Martyred Medic
Doc Painless
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: To convert a PC who is no longer actively played over to an NPC who can still be referenced.
- Image Credit: Custom screenshot from Cyberpunk 2077 by CD Projekt Red, captured in-game by me in Nvidia Shadowplay
- Role: A kindhearted street medic who takes care of people in Denon's lower levels.
- Permissions: N/A
- Links: Doc Painless, Back Alley Exorcism, Mile-High Hack, Happy Life Day, Quekko's Choice: Seven Corners, Lend You A Hand, Circling the Drain, Interlude: Refraction Point, Crooks of a Feather, Enterprise Day, Disaster on Denon, Tonight We Protect Us, Shattering the Mirror, Search for Shadows, The Best is Yet to Come, Tonight the Tap Pours Blue
- Age: 33
- Force Sensitivity: Non-Force User
- Species: Human
Appearance: The Doc used to wear a different face, and relatively few people have connected his new appearance with his old one. He looks a little older now, older than his true age, with softer lines to his features. Some things remain unchanged. He is of average height and build for a human, not the kind of person to stand out in a crowd. He appears to be in his mid thirties now, relatively healthy for his age. His eyes are obviously cybernetic, and there are other clear implants on his face and neck, but there are also many other, more hidden grafts. His arms are entirely cybernetic up to the shoulder, with a variety of medical tools built into his hands and forearms. Other implants are built into his legs and chest, though these are usually clothing-covered.
- Name: Doc Painless
- Loyalties: Darkwire, citizens of Denon
- Wealth: Low, mostly funded by community donations and sympathetic shadowrunners.
- Notable Possessions: Various cybernetic implants, medical tools and supplies, clinic in the back of a speeder truck.
- Skills: The Doc is a gifted medic and surgeon. He also knows a thing or two about hacking, and is a good underworld job fixer.
Personality: Doc Painless it a little more guarded these days, and a lot more tired. Some of the fire and optimism has gone out of him since the Xopsaloff assassination, but his kindness and empathy have not. The Doc takes people as he finds them, without judgement, and does the best that he can. After briefly dabbling in supporting justified violence, he has returned to a medical philosophy of do no harm, leaving the armed struggle against oppression to others. While he is generous and goodhearted with others, he has less goodwill for himself, and has yet to develop healthy coping mechanisms. He throws himself into his work on a merciless, punishing schedule to keep his haunting memories at bay, and he drinks to excess when he cannot.
- Weapon of Choice: Wits, Charm, and Stealth
- Combat Function: The Doc has seldom ended up in combat, and when he has, it's always gone pretty poorly for him. He knows that he is best served by running from a fight. If he can't do that, he tries to use his environment to his advantage, finding opportunities to distract, delay, and disorient his foes. His cybernetic implants allow him to survive taking something of a beating, and his metal arms can hit pretty hard if it comes down to it.
- The Doc is an incredibly gifted medic and cyber-surgeon. Even with minimal supplies, he's great at saving lives.
- The Doc is a people person. He is kind, empathetic, warm, and open. As a result, he has many friends and contacts.
- The Doc is a very poor combatant. He is not a trained fighter, and has pretty much never used a blaster or blade.
- The Doc is an alcoholic. He copes with his past failures through heavy drinking, a practice that will likely kill him one day.
No one on Denon is sure where Doc Painless came from, or what he did before he arrived on the city-planet. That hasn't stopped people from speculating, of course. Various rumors place him as a rogue Saaraishash agent, a former pirate sawbones, a rich family's secret shame, a bitter ex-corpo, and a dozen other possibilities, each more outlandish than the last. What can be said for sure is that, soon after arriving, he set up a little clinic in the Seven Corners district, a clinic that quickly became famous as a place you could go if you didn't have the money to pay for a corporate hospital. As word spread, a lot of people came through the Doc's doors seeking treatment. He turned no one away, so long as they could keep to a simple rule: no violence in his place.
Pretty soon, people began to wonder: how did the Doc keep up his business? He only ever charged what people could afford, which often wasn't very much, certainly not enough to pay for all the supplies he was going through. The truth was simple: he was in deep with the Denon underworld organization known as Darkwire. A lot of his medical supplies were stolen, and a lot of his costs were paid by shadowrunners, whom he hooked up with aftermarket cyberware. Darkwire was a sort of unofficial sponsor for the clinic, and he took good care of their people in exchange. He also offered them work, returning some of those credits in the form of rewards for jobs that would benefit the community. As a result, the Doc built up a reputation as a reliable fixer as well.
Over time, Doc Painless was drawn deeper and deeper into Darkwire. A turning point was his humanitarian mission to Belazura, where he saw the horrific results of Divak Manfloon's planet-wide strip mining: the formerly beautiful resort world was industrially despoiled, its population reduced to indentured workers with little hope of ever escaping their debts. The Doc's thinking turned increasingly anti-corporate, and even militant, after that. When he was invited to an emergency meeting to discuss the deepening doppelgänger crisis, he advocated for dramatic action directly targeting the Corporate Authority's DireX Board. He was fully on board with the first plan: crashing the CAD financial system with counterfeit corporate vouchers. He used them to mass-buy clinic supplies.
It took some doing to talk him into actually participating in the second part: the mission to assassinate Quanatain Xopsaloff, bursar of the DireX Board. The Doc assisted in boarding Xopsaloff's yacht and releasing a powerful computer virus into its systems, surviving to make a narrow escape back to Denon. As it turned out, that was the beginning of the end for his clinic. The corporate crackdown in the wake of the assassination was swift and severe. When the Doc happened upon a raid on one of his favorite drinking spots, the Blue Flame, he intervened to try to help the patrons escape. Although he was successful in rescuing many of the people inside, sparing them capture and interrogation at the hands of CorpSec, he was spotted working directly against Corpo forces.
The Doc knew he'd been IDed, and that meant everything would have to change. That very night he packed up everything he could from his clinic into a speeder truck and fled into Denon's lower levels. He changed his face, changed his voice, cut off all his financial trails, and went to ground, laying low for a while. His network of friends and contacts, people grateful to him for his generous medical aid over the years, helped to hide him. Eventually, when the heat came down a little, the Doc went back to doing what he did best: cheap but effective back-alley surgery. He continued to operate out of the back of a speeder truck, though he varies which truck he uses and where he appears; he knows that he will be hunted until the end of his days, and so he stays mobile and cautious.
But if you need good medical aid or cybersurgery on Denon, he's the man to look up.
