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Karse is a typical Marrian, a bipedal mammalian species adapted for a nocturnal lifestyle, with a coat of dark colored fur, eyes that are sensitive to light, and above average senses of hearing and smell, as well as a modest tail for balance purposes. Karse in particular stands at a respectable five-foot-ten, with a somewhat fit body. His most distinguishing features are his right arm and eye, both of which were damaged beyond repair and have been replaced by cybernetics, the arm is bare metal and connects to a modular socket grafted over his shoulder joint, while the eye looks largely inconspicuous, but still contains the distinct details of a prosthetic.
Personality
Karse has, after a long and unpleasant life, adopted a generally resigned demeanor, although he will still work furiously towards what he believes is within his power, he is quick to simply accept things that he feels are not. Somewhat slow to trust and commonly distant Karse nonetheless does not style himself as a malicious individual, extending a great deal of thought and concern for those he works with.
Equipment
- Custom light powered armor: Designed for as wide a range of uses as possible, Karse’s armor is as lightweight and compact as powered armor can reasonably be while still performing its job, offering environmental sealing, highly resistant armor up to an inch thick with thorough coverage, as well as a built-in tactical computer connected tenuously to Karse via wireless implant and much more solidly via voice commands and his HUD.
- Custom holdout pistol: A small pistol-caliber fully automatic weapon is concealed in the armor panel fitting over the forearm of his cybernetic arm, although it lacks capacity and stopping power it is nonetheless a viable last resort.
Background
Karse’s early life is thoroughly unremarkable, born into a middle class family on Morelas as Delan Sertun, Delan enjoyed a quiet and successful early life, attending school to be an engineer he ultimately was employed by Tarsun Defense Industries in their weapons development department, specializing in small arms. Although he had a promising career ahead of him, corporate politics saw Delan randomly chosen to take the fall for a plan to fabricate a national security scare to bolster sagging sales. Being framed as a terrorist understandably put a premature end to Delan’s career as an engineer, and he was incredibly lucky to avoid arrest initially.
Going to ground among the destitute vagrants of Morelas Delan was able to avoid the subsequent police crackdown, but was ill-suited for surviving on the street. After several weeks of hiding and living off scraps and garbage, Delan had had enough, and decided to try and steal some sustenance before malnutrition killed him. Unfortunately a malnourished engineer does not a scary mugger make. As he attempted to scrape by he was tracked down and approached by some shady men who, in no unclear terms, explained that they represented the local crime lord and Delan was going to get the hell off their turf and stop scaring people, or they were going to kill him. Seeing another opportunity to worm his way out of a grisly and undeserved end, Delan quickly offered his professional skills to the men, who reluctantly agreed to bring him back to their hideout where Delan could present his case in person.
The crime boss in question was an ambitious one, moving quickly to fill in the void of power left after the recent police crackdown in the wake of Delan’s alleged attack, and he was very receptive to Delan’s offer. Wary of deception, the crime boss allowed Delan a modest workshop, and his life, so long as he could deliver on his promise of weapons. Without the equipment to produce modern energy weapons, and no experience with archaic ballistic weapons, Delan frantically improvised a crash course on how to build antique pistols for himself. Able to recover some semblance of a standard of living, Delan nonetheless was not thrilled about his new status as a criminal weaponsmith, but powerless to do anything about his predicament, he simply buried himself in his work.
For several months Delan was scarcely seen outside of the workshop he had been provided, his services were a great boon to the organization though, and its influence and power spread fast and far, in turn allowing Delan access to better equipment to make better weapons. Delan’s willful ignorance of what he was enabling came crashing down when some of the thugs came home with a hostage. Apparently the boss’ latest plan involved starting to pressure the local government by kidnapping and ransoming the daughter of some official, this added a horrifying degree of reality to Delan’s actions, but he still powered through, as he saw no other choice, he figured the police would come to rescue the girl soon, or her father would pay the ransom and she would leave.
Neither of those outcomes came to pass, as weeks dragged on Dalen did everything possible to avoid the old office where they were keeping her, but this too only sheltered him from the truth temporarily. Eventually Dalen learned that many of the gang members had taken to “using” their poor hostage to blow off steam and just pass the time. This was the final straw, he couldn’t stand by and watch this any longer. Working day and night Karse crafted one last pair of weapons, a rifle and a pistol for himself, and he haphazardly lashed together some makeshift armor using scrap lying around. If the police were unable or unwilling to rescue this poor girl, he would do it himself.
Later that night he collapsed onto the sidewalk outside, the boss was dead, but so was the girl, and Dalen’s arm was reduced to bloody ribbons when he tried to protect her, to say nothing of the eye he lost earlier. By all means his story should have ended there, bleeding out into the gutter, but he had caught the attention of some foreign agents. Tecarian Special Operations Command had been keeping a finger on the pulse of his operations, with a vested interest in destabilizing the Marrian Federation by nurturing criminal organizations and political opposition groups, they practically considered Dalen an asset already. They extended him a one-time offer, they would save his life, and in return he would keep making and selling weapons to the undesirables of the galaxy. Being a coward, Dalen blearily accepted, and passed out.
When next he awoke, Dalen had a new eye and arm, both sophisticated cybernetics courtesy of his new benefactors, he also found himself in a hideout of his very own, an underground facility on some out-of-the-way planet in Tecarian space. After a brief tour of the facility his current situation was that he would have a lot more operational freedom now, but he would be expected to maintain a respectable presence as an ostensibly independent black market weapons dealer, if he couldn’t deliver there was somebody willing to “cut the Empire’s losses” less than a minute away from him at all times now. Dalen resolved that this would be a new chapter in his life, Dalen had died in that gutter, and so he adopted the alias Karse and left his bloodied past behind.
Karse’s legacy wound up being even more bloody than Dalen’s though, unable to safely conduct business in person without revealing his connection to the Tecarian Empire, Karse was frequently scammed and cheated out of both product and credits, and TSOC would not fund him completely and indefinitely. The difficult solution was that he needed to respond to these offenses with offenses of his own, after his near-death mauling on Morelas he had resolved to keep the otherwise temporary cybernetics as a reminder, and he had resolved to learn to make some proper armor for himself. With some help from the Tecarian doctor assigned to him he assembled a full suit of powered armor, received the necessary nervous interface implant to control it, and he left the safety of his new “home” to make a few bloody examples.
The Tecarians were willing to accompany and help him on these revenge quests provided no witnesses were left behind, and he foolishly accepted this offer. The added death and carnage only weighed further on his mind, it was a necessary evil but it was one that was tearing him apart, there had to be a better way. Then one night a better person for the job presented himself, after dealing with another deadbeat alone Karse encountered a drunken and irate Leo in an alley, the merc looked ragged, but his contract records were publicly accessible and his reputation as a brutal, stubborn, and efficient killer was hard to avoid. Karse saw nothing he didn’t like in Leo, a thoroughly unpleasant individual who had burned every bridge he had and was almost certainly living on borrowed time. Karse made a simple offer to Leo, generous retainer pay, quarters, and all the alcohol the merc could drink, and the drunkard eagerly accepted before even hearing what he had to do. He really was the perfect candidate.
Leo kept largely to himself, starting a few brawls with the Tecarians when they took to scamming him out of his wages with gambling once he was drunk, but after a number of two-way beatings the groups developed a begrudging respect for one another. On the job Leo was everything Karse could have hoped for, brutal, efficient, swift, and expendable. The worst case scenario was that Leo dies and leaves no trace of Tecarian involvement, none of his gear wasn’t available on the black market already, and he spent too much time intoxicated to really appreciate the operation he was now entangled in. However as the months dragged on Leo eagerly confronted more and more overwhelming odds, coming home on death’s door, and then miraculously recovering each time, Karse found that the idea of the merc dying didn’t appeal to him at all.
Sure Leo was an ass, but he had been loyal, he hadn’t bitten the hand that was feeding him like he tended to lash out at everyone else around him, and he would be genuinely difficult to replace. So Karse made an offer to Leo, he had already provided Leo with a collection of custom weapons, and now he would supply Leo with his own suit of armor, over the past few years Karse had become quite used to his armor, accepting more implants to extend its functionality and iterating on its systems until it had begun to feel like a second skin. Unlike him though, Leo was not as accepting of the concept of receiving an implant in his skull to wear a giant suit of armor that would slow him down, but after some bargaining and reassurances he agreed, and Karse set to work.
Borrowing the half-completed husk of one of the Tecarian superheavy infantry droids Karse used it as the basis for a suit that would go toe to toe with an armored vehicle. Leo took to the new suit well, delighting in its inertia and power, but before too long he had worked himself out of a job, most people either refused to do business with Karse or wouldn’t think of trying to cheat him in fear of Leo’s wrath. With more free time than he knew what to do with, Leo sank into a deep alcoholic slump, finally killing his body with all of it, and as Karse’s doctor explained how lucky Leo was that it had taken this long for his body to give out he decided that he still didn’t fancy the idea of losing Leo, so he gave his doctor the simple instruction “fix him” and left.
A year after Leo’s brush with alcohol poisoning Karse’s benefactors in TSOC had their own brush with death, assaulting the Imperial senate and getting their command chain dismantled, Karse was left in the breeze with his doctor and security forces as forgotten assets. The Tecarian Engineering Corps was hesitantly receptive to forming an agreement with him, they would not offer him any active support but they were willing to let him retain his current home and the Tecarians with whom he had built up mutual respect over the years in exchange for his services as a consultant offering his distinct and external viewpoint and opinions on matters. Ultimately his life didn’t change much as a result of the new agreement, he found he kept up the black market weapon smith show as a matter of habit, something had changed with Leo, but otherwise his life was finally starting to look up.