Dizkord, Ork Shadowrunner (A to Z, D)

Today, the member of the supporting cast is a Shadowrun character.  Complete with some fiction.

“Rock on,” said Dizkord sliding the credstick into her boot.  “A pleasure working with you all.  Com me when you have another job.” She sauntered out, as though she did not have a care in the world.  Once she was sure she was out of sight and sure she was not being followed, she broke into a run.  Making it to the monorail station and up to the platform just in time to slip onto the northbound train before the doors shut.

She activated he comlink.  “I am on my way, the meeting ran late, but I will be there . . “ she looked at the route map, “. . . with minutes to spare.”

“Yes, I know.  I will be there.  Ciao.”  She snapped off the comlink.

She moved to a section of the car that had been recently vandalized, sadly a routine occurrence.  But it meant that security systems there were inoperable, so she could start changing without it being recorded.  She would have to be careful getting off, avoiding as many cameras as possible.  Dizkord and Melody could not be linked.  People tended not to hire models and actresses with criminal records.

By the time she reached the staging area, she was all Melody.  “Hey George!  Have I missed anything?”

George was a massive troll.  “Melody!  I was getting worried.  Nothing new here. Jazmyn had a meltdown but she is cooling down.”

“Just as glad I missed it, she can get mean,” she said, signing in.

“You got that right,” he said handing her a badge.  “One of Torii’s assistants was reduced to tears.”

“Damn,” she said shaking her head.  “If she was not so fucking beautiful.”

“Yes, cameras love her.”

“And every teenaged boy.”

“Good one, Mel,” he said with a big grin.  “If you hurry there is still some of the buffet left.  I think Sally set some back for you.”

“She is an angel,” Melody said with a wave.  “I will try and snaffle up some cookies for you.”

“Thanks, Mel.”

Dizkord, Ork Shadowrunner

Quote:  We can use the music to cover the break in, people expect orks to play their music too loud.

I can handle the stress, don’t worry about me.

Description:

Melody is a ork woman of average height but exceptional build, both athletic and with pleasing curves, not busty but shapely.  Her hair is naturally auburn but she wears it close cropped, usually covering it with a wig, blond as Melody Dancyr, black when working as a runner.  She has a variety of contact lenses to cover her eyes and uses makeup to disguise the shape of her face as Dizkord.  Melody dresses in the latest fashion, Dizkord goes in street fashion at least to meets.

Melody is surprisingly charming and skilled at fitting in, naturally, she is physically fit and athletic.  She is brutally efficient in hand-to-hand combat.

Background: Melody Dancyr, the only name she has known though she was sure it is not her birth name, was raised by committee.  Along with fifteen other young ork girls, all orphans, Melody was raised in the Starmaker House in California.  Never told of where they came from, only what they could be, they were educated, trained, and shaped to be the best they could be . . . in the eyes of the man behind Starmaker House, the enigmatic Mister Green.

Melody and her sisters, they were taught to think of each other as family and they did bond into a found family, were raised to be pop culture stars, models, actresses, and musicians.  A beautiful representation of ork womanhood.  Of course, their purely natural ork looks would not do, they were shaped by diet and exercise, and later surgery, to be what was thought to be more pleasing to the metahuman eye.  For most of the girls, they did as they were told, they had internalized Starmaker House’s ideals as their own.  But those that resisted, they were “convinced” to follow the “right choices” by psychological pressure and targeted pharmaceuticals.  Melody was not one of the problem children, though she helped them when she could, she knew what she wanted to be, a dancer, just like her name said and Starmaker House was bending over backward to help her succeed.

Melody was good, a natural talent and she had the best virtual teachers (and some bioware upgrades) to ensure she was great.  Starmaker House was beginning to make its move, the Rok Grrls trio had a hit with “the heart is a lonely muscle.”   Jancis Kween, just a year older than Melody, had a starring role as the love interest of Nero Bond, Corporate Spy, in Diamond Holograms and was getting offers left and right.  Melody was getting exposure as a dancer in music videos, including the ones for the Rok Grrls releases, and as a background actor (she was the blackjack dealer in Diamond Hologram’s casino scene).  Then things imploded for Starmaker House.

Melody was in Seattle for a fashion shoot when it went down, so she only saw it on the news.  Helicopters and SWAT teams crawling all over the Starmaker House “compound” as the reporters and police spokespeople kept calling it.  But to her, it was just home.  A EMP took out the records center just before the cops could burst in, destroying all of the records, it was all there on magfiles, with no connection to the Matrix.  Mister Green vanished like a shadow at noon and the staff and other ork women were rounded up and questioned and released.

To this day, no one knows who Mister Green was, where the money came from or what was the endgame for Starmaker House.  But all of the women and girls who were raised there had, it seemed been adopted through questionable means, they were indeed all orphans but some had more distant families they could have gone to but they ended up at Starmaker, one California judge resigned after being implicated in the legal sleight of hand.  Evo, Horizon, even Aztechnology have been suspected as being the secret master behind it, but no one has found out the truth.

Melody was questioned by the authorities and released.  Unlike some of her sisters, she had no interest in playing the victim card and going on the talk circuit.  So, she stayed in Seattle.  But without the Starmaker network to help feed her jobs, it was tough, there were a lot of things Starmaker House had not prepared her for, but she was a quick learner and determined.  Helping a bunch of runners extract a singer from an abusing contract -and manager- opened a new line of work for her.  Now she mixes media and missions as she tries to rebuild her career . . . and perhaps understand what happened at Starmaker House.  She has taken the street name of Dizkord, even though she realizes it is an antonym of her actual name.

Presenting this Character: The shared traits between Dizkord and Melody are confidence and a can-do attitude.

Dizkord is the stereotypical street ork, rough around the corners, chip on the shoulder, a little out of place outside of Ork culture.  But it can come across as a bit too stereotypical to those who actually are part of that culture.

Melody, on the other hand, is all media, all the time.  Playing the status game, looking for her chance to move up the fame chain.

What can she do?: While there is not a lot of call for dancing on a shadowrun (but it sometimes shows up), Dizkord is a peak plus ork athlete and fairly socially adept, an odd but useful combination.  Her close combat fighting style may be unorthodox but it is no less effective for that.

While she does not know Seattle that well, she can fake local knowledge.  What she does know cold is the mediascape, who is filming what, what songs are popular, and so on (“I hang out at a lot of clubs, yah.”).

Who might know her and why: Melody is known in modelling, professional dancing, and other tengental media circles, so people in those might have run across her.  She could have encountered people at the gym or at a club, she is very outgoing and hard to miss.

Dizkord, on the other hand, only really exists in the shadows.  So, maybe you have had a short job with her or heard of her skills.  She does try and hit up Ork clubs at least once a week, to get a better sense of where Ork music and culture is at nut she does not have a lot of spare time to build out the Dizkord legend, but she tries on the margins.

Plot Hooks: Some of the runners have met Melody in her media work (filming a music video maybe?) and want to draw on her knowledge to get on set / into a fashion shoot / whatever.

Someone has hired Dizkord to be a guide to the ork community in Seattle, so she has called you, to help her do that job.

On the dance floor of a club, you see some drunk ork shove his girlfriend, and Dizkord slams him to the ground.  The drunk’s friends, pack of low-level local gang members, are now heading in to put the hurt on her.  What do you do?

Note: Just playing around with different ideas for Shadowrun characters and this one sprung into being.

Image Photo from PixaBay and used under their license.