CQ Character ideas.

Note:
for a given combat skill in a given category I'm approximating out a rating of "average" to be around that of a freshly minted US infantryman; ie firing a properly serviced and zeroed rifle from the prone at a range target and under practice stresses the character will hit ~75% of the time.

Equipment is, with the exception of specific items, generally more a guideline than a complete list. Ditto skills.

Talents are the "feat" -ish abilities not tied directly to typical skill levels.

Flaws are similarly natured penalties.

Characters are present in ascending order of relative grade of overall skill. By my read Jan Kowalski fits neatly between the 2nd and 3rd. This is not an opinion that should really matter.

Poor-Average-Above Average-Excellent-Formidable-Legendary.


The Survivor.
For Priscilla Dari life prior to her becoming the property of ISIL was pretty normal. Training in track and field in secondary school, worrying about how to break it to her mom that she wasn't that into Vishnu (or boys at all for that matter) and living with being "brown" amidst the cliques of olive-toned girls at an upper class English boarding school took up enough of her stress bandwidth to seem like enough suffering for one teenager.

That was 4 years ago before a family reunion/funeral in the homeland went very, very wrong.

Since then she's just escaped a lifetime of being the fuck-furniture of Ali Baba the ISIL commander. By him she's birthed two children and endured countless attempts at more. One of Ali's particular kinks is "shaping" his harem to his liking. He liked Priss's toned legs and athlete's form, but thought her correspondingly flat chest "unwomanly."

She didn't take well to the cartoonishly inflated implants, but a couple days of restraints and starvation changed her mind.

When one of Ali's lieutenants strangled him during a disagreement about his monopolizing the best picks of the incoming children Priss bolted and has since been lurking around ISIL territory equally fixated on finding some kind of route out and becoming a kind of an urban legend that leaves horrified looking (and severely mutilated) fighters in it's wake.

For Priss this isn't just vengeance it's a way to suppress the years of terror and hatred frantically clawing her self control. She knows that if she's not careful she'll die, or worse be recaptured, and that's not going to happen while she can escape to exact revenge.

The fate of her children are a mystery and she prefers not to know. She doesn't want to know they could be alive and doesn't want to think about what could be happening to them.

Name: Priscilla Dari.
Age: 20
Ethnicity: Lebanese-Italian.
Family: Father, deceased. Mother, deceased. Older Brother: conscripted.
Area of Operation: Near East, Mediterranean, N. Africa.
Languages: Italian, Lebanese, English, Pashto-Urdu-Persian hybrid ISIL argot.
Appearance: slim medium frame, wave black hair, light brown eyes, recent combat scarring (slight), haunted mien, ~5'5", 109lbs, obvious cheap breast implants.
Sexuality: Lesbian.

Skills:
-Small arms: poor.
-Long arms: poor -increase to average with shotguns and to above average at point blank range.
-Heavy weapons: none.
-Hand-to-Hand: average, with bonuses while Frenzied.
-Driving: average.
-Athletics: excellent.
-Acrobatics: average.
-Stealth: average.
-Survival: poor.
-Deception: above average.
-Desecration of corpses: excellent.

Equipment:
-Modified Burka*.
-Weatherby Athena 12ga. shotgun w/ improvised bayonet^, barrels cut extremely short.
-fistful of assorted 12ga shells.
-Cache of canned food.
-Small amount of mixed currency.
-swiped aspirin, twine, bent needle, duct tape & maxi pads = first aid kit.
-one red shoe.

Talents:
-Sculpted. A dogged athlete before her capture and given to frantic exercise during it (most reliable way to dreamless sleep was to be too exhausted to stay awake) Priscilla has the fitness level of an off-season triathlete.

-Frenzy. In close quarters Priscilla is greatly more resistant to wound trauma and  concussion and strikes with considerably greater force than would be obvious. Also biting.

-Desecrator. Kicking a pocket Koran 1/2 up a dead man's ass really makes'em mad. Mad enemies make mistakes. See also pelting sentries with her scrotum collection.

Flaws:
-PTSD; rating: severe. Triggers: watching people eat in front of her when she's hungry, being confined/restrained, being grappled without consent, smell of cigars, sounds of people walking on creaking wooden floors.

Reactions: reflexive stillness, violent panic, attempts to isolate.

-Insomnia; physical exhaustion partially compensates for being sleepless.

Future?
-Oddly she's got a good head start on being a Contractor. She's blooded, ruthless, and has both quite a work ethic and zero expectation of ever normalizing back into civilian culture. However she would need a full course of infantry training to get up to competency in most areas and is quite of bit of therapy away from real long-term mental stability.

After that she'd be a specialist in hunting Muslim terrorists with the side project of trying to figure out what kind of person to be.

"If you could be anywhere...": Anywhere not here while playing Minecraft in no monsters mode.

*Much as she hates the full bee-keeper outfit it's proved useful for moving around in packs of other luckless women. In particular she's sown improvised weights into the hem so that it can be hurled off her and onto a target rather like a gladiator's net.
This is unlikely to work on any actual professional warrior but when paired with a frenzied bayonet assault has proved effective on pairs of isolated ISIL foot soldiers.
Blood stains, buckshot tears, and tears from the bayonet do tend to reduce the usability of a given burka rather severely, but ISIL likes to stockpile them for any incoming "godless infidel whores."

^though this over/under shotgun has been battered by merciless use, crude repairs, and stripped of it's precious metal furnishings a skilled gunsmith could find the manufacturer's stamp that would lead to the discovery of it being once of a limited production run that replaced the conventional silver decorations with platinum.
Who bought this one?
Uday Hussein, eldest son of Iraq's former dictator for life.


The Fugitive.

"Annabelle Morgan" thought being a neutral veterinarian in her native Derry County would be enough to maintain a kind of stabilizing distance from the chaos of The Troubles.

The IRA disagreed.

Fast forward around a decade and when former terrorists are becoming freshly legitimized bureaucrats they tend to like to scapegoat the out of favor. Anna was never really one of them, and they hadn't forgotten.

Anna's response was to flee Ireland for Central and South America not far ahead of an Interpol bounty for her arrest.

Another decade of fulfilling but depressingly futile freedom fighting (the exception being the brief installation of Aristide) finds Anna floating around the usual paramilitary circles hoping for one last real People's Revolution before succumbing to middle age and despair.

Despite the terms of her flight from Ireland Anna is not particularly bitter about the experience or about life -having at least reconnected with her family via Facebook- though given the chance to settle up with her former bosses she'd take a thorough and humiliating revenge.

Age: 37
Ethnicity: Irish.
Family: Irrelevant.
Area of Operations: Central & South America.
Languages: Celtic, English, Spanish, Portugese, Marxist Dialectic, Blarney.
Appearance: medium build, stringy deep red hair, sparkling emerald eyes, freckles, "commando" tan lines, light combat scarring, ready smile, 5'2", -her pointy chin and narrow jaw have led to her sometimes being descibed as "elfin," surprisingly strong grip. Interesting tattoos.
Sexuality: Bi, but low key.

Skills:
-Small arms: average.
-Long arms: average.
-Heavy weapons: average.
-Hand-to-Hand: average.
-Athletics: poor.
-Stealth: poor.
-Survival: above average.
-Deception: above average.
-Field Medicine: excellent.
-Riding: above average.
-Detect Lie: excellent.
-argue politics/philosophy/religion/rugby: excellent.

Equipment:
-stock M4/AKM in good condition, several mags.
-x2 1911A1/M3/Glock 17/short-barreled revolver(s).
-Medical field kit, battered but solid.
-Surprisingly comfortable but saggy plate carrier.
-Water resistant hiking Boots on 6th pair of soles.
-Really, really road worn (but diligently repaired) bomber jacket.
-very clean Bowie knife w/ compass, fishing line, matches, etc.
-fairly grimy passports.

Talents:
-Botanist. Very likely to have a useful knowledge of local flora and fauna, can improvise antitodes, forage for food, provide toxic materials, etc.

-Combat Surgeon. When it's time to suture she barely notices the bullets anymore. Also likely to score deep bleeding effects with small edged weapons.

-Charming. An actual love of people, a regard for relieving human suffering, a natural bent towards tact and a cheerfully filthy sense of humor make Annabell  pleasant company even over long periods of time.

-Animal Sympathy. Critters like her.

Flaws:
-Ethical. May object to particularly ruthless looting, and will definitely fuss about abuse of prisoners, torture, etc.

-Hunted. Though practiced at concealing her accent it still sometimes slips out during moments of high stress and any SAS veteran will pick it up immediately. She's not particularly guilty of the charges, but would be a project to discredit her accusers and clear her record of the more serious crimes. This would also do nothing to address the dozens of other real crimes committed against "legitimate state actors" and actual bandits since her exodus.

-Civilian. Anna crucially lacks the professional's commitment and discipline to the arts of war. She will eat more than is strictly necessary, catnap whenever she can, choose to ride over walking every time, and prefer to spend any extra money on neat stuff above tacticool accessories and elite training. Breaking her of these habits would be a major undertaking.

Future?
Annabell is not really suited to be a professional any more than she was actually born Annabell Morgan, but she could be interested in a legitimate life stitching up contractors or working for a relief NGO.
She is also potential waifu material given her recent bouts of "the baby blues" and growing interest in coming in from the cold.
Alternately there is the Interpol bounty for her capture (as per any low-ranking terrorist).

"If you could be anywhere...": The Shire. What?


The Resident Alien.

That she calls herself "Victoria Cross" is a transparent statement of her false identity, is a pure and straightforward way of saying, "you don't know who I am and you won't find out."

What's clear is that she's one of the least probable looking humans alive, an expensive specialized mercenary with a proven record of effective action, and an actual sociopath.

This surgery addicted narcissist's document trail goes not much farther back than an Israeli lunatic asylum and might point in the direct of Indonesia, but if you're talking to her you're probably interested in her talents with artillery.

Victoria Cross is an artillery savant. She _never_ misses.

Name: Victoria Cross
Age: apparent 25, actual unknown.
Ethnicity: unknown, possibly Asian, possibly African, possibly Ainu, possibly Demonic.
Area of Operations: anywhere.
Languages: Arabic, English, Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin), German, Japanese, Portugese, Russian, Spanish -possibly any major trade language.
Appearance: a leggy 5'7" with mocha skin, luminous yellow eyes (or is wearing cosmetic contact lenses), rosebud lips, pointed ears (excised earlobes), and obviously altered knife-edge cheekbones. Her hair could be in any color or cut as per the wig of the day (typically something neon in a bowl cut), but under it she is shaved clean. Subtle surgical scars. Not an ounce of fat out of place. Amazing toned curves. Numerous expensive piercings. Utterly unsettling manner.
Sexuality: herself, everyone else is an ornament.

Skills:
Small arms: above average, excellent with SMG's.
Long arms: average.
Heavy weapons: above average -see talents.
Hand to Hand: excellent, and a terrifying knife fighter.
Athletics: average.
Acrobatics: excellent.
Driving: above average.
Stealth: average.
Deception: excellent.
Empathy: nearly nonexistent.
Survival: poor.
Intimidation: formidable.
Contract Negotiation: excellent.
Torture: excellent.
Field Medicine: poor.

Equipment:
-cutting edge SMG in a complimentary matte finish w/ lots of accessories.
-conspicuously sculpted body armor w/ helmet and communications suite, modular plates, clever pockets.
-stupidly sharp fractal knife w/ polymer grip.
-several sets of fashionable clothing including several jaw-dropping something in latex/vinyl/leather.
-pleasant smelling skin care products.
-spare wigs.
-appropriate vehicle (rented supercar in civilization, SUV in the field).
-high end rations; very bland but nutritious.
-very expensive but practical boots and never platform heels.
-very expensive fake (?) passports.
-the latest iPhone.

Talents:
Edetic Memory: Victoria has perfect sensory recall -including pitch.

Mathematics Savant: go ahead -ask about Pi.

Artillery Savant: with any mechanically launched arcing projectile Victoria is the angel of death. Give her a WW2 era field gun and a target so far out the curvature  of the planet is a factor and she'll call the window the round enters.
This is part mathematical talent, part hypersensitivity to environmental cues, and part God liking it when people run around on fire waving their arms.
This talent applies to grenade launchers (but only partially to thrown grenades), any artillery weapon from light towed to naval cannon, and any RPG or MANPAD that can be fired indirectly. This applies to rocket batteries if they're not laser guided and works with MLRS systems that can be manually calibrated.
Theoretically this could apply to satellite weaponry as well.
How this applies mechanically is GM fiat. Something like her keeping or discarding scatter dice and re-rolling misses would be appropriate.

Gorgeous: Victoria is a legendary stunner. Most people forget what they're doing when they first see her. Even disciplined hostiles may forget to shoot. Men are disarmed beyond even possessiveness, women are cowed beyond even jealousy. Even after they're gotten used to her appearance and the raw creepiness of her mannerisms sets in an echo of it still inspires a little awe. Her initial presence has been described, sincerely, as "Angelic." Her enduring impression blends that with "Eldritch" or "Cthulu-esque."

Aware of the problems this can cause she typically invests in a scarf and some oversized fashion sunglasses when back in civilization.

Flaws:
Sociopath: in an industry full of functional sociopaths Victoria is an actual one and as such has had to train herself to imitate empathy. This is very conspicuously unnatural; most people find her alien-ness disturbing -doubly so paired with Victoria's obviously "altered" appearance.

Autistic: Victoria has to consciously interpret human behavior based on facial and physical clues. Human tone of speech sometimes provides her few clues about motivations but fortunately in this business standing with hip cocked and wearing a slight plastic smirk tends to be interpreted as "bitchy badass" not "indifferently confused and hair-trigger murderous."

Uncanny Valley: she's in it. She IS it.

Personality: given how nearly impossible it is to get into her head the actual person people interact with deserves a mention and in that regard she's rather normal -for a mercenary. She's cool, distant, plain spoken, exact, patient, thorough, and occasionally will attempt an ...unusual.... attempt at humor -she also finds people running around on fire waving their arms amusing. She likes the smell of roast pork as well and has probably eaten human flesh ("watch out for kuru") -but who'd find that out?

Her professional record is oddly spotty. Her terms of employment are extremely detailed and specific and if she thinks a contract is trying to stretch them she's probably going to turn and walk off with a full willingness to kill, flee, or bribe her way out as required. When that isn't happening she's indifferent to the nature of any given operation and could be possibly contracted to kill anyone alive if she thought the legal backlash was sufficiently deflected.

As a rule she always has an escape plan starting from right now and including ideas on how to kill everyone present as well as everyone encountered.

Victoria has zero innate compassion, but isn't indifferent to events that might affect the ongoing situation. Her baseline reaction to anything is transactional, "what do I get out of it? What might this cost me?" and as such will reliably look out for others as an extension of looking out for herself.

So what is her actual ambition? Self-perfection. Elective surgery is costly. Saving for cutting edge prosthetics (none yet, but she's waiting) is costly. At any time Victoria is either very, very wealthy or nearly skint and rarely anything in between though she always has several fortunes tied up in investment through proxies of proxies.

In her down time she's either recovering from something, searching for her next job, or occasionally in Ibiza or Monaco or Goa or any place pretty hedonists collect to dance around in strobe-lit X-fueled bacchanalia. Though normally a tightly controlled person as a pressure release Victoria will periodically go ultra-clubbing, do a ton of molly/Xstacy, and hook up with a small crowd of people who she will proceed to fuck savagely as a means of forming memories that amount to epic orgies done in the name of her own superhuman glory.

Because epic narcissist.

This does also mean she can be one hell of a wing-woman.

Future? Utterly an enigma. Killed in action. Arrested for an artillery assassination. Cancer from some insane gene-therapy experiment while attempting immortality/functional vampirism. Decide she's finally perfect and try to conquer a nation. Have an epiphany and get interest in space travel. First full-body prosthesis ala Ghost in the Shell.
All directions point to nothing normal with a high likelihood of spectacular collateral.

"If you could be anywhere..." No comment.


The Elite.

For Valentina Vashevskayakovnik the choice was essentially to either take her prosthetic leg and her early retirement and learn to civilian or to enter the private sector.

With her life defined by a honestly fulfilling personal crusade against evil there really was no choice. First she'd been police, than after 9/11 an adjuct to UN contra-terror actions, than an INTERPOL liaison, than a door kicker in the Afghani hills. Than all of those interchangeably across the world.

Then the IED.

Valentina was born to be a counter-terrorist. Only death can stop her and to date she is only 1/4 dead.

Name: Valentina Vashnevskayakovnik -or call sign "Leopard."
Age: 35
Ethnicity: Russian.
Family: Aleksandr, father. Svetlana, mother. Natalya, younger sister.
Area of Operations: anywhere.
Languages: any, as required.
Appearance: 6'1", broad shoulders, perpetually alert posture, strong jaw, "broken and reset a lot" nose, numerous scars of all types across body, frizzy blonde hair cut helmet short, pale blue eyes, formally friendly mien. Toned build and slightly mannish. Only slight makeup.
Sexuality: Heterosexual, and happily boring.

Skills:
Small arms: excellent, legendary with pistols.
Long arms: excellent.
Heavy Weapons: above average.
Hand to hand: above average.
Athletics: average.
Driving: above average.
Electronics: average.
Lock picking: average.
EOD: excellent.
Sleuthing: above average.
Survival: average.
Intimidation: above average.
Stealth: excellent.
Field Medicine: above average.
Empathy: formidable.
Detect Lie: Legendary.

Equipment:
-FN 5-7 x2 with many magazines and UV laser sight (NEVER dual-wielding).
-Steyr AUG w/ accessories and UV laser or anything reliable as necessary.
-anti-glare goggles w/ ultraviolet spectrum lenses.
-UV light sources. tac lights, glow sticks, strobing source for signaling.
-flashbangs. 6.
-EOD and electronics tools.
-Low profile body armor normally, heavy as can be acquired for operations.
-encrypted satellite smart phone w/ basic auto-intrusion software.
-"smart" noise canceling earplugs (runs w/ smartphone app, reduces nearby gunfire, filters for superior directional cues, etc).
-survival kit.
-first aid kit, high end.
-spare batteries.
-passports, biometric ID.
-rations, water, healthy sweets for kids.
-vacuum packed dried apricots, because it's nice to have something pleasant once in a while.
-Formal wear. Slacks, not dresses.
-prosthetic right leg.

Talents:
CQC Divinity: With thousands of hours of practice and dozens of encounters Valentina has earned the shooting skills of a legendary Delta Force operator. When using a handgun she _never_ puts a round into the wrong target and only rarely misses even when manually firing 2 or 3 round bursts. She backstops her shots flawlessly and has the focus and reflexes of Neo on an amphetamine binge. For her the 5-7's weak stopping power* is no obstacle because if she has to aim she's planning on shooting out the medulla oblongata anyway.
Otherwise in any direction up to 30 meters out she has as near to perfect situational awareness as humans get and nearly the very touch of death itself. She fires first, she gets opportunity shots on any new target -including grenades- and anything attempt to strike her in HtH. In HtH she can treat her sidearm as a melee weapon that happens to fire bullets instead of delivering blunt impact -pistol whipping is bad for the mechanism; contact shoot instead.

Using a long arm she is merely an exceptional shooter with some of the world's best training.

Secular Paladin: Beyond facing death in the field there is the acceptance of death. Beyond even acceptance there is the state of every moment being taken as the possible conclusion to a life spent well.
Valentina has accepted that of her generation her sister will have children for them both. She answers to Russian but considers Human to be her higher loyalty and if put in some sci-fi position of needing further clarification going to Sapient is no real ethical challenge. She is undistracted by wealth, unconcerned with material gains beyond the necessary and possesses no tribal loyalties to god or government.
Valentina is simply the drive to improve the world by removing the worst of it's actors.
Consequently she is subject to very little combat stress under even the worst conditions, never panics and never acts uncontrollably. Even a death by burning is little more than a mild distraction. Valentina is also entirely capable of deciding an extreme enough state of injury is beyond surviving and making the last life she takes her own. No regrets.

She is a paladin of the mundane world, and justice is her god.

Living Legend: Valentina has an accompanying reputation and for people who bother to know about professional soldiers she's in the top 10 not far behind Colt Williams.
This does occasionally cause problems.

*claims vary.

Flaws^:
Vindictive. Hoooooly shit is she a bad enemy to make. Valentina is hard to really get on the bad side of, but if someone does she'll spend a lifetime waiting for the perfect moment to utterly fuck their world. This will occur within the confines of her greater moral imperatives, but when revenge comes the Furies themselves will reflexively flinch at what fate is featured.

Crippled. Minus one right leg. Her prosthetic is pretty damn good quality, but it's still not a leg. It still gets stuck in large cracks sometimes. It still is imperfect to balance on. At any time that would prove amusing it might and when that happens Valentina loses a full skill grade in any physical skill she's using.
Except small arms.
She's THAT good.
Why she doesn't have a proper cybernetic model is a story unto itself. Perhaps she never had the chance to get one.

"If you could be anywhere..." "Joseph Kony is my Carmen Sandiego. I'm his Jason Vorhees."

^curiously she does _not_ have the Ethical flaw.
To Valentina it's simple: evil people deserve evil fates.
In the case of the father and son kidnap, hunt and murder team she wouldn't have participated in their very extended deaths -but she wouldn't have interfered either. That they died was what counted.
As for the natives she similarly would have preferred not to have to harm any of them but once it was clear that wasn't an option she'd start dealing death like she would anywhere.
Though subtly hidden behind her general humanism Valentina has an extremely methodical and cold blooded mentality. Over the course of her many missions she's had to pull the trigger on every conceivable type of target. Once the number of children you've had to shoot for being used by shitbag adults as bomb-delivery services hits double-digits your choices are to just break down and shatter or to simply accept that their handlers killed them and you just finished the job.

Life's like that in a violent world. Let it pass through you like all things must. Never forget that the end is always a world where that kind of thing doesn't happen. That might not be possible, but possible hasn't got a fucking thing to do with it.

Beyond that basic codes of professionalism suffice. Don't fuck up the mission for loot. Don't abuse the helpless. Don't goddamn rape anybody. Don't kill anyone you don't have to, and when you do kill quick and clean.
Do the job clean, be thorough and go home.
Catch up on your TiVo.
Feed the cats.
Skype Natalia and make faces at little Pavel.
Heal up.
Prepare for the next mission.

Notes: well, she's quite the Sue isn't she?
Valentina -Leopard- was the survivor of a biweekly Spycraft 2.0 campaign that ran for nearly 3 years and rather curiously after 70+ missions she ended up being a very simple character: Valentina is just someone who's let go of everything except Saving The World.

(She also was someone carrying the MRDE.50AE as a primary sidearm because of the mechanics of the game but that'd be stupid IRL.)

So what would make her useful? As a background character. As just someone to meet with a badass rep and maybe some unusually Zen perspectives on the job. All that pretentious crap like "CQC Divinity" (ha!) just exists to define something that will in all probability never actually matter.

Ultimately all games are narrative first, and these vague approximate mechanics must in the total sum serve the game just like any others.

-fin-

PS: Leopard? Yeah, she saw a leopard on a safari as a wee nipper and thought that it was just the coolest thing to ever purr and lick it's bloody paws. Finding out later that they were feared mankillers for their patience and ferocious pounce made the code name really stick.
Also she uses it because "Vashneskayakovnik" is really too much to say over the goddamn radio -and because she has at least a little bit of a sense of humor.