Brian Smith

Brian Smith as Mortar, circa 2077

Brian Smith as Shaker, circa 2045-2046

Brian Smith as Chase, Circa 2017-2023

Brick & Mortar Apartments

**Brian Smith**, also known as **Chase**, **Shaker**, **Blank**, and countless other aliases, is a solo in Night City. He has most recently taken the handle **Mortar**.

## Biography

### 2000s-2010s

Brian grew up in the Pacifica Arcology, the only son of well-to-do corporate stooges who worked hard for Militech. He grew up admiring stories his parents would tell about Morgan Blackhand and watching television shows about bad ass action heroes. In middle school, he started dating Meagan Fisher and the two were a couple all throughout their teens. Brian was a part of the JROTC in the arco's high school.

### 2017

In the spring, Brian married his childhood sweetheart. Then, in the summer, Brian enlisted in the NUSA military and around Thailand, Myanmar, and Laos during the re-establishment of opium production in the region. During his tour of duty, Brian saw conflict nearly every single day. This made him a very capable killer, but also ruined his ideas of patriotism as all they were sent to do is protect drug crops and his friends and fellow soldiers were dying in gruesome and horrific ways for what he considered to be no real reason. While on leave, Brian went AWOL and did everything he could to get out of the Opium Theater, moving through Japan back to NorCal.

### 2019

Brian returns stateside, moving in with Meagan in the Watson district or Night City and starting a comfortable life as a low-level Militech exec, who turn a blind eye to his military service and the nature of his leaving that contract. After he is laid off, Brian takes a job as a gun-for-hire and crosses the wrong guy on the job, causing Militech to renew its interest in him and consider him a lost asset. He breaks it off with Meagan and gets a divorce against her will with help from his remaining friendly connections at Militech. He goes into hiding and starts getting more chrome upgrades, specifically a cyberarm and cybereye. During this time, he does some odd jobs for the Valentinos, mainly guard duty for the boys going out to clubs to party and to seduce women.

### 2020

Brian, using the handle Chase during this time, gains some notoriety on the streets of Night City. He and a group of other punks are pulled together by a Militech exec to deal with a small time gang in South Night City known as the Red Rings. The group consists of Brick, Chase, Mickey, Night Knight, Ren, and Valor. They plan for a few days and try to infiltrate through the roof to secure the elevator to secret floors used by the gang to protect their top brass. The job goes south and leads to a massive gunfight on the roof of the building where Ren is zeroed and the loading bay at the base of it with Night Knight getting put down. Ultimately, Brick, Chase, Mickey, and Valor get out after bombing the defended floors. It is later learned that the leaders of the gang weren't killed in the strike and Militech isn't exactly happy with the whole fiasco.

Later that year, Chase learns that his ex-wife Meagan is looking for him and has herself gained a reputation as a hired killer known as Black Meagan.

### 2023

As Chase, he takes a job alongside Brick, Mickey, and Valor along with a new guy named Spider. The job is simple: smash & grab some Militech junk from a crash site up north of Night City in the town of Cayucos, killing the collection team on site, and getting out with the goods. The job went well until Militech aircraft swept overhead and strafed the crew's car, then the punks themselves on a second run. In the aftermath, Spider and Valor were splattered, Brick lightly wounded, and Chase's remaining meat arm and both his legs were blown off. He was saved by Brick. It was later learned that Mickey sold the crew out to Militech and got out on his own with the goods to return them to the Corporation.

Brian got new cybernetics put in to replace the missing parts and had his documents forged to take the name Andrew Mantz. He takes the new handle of Shaker. As he remained in a hospital recovering, he watched the bombing of Arasaka Tower on an old TV in his room.

### 2045-2046

With his new forged identity, Shaker has gained a number of close friends and associations that allow for him to get a healthy income and take up residence in a luxury apartment on the northside of Pacifica. He starts working exclusively for The Glen's fixer Grease, being there when the fixer's apartments were attacked by a small security firm hoping to forcibly evict him and take the property. After, he joined up with a number of other punks associated with the fixer, including Redeye, Lucky, Forty, Krystal, Odette, Salt, SpOtLiGhT, Tark, s u g a r, and Zigzag. His largest job had him and Zigzag's crew stealing a highly illegal Arasaka biochip from a secret warehouse and selling it to a Militech exec who was buying it for purposes outside of the corp's desires for the technology. It was used to save a little girl, the niece of a punk named Styker. The job involved blowing up a rail line and dropping a train onto the Danger Gal security operatives outside and escaping on jet skis to a hydrofoil cruise ship off the coast.

When members of the crew, namely Salt and Zigzag, were later attacked by Black Meagan who was seeking information on Shaker, he had Tark perform some cosmetic surgery to make him look different and changed his handle to Blank. As Blank, Shaker was a part of the team that accompanied the Joe Boys into Megabuilding H3's bar, the Astral Sea, where they killed Grease and Redeye. Blank was aware that he was hired on by Zigzag directly, while others thought they were hired by Junior.

### 2066

After decades of running, Brian finally faced off with Meagan in the middle of the Coronado Dam. Both came with violence in mind with a score to settle. In the end, Brian detonated a massive block of C-6 directly under the two of them. Brian narrowly survived the explosion and the fall down the dam. He was able to peel himself off the asphalt and limp to the nearest ripperdoc, where he had a lot of his high end chrome removed and replaced with bargain bin replacements just to get him moving. He still required several years after this event going in and out of the ICU, mental and physical therapy before he was even close to fully functional again.

### 2075

Brian Smith was scouted by a Militech exec named Vernon Fisk, high ranking member of the Night City Reclamation Department. He was given an ultimatum: either occasionally take on tasks for the exec and his connections, or Fisk would see to it that the things he was able to find out about Brian's past with all the dots he had connected would be laid bare to others in the corp. Brian took on the jobs and was connected with a fixer named Johan Yevnesky.

### 2077

As of current day, Brian Smith goes by the handle Mortar and lives in an apartment on Skyline East in Vista del Rey. His connections with the Valentinos are still strong and more often than not he's hired out as a hired gun or strong arm for the Valentinos, especially in engagements that deal with the 6th Street Gang.

## Equipment

* **Budget Arms Carnage.** Standard model Shotgun.
* **Militech Ronin.** Assault Rifle with Grenade Launcher Underbarrel Attachment
* **Militech Avenger.** Medium Pistol.
* **Techtronika T37 Bastion.** Standard model Rocket Launcher.
* **Kiroshi Optics Mk. 1 Cyber Eye.** Right eye with Chyron heads up display and targeting scope.
* **Dynalar One Processor.** Neural Link with Interface Plugs and Sandevistan speedware.
* **K-10X Cyberarms.** Pair of cyberarms, both with Big Knucks. Left arm has Popup Heavy Pistol, right hand has Subdermal Grip.
* **NovelTech Corvette Cyberlegs.** Pair of cyberlegs, both with Jump Boosters.
* **Dynalar Sigma Skeleton.** Implanted Linear Frame Sigma.
* **Trauma Team BioMon.** Biomonitor, linked to Neural Link and personal agent.

## Notes

Brian Smith is regarded as a lost asset by the NUSA and Militech, as he went AWOL and was seen as an asset worth reclaiming due to the 2019 Incident.

## Trivia

Brian Smith, aka Chase, Shaker, Blank, and now Mortar is the single longest running character in the *Dark Skies* variant of the Cyberpunk Roleplaying Game. He was created by Andy M originally as Chase, then played as a variation of the Jumpstart Kit's pregenerated Solo named Mover but renamed as Shaker as another player was playing as Mover, thus creating the duo Mover & Shaker. Other characters would go on to create characters that had similar gimmicks for naming conventions, as well as NPCs.