Allele la Creuset

Woman, Machine, Moment

Allele le Creuset was born for military service. Her parents were proud Quebecois and strong supporters of the Federation military. It would follow suit that their children, regardless of gender, would very likely serve in the Armed Forces of the Atlantic Federation. Allele would undergo genetic screening and augmentation in utero. This was fairly normal in French Canada, but the la Creusets went further than just the basic anti-cancer and hereditary treatments. Each of their children was elevated to a H+ status, improving their intellectual capability, physique, and other major improvements to their genomes.

Appearance:

Allele is above average height, and has a slender but muscular build. Her eye and hair colors were altered to be grey and blonde respectively, and as a point of vanity, she was augmented to be as attractive as possible. While her parents expected this to work in her favor, moving their daughter into higher positions, it proved to be a major impediment to her military career.

Samus Syndrome

Harkening back to a Petroleum Era Game, and later a mecha pilot of the same name, Samus Syndrome is the name given to the social condition where an exceptional soldier or special ops agent experiences strong social reaction. While the propaganda machines and entertainment feeds favor attractive and highly sexualized women in their war machines, in real life the reaction is quite the opposite. One of the few remaining gender stigmas revolves around the notion that women, especially attractive women, aren't suited to combat operations. This is one of the few remaining social relicts of the Petroleum Era, and an ironic one considering the military record of female fighter pilots, mecha pilots, and power armor troopers. This social syndrome is generally restricted to attractive women, and women who are average to unattractive looking are not subjected to it, nor are women with obvious cybernetic augmentation, combat scars, etc

Service

Rather than following the traditional ROTC path, where she would go through basic military training and then enter the military command structure, Allele entered the power armor corps. She excelled in squad tactics, and quickly rose to a position of command inside the combat forces. She didn't stay in the iron grunts long before being hand picked out for special ops, trading her conventional power armor for more cutting edge and prototype armors.

Die Hornissennest

The D.Hornissennest Power armor is a prototype power armor designed for multi-role fire support, coordination, and ambushing. The main armor itself is unremarkable, with good levels of armor protection, high mobility with jump boosters built into the legs, and mounting points for a jump pack. The main weapon is an over-under magnetic assault rifle and laser designator. The real firepower of the suit comes from the Hornissennest system, also known as a Hornet Nest. The nest is actually eight detachable gun drones connected to the suit. Each drone is a self contained A-pod hover system with a pair of linked pulse lasers, a guidance and control system, and a pocket designator. The helmet and computer system of the power armor allows for a gifted pilot to remote guide the drones to provide firepower in close in combat, with each drone funtionally packing the same firepower as a pair of normal soldiers. The pocket LAI of the armor typically controls the drones, with the pilot only telling them where to go, what patterns to follow and what to engage or ignore.

Hornet pilots typically use the drones to set up ambushes, creating crossfire situations, present themselves as a much larger force, and otherwise cause a large amount of damage relative to their size.

Types of drones
Standard - twin linked pulse lasers (dmg as per infantry laser rifle x2) can spot for short range artillery
Heavy - single heavy pulse laser, aka blaster (dmg as per infantry support laser) no spotting ability
Bomber - single magnetic grenade launcher (dmg as per infantry grenade launcher, multiple types of rounds can be carried) short range spotting
Raven - no weapons, enhanced visual acquisition system, can spot for long range artillery and orbital weaponry, surveillance capability.
Firebat - short range flamer (dmg as per flamethrower, 3 shots, short range)
Mosquito - magnetic 'needler' capable of using coated poison needles for assassination.

Private Career

Allele served an unremarkable career in the AFAF, largely hampered by the lack of large scale engagements and the previously mentioned Samus Syndrome. The command structure was more interested in having her pose sitting on power armor than having her inside it, regardless of her record in action. After finding a ceiling in the junior officer ranks, Allele would retire from service after eight years and would then enter the private sector.

Lacking her D. Hornet armor, she worked around to make her own. Her new shadow ops armor is a low visibility body sleeve with overlapping light SLAB plate. The armor is equipped with a high end SmartGun system, which is slaved to an aftermarket military grade synthetic intelligence. While this would make her absolutely lethal with a rifle, the only weapon she carries herself is a heavy magnetic pistol. Drones are easy to come by in the Cosmic Era, and she has four drones slaved to the armor. Each of the four drones has it's internal synthetic intelligence, allowing it to respond to both her voice commands and to the signals from her armor's computer.

Albright
Albright was originally a security drone intended to be part of a building/facility inspection or security system. It is larger than the military drones and subsequently has a larger load out. The puppy like drone carries a pair of linked magnetic rifles, a single five round grenade launcher, and an active camouflage system.

Seeker
Seeker is a copy of Albright, but where Albright has a more adventurous programming, Seeker is more reserved and will often follow and support Allele or Albright when running ops.

Werewolf
Werewolf is a nasty drone, a salvaged Neo-Soviet drone, it has heavy armor, four magnetic SMGs in the nose, and a rotary rocket launcher buried in the body.

Mouse
Mouse is a small drone, and only equipped with a needler. Where the other drones are heavy on firepower, Mouse is small, quiet, and can dispose of sentries and unarmored guards quickly and quietly, and then reply with intel including chemical scanning, optic and EM scanning, and light hacking as the drone has a media node allowing it to link into unprotected and short range networks.

Allele has had a great deal of success as a mercenary and shadowrunner. She specializes in hot ops, demolition, and other fire freely events where her drones can sniff out a path for her or her team. She is a top level operative and commands the highest pay grades. Allele is a member of the all female Hell's Belle's merc team.

Author's Notes:

Allele is a combination of things, a long running character from my home game, the Dragoon system from Gundam SEED, and an attempt to make the Rigger and Drone rules from Shadowrun actually be more interesting than just having a glorified RC drone following you around. Her equipment build is designed to take advantage of tactical rules such as suppressing fire (forcing foes into a prone or sheltered position rather than advancing) crossfire rules (negating cover bonuses, exploiting flanking and rear attacks) and exploiting the general ruthlessly accurate nature of computers. In real life, a tank with a targeting computer can hit and kill targets three miles away. Why in a game should the technologically superior computers of the future struggle to hit targets in the same room or within short range? Yes, I know the answer is game balance, but I don't like that answer.