Skoryy Feldspar

Skoryy Feldspar is a Nadezhdan mech pilot and former mech racing ace, now part of Dodeka. She pilots the Ripshaw.

Appearance
Being a Nadezhdan Skoryy has animalistic features, pulling primarily from those of an arctic fox and vole. The latter effectively muting the features of the former. She has a relatively short snout, with large ears and large yellow eyes. Her fur had been an ashy white but one of the features of her extensive body modifications has been the removal of hair follicles. She has a excess of skin making her wrinkly and expressive. Other modifications affecting her appearance are flat hexagonal protrusions that sit just out of her skin, these are areas where diagnostics can be taken on the cybernetics in her body. She also has robotic legs below the knee. These are digitigrade and fairly high quality.

History, Abridged.
Skoryy Feldspar grew up in the slums of the Peregrine District of Vow, herself and her longtime childhood friend Ushel Indium, were pushed into petty crime at a very young age. Through the course of this they discovered a passion for Mech Rally, the sport of mech racing. Eventually gaining recognition led them to working under Toporik Jet, leader of the Toporik Syndicate. Through the course of their climbing the leagues and ranks of their sport, they were pushed and coerced into expensive and drastic cybernetic, genetic, and biological modifications to their bodies, specifically to pilot a pair of experimental racing mechs. Although recognized as two of the best racers in their sport, years under Toporik made it clear that they were trapped in the syndicate, and under Toporik. During a attempted escape that Toporik had gotten wind of, a device meant to terrify Skoryy into submission, detonated and destroyed the Zoloto Liga, presumably killing Ushel Indium. Skoryy successfully fled, however, the false story told was that Skoryy and Ushel's rivalry had pushed her to killing Ushel. Toporik put a price on Skoryy, and most of those who she had known felt betrayed by her supposed actions, with few contacts and options, she was given the opportunity to work under the Dodonan Dodeka Branch, to which she reluctantly agreed, thinking it a stepping stone on a long road to revenge.

History, Expanded.
Skoryy Feldspar was born from parents that she never met, somewhere in the Peregrine District of Vow. She grew up in Dustside, an utterly lawless and poverty stricken area on the edge of the city and district. Here the abandoned neighborhoods have been overtaken slowly by the desert, golden sands blowing in and filling the bottom floors of crumbling buildings, and flooding the decrepit streets. Skoryy was brought up under the head of a minor criminal enterprise in Dustside, Yaromir Niter.

Yaromir did not take in mewling orphans out of the good of his heart however, and as soon as his slum children could assist in grifts, slip hands into pockets, and act as bait for other criminal acts, they did just so, and the food in their bellies depended on it. Skoryy struggled, and found friendship in another child in Yaromir's bunch, Ushel Indium. It was working with one another, as a duo, that they learned to excel. Yaromir would pit children against each other often but before they turned out their pockets of stolen nick nacks and scrip to him, they'd turn them out for each other, see who did better.

This competitive spirit defined Ushel and Skoryy's relationship. When they got too old to pick pocket and play pretend lost child, they started hustling corners, trying to push more of whatever came down the line from Yaromir or his implied masters. The first time the two saw a mecha rally in person it was depositing something in the dunes where no one would look, just outside of Vow. But a distant boom made them look for combatants or smoke, bringing their attention to a massive cloud of sand being kicked up behind something that appeared to be coming directly at them. They ran, climbing up and tumbling down dunes as they heard another off beat series of loud crashes. As they crested a dune in their scattered escape, they turned as the mechs passed them. In that single moment they caught a glimpse of the racers. They were beautiful and terrifying, blurs of colour and steel and fusion plumes. The air pressure when they passed rippled their cheeks and sent the two young teens tumbling backwards down the dune they stood on.

Ushel and Skoryy were enamored. They spent late nights on stolen communicators trying to connect to pirate race streams and figure out who was who through the fuzz. And it wasn't soon after that that they found the teenage version of such activities, fixing up old wrecked automobiles that were littered throughout the ruins of peregrine and in the desert surrounding vow. The first time Skoryy and Ushel raced was through the streets of Vow in an automobile they had barely convinced to run, evading security patrols and pushing for anything more than last place. The dozenth time was after they heisted a pair of light exo-suit mechs, the modifications they made to its fusion generator to run dirty and act like a nuclear rocket were extremely dangerous, but netted them their first gold, more scrip than they'd ever seen, and attention from beyond their little sector of Vow.

Ushel and Skoryy had known for some time that Yaromir was one of hundreds of low ranking officers in the Toporik Syndicate. But it was a surprise to them when Vassily Citrine, underboss of Toporik Jet himself, stepped foot into the dingy squat the two maintained. The amount of scrip they were looking at from what Vassily offered them made what they had made off their first big win look like nothing. Two weeks later they were in parts of Peregrine they had never imagined they'd step foot. They started in low stakes side races but still ones that were sanctioned by the syndicate and streamed on pirate casts they had watched as kids.

It was a slog. The two of them knew how to race down in ramshackle tracks that other young hopefuls had set up in the Undercity of Vow, but racing on the open dunes of Aureate, it stopped being about corners and breaking. Speed was the most important factor. It was made clear that Skorry and Ushel knew that their newfound life outside of oppressive poverty was dependent on their ability to win races, be consistent competitors, and take falls when they were told. They were determined to be better, and slowly increased their standing in their league, it took years, but they were still years again younger than those they beat.

Skoryy came to Vassily first with the idea of modifying herself. Cybernetic implants were common at the serious leagues, optical enhancements, stimulant systems, synaptic boosters. At the highest leagues the only limits on enhancements is a matter of acquisition. It was a simple thing, a pacemaker, Vassily agreed, so long as Skoryy took on the debt, there were limits on the amount of vibration and acceleration a Nadezhdan heart could take before it became arrhythmic, a little electrical encouragement went a long way to shifting those limits. Ushel was skeptical at first, but agreed to their own upon seeing the immediate results that Skoryy pulled from her machine. Through the acquisition of a small amount of debt they had given themselves an edge, and access to higher heights.

By the time the two of them had crested twenty two, they were comfortably sitting at the top of their league and living large. The first time they met Toporik Jet was at a party occupying the top three floors of one of the tallest ancient buildings in the Peregrine District. Toporik Jet was monolith, terrifying and heroic, each of them had grown up hearing stories of him. He informed them that they were being given the opportunity to compete in the Doroga Damask, which required one to be sponsored by a recognized individual or organization, a thing both Ushel and Skoryy had been prodding Vassily for for months. Toporik had other pilots in the game, but wanted to shake it up. Skoryy and Ushel had a strong following, for fans of mech rally many had seen the two of them climb tooth and nail up the ranks, forever fighting each other for the number one spot. The dark VIP room was lit by the glow of a holo projector showing the two of them a pair of mechs more beautiful than they had ever seen, one gold and orange, highlighted in red, and the other teal and silver, highlighted in white. They were sleek and strange, made for incredible speed. The Beryl Begune and the Zoloto Liga. Toporik explained that some modifications would have to be made to their bodies, nothing unusual, they agreed unconditionally.

The mechs Toporik provided were two of a kind. The two of them had received dual cyber prosthesis on both of their legs at the knee to lower the chance of stroke outs at high G acceleration, and even so, their vehicles were still limited by their bodies. Yet they hit the Doroga Damask in a flash of surprising and terrifying speed. They didn't take the gold on their first run, or even their dozenth, but they were hard fought contenders. Toporik wanted more out of them, and so did they. He offered just the right nudges, in a way, all he needed to do was give them the fastest pieces of bipedal machinery to grace Aureate, and a line of credit that had no bottom, and the promise of the many races they would be able to use to pay it back. Ushel and Skoryy honed their engineering abilities learning what the mechs could do, how they were holding them back. The skeletal system could be physically reinforced, and bones convinced chemically to stay elastic and hard. Muscles could be treated much the same, through dual processes of biological enhancement and genetic tank jobs. Circulatory systems could be reinforced, capillaries strengthened, a pacemaker added to their hearts. Endocrine enhancements reserved for combat specialists worked just as well when applied to the pilots, hormones tailored to keep them awake when the G's were high and adrenaline was pumping. Their Nadezhdan bodies, naturally skilled at keeping heat, needed to be taught to lose it, fur unnecessary, metabolism slowed to offer less heat production. Reinforced respiratory system to keep it from collapsing under pressure, lungs treated with invasive gene swarms that taught them to oxygenate blood more efficiently. The initial changes were obvious, half the ace pilots who raced had them, the smaller ones less so, eventually it moved on to the extreme, improvements being measured in fractions of a percent. It took years, they were completely unmatched.

Fame and victory were comfortable at first. They pushed their way to the first and second place on the podium, often trading between one another. Slowly growing the gap between them and everyone else, their twin mechs, jewel tones of red and teal crossing the desert in record times. They were beloved by the Nadezhdans of Aureate. The story of their fierce rivalry embellished, twisted, turned into a show that worked in tandem with their dueling competitive spirits. No one cared that they were seen together on almost every occasion, walking into parties flanking Toporik Jet himself, that they would find themselves at Second Mother together after every batch of post race partying. But slowly it became stale. Ushel and Skoryy knew each other's abilities, strategies, reflexes, response times. Races between them came down to the smallest factors, again and again. And the occasional new ace would challenge them, sometimes even surprise them, and then they would leave them in the dust like the rest. There was more out there though. They talked about it when no one was around to overhear, leaving the system, finding distant worlds, different terrains, new challenges. It was impossible. The first time they mentioned it to Toporik Jet it had very nearly thrown him into a rage. They were crown jewels. The best, he had made them the best, given them the best, they should be thankful.

T (First pass, I'll add and edit)

Skoryy was a racing pilot under the Toporik Syndicate, before her racing partner was killed mid-race to set an example. Since then, she has been pushing on social connections to find work and somewhere to hide.

Special Abilities

 * Meat Is Cheap, Save The Metal: When the vehicle you are piloting takes damage you can choose for the pilot to take an equal level of harm instead. If you resist this harm take -1d to the resist roll. Pilot armor cannot be used to prevent this damage.
 * Travelling Companion: You can exhaust 1 Quirk or spend 2 Stress to Push Yourself on Vehicle actions.
 * Reflexes (Infiltrator): When there's a question about who acts first, the answer is you (two pilots with Reflexes act simultaneously).
 * Tough as Nails (Soldier): Penalties from harm are one level less severe (though level 4 harm is still fatal).

Beliefs

 * Iskra Garomedon (1/4)
 * If Iskra can't fight she has no place in the cockpit.
 * Nandi Tin (2/4)
 * Nandi thinks she's hot shit, I know better.
 * Nandi has a lot at stake.
 * Zoya Gabbro (1/4)
 * I can't be sure Zoya won't stab us in the back.
 * I think Zoya's just looking for something good.
 * Tested (true) in GS08 – MESSIDOR.
 * Zoya thinks I'm the good thing.
 * Zoya has my back.
 * Toporik Jet (1/4)
 * Jet underestimates me, it's gonna get him killed.