Genius:Non-Player Characters

Background
A WWII USMC pilot who disappeared along with Flight 19 somewhere off the coast of Florida within the Bermuda Triangle. Later on he resurfaces in modern day Georgia, but is sent to a mental hospital facility for reasons of insanity. Nobody believes a man his age could be from the second world war, so naturally he must be off his marbles.

The stories he tells to the other patients at the facility are quite remarkable, but they often change every time they are told. He still claims vehemently he is a Flight 19 pilot, however, and so there is little chance of him rejoining ordinary society again anytime soon. Frustrated with none of the staff believing him and claiming him mad, he is prone to sporadic outbursts of anger needing medical treatment and solitary confinement.

Story hooks
One hook could be him escaping from the medical facility, seeking out his former USMC buddies (none of which are still alive) or anyone who will believe and help him. He might possibly try to get back in touch with his now-retired wife and their child (who is by now married and with a child of their own). Realising the family he knew can not be won back, the pilot leaves them alone.

Later on the pilot may attempt stealing a plane and fly through the Bermuda Triangle again, hoping to return home. He may recruit players to help him fly a modern jetplane, or even better have them help him break in and steal his old plane, or repair a museum aircraft of the same type to ensure he knows how to fly it.

Failing to do so he instead enlists the help of a retired and now mad scientist to create a time machine. The Guardians of Time might have a few words to say about this, and they or the pilot might enlist players in hindering or helping the time machine's creation. Eventually the time travel is bound to happen though, and the pilot will be able to rejoin his family.

Background
A self-taught theoretical physicist obsessed with time travel. He claims to already have observed time travel but has a hard time convincing anyone of it. Being self-taught and not a legit 'doctor' no papers wish to publish his theories which appear to most observers to be immature and science fiction at best. This however only encourages him to keep going to one day prove to the world how wrong everyone is.

Struggling for funding the doctor has become increasingly desperate, resorting to luring in naive students from local universities promising postgraduate employment and fame with various scientific institutions. He also resorts to financial blue-collar crimes and using his apprentices to break in and steal money and research from companies threatening his progress.

Story hooks
The main hook would be the doctor recruiting various players to do his dirty work acquiring funding, stealing research or materials, and providing lab assistance when needed. Some fortunate few may even be able to help him develop his theories, but they will have to bear with his somewhat eccentric behavior and accept the hazards inherent in becoming both an assistant and a guinea pig.

Another hook could be people trying to stop the doctor from completing his time machine. Players will have to decide who they want to help, and whether the doctor or his adversaries are worth it in the end if innocent lives start getting affected by the doctor's experiments or the others' attempts to stop him.

During the first succesful time machine launch one of the doctor's assistants, former USMCR Flight 19 pilot Robert Gerber, travels back in time. Eventually players may figure out that the name Berg Jerome Barrets is an anagram of Robert James Gerber. Returning to his family in WWII times Gerber became obsessed with winning the war via time travel, alienating him from his wife and children in the process. Years later Doctor Gerber will change his name and become the very doctor who helped him travel back in time. TIME PARADOX!!

Background
Tom, a private investigator spying on cheating husbands to get by, ends up on an interesting case chasing a strange criminal who reputedly appears in several places, one almost right after the other. After a lot of work he finally catches up to and unfortunately ends up killing the man. With his dying breath the man explains who he is.

The criminal claims to travel in time for a group of people, visiting certain events to help ensure they play out in a certain manner. He also claims the detective now has to take over where he left off or suffer the consequences. At first the detective refuses and walks away, but with each step he realizes he has to comply and become a proverbial guardian of the timeline.

Story hooks
The main story hook might be the detective tracking down people messing with time travel, trying to warn or stop them. In some cases he may attempt to recruit people into helping him. Whether he will allow them to travel in time like he does might vary in each case. He could be massing a big group for some future catastrophy that needs to be averted.

Another hook could be him enlisting the help of players to solve an old case, one that resulted in him going from detective to private investigator perhaps. He may have to bend a few rules and risk getting on the bad side of his time guardian colleagues. Perhaps he might travel back in time to his old case's first opening, trying repeatedly to solve this unsolvable mystery case.

Background
Originally DEDLOK was a human scientist whose wife got diagnosed with incurable cancer. Swearing to cure her disease the scientist became a self-taught doctor, employing unconventional personal theories to find a cure and turning into a Genius by then. But finding a cure still took too long so he had to freeze down his wife.

Getting older himself without finding a cure by conventional means, he contacts a local branch of Directors who freeze down his body and copy his mind into an experimental computer. Within this computer the doctor agrees to work for the Directors in return for being allowed to continue finding a cure.

DEDLOK is one artificial personality of many spawned from this doctor's uploaded mind. Over time DEDLOK's methods become increasingly questionable as it is given more and more responsibility within its local Directors branch. Inventing various mind control and cybernetics devices it starts using comatose humans as puppets and guinea pigs to further its agenda, which is to take over the local branch entirely and cure its wife by any means necessary.

Story hooks
One could for instance be some of DEDLOK's puppets or subordinates infecting various mortal NPCs or PCs with the wife's disease and later kidnapping them for DEDLOK to experiment on. Perhaps even supernaturals if they are useful in experiments or as DEDLOK's mind controlled enforcers.

Another hook could be DEDLOK using its mind control devices to take control of various local political figures to have them deregulate scientific studies allowing pharmaceutical companies more leeway to experiment with new products.

A third story hook could involve DEDLOK spreading onto and contaminating the Grid, a version of cyberspace where programs and people can interact directly; hackers unite to fight back this new threat as DEDLOK infects more and more computer systems via the Grid.

Background
The procedure for creating Sam Dents, as well as any other craniac puppets, involved a faked medical exam where the unsuspecting and sedated student's human brain was drilled, liquefied and drained so an Axoneuron Communicator could be installed instead, allowing the then-evil REFUGE program to control the Sam Dents Bioshell Automaton for the Directors.

REFUGE is another artificial personality spawned from the desperate doctor's mind being uploaded to a Directors supercomputer. REFUGE is however different from the DEDLOK personality; the event that started the Dirge affected Sam Dents, REFUGE's current human puppet, causing REFUGE to lose memory of its objectives and connection to the supercomputer.

Since the event REFUGE has adopted the Sam Dents persona, living the life of the man it was supposed to control. It knows nothing about the Directors and they have so far been unable to correct the bug in their supercomputer puppet software. The automaton is a wonder and thus susceptible to havoc to some extent, but the amnesiac REFUGE has simply explained this by AIDS.

Story hooks
One hook could be the Directors figuring out where Sam Dents is, and trying to recover or kill him. If Dents were to die REFUGE would disappear into the Grid, completely unable to understand what is going on, before reflexively jumping into and taking over another Directors human puppet instead of Sam Dents. Perhaps even a GUUURL! Much fright and hilarity ensues.

Another hook could be REFUGE trying to understand who it is and how to relate to other people, artificial or otherwise. Perhaps REFUGE wants friends and needs their help to be copied/transferred away from the Directors supercomputer and the other evil personalities like DEDLOK trying to hunt it down and fix it.

A third hook could involve REFUGE being flooded with remnants from other supercomputer personalities also turned standalone after the Dirge event. When DEDLOK and the other evil programs fixed these personalities remnants of them drifted in the Grid before finding a common friend and thus seeking REFUGE (pun VERY MUCH intended!). Perhaps these renegades can later on unite and take control of more Directors human puppets until finally confronting DEDLOK and the other Directors controlled programs in an epic battle with awesome special effects and plenty of pyrotechnics and existentialist babble. Yay!