Things have changed a bit since we last talked so I’ll begin at the beginning, after all, I’ve gone from corper to street rat to socialite in the brief space of twenty years, thanks mostly to Silk… I’m even aspiring to Jedi hood now if Silk can gather enough of us together. Anyway, here we go:
I grew up in a nice enough part of Bellevue, but my ‘rents weren’t corp drones exactly. They were researchers for Seattle U, anthropologists studying the urban tribe phenomenon. That’s how I hooked up with Freedom, my family practically lived with them for years and I drifted between them and my school friends and the group of middle class, semi-rich, bored kids who laughably called themselves a gang. They got me into the boards though and I’ve not looked back since so I’ve got that to thank them for.
I guess I stood on the edge of the shadows rather than in them, I could see their effects but was still fairly isolated from the realities, at least until ’72 when the corp mercs assaulted Freedom in order to snatch the technos hiding in the tribe. My parents made the mistake of trying to intervene, Mum died for her trouble, Dad was in a coma from a nasty headshot. My brother Tom reacted by disappearing off grid (I’ve since found him running his own little urban tribe out of a former children’s home in Redmond), but I knew that someone had to take care of Dad before the insurance ran out. As a kid I didn’t really have a legal way of making any real money and I wasn’t interested in ‘just surviving’ or being someone’s joytoy. As Freedom upped sticks and headed south I joined the convoy…I had a feeling that they would provide me many more opportunities, despite their losses, and I was right!
I’ve always had a talent for reading people, and occasionally getting them to do what I want. The move introduced me to the Crime Mall and I recognised that here was a place I could help Freedom, and help myself in the process. It was wondering the halls of this ‘wonderland’ that Silk found me. Apparently she’d been watching me and offered to take me under her wing. I was sceptical at first, who wouldn’t be? But she’s almost as persuasive as I can be and in the end the chance to work for a rising star infobroker was too good to pass up. I didn’t really know it then but I was being groomed as her protégé and that basically meant being a spy…all very exciting as a teenager although now I recognise the importance of what we’re doing, no, I’m not going to tell you what that is!
So there I was, little Silk, they even started calling me Silkie! I wasn’t a shadowrunner precisely, I watched people and places for Silk and occasionally interfered when she asked me to. It was maybe sixth months later that I had my epiphany and all the Pattern stuff that Silk had been banging on about suddenly came to startling, and slightly frightening focus. Within the space of a week I went from being blindingly average to scintilating! I’d known that I was an adept but I could now see the underlying threads that I had been unconciously manipulating to get what I wanted. I can even follow the threads outwards and effectively, or so I’m told, cast spells…damn!
I’ve always been a bit of a social chameleon… I had to be to go from corp kid to urban tribal to high class socialite. That last one is where I seem to be spending most of my time now, no complaints from me of course! The society currents are in some ways even more cutthroat than the streets and Silk has me watching who is doing what to whom. It’s not a bad life, and there are lots of parties to go to. Silk has insisted that I get some slightly more rounded education at Seattle U so I’m doing some online course when I have a spare moment but there’s nothing to beat the thrill of wrapping a corporate pawn around my finger and getting him to whisper his secrets to me, particulalry if he doesn’t know he’s doing it!
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