Steeljaw
Jan 16, 2012 10:21:42 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Jan 16, 2012 10:21:42 GMT -5
-Player Info-
Name/Alias: Rose / Darthneko
IM/Email: lenoirrose@gmail.com (for MSN and email contact)
-Character Info-
Name: Steeljaw
Age: Middle-ish for his frame type. Equivalent of human early 30s.
Gender: mech/male
Species: Cybertronian (quadruped symbiont cassette)
Faction: Formerly Autobots, currently Neutral
Occupation/Specialization: Communication and information specialist (spy)
Appearance/Altmode: As a quadruped cassette, Steeljaw stands (on all fours) just above knee height for a mid-sized Cybertronian like Bumblebee - or about the height of a human adult male. He is predominately gold and silver colored, with blue optics. The slimness of his build, combined with his flexibility, put him firmly on the "feline" end of the spectrum to the human eye (which is only augmented by his rather haughty manners). The sides of his face, his neck, and blending down into his chest are covered in a thick layer of tiny overlapping plates which shield his sensor arrays, giving him something of the appearance of having a lion's mane. Being an un-upgraded symbiont, he has no mobile alt mode (his transformation is to fit onto and synch with his carrier only).
History: Steeljaw is a sparked cassette, created by a carrier named Uplink who worked in designing (and sometimes infiltrating) information security systems for the wealthy. He was Uplink's first and only symbiont, and was created more as a partner than as a dependent. Steeljaw was modded to complement his carrier's work, specializing in the gathering and processing of information, and the two lived fairly comfortably before the war.
When the war came Uplink put off choosing a side until it was absolutely necessary, but finally joined the Autobot cause as 'the lesser of two evils' and the safer choice. The two put their skills to use picking enemy security apart and 'acquiring' information for the Autobots. 'Safe' turned out to be something of a myth, though - Uplink was killed during a mission that went bad. Steeljaw barely survived and by the time he was released from medical he had worked his way out from shock to grief and a feeling of betrayal; they had come to the Autobots for safety and it had gotten his carrier killed. Refusing to consider another carrier or continue to serve a cause he didn't believe in, Steeljaw declared himself neutral and left the Autobots, striking out on his own where he's sold his hacking skills to get by ever since.
When the exodus started, Steeljaw got off planet by hitching a ride with one of the fleeing neutral ships. He has, since then, hopped from ship to ship when necessary - sometimes as a barter for programming work, sometimes as a stowaway. His last ship, a small neutral shuttle, ran afoul of a string of bad luck that culminated in encountering Decepticons. The ship was lost, the crew scrambling for escape pods; Steeljaw and a severely wounded femme ended up in one together. The femme died soon after their escape, leaving Steeljaw on his own. He has, since then, kept the escape pod going with sheer luck, determination, prayer, and a lot of jury rigging of its rudimentary onboard computer system. He would have been happy to find ANY ship or planet; instead, he found Earth (because, Steeljaw insists, Primus has a very warped sense of humor and hates him).
Personality: Steeljaw is a cynical pessimist, through and through. He's been on his own so long he's forgotten how to rely on others; it's him against the universe, just like it used to be him and Uplink against the universe, only now nobody's watching his back. He's honorable in his own way - he doesn't take charity and he won't steal if he doesn't have to. He's bitter, the glass is always half empty, and yes, the universe really IS out to get him. Rather then be depressed about this, Steeljaw meets it head on with a lot of snark and a black, biting sort of wit.
Likes: information systems, programming (especially games), knowing secrets. Has a secret soft spot for sweets and good polish.
Dislikes: NOT HAVING THUMBS. This is his biggest pet peeve ever - never having gotten his frame upgraded so that he could have a bipedal or alt form. Also Decepticons, Autobots, fighting, and pretty much the entire war. Being afraid.
Strengths: Fast and sneaky and hard to pin down - these are the best (and really only) things Steeljaw has going for him in a fight. He was never built to be a fighter - at best, he's built to get in and out of stupidly difficult to reach places. He's turned this into an asset by adapting what he does have to make him hard as heck to catch; claws made for climbing walls work just as well on most mechs' armor plating, a backstrut that can slide through tiny passages is just as useful in evading capture, and ditto with being able to stop, turn, and dash on a pin head.
Weaknesses: The same things that make him hard to catch - fast and flexible - also leave him incredibly vulnerable. Steeljaw doesn't have solid armor plates, he has a lot of small overlapping armor bits to facilitate his flexibility. One good blast from even a medium sized gun would take him out, and any bot Bee's size or bigger who got ahold of him could re-enact the infamous Ravage scene from RotF without straining anything. He has almost no ranged weaponry, having to resort to claws and micro range lasers meant for lockpicking and glass cutting.
After crash landing on Earth, Steeljaw has developed a case of agoraphobia - fear of open/large spaces - and an extreme distaste for organic surroundings which are far less compatible to his preferred mode of getting about than the metal walls and floor of the Autobot base. He's fine in base, but fairly miserable outside of it and will not willingly venture far.
Special skills:
* Programming/Hacking - Steeljaw may not be on Blaster and Soundwave's level, but he's no slouch. Within his primary field - data security and firewalls - he is a top notch programmer and hacker. He's had a lot of time to get very well acquainted with the systems of most ship types since he left Cybertron (his programming there is less 'elegant' and more 'messy ball of yarn but gets the job done').
* Infiltration - Steeljaw was designed to be his carrier's physical optics, audials, and data link when there was no other way to get to the information. His claws are designed to be able to punch through all of the most common building materials on Cybertron to facilitate climbing, and he can, when necessary, magnetize all or part of his own frame in the same way mechs magnetize their pedes when in zero-G. As far as flexibility goes, if he can fit his head through it then chances are the rest of him will fit too. He has micro range lasers and EM pulse capabilities designed for lock picking and disabling of physical security systems.
* Data Gathering - Part of Steeljaw's original function was data gathering, whether digital or analog. He has a top notch and extremely extensive sensor suite hidden beneath his neck plating - long and short range, multi-frequency, as well as a number of different data cable connector types. The cables are moderately prehensile and Steeljaw will occasionally use them in lieu of hands, but their range is fairly short (most of them are less than three feet long) and it's really not what they're meant for.
Extra Info: As an unbonded symbiont Steeljaw's life expectancy should have been dismally slim after Uplink's death. However, in their primary line of work Uplink and Steeljaw had utilized an almost paranoid system of backups for themselves in case of viral damage, including each of them carrying a base level processor backup for the other. Having survived the initial separation, Steeljaw found comfort and strength in the backup echo of his host. He is well aware that Uplink is dead and that what he carries is nothing more than a data backup, but it helps in staving off the desperation the broken bond would otherwise create. He has, at various times, been driven to create loose, temporary bonds with others and he has a very limited tolerance for true solitude, but Steeljaw maintains that he neither wants or needs a host, preferring to continue alone.
Steeljaw is best read as though his voice actor was the result of a tragic accent mashup between Stephen Fry and Alan Rickman.
Name/Alias: Rose / Darthneko
IM/Email: lenoirrose@gmail.com (for MSN and email contact)
-Character Info-
Name: Steeljaw
Age: Middle-ish for his frame type. Equivalent of human early 30s.
Gender: mech/male
Species: Cybertronian (quadruped symbiont cassette)
Faction: Formerly Autobots, currently Neutral
Occupation/Specialization: Communication and information specialist (spy)
Appearance/Altmode: As a quadruped cassette, Steeljaw stands (on all fours) just above knee height for a mid-sized Cybertronian like Bumblebee - or about the height of a human adult male. He is predominately gold and silver colored, with blue optics. The slimness of his build, combined with his flexibility, put him firmly on the "feline" end of the spectrum to the human eye (which is only augmented by his rather haughty manners). The sides of his face, his neck, and blending down into his chest are covered in a thick layer of tiny overlapping plates which shield his sensor arrays, giving him something of the appearance of having a lion's mane. Being an un-upgraded symbiont, he has no mobile alt mode (his transformation is to fit onto and synch with his carrier only).
History: Steeljaw is a sparked cassette, created by a carrier named Uplink who worked in designing (and sometimes infiltrating) information security systems for the wealthy. He was Uplink's first and only symbiont, and was created more as a partner than as a dependent. Steeljaw was modded to complement his carrier's work, specializing in the gathering and processing of information, and the two lived fairly comfortably before the war.
When the war came Uplink put off choosing a side until it was absolutely necessary, but finally joined the Autobot cause as 'the lesser of two evils' and the safer choice. The two put their skills to use picking enemy security apart and 'acquiring' information for the Autobots. 'Safe' turned out to be something of a myth, though - Uplink was killed during a mission that went bad. Steeljaw barely survived and by the time he was released from medical he had worked his way out from shock to grief and a feeling of betrayal; they had come to the Autobots for safety and it had gotten his carrier killed. Refusing to consider another carrier or continue to serve a cause he didn't believe in, Steeljaw declared himself neutral and left the Autobots, striking out on his own where he's sold his hacking skills to get by ever since.
When the exodus started, Steeljaw got off planet by hitching a ride with one of the fleeing neutral ships. He has, since then, hopped from ship to ship when necessary - sometimes as a barter for programming work, sometimes as a stowaway. His last ship, a small neutral shuttle, ran afoul of a string of bad luck that culminated in encountering Decepticons. The ship was lost, the crew scrambling for escape pods; Steeljaw and a severely wounded femme ended up in one together. The femme died soon after their escape, leaving Steeljaw on his own. He has, since then, kept the escape pod going with sheer luck, determination, prayer, and a lot of jury rigging of its rudimentary onboard computer system. He would have been happy to find ANY ship or planet; instead, he found Earth (because, Steeljaw insists, Primus has a very warped sense of humor and hates him).
Personality: Steeljaw is a cynical pessimist, through and through. He's been on his own so long he's forgotten how to rely on others; it's him against the universe, just like it used to be him and Uplink against the universe, only now nobody's watching his back. He's honorable in his own way - he doesn't take charity and he won't steal if he doesn't have to. He's bitter, the glass is always half empty, and yes, the universe really IS out to get him. Rather then be depressed about this, Steeljaw meets it head on with a lot of snark and a black, biting sort of wit.
Likes: information systems, programming (especially games), knowing secrets. Has a secret soft spot for sweets and good polish.
Dislikes: NOT HAVING THUMBS. This is his biggest pet peeve ever - never having gotten his frame upgraded so that he could have a bipedal or alt form. Also Decepticons, Autobots, fighting, and pretty much the entire war. Being afraid.
Strengths: Fast and sneaky and hard to pin down - these are the best (and really only) things Steeljaw has going for him in a fight. He was never built to be a fighter - at best, he's built to get in and out of stupidly difficult to reach places. He's turned this into an asset by adapting what he does have to make him hard as heck to catch; claws made for climbing walls work just as well on most mechs' armor plating, a backstrut that can slide through tiny passages is just as useful in evading capture, and ditto with being able to stop, turn, and dash on a pin head.
Weaknesses: The same things that make him hard to catch - fast and flexible - also leave him incredibly vulnerable. Steeljaw doesn't have solid armor plates, he has a lot of small overlapping armor bits to facilitate his flexibility. One good blast from even a medium sized gun would take him out, and any bot Bee's size or bigger who got ahold of him could re-enact the infamous Ravage scene from RotF without straining anything. He has almost no ranged weaponry, having to resort to claws and micro range lasers meant for lockpicking and glass cutting.
After crash landing on Earth, Steeljaw has developed a case of agoraphobia - fear of open/large spaces - and an extreme distaste for organic surroundings which are far less compatible to his preferred mode of getting about than the metal walls and floor of the Autobot base. He's fine in base, but fairly miserable outside of it and will not willingly venture far.
Special skills:
* Programming/Hacking - Steeljaw may not be on Blaster and Soundwave's level, but he's no slouch. Within his primary field - data security and firewalls - he is a top notch programmer and hacker. He's had a lot of time to get very well acquainted with the systems of most ship types since he left Cybertron (his programming there is less 'elegant' and more 'messy ball of yarn but gets the job done').
* Infiltration - Steeljaw was designed to be his carrier's physical optics, audials, and data link when there was no other way to get to the information. His claws are designed to be able to punch through all of the most common building materials on Cybertron to facilitate climbing, and he can, when necessary, magnetize all or part of his own frame in the same way mechs magnetize their pedes when in zero-G. As far as flexibility goes, if he can fit his head through it then chances are the rest of him will fit too. He has micro range lasers and EM pulse capabilities designed for lock picking and disabling of physical security systems.
* Data Gathering - Part of Steeljaw's original function was data gathering, whether digital or analog. He has a top notch and extremely extensive sensor suite hidden beneath his neck plating - long and short range, multi-frequency, as well as a number of different data cable connector types. The cables are moderately prehensile and Steeljaw will occasionally use them in lieu of hands, but their range is fairly short (most of them are less than three feet long) and it's really not what they're meant for.
Extra Info: As an unbonded symbiont Steeljaw's life expectancy should have been dismally slim after Uplink's death. However, in their primary line of work Uplink and Steeljaw had utilized an almost paranoid system of backups for themselves in case of viral damage, including each of them carrying a base level processor backup for the other. Having survived the initial separation, Steeljaw found comfort and strength in the backup echo of his host. He is well aware that Uplink is dead and that what he carries is nothing more than a data backup, but it helps in staving off the desperation the broken bond would otherwise create. He has, at various times, been driven to create loose, temporary bonds with others and he has a very limited tolerance for true solitude, but Steeljaw maintains that he neither wants or needs a host, preferring to continue alone.
Steeljaw is best read as though his voice actor was the result of a tragic accent mashup between Stephen Fry and Alan Rickman.
