Shellshock
From Axalon RPG
Contents |
Basic Info
- Created by: Ironhide
- Name: Shellshock
- Aliases: Shelly, Shellhead
- Faction: Maximal
- Subgroup: Axalon Police Department
- Type: Beast Warrior,
- Beast/Alternate Mode: Alligator-snapping turtle
- Size: Large - 11'
- Gender: Male
- Primary Function: Peace officer
- Secondary Function: Heavy Support
- Rank: Sentinel
- Theme Song: n/a
- Quote: n/a
Statistics:
- Strength: 9
- Stamina: 9
- Speed: 4
- Skill: 8
- Firepower: 7
- Aim: 8
- Intelligence: 7
- Discipline: 7
- Luck: 4
Skills:
- Autofire Weapons - Along with his personal weapons, Shellshock is capable of using a variety of high-powered automatic weapons, both energy and solid-state.
- Endurance - To better fulfill his functions, Shellshock's systems have been enhanced to increase his durability and his fuel efficiency.
- First Aid - Since Security heavy assault engagements often create casualties, many troopers are trained in emergency first aid. Shellshock's abilities are rudimentary.
- Melee Weapons: Clubs - Shelllshock has studied the combat skillset required to wield his close combat weapon of choice extensively, and is proficient in its use.
Physical Description:
Beast Mode:
Shellshock’s beast mode is the rather fearsome-looking alligator-snapping turtle, an amphibian from earth whose name comes from the fact that it contains much of the look of the two animals. Like all turtles, Shellshock has a large, tough shell on his back, though his beat mode's protective covering is spikier and rougher than most other turtles. It’s roughly seven feet tall, from the softer underbelly to the tip of the highest spine, a roughly rectangular shape, rounded at the edges, with the six holes all turtle shells have. His shell is a dark brownish-green, mottled and speckled.
His forelegs are the more powerful of the two sets, and provide the majority of his admittedly rather weak mobility in this form. The front two limbs are a pair of broad, powerful flippers, a little over three feet long and curved. The rear limbs are stubbier, with powerful toes and broad feet, and unlike his forelimbs are well suited to moving on dry, solid land. Unlike his forelimbs, which spread out to the sides, his back legs push straight out behind him. His head is mostly jaw, a large, powerful beak-like mouth that is filled with a row of extremely sharp teeth. His eyes are small and beady, hidden under a prominent brow that leads up into a sloping forehead. His tail is short and stumpy, a matter of no consequence to his animal shape.
Transformation:
His transformation begins with his arms, the limb-holes of his shell widening and his robot arms pushing out of them. His flipper-like forelimbs detach from his shell, spreading out over the backs of his forearms and hands. He plants his hands on the ground and pushes himself upright, while his legs thrust out from his rear legholes. The short, stubby rearlimbs stretch out around the metallic superstructure of his upper legs, with his broader lower legs thrusting out from within them. The armour of his turtle shell underbelly thickens, while the points of his shell compress downwards, growing shorter and more uniform. Finally, his head splits open and shifts down, spreading over his shoulders, and his robotic head thrusts up from within his shell.
Robot Mode:
Shellshock measures just over eleven feet tall in his robot mode, a broad and imposing figure. Reflecting his beast mode, his coloration is centred around muted earth tones. His lower arms and legs are a dark forest green, while his upper limbs are a brighter emerald. His chest is a mottled brown, several shades mixed together, while his shell is a similarly multi-hued mixture of greens. The only points of stand-out colour on him are the red Maximal sigil and his optics, which are a bright, vibrant blue.
He is powerfully built, with a wide, barrel-like torso. His beast mode's underbelly covers his chest and stomach, more heavily armoured after his transformation into robot mode, with the plates giving his torso definition, picking out muscle-like regions on his body. His maximal symbol is stencilled over his right chest, the sharp red standing out clearly on the muted, variegated brown of his chest. His shoulder-pads are formed by the enlarged turtle’s head, split down the middle, with the eyes looking straight out from his shoulders.
His arms are thick, their rounded edges lending them the look of two smooth cylinders, with his upper arms smaller and thinner than the lower. Instead of the usual four, he has only three fingers to go with his thumb. He has a very strong grip, and the backs of his hands are covered with the front flippers of his beast mode. His legs are equally powerful, and like his arms get wider below the joint. His upper legs have a little more of an edge around them than his upper arms, but his lower legs are consistently smooth and rounded, widening the lower down they go. He has no visible ankle joints, and the front and back parts of his broad, flat feet fold out from inside his lower leg. His rear turtle flippers are pressed against the outsides of his upper legs and stop just above the knee.
His shell is mounted on his back, held there by a pair of small but powerful magnetic clamps located on each of his shoulder blades. The shell is somewhat smaller and flatter in this mode, with the spikes being much less pronounced and more uniform, giving it a more clean, constructed appearance.
Personality:
A generally easygoing and sociable bot, Shellshock is the kind who makes friends without much trouble. He gets along with most bots, and is willing to overlook bad habits and the occasional bout of nastiness so long as the other party is at least making an effort. He doesn’t hold with the concept of revenge, believing it’s a ridiculous idea and does nothing but prolong the circle of violence and pain. He has a very ‘live and let live’ attitude about him, but this should not be mistaken for complacency. Though he is difficult to anger to any truly great degree, once his considerable patience is exhausted he can be as fierce as any Predacon killer.
He does not particularly enjoy violence and bloodshed, but given the war-torn history of his planet and his people, he has grown resigned to its reality. As a peace officer, of course, he has often had to use violence in the past to uphold the law, and his dislike of unnecessary violence in no way hampers his ability to dispense it as necessary in the pursuit of his duties. When he decides that violence is the only option open to him, he will exert himself to the utmost in an effort to end the threat, whether that means simply incapacitating his opponent or destroying them completely. Shellshock has not, as yet, had to kill anyone with his own hands, but if the need should arise he is capable of it, even if he would regret it afterwards.
In a social setting, Shellshock is generally comfortable speaking with just a few at a time, as large crowds of people make him uneasy. Though he isn't stupid, and in fact has something of a hunger for knowledge, by the standards of a race that can live for hundreds or thousands, even millions of years, he is still little more than an awkward adolescent. He covers his discomfort with a layer of stoic resolve, attempting to project the image of a staid and stolid officer. Shellshock does his best to marry this self-construction to a fierce attachment to friends and companions, priding himself above all else on being an unflappable confidant. His advice isn’t particularly insightful or enlightening, but he has a good head on his shoulders, and he does his best to approach any new problem from a pragmatic and sensible viewpoint. He also fancies himself a bit of a matchmaker, but would never go so far as to outright tell two parties that they should be together, choosing to respect their own intuition more than his own.
Like all good Maximals, Shellshock respects those in a position of authority, whether civilian or military. Although he is willing to apply a rather liberal interpretation to his orders, and will work on his own initiative in the absence of direct orders, Shellshock has never actually disobeyed a direct order. However, his own personal code is somewhat archaic, and he is reticent to fight against fems. The subject has not yet arisen, but Shellshock worries that, in the face of a dangerous female, he might hesitate to act with all necessary dispatch. Shellshock is not pleased about this fact, and has been trying to overcome it. Nevertheless, his own personal code of chivalry would certainly hamper his ability to defend himself against the so-called ‘weaker’ sex.
A quiet and contemplative bot for the most part, Shellshock’s personal time generally involves equally quiet, contemplative activities. In contrast to what his somewhat hulking physical appearance might suggest, Shellshock is actually a great fan of high art and culture, with a particular weakness for neo-classical Predacon opera and the writings of the great philosophers and leaders in Transformer history. While he tends to keep such things to himself, they are by no means secret. He does, however, have two of them. The first is his claustrophobia; Shellshock suffers from an extreme, almost crippling fear of being confined in small spaces. Such physical confinement puts him in mind of the mental confinement he suffered through for the first six years of his life. The second, however, is not nearly so traumatic. After having been introduced to the world of organics by someone he cared deeply for, but was separated from after only a short time, Shellshock discovered he possessed something of a green thumb. One room in his apartment is given over completely to plants, mostly small, somewhat rare and particularly beautiful specimens. He likes to joke to himself that he picks them by that criteria because it reminds him of her.
Weapons & Special Abilities:
Scatter Laser -
His signature weapons, Shellshock carries a pair of these massive beam-gatling guns with him when charging into battle. A little over two feet long, they are rectangular in appearance, with a thick, sturdy handle attached to the rear of the weapon. The casing of the weapon is dark green, with a rotating circle of two-inch gunmetal grey barrels and a thick brown handle moulded to his grip. The powerful battery pack attaches to the under side of the weapon, fitting into a rectangular depression midway alone the weapon's body. Each individual bolt of energy is rather weak, less powerful than a standard laser pistol's output. However, Shellshock’s steady aim makes up for the weakness of the weapons’ individual shots, as he can hold a medium-sized target under fire for several seconds at a time. Given that the bulky autofire weapons can put out five bolts a second, even a few seconds of sustained fire can do serious damage to a target. The casing and barrels are made from materials with high heat tolerances, but even top-grade materials have their limits. The weapon can continue firing for up to thirty seconds straight, but the metal in the barrels will begin warping badly after that point, making the bursts erratic and harder to aim. After ten seconds of sustained firing, the weapons require two seconds of rest for every second of use to retain long-term viability.
Warhammer -
A large sledgehammer-like weapon, black handled with a dark green and brown head. The shaft is a little over four feet long, with padded grips spaced evenly a third of the way from the bottom and top of its length. The head itself is made of a very dense ceramacrete compound, giving it extra stopping power and preventing fractures and warping in the head. The head is rectangular, two and a half feet long by a foot and a half wide and tall, with a red Maximal emblem etched into the side. Given its large, awkward size and the lack of a bladed edge, its usefulness is often underestimated. However, Shellshock can wield this close combat weapon with lethal efficiency with either one or both hands. Single-handed he grips it high up on the shaft, his range limited in exchange for being able to use it in very close quarters. Wielding it with both hands increases his striking range and the power of his blows, but creates an area close in within which he cannot engage. Although the combination of the powerful hammerhead and Shellshock's massive strength enable him to shatter armour and crush limbs, he rarely uses the naked hammer. Instead, a small mechanism embedded in the head projects a scramble-field around the weapon, delivering a short, sharp concussive charge on impact. The weapon thus becomes an effective crowd control device, disorienting and debilitating a target without having to resort to lethal force.
Equipment:
Repair Kit -
For emergency situations. This kit contains the tools and equipment necessary to stabilise a transformer badly damaged on the battlefield long enough to get them back to a CR chamber. It is mounted in a compartment inside his right leg, which extends outwards when needed. Amongst other things, it contains emergency fuel and mechfluid infusions, pressure sealants, laser scalpels and micro-sutures. The kit is not, however, a viable replacement for a full treatment in a CR chamber or under a qualified Transformer repair technician.
Shell Shield -
When necessary, Shellshock can detach the turtle shell from his back. Made up of several layers of tightly packed plasteel and ceramacrete, this shield can withstand a punch from a full-powered G1, and can resist heat up to several hundred degrees Fahrenheit. The only drawback is that the shell makes up most of his rear armour, and without it, his back is vulnerable to suffering serious damage from even mid-range weaponry. As such, he generally deploys the shield only when he has either backup to protect his vulnerable rear or a defensive emplacement he can use for the same purpose. The shield attaches to specially designed points along either of his forearms, leaving his hands free.
Traits:
n/a
History:
Though the official state scientists of the Autobots and Decepticons were the primary agents of the new technology that gave birth to the new Maximal and Predacon factions, they were not the only groups to make use of it. A powerful sub-faction of disaffected Autobots and Decepticons managed to secure the preliminary research. In the aftermath of the Great War, and the planet-wide societal rebuilding that followed, these discontented ex-soldiers incorporated themselves under the name Manpower Unlimited, a firm dedicated to exploiting the potential of non- and semi-sentient Transformers technology. One of their first experiments gave birth to the construct that would, in time, become Shellshock.
Automated defence systems had long been a disappointment amongst Transformers; they were simply ill-equipped to deal with beings that could wield as much firepower as they themselves, and had the benefit of being able to think their way around whatever problems unthinking constructs could produce. Exploiting the new opportunities made available by the new technology, Manpower began to blur the line between automated machinery and sentient Transformers. Their Security Concepts division, using custom-built infant sparks, created a mobile security system with the ingenuity of a free Transformer, but controlled as thoroughly as any security system. Shellshock was the second model to be created, one of only six ever built.
The problem with Security Concepts’ project was that it was simply inefficient, from every angle. The semi-sentient security bots were still not as capable as fully cognizant Transformers, keeping them in their limited state was extremely complicated, and they were, at the end of the day, simply prohibitively expensive. It was cheaper and more cost-efficient to just hire fully sentient Transformer guards. The project was terminated, the scientists, technicians and labourers reassigned, the construction and maintenance facilities retooled. That still left, however, the six prototype models.
Six years after having been brought online, and with every court judgement having gone in their favour against Manpower’s attempts to simply scrap them, the six constructs were upgraded to fully sentient status. It was only then that Manpower’s scientists learned that, far from being prevented from developing by the programming blocks, the prototypes had simply been prevented from expressing their normally-developing minds. Once the blocks were finally released, all six of them were found to be suffering a variety of psychological problems, Shellshock’s manifesting as severe claustrophobia from which he still suffers. Further court judgements, by various supportive groups, required Manpower to upgrade the prototypes to fully-functional Transformers. Shellshock remembers little of this time; he spent much of it alternately near-comatose and feverishly studying.
It took him almost two full years to finally work through both the issues from his mental confinement and the accelerated learning courses necessary to bring him up to speed. Once that was completed, however, Shellshock, some of his earlier programming lingering years later, was drawn immediately into the security forces. He began by serving in the Maximal Navy, a not uneventful posting even with the Great War finished and the Pax Cybertronia in force. Though the major factions were quiescent, projecting an outward camaraderie while jockeying viciously in private, there was no shortage of splinter groups, extremists and secessionists to keep the military busy. Shellshock saw action against several radical groups on half a dozen years before his enlistment ran out, and despite the requests of several of his comrades and superiors, he decided not to join up once more. Instead, tired of hopping from world to world, Shellshock returned to Cybertron and the city where he was first constructed, Cybertropolis.
Though his civilian policing experience was nonexistent, his combat experience and powerful natural build and armaments earned him a spot on the CPD’s emergency response unit. Though actual calls were few and far between, Shellshock spent over a decade in that posting, and in that time he did see his fair share of action against some of the mid-level criminal enterprises and run of the mill hostage takers and hijackers. Though never a star of the department, his annual reviews were consistently high, and his squad mates respected his support and dedication.
Eventually, however, the intensity of his posting began to wear him down. On the edge of burning out, Shellshock finally put in for a transfer, regretfully departing from the CPD’s emergency response unit. His timing was excellent; just as he was finishing the paperwork for the transfer, construction on the new orbital city of Axalon was wrapped up, and the first inhabitants were moving in to both the residential and commercial districts. His life boxed and shipped, Shellshock crossed the bridge and assumed his new role, that of a patrol officer in the newly-minted Axalon Police Department.
Commanders’ Notes:
Captain Leo, Maximal Navy – Powerful, but possibly too controlled; his combat capabilities are all too often constrained by his desire to engage with the minimum necessary force. Lieutenant Fry, CPD – A perfect fit for the unit, knows when to act with restraint and when to smash whatever you point him at. I don’t know about patrol, though.
Known Acquaintances:
Lieutenant Roach, MN – liaison between the Captain Leo and the combat detachment
Sergeant Vulpes, CPD – commander of his squad in the CPD’s emergency response unit
Lieutenant Massif, APD – commander of Shellshock’s new division in Axalon
