The Unforgiven

The Unforgiven

Jill Daniels, a.k.a. The Shadow

Campaign: 21^st Century Digital Children (Cyber HERO)

Background:
Jill was born 26 years ago to a couple of middle-class corp-workers. Her father was a low-level mechanic, and her mother was a waitress. She was raised to believe that hard work and devotion will bring you anywhere you want. Since her early years in school it was quite clear that she was brilliant, with a natural aptitude for math and computer programming. This fact didn’t elude the corporate teachers either, who made sure that she learnt as much as she could, so she could be a better programmer in the service of CyberSystems corporation.
Once she graduated, she quickly became a part of CyberSystems software division (future labor is the typical way to pay for one’s education). Combining her natural skills and a cut-throat mentality she learnt from her corporate teachers, her climb through the ranks was meteoric. Before long, she became one of the top-level programmers in the R&D department.
For the first time in her life, she got a glimpse at how life looked on the other side – and she liked it. She was making more money a month than her parent would make in a year, she lived in a huge apartment, and had people attend to her every whim. Life was good, even great, until her father’s accident. The jack that was holding up a car he was working on gave way, and it fell on him, crushing Both his legs. Since he couldn’t work anymore, and his wife’s salary couldn’t even pay his medical bills, let alone the rent, they were evicted, and unceremoniously thrown out to the cold.
For the first time in years, Jill had to come out of her ivory tower and start seeing what the real world looked like. The first time she delivered classified information to the rebels, she was was nervous as hell, and even though she took every precaution in the book, and several that weren’t written in any book, she still could help throwing up every time she looked at food or jump at the sound of every slightest noise, sure that the corp-police had come to get her.
Today, it comes as a second nature to her. There are more than a dozen warrants for The Shadow’s arrest, for every conceivable electronic crime – from laundering money, through illegally accessing classified information and up to high treason. And yet, no one suspects that the shy hazel-eyed computer prodigy and The Shadow are one and the same.

Personality:
Since seeing how the corporation treated her father when he was no longer of any use to them, Jill has grown an anarchistic attitude towards life. She passionately hates the corporate world, although she is usually able to hide this quite well. In fact, sometimes she puts on her show a bit too good, which might make you think that somewhere, in a place that she wouldn’t admit that exists, deep inside her mind, she still actually believes her corporate upbringing.
Jill is a cold and calculated individual, much more comfortable among her computers and flow charts than she is among people.

Appearance:
Jill is in her late twenties. Her naturally appealing features were somewhat ruined by spending hours in front of a computer screen, leaving her pale and slender, somewhat sickly looking.
She usually dresses in functional, comfortable cloths, which are as close as possible to the limit of corporate dress code, without actually crossing it. She wears her long brown hair loose, with a few strands braided together on both sides of her head.
Her hazel eyes are probably the only aspect of her appearance that might transmit some sort of warmth, but she makes sure to keep them concealed behind a pair of mirrorshades at all times.

Powers/Tactics:
Most of Jill’s abilities are within cyberspace. She could usually hack her way into any computer, get the information she wants and get out of there without leaving a trace. That is, besides the severe neural damage to the corporate security guards that tried to track her.
Like most corporate personnel, Jill is slightly cyberneticly augmented. Her lungs are equipped with an internal air filter which should prevent her from dying from lung cancer by the time she’s 40 and which also gives her some immunity to poisonous gasses.
Her position within CyberSystems corporation also gives her access to large amounts of information and sometimes even equipment that would be unavailable to the average Jo. If forced into a combat situation, Jill owns a CyberSystems standard issue pistol she can use, but she isn’t a very good shot and would prefer running away and leaving the dirty work to others.

Notes:
Jill is one of the characters based more loosely on the songs in The Black Project. Basically I took the line from the verse (“What I felt, what I’ve known, never shined through what I’ve shown”), and started getting crazy.

Campaign Use:
Jill could be used in several ways. First, the characters could be mercenaries always being tipped off by a mysterious figure on the inside, or even maybe being hired by her. The players could also be Jill’s co-workers who somehow stumble over her secret, and get all caught up in the middle.