Monday 21 April 2014

Elz Bellz

Elz Bellz

Cyberpunk – I played her briefly as a cameo/NPC when I was home from uni for a weekend, but because I designed her really as an NPC I couldn’t play her beyond that. Also I think the Cyberpunk game had finished by the time I got back properly.

Elz is a party animal. Players who meet her will probably do so in a nightclub, where she will be hogging the dance floor regardless of the music – she has a built-in personal stereo so if she doesn’t like the song she can just listen to another. Her outfits tend to the barely decent; not because she craves attention or is seeking the male gaze, but because she dances so hard she tends to overheat. She smokes coloured cigarettes that match her outfit (usual pink, black or silver) and often wears coloured contact lenses. Petite, with very pale skin and platinum blonde hair in an ear-length bob.

Elz is moneyed, and this is probably her advantage to the party. Her parents are wealthy and she supplements their generous living allowance by dealing in drugs – recreational, for the most part, but she can get her hands on most things including some more experimental items.

Talking about the job near her may attract her attention and she may offer her assistance at this point if the job sounds interesting. She’ll join them for the thrill of it – like the girl in Pulp’s Common People, it is a game to her. She’ll use her friends as source to track down exotic equipment the party may need in return for them allowing her to accompany them, as well as bringing her interesting supply of drugs. In terms of weaponry, she has a small handbag pistol and various variants on pepper spray and she will wear a high quality armoured catsuit in black or dark grey.

A sensible party is likely to want to do a bit of research before letting someone tag along. A quick nose around social media (or if someone she likes asks her) will reveal her as Elizabeth Bennett, a psychology student at the local university.

Your party are more paranoid than that? Well, if they check the university enrolment lists, there is no Elizabeth Bennett but there is an Eleanor Barnett, whose accompanying photo looks a lot like our Elz. If asked about this, Elz will acknowledge this is her, but her parents divorced and her mother (a fan of Jane Austen) had always wanted her to be Elizabeth after the character in Pride and Prejudice, so that’s what she tends to go by. A bit more digging will reveal her fees are being paid for by [suitable mega-corp]. Her father works for them, she will explain, now can we get back to having fun before I’m tied down for the rest of my life?


Of course, that’s not all there is to it. Her parents are chemists and use her party lifestyle to help test some of their new drugs ‘in the market’ as it were. Spend too much time with Elz – or accept too many of her kind donations of combat stimulants and healing drugs – and you will find yourself seeking her out for a fix more and more often, sometimes suffering unusual and unexpected side effects. Elz is smart and likeable, but as morally doubtful as her parents and the companies they work for.

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