Sample Character Creation: STEEL JACKAL

Because no one fears a blade like the one that’s already tasted vengeance.

Meet Steel Jackal, a cold-blooded, cybernetically enhanced bounty hunter. But beneath all that chrome and firepower, there’s a haunted past... Let’s build it using the Sample Trauma Table (roll 3d12):

Rolled: 4 – 8 – 3

🎲 4. “Your childhood had a price tag—and someone paid it.”

Jack Sullyvan, Steel Jackal’s birth name, was sold by his poverty-stricken parents to a criminal syndicate operating in the back alleys of Metro Manila. He was just another product, packaged and processed into servitude.

🎲 8. “You struggle with uncontrollable outbursts of anger.”

Though we won’t expand this thread now, keep it in the background. Jack's rage isn’t random—it's a delayed detonation, waiting for the right trigger.

🎲 3. “If someone you are bonded to dies, you must react immediately.”

This unlocked the real emotional core.

In the grimy back-kitchen of the gang-owned noodle bar, young Jack found a friend: Hemmy, a gentle, oversized teen with a dopey grin and a soft spot for Jack. Every day, Hemmy snuck food to Jack from the backline.

One night, the sadistic restaurant manager caught Hemmy “stealing.”
He beat him to death with a metal ladle.

Jack snapped.

He stabbed the manager in the chest with a meat cleaver, ran out into the rain, and never looked back.
Since then, if a comrade dies in front of him...
Jack doesn’t grieve.
He erupts.

🧠 Why this works (and why it’s adaptable):

This isn’t just cyberpunk edge-lording. This trauma chain has:

• A catalyst (the sale)

• A bond (Hemmy)

• A reaction pattern (explosive grief)

• And a moral anchor in a world that’s forgotten the concept