[K5pbem] Update on game status

[Mathieu Roy]

Michael Surbrook wrote:

> I think it would be a good idea for those people to introduce  
> themselves and possible present their character concepts. At the same  
> time, the original players might want to do the same.

My name's Mathieu Roy and I hail from Gatineau, in Quebec, Canada. I've 
been around from the very start, with my character, Raven, making her 
initial appearance in Turn One.

Raven is Zero Zone born and bred. She is a powerful psychokinetic who 
was born with serious deformities that confined her to a wheelchair. 
Accordingly she's used her power for everything, even the most mundane 
tasks, and has developed a huge amount of control over it. 
Shiroko-Tsuhi, a major corporation, found her and offered to cure her of 
her deformities in exchange for the esper to work for them; since they 
made this offer while Raven was recuperating from a ganger attack in a 
S-T hospital ward, she didn't hesitate. Raven spent a few months in the 
vat and emerged as, to paraphrase Jeff Skagen, "a genetically-perfected 
uber-babe"; and that's when the game started.

Raven has a long and bumpy history. She was a corporate esper weapon for 
quite some time, on friendly terms with her superiors, and made friends 
with several of the other characters and several NPCs. Then her superior 
Sanato was ousted, the corporation changed its attitude, and Raven found 
herself under much tighter control. Initially shocked, she fought hard 
from under that, and eventually managed to effect an escape -- with a 
lot of help from several friends, several of whom she still owes. She 
then became a freelance esper weapon, and spent a great deal of time and 
effort fighting the Zone war on the Zone side..

Personality-wise she's a bit of a mix; generally friendly and often 
downright noble. But she's also someone who's grown into the Zero Zone 
who's mentally very tough, and can be utterly vicious when she fights. 
She also has serious issues with rapists, people who threaten children, 
and the like -- "blow buildings up"-type issues. She has a bit of 
typical esper arrogance, which in her manifests into feelings of 
invulnerability rather than snubbing people; having been on the 
receiving end of that, she's not inclined in that direction. She also 
used to be rather innocent, but grew out of that during the course of 
the first game run. She still sometimes uses her powers when she could 
simply use her hands, simply because it's the way she's always done 
things, but that's another thing that's been less and less frequent as 
she got used to a functioning body.

In the intervening five years Raven has been spending a great deal of 
time helping raise and train the 20 esper kids she helped rescue from 
the Zero Zone, including Vivian Lau. With Vivian being the last of the 
espers remaining, she's now rededicating herself to her freelance work. 
Right now she's busy finding a place in HK; she makes a good deal of 
money as a world-class esper weapon so her digs are going to be classy.