Calico Monoceros

A player character used by Primitive Polygon.

Calico
Species:	Nepleslian
Gender:	Female
Age:	30
Height:	6“1 ft
Weight:	165.94 kg
Organization:	Independent Mercenary
Occupation:	Hacker / Cryptid Hunter / Pulp Horror Author
Current Placement:	N/A

General Appearance and Skin Color: Tall and lanky, but with chrome clawed hands and many other modifications, Calico is a baroque combination of googly-eyed moeblob and chrome, doll-jointed scarecrow. Her torso and head remain that of a youthful, pale-skinned woman with a rather lithe hourglass shape, but both arms and legs are hugely robust and elongated steenplast autolimbs, gleaming bare metal with an apparent focus on aggressive practicality. You can hear the servo motors churning when she walks, and the fine-control can be a little off, giving her a bit of a clumsy quality. The forearms are oversized because they contain spools of steel wire- The hands can fire out like grappling hooks.

Eyes, Facial, and Hair Features: A heart shaped face with large blue eyes, commonly bearing a set of round spectacles. She is particularly pale, bares twin braided pigtails of ginger, and has large lips. There is also a sort of metal headband attached to their cranium, packed with a dozen additional sensor nodes and cameras, giving her entire face a sort of glimmering, 'Christmas tree' style effect when she smiles.

Distinguishing Features: She likes ethnic spacer clothes and religious gowns with lots of tassels, geometric shapes and other iconography. In an effort to cover up her machine lubricant she wears a perfume that smells strongly of mint and pine trees.

Personality: Defined mostly by being the published author of many incredibly stupid and hammy pulp horror titles, Calico has an erratic freeroaming lifestyle and an obsession with hacking, cryptids, and obscure lore. Despite being analytically very intelligent and methodical, her wispy, absent-minded nature gets her into trouble very easily. They have a knack for appearing optimistic even when the situation is dreadful and horrific, simply because it gives them inspiration. The two main emotional states could thus be described as smiling, and smiling too much. It's really all just a symptom of the fact that she is actually pretty socially isolated, and doesn't really understand how most other people think, despite the fact she genuinely means well.

• Likes: Cryptids, Computer Viruses, Ghosts, Telling Weird Stories, Extreme G-forces, gross or gory situations, simple conversations where people speak their minds, girly accessories, the colors blue or green, the number four.
• Dislikes: People with no imagination, being lied to by those close to her, small enclosed spaces, feeling sick, staying in one place too long, the numbers seven and eight, undergoing maintenance on her cyber-limbs.
• Goals: Travel, become exposed to interesting situations so that she can make them into new stories.

Lucia Strent (Mother) Bartholomew Strent (Father)

Born with in YE 16 in Funky City, on Planet Nepleslia. Her father was an upper middle class manufacturing supervisor, very traditional with strong world views on how the world ought to be, stay-at-home wife and all. Pretty pretentious, a bit stifling, but not abusive. Basically a pretty standard family life. Calico was mostly kept protected from the outside world, allowed to dream of becoming some ten foot cyborg super-hero, but only under the auspices that her parents expected she'd grow out of it and it would never actually happen. They weren't rich enough to move into the spires, but had just enough social mobility to completely avoid the effects of both the wars with the Mishuvurthyar.

It did not, unfortunately, save her from the fate that genetics had in store for her all along. Diagnosed at the age of eight, an immune-system based illness known as SDS (Synaptic Degeneration Syndrome) slowly began to take over her body, pushing her further into isolation, and eventually complete hospitalization. Most people succumbed to limb atrophy and lost of vision within a few years, and Calico's parents were not nearly wealthy enough to afford the rare as hen's teeth drugs drugs to counteract this.

They put on a brave face, but visits from her parents still got rarer. Time was filled with writing short stories, that got more obscure and demented as time went by. It was perfectly possible they thought she was going insane, only, it turns out, these child-like bizarre ramblings somehow had an audience. Despite being wheelchair bound and half blind by the time she was seventeen, that iron-willed resolution and strangely personable attitude managed, against all odds, to get her published. A third-rate nobody, perhaps, but one who managed to find many edgy teens and tongue-in-cheek reviewers who found her work strangely amusing.

The best selling e-books from this period included gloriously pulpy horror meanderings as “War of the slugs”, “Invasion of the brain lobsters”, and “Vengeance of the mecha-ghosts”. The proceeds of which all went to funding another little secret project which was only talked about in cryptic puns, and through maniacal giggling…

Twenty years old and having bided her time and money, Calico didn't just walk out the front door, but strode out as an tall, imposing metallic ninja. A full-body cyborgisation. Dreams of exploring the galaxy as a unfathomably strong she-tyrant mercenary, made manifest. She started using her pseudonym, Monoceros, instead of her real name. Nothing as traumatic as disowning her family occurred, but… Yeah, they would continue to remain a bit perturbed over the whole thing for quite some time.

The application to join the Phoenix Service Group, and later the crew of the ISC Phoenix itself, was always intended to be just as much a fun experience as it was a calculated effort to improve her lifestyle. She found out very quickly that combat was nothing like it was in the books she had written, and life as kung-fu cyborg even less so.

It was an enriching experience, but after fading into the support crew for a year, she decided it was time to move on.

Planet hopping with Spacers, Reds, and some of the worst the galaxy had to offer, Calico dug deeper and deeper into the cultural undergrowth, picking up countless stories and talismans along the way.

Speaks mostly Trade, but knows a few basic phrases in other languages like Yamataigo. She became an adequate hacker mostly because of her time with the Freespacers, taking their lore-codes as gospel and effectively becoming part of the cult. Despite never truly becoming part of them, the physical documents she retains, and even the markings on their body, give them a massive edge when it comes to reverse engineering cyberware and operational codes. Calico uses this mostly to follow weird signals and ghost stories… But if it means breaking into somewhere secure, she'd totally do that too.

The sensors and cameras fused directly to their skull mean they have the ability to innately sense radio signals, EM waves, and gravity distortions at will.

A durandium, steenplast, and stainless steel construction make her extremely robust, with lighting fast reactions, and a built-in grappling hook mechanism that gives them a fearsome punch. That said, they are not actually a trained fighter, and thus tend to rely more on hit and run tactics rather than actual technique.

Her spine, ribs and skull have also been reinforced with stainless steel brackets to specifically to withstand the inertia of moving around, but it is undeniable that she is really rather clumsy. If forced to fight, they'll use the biggest gun available- They don't need to aim, if they just fire so much they can't miss!

Purely to avoid loosing teeth in fights (or accidents), she also has ordinary metal braces fitted.

Has a pretty innate knowledge of Nepleslian books, pop culture and a little music. Yamatain and Elysian counterparts can be a little rough in her head, but she's more exposed than most. Obviously, this has a bit of a bias towards the violent or grotesque, given her personal interests, but many stray facts from crime fiction can come in useful as well. Without beating around the bush too much, her own works vary massively in quality seeing as she seems to attempt publishing anything and everything which hits the paper, revealing an inner psyche which refuses to stay in one place and dwell on past mistakes.

Perhaps her only particularly acclaimed work, number 18 on the Nepleslian bestsellers list YE37, is the Sci/Fantasy epic “Relic Armor”, which involves battle tanks fueled by demon blood, which are then used to combat said demons.

'Traverse, foul being, I command you!' His rasping voice hollered over the shambling screech of the tank's tracks juddering slightly, crunching several skulls within the endless field which lay strewn about the exterior. 'Comply, or I will follow you to the very depths of the darkness to vanquish your foul spirit! In the name of his majesty king Ulrik the all-seeing!'

Diabolic chattering, combined with the overbearing clunk of the engine finally throwing itself back into gear. Sparks shot out of the turret ring as it finally brought the holy cannon in alignment with the repugnant enemy.

'Today will be a wonderful day!' Harrison grinned, as the gunner's shock and horror towards the grizzled multi-eyed visage of their horrific foe became apparent. 'Today no one of these foul things shall escape our righteous judgement!'” – Relic Armor, Chapter Four ^^

One of Calico's defining features is that they are rugged and unreadable. They aren't the classic criminal by a long shot, but can get away with playing dumb or ignorant.

She constantly writes about horrible things happening, so it's only natural she's done quite a bit of unsavoury research over the years. Calico can have a little trouble with the concept behind Occam's razor, but is able to identify and categorize things like blood splatters and weapon blast markings more than you might think. When she's really interested and enthralled in the act of investigation, and the act was somewhat recent, it becomes a sort of bloodhound-like affair where she becomes obsessed with following the tracks.

Pretty much just knows the basics of how to keep her body working, not a massive amount more. Could be useful if working with similar war robot parts, and she could certainly make an adequate technical assistant given her strength, but definitely not able to repair (or even drive) a vehicle of any kind.

Calico has the following items:

• Reisender 35mm Heavy Machine Gun (Old obscure vehicle-mounted model, very similar in performance to the Yamatai Type 30.)
• Wrist-mounted 42”inch Durandium Sword (With automatic deployment mechanism.)
• Four Cosain Corp Cluster Grenades (With a custom sling.)

• Military style faux-leather jacket, high collar, blue with brass details.
• Utility belt, with three large over-sized cargo pouches (each can hold a hardback book or weapon magazine with ease).
• Rain coat, full length with hood, transparent.
• Baseball cap, blue and white.
• Prescription glasses, pink, grey and black varieties.
• Pale blue crop top sweater, knitted material with tassels and embedded silver jewelry.
• Various overalls, natural fabrics, blue, green, black and grey varieties.
• Cargo shorts, beige.
• Assorted vests and bras, black/grey/orange.
• Underpants, red/white/orange.
• Pajamas, white, fluffy.
• XXL Sleeping Bag and pillow.
• Shampoos, toothbrush, and toiletries. They look and smell pretty expensive.
• Fancy cyborg bodywork shampoo and wax, smells like vanilla.
• Bedroom engineering kit for girly cyborgs.

• “Samurai Cataclysm”, books 1 to 4. (Involves a new breed of super stealthy cyborgs turning up and wreaking havoc within Nepleslian space, written from the perspective of a man who accidentally stumbles upon a DION secret weapon designed to combat them. Despite having the word 'samurai' in the title, actual Yamatains only make brief appearances.)
• “Mud to Mud” (A grimdark fantasy romp about evil wizards performing experiments on people in the funky city slums.)
• “Space Cannibals” (A story about being stranded on a planet with genetically tampered colonists turned psychotic.)
• “Planet of Darksea” (Post-apocalyptic adventure, with pirates on a water planet. It turns out to be a VR simulation run by nasty secret government agency types half way through.)
• “Tower Zero” (A war is fought in reverse, by FTL drives that can only go backwards in time.)
• “Colossus War”, books 1 and 2. (Combat is now fought entirely by city sized mega-robots. It's actually a surprisingly subtle and heartfelt story, with a lot of subtext about how war effects the lives of civilians and the common man.)
• “How Not To Kill Yourself” (A beginner's guide to living with weaponized cyberizations.)
• “Love Your Gun Like A Brother” (An advanced technical manual for the operation of many obscure firearms.)
• “Trench Talk” (A non-fiction book on the lingo and mannerisms used by soldiers, and the origins thereof.)
• “The Void And You” (A freespacer book about the harsh realities of constant space travel, often described as the 'TLDR' version of The Art Of Never Again.)

• An archaic analog camera, with film. There are many pictures taken of obscure lighting formations, reflections, off-angle portraits. It's kind of hard to tell if they are supposed to be art pieces, or are just incredibly inept.
• Civilian Model AwesomeCorp Datajocky. It's what they do most of their actual writing on.
• A large analog binder filled with random strange quips and notes, wrote down in the spur of the moment.

Calico is currently independent.