Pepper

**Pepper** is a Human Mech tech expert who lives and works on the moon of Coriol. She is from Aganon, an Enhanced Humanity colony.

## Appearance and Personality

Pepper has light, pinkish skin and no hair. She is short, waifishly thin, and flat-chested as a result of Enhanced Humanity genetically engineering her to have one less chromosome than normal, a condition called Turner syndrome. She is hardworking and very local to her close friends.

## *The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet*

Pepper is a friend of Jenks and Kizzy. She runs a tech shop in Port Coriol, and dabbles in the black market. She helps Jenks secure a body kit for Lovey, the wayfarer's AI. When Lovey suffers a catastrophic cascade failure and has to be rebooted, Pepper agrees to help the new iteration of Lovelace, born from the reboot, into the body kit she got for Lovey and take care of her.

## *A Closed and Common Orbit*

Pepper was born as Jane 23 and raised by robotic caretakers known as Mothers. She was created to be a menial labourer in a factory, which is how she learned to handle tech. She escaped the factory at age 10 after an explosion created a hole in the factory's wall, killing several other girls. Pepper, curious about the sky outside as she had never seen it before, snuck out to investigate the hole with her bunkmate Jane 64. Jane 64 was apprehended (and probably killed by) a Mother, while Pepper escaped into the wasteland.

Pepper eventually finds an old ship with a working AI named Owl. Owl takes care of Pepper and helps her formulate a plan to fix Owl's ship and leave the planet. Pepper spends the next 8 years fixing the ship with junk from the surrounding junkyard, eating wild dogs, and playing sims that Owl has stored in her memory, especially The Big Bug Crew. She meets Blue, then Laurian, while breaking into another factory to steal fuel. In return for taking him with her, he gives her fuel for Owl's ship.

After Owl, Pepper, and Blue leave Aganon, they are apprehended by the Galactic Commons and taken in as refugees. However, Pepper's ship is confiscated and Pepper loses Owl. Pepper and Blue eventually become fed up with the bureaucratic nature of their GC representatives and run away, taking jobs on the first ship they can. Oouoh, one of the crewmembers, introduces Pepper to spices. The ship they work on lands in Port Coriol and they decide to stay.

After the events of *The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet*, Pepper takes in Sidra, the new Lovelace iteration after Lovey's death, transferred into a body kit. Pepper gives Sidra a room in her house and a job at the Rust Bucket, her tech shop. During this time Owl's ship resurfaces in a museum and Sidra helps Pepper get Owl back.

## Relationships

### Blue

Blue and Pepper are romantic partners who share a modest house in Sixtop, Coriol's modder district. The circumstances under which they met have made them fiercely protective of each other.

### Sidra

Sidra is a Lovelace model AI, she is installed in a body kit. Pepper starts out as her sponsor/caretaker, helping her come to grips with her new life, but they become something more like friends as Sidra acclimates to life as a Human.

### Jenks

Jenks and Pepper enjoy a close friendship, sharing a rejection of their respective (and vastly different) backgrounds – Jenks' mother was a Survivalist and Pepper is from an Enhanced Humanity colony.

## Trivia

Pepper's Picnic handle, "pinch" is also the name of a sim character described as a "furry animal", from The Big Bug Crew.