BARD PAPER: DANI0806

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Whisper
Age 33 in 1201

by Lewis Roberts

Occupation: Hacker

Attributes: 5837B8-4

Background:
Whisper grew up on the streets of Dobroye, the main starport on Oriflamme. She came from a broken family, and was often ignored at home. To compensate for her lack of family she joined `the Dead Cows' one of the many hacker gangs in the city. There she fell in love with computers and hacking. She did it for the challenge more than anything. She quickly became one of the better hackers. Eventually she formerly left the Dead Cows, and became an independent hacker, though she often has contact with old friends. Whisper doesn't limit herself to sitting at home and using the public Net to break into systems. Some of the most interesting computer systems were not connected to the Net, and she learned to penetrate their physical security to get access to them. To improve her performance, she had a Neural Jack installed. They are pretty rare, and they cost an immense amount, but she felt it was worth it. According to Fire Fusion & Steel, " When "jacked in" to machinery, all tasks using that machinery become one level easier. When jacked into memory bank and educational programs, the Education Attribute is increased by 3." Computer skill's attribute is education, so jacking into a powerful workstation makes hacking much easier. Whisper isn't too worried about Virus, its been eliminated from Oriflamme, and if she does get killed, "Well that's the way the ball bounces."

When she breaks into a computer, she doesn't do anything malicious, she just looks at all the secrets that are in there. Occasionally she is contacted and hired to break into a computer and retrieve certain documents. She works through several brokers who check out the clients. Once or twice, a client has hired her to put something into another computer, she doesn't like these jobs, but they pay very well.

A week ago, a client hired her to break into the central computers of the Gorboski Trust, one of the larger Technarchs on Oriflamme, and steal several thousand files. Gorboski Trust's territory is quite extensive, but primarily contains heavy industry and mining sites. The pay was excellent, and she agreed to the job. The target computers were not accessible from the standard Net, so she planned to break into one of the Trust's Dobroye offices and use their own computers to hack into their network. It took her several days to set everything up, but when it came to the actual job everything went smoothly. That is until it came time to turn over the documents to the client the next day. Her broker was supposed to meet her at a all-night dance club, but when she got there she found him dead in a booth. She got out of the club fast, and went back to her apartment. She took a shower to calm her nerves and as she was drying off she noticed two large men in business suits approaching her apartment building. Guessing that they were the people who killed her contact she grabbed a bag and shoved some things into it and ran out the back stairwell.

Whisper went to the loft of Shadowmaster, a friend and fellow hacker. Shadowmaster, she always thought that name was really pretentious, was a good friend, and would hide her. It didn't hurt that he had a crush on her for the last few years. Once she had explained the situation, he agreed to help her. After a few hours of waiting for the door to be kicked in she fell asleep. The next morning she started to look at the files she had stolen. They were heavily encrypted and didn't explain anything. She attempted to retrieve some electronic funds that she had hidden away, but when she started to access them, she found that they had disappeared; twenty years of illicit gains all gone! It was about then the door was kicked in. Whisper grabbed her bag and fled down the fire escape. As she was running she heard gunshots; she didn't think Shadowmaster had a gun.

She ran for a few blocks in a blind panic. She went to the mall to think and to hide in the crowd. After a few hours of nothing happening, she called Lisa, another friend, to see if she knew anything. Lisa told her that the word on the street was that there was a big reward for anyone who could turn her in.

Whisper doesn't know what to do now, she can't hide out with any of her friends. She already tried that and he is probably dead. She doesn't have any money and someone with a lot of power is after her. She can not sell the stolen files, because only her broker knew how to get in contact with the buyer. She doesn't know if the people who are after her are from Gorboski Trust, the buyer or some third party. She can either go hide out in the hills with one of the nutcase survivalist groups or get off Orflamme. Somehow she will have to convince one of these tramp starships to take her aboard. After that she doesn't know what happens; there are those stolen files, it will take some time to decrypt, but then Whisper will use them against who ever destroyed her life.

So who's chasing Whisper. It's up to you. It could be that she grabbed evidence implicating Gorboski Trust in dealings with the government of Kal to circumvent the Coalition Auction. Since this also circumvents the Coalition embargo against Virus, this is an extremely serious crime, which could get Gorboski Trust disbanded and their leaders executed. Or perhaps the Trust has dealings with the rebels: supplying them with weapons to ignore Gorboski Trust and to focus their attacks on the Trust's rivals. Or the information could be a valuable new industrial process that will be worth billions of credits, one competitor hired Whisper to get the information, but a third has heard about the deal and it tried to snatch the information. Now all three Trusts are after Whisper.

Whisper isn't her real name, but she hasn't used Debbie Molonowski in over twenty years. She didn't actually go to a technical school, I figured that was a good career to simulate all the skill she learned while a member of the Dead Cows.

Career Path:
1186-1189: Technical School
1190-1193: Hacker
1194-1197: Hacker
1198-1201: Hacker

Initiative: 1

Combat Assets:
Thrown Weapon - 2/10

Other Assets:
Acrobatics - 2/10
Admin/Legal - 1/12
Climbing - 2/10
Communications - 3/14
Computer - 10/21
Electronics - 4/15
Forgery - 2/10
Intrusion - 2/10
Liaison - 2/10
Marketing - 2/13
Streetwise - 2/9
Wheeled Vehicle - 1/9

Appearance:
Whisper's hair is dyed vivid red, so vivid that it is obviously dyed. Her natural color is dull brown. Her hair is long and is usually teased into strange spikey shapes, except on the sides where it is shaved very close to the scalp. The long hair helps to hide the neural jack that is mounted at the base of her skull. She has pale white skin, which shows off her ancient Russian heritage. Whisper tends to wear black and other dark colors. Her left ear is pierced five times; she tends to wear dangly silver earrings. She is a fairly average looking 30year old women, and she is just starting to show signs of aging. Two months ago, she found her first wrinkle, which depressed her a fair bit.

Personality:
Whisper has always had a reputation as a party girl. When she is not working she spends most nights at various Dobroye underground nightclubs. Here she will dance and drink, and occasionally meet up with a client. She is fairly popular, and has a large circle of friends.

Whisper has never really thought much about the future, when growing up it never looked like she wouldn't have a future, when she was in her twenties, she just wanted to have a good time and enjoy life. It has only been in the last year or so that she has started to think about getting old. Most of the other hackers are much younger, and one called her `Mrs. Whisper' the other day. She almost broke the kid's jaw. Since she broke in to the Gorboski computer network she is just concerned about surviving.

She has never concerned herself with politics, or even the situations out in the Wilds. She is fairly ill-informed about the other worlds of the Coalition, and only knows the most general or stereotypical facts.

Possessions:
She has an overnight bag where she managed to throw a few outfits, a couple of mementos, and a few hundred credit chips. She also has her laptop and some electronics gear in another carrying case. The laptop has a connection for a neural jack and hardware for interfacing with the Oriflamme global network. Everything else she ever owned was left behind when she ran.

Contacts:
1 - Government
1 - Criminal
2 - Hackers

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