NPC: Jack Buck, NHPD

Jack Buck is an inspector at the Downtown Headquarters of the New Hades Police Department.

Jack Buck is also a horrible human being. 

He is petty, childish, prone to anger explosions, a heavy drinker, an even heavier smoker. His personal hygiene can be best described as 'spotty' and his eating habits would make a hyena regurgitate.

But there is another side.

He is reasonably fair. He always protects the innocent. He prides himself of never receiving a bribe. He has a pet parrot called Silver that he adores. And he has a nephew that he dotes on.

He has been described once by Orion Grey as a 'dung covered Vietnamese water buffalo: he is big, fat, dirty and stinks; but by golly, he'll pull that plough'

He dislikes Orion. The feeling is very much mutual.

NPC: Doctor Aether Theobald

If one had to describe Doctor Theobald in one word, the word could be mad, as he deeply deeply is such. Another, however, could be amoral. Theobald has no affiliations, no agenda, no morals to speak of. All he cares is to increase his knowledge of cybernetics and surgery, and of course the Novus.

Pay him, he will graft or install anything you like. Don't pay him and there's no deal. Here is a man of black and white, of yes and no.

In a city of greys and shadows as New Hades, some find him a welcome and refreshing new approach.

A surgeon. I am most definitely bringing the cyber-implants home to roost and I needed someone to install them. SPectacularly high Knowledge: Surgical Modification (D10), hopefully it will mean patients don't die.  

The Tanhauser Gate

'If you come for Fun, welcome', says the sign when you enter The Gate. If you're here to find trouble, says the unofficial, non-existent sign, you came to the wrong place.

The Gate stands near the Redcrest side of Anubis Bridge. It is a multi-level arrangement of bars, dance-floors and booths, catering to one and all. Most things are in fact permitted (if not actively insisted upon) at the Gate. The only two rules are: a) consent, and b) if money changes hands, Mrs Chang takes a cut.

Mrs Chang is an elderly woman, blind (in fact, with a forehead that just keeps coming down to her nose, without even the orbits where eyes should be), but with a sense of smell and hearing that would put a pack of bloodhounds to shame. Why she was spliced like this has never been established, as such questions are..... discouraged.

With a retainer of bodyguards to make even the richest envious, she slides effortlessly around The Gate, bringing a smile or a chastisement (if such is needed).

If you need information, some fun, or a drink, The Gate is where you want, nay, need to be.

The Secret

Half way into the war, in 2050, a very faint signal was detected coming from a distant asteroid, beyond the orbit of Jupiter. This nameless rock, HPL18901937 was at the time the farthest object on any interest in the System, and access to it was difficult.

A mad race started, mirroring the space race of the 1960s.

After sabotage, set-backs and back stabbing, the five major Corps, Koruachi Corps, Everleaf Group, MegaGen, Eclipse Inc and Schatten Korp arrived within a week of each other. And after some space battling, leading to a number of deaths, they decided to end the stalemate and find the source of the signal together.

They found an obelisk. It had clearly not be made by man. And it was old. The type of old that is cold to the touch, even at absolute zero. 

After 2 weeks of research, the obelisk was just that, an engraved, vaguely glowing carved rock. As interesting as a possible clue to alien intelligence might be, there was a war on.

The researchers came back to Earth, vowing to return one day.

They haven't yet.

Also, they didn't take anything with them.

And weren't changed in any way.

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.

NPC: The Darkness

We've all seen the footage a million times. It went beyond viral, it went epidemic. It's CCTV footage, from somewhere in the Docklands. It seems to show about 10 people (the footage is fairly dark and grainy) having an argument. They would later be identified as members of the McDougal and the Moretti crime families, a deal, a fight, a trade, who knows.

Then, 2:21 minutes into the footage, one of the McDougal party, Sam, is lifted into the air. Slowly, clutching his throat. Guns are unholstered, people get agitated, start looking above for drones. One man actually grabs Sam's feet and tries to pull him down.

After about 10 seconds, his head is violently twisted about sideways. He's now clearly dead, and his body falls limp to the ground. Shots are fired and the footage ends.

This would be forever simply the common enough footage of the underworld being weird. If not for a hacker that decided to enhance the man's neck.

 And there, you can see something. What depends on who you are. If you are that inclined, you can see just a plain shadow, due to the multiple light sources in that dock. But if you squint JUST right, the main shadow right across the man's throat is unmistakably a claw. A big one at that.

The other men (the ones that survived the fight) claim they saw nothing. Just shadows. And with that, a legend was born. People have it a name and threat little children with it. 'If you don't behave The Darkness comes for you'. Even among adults it is now common to hear 'the thief went in and out like he was The Darkness'.

Ever since that grainy footage, around 10 bodies have been found, killed in the same way. Men and women, all hard criminals, their necks snapped like twigs. In at least two other instances, there were dozens of witnesses. And always, ALWAYS, in the dark or at night. In places filled with shadows and darkness.

Something, it seems, is out there.

This one is a silly idea. A failed stealth operative experiment left a man (an android? a Gen?) able to fuse his body colour and texture with ambient shadows. Who knows what this would do to a persons' sanity? Hence New Hades newest vigilante....