Jack "September" Smith

Player: Cocoa

Profession: Information Gatherer, Liaison, and Hacker Extrordinare

Demeanor: September is flippant, an inveterate smartass, and an avid coffee-drinker. Still, he likes solving interesting problems and does good work, so you can get his help with little more than a bribe of the right challenge (and maybe some of that fancy pudding the cafeteria always runs out of too quickly).

Nature: September is a freedom-junkie and conspiracy theorist at heart, and the irony that he works for just about the literal Men in Black is not lost on him. A good chunk of his flippant demeanor is just the result of him trying to not take other people too seriously to try to make that sit a little easier. Still, he sees the Foundation and the GOC as lesser evils given the state of the world at large, and he takes pride in his work, so there's little risk of him going rogue at this point, even if he doesn't fully trust the people he works for. Though he has problems opening up to people, he's most likely to get along with others with good intentions and the skills to back them up who still have a slight rebellious edge to them, and has even managed to turn one or two outside agents through that bond.

While he has mixed opinions about the various anomalous organizations found in the world, he consistently opposes AWCY? (due to personal rivalries and generally being annoying) and MC&D (they're human traffickers and greedy dirtbags only out for themselves, enough said).

Description: September is a wiry, constantly-disheveled man of Mongolian descent in his early thirties. He usually has a short, scruffy beard (or at least a five-o-clock shadow) and wears rectangular glasses. His wardrobe is fairly simple; jeans or sweats, t-shirts, and sometimes a hoodie tossed in for good measure.

Stats

Health

  • Physical Health: 11
  • Mental Health: 15

Attributes

  • Physical Defense: 1
  • Mental Defense: 5
  • Strength: 0
  • Agility: 2
  • Perception: 2

Skills

  • Melee: 0
  • Ranged: 0
  • Stealth: 4
  • Academics: 3
  • Science: 6
  • Medical: 0
  • Engineering: 6
  • Social: 4

Specialities

  • At the Center of the Web Sat a Spider: 4 September has his fingers in dozens of pies across the internet, be it as a member of paranormal enthusiast forums, hacktivist groups, or that one guy that hacked into your "secure" server. Odds are, if it's on a computer, he can get it for you. +4 to hacking checks, and September can gather extensive and sensitive information of the goings-on around the world given enough time.
  • Surprise! I'm Actually Dangerous: 4 Just because he works best behind the scenes and doesn't like or often partake in field work doesn't mean September can't handle himself in a fight, as he's willing to demonstrate if pushed too far. +2 to Melee and Agility while injured. These bonuses disappear if he is healed, even if there is still damage remaining.
  • Great Meme War Veteran: 2 September has it out for more than a couple members of AWCY?, and the feeling is mutual. As such, he's had to find ways around some of their standard tactics. +2 bonus to Mental Defense rolls against memes and memetic effects.

Gear

Onsite
  • A high-tech computer rig
  • An absolute mess of papers and junk, where he can nonetheless find whatever he's looking for in seconds
Offsite
  • Laptop
  • Hacking Gear
  • Duffel bag
  • Bits and pieces that can be used to make quick, simple disguises in the field (social engineering ftw!)
  • Concealable radio earpiece

Personal Belongings

  • Quite a few film posters
  • Those cool glow-in-the-dark stars that you can stick on things
  • Yet another absolute mess of papers and junk, where he can nonetheless find whatever he's looking for in seconds

Background History

Jack Smith's childhood was largely uneventful, and he grew up to be an unassuming but intelligent young man on the surface, and to a degree that was true. But at the same time, he was very inquisitive, and enjoyed tinkering with technology and absorbing information from the various discussion boards and chatrooms scattered around the nascent internet. In time, he came to believe that the world was a very complex, secretive, and incredible place where the powerful used their resources to exploit or control others. But he also came to believe that he had the ability to change things, at least in small ways.

Taking up the moniker "September," Jack became a grey hat hacker. While he never went full anarchist, he did form loose alliances with activist groups of varying levels of radicalism. At first, it was entirely mundane groups, but as time went on he eventually made contact with groups that skirted the edge of the veil, reinforcing his beliefs in the paranormal. At the same time, he hadn't yet pinpointed why (or rather, in his mind, "who") knowledge of paranormal phenomena was mostly confined to small pockets, and why disseminating it encountered so much resistance. Then, in the summer of '96, he found his answer.

Originally, it was just groundwork for another job; he wanted to figure out how to let people piggyback signals on Promethean Labs satellites. But in mining for information on the satellites themselves, he found something far more interesting — Who some of those satellite networks were being made for, and the papertrail they left. It was slow going at first, but over time the bits and pieces he was able to glean added up to make a rough silhouette. A massive international conspiracy, dedicated to the suppression of the paranormal. The monster in the shadows that he'd been poking his entire life. He had to be careful, but he knew exactly what to do; he was going to blow this wide open.

To cut a long story short, he wasn't careful enough.

The Foundation caught on, and September soon found himself captured by authorities and tosses in federal prison on a variety of charges, some accurate, and other trumped up. Then someone approached him with an offer. Put his skills and connections to use for the Foundation, do some good in the world, and all his problems disappear.

He resisted, at first. They could imprison him or even silence him if they wanted, but he wasn't a sellout. Eventually, though, he got worn down. At first it was just a few big things where they needed a pointer in the right direction. It was alright, he told himself. It was battles that they'd win anyway, but by speeding things along he was saving lives. Then it was actual missions, helping coordinate and provide information for entire operations. It was still okay, he told himself. These were the kinds of people who deserved to be taken down. Strange bedfellows, and all that.

Soon, September found himself caught in an entirely different web than the one he'd come to love.

Misc. Details

Languages

English
Mongolian
Japanese
German
Russian

Facts
Music/Artwork
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