Background:

Tom Murray was born in the barrens, raised by a single mother in deep poverty. She refuses to speak of his father, but Tom was a troll, like her, but with strange blue skin, and as he got older, poorly developed musculature, both traits she didn’t possess. His mother was a bouncer at a strip club, and his days would have been spent at home learning with a commlink, but AR signals were painful and confusing to him, so his mother found a school for children that shared his AR disabilities, and sent him there on a needs-based scholarship, using a fake SIN (since he had never been issued an official one). Throughout his youth, he spent his days in the school system for AR-disabled kids. He was rarely bullied, due to his size and species, but also had few friends for the same reasons, and his nights were spent in the strip club, doing homework.

When he was 16, a strange man showed up at his school. He interviewed every student, as well as conducting an astral inspection, then left the school. Tom found out later that he was a researcher and academic, conducting research on the correlation between AR disabilities and magical talent. Six weeks later, another man came, and subjected a number of students, including Tom, to an extensive battery of tests and astral inspections. This second visit resulted in an invitation, and a full scholarship, to attend MIT&T and study Thaumaturgy. Tom had no idea he had magical talent, so he was shocked by the offer, and frightened by the thought of being so far away from home, but his mother and her friends convinced him that he should go, because it could change his life.

So it was that a nine-foot-tall blue troll ended up attending the most prestigious school of magic in the world. He excelled in his studies, and had a bright career ahead of him, all built on a fake SIN his mother had gotten him so he could get into a kindergarten with no AR to make him cry. He earned his Thaum.D., his mother flying out for the graduation ceremony, but then things took a turn for the worse. The school hadn’t probed very deeply into his life, but he tried to become a licensed mage, working for the government, and his old fake SIN just wasn’t up to the challenge. Tom found himself unlicensed, and unable to get licensed, and was forced to go back home to Seattle, to live with his mother while he tried to find work.

Once there, the situation didn’t improve much. Through a friend of a friend of his mother’s, he was able to meet a troll named Feather, a contact who could get him occasional work. He managed to get a new fake SIN, and a fake magic license, but he found that his appearance was too distinctive, and after several job interviews that did checks thorough enough for his fake license to be meaningless, he gave up on legitimate work.

1. What is the Character’s sex?
Male. Spending his formative years in a stripclub daily has made him very blasé about nudity and sexuality, and sex is not very important to him as a result.

2. What is the character’s physical size?
He is a troll, 9 feet tall and a bit stockier than many trolls, but lacking in the muscle growth that most trolls possess.

3. What is the color of the character’s hair, eyes, and skin?
His skin is a deep blue, his eyes are red and his horns are black, and he is hairless.

4. What is the character’s general appearance?
Tom is very conscious of looking ridiculous, with his strange blue skin, and he tries to make up for it with formality. Therefore, he always wears a formal suit, and keeps himself very neat and professional looking. He is lacking in the ordinary muscle growth trolls have, and between that and the blue skin, he is shy of being seen anything but fully clothed. He has a natural scowl which makes him seem less friendly than he actually is. To some eyes, he looks like a scary monster, which can cause him a lot of emotional pain and social awkwardness.

5. Where was the character born?
Tom was born in the barrens. He didn’t make many friends as a kid, because he went to school outside of the barrens, but with kids in a very different social class that weren’t allowed to be friends with a troll kid; and he was disliked by kids in the barrens because of his differences; so most of the time he wasn’t at school he was at his mother’s work.

6. What is the character’s age?
Tom is 30. He left Boston just weeks before the CFD outbreak, to interview in DC, then made his way across the country back to Seattle.

7. What was the character’s family?
He’s never met his dad, and his mom refuses to go into details, but he’s gotten enough out of her to know he wasn’t a normal troll; which he thinks explains his blueness, weakness, and gift for magic. His mom is a bouncer in a strip club in the barrens, who worked hard to put him through school and whom he loves deeply. They still live together, though they have independent lives and finances.

8. Has the character begun his own family?
Tom is romantically stunted, a combination of his own self-esteem issues and the fact that he essentially grew up in a strip club, giving him a combination of unrealistic standards and ennui about sex.

9. Where or how was the character educated?
He went to a special school for kids with bad reaction to AR, which is otherwise heavily used in education. He attended MIT&T on a full scholarship, and has a Thaum.D.

10. Has the character ever done anything else for a living?
He supplements his income by occasionally writing freelance articles on magic; other than that he’s never had a normal job.

11. What about the character’s political and religious beliefs?
He believes religions are all lies, either created by spirits to gain worshipers or by humans to gain power. He feels the world, magic and all, is a known and knowable totality, and faith is meaningless. Politically, he wants society to be open and free, and not discriminatory against metahumans. He would love to be able to have a legitimate existence without needing to run the shadows, though he knows it’s too late for that since he’s already broken many laws, he blames the political system that prevented him from becoming a licensed mage working a normal job.

12. What is the character’s moral code?
He doesn’t like or condone senseless violence or infliction of pain, but he is willing to do what it takes to get the job done. If he is facing a foe using lethal force against him, he thinks it would be stupid not to answer with lethal force in return; but if he was facing enemies using non-lethal weapons, he would do the same. He adheres to a live-and-let-live philosophy, and will defend people he cares about. He cares about sexual objectification, though his feeling is not that it is inherently wrong, but that it should be a choice by the object; someone’s choice to be objectified in a limited scope for money shouldn’t create a universal objectification for them or anyone else.

13. Does the character have any goals?
He once wanted a normal job and a normal life, but he’s given up on that. Now he just wants to do well enough to have a comfortable life, something he hasn’t really managed yet.

14. Why does the character run the shadows?
He runs because he wants to earn a living with his magic, and also because he’s somewhat lazy and running the shadows allows a lot of downtime.

15. What is the character’s personality?
As a kid, Tom was very quiet and studious. As an adult, he strives to be a calm, collected professional. On the other hand, Tom never had many friends, but it wasn’t his choice, and he’d like to have more. He is friendly but formal, and always seems to be trying to make a good impression. He wants to be be sociable and popular, so he tries hard to be friendly to everyone he meets, even though his shyness can make it hard for him to be gregarious.

16. What special qualities does the character possess?
He is calm and quiet, he tries to be the voice of reason; but he also sometimes comes across as callous because he is governed by rationality rather than emotions.

17. Are there certain tings the character just cannot do?
He can’t handle AR. He also can’t handle being undressed around people. He can’t blend in to a crowd unless he uses magic.

18. What does the character hate?
He hates judgmental people, the saturation of the matrix into everyday life, and the security apparatus that forced him to become a shadowrunner to use magic.

19. What does the character love?
He loves seafood, and really spicy food. He enjoys being in a noisy, chaotic environment, he finds it easier to concentrate in such a place than in a quiet place. He also likes to feel hidden, as a break from being a giant blue troll, whether just being in the dark, or invisible or magically disguised.

20. What is the character’s name?
Tom Murray aka Blue Tom aka Big Blue. He doesn’t love being named after his color, but he accepts it as inevitable.