#oc: stel gonzalez

[aggravateddurian]

WIP Wednesday (or at least it is in AUS)

Thanks once again to @theviridianbunny for tagging me.

Here's what I've been cooking up of late...

NEW OC: ESTELLA 'STEL' GONZALEZ

Introducing Estella 'Stel' Gonzalez, a former Militech EDICE (Encryption and Defensive ICE) netrunner. If she looks familiar, it's because she's Valerie Ocampo-Gonzalez's cousin. In Chorus, she will play the very important role of Judy's girlfriend. The story of how they met will be revealed at a later time.

River was involved. Not only is he our precious beefy boi, a lawman and a private investigator, but he's also apparently a matchmaker.

VEGA x SONGBIRD DEVELOPMENT CONTINUES

I've added a couple of new So Mi appearances for 2079. She now wears a crystaljock bomber jacket (it has a 'damaged machine' patch on it, kind of thematic).

VEGA (2079) APPEARANCES

Unfortunately, the mod I was using for Vega's hair bugged out in a major way. The modder no longer supports it, so I had to remove it. I've picked up this mod by NoraLee to replace it. I then proceeded to completely make over Vega's appearance, to take a little more after her namesake.

V(EGA)'s 2077 APPEARANCE

This is V as Judy remembers her. A little bruised and scratched, occasionally flopping over from a Relic Malfunction, but that was her V.

You might recognise Vega's original facial features, because they're the same basic facial features as E3 V. You can see some of her facial features in Vega as well, most notably the jawline and the freckles. The addition of Johnny's DNA led to altered gene expressions in the clone body, causing the change in Vega's final appearance.

[aggravateddurian]

fear, ghost and mask for one or more of your ocs :)

For @chevvy-yates. Thanks for your ask! Sorry if it's long, but there's there's a lot to unpack for these folks.

Questions can be found here

I've chosen Val and Stel for these, because I wanted to share more about these two :) They're cousins (on Val's father's side).

Fear: What is your OC's greatest fear? What do they do when confronted with it? Are they open with their fear, or do they hide it away?

Val

Val's greatest fear is that she will never be truly able to escape the mercenary life. One of Val's greatest hopes is that one day she might be able to settle down and start a family with Chet, a dream that Chet shares, were it not for ghosts of his past haunting him at every step. Her mother's many attempts to retire from being a Solo ending in failure makes Val feel that her mother's past may be her future, and that scares her. She's been very open with Chet about this, and Chet has vowed that he will do everything he can to ensure that one day, Val gets to live a normal life. The problem with Chet's version of "I'll take you to the Moon, I promise!" is that the person who makes that promise rarely gets to see it come to fruition. Night City always takes in equal measure to what it gives, and nothing ever comes for free...

Stel

Stel's greatest fear is that Judy will get dragged even further into Stel's and River's edgerunner world. The cyberpunk life already grabbed Judy by the leg when she accepted River's job to review the BD that led to River hiring Stel to kiil Shoda Noboru in 2078, and Stel dreads the day that something pushes her partner into the rabbit hole. As Stel's cousin can attest, leaving the mercenary life isn't as easy as hanging up your pistol belt and going back to editing hardcore BDs. She hasn't shared this fear with Judy, but with River. River understands her fear and has promised that he will never push Judy beyond occasionally reviewing a BD of an unsolved crime, or to gather intel for an upcoming job.

ghost: Who or what haunts your OC? What happened? How do they live with their ghosts?

Val

The thing that haunts Val is an early gig she did for the fixer Samurai Jack, who used to hustle in Muamar 'El Capitan' Reyes' district of Santo Domingo. About a year after she was dumped by Clara Martinez at her senior prom, Samurai Jack hired her and a crew of mercs she was running with at the time to rescue a friend of his who had been taken to Pacifica after falling into a trap. While Val had grown up hearing stories about the Scavs, it was seeing that Scav chop shop in a derelict luxury hotel that truly changed her. They found Samurai Jack's friend, but the Scavs had already gotten to work... while he was still alive. He begged Val to end his suffering. Val couldn't bear his incessant nagging, and so she pulled out her Liberty and gave him the coup de grace he requested. But the smells and sights of that Scav den continue to appear in her memories. She can't even look at synth-meat without remembering the Scav den. It's safe to say that Val doesn't live with her ghosts, merely survive. While she can sleep at night, the initial trauma fading over time, it doesn't take much to remind her of that day in 2072.

Stel

Stel's ghosts come from her past, working with Militech's EDICE (Encryption and Defensive ICE) Program. One of the grim things she had to work on was covering up a Militech project from the 2040s called Project Hades. At first, she thought that it was going to be another basic, run of the mill 'hide the failed Militech AGI experiment from NetWatch' but when they began to deep dive into Hades, she learned about what Militech was actually doing under Night City in the 2040 and 2050s that they didn't want Arasaka to know about. Project Hades was a 'new and revamped' Militech attempt to build the netrunning equivalent of a nuclear bomb. This went about as well as anyone who's played Phantom Liberty could expect. Deep diving into Hades was also Stel's first encounter with the Blackwall. She was never quite the same after that, and the Blackwall's uniquely malevolent torture of her and other netrunners as they tried to isolate and cover up Hades, trapping them in the net for several days while their compatriots in meatspace struggled to keep them from burning out. Stel had to watch many of her friends get fried to a cinder inside Hades. As she linked with one netrunner to try and save his life, she was attacked through the personal link by the Blackwall itself. It left scars on her mind that will never heal, because the Blackwall's damage tends to be permanent without some miraculous cure (e.g. the Neural Matrix). Stel has mostly recovered from her encounter with the Blackwall, but sometimes she can hear the voices of Blackwall daemons whispering to her in her sleep. For a while, not even sleeping tablets could help her get to sleep at night, and she'd stay awake until she passed out from exhaustion, waking up a few days later in a medlab at EDICE division in Night City.

mask: Does your OC wear a mask, literally or figuratively? What goes on beneath it? Is there anyone in their life who gets to see who they are under the mask?

Val and Stel are very good at masking their fears and insecurities with a layer of absurd confidence. The kind of confidence one expects of a merc who rubs shoulders with legends of Night City at the Afterlife when contracts are closed and it's time for boastful stories over drinks in the private booths. But for both of them, it's like wearing a suit of emotional armour. It's heavy, and it eventually tires you out and you have to expose yourself.

Val

Val hides her fear that she will never be able to leave the merc life, like her parents. While she puts on the persona of a confident, capable Solo, she wants nothing more than to fade away into the crowd and live a normal life, something that the city has deemed is not her path. She fears that Chet's devotion to rescuing her from this life may take him as well. Whatever Night City gives up, it also exacts a toll. Will the price of Val escaping the merc life be Chet's life? For Val, the mask only comes off with Chet. To everyone else, like those who relate to Val's struggle (such as Vega and Dorian), they are only able to see through the gaps in Val's armour.

Stel

Stel's mask hides the scars of her past, the emotional damage that her years of netrunning for Militech has done to her. Working for them has damaged her mind, altered her body and maybe even corrupted her soul. She hides this under a layer of confidence, pretending that she's got it all together. Judy knows the truth, she's been down this path before with V. Stel's mask only comes off around Judy, not even her own family knows what she's going through. Aside from Judy, nobody fully knows or understands Stel.