In this series modellers and writers pool their talents to create game characters from flights of fancy and their bits box. This entry sees Matthew building a model from parts, and Foti using this to craft a character around.
Sklee the Polluted
Fiction by Foti Pitrakkos | Model by Matthew Lee
Details
NPC (but a very interesting PC for one game enough to play it)
Will suit sci-fi of a kind. Horror-esque or a dark tone included. If there is such a thing as Grimdark Space Opera, I’d say this character would fit right in. Might also work in a dark Urban Fantasy/Superhero setting where the character’s claim to fame is his access to advanced, yet corrupting, technology.
Description
Sklee was never what one might call normal. His interest always lay in the capacity of the body to adapt and endure. What some died from, others managed to survive, even thrive. Sklee witnessed it all, from his unremarkable post as a lab-assistant for a bio-enhancement company.
Ten years he spent, doing the dirty work for his superiors – elitist scientists who saw him as nothing but a glorified cleaner – and after all that time, the writing on the wall was plain to see. He would never be more than he was. He would never be recognised as something of worth.
And the truth was, they were right. Sklee was nothing special, not particularly smart (relative to the genius he was surrounded by), and not particularly liked.
But he could endure. Oh how he could endure. He had a knack for absorbing pain, both physical and mental. And he had nothing in his life worth holding on to, besides the vitriol of resentment and bitterness. Such things were a taste he had acquired in spades.
So one night he decided to experiment. He took a variety of bio-implants he had gathered from the week’s work – materials gathered from the cadavers of failed operations – and he inserted them into his own body.
The results were excruciating… and exhilarating. Intelligence increased, vitals stabilised via steroid-pumping organisms, Sklee managed to survive the initial process of self-enhancement. He passed out, only to awaken to the sound of the staff arriving at the facility the next morning.
After he killed them, he took only the necessities to maintain his new state of being – organ-repairing fluids, breathing apparatus, neuro-enhancing pulse generator, etc – then he made his escape. The rest, he figured, he could find elsewhere. Black Bio-Markets were not difficult to find, if one was willing to attach themselves to the stigma of knowing such circles.
Sklee can never stop now. His body deteriorates and transmutates in ways he does not understand – after all, he was just the “cleaner” as they would always remind him. But that is his advantage. The arsenal he has acquired, devices that would prove fatal if exposed to“healthy” bodies, such things make Sklee powerful. Such things make Sklee special.
No matter what lies ahead, Sklee the Polluted endures.
Creator Notes
Foti: This one was fun to think about. There are so many story threads that could launch off of this concept, leading to some great (and creepy) adventures. I imagine the character to have his own lab now, filled with all sorts of horrifying and dangerous things – here you could let your imagination run wild, creating a lair that will prove a memorable location to introduce to your players. As a PC, I would remove the “murder all the staff” thread from my backstory, and perhaps make the character less bitter. It might not be a long lived character, but the idea of a hero exposing themselves to inevitably fatal chemicals all for the greater good could be an terribly interesting concept to explore.
Matthew: Trawling through my bits I came across the Zombie legs and the masked head, and thought they would be an interesting pairing. A Dark Eldar body choice would create some variation in the diseased look. Though it has a tapered waist, so I grabbed a pauldron to act as some kind of belly armour. I picked two arms to follow each theme; technology and lumpy mutant-ness, with one Eldar arm and one Ghoul arm. A weapon that looked dangerous to the wielder seemed in order, so I picked the plasma gun. Space Marine and Chaos Space Marine backpacks are pretty iconic, but I managed to offset this by turning the backpack upside down. I connected the gun and backpack with some wiring to act as a hose. Just to return to that idea of grossness, I included a snail from the Bretonnian range, plus the end of a Clanrat tail to fill in for a worm.
