Cable

Archetype: Troll Communications Expert

A female troll whose hobbies include bodybuilding and karate, Cable formerly worked for AT&T International until a racist supervisor moved in and framed her for a construction accident.  Cable now works as a freelance comm expert, primarily laying illegal trunks and tapping corporate lines.  She is comfortable working in both sewer and underwater environments, keeping with her a respirator to augment her high level filtration system.  Her twin bases of operation are a Brumby for sewer operations and an Aztech Nightrunner for sea missions.

A pleasant, albeit passively intimidating, individual to be around, Cable has shaved off her hair and equipped her body with an array of cyberware geared towards underwater and sewer operations, including a range of proximity electronics so she can sense an oncoming threat and a cybergun that fires projectiles designed for underwater stability.  Cable will occasionally hire runners of her own if she begins to run low on actual materials, usually assigning the group to raid a communications facility.

Comsat

Archetype: Human Communications Expert

Comsat has never worked in the legitimate communications community, and has lived with his mother since he was born.  He has spent virtually all of his time since age 8 camping out in his mom's basement and tinkering with electronics gear.  If a piece of gear proved too expensive to purchase, he would occasionally hire a group of thieves to snag it for him, paying the thieves via illegal communications hookups.  Before going pro at age 18, Comsat was arrested around 30 times for communication related crimes.  Usually the thing that got him off the hook was his obnoxious mother, who would run to the police station and irritate everyone there until they decided to let Comsat go.

Five and a half feet tall, scrawny, in his late 30s, and sorta dorkish, Comsat began committing more heavy duty communications crimes after he realized it was the only way he'd ever get enough money to buy a deck.  Through his thief contacts, he began working minor jobs for shadowrunners, only taking the ones that offered very little physical risk or a contract clause that stipulated he could run like a wuss if any violent situations developed.

Now equipped with a mid grade deck and enough skills to hack into a matrix router using only the keypad on a vid-phone, Comsat is gradually adding ware intended to make him physically tougher and faster.  So far he's gotten some dermal plating and a reaction boost, but he is hesitant to engage in any further alterations.  Comsat continues to live with his mother, who refers to him as "Sonny Boy".

The Hookup Guy

Archetype: Human Communications Expert

The Hookup Guy worked in a small, Baptist farming town in Illinois as the lone communications installer for the entire area.  Kind, boyish, and sporting a smile right out of a Rockwell painting, The Hookup Guy was adored by everybody in town – at least until they discovered he had installed hidden video cameras in virtually every location in the village.  Upon hearing of their anger, The Hookup Guy filled his van with several thousand recordings he had taken over the years, set fire to his house, and disappeared.

The nervous and embarrassed town didn't hear from him for two years, when he slowly began blackmailing the town with the footage he had accumulated.  He contacted the entire town and informed them that he would be needing some assistance, and that it would be best if nobody currently living in town moved out and that no new people be allowed to set up residence.  He also stated that any move by any member of the town to contact authorities or violate his wishes would result in ALL recordings being played.  Since the town had traditionally been biased against magic users, none had established residence, thus making The Hookup Guy's plan even more solid.

Everybody has a dark secret that they'd die to conceal, and The Hookup Guy had all of these secrets on optical.  After issuing his  decree, The Hookup Guy made no immediate requests, preferring to sit in his isolated, well protected home in an adjacent county and watch the town's activities through cameras that hadn't been discovered.  The town quickly turned into a strange police state, with residents killing anybody who even hinted that they would talk.  In one case, the town reverend and his wife killed their own teenage son and daughter after the children had vowed to leave the town and talk.

The Hookup Guy now uses the entire town population as his personal "special operations" team, forcing them to commit acts ranging from simple theft to multiple murders.  When a resident is assigned to a task, they are first required to drive to a remote location and sedate themselves.  The Hookup Guy then snags them, drugs them further, and takes them to a bodyshop to have them installed with a cortex bomb, video recording/transmission headware, sim rig, and a cybercomm radio so he can not only speak with his unwilling soldiers, but also monitor their surface thoughts.  They are then placed back in their vehicle and told what to do when they wake up.  Able to monitor their actions and give them instructions (or simply harass them) through the commlink, The Hookup Guy is also ready to detonate the cortex bomb is things go terribly wrong.

Virtually every resident of the town has now gone one at least one mission, and thus has had the traditional town cyberware installed.  As time has passes, the residents are going crazier and crazier.  Initially the result of blackmail paranoia, the degradation of their mental conditions has been expedited by tricks played by  The Hookup Guy, such as transmission of an individual's surface thoughts to the cybercomm of everybody else in town, or a heavy duty mental chaos when he remotely sets the cybercomms to accept the thought transmissions of anybody within a one block area.