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Castor looked down at the puddle of grease, sighed, and pulled his pulsecaster, happy to have still had it on hand from loaning Bagit his jinncaster. He had no intention of needing to close the distance to hurt Yamatin "You're under arrest!" Cas called after his shot, getting the order wrong and not particularly caring at the moment.
Castor still had feeds up from reviewing the security footage, by the time he cleared them from his vision, Yamatin was already drawing on him.
Caz looked at the others, he was still not the most social but he did have all the facts on hand anyway. "Uh, yeah, we're looking into some events on the station and were wondering if you could provide us a bit of professional expertise," he handed a transcript of the stolen items over. "We need to know about the damage patterns these spell amps could cause."
Castor is waiting with the manifest and images already pulled from his datajack outside of Yamatin's station. While he waits for Yamatin to show, he runs through whatever other records he can from around the time of the theft, camera surveillance, security calls, and the like for anything suspicious.
No worries. Anyway, I'm pretty sure Mysticism is a skill our party does not cover. We'd need to take that information to a specialist for further proof.
Would that be a Mysticism check to match the wound patterns on the Flumpf to the spell contained in the Amp?
Yeah, the recent troubles have just about convinced me to abandon Paizo for any games in the future.
Cas was just about to offer to crack the comm unit when Velocity set to it like a professional.
”Really, pal?” Cas said, annoyed more and more by this manu. Still, he followed after. He had to admit it was a nice little way to seize momentum and feel in control, ”Bagit, you’ve been soldiering for a while. Do most people respond to four troopers with such suicidal indifference and impatience? I’m tempted to arrest him to keep him from wandering out an airlock.”
"Right, you're coming with us until we figure out where you fit into all of this," Cas ordered the Manu. "And you..." Cas said, trailing off as he fully took in the goblin, "I guess welcome to the squad?"
Roger, roger
"You know anything about the cult? There was one that caused a bunch of problems recently, right?" Cas asked, his interest suddenly piqued.
"No," Cas said coldly, "They weren't. The damage pattern was all wrong, definitely not the work of a jinncaster and especially not one loaded with a full fire gem. Congrats, you just got yourself promoted to 'Person of Interest.' Now, why don't you volunteer to help us by taking us to where your inventory went missing from before I have our vesk get insistent?"
"You know what the great part about a space station is? They're really easy to lock down. If you're lying, all I've got to do is make a call. Then it is just a matter of sweeping through systematically," Cas said, a slightly twitchy smile on his face. Intimidating people was not his strong suit but a few hard words might save some trouble later.
Cas shrugs and raises his pulsecaster, ready to cover Bagit as the vesk breached the room.
Cas's thinking was interrupted by Velocity's message. He left the clean up of the scene to the Doc and her people, leaving at a jog to catch up with the others. He wanted a few more brains mulling over this problem.
"On it, doc," Cas said with a hard look to his eye. He liked the Flumphs, they seemed like decent sorts for bags of meat that propelled themselves by farting. When the doctor left, he checked the junncaster again.
"Right," Cas says distractedly as he sets his implants to start recording what he sees. For the sake of completeness, he examines the wounds carefully and looks to the weapon, being sure that the data would be there later. Electrical burns and a weapon with the wrong ammunition left at the scene. The murderer was either unprofessional or did not know the specifics of jinncasters. "The assailant is likely still armed with some kind of shock weapon or spell. This jinncaster is loaded with a full fire crystal but the burns on the victim match a massive and short electrical discharge," Cas noted, pointing to a fractal like discoloring of the flesh around the wounds. "Plain heat or prolonged electrical exposure doesn't leave Lichtenberg figures on a body."
"We got any kind of forensic tech on this station?" Cas said from where he knelt next to the dead flumph. His vision was full of logistics and targeting information from the computer in his head reacting to a heightened emotional state. This was not his first time seeing a dead body, growing up on a junkworld meant witnessing more than a few violent deaths, but there was something uniquely sad about how the boneless body crumpled like a meaty bag in death. Angrily, he dismissed the visual displays from his implant and tried to focus on the tasks at hand.
Cas does better with the assignment to the med bay. While largely self-taught for the sake of surviving his bypass, he made a more than capable nurse for dealing the sort of day-to-day ailments common to soldiers and stationers. Then there was the scream He was on Bagit's heels. Cas passed the towering merc his own jinncaster and had his pulsecaster to his shoulder. It was not ideal but hopefully the stun rifle would be plenty for now. They could not waste time rushing back to grab Bagit's gun.
Cas puts himself to work managing resources, running dishes too and from the washer, restocking, and generally doing whatever he can to be useful without directly interacting with the public. Thankfully, he saves his constant low-level grumbling for when he is in the back so that the customers do not run the risk of hearing him.
Castor's head thumped onto the bar top when he realized he had been looped into scut work for the bar. This was certainly not what he had been hoping for. Patrolling would have suited him more than this. Still, he stashed his pulsecaster and jinncaster behind the bar and tried to figure out what was actually needed. He still needed to make good on what had been tacitly promised. He barely noticed when the floating thing appeared and made it's enigmatic pronouncement. "Yeah, not him or anybody else," Cas replied off-handedly before realizing just what was said. By the time he had snapped his head around, the squishy prophet had vanished.
Cas heads to the bar and takes a seat, yawning and absently scratching at the mass of scar tissue around the device jammed into the base of his skull. Still he was properly kitted out with both his pulsecaster and the jinncaster slung from the much repaired tactical harness of his armor. The lad was clearly having a hard time adjusting to station time, having spent most his life on the same planet.
Cas watched as their antagonist was hauled away, hurling threats at Bagit. Something needed to be done there and he had a few ideas as to just what but would need some help first. Threatening a vesk was suicidal and Cas wanted to pull the bully's teeth before he did something everyone regretted. Still, the situation did not stop him from overhearing Twelve's words as she hastily cleaned the floor. "Let's get out of here before someone tries to burn the place down because of us." There were things on Cas's mind, that much was obvious.
Castor's eyes widen as the merc takes a clumsy swing at him. His implants reacted and he was treated to a far more in depth load of information about the awkward attack than was really necessary. Dismissing it all with a quick command line, he put his hands up in a vaguely defensive posture. Cas did not have his armor or even his pulsecaster on hand. Though he was rapidly starting to think he should carry a sidearm from here on out. "Look pal, I don't even want to dance. I've been trying not to step on anyone's feet this entire time. Let's go to the bar and get a drink, yeah?"
"It's- I- Uh, sorry," Cas manages and quickly drains the last of his ale. "I'm not good at this kind of thing."
Cas cleared his throat and tried to regain a bit of composure now that there was not a lady in a low-cut dress leaning over the bar in front of him. He finally seemed to realize just how close Velocity was and took a nervous and jerky step away. "Tin-man, a little tip, the rest of us find each other as unusual as you do, we just hide it better. Now, as for the fact that she has enough pull to get our assignments swapped, that's really weird."
"Thanks anyway," Cas said, taking a pull of the ale with little regard for quality. He let the android go but straightened up when the kasatha made an appearance. "Bagit, hey, Bagit! Leave the poor thing alone. This is probably Ms. Raynold," Cas called over to the towering vesk before he could put Twelve into a state. The entire time he kept his eyes firmly on the kasatha's and smiled nervously. Perhaps it would be better for Velocity to handle introductions.
"Whatever's cheapest," Cas said. Bagit may be a giant vesk, but Cas grew up in a backwater scrapyard. The kind of rotgut liquor that was common there was often brewed in very questionable containers. The distillers there would have considered a bathtub a considerable upgrade to their operation. "Yeah, fresh off the shuttle so to speak," Cas grumbled and slumped against the bar, the picture of youthful dejection. "Wasn't expecting so much patrolling and civilian outreach though."
Cas looks a little despondent once dismissed, sauntering vaguely towards the Trusted Priest for that promised round. Community building and patrolling were not what he signed up for. The Jinncaster was a nice piece of equipment, a bit old-school for his tastes though. Probably better than the cheap pulsecaster he had been hauling around regardless.
Am I correct in assuming from the description that Cas' condition is similar to MS? I just realized I never answered this, but yes. I altered the pathology of it so that him essentially bypassing the affected sections of his spine with a cybernetic implant relieved the worst of the symptoms.
Cas stepped up next and picked up the unfamiliar rifle. Checking the action and the crystal, he shouldered the weapon and focused along the sights carefully. With a textbook stance, he fired three deliberate shots, far slower than Bagit had.
Cas got himself together and tried to stand at something approaching attention when what was obviously an officer entered their quarters. He had cleaned up and changed into the generic uniform coveralls he had purchased right before signing up with the Blackvines and was clearly ready to start the day with as little delay as possible.
"Just let it drop, yeah? I'm not made of glass, I got this far and I've got every intention to go farther," Cas was not being reproachful or catty over the issue, just gently pushing to shut down the issue. For someone so young he had clearly come to terms with what his illness meant for him long ago. "But yeah, I did not know the Blackvines accepted penal labor contracts. Gotta be better than a prison station or getting put on ice."
Cas had gotten progressively redder and redder as Isaac explained the condition. He was good at machines and himself, not people. The expected responses would either be pity or scorn and he did not have the time or patience to deal with either of those at the moment. "For the record, tin-man, 'you don't want to hear about that' does not mean 'explain the prognosis in laborious detail.' Got it?" Cas said, throwing his roll of electrical tape at the android. It bounced off the mattress and rolled to a stop in the middle of the room instead.
"Ah, no, I've got Eltanin's Syndrome but you don't want to hear about that," Cas said with a self-effacing laugh, clearly trying to deflect from the subject. "Try the big guy if you want a good story." Medicine DC 15: It's a degenerative autoimmune condition caused by exposure to certain complex artificial or exotic biological substances in utero. These chemicals can gather in fetus's spinal fluid before binding to the myelin sheaths of the nerves in the spine. The victim's immune system then targets and attacks these sheaths. It slowly wears away myelin with predictable symptoms.
There are two saving graces to the illness, the process is relatively slow and follows a very specific course with the demyelination starting at the lower end of the spine and creeping upwards. There are a few methods of treating Eltanin's but all involve in depth testing and are prohibitively expensive. A nerve bypass will improve the victim's quality of life but depending on the substance involved, most victims are still looking at an early grave as the condition eventually progresses to the brain.
"Elta-," Cas started to say without thinking but caught himself. His eyes turned quickly back to his rifle where he started trying to wipe a scuff mark from the barrel of his weapon. "I mean, uh, quick cash and glory, the usual."
"Castor- Cas. Unless the 'droid can do it better, I'm a fair hand with most tech or a med kit," Cas said, giving her hand a shake. Retrieving his hand, he tapped the back of his head, with a slightly twitchy smile, "Then there's this. Refurbished but I can hardline myself into just about any computer system and I've got an induced synesthesia package loaded in to help interpret data."
Something in Cas's pulsecaster sparked and fizzled, making the ready light flicker and wink out. With a caustic expletive he sat on his bunk and began prying the casing open with a handy tool. "So we've got a meat shield," he said to no one in particular, checking a questionable connection in the guts of his rifle gingerly. "A gearhead," there was another spark and he jerked his fingers back quickly, "And a crook?" Having identified the problem, strapped the loose connection down with some spare electrical tape and reassembled his rifle. "So is this the part where we establish points of contention and conflict that will later be overcome through hardship and bonding?"
Castor tossed his ratty duffle bag onto on of the bunks and unzipped it. The battered canvas bag clearly contained what few items he had seen fit to bring from his previous life. The grand total of his worldly goods was a spare uniform, his civvies, and a set of toiletries. Clearly, he was not the sort to make frivolous attachments. Everything was secondhand with the exception of his spare uniform. His weapon was a cheap refurbished pulsecaster of a model that had gone out of production a few years ago. His ill-fitting armor was clearly military surplus from somewhere, though the difference in materials between part of the chest plate and rest of it clearly indicated what probably happened to the previous owner. Lean and pale, he as perhaps the youngest looking in the bunk room with a shock of straw blond hair and sharp features. His movements were jerky but precise and his hands, when empty, had a tendency to twitch. Then there was the back of his head and neck. Someone had clearly jammed some hardware into him and done a poor job of it. Most of the time, datajacks were innocuous enough and only visible as a set of small ports embedded in the skin. Cas's was demarcated by a mess of scar tissue and the partially exposed surface of the jack, a matte black panel emerging where he had not healed over it.
Let's see, Castor is built to play rather like a soldier with a focus on energy weapons and some nifty skill and damage bonuses. Combat tracking means he is going to be focusing on one target at a time. I was planning on taking the Blackvine Hopeful trait and taking Overcharge as my first trick and either Neural Shunt or Overclocking as my second.
I'll get an alias up in a minute. Edit: Boom, bare-bones at the moment but I'll probably flesh it out soon. |