Here’s the writeup of the PCs’ backstory for the Shadowrun campaign I started tonight. It was surprisingly fun to write.

Dramatis Personae
Baldvin: Fomori troll street samurai, unhealthily happy in combat
Kino: Neotonous female sniper, very focused on her work and not dying
Karolyn: Steampunk-loving psionic mage, Dryad face
Adrea: Wheelchair-bound girl hacker/rigger who is unexpectedly social

The place is Seattle. The year is 2071 – early spring. Our heroes are Kino, Karolyn, Adrea, and Baldvin. Three girls (of one sort or another) and one seriously large troll.

They all know each other, and have for more than a decade. They grew up together, in the same orphanage in Renton. Your normal orphanage upbringing; they don’t remember any children over the age of seven being brought in. Every so often, a child would be placed with an adoptive family: usually high-ranking corp administrators or crime syndicate leaders (is there really much difference anymore?). Or at least, that’s what it looked like from the outside.

In reality, the orphanage was a front for a secret black ops agency run by the Shiawise megacorp. All of the children were heavily indroctrinated to think of Shiawise (and their handlers) as beloved family members. Then they were given stealth and combat training, along with more specialized skills, and, in some cases, ‘ware. Those children that were “placed” with new families? They made excellent spies with deep cover in competitors’ organizations. So our heroes have spent the last eleven or twelve years of their lives stealing, delivering, spying, and in some cases, assassinating.

That all ended about six months ago. Several Shiawise administrators were meeting with the orphanage’s handlers, and Kino was roaming the halls looking for something interesting to do. Out-of-office bigwigs always forget about Kino. She looks twelve, and she an act it, too. After hearing enough words like “liquidation” and “cut our losses” and “sweep it under the rug”, she raced back to the dormitory. After much arguing, she convinced Adrea to turn her not-insignificant hacking skills toward their “family”. That’s when Adrea discovered the trail of emails saying that the orphanage cover was about to be blown, and it was time to shut it down and destroy all the “equipment”.

Spurred on by this knowledge, the team staged a daring escape while out on a run, during which Baldvin mangled no less than five Shiawise security officers. Unfortunately, Adrea was grievously injured during the battle, and has been wheelchair-bound ever since.

Since then, they’ve been ‘running for money, not for love. They make a living and have found a home in Snohomish among the factory farms. So far, they’ve avoided reacquisition by Shiawise…

I don’t want to write a great novel or extensive political thesis – well, ok, I do, but that’s not the focus. I want to sit down and just write, and end up with something worth reading. How do I do that? How do I come upon inspiration for a topic, first. I’m a programmer – a technical person first and foremost; I don’t just sit down and let the creativity flow. On the other hand, here I am in Barnes & Noble, standing in the aisle and writing. Maybe I can do it after all?

So why not start with this? This is the first time I’ve actually just sat down to write. My chronic problem is a desire to be a writer, but a complete lack of anything to write about. As I grow in so many other ways, in my political and religious understanding, in my fiction and nonfiction reading habits, even in my relationships with others, my desire to write grows and grows, with no outlet at all.

I have my stereotypical twitter account where my small nuggets of wisdom, wit, or banality go. I have my blog, where I can expound on anything I’m legitimately knowledgeable about, which usually means software.

So, here we have it. The awakening of a new being. I resolve not to care if anything I write is worth reading – the writing of it is value enough for me. If I end up with something useful or edifying or entertaining along the way, so be it.

Hello, world.

The preceding was written on my cellphone while wandering Barnes & Noble this evening. I’ve corrected spelling and capitalization errors, but haven’t done any other cleaning up. I won’t guarantee that it leads to a change in my writing habits here, but as I said, that’s not the most important thing.