Info: Isle of Avalon
| MARY STEINBERG "Of course you have expressions. How could you not know that?" |
 CHARACTER
|
APPEARANCE
PERSONALITY
CANON ABILITIES
|
ISLE OF AVALON
PLAYER
|
2021-08-28
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Permissions
 BACKTAGGING: THREADJACKING: FOURTHWALLING: ROMANCE: MINDREADING: MANIPULATION: INJURY: FIGHTING: KILLING: ✔ ✔ ✘ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✘ |
Background
• The single most defining event in No Guns Life is a Great War that ended five years prior to the start of the series. The war and the post-war led to the establishment and proliferation of Extension technology, which is essentially is the process by which people are made into cyborgs to enhance their natural abilities (complete with “sub-brains” to handle the extra processing load in lieu of human brains that are ill-equipped to do so).
• How this pertains to Mary is that she’s one of many orphans that cropped up as a result of the war. She and her brother, Victor, lived together on the streets until they were adopted by an engineer, Emmet. Emmet was looking for a successor, and Victor turned out to be a very promising candidate.
• Living with Emmet was not a great life. Due to resentment and alcohol, Emmet became unpredictable and abusive. At the same time, Victor became more and more obsessed with Extension technology—to the point where he volunteered for the war effort in order to learn more about it and change the world.
• Emmet threated to prostitute Mary when Victor expressed his intention to leave, leading Victor to kill him in a blind rage.
(Mary has only just learned this detail—she knew Emmet was killed and Victor was the most likely culprit, but not why.)
• Victor left for the military, leaving Mary to learn of his service from a letter that arrived several days later.
• Left alone for the first time in her life, Mary resolved to become an engineer like her brother in hopes of better understanding and finding him some day. She practiced day and night, assembling and disassembling the extensions and related parts around her until it became like second nature.
• Meanwhile, as part of his war duties Victor was assigned as the personal engineer to Gun Slave Unit Device #13 (later Juzo Inui). He was also heavily involved in Extension research and development, going so far as to be the test subject for a parallel sub-brain meant to double extension loads and operate like hemispheres of the brain. It worked well until Victor saw first-hand the horrors that his work in Extension technology had wrought.
• The parallel sub-brain malfunctioned and created a separate consciousness based on Victor’s trauma, destroying the R&D lab and killing everyone in it. This manifestation of Victor proceeded to go AWOL and eventually joined up with an anti-Extension outfit, Spitzbergen, to atone for the sin of helping to advance Extension technology in the first place.
• At some point during this whole mess, Victor asked Juzo to look after Mary. Juzo agreed.
• At the start of the series, Juzo is working as a Resolver and Mary (now in her late teens) helps him with regular care and maintenance as his personal engineer in between underground Extension work she does to make a living. Juzo ends up taking in Berühren Corporation escapee Tetsuro Arahabaki, leading the three of them into a mess of politics and danger.
(Berühren, of course, being the sinister megacorporation that controls nearly everything in the post-war period, up to and especially Extension technology.)
• Mary by this has grown up to be competent and independent, although not to such a degree that she pushes people away like some people (read: Juzo). If anything, she's eager to make human connections as much as possible, opening up to Tetsuro despite a clear reluctance to do so at first. She's also very caring toward her Extended patients, letting bad behavior (including non-payment) slide and even being able to read the expressions of Extended whose faces have been dramatically altered to the point where normal human facial features are no longer clear (again, read: Juzo). She's internalized something her brother told her long ago: Extended are people trying to find something they've lost, and she's not interested in taking too much from them further.
• That said, Mary is also impatient, dramatic, and grody. Her fascination with Extended technology borders on the obsessive at times, causing her to sometimes ignore basic social cues to creep at someone whose Extensions catch her attention. Please let her look at them. It probably won't hurt.
• Recently, Mary has finally made contact with both her brother and his other, broken consciousness via remote-controlled Extensions when the group goes head-to-head against Spitzbergen. The interaction left her both satisfied and frustrated, and one of her driving goals going forward is finding Victor’s actual body and settling things once and for all.
• (Which she does, after her canon point, and it does NOT end well. :( )
• How this pertains to Mary is that she’s one of many orphans that cropped up as a result of the war. She and her brother, Victor, lived together on the streets until they were adopted by an engineer, Emmet. Emmet was looking for a successor, and Victor turned out to be a very promising candidate.
• Living with Emmet was not a great life. Due to resentment and alcohol, Emmet became unpredictable and abusive. At the same time, Victor became more and more obsessed with Extension technology—to the point where he volunteered for the war effort in order to learn more about it and change the world.
• Emmet threated to prostitute Mary when Victor expressed his intention to leave, leading Victor to kill him in a blind rage.
(Mary has only just learned this detail—she knew Emmet was killed and Victor was the most likely culprit, but not why.)
• Victor left for the military, leaving Mary to learn of his service from a letter that arrived several days later.
• Left alone for the first time in her life, Mary resolved to become an engineer like her brother in hopes of better understanding and finding him some day. She practiced day and night, assembling and disassembling the extensions and related parts around her until it became like second nature.
• Meanwhile, as part of his war duties Victor was assigned as the personal engineer to Gun Slave Unit Device #13 (later Juzo Inui). He was also heavily involved in Extension research and development, going so far as to be the test subject for a parallel sub-brain meant to double extension loads and operate like hemispheres of the brain. It worked well until Victor saw first-hand the horrors that his work in Extension technology had wrought.
• The parallel sub-brain malfunctioned and created a separate consciousness based on Victor’s trauma, destroying the R&D lab and killing everyone in it. This manifestation of Victor proceeded to go AWOL and eventually joined up with an anti-Extension outfit, Spitzbergen, to atone for the sin of helping to advance Extension technology in the first place.
• At some point during this whole mess, Victor asked Juzo to look after Mary. Juzo agreed.
• At the start of the series, Juzo is working as a Resolver and Mary (now in her late teens) helps him with regular care and maintenance as his personal engineer in between underground Extension work she does to make a living. Juzo ends up taking in Berühren Corporation escapee Tetsuro Arahabaki, leading the three of them into a mess of politics and danger.
(Berühren, of course, being the sinister megacorporation that controls nearly everything in the post-war period, up to and especially Extension technology.)
• Mary by this has grown up to be competent and independent, although not to such a degree that she pushes people away like some people (read: Juzo). If anything, she's eager to make human connections as much as possible, opening up to Tetsuro despite a clear reluctance to do so at first. She's also very caring toward her Extended patients, letting bad behavior (including non-payment) slide and even being able to read the expressions of Extended whose faces have been dramatically altered to the point where normal human facial features are no longer clear (again, read: Juzo). She's internalized something her brother told her long ago: Extended are people trying to find something they've lost, and she's not interested in taking too much from them further.
• That said, Mary is also impatient, dramatic, and grody. Her fascination with Extended technology borders on the obsessive at times, causing her to sometimes ignore basic social cues to creep at someone whose Extensions catch her attention. Please let her look at them. It probably won't hurt.
• Recently, Mary has finally made contact with both her brother and his other, broken consciousness via remote-controlled Extensions when the group goes head-to-head against Spitzbergen. The interaction left her both satisfied and frustrated, and one of her driving goals going forward is finding Victor’s actual body and settling things once and for all.
• (Which she does, after her canon point, and it does NOT end well. :( )