147 lines
5.3 KiB
Markdown
147 lines
5.3 KiB
Markdown
# Elias Vae'lor
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> DM-facing NPC writeup. Student-aged AV/tech kid with more access than he should have.
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---
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## Role
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- **Title:** Subnode Technician’s Assistant / Student Systems Tech
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- **Age:** 16–17 (a couple years older than the PCs)
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- **Heritage/Class:** High elf; artificer / tinkerer flavor
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- **Public Image:** That quiet AV club kid who:
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- Fixes projectors,
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- Knows how to get into locked hardware cabinets,
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- Appears at the worst possible time with a toolbox and a coffee.
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---
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## What Students Know
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- He works part-time for Maintenance and the arcane IT crew:
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- Runs cables,
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- Checks node readouts,
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- Curses at miscalibrated runic controllers.
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- He’s around just enough that everyone recognizes him, but:
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- He’s not particularly popular or unpopular.
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- He just… exists in the background with a multitool and a datapad.
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- Rumors:
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- He “sees all the good camera footage” and could ruin lives if he wanted to.
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- He once got locked in a subnode chamber during a power test and came out “different.”
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- He’s on some kind of unofficial Oversight scholarship.
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---
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## What He Wants
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### Surface Goals
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- Graduate with enough **credits and experience** to get hired into a real tech team:
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- Root monitoring,
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- Titan armory maintenance,
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- Or some cushy city node job.
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- Keep the campus grid running **without** explosions, screaming, or surprise inspections.
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### Deeper Goals
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- To understand what the hell is actually happening in the Root:
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- He has seen too many “impossible” graph patterns.
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- He’s curious, not just scared.
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- To prove to himself that he’s not crazy for seeing the patterns he sees:
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- Older techs tell him “it’s noise.”
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- D’serris’s logs suggest otherwise.
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---
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## Methods & Tactics
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- **Data first:**
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- He trusts logs, graphs, error codes more than people’s stories.
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- **Avoids conflict:**
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- Will absolutely let a teacher rant at him rather than push back.
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- Folds in front of admin, vents later.
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- **Helps students quietly:**
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- “Off the record” fixes,
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- Looking the other way if a lab is slightly out of spec but no one’s in danger.
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---
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## Relationship to Oversight & Maintenance
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- Maintenance sees him as:
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- Useful hands,
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- Cheap labor,
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- “The kid who actually understands the new firmware.”
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- Oversight (D’serris) sees him as:
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- A **low-level asset**:
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- Someone who can be fed selected data and instructions.
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- Not trusted with full truth, but trusted to follow technical orders.
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- He occasionally gets:
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- Direct system messages “from Root Oversight” with:
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- Task lists,
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- Warning flags,
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- Weird log snippets to investigate.
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He’s starting to suspect that:
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- The system is sometimes pinging him about anomalies **nobody else sees yet**.
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---
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## Relationship to the PCs
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- He was with them in **Subnode A3 / B2** and saw:
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- The Root do something he can’t fully explain.
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- The PCs walk out far less “fried” than they should have been.
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**Initial view:**
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- They’re trouble, but:
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- They’re trouble that pays attention, asks questions, and doesn’t forget what they see.
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- They might be the only people on campus willing to crawl into places he can’t justify going alone.
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### How He Might Use Them
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- As **eyes on the ground**:
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- “If you see this pattern again – the humming, the flicker, the way the sigils twist – I need you to tell me exactly where and when.”
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- As **muscle / backup**:
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- He can’t defend himself in a fight.
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- He can absolutely guide them to vulnerable spots if they go with him.
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- As **confessional**:
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- If he’s going to blow the whistle on something Oversight or Admin is doing, he’s more likely to tell the PCs than any adult.
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---
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## Secrets & Pressure Points (DM Only)
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- During a previous minor anomaly, Elias was:
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- Trapped in a subnode chamber for several minutes while the Root did its “structured hum” thing.
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- He heard something whisper his name in the noise.
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- Since then:
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- He sometimes hears faint echoes when near stressed taps.
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- He chalks it up to nerves, but you can decide how much is Root attention.
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- D’serris has flagged him in the system as:
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- “Technician-tier access, potential long-term recruit.”
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- If the PCs burn Elias, D’serris may try to pull him closer or throw him under the bus, depending on who’s more useful.
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- Elias has minor illicit projects:
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- Personal logging daemon scraping more Root data than he’s supposed to.
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- Secret backups of certain anomaly logs in case Oversight “loses” them.
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---
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## How to Play Elias
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- **Voice:** Quiet, slightly awkward, sentence fragments that trail off into jargon. Speeds up when talking about technical stuff.
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- **Body language:** Shoulders a bit hunched, always fiddling with a tool or crystal tablet, rarely makes long eye contact.
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- **Key Lines:**
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- “Uh. That… that’s not what it’s supposed to do.”
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- “Okay, so, if this graph is right, we should *not* be in this room right now.”
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- “I can’t officially tell you to go there. But if you did, and took notes, I… might be able to fix something.”
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- **Pivot:** When the PCs back him up against admin or Oversight, he can:
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- Crack and spill a bunch of classified info in a panic,
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- Or retreat and ghost them for a while, terrified he’ll lose his job.
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