Need help with a sneaky liaison

[Mark Rand]

Kate Harper, an African-American woman with braided, shoulder-length black hair, works for the Department of Homeland Security and is one of several agency representatives assigned to the team the PCs are in. As far as skills go, she is a skilled actress (15-), seductress (15-), and cat burglar (17-) and can handle herself in combat if she has to. Kate often goes with the team on missions. She'll stay with them if she thinks her skills can help. Otherwise, she'll stay with the police officials that are in command.

 

I'm hoping to get help from my learned colleagues on these boards in developing her background.

[1EyedJack]

Re: Need help with a sneaky liaison

 

I find it helpful to ask my self qustions about an npc I build to help flesh out the background and develop sub plots. questions about your liason:

Dose she have a criminal backgroud?

if so what caused her to reform?

Dose she still have contacts in the criminal world?

How did she come to work with the police?

if she has a criminal background how dose it complicate her relationship with her fellow employees.

How many siblings dose she have, and what are they like?

Who are her enemies? Why do they dislike her?

I hope this is of some help to you.

P.S. you might try to find a real person with a similar job/skill set and base your NPC off of them.

[Mark Rand]

Re: Need help with a sneaky liaison

 

I find it helpful to ask my self qustions about an npc I build to help flesh out the background and develop sub plots. questions about your liason:

Dose she have a criminal backgroud?

if so what caused her to reform?

Dose she still have contacts in the criminal world?

How did she come to work with the police?

if she has a criminal background how dose it complicate her relationship with her fellow employees.

How many siblings dose she have, and what are they like?

Who are her enemies? Why do they dislike her?

I hope this is of some help to you.

P.S. you might try to find a real person with a similar job/skill set and base your NPC off of them.

 

I have no idea if she started out as a cat burglar and made a deal with an intelligence agency ("Work for us or go to jail!") or joined an intelligence agency and was trained as a cat burglar after graduating from acting school.

 

She has no siblings.

 

She probably has a few enemies, either people she's stolen stuff from or politicians she's run afoul of.

[Mark Rand]

Re: Need help with a sneaky liaison

 

I find it helpful to ask my self qustions about an npc I build to help flesh out the background and develop sub plots. questions about your liason:

Dose she have a criminal backgroud?

if so what caused her to reform?

Dose she still have contacts in the criminal world?

How did she come to work with the police?

if she has a criminal background how dose it complicate her relationship with her fellow employees.

How many siblings dose she have, and what are they like?

Who are her enemies? Why do they dislike her?

I hope this is of some help to you.

P.S. you might try to find a real person with a similar job/skill set and base your NPC off of them.

 

I was considering starting her out as a second, or third, generation cat burglar who either "made a deal" with the authorities to stay out of jail or is on parole to the agency she works for.

 

She probably still has criminal contacts and many of her fellow agents refuse to work with her because of her criminal past.

[Shaft]

Re: Need help with a sneaky liaison

 

If she works for Homeland Security, that opens a whole slew of ideas: the most obvious being that the Agency is corrupt (though that might be a little too "real life" for your players).

 

If DHS is indeed corrupt, the obvious choice is to make Kate an agent for the secret masters or whoever is running the agency, but I get the impression that Kate is genuine goodguy. If that's the case, maybe Kate arranged for herself to get an assignment linking herself to the players so she can use them to root out the corruption without exposing herself too much. Perhaps she hopes to clean out the agency so that she can take it over a few years down the line, at which point the PCs will have a signifigantly more powerful contact down the line.

 

Of course, she might come under fire if she is told to act against the players because of missions that she requested they undertake...

[Mark Rand]

Re: Need help with a sneaky liaison

 

If she works for Homeland Security, that opens a whole slew of ideas: the most obvious being that the Agency is corrupt (though that might be a little too "real life" for your players).

 

If DHS is indeed corrupt, the obvious choice is to make Kate an agent for the secret masters or whoever is running the agency, but I get the impression that Kate is genuine goodguy. If that's the case, maybe Kate arranged for herself to get an assignment linking herself to the players so she can use them to root out the corruption without exposing herself too much. Perhaps she hopes to clean out the agency so that she can take it over a few years down the line, at which point the PCs will have a signifigantly more powerful contact down the line.

 

Of course, she might come under fire if she is told to act against the players because of missions that she requested they undertake...

 

In truth, I'm still trying to decide if Kate's a real cat burglar or an agent trained like one.

 

It's common, in fiction, for cat burglars to be spies. Either the agency sets them up, or the police capture them and an agent makes them an offer, or they've been parolled to the agency.

 

Kate could've worked for her original employer for the required number of years before being transferred to DHS. In that case, her agency records may not have any indication of her past as a cat burglar, only that she often handled black bag jobs for them.

[Shaft]

Re: Need help with a sneaky liaison

 

Her cover could have been a Cat Burglar. Her father trained her then she was recruited by the Agency who gave her additional training. She used her cover and reputation from her father's legacy to make contacts on the black market, working primarily for the Agency, but also taking real jobs (with the Agency's blessing) to keep her cover. Eventually, she was exposed which is why she's riding a desk job, but she misses the field work in a big way. She still does some field work, without the agency's knowledge, and on one of these unsanctioned heists she uncovered something sinister about the very agency that employs her, which is why she's turning to the PCs...

 

?

[Mark Rand]

Re: Need help with a sneaky liaison

 

Her cover could have been a Cat Burglar. Her father trained her then she was recruited by the Agency who gave her additional training. She used her cover and reputation from her father's legacy to make contacts on the black market, working primarily for the Agency, but also taking real jobs (with the Agency's blessing) to keep her cover. Eventually, she was exposed which is why she's riding a desk job, but she misses the field work in a big way. She still does some field work, without the agency's knowledge, and on one of these unsanctioned heists she uncovered something sinister about the very agency that employs her, which is why she's turning to the PCs...

 

?

 

Cool stuff. I owe you rep.

 

I'll come up with a hopefully interesting background soon and post it once I figure out how the agency, not the CIA, recruited her and who blew her cover.

[Shaft]

Re: Need help with a sneaky liaison

 

Glad you approve.

 

I'm gonna have to get you to write an "executive summary" for all your ideas. It sounds like you have a really cool set of campaigns (and your ideas are good triggers for ideas of my own), but it's spread out over your posts, so I'm not sure which character belongs in whcih setting.

 

Of course that might be a lengthy chunk of writing on your part, so don't treat this as a demand or anything...

[Mark Rand]

Re: Need help with a sneaky liaison

 

Glad you approve.

 

I'm gonna have to get you to write an "executive summary" for all your ideas. It sounds like you have a really cool set of campaigns (and your ideas are good triggers for ideas of my own), but it's spread out over your posts, so I'm not sure which character belongs in whcih setting.

 

Of course that might be a lengthy chunk of writing on your part, so don't treat this as a demand or anything...

 

Most of the characters are written to be used with any setting with no change. Those that aren't, can be easily adapted to your needs.

 

The Secret Service questions just give unusual situations that a Secret Service agent might find himself (or herself) in.

[Mark Rand]

Re: Need help with a sneaky liaison

 

Kate was trained by her parents as a cat burglar, then set up by the agency. They caught her, gave the FBI her go-between, and made her an offer. She spent four years with them instead of the agreed upon two.

 

Her cover was a cat burglar, and she was good at it. Being one, due to her reputation, and that of her family, she had contacts everywhere. To keep her cover up, she pulled, with the agency's knowledge and permission, real jobs. This way, she keep her cover up and, occasionally, uncovered interesting information.

 

A scheming senator (like Robert Kinsey, from Stargate SG-1) blew Kate's cover after she looted an ally's mansion. She was quickly transferred to the Department of Homeland Security, who quickly put her to work. (The DHS had no idea she was a real cat burglar. They thought that she was an agent with the cover of one.)

 

While Kate was out of the country, the senator's limo exploded while he was in it. Although the car was trash, he escaped without injury. The bomb squad's investigation turned up the remains of no less than 10 M-80s, two of which were in the fuel tank.

 

Six months after her transfer to DHS, Kate was assigned to the PCs as a liaison officer.

[Mark Rand]

Re: Need help with a sneaky liaison

 

Kate originally had a 20 point "Code vs Killing". It became a 15 point "Reluctant to Kill" after she joined the agency when she discovered that some circumstances require lethal force.

 

That said, all her weapons generally carry non-lethal loads.

[Guest Major Tom]

Re: Need help with a sneaky liaison

 

It'd really be hilarious if her control officer (assuming she has one) was none

other than Alexander Mundy.

 

 

Major Tom

[Comic]

Re: Need help with a sneaky liaison

 

Oh. Sorry. Uhm. I read the title of the thread and thought you were looking for advice about how to date without getting caught by your wife..

 

Which I think wouldn't be especially appropriate to this thread. I mean, unless her name is Kate.

 

And then the advice is, "never have an affair with anyone who has less to lose than you do." I've never actually, you know, needed this sort of advice, but it comes from Henry Hill, who in addition to being the head of the committee to impeach the president (or whatever it was called) fathered children by four different women, only one of them his own wife at the time.. but all of them married to someone. So, he ought to know.

 

Er. Ahem. Uh. Back to the real topic of the thread. Sorry.

[Mark Rand]

Re: Need help with a sneaky liaison

 

It'd really be hilarious if her control officer (assuming she has one) was none

other than Alexander Mundy.

 

 

Major Tom

 

He might've been her control officer in the CIA.

[Narratio]

Re: Need help with a sneaky liaison

 

A comment upon her basic main skills of Actress, Seductress and Cat Burgler. Ummm, doesn't this sound the "cliche" bells in your head? To me she sounds like an 'ALIAS' clone.

 

I like all of the above posts, but how about ditching the Seductress and lowering her COM (and I think you've got it set way high without seeing it) to norm or below levels. Of course I always read 'seductress' to mean an aura of intense sexuality on a pneumatic body designed to inflame the lust of the long dead (sort of Halle Berry/Selma Hayek levels), so I may be wrong here.

 

A good actress doesn't have to have high COM and doesn't need seduction skills (given males eternal power struggles between big and little heads). A good actress can make you believe what she wants you to believe with that talent alone. Seduction is really a subset of acting in most cases.

 

I'd go for more development of character knowledge than ability to out slink a broken back rattle snake.

[Mark Rand]

Re: Need help with a sneaky liaison

 

A comment upon her basic main skills of Actress, Seductress and Cat Burgler. Ummm, doesn't this sound the "cliche" bells in your head? To me she sounds like an 'ALIAS' clone.

 

I like all of the above posts, but how about ditching the Seductress and lowering her COM (and I think you've got it set way high without seeing it) to norm or below levels. Of course I always read 'seductress' to mean an aura of intense sexuality on a pneumatic body designed to inflame the lust of the long dead (sort of Halle Berry/Selma Hayek levels), so I may be wrong here.

 

A good actress doesn't have to have high COM and doesn't need seduction skills (given males eternal power struggles between big and little heads). A good actress can make you believe what she wants you to believe with that talent alone. Seduction is really a subset of acting in most cases.

 

I'd go for more development of character knowledge than ability to out slink a broken back rattle snake.

 

The seduction skill is meant to represent her ability to be the bait in a "honey trap". Of course, her acting skills could represent that, too.