Single Mothers's page

Making a life for your lower-middle class family can be hard in neo-industrial New York City, but the Stephanides family did the best they could to give Smyrna all of the advantages she'd need to break through the glass ceiling. Doing everything she could to live up to her family's expectations, Smyrna used her natural intelligence to get a conditional full scholarship to Columbia University, the most prodigious medical in New York. The condition being that Smyrna must have top marks in all of her classes. Unfortunately, Smyrna quickly found that academia is as much a political system as it is an academic one, and Smyrna's conversational skills can be described as "direct, abrasive and mildly offensive."

Fortunately for Smyrna, during high school she worked part time at her uncle's P.I. firm as a secretary. While taking calls was never her strong suit, Smyrna used her intelligence along with an online copy of "Hacking for Goblins" to gather info for her uncle and create programs to do all of the tedious tasks for her.

Unfortunately for Smyrna, Columbia's firewalls are much stronger than those of the basic comm units of blue collar adulterers. In an ironic twist, they also turned out to be much more literal, as the mainframe that Smyrna tried to corrupt burst into flame. Expelled from Columbia with a permanent mark on her record, and too disgraced to return to her parents who've sacrificed so much for her, Smyrna decided to find her own apartment in Harlem. To afford her forced independence, Smyrna got her position back at the only job she knows: her Uncle's failing P.I. agency.

http://paizo.com/people/SmyrnaStephanides

: 1. What's your characters economic situation, and the economic situation of their family? A desperately poor character with a rich family tells a very different story than a desperately poor character with a poor family.
Smyrna comes from a family that is poor but not struggling. Due to her independence, she feels a strong obligation to do well in life financially.
2. What does your character look like? Describe their fashion sense, their hair, their eyes and skin. Is there a reason they dress or act the way they do? How do they carry themselves when they don’t think anyone is looking?
Smyrna is a young, light-skinned woman with dark hair and makeup. Her face has been set into a vague grimace that she's practiced since she was four years old. Even though she's petite, she carries herself with the confidence of someone who's used to being right.
Her fashion choices tend towards metal and leather, the analog of which is an odd sight to the bright technofashion popularized by her generation. Though she did go through a body modification phase: she has a comm implant in her right eye and a set of custom, extendable rigging tools that she keeps hidden under her black, immaculate fingernails. She also wears an all-black second skin under her clothes, another odd choice when most people spend so much time finding armor that exactly matches their skin tone.
Altogether, Smyrna strikes people who meet her as apathetic, rude, and incredibly competent.
3. Where was your character born? A Space Station? Old Earth? An offworld colony? The Moon? If they aren't from Old Earth (which is most likely if they are an alien) why did they move to Old Earth? Feel free to do some invention here. There's a whole galaxy out there, and a whole range of places to be from.
Smyrna was born on Old Earth and has spent her entire life there.
4. How did your character become whatever class they are or learn the skills they have?
Smyrna is self-taught in her hacking skills, which explains why her methods are often ratchet. She has had a formal education to support her medical knowledge.
5. What does your character do for a living? How did they get into doing that?
Smyrna currently works part-time at her Uncle’s PI firm. She is always looking for better opportunities though.
6. What is their personality like?
Smyrna can be abrasive in her confidence, but her personality is evened out by her level-headedness. She’s also very empathetic, though she’d never openly admit it.
7. If your character is religious, explain why and how. If not, there may be a reason for that as well.
Smyrna is not religious at all. Her family is a part of the now almost extinct Greek Orthodox church, but Smyrna was far to contrary and questioning to commit to her family’s religion.
8. Explain what your character’s alignment means to them. Something like “Jessica is lawful good because she wants to stamp out evil and eradicate it. She would sacrifice herself to attain her goals.”
Smyrna is true neutral because she prioritizes her own happiness highly. Smyrna naturally has rather rigid morals, but she follows them for her own emotional health. Smyrna will almost definitely prioritize her life over the mission, but she’d probably sacrifice herself to save multiple loved ones because it’s a net gain.
9. How does your character feel about technology? About trans-humanism? About other races? Some people will always be conservatives, but some embrace technological advance wholeheartedly.
Smyrna is alllll about technology. She shows neo-anarchist tendencies in her belief that technology should be a wild, unregulated market for the smartest to take advantage of.