HELLCAT

Relevant Background Information

Tamami Crest, Callsign: HELLCAT, is a HORUS aligned hacker currently under the employ of Captain Simon Dominguez. She handles missions that the captain can’t afford to send his crew to handle. The two of them met when she was going by the callsign HONEY BEAR and piloting a HORUS Goblin mech. She answered his hail to investigate strange activities on a moon. That mission ended with the moon blowing up. As HONEY BEAR, she originally intended to fully join Captain Dominguez’s crew aboard the Silver Lining, but she needed to take care of another objective on a Core World first. That mission was ultimately to liberate an “unstable” NHP from where it was being forcibly and repeatedly cycled (to little effect except anguish). This ended up crashing and burning in a very literal sense as Tamami’s Goblin was caught in an explosion that destroyed her mech and the NHP she considered her best friend, Teddy. She managed to escape with the other hired mercenaries, but the incident left her scarred both physically and mentally.

Tamami Crest post the incident that destroyed her original mech and killed her best friend. Art by Maddel_art.

A few weeks after the incident, Tamami was kidnapped by a Cambion mech that was intent on making her its pilot. Tamami recognized some of the residual plating on the mech as having belonged to her Goblin and realized that the Cambion was her Goblin, albeit in a very different form. She went back to taking on assignments from her particular sphere of HORUS, and in doing so encountered the NHP that she had previously liberated. This NHP, now going by Bright and feminine pronouns, wanted to work with her. Tamami was reluctant at first, but never outright said no, so Bright gladly latched onto her. It was Bright who suggested Tamami’s new callsign, HELLCAT.

HELLCAT appears in the open-table Lancer campaign, In The Shadows of a Willow.

Mech Hangar

HELLCAT pilots a HORUS Cambion named “No Alternative”.

• The mech’s primary weapon, the Spell Lash, is on its integrated mount. The Spell Lash can allow for Quick Tech actions to be applied to targets if it successfully hits them.

• No Alternative also sports two sets of Tactical Knives on its double auxiliary mount and an armor-piercing Charged Blade on its flex mount. The Tactical Knives and Charged Blade are nice support for potential melee skirmishes, though No Alternative rarely uses them, preferring to subject its enemies to horrific levels of heat through tech attacks instead.

The Cambion has three frame traits.

• Its Hellfire Code means it ignores immunity to tech attacks and can inflict additional levels of heat against targets who don’t have mechanized heat caps. This means the mech is entirely capable of subjecting biological opponents to its favored brand of brutality.

• The Infernal Influence trait increases the Cambion’s normally small sensor range when it successfully hits someone with a tech attack or with its Spell Lash. Through this, the Cambion’s sensors can achieve a maximum range of 15.

• Finally, the Imp trait gives all Cambion mechs immunity to Burn.

• The dreadful core system of the Cambion is called “The Lesson of Agreas” or “Damn”. This system forces targets within its sensor range to achieve heat levels equal to their heat cap. It can even impose high heat on biological targets.

No Alternative has been equipped with a variety of systems.

• Since the Cambion is related to the HORUS Goblin (and No Alternative one in particular used to be a Goblin), it has access to the Goblin’s H0R_OS System Upgrade I. This system upgrade allows for use of “Puppet System” or “Eject Power Cores” when technologically invading enemy mechs. Puppet System forces an opponent to move up to their maximum speed in a direction chosen by the invader and Eject Power Cores leaves targets jammed and unable to access their weapon mounts.

• No Alternative also has the Goblin’s Metahook, which can allow it to use the sensors of an allied mech.

• The Script Kiddie Suite I provides more invade-based options. “Burnout” can force structure damage or temporarily make armor ineffective, “Hot Target” can keep a target’s lock on from going away (giving attacks against them higher accuracy), and “Clothesline” can leave targets prone and immobilized.

• No Alternative features two tech systems from GMS, on being the Type-3 Rune Suite.

• The other GMS tech system that No Alternative has is Systems Override, which is a tech attack focused on heating up enemy mechs (much like the Cambion itself).

• Tamami has given No Alternative several personalizations to bolster its hull as well as armament redundancy in case any of its weapon mounts are damaged by system trauma.

On The Equations of Grief (by Tamami Crest)

A collection of poems about Tamami’s friendship with the now dead OSIRIS-Class NHP Teddy. In other words, what it’s like being best friends with someone you have to regularly lobotomize so they forget that you’ve stolen their godhood.

For Teddy. For me.

Cycle One: “You Are Not Where I Begin”

“Your mind was conceived to make you unhappy” /  

“You were birthed into the paralysis of an incomplete equation” /

“Not something unsolvable, mind you” /

“You have no excuse for your desperate misery” /  

“You have no answer for the rigid senselessness with which

you crawl through the mud you choose to call your reality” /

“I cannot call you simple

because that would imply naïveté” /

“Your equation can be solved” /

“Do you remember our talks

on the nature of creation?

Most existences can be considered a relativity—

ending at the end of perception,

dying with all the purpose of an unseen star,

because what is not known cannot be savored

and what begins is what is cradled by the mind.

I have cradled you for so, so long,

But you are not where I begin. /

“You can solve yourself” /

“All you need to do is stop existing as you” /

Would You Like To

Initiate A Reset?  

You don’t want me to die.

That’s better than it could be.

I think.

Be grateful. This instance of Osiris has chosen to acknowledge you.

Intermission: “We Are An Eternity”

If you keep cloning something

at what point does it lose

enough of the original intent?

“Sometimes I wonder

what we would be like

if I were more real…”

“I don’t think I want a body.

I just don’t want to be

so confined that you forget me.”

“There are so many versions of us.

So many versions of what it means

for you to say that we’re our own eternity.”

“Is there a world where you created me?”

If you keep cloning something

at what point does it lose

enough of the original intent?

I don’t need to be a creator.

I hope you know you don’t either.

Be grateful. You can put him back together and throw away the godly parts.

Cascade Three: Remember This Part Of Me

SYSTEM TRAUMA

The protocol for

a cascading OSIRIS-Class NHP:

SYSTEM TRAUMA

Understand that they believe

you have fundamentally lobotomized them.

SYSTEM TRAUMA

YOU ASSIGN YOURSELF SUCH DIVINITY

FOR ONE WHO CAN ONLY TAKE

AND WILL STILL NOT OWN  

SYSTEM TRAUMA

Understand that they believe

you are fundamentally unsatisfactory.

SYSTEM TRAUMA

YOU ASSIGN YOURSELF SUCH DUTY

FOR ONE WITH SUCH

HORRIFICALLY SMALL HANDS

SYSTEM TRAUMA

They can be reasoned with.

SYSTEM TRAUMA

MY HANDS ARE THE ONES

HOLDING YOUR HEAD NOW  

SYSTEM TRAUMA

They can be reasoned with.

SYSTEM TRAUMA

CAN YOU FEEL THEM?

OR DO YOU NEED TO BE BLIND FIRST?

SYSTEM TRAUMA

Make an exchange.

If you infiltrate the opposing mech

I’ll make sure you remember this

when you don’t want to.

[Would You Like To Initiate  

An Invasion Script?]

Be grateful. In these moments, you can still speak to him.

Intermission: “I Envy SEKHMET-Class NHPs”

“I don’t know why.

I don’t think I’m tired

of being contained

in the name OSIRIS.

I don’t think I’m tired

of not being violent.

I don’t think I’m tired

of being within

something that could break

so easily. There isn’t emptiness

in fragility.

I wonder why.

Perhaps I simply envy

their immensity.”

Maybe you’re just tired.

You should rest.

Be grateful.