Character: Archetypes (Elaran Neural Parasites)

One of the most well guarded secrets of the New Hades universe is the Elaran Incident. In a nutshell, alien insects, evolving independently at an exponential rate, isolated in a remote Jupiter moon, bla bla bla.

What NO ONE knows at this stage, is that some of the Elaran insectoids have already escaped. They found a way (possibly experimenting on dead soldiers sent to destroy them) to link small larvae to the corpses' nervous system, thereby animating them. And so they did, to said soldiers, to the research scientists and to a couple of scavenging ship crews that went into Elara looking for some quick Novus. 

What these Archetypes want is still a mystery, but they are out there. They might look odd, but who doesn't these days?

An updated version of the zombie character. Stronger, slower and in need of some chemical every 24h, else, -2 to tests. Maybe without it, it goes into a frenzy and attacks friend and foe alike? Also, perhaps a -2 to CHA?

Character: The Myth (Constantina 'Tina' Bianchi)

On paper, it looked like a spectacular idea. Instead of all the work needed to resequence someone's genes and turn them into a Gen (DIVERS therapy can take months), how about a virus, encoded with upgraded genes (faster, stronger, more agile, you get the idea) injected directly into a soldiers' bloodstream. It wouldn't last long before their immune system fought it off and back into a baseline human, but until then, they would be better at everything.

It worked. Until it really didn't.

Yes, it enhanced as they wanted. Yes, it was temporary. But it destroyed the subjects' skin pigmentation, and wreaked havoc with their blood cell count. These poor people were now better than humans, but they needed constant blood transfusions and were clinically sensitive to sunlight.

Yes. For all intents and purposes, they are vampires.

It didn't take long for the young Lieutenant Bianchi to realise the possibilities of her condition. Escaping her facility she now roams the Hadean nights looking for work, and for the next pint of scarlet life force....

I just got my hands on the Horror Expansion for the Savage Worlds rules. So this character HAD to happen. It is as it says on the text above, she is faster, and stronger, but vulnerable to sunlight and with an addiction to consuming blood every 24h. Without it, all her rolls are at -1 penalty.

Characters: The Cloud (Ralph 'Smoke' Harrison)

Once upon a time, there was a man. He was very bright, a doctor. He wanted to help people. He wanted to make them better. So he made these tiny machines that could fix people from the inside all the way out. And people were very happy.

One day, a messenger arrived, from a nearby kingdom (a message from Koruachi Corps) that said 'Come work for us, we'll give all the gold you need for your machines!'

So the healer went, and all was well.

But there was a problem.

The machines could heal or destroy. And the other kingdom was only really interested on one of them. The wrong one.

They tried to shut him down, and push him away. He fought back, and in the cross fire, a number of unprogrammed nanobots got free, and spilled over the man.

And they disassembled him. And he died.

He awoke in the same place, 2 days later. Naked, the lab empty and cold, all his research long gone. The nanobots had memorised his composition, and brought him back, slowly, cell by cell, particle by particle.

He could now partially command the nanobots keeping him alive. He could heal with them, as he wanted, or he could destroy, as they wanted. He found he was angry. And it was high time he did something about it.

My first attempt at a really exotic offensive power. Ralph has the Burst power, which allows for a area effect blast cone (the nanobots would attack everything in that area, like a flamethrower). Also, I needed a healer, so i gave him really good healing stats (nanobot-based, D8-D10). I also consider the nanobots as melee weapons (they probably won't care how far away the adversary is), so i gave them STR+D6 melee. I'm tempted to give him a very basic ability to change his face and skin colour, but am still debating it (too powerful?).

Characters: The Puppet Master (Tegan 'TK' Keath)

Drafted in the latter days of the War, Tegan is a Drone Jockey (also known as a Rigger). Her 3D visualisation of the universe has been enhanced, and she has a Level 2 cyber implant, that allows her to mentally and instantaneously direct and command Drones - robotic constructs as varied as small helicopters, spheres or full blown attack vehicles.

These days, although the military work is not as frequent (there IS always some Corps vs Corps skirmish somewhere), there is plenty of independent missions to go round. To extend your perception onto a small (or big) inanimate construct is as helpful ans one might think, allowing to do stealthy recon or knocking-doors-down-and-killing-everyone-in-the-room with the same effort. It's just a matter of Novus and of how big your drone is.


Simple human, with no physical enhancements, but really high driving, allowing her to control drones. I've started her with 2, a small well armoured helicopter, and a stealthy, less well armed recon sphere.

Characters: The Alien (Merlin 'Wizard' Ryant)

In any sensible set of definitions, Merlin is an alien. Born and raised on Port Armstrong on the Moon, the young colonist quickly found that the impositions put upon him in those early days of the history of the colony were too restrictive for him. Everyone had to work. Everyone had to pull their weight. This system of affairs was not what he wanted of his life, if indeed he wanted anything. 

It all changed on the morning of the 22nd of February, 2079. 

A micrometeorite hit one of the cities' main blast doors controls, a billion to one chunk of bad luck. The computers started to open the airlocks, wrongly believing the city was evacuated and essential maintenance was under way.

People were running around in a panic, tens of thousands of them were minutes away from a gasping death. And in that moment, Merlin the idiot, Merlin the 'waste of life support', hacked the system. He didn't succeed, of course, the computer was much too powerful, but it did make it take precious seconds trying to ICE (Intrusion Countermeasures Electronic) him, seconds that the actual rescue team used to shut everything down. 

Merlin saved everyone. And no one ever found out.

Becoming something of a tech wiz, he turned his life around, working first on the Moon, then on cargo ships and every now and again on Earth. When on the Homeworld, Merlin needs to wear an exoskeleton to compensate for his fragile low-G muscles.

Another test character. He's just a normal human (with a couple of low-G Hindrances) with a gun (D6), but his Repairing and Hacking skills are huge (D8-D10).

Character: The Blade (Yoshihiro 'Hiro' Kusatsu)

Hiro was a munitions officer in the War..... Until the day his wares blew up around him. Fortunately, he was attached to a Koruachi Corps. unit, and the Corps Docs were keen to try out the second generation cyber implants.

Which they did.

Not necessarily enhanced, Hiro was now tougher and more resilient. Most of his body is now in some way armoured. He was trained in melee fighting, as he was now the perfect human(ish) shield.

Eventually rotating the out of the army he became a merc. His weapon of choice became a giant vibro-sword, which as you can imagine, makes him a nightmare in melee fighting.

A simple character, with no long range abilities, or particularly fine tuned proficiencies, but very well armoured (+4 all over) and with a wicked vibro-sword (Str+d8+2, AP 4).

NPC: The Happy Gang

There are mercs that die on the first job. There are those that find that ditching security guards and cyber hounds is not what they wanted to do with life. And then there are those that survive. And survive. And survive.

They become Legendary. The people you call to kill a president or a Corps exec. Or to infiltrate a facility that does not exist. Or invade a space station on a decaying orbit onto the Moon, stealing some data and covering their tracks by detonating the station's plasma core seconds before impact (remember the High Sky that hit the Moon in '79? The one whose positioning engines failed and it crashed? Remember how they said it was such a tragic 'accident'? Yep.)

The Happy Crew is one of those teams. In order, they are: Ugly (ex soldier, disfigured face, never takes heavy combat armour helm off, melee), Rachel (sharpshooter/sniper and the Face), Nighshade (Decker), Panda (Gunslinger. targeting helmet), and Skully (heavy weapons and drones).

If you have a problem, if no one else can help you and if you can find them..... and if you have an ungodly amount of Novus.... The Happy Crew are who you need.

Character: The Idol (Helen 'Bam-Bam' Batson)

After the redrawing of border lines, all over the globe, one of the things that keeps uniting people is music. Singers and songwriters are made and broken overnight, in a spectacularly Darwinian environment.

Bam-Bam came from nowhere and took the Solar System by storm. She is spectacularly popular with all ages and backgrounds, her music a mixture of New Celtic Rock and Trance / Chillout. Her fans number in the millions, and hers is a face known in every house.

What most people will not know is her night job. Bam-Bam is a sharpshooter, a sniper, and a good one at that. Why she chose this side gig is unknown, but she is well known to hold a grudge.

Bam-Bam is possibly a character which is too bloated, or maybe not. Her Charisma is through the roof, her Shooting is huge, but she is meh at most else. Her gun does a stupid amount of damage, but only fires every other turn. I'll look forward to see how she performs in a game.

Characters: The Oddity (Talanie 'Tala' Minnins)

Thought, consciousness, reason, whatever you want to call it, are so-called emergent properties, insomuch as there are no clear physical explanation for them, you just make a complex enough nervous system, and they are just there, they emerge.

Tala is one of these wonders.

A quick (and simple) genetic resequencing to improve her memory left her with an interesting side effect. Something no one would believe and something Corps would kill for.

Tala is, for all intents and purposes, a telepath.

She found this out soon after her treatment, and has kept it secret ever since. Tala is a part-time writer and high-level division leader for Infinity Logistics, and on a good day, she 'overhears' enough criminal and corrupt thoughts to feed a lifetime of information-gathering and prison time.

She became an information broker, selling and trading titbits of information, always careful to keep herself in the shadows.

Some fight the corruption of the Corps from the outside, with guns and explosions. Some do it from the inside, with a smile.


A test character. Gave her the Arcane background (Psionics) to see how a telepath would work in New Hades.

Characters: The Rat (Evelynn ‘Elf’ Kniffin)

For your average Hadean, The Scraplands are as close to a dystopia as you can reach. These people don't know Below.

Centred around Old Hades and Rattown, a huge, multi-level network of tunnels (some the size of a dog, some old Tube tunnels, some old shopping areas the size of caverns) spreads out throughout the city. This is truly the end of the road. If you find yourself Below, there is quite usually no way back. A century of pollution and discarded Gens have bred and mutated down there, and a lot of sections are about as safe as diving into a pool of broken glass.

So when a toddler was found crying, wondering the corridors aimlessly, her lifespan could be measured in seconds.

The reverse turned out to be true.

A lot of the denizens of this forgotten place had cut their ties with the world above: light, innocence, beauty. The little girl (clearly a Hybrid, a product of the coupling of two Gens) reminded them they were still alive, and they were still human.

Evelynn grew up Below. She learned which tunnels led where, she was taught to read and write by insane scientists, how to fight by burned out soldiers, how to hunt by packs of cyber-rats (most likely a failed experiment), how to be stealthy by malfunctioning infiltration robots. Protected by the community who adopted her as a mascot, she thrived, eventually becoming one of the best smugglers in town. If you need to move stuff around, without the Corps or anyone else finding out, she's the person to find. She adopted one of the cyber-rats as a pet.

This one was a personal request. I made her small, elfish, and great in a scrap. I like that she will have access to a network of people that love here, and are also the lowest of the low (and therefore invisible).

Gen; Noun, coloquial, plural Gens

Gen; noun, colloquial, plural Gens

• Any of an almost infinite number of living organisms modified and/or created from an 'empty' genetic template, usually using the DIVERS technology, developed by MegaGen in 2059. As of time of writing (2088), it is possibly to choose an (as mentioned above) a  blank template (usually but not exclusively the genetic code of the sea slug Nembrotha aurea) and then to add any and all desired characteristics. Although developing high-intelligence/sentient constructs is not only illegal but highly frowned upon, it would be theoretically, possible. Size is also a factor, with constructs being limited to anywhere between an ant and a small elephant. 

• The term is also used to describe heavily changed humans, usually derogatorily. 

NPC: Robert 'Tiny' McDonald

What do you do, post War, when you've been genetically resequenced to be 2m tall, and with a muscle density twice as high as that of normal humans? You graft some horns, change your eyeball colour and become hired muscle. Tiny is something of an aberration, an anomaly: a well-spoken, kind soul, that survived the horrors of the War more or less intact, in the body of a fairytale beast. He is very active in the NeoHipHop circuits of Rattown. You'll find him around town, either as hired muscle or going to one of his DJ’ing gigs. There are stories of him doing some Wetworks in the past, but these are unconfirmed.  Either your best friend, or a haunting nightmare.

The Boys (and Girls) in Blue: New Hades Police Department

It is a commonly mentioned fact that the NHPD is under a short leash, held by the Corps. This might or might not be true, but, taking into consideration that a lot of the men and women of the Force are either ex-soldiers or had military training, and are kitted out in Corps-grade gear, one defies them to one's peril. Their take on the universe might be linear, their behaviour has been described as brutal, but they are still bloody good at what they do. In the lighter parts of town, one can walk around fearing little. In the darkest parts of town....

The Rattlesnakes are the NHPD Special Intervention Teams. For the rest of the city, it might be the last thing they see on this plane of existence. No one from the public has ever seen a helmet-less Rattlesnake, so stories abound. In any case, they are dealers of swift punishment, and are only deployed as a last resort.

NPC: The Guang Long (Neon Dragons): Naomi Lee, Kento Han

The Neon Dragons are an up-and-coming biker gang, based out of Chinatown. Ruthless, deadly efficient, and with the backing of The Triads, they have written a bloody history in a few brief years. A recent war with the Moretti crime family threatened to escalate into all-out war, but the revelation of a hand-written (and therefore unhackable) Moretti ledger of bribes and Wetworks made the mafia family go underground for the time being. Riding this reputation and success wave, time will tell if the Dragons can hold on to this height.

NPC: Weylyn O'Hoolhan a.k.a. Neon Nelly

Weylyn is a recent addition to the streets of New Hades. She claims to come from somewhere 'up North', which can mean anything, from Viken, to the Polar Cities, to one of the Habitats in Earth orbit. A mercenary, she does not get bogged down in stale and boring events, instead thriving on the heat of the action, choosing assignments and contracts based not on money or difficulty, but on how exciting they might be. Known as a woman of passions, she seems to have a new love interest every 2.7 days (people have actually done the maths). If you have the Novus, you could not ask for better backup. If she's hunting you, may your Gods - if any - help you.

NPC: Maxton 'Bulb' Edison

One can usually see Bulb coming a mile away. In the streets of New Hades nothing is really taboo, you can easily see NeoNaturists walking around technically naked, or mercenaries wearing borderline power armour, but even in this milieu, an open vest, spiky orange hair and high tech visors makes people look twice, if briefly. Bulb is what happens to street urchins when they grow up with a mild drug problem, a number of incipient psychosis, a love of technology and absolutely no morals. His brain, to quote an acquaintance 'is like a bag of rabid mice'. You would call Bulb for information, if you have no other choice. You would call Bulb if you need a weapon and you have no other choice. You would not call Bulb in any other situation.

NPC: Ivan Ivanovich Kuznetsov, a.k.a. Crazy Ivan

Ivan Ivanovich was born is Little Moscow, a Russian/Slavic enclave to the west of Old Hades. A gifted child, his abilities with weapons and hardware were apparent from an early age, and by his early teens he was running with the Bratya'Volk (The Wolf Brothers), a small but influential gang. A deal gone bad and a stint in prison later, he decided to go 'clean' and make neutrality and quality his keywords. From his shop, he sells weapons, computers, programs, ammunition and - occasionally - information to all who can pay. If you can't, well, deals can always be reached. If you start trouble, that's what Igor is there for. You know Igor? Yeah, the polar bear in the cage. Yep, the one with the cyber implant in its skull. No, I also have no idea what it does. 

Characters: The Everyman (Walt 'WW' Watson)

Walt was again a late addition. I decided to make him..... average. Not excelent at anyting, but good at everything. He has no background (for now) but there you have it. A normal Hadean.

I made Walt with across the board average stats. The main difference is the Jack of All Trades, an unusual, but highly powerful Edge. The character doesn't get negative penalties when attempting an unskilled roll, so he effectively has a 25-90% chance to succeed at anything at all!

Characters: The Thief (Eddie)

Eddie is a petty thief, someone who grew up dodging the law and stealing Novus chips for his next meal. One of the most talented graffiti artists around, he usually hides behind a Cheshire Cat smile hologram, that floats right in front of his face.

To try and pin him down would be to try and nail jelly to a wall. He knows every alleyway, every tunnel. His connections are not as extensive as some, but he knows who he can trust.

Eddie was a late arrival to my palette of characters. I tried to overlap abilities so no one absolutely had to pick any character, so Eddie (with a fairly high Pickpocketing Edge) was my Face alternative. Besides, it's always good to have someone who knows where all the back doors are. 

Characters: The Faceless Man (Crimson Shadow)

The idea for this character (originally a female) came to me in a flash of inspiration - he doesn't show his face.... Why????

Therefore, although his backstory is my favourite, I cannot talk about it here, until my player decides if he wants or not to show his face to the other players.

Shadow has a katana, shuriken, and is stupid good at melee fighting.

The mystery deepens.....