to run up some fairly significant debts, leading him into a number of scrapes with casino heavies and to take on riskier jobs for higher pay. Only through his charm and his use to certain mobsters did he walk out of several casinos at all.
Operating Style
Arclight is a human male in his early forties with short blonde hair that's starting to go white at the temples. A well trimmed goatee adorns his friendly face, which is often found wearing a smile. A pair of blue chrome cyber eyes harking back to his days of running the shadows, something that gives a striking contrast to his otherwise impeccable dress and appearance. For all his boyish good looks, a few wrinkles have still managed to creep into his features, tell tale signs of the all too constant stress of being in debt to one mob boss or another.
Arclight's one of the pros, a fixer at the top of his game, with connections all over the Seattle area. Unfortunately, he also has a gambling problem, something that has kept him in debt a little too often for comfort and has also hampered his otherwise great street rep.
Fixers like Arclight are a diamond in the rough, a fixer that's willing to stick his neck out for his runners, go that extra mile, dig around a little and do what he can to keep the teams he finds work for from becoming next weeks special at the local chop shop. This comes from the fact that Arclight used to work the other side of the fence, was once the runner on the other side of the table, getting paid to do the corps dirty work. He still does in a way, but as time wore on, his connections grew, and his age started to creep up on him, he decided it was time to sit back and pass the work forward. He's also sharp as a tack, extremely resourceful, and always tries to stay one step ahead of the game with connections that tend to give him the heads up on what's going on in the shadows.
Arclight tends to go through small time teams when doing biz, having them drop off gear, run errands, and so on. The small time stuff will tend to be errands he needs run and generally won't pay much. He also uses such jobs to get a feel for new teams, test out their capabilities as well as professionalism before giving them the bigger gigs. Unless he trusts who he's working with, expect most business to go through third parties or to be conducted over the phone. Arclight's not one to generally do face-to-face meets. When he does though, Arclight will be accompanied by an ork bodyguard by the name of Stone, highly trained, cybered out, and absolutely professional. Stone's also liable to be the one sent out on high risk errands where expensive gear is at stake.
Sounds familiar. http://shadowrun.wikia.com/wiki/Teeg
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Mr Armitage:
A sophisticated looking and well dressed troll? With a clipped british accent? Something isn't right here.
Don't let his apperance fool you this guy might seem like an english toff on the surface but hes a former neo-anarchist deep cover agent with a bloodsoaked history.
Scratch the surface and you will find a seriously well supplied network focused almost entirely on being a thorn in lofwyrs side. If you don't have a rep the odds are you wont even be on his radar. If you are though, you will struggle to find a better source of current info (or potential runs) on Sader-Krupps activities and movements, or a more ruthless and opportunistic adversary to him, he has the contacts, gear and knowhow to bring the hurt, but he wont hesitate to dispose of you in a heartbeat if you might jeapordise his organisation or bring back heat.
He runs a small nightclub in Antwerp mainly for gay trolls and some "select others" called "The Bridge". Obviously this is just a front for moving personnel and materiel without attracting undue attention, conveniently it also keeps the local gangbangers firmly off his back, after all what doped up ganger wants to start a fight with a nest of trolls?
If you have something he feels will give his group an edge be it data or shiny new chrome he will pay top NY for it provided it can't be tracked back to him in any way.
(Sorry if this was a bit unstructured I'm exhausted)
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"Sounds familiar. http://shadowrun.wikia.com/wiki/Teeg"
Indeed, Molly; but a weak piece of material significantly improved to be far more useful to a GM searching for a decent fixer......
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Best fixer ever was Recoil. My first GM came up with him. Recoil was an ork. He was really more of an arms dealer than a fixer. He had a van full of guns. You asked him what he had, and he looked around in the back of the van. Like a taco truck, but for guns. If you had extra money, he might find a gun that he was planning to sell to someone else, and you could make that person wait. I shamelessly stole Recoil for my games.
I'm currently using an Elf fixer named Gunner. He is an independent, originally from Vladivostok. He travelled as a gunner on panzer crews for about a decade, making friends everywhere he went. When the panzer rigger got killed, Gunner was stranded. After a few weeks he realized his main source of income was putting his friends in touch with each other or moving other people's loot for a percentage, so he made the jump to Fixer. He speaks several languages, knows a ton of smugglers, a few other fixers, several Johnsons, and loads of mechanics and arms dealers.