> > What does your character think about the survival horror genre (films,
> > games, books, etc)?

Chordae never had much time for random entertainment growing up,
especially nothing of that genre. Her parents kept her busy with
charity type things and school. Med school wasn't much better and her
free time while she was working as a resident was spent at street
clinics or sleeping. However, she briefly dated someone in college
who like that sort of thing. She couldn't get past the fact that the
viscera of the corpses was just so wrong. Intestines don't look like
that and really a left hypochrondiac puncture where neither the spleen
nor stomach are damaged? Occasionally she was fascinated by the way
some of the viruses worked in movies but they never stood up to her
scrutiny.

Sarah

> Now, to the homework. What kind of music does your character like? Does
> he or she like different kinds of music in different circumstances?

Chordae generally doesn't think about it much. She associates
classical music with the stuffy fundraising affairs she attended with
her parents. She was doing a paper in high school about a physician
named Armstrong and in her research came across Louis Armstrong from
the 20th Century. There was some great sound clips and she really
liked the style. She is somewhat sorry that music has gone the way of
synthsized sounds when the real thing has so much more personality.
She tends to listen to angsty girl rock when she's riding around the
city doing some thinking but most of the time music doesn't play a
large part in her life.

> What would your character do if Mr. Johnson left you holding the bag,
> trapped, doomed, and otherwise completely screwed over? Assume that you
> get out of immediate danger.
>

A Johnson reputation is just as important to them as our reputation is
to us. If he doesn't hold up his end of the deal--assuming we can
track him--the very least we could do is make sure other teams know
about it.

I think the biggest issue is making sure the team is safe. Revenge
may not be worth our time--in this world everything comes at a much
higher price than we realize. If possible may be we can re-coop some
money on something we were supposed to lift or on protecting the
person we were supposed to kill. It depends upon what the mission
was.

I'd be angry and frustrated but everytime I've made a decision based
on emotion in this job I have regretted it later.

--Chordae

> It's Sunday morning, your character has no commitments until tomorrow
> afternoon. What does he or she do for the day?

Chordae is a night person generally. On a weekend when she isn't
running she'd take a shift at Altered Mind late on Saturday until the
wee hours. She'd still be up though when she got home so she'd start
working on her research or watching bad medical dramas until the rest
of the world woke up. Then she'd shower and head out looking for a
street market of some sort. The fact that she is supposed to be dead
makes it difficult to do got to any mainstream markets and she doesn't
like her fake SINs noticed too much. But street markets are usually
fun and help the community out.

When she get home she crashes until late Sunday evening when she gets
up and cooks herself a little dinner, catches up on the news, and
takes a long hot bath. She likes her idle days but she tries to have
as few as possible as. She'd rather be busy and usually ends up
taking on an extra shift of some sort at Zeke's.

> How would you react to being offered a job that would be challenging,
> but within your capabilities, for greater-than-typical compensation, but
> would require that your memory of the run be erased? Under what
> circumstances would this arrangement be acceptable, and how would you
> handle it?

There are really no guarantees that a Johnson will hold up their end
of the bargain in any situation we encounter. A lot of it is luck
when a Johnson does what they promise. I'm willing to accept that the
job is dangerous or that we might get stiffed for the payout. I am
not however okay with a Johnson messing with my head and then erasing
any memory that they were there. Who knows what they will tap into or
destroy. It leaves no room to correct or learn from errors that
happened on missions (this is still a learning process for me) and
there is no accountability to the Johnson--it is like a get of jail
free card for them and a death sentence for me. I'm not cool with
that.

--Chordae

> The ACHE has a fairly uniform clothing style, but the outside world
> doesn't. What is your character's personal style? How, if at all, does
> it change based on situation? What would your character wear if he or
> she could get away with it? What first impression does your character's
> style give to others?

For the better part of the last 10 years Chordae has pretty much lived
in scrubs. It's about the only thing that she is really comfortable
in and she was so rarely outside a clinical setting that she needed
actual clothes. Chordae has never felt much need to stand out in a
crowd. In fact she sort of enjoys the opposite so much of her
collection of street clothes has always been black. Occasionally some
blue but generally black. When she started running she got her
herself a pair of black leather pants to go with the somewhat
Hollywood image of what it was to be a runner that she had in her
head. She's only about 5'3" though so they had to be altered a bit.
Her armor jacket was a black leather jacket cut to resemble a lab
coat. It has probably been her biggest splurge. Well, except for may
be her shoes. The one thing Chordae splurges on outside of quality
spa products are shoes. She will even buy shoes that don't go with
any of her existing clothes just because she likes them. Chordae
spent so much time on her feet as a doctor that she has always been
keenly aware of the quality of her footwear. The boots she got for
running were custom designed for both her foot and her gait.

http://www.digitalchangeling.com/gaming/session_notes/smark/070102.html

> Describe your character's living arrangements? What is the space like? What
> things in the living space illustrate that a person lives there (e.g.
> decorations, cholor schemes, etc.)?

Chordae lives in a one-bedroom, third-floor, walk-up apartment outside
the city. The apartment is over a small mom-and-pop grocery/novelty
store. Nice people. Anyway, each room in the apartment is small but
they are partitioned off so it seems larger than it is. You enter in
the main living area. There is a couch and a trid. In the corner is
the window to the fire escape/balcony. There are a bunch of plants on
a shelf by the window--I should say plant. Most plants Chordae owns
are fake--she only really seems to be good at keeping people alive.
There are some beakers with plant cuttings growing so she can study
and one aloe plant Chordae took a cutting of from her mom's. It's the
only thing that has survived.

Through a doorway is a small nook (sp?) to the right Chordae has put a
table in. She uses this as an office with the main eating table being
in the kitchen through the next doorway. However to the left in this
second room is the door to Chordae's small bedroom. Inside is the
first of Chordae's 2 luxuries. Her large plush queen size bed covered
in tons of pillows. Back to the kitchen it is a utilitarian galley
kitchen. In the kitchen on the left wall there is a door to the
bathroom which also connects to the bedroom. A feature Chordae would
have thought inconvenient had she ever had guests over but it works
out rather well in her solitude. The bathroom is small but contains a
shelf full of spa quality items (this is the second luxury) and most
of the decor in here is designed to be relaxing and spa like--with
candles and soft colors.

The apartment walls are white and there isn't much in terms of decor
in the rest of the apartment. A few random pieces she picked up
inexpensively here and there. She put most of her money into keeping
her space at Zeke's as up to date as she can. After losing everything
when she had to walk away from her big museum of a house back in the
Boston area, Chordae doesn't want to maintain the same kind of
attachment to things that she once had. She assumes her life will no
longer be permanent in any sense of the word and doesn't want to go
through that heartbreak again.

> If your character could have any pet, what would he or she want? What would
> be most appropriate for the character, regardless of what he or she wants?
> In either case, why, and how well would they be cared for?

Chordae has never really had time for pets. Her grandparents had
horses and she enjoyed interacting with them just as much as she
enjoyed leaving them in the capable hands of the stable crew when she
was done. She did have a guinea pig when she was about 12 that was
part of a science project (and before you go there no guinea pigs
were harmed in the project). But that was about it. Chordae has
always had a fondness for cats because they are independent,
intelligent, and just enough crazy to be interesting. For as little
as she's home it has never made much sense though. Instead she makes
a generous donation to an animal shelter each year.

> Assume your character is seeking companionship, and has the opportunity to
> write a detailed personal ad for a Matrix dating service. Write the ad.

Chordae doesn't want companionship outside of a professional sense.
All of her friends and boyfriends have never really understood that
her work comes first. Yes she needs people but she needs them on her
own terms (have I mentioned she is somewhat selfish). Most of her
relationships have ended because she was never around. She does admit
that it would be nice to have someone watch medical dramas with late
at night when she can't sleep but she doesn't want strings.

Her ad would read something like this:
SWF workaholic loves literature and French cuisine seeks SWM for no
strings attached good clean fun. Must enjoy watching medical dramas
and late nights.

> Assuming that this is true, and that your character could, indeed, summon a
> watcher spirit, what would it look like? What would it sound like? What
> idiosyncrasies would it have that would set it apart from other people's
> watcher spirits?

Either a songbird or more likely a cat of some kind. I
don't imagine them speaking much but instead being very intense and
curious. There would be a strong urge to want to get into everything
and I imagine this would create some conflict with their task. I'm
never really worked with watcher spirits so that's really all the
farther my imagination is getting on this one.

On 11/3/06, Aaron <aaron@pavao.org> wrote:
> Most people have some item, tool, or memento that they regard as very
> important, if not downright sacred to them. What is your character's sacred
> item? How did your character come by it, and why did it become important?

There are 2 items actually. The first item Chordae has is an antique
stethoscope that has been in her family for generations. There have
been doctors/healers of some sort along her lineage for more than a
century and this has been passed down from one doctor to the next upon
completion of medical school. Chordae loves it because it still
works--it's not some high tech blinking do-hicky with lasers and what
not. It's a simple honest instrument that still performs it's task
and gives her the information she needs to help others. It connects
her to her family and to her history which is comforting in a cold and
somewhat uncaring world.

The second item is a small clay leopard that fits in her hand. Her
father made a life long study of the healing arts and medicines of
cultures all around the world (in fact his notebooks helped Chordae
write the thesis that got her into Sader-Krupp). As a child she
accompanied him once to visit a tribe in the central part of the U.S.
(she was small and doesn't remember the name). They stayed with a
local shaman and his wife and while her father went out with the
shaman, Chordae stayed behind with the woman--Dahlana was her
name--and helped her cook supper for the evening and make flatbread.
That night there was some sort of disturbance in the village--or maybe
it was a bad dream; Chordae can't remember--but Dahlana sat with her
all night comforting her. She gave her the small clay leopard to keep
her safe and watch over her. Chordae has carried in her pocket
everyday since then and hopes to some day be able to bind it.

> Assuming they could speak, what would each of your character's parents
> (separately) say about him/her?

Both of Chordae's parents have past away. Her father was never very
good at looking at feelings outside of a clinical setting. He loves
his daughter and while he wishes she were more spiritually in tune he
has nothing ill to say of her. In point of fact, he would not
understand why you would ask the question.

However, I think her mother would have this to say:
"As the daughter of a diplomat I learned at a young age the value of
humanitarian service. Because of my experiences I grew into a
passionate adult always fighting for a cause. My husband, while he
shunned the money that made his life possible, was able to pursue his
life's work because of it. He wanted to heal the world one molecule
at a time for him science was the answer. We decided to raise our
daughter to do everything she could to help her fellow man. We took
her with us on our humanitarian visits. She picked up the garbage in
broken down neighborhoods at the age of four and she ladled soup to
the homeless before she mastered her alphabet. We thought that we
were teaching her our passion to help others, but we did not realize
that we were showing her a world of contradiction. During her
afternoons, she would help those who did not have the luxuries she
had, and at night she spent her time debating philosophy with her
father, myself, and Xavier. I think what we ended up teaching her
that the injustice of the world was balanced by doing a kind thing.
And while she may not realize it consciously, I think there is a part
of Audra that believes that everyone can go home to a warm supper and
a comfortable bed at night if they just wait long enough or work hard
enough. She became desensitized. Service became something that she
just did though she never understood why. She signs all the right
petitions, she votes in the elections, and she volunteers her time to
help others, but I wonder if she understands the why her time is so
important in this way. We never taught Audra what it means to have a
passion. We thought she would learn that by helping us in our causes.
But we were so wrapped up in our work that we forgot about the little
girl who spent her days split into two worlds. She goes through the
motions of doing the right thing because she wants to make us proud.
That was not the lesson we had intended to teach. I think that is why
Audra could never really deal with my passing. We sheltered her. We
wanted her to remember the happiness we shared a rather than the
sadness of loss. What we ended up doing was confusing her. We left
this sweet young girl without a mother and not having the capability
to understand why I wasn't going to come back. Perhaps that is why
Audra was so devoted to medicine. Perhaps she is trying to understand
how to ask the question we never taught her to ask—why—so that she can
finally find the right answers. I'm not sure that I approve of this
new life she has found, but maybe at last Audra will be forced to
understand what right and wrong really mean as she is faced with these
choices everyday. I see her having a harder and harder time
justifying what she is doing in Seattle. I hope that this does not
break her. I miss my little girl. I wish I could be there for her."

--Sarah

> Give three functions that are important to the team that are performed by
> your character. Explain why they are important, and why your character is
> the best candidate for that particular task.


Healing is the obvious one--both magical and non. This will be more
effective in combat when I can get a sustaining focus. Especially as
Bathan keeps soaking up bullets like a sponge.

If I'd start rolling better astral projection is helpful to get an
idea of what we're looking at before we enter a location. This was
something I should have used before we went to the graveyard.

As to a third, I'm not sure. Stunbolt is occasionally helpful but I
don't have a lot of initiative passes. More than anything, Chordae
wants to be a voice of reason but she's rather inexperienced so it
doesn't always work the way she would like. She does occasionally
help with karma if only because she wants to rescue everyone and
everything.

--Sarah

> Give some reasons why you (the player) would have to hate your character.

This may sound like a cop out but I don't actually hate my character.
I don't even dislike or find her irritating. I'm not sure that
Chordae and I would be friends but that's more because my brain
focuses so much differently than hers. I think perhaps she's a little
too dramatic. I also think that she needs to always be doing the
"right thing" to the point of deluding herself that when survival
requires her to do the wrong thing it is in some way right. As I
think about it though, the most detestable thing about Chordae is that
she doesn't truly understand how fortunate she was in her upbringing.
There is a part of her that still thinks that all of this will go away
and she can go back to her safe little world. She doesn't grasp that
people can't choose to have trust funds.

> Additionally, what reasons would someone that hates your character have for
> their dislike?

She's lawful stupid. There has to be some noble quest buried in all
the muck. There is only so much windmill-tilting a person can stomach
before they want to punch her in the face.

--Sarah

I started having this nightmare in college after my father passed
away. I was being dragged through a corridor by someone or something
extremely large. He was cast in shadow so I could not see his face.
He was wearing a black business suit; I do remember that.

The corridor was lit only by a hanging fixture with a bare bulb about
every 20 feet. Eventually we got to a door, and upon entering it, we
were in a room full of charred debris and smoke. There was a little
boy covered in ash asking me to help him find his mommy. I try to
free myself but my "escort" just tugs harder and tells me to keep
going. Then we pass through another door. In this room it looks like
some sort of accident and there is a man pinned nder a ubus. He's
surrounded by people--all of whom look bloodied and beaten--who are
asking for my help. But, it's the same story. We keep going forward.
In each room there is more carnage--worse than before. And, I can't
help. There's nothing I can do. I have to keep going forward. The
last room I remember before I wake up is white and filled with light.
My mother is in her bed hooked up to various life support machines.
There's a teenage girl at her bedside who looks up at me. It's me, or
at least me as I was then. And, she asks me to help her. To save the
woman in the bed, my mother. But I can't help her. I can never help
her.

--Chordae

Server didn't seem to want to accept my homework so it will be posted here:

> Running the shadows tends to interrupt one's daily (or weekly) routine.
> What is your character's routine when he or she is not shadowrunning?

Chordae hasn't really had a routine since she moved to Seattle and it's made her cranky. She feels like she's never home and she really misses treating patients--even what little work she does at Altered Mind is better than nothing. Generally, when the team doesn't have a job Chordae cycles between working at Zeke's shop, volunteering in some capacity, doing some research, or just watching bad TV. It's somewhat difficult to make plans or start projects when she is never sure what might interrupt them. And, with this line of work she accepts that her apartment has become the place she dwells rather than a home--that at any given moment she will have to just pick up and go. It's hard to get settled into a routine in a world like that. Mostly her life has become a blur. It's a new experience for someone who likes order, lists, and the ability to make plans.

Writing the thesis was a good break from the shadowy world though. It was five weeks of frustration but at least she had a normal schedule for the period--Get up at the crack of sunset, fix some coffee (the rest of the pantry may be soy but the coffee NEVER will
be) and food of some sort. Compile her notes and reading material for the day. Work until 2am. Watch bad medical dramas on late night feed for a break from 2am to about 4am. Gather notes and write until she crashes at 11am. Darken all the windows. Sleep. Repeat for 7 days. It was sort of like college.

Then there was the very bad morning sometime in Week 2 of this cycle when Chordae discovered that some brain dead moron wrote a very bad and poorly researched essay using the same premise as her very own thesis. As far as scholarly work, the slob must have sold his soul to
publish it. Given that she no longer exists her credentials aren't going to back up her debunking of his essay. The details from much of that day are hazy but it involved a very angry mage shouting obscenities and making things explode. There are some house plants, broken pottery, and a landlords substantially padded bank account that could probably tell the tale better.

Anyway, after she cooled off for a bit, she was able to start on a new topic and the
same cycle began again with little interruptions. Three weeks later Chordae is initiated but just as frustrated as before she started on any sort of routine. She is discovering how quickly she is adapting to this world and has decided that perhaps "routine" isn't really a flavor she likes anymore. What's worse, she's not sure if that is good or bad.

Let me just say when it comes to taking on assassination jobs--or as they are so gruesomely referred to as "wetwork"--I'm appalled quite frankly. I accept that in this world violence is
currency. I will do what I have to as part of protecting the team. That doesn't mean I wouldn't rather find a better way to accomplish a job without violence. I've already had to put so much of myself aside to do this. Entering a mission knowing that its very purpose is for someone to die--I don't know if I can handle that. That may not be popular but I figure my team should know now rather than later. This announcement wasn't met well but it's the truth and I'm not going to lie.

Ironically, our most recent job is to destroy Emerald Numina, an advisor for Julius Struthers, the mayor of Seattle. Of course this isn't just a normal assassination mission as Ms. Numina is a free spirit. Exciting, huh? Gave myself quite a headache trying to boost my knowledge skill of magic theory to an active arcana skill. But it looks like I needed to find out what her spirit formula was in order to banish her. Why is it the person most opposed to killing is set with the task of banishing?

I of course didn't feel quite so awful about it after the team did some research into who she was and what she was willing to do to others in order to protect herself. Stupid bitch.

Stupid Johnson.

Haven’t been sleeping. I can’t get the last mission out of my head. And, it’s not just the guilt of not understanding how my powers can help. I think I missed something important and I’ve been haunted by it. I don’t think the disc was just music. I think there was more. The phrase “for enlightenment seek out absent friends” runs through my head over and over. I’ve taken to driving through the streets at night listening to Jet Black recordings on my system trying to make sense of it all. There was too much money tied up in getting that disc and the only thing more powerful than money is secrets. There was also a hell of a lot of fire power—all shoot first and forget about the questions. I need to know where the story is going. I’m tempted to look up the vampire mage and see if she knows more, but I think that’s only a recipe for disaster.

I had to head back to Boston over the last week to finalize some points of my life back there and get a chance to spend time with Professor Xavier Rasmussen—a man I’ve always known as Uncle Avi.

Xavier was my father’s college roommate and life long collaborator. Where my father approached magic and healing from the view of a shaman, Xavier saw the world of only
through science and nothing existed outside of that. It was the reason he became a doctor because science provided mankind a way to heal and it was the duty to respect it's power. He was often baffled by people who refused treatment for religious reasons. Science was religion and he saw it as stupid to die when science could heal. One of my favorite stories about him concerned a long-standing feud with a student he met at campus. Xavier believed very firmly that any monkey could put together cyber ware, but that the manipulation of genetic material to create enhanced organic material was a true art form. When he published an article on a genetically altering the heart valves in patients whose were malfunctioning, he received a piece of cyber ware from the aforementioned student who was himself now the head of a cybernetics divison. It was cyber ware designed after Xavier’s research. Avi wrote back simply: “Thanks for the paper weight.”

My father and Xavier were close friends up until my father's death, and there combined research has saved countless lives. He's always been a part of my life and became Uncle Avi because I couldn't pronounce Xavier. In the end even my father called him that too. With both my parents gone, Avi is all I have. It was through his help that my trust fund could be redirected to help save my life. Because of his status within the medical research community, he is still fed tidbits of information and asked for advice. Though, he's generally too involved in some new theory to pay much attention.