Huntsman Rafferty
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
| |
| Huntsman Rafferty | |
| Player: @Serpine | |
| Origin: | Technology |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Brute |
| Threat Level: | 26 |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Scott Rafferty |
| Known Aliases: | Trooper 46 |
| Species: | Human |
| Age: | 31 |
| Height: | 6'7" |
| Weight: | 300 Lbs. |
| Eye Color: | Blue |
| Hair Color: | Blond |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | American |
| Occupation: | Arachnos Soldier |
| Place of Birth: | Newark, New Jersey |
| Base of Operations: | Darwin's Landing, Mercy Island, Rogue Isles |
| Marital Status: | Married |
| Known Relatives: | Linda Rafferty (Wife), Scott Rafferty Jr (Son), Robert Rafferty (Son), Mark Rafferty (Son), Lisa Rafferty (Daughter), Frank
Rafferty (Father, Deceased), Sandra Rafferty (Mother, Deceased). |
| Known Powers | |
| Spinal interface allowing linkage to prototype combat armor (see Equipment) and other compatible systems. Minimal surgical augmentations to strength and toughness. | |
| Known Abilities | |
| Certified auto mechanic, Arachnos Wolf Spider combat training | |
| Equipment | |
| Prototype Arachnos combat armor featuring advanced neural interface, exoskeletal strength augmentation, hybrid alloy armored plating, and near-zero friction acceleration system. | |
| No additional information available. | |
Contents |
Affiliations
Currently a member of the Ghost Spiders.
Personality
While not unintelligent, Huntsman Rafferty prefers things to be direct and by-the-book (whichever book he has chosen to follow anyway). He is keenly concerned about the comfort and welfare of his family, and loyal to those who can best provide it. He can be counted on to follow orders from a superior, though his frustration with his father's poor decision making guarantee that he will question those orders he feels are foolish. Also notable are his strong feelings of contempt towards super powered individuals who do not "recognize their responsibilities" and choose law-enforcement or military work as a career: In fact he prefers those who are classified as career criminals to those who might potentially steal normal jobs from a mundane person.
Scott has adopted a world-view the holds Arachnos as a benevolent dictatorship, and sees his role as sanctioned protector to the monarchy. He accepts the brutality in the system as necessary to maintain order, and believes it will fade as more people accept their proper roles as patriotic citizens, and once the illegal encroachments from the US (particularly Paragon) fade. In the Arachnos world, he has gravitated towards those he sees as patriotic followers of the organization (i.e. Ghost Widow and her followers) rather then those he perceives as craving personal power only (i.e. Black Scorpion).
Powers
Huntsman Rafferty has been surgically augmented to accommodate the demands of his prototype battle armor. Strands of synthetic neuro-reactive cords have been added alongside his existing musculature, roughly doubling his natural strength. His skeleton and epidermis have been laced with ceramic composites, increasing their durability and resistance to abrasion.
Most importantly, his spine has been reinforced and linked to a segmented surface plate running down his back that has various connector slots that allow direct neural interface between the armor or other compatible systems. While there have been some problems with immune-system rejection of the augmentations, they were designed with biological neutrality in mind and at this point have become largely accepted by his body as long as general health and nutrition is maintained.
Abilities
Rafferty is a competent mechanic, able to repair and maintain cars, motorcycles, and trucks. He has begun trying to understand the technologies behind his battle armor, but has had only peripheral success. He has received extensive training in the combat techniques of Arachnos Wolf Spiders, particularly hand-to-hand. He is also a decent football player, having played during high-school.
Equipment
Huntsman Rafferty's primary piece of equipment is a suit of prototype Arachnos powered battle armor. Constructed of various hybrid alloys, it has impressive resistance to penetration, requiring either special rounds or super-powered attack to damage. It is equipped with a series of exoskeletal servos, greatly enhancing the wearers strength and has an integrated self-regenerating jump-booster allowing short assisted leaps. The helmet is fitted with communications gear and advanced terrain sensors (a strong requirement when moving at accelerated speeds). A large number of nano-machines are also integrated into the system, swiftly repairing breaks in the armor and even performing minimal healing on the wearer.
More importantly however, the armor features an experimental low-friction field generation system. This system allows the friction of the environment to be lowered or increased on the armor's surface, in full or in part. Among other things this can be used to allow smoother augmented blows (removing air resistance to the punch until the point of impact), "skating" along the ground at extreme speeds, or even defensively by allowing grazing shots to more easily slide past.
Unfortunately, the timing required to regulate the enabling/disabling of the fields proved to daunting for a purely mechanical system, since intent was as important as motion. Thus a direct spinal interface was worked into the design. While this solved the problem, it proved to be the undoing of mass-production, since the interface was extremely expensive, had to be custom designed for each wearer, and produced tremendous feedback (sometimes lethal) in all but a few subjects.
History
Early Life
Scott Rafferty was born in Newark, the only child of a mildly successful contractor. While he was in his early teens, his family moved to Paragon City, hoping to take advantage of the constant need for construction generated by its powerful occupants. Unfortunately this proved to be a gross miscalculation. Many of the more hazardous (and thus lucrative) construction jobs were filled by heroes who required day-jobs, automated systems created by hyper-machinesmiths, powered criminals on work-release programs, or similar oddities. The need for a mundane contractor was low, and to make matters worse the jobs that were available inevitably went to those with contacts in the hero community.
Still his family seemed to be getting by, and so Scott focused on his two primary joys: Football and restoring cars. It was doing the latter (which he viewed as a backup career if football didn't prove profitable) that introduced him to his future wife Linda, the daughter of a local automotive scrap yard owner. Things in his life went well enough for several years, until a combination of events conspired to end it just as his senior year of High School began. His father, it turned out, had been making ends meet by working secretly with supers to construct their hidden bases, which usually existing far outside of safety codes and definitely were not insured. A random fight between one such hero and his nemesis at a still-in-construction base put Scott's father in a coma and killed his mother (who had been there dropping off lunch). Then, taking advantage of the distraction, a football rival of Scott's managed to successfully frame him for dealing in steroids and cocaine, scuttling his football prospects. The final double blow came while he was still in jail: Linda visited to tell him that his father had passed away in his coma, and then in the emotion of the moment she confessed that she was pregnant.
Joining Arachnos
Once out of jail, Scott tried to put his life back together. He married Linda, who thankfully did believe he had been framed, and started looking for work. Unfortunately in a city of "heroes", the difficulty at getting a job with a criminal record was magnified. For years he pursued whatever he could, barely managing to feed his family (which increased in size several more times, much to his increasing panic), and soon found himself engaging in petty crime out of desperation. Eventually feeling he had run out of options, he debated killing himself and making it look like an accident so his family could collect the insurance money and survive without him. Before that however, he was invited to a secret rally, which turned out to be a recruitment drive for the Rogue Isles. Lord Recluse needed fresh forces to maintain order as increasing numbers of powered individuals emigrated there, and so had sent officers to Paragon and other cities to offer a new home to the desperate and willing. Scott was both.
Stunning his family with the news they were moving to Mercy Island, Scott quickly found work in RIP, where his criminal background (both the true and false aspects) had a far lesser impact on his application process then his intimidating size. Throwing himself into his new job, the first "honest" career he had been in for some time, he was rapidly singled out for recruitment into the Wolf Spiders and Arachnos proper. Seeing this as no different then joining the army (something he hadn't been able to in the US do to his background), he approached it with a discipline and focus that stunned (and somewhat disturbed) his superiors. In no time he was placed into the advanced training of the Enforcer program. From there he worked to prove himself worthy of Tac Ops training, though this proved more challenging as it required a much more broad view of battle then he had become used to. However, coming to the conclusion tactics wasn't unlike what he experienced back in his football days (particularly the way Arachnos approaches tactics), he soon overcame this hurdle as well.
His family, while concerned at first at what had happened, now enjoyed the comforts that his rapidly improving position provided and quickly adopted his same vision of Lord Recluse as the benevolent lord that had saved them from squalor. His sons now look forward to the day they will be old enough to follow in their father's footsteps and join Arachnos. His wife Linda began a support group for other spouses of Arachnos personnel, helping them to adapt to their roles and support the military in their own way. Between his wife's social efforts and his own actions, Rafferty came to the attention of the Huntsman selection administrators. It also brought him to the attention of a very different and more dangerous set of recruiters in the organization... those in Research and Development.
The Prototype
Recognized for his moral flexibility, adherence to orders, and physical attributes, Scott Rafferty was the 46th (of 100) Wolf Spider selected to take part in the trials of an experimental Arachnos powered battle-suit utilizing a revolutionary low-friction field generator. Guaranteed a promotion and that his family would be cared for in the event of problems, he submitted for surgical adjustments that would enable him to interface with the armor as well as augmentations to compensate for the intense physical stresses it would put a wearer under.
While the premise seemed solid, the program overall proved to be financial failure: Only 20% of the subjects survived the modification process, and all but five of those went into permanent comas upon initial interface with the prototype Trooper amour. The cost in lost equipment (as well as training) per soldier was immense. With the scientists and directors involved taken away for therapeutic accountancy training/penance, the survivors of the program were returned to the field in their former roles.
Still utilizing the armor (once interfaced, the suits would adapt to each user to much for reuse, which was one of the design issues), the prototype Troopers found their new positions problematic. They were to powerful to be used for the roles of normal Huntsman (often viewed more as a threat to their commanders) and their neural systems were to corrupted to be used in the Crab or Bane Spider programs. And they were viewed as to expensive to simply dispose of. Of the three that have not gone rogue since then, Rafferty has worked the hardest at continuing to find advancement in Arachnos.
OOC NOTES
( Huntsman Rafferty was transferred to Virtue from Champion (where he was called Trooper 46) in hopes to find superior Arachnos themed RP )
