Character Sheet: Ref
I've actually attempted to use this character in two different "Matrix" RPGs, but this one seems to be the most promising yet.... You know what they say about third time's the charm...
NAME: Real world name: Ref / Matrix-side name: "Berlin Maguire"
TEMPLATE: An intellectual, slightly bookish female freed mind who for all her intelligence, can't keep control of her heart.
SPECIES: Human, pod-born
AGE: About 28 (unplugged for about 9 years)
GENDER: Female (heterosexual)
HEIGHT: 5 feet 7 inches tall
WEIGHT: about 135 lbs
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: Short, jaw-length brown hair, medium brown eyes, light-skinned (boring old, plain vanilla Irish/French Caucasian), rather thin. Not extremely pretty, not very plain, just average-looking.
BACKGROUND: For the first 19 years of her life, Berlin Maguire thought she was the daughter of a cultured but down-to-earth couple living just outsde Boston, Massachusetts, the U. S. of A.: Her mother was a former opera singer, her father was an art historian/preservationist working for the Museum of Fine Arts and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum among many others. Her family travelled a lot, living for extended periods of time in Paris, Rome, Florence, Naples, Sienna, Barcelona, to name a few major cities all over Europe. Berlin had no idea, until she was in her teens and she started having a series of strange nightmares, that her world was anything but normal. Her parents regarded the dreams as just that, though Berlin argued there was more to it than that, that the dreams just felt too real. Her mother encouraged her to get therapy, at the Daniel Institute of Dream Interpretation, to counteract it, not knowing that this particular therapist had ties to the Zion Rebels. One of the therapeutic methods used to treat Berlin's sleep disturbances was art therapy, and the wierd H.R. Giger-esque images (all of them signed 'Ref', an abbreviation for "reference section", her favorite place to hang around in libraries, as well as a self-applied joke nickname on account of her encyclopediac knowledge: "I'm practically a walking reference section!") she produced alerted her therapist that something was going on... Her therapist informed her family that Berlin's condition was so severe it would require medication... "Berlin"/Ref agreed to this, if only to stop the nightmares... And at that point, her therapist introduced her to Enlil, captain of the ship Gilgamesh, a leader among the Zion Rebels, who offered to show her the truth behind her nightmares... Ref hesitated at first, but took the red pill...
Since then, with a little help from Councillor Hamann, who took Ref under his wing, Ref has become a collector and historian for the Zion Archives, venturing into the Matrix in search of copies of art treasures and literary classics and historical documents. Her role might be compared to that of a civilian employee in the military. She carried this out gladly, but she became increasingly dissatisfied with her task. For one thing, Commander Locke has often tried to have the Archive shut down, considering it an unnecessary drain on Zion's often strained resources. For another thing, the real world can sometimes seem too rough and unpolished for her, since she's grown up in an almost elitist circle.
Just before the dawn of the Alliance, Ref was transferred to the Mjolnir (aka. the "Hammer"), serving under Roland, whom she describes as "dull but worthy of trust". Once inside the Matrix, attending art auctions and old book sales, she discovered, while attending an auction held by the estate of a private collector of medieval antiquities, an extremely old Frankish sword, most likely from the 400s. She set out to bid on the sword, but her bids kept being blocked by a more aggressive bidder, a man (or so she once thought, that he was merely a man...) named Armand de Merovee, for whom her father had cleaned several paintings over the years and whom Ref had known since she was a teenager. Armand out-bidded her on the sword, but as a consolation prize, he offered to allow her to select something from his own private collection. Ref had long been attracted to Armand, and now that she had grown, the feeling appeared to be mutual. Once Armand had won Ref's confidence and charmed her, Ref gladly let him seduce her... only to discover that he was not a human, that he was in fact a highly dangerous program known to the Rebels as the Merovingian... And she further discovered that her liaison with him had resulted in her RSI becoming pregnant with his son.
PERSONALITY: Deceptively quiet, but not painfully so. Get her talking about her favorite things (art/literature/philosophy/history/music) and she's hard to shut up. Tends to mask her feelings behind shyness or a slightly overweening self-assurance, depending on her mood. Something of a romantic, but she tries to keep this toned-down, since she's had her heart bruised.
OBJECTIVES: Preserving the remnants of the past to help what's left of humanity move on into a brighter future.
...Or at least until she got into a comprimising situation with the Merovingian...
A QUOTE: "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it" -- George Santayana (I think...)
SPECIAL QUIRKS, ABILITIES, ETC.: She's a terrible fighter. Zech, the operator on the Gilgamesh, had done his best to equip her with all the fighting skills she'd need, but Ref has this maddening tendency to freeze up or freak out in a tight situation, and nothing has been able to cure her of it. But what she lacks in fighting prowess, she compensates in her ability to collect and compile information on the history of the war.
NAME: Real world name: Ref / Matrix-side name: "Berlin Maguire"
TEMPLATE: An intellectual, slightly bookish female freed mind who for all her intelligence, can't keep control of her heart.
SPECIES: Human, pod-born
AGE: About 28 (unplugged for about 9 years)
GENDER: Female (heterosexual)
HEIGHT: 5 feet 7 inches tall
WEIGHT: about 135 lbs
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: Short, jaw-length brown hair, medium brown eyes, light-skinned (boring old, plain vanilla Irish/French Caucasian), rather thin. Not extremely pretty, not very plain, just average-looking.
BACKGROUND: For the first 19 years of her life, Berlin Maguire thought she was the daughter of a cultured but down-to-earth couple living just outsde Boston, Massachusetts, the U. S. of A.: Her mother was a former opera singer, her father was an art historian/preservationist working for the Museum of Fine Arts and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum among many others. Her family travelled a lot, living for extended periods of time in Paris, Rome, Florence, Naples, Sienna, Barcelona, to name a few major cities all over Europe. Berlin had no idea, until she was in her teens and she started having a series of strange nightmares, that her world was anything but normal. Her parents regarded the dreams as just that, though Berlin argued there was more to it than that, that the dreams just felt too real. Her mother encouraged her to get therapy, at the Daniel Institute of Dream Interpretation, to counteract it, not knowing that this particular therapist had ties to the Zion Rebels. One of the therapeutic methods used to treat Berlin's sleep disturbances was art therapy, and the wierd H.R. Giger-esque images (all of them signed 'Ref', an abbreviation for "reference section", her favorite place to hang around in libraries, as well as a self-applied joke nickname on account of her encyclopediac knowledge: "I'm practically a walking reference section!") she produced alerted her therapist that something was going on... Her therapist informed her family that Berlin's condition was so severe it would require medication... "Berlin"/Ref agreed to this, if only to stop the nightmares... And at that point, her therapist introduced her to Enlil, captain of the ship Gilgamesh, a leader among the Zion Rebels, who offered to show her the truth behind her nightmares... Ref hesitated at first, but took the red pill...
Since then, with a little help from Councillor Hamann, who took Ref under his wing, Ref has become a collector and historian for the Zion Archives, venturing into the Matrix in search of copies of art treasures and literary classics and historical documents. Her role might be compared to that of a civilian employee in the military. She carried this out gladly, but she became increasingly dissatisfied with her task. For one thing, Commander Locke has often tried to have the Archive shut down, considering it an unnecessary drain on Zion's often strained resources. For another thing, the real world can sometimes seem too rough and unpolished for her, since she's grown up in an almost elitist circle.
Just before the dawn of the Alliance, Ref was transferred to the Mjolnir (aka. the "Hammer"), serving under Roland, whom she describes as "dull but worthy of trust". Once inside the Matrix, attending art auctions and old book sales, she discovered, while attending an auction held by the estate of a private collector of medieval antiquities, an extremely old Frankish sword, most likely from the 400s. She set out to bid on the sword, but her bids kept being blocked by a more aggressive bidder, a man (or so she once thought, that he was merely a man...) named Armand de Merovee, for whom her father had cleaned several paintings over the years and whom Ref had known since she was a teenager. Armand out-bidded her on the sword, but as a consolation prize, he offered to allow her to select something from his own private collection. Ref had long been attracted to Armand, and now that she had grown, the feeling appeared to be mutual. Once Armand had won Ref's confidence and charmed her, Ref gladly let him seduce her... only to discover that he was not a human, that he was in fact a highly dangerous program known to the Rebels as the Merovingian... And she further discovered that her liaison with him had resulted in her RSI becoming pregnant with his son.
PERSONALITY: Deceptively quiet, but not painfully so. Get her talking about her favorite things (art/literature/philosophy/history/music) and she's hard to shut up. Tends to mask her feelings behind shyness or a slightly overweening self-assurance, depending on her mood. Something of a romantic, but she tries to keep this toned-down, since she's had her heart bruised.
OBJECTIVES: Preserving the remnants of the past to help what's left of humanity move on into a brighter future.
...Or at least until she got into a comprimising situation with the Merovingian...
A QUOTE: "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it" -- George Santayana (I think...)
SPECIAL QUIRKS, ABILITIES, ETC.: She's a terrible fighter. Zech, the operator on the Gilgamesh, had done his best to equip her with all the fighting skills she'd need, but Ref has this maddening tendency to freeze up or freak out in a tight situation, and nothing has been able to cure her of it. But what she lacks in fighting prowess, she compensates in her ability to collect and compile information on the history of the war.