Player Name: Kit
Full Name: Vivian Renée Crane
Nicknames and Pseudonyms: Viv
Age: 31
Birth Date: June 3rd, 2283
Blood Type: AB+
Role on Ship: Navigator
Homeworld: Khocladia
Significant Relations and Affiliations:
Parents: Michael and Stephanie Crane. Currently living on Khocladia, owner-operators of Crane Mineral Enterprises. Moderately wealthy, supportive parents, likely scandalized by any reports of Viv’s turn to crime. Crane Enterprises is no major player in the economy of Khocladia, but does well enough that the family has never really wanted for anything. Viv is an only child.
Business Partner: Ophelia Varis. Both students together at the University of Sciences on Khocladia, roommates in later years. Went into freelance cybernetics together.
Assorted Lovers: Vivian went through a lot of partners before realizing she doesn’t really do relationships. Or rather, perhaps more accurately, she’s kinda bad at thinking about anyone other than Vivian Crane.
Bonds, Obligations, Debts, and Warrants:
Katia Smock: Has a warrant/price out on Viv. The details are unclear - Katia is fabricating a case in order to hunt Viv for (allegedly) knowing a secret tied to the installation of a new cybernetic eye. Viv does not even know what she’s being accused of.
Nebula Brume: Having met about two years ago at Club Alibi on Hermes Station, Nebula and Vivian have known each other since. Their relationship is best described using the polyamorous term ‘comets’ - they hook up, hang out, and spend time together when their paths cross, but lead individual lives that take them in and out of each other’s orbits.
Appearance: Vivian Crane has short-cut red hair which sits at jaw-length, though her hair color can essentially be changed on a whim using nanites. She is pale, a factor usually mitigated by time in salons on Khocladia to mitigate the reduced sunlight of living on an asteroid chain. Her earlobes, navel, and nipples are all pierced. She has no tattoos, but extensive cybernetics work. Her entire left arm is cybernetic, and contains many of the tools used in her previous work as a cybernetics specialist, which can be activated along the fingertips for dexterous work - laser scalpel along her index finger, soldering iron on her thumb, and so on. The entire arm itself is mounted onto her shoulder with a gyroscopic joint that keeps her hand steady whenever possible. The cybernetic is sheathed in a synthetic flesh, but it isn’t perfect, and more than a quick glance reveals the metal at the edges of those synth flesh panels.
Viv has numerous scars - one behind each ear for two brain implants, in a curving crescent shape, one hidden in her hair from facial feminization surgery, and two orchiectomy scars on either side of her pelvis. Behind the left ear she also has a data jack that allows data to be directly fed into the computer chips that are wired into her brain.
Viv is an even six foot, though she will sometimes wear heels to make herself taller. Her nails are carefully manicured at all times (cybernetic hand just looks like that, though the metal around the joints is still obvious). She’s leggy, and likes to emphasize that when flirting or dressing to get attention.
Personality: Vivian is a princess. Up until the last month of her life, absolutely everything has gone her way. Despite being a trans woman, she came out relatively early in her life, and had supportive parents through her transition. She came from a wealthy family, allowing her to pursue higher education without concern for cost. She was augmented with cybernetic enhancements upon her graduation, further improving her ability to be an excellent cyberneticist. She has never struggled.
As such, she can often be an entitled princess type, prissy and demanding, almost bratty. She has an over-large sense of self-importance, and that has been crushed, crumpled, and dented recently. She is struggling to hold onto her pride, since it is the anchor to her self-worth, and struggling to find a new way to measure her value in a world where she has lost her wealth, her business, and her life.
Vivian ultimately is all bark and no bite, however. She will whine and bitch and rail against those that wrong her, but she lacks any real sense of vengeance or fury that might drive her to physical violence or retaliation. On the rare occasion she has been pushed past petulant annoyance, her fury and anger has been extremely cold and calculated. She has not, however, acted upon it.
Her sense of humor is a quirky one, and often is rooted in autistic humor that is harder for allistics to grasp, and also frequently dips into niche knowledge and understanding.
Under pressure, Viv has two reactions. If she knows what to do and is confident in her ability to execute a plan of action that will take some of the pressure off, she is calm, collected, and capable. However, if she is unprepared or untrained for the kind of strain she is being placed under, she cracks and breaks. She is a Prince Rupert's drop - extremely strong under the right kind of pressure, but fragile otherwise.
Strengths, Talents, Abilities: Vivian is extremely intelligent, a factor which is only further improved by the mathematical implant installed in the left side of her skull and linked into her cerebellum, allowing her to do complex mathematics in record time. Using the data jack connected to this implant, she can connect other devices and computers into her mind, allowing quick processing and interactions between her thoughts and devices. She primarily used this previously to quickly configure client’s cybernetics, but has recently begun to write modifications to her software that might allow her to interface directly to starship navigational systems. Pursuant to that, she also has significant skill in programming, physics, mechanical engineering, and electronics. These skills are limited, however, to the scope of cybernetics. While it is certainly possible to learn all of these disciplines, her background and education was highly specialized, and it’s unlikely she would be able to apply those skills to significantly different scenarios without help. Finally, her formal education originally began in astro-navigation and stellar plotting, and she retained those skills due to being particularly fascinated by the prospect of interstellar exploration.
As a cybernetics specialist, Viv has a strong understanding of anatomy and surgery in highly specific ways. She can amputate limbs, install cybernetics, and join muscles to implants, but is likely to be unable to handle broken bones, lacerations, and other wounds on her own. She can, however, function as another set of hands to a skilled medic or doctor, given they can give her clear direction.
As part of her cybernetics practice, Viv was primarily responsible for software and neurological integration, while her partner, Ophelia, specialized in mechanical work and fabrication. While each could perform the role of the other, they worked best as a team, and would do all installations together. Without Ophelia, Viv is capable of maintenance on most cybernetics and intensive software and neuro work, but would need assistance to complete mechanical installations or fabricate new devices.
Previously mentioned, her cybernetic left arm functions as a full toolkit for cybernetics work, containing all but the most specialized tools she might require to do work on cybernetic implants: (copied from above) Her entire left arm is cybernetic, and contains many of the tools used in her previous work as a cybernetics specialist, which can be activated along the fingertips for dexterous work - laser scalpel along her index finger, soldering iron on her thumb, and so on. The entire arm itself is mounted onto her shoulder with a gyroscopic joint that keeps her hand steady whenever possible. The cybernetic is sheathed in a synthetic flesh, but it isn’t perfect, and more than a quick glance reveals the metal at the edges of those synth flesh panels.
Behind her right ear, she has another cerebral implant that functions as a built-in comm bracelet and datapad that projects information directly into the optical nerve between her eye and her brain, allowing her to “see” the data and information overlaid onto her vision in her right eye. Likewise, it wires audio into her left ear, and a vibration microphone implanted in her jaw allowed her to communicate verbally. The implant is, ultimately, reliant on the same signals that power the crews’ phones and comm bracelets, however.
Weaknesses and Fears: While she is incredibly well-suited to clean, pristine corporate offices and sleek scientific facilities, Vivian is completely out of her depth in any situation that calls for violence, coercion, or other ‘nastiness’. She has never seen combat and never held a weapon. In a firefight, she is very much a liability. She is likely to react with fear, anxiety, and to freeze.
Vivian is prickly, and finds it difficult to bond emotionally with others. This makes her very cold and unpleasant to strangers, and she would be a poor choice for any scenario that requires charisma or charm. She is blunt, harsh, and direct, and while those things can be appreciated by other autistic people or the right crowd, they are generally a detriment - especially when conversing with authority figures, who tend to find her patronizing, stuck up, and irritating. At best.
Coming from wealth, Viv has an unbalanced sense of value and importance. It’s important to emphasize here that she is not greedy, but rather, her sense of what is important has ultimately been skewed toward the materialistic. She is used to having the basics be provided without a thought, and therefore her idea of ‘minimal’ often translates to the average person’s ‘comfortable vacation’.
Vivian’s more superficial fears are minor - she is afraid of most insects, and hates anything that is creepy and crawly. On a more existential note however, she is extremely terrified of being without a purpose, afraid of being useless, not good at or for anything. This fear is her driving force, and is what has made her into the person she is today. That fear is being directly stimulated now, as she has lost her business (and therefore her previous purpose) and is desperately remaking herself into something that the people who can help her need. This makes her, despite her propensity to be prissy, whiny, and stuck-up, a people-pleaser. This naturally ties into a fear of abandonment and feeds her unwillingness to form meaningful bonds with people who might discard her if she ever stops being good for something.
History: Born Isaac Renfield Crane on Khocladia, the child of Michael and Stephanie Crane grew up a ‘gifted’ child, benefiting from the wealth collected by business-owning parents. Excelling in academics, she came out as non-binary at the age of 16 before announcing her trans-femininity at the age of 18, taking the name ‘Vivian’ from her mother’s mother, and her new middle name, ‘Renée” from her father’s mother. That same year, she enrolled in the University of Sciences on Khocladia, funded by a hefty educational stipend provided by her family. Originally she enrolled for a double major in Astro-Navigation and Stellar Cartography, but after two successful years in those majors, she switched to Cybernetics, under pressure from her parents to stay on Khocladia after graduation. There she met Ophelia Varis, who she became fast friends with, and later that year they became roommates.
She graduated three years later, having taken extra time to get exceptional marks and extra time in practice. This additional work earned her an endorsement by multiple professors and experts in the cybernetics field. As a graduation present, her parents funded two surgeries - one cosmetic (facial feminization surgery) and one functional (her cybernetic toolkit arm). After graduation and recovery, Vivian and Ophelia founded Crane-Varis Cybernetics. Unlike many cybernetics clinics, Vivian and Ophelia specialized in providing home augmentation, modification, maintenance, and alteration to high-class clients, who did not want to visit a physical clinic location. They excelled with this business model for the next seven years (particularly helped by their professional endorsements), growing a reliable market of clients, primarily on Khocladia, but also throughout Gjallarhorn.
During this time, she met Nebula Brume. It was happenstance, both of them on Hermes Station at the right time. Vivian was 29 at the time, and just Nebula’s type: aloof, elegant, hyper-femme, emotionally unavailable, and looking to burn off stress. They hooked up, and, during pillow talk, Vivian emphasized that she didn’t do relationships, that she didn’t have any interest in tying Nebula down, but that she wanted to see her again, sometime. This was the beginning of what Vivian would describe as a polyamorous comet relationship, though Nebula would never identify with those terms, exactly. They keep in touch, and have communicated where they’ll be at any given time, meeting up when they can for drinks, to chat, and to fall into bed together in the expensive hotels paid for by Vivian’s clients. Despite not doing relationships and having no interest in ‘marriage’ or ‘monogamy’, Viv is more protective of her relationship with Nebula than she is with most other partners - refusing to allow others to use the nickname that Nebula uses for her, for example.
The next two years would boom her business across the system, with wealthy clients paying her to fly to their stations, install their cybernetics, and stay in their fancy hotels with whichever pretty women she could pick up from local clubs and bars. She dabbled in her true passion once again, writing open-source code for navigational computers, including writing the scripts that allow her to link her neural implant into them. During this time, her relationship with Ophelia deepened, though it never shifted out of anything more than a platonic connection, and they were never physical - Ophelia needed a romantic spark, and Vivian identifies as aromantic. Still, her business partner was unquestionably her best friend.
And then, last month, after installing an ocular implant for one Katia Smock, Ophelia began getting threatening texts and seeing strange people following her in the shadows.The police were informed, but the stalking didn’t let up. One morning, Ophelia had vanished without a trace. The same day, their business was crushed under administrative sanctions and audits, her finances seized, and license to practice cybernetic modification was revoked. She fled Khocladia, and sent a message out to one of the few people left that she could trust - Nebula. Knowing Nebula’s background, and offering her own skills - as a navigator, as a cyberneticist, as a programmer - Vivian asked if Nebs knew anywhere she could run.
Anything Else: Vivian is autistic and ADHD. She also has an anxiety disorder, managed by an additional medication implant installed in her thigh by injection. The medication mitigates the worst of the effects, but does not eliminate the disorder.
Vivian previously coped with the stresses of her high-power job by frequenting a kink/BDSM club on Khocladia called The Web Lounge, indulging in masochism. While she had some friends in those circles, she only knows them by various aliases used in that community. When off-world, she sought out similar establishments on other stations and planets to indulge.
Model: Hari Nef