318: Greysmith

ENTRY 318: Greysmith

"So I said to the guy, 'You want an old-fashioned katana made out of carbonized iron? I mean, yeah, I can make it, but I've got...no, look, really they're doing some great stuff with nanomaterials these days...no, it can't cut railgun pellets out of the air, that would be stupid.' I ended up putting an edge on a hunk of rebar. Stupid flat was happy as a spigipede in shit."
- Greysmith, unwinding with Therapist-by-the-Hour, session #366

Greysmith spent his early adolescence on Luna as Aditya Gupta, under the thumb of his traditionalist parents. Born a girl, they wanted a boy to carry on the family name, and raised him up as one while they saved up credits for the sex reassignment. He spent his days learning material science and working part time at the ore refinery, and his nights learning about his cultural heritage and staging mock battles with his schoolmates. A poor investment by his father reduced the family savings meant that Aditya's puberty was spent in a binder and with no hope for higher education, and by the time they could afford the sex reassignment he no longer wanted it - he identified male, but was rather attached to his female body. The argument turned into a terminal familial clash regarding life choices and life debts, and ended with a twenty-year old Aditya cashing in all his favors for a one-way trip to Mars. Aditya Gupta was dead; Greysmith was born.

Two meters tall, androgynous, and lanky, Greysmith has visible muscles on his arms and shoulders and all manner of small scars around his eyes, making him look a bit like a raccoon when he has his goggles off. Greysmith's specialization is the creation of traditional low-tech items, preferably with high-tech materials that can improve their performance or take less time and energy to create. Most people know him as "Katana-man" because of his penchant for traditional pattern welding, but he resents being boxed into a niche and does a lot of experiments with nanomaterials, allotropic alloys, and whatever else he can get his hands on. Unfortunately for him, even six years after leaving home he still hasn't managed to cut all ties with his old life - his parents have entered a lawsuit for filial abandonment at New Varanasi, and he keeps having to dodge random cousins enlisted to bring him back, change his sex, marry a nice girl and pump out a bunch of grandkids while supporting his parents financially and emotionally.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
14	14	20	15	10	28	15	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
7	1	30	6	60	30	6	45

Morph: Splicer
Skills: Academics: Engineering (Combat) 50, Academics: History (Weapons) 35, Academics: Metallurgy 50, Art: Metalworking 36, Blades 24, Clubs 24, Fray (Parry) 25, Free Fall 35, Hardware: Armorer 66, Interests: LARP 30, Interests: Martial Arts 24, Interests: Mock Combat (Re-Enactment) 27, Interests: Weapon Design 25, Language: Native Hindi 85, Language: Urdu 80, Language: English 70, Language: Japanese 70, Language: Mandarin 55, Networking: Autonomists 24, Networking: Firewall 25, Profession: Smith 40, Unarmed Combat 24
Implants: Access Jacks, Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack, Enhanced Hearing, Enhanced Smell, Nanovision, Radar Sense, Temperature Tolerance
Traits: Blacklisted (Luna), Neural Damage (Migraines)

Using Greysmith

As a practical craftsperson, Greysmith can easily be brought into the game as the NPC that fills the role of building, repairing, or selling equipment, particularly any sort of armor or melee weapon, and in a pinch can be the go-to person when researching a particular weapon, martial art style, bit of combat-related history, etc. or if the gamemaster wants to introduce a new weapon or piece of related equipment into the game. He does accept commissions, and his work is reasonably popular, which lets him spend far too much time with Therapist-by-the-Hour, basically subsidizing her lifestyle at the expense of his own. Greysmith himself has some ready-made seeds in his ongoing family drama, and would be more than happy to crank out some customized weapons for player characters willing to run interference with a particularly persistent cousin or go back to Luna to resolve his parents' madness (or at least bribe someone into making the lawsuit go away). As an antagonist, Greysmith would have to see the player characters as a threat of some sort - perhaps if they were taking up too much of Therapist-by-the-Hour's time while undergoing psychosurgery, for example - in which case he might be possessive enough to call in a few favors and try to make life tough for them, maybe even threaten them a bit.

Seed

• Greysmith is in love with Therapist-by-the-Hour, and he finally confessed it. She responded by cutting their session short and saying she can no longer see him professionally, and he's spent the last three days getting high at a hookah bar that specializes in narcotic vapors. Unfortunately, the PCs need him for some reason - maybe he's the only person on the habitat with the materials to make the part they need to make their space ship go, or their cyberclaw malfunctions and now every time they pop the claws they uncontrollably urinate themselves and he's the only one that can fix it - and he won't be functional again until he's sorted things out with TbtH. The exact nature of the situation and the PC's fix to it can be flexible - TbtH might reciprocate his feelings, but want a marriage contract; or else they may have to play Cyrano de Bergerac and guide Greysmith through wooing her back; or maybe they can just bribe her to accept him back as a client, or at least convince her to unlock the sex therapy option on her menu in the hopes that a good tumble will satisfy him temporarily. Whatever the PCs come up with, it should be fun.