Apex

Not so friendly magic hacker

### Summary

Apex, a mystic adept nosferatu sleaze decker, just dipping their toes in the awakened world as a means to enhance their hacking capabilities. Consumate professional, physiologically incapable of feeling empathy or remorse, and completely amoral, they still dislike the application of unnecessary violence, seeing it as a rather simplistic and inefficent, prefering tools such as blackmail and third parties to liquidate threats.

### Goals

* Cultivate their interests, by learning new languages, enjoying good music and delving deeper in the fields of sciences and thaumaturgy.

* Unveil the secrets of the true powers that run the Sixth World, and consequentially become one of those pulling the strings.

* Continue their transhumanist project of building the perfect mind through the combined efforts of biotechnology and hermetic magic.

* Build a network of shadowrunners and useful contacts for future shadow plots.

## Background

Kai's early life is basically uneventful as it gets. Born in a loving family of AA wageslaves (and UCAS SINners) that sadly never got to enjoy much quality time with their only child, got raised more by trids then their parents, the most boring, Sixth world family ever. The first spark of oddity was around the child's 6th birthday, when they got their very first commlink, a Sony Angel. It was an instant crush. Spending days trying to push new buttons, do new things, in general pushing the boundaries of that tech further and further.

Seeing the passion in their children the family decided to do some overtime shift and save up that extra cash, to make sure that maybe, just maybe, with those funds going into paying for a better school, Kai could live a life better then theirs. Their only child took this blessing very seriously, and studied hard, REALLY hard, to make it into EVO's young prodigy program. Basically, the AAA corp periodically scoops up potentially talented hackers from technical schools, promises them a future in the company, and gets a stream of high performing idiots who accept to get paid well below the rates they deserve cause they are still blinded by the hope of moving up the ranks. Usual corp drek. Kai managed to get inside, and while outside they were the most talented kid on the block, here they were just one of the many. The competition was fierce, but Kai was terrorized by failure, so they kept putting more and more effort in what they did.

2 years in, it came the realisation that a regular meatbrain, no matter how talented, could only get you so far, and thus Kai started using (and abusing) nootropic substances, soon finding out about psyche. That edge right there, THAT was what it was missing. With this newfound brain juice, the competition with the fellow interns stopped looking like a bloody free for all, and more like a managaeble fight for the spotlight with the other 2 or 3 truly talented kids with a surrounding background noise of mediocrity.

After that, years kept passing, but the hope for a truly great work position started to fade. With their family still sustaining them and paying for rent and other necessary expences, Kai was able to get some kickass mods, all with the very specific purpose of pushing their brain further and further, to be the best decker that EVO office ever saw.

And it kinda worked! Kai was, in fact, very good at the job. But with grandeur comes boredom, and that underlying feeling that you are being gravely underestimated. So, they did what all deckers do, and started trying to contact the shadows.

Picking up cyberduels for fun here and there, they realized that wow, those EVO teachers may have been full of drek, but taught how to codesling quite nicely. Those escapes were enough for Kai to assess their position in the Matrix food chain (which would be above most AA spiders but below the upper crust of shadowrunner hackers), and with some estimations, they realized that it could have been enough to get running with a profit aproximately 3 times better then what they were already earning, with margins of improvement.

Seeing with their own eyes how crazy good corps can be at tracking down people, when Kai finally "got extracted" the first urge was to go in places where no one could track them.

This also allowed to finally obtain a modicum of freedom, living alone and finally being able to transition without questions. From their small apartment in Bellevue, they started their mundane decker carreer in the Haven, proving a valuable asset to most teams. While not necessairily the best matrix specialist (even tho far from the worst), they were also versed in medicine and first aid, able to help formulate plans and stick to them and amoral just enough to accept jobs some of the other deckers or technomancers wouldn't.

In this phase, they accumulated a small fortune of money, promptly invested in cyberware and other hardware, but with those expences came the realisation that the current level of technology wouldn't have cut it, and offered an hard cap on their capability. No matter how good the artificial brain augmentations, there was an hard limit on just how smart they could get. This lead to some reasearch in multiple fields to look for alternative ways to expand their mind, including but not limited to reprogrammed CFD nanites, forceful installation of xenosapient entities in quarantined commlinks linked to their lobal cortex to archieve native non-linear time thinking and ascension to e-ghost.

While all of those appeared viable, the solution became clear once they started interacting with a decker of the now defunct haven, Spider, an hermetic adept who used some of that power to be a more effective fighter, and some to enhance her decking. Application of magic purely to hacking would have removed the issue of a capped growth, as with initiations the potency of a magician is only limited by their good will and lifespan.

They were however mundane, but that was no issue. Having researched extensively HMHVV, Apex was aware of the existance of some strains capable of forcing an awakening in the hosts. The research of a suitable donor of viral matter lead to "subject F", 87 years old male human of African American descent, infected with *Ghilani Vrykolaviridae Sanguisuga,* more commonly known as HMHVV strain IA. In a controlled environment, the subject drained Apex's essence until their biological death, after which the process of regeneration was aided by an equipe of a medic and a mage, to ensure a successful transformation in a nosferatu.

After the successful procedure, they awakened as a mystic adept, trait shared with the "subject F" himself. In the following weeks, Apex went over the entire program of the course for a degree in Magical Sciences, being able to archieve a level of academic knowledge of magical theory equivalent to 5 years of study in little over a month. The results of this study were to embrace the hermetic tradition, due to the ease to access foci and reagents, its reliance on rational thinking and mental fortitude for its spells, and overall the attempt to tackle magical phenomena from a scientific angle.

Now they live a life not too dissimilar from that before the infection, accepting functionally any job they evaluate as worth their time, with little to no consideration to the morals involved, and living in their secluded apartment most of time, relying to VR connections and drones to provide day to day needs, and only leaving to feed every so rarely and in case the parameters of the run require it (or potentially to meet other colleagues), and even then, always masked, and if possible, not leaving their car.

## Narrative Significant Qualities

* Brilliant Heuristics - "Speed in mental processes is a byproduct of other mental augmentations, but an useful one for that matter. Having enough reasoning skills to automaticlaly filter out information that is irrelevant, false or misleading cuts down the time to solve problems by a significant margin, for hte joy of the street samurai with an itchy finger"

* Instinctive Hack - "By my empyprical measurements, 97,63% of cyber duels are won by the individual that managed to send the first dataspike. I just make sure that individual is me"

* Infected (Nosferatu) - "Many would fine the choice of voluntarly infecting myself with HMHVV to be irrational. However, considering the complete awakening that came off of it, alongside biological immortality and the reconstruction of multiple brain regions in a way that lead to a quantifiable increase in mental acquity, I find their critiques irrelevant."

* Mentor Spirit (Spider)- "There is a distinct sensation of clarity coming from being the one at the center of the web, having perfect clarity on the events unfolding in real time"

* Trust Data, Not Lore - "In the Matrix's strictly deterministic environment, one's understanding of its rules and logical reasoning are more then sufficient for success"

* Albinism I - "The specific sample of HMHVV choosen had the peculiar effect of causing a repression of the *trp1* gene, resulting in a massively reduced pigmentation of my skin"

* CHA 1 - "I take no shame in admitting most metahumans find me an highly unpleasant individual to interact to"

* Creature of Comfort (High) - "I didn't start the career as a shadowrunner to suffer the ugly and unsanitary. Money is best invested in gear, that is for sure, but I'm sure that sparing some thousands of nuyens here and there for a dignified lifestyle won't lead to bankrupcy"

* Faceless - "My mask's function is twofold: protecting my identity, and preventing people's adverse reactions to my less then desirable appearances. So no, I won't just take it off"

* Faceless - "My mask's function is twofold: protecting my identity, and preventing people's adverse reactions to my less then desirable appearances. So no, I won't just take it off"

* Paranoia - "There is a common trait amongst the most successful individuals in this planet, and that would be the ability to set up contingency plans, and only act when they have the full picture of the situation at hand"

* Superhuman Psychosis - "Most of those wielding considerable power, be it because of expensive augmentations or significant magical gifs, struggle to, as they say, keep their metahuman side. I refute such a fallacy, embracing the fact that my current state is so far detached from the metahuman experience that I am under no obligation to see them as equals"

## Run History

CDP: 2

Become An Ad Producer - Madman

# In Character Information

## Symbols and Signatures

Apex has a sort of carefully kept aura of apersonality, intentionally refraining from showing something that could be considered as a peculiar trait. Sure, they love formal clothing, but not enough to be called dapper. They do appreciate classical music, but never in such an outspoken way to make people call them a fan.

Outside of the almost non existent private life, there must be some amounts of recognisability when working the shadows, so Apex has developed their own trademark, a mask shaped like a low poly rendition of a human visage,made by a blend of mirrors attached to an hard support covered in fresnel fabric, to give it an almost outerworldly look. While their face may be unknown to most, that mask is how they are recognized by colleagues, a sort of "true" face

## Matrix Search Table

 3
 6+
it seems

## Shadow Community Table

 3
 6+

## Assensing Table

 2
 3
 4
 5+

## SINs

R5 Ash Kinney, UCAS, Magitech engineer (Cyberdeck and mage licences)

## Appearance

NOTE: You won't see them in person a lot. Actually, almost never. And they will be masked and covered in non revealing clothes. So this is for those curious and/or runners masochistic enough to attempt to befriend them.

Apex has a peculiar look. Being a nosferatu, they have no body hair and a rather withered physical appearance, made even more grotesque by their already lithe build pre-infection. Their skin is surprisingly well put for their condition, with the only oddities being the unnaturally white tone and its dryness. Their eyes are of a deep blue, with the faintest of glows, fueled by their weak magic.

### Clothing

The ever present mask, in a very minimalist style, blends well with the rest of their outfit, composed of almost exclusively suites and other examples of formal, masculine coded clothing, but still tailored to the forms of their androgynous body.

### Matrix Persona

An horrifying bipedal machine, made of twisted metal and a flowing robe that appears to be its body, moving without any apparent logic by warping the digital space surrounding it