Claw

Created By: Mike Mayhew and Jay P. Hailey

Name: Claw (Experimental Subject #21)

Species: Human/Genetic Monster

Born: 2352

Birthplace: A secret genetics lab on an icy planet in an out of the way sector of the Sword Worlds

Parents: A test tube and a knife

Siblings, Relatives: Claw had 24 siblings including at least 7 clones, as well as the research staff at the lab. Claw and his siblings were happy in close proximity and got along well, but were never really fillial.

Friends: Cobra Force, especially Mikki Ashby, Lady Idun, Joe Little and Markus Wellington who is educating Claw on the ways of paranoid conspiracy mongers.

Height: 5' 10'

Weight: 175 #

Description: Claw is a horrifying creature, a humanoid with a chitinous exo-skeleton, large compound eyes, a huge claw for a left hand and a strong segmented tail equipped with a poisonous stinger. Claw in fact resembles a direct mixing of human and scorpion.

Personality: Claw is a relatively innocent creature, although he has seen enough death and destruction to last anyone a life time. He is relatively new to the outside world and tends to be very earnest, very friendly (unless youi're shooting at him) and too literal and shallow in his depth of references. Claw is basically a nice guy.

Skills/training/Professional skills: Claw is a very well trained soldier and now, an experienced one. Claw is a very good field medic and is considering pursuing a career in medicine. Not surprisingly Claw has a very good knowledge of genetics, genetic engineering and bio-laboratory proceedures having grown up in a genetics lab.Claw would make a wonderful lab assistant.

Special powers/abilities: Claw has an exo-skeleton formed of chitinous plates which grow naturally from attachment points on his body. In place of his left hand, Claw has a large pincers style claw with a sort of bony serrated edge which, when used properly can grab and hold a victim or cut an unarmorerd human badly. Claw has a large tail very reminiscent of a scorpion's even to the way he likes to arch it over his back for an attack. This tail is equipped with a stinger and a poison gland which can inject a soft target with a poison very similar to scorpion poison. Most anyone injected successfully with this poision would be incapacitated in short order and only the strongest and robust of people could survive two or more such injections. Claw is good for three injections and must then recharge. Claw's large compound eyes give excellent peripheral vision and some enhanced night sight

Weaknesses: Claw's main weakness is that he's well intentioned and very naive. Physically Claw is very robust and durable but somewhat less flexible than a normal human. If Claw gats an injury to his carapace it's slow to heal and regrow. Claws large compound eyes make excellent targets, He can't blink or shut them. Claw is vulnerable to bright lights, finding them somewhat uncomfortable.

Career History: The Sword Worlds are a nation on the edge of the Klinzai region. The Sword Worlds thrive mainly on not being subject of the Klinzai and being in conflict with the Klinzai. Knowing that a war was coming (eventually. There's always a war coming eventually between the Sword Worlds and the Klinzai.) A certain amount of the Sword Worlds very large (by weight) military budget was diverted into "special projects".

One of these special projects was bio-warfare. On a small, out-of-the-way and generally useless world, a lab was established to explore this possibility. This lab's first project was to create an genetically engineered super soldier.

After several years the results were Claw and his twenty four siblings.

As Genetic Engineering, they were masterworks, stable, functional, combining elements from across several different life forms sucessfully.

As super soldiers they were not terribly successful. Although armed with effective natural weapons, they had nothin that an assault rifle didn't equal or exceed of effectiveness. Although stable, due to biological and energy constraints their nervous systems weren't notably faster or more accurate than natural models. Their physical mobility was slightly hampered.

But the real weakness of these creatures became apparent during their harsh and ruthless training as soldiers. Claw and his siblings are resoutely emotionally mature and well adjusted. They just aren't by nature killing machines. One of these creatures approaching you in a dark alley is far more likely to invite you to discuss your difference and attempt to arrive at a peaceful resolution than attack you.

These creatures aren't stupid, and if in combat will fight with a will. But they generally don't buy into the thought process that the enemy is a hated monster to be slaughtered on sight, a necessary ingredient to new soldiers. These creatures will generally try to avoid combat and find peaceful solutions.

Several of them were forcefully altered during gestation resulting in creatures with horrifying brain damage, but as nice as they could be otherwise, considering the circumstances.

Claw was part of the last batch of creatures, left unlatered while the project chief tried to come up with a use for them that would suit thier temperment.

Claw and his siblings became guards and assistants at the out of the way lab.

The lab moved on to real bio-weapons, war plagues (despite numerous logical and philosophical arguments in person and by e-mail from the super-soldiers.)

Klinzai Intelligence caught word of the out of way genetics lab. After due analysis the Klinzai High Command decided that a risky mission to capture the lab was in order. They hired Cobra Force and sent them in.

The first Claw and his fellows knew of the mission and the impending attack on their home was when Cobra Force landed a handful of their troop-carrier gunships near the place and came out shooting.

The genetic super soldiers were hampered by a total lack of warning, bad organization and an unfortunate tendency to try and reason with the crazed commandoes first.

Even backed up by other Sword Worlds troopers, the secret lab was soon over run.

Claw and a small group of his siblings were the last line of defense for the scientists and their top secret data bases. Claw and his siblings, as soon as they saw how badly out numbered they were by evidently unusually violent people, surrended utterly.

This was a completely unexpected move and it befuddled the lead elements of Cobra Force, stalling the attack. This was academic since there was no opposition left, anyway.

During a breif discussion about how to handle it when monsters surrendered, some of the more alert members of Cobra Force secured the lab complex and the mission objectives. Soon a Klinzai ship took possession of the surviving records, surviving scientists, some of the surviving super soldiers (there were very, very few). During this Claw and his companions tried to be friendly and helpful to the Klinzais and Cobra Force, generally figuring that if the violent maniacs got what they wanted quickly, no one else would have to be injured or killed.

The Klinzai ship lifted off, leaving behind a timed device for eradicating evidence. violently. They took with them all but Claw who seems to have been regarded as superfluous.

Corba Force after short, professional bout of looting boarded their ships. Claw followed them. No one objected, figuring that Claw was there on someone else's authority.

On the transport ride home, The truth about Claw's state was discovered and he was offered a berth in Cobra Force. He accepted with pathetic gratitude.

Claw has since since regular and violent action with Cobra Force and has learned that

• Being reasonable doesn't work nearly as often as it seems like it should,
• That when it is appropriate to use reason it's almost always better to let someone else make the first approach
• That Jay uses too many (fresh!) bullet points and that
• People get very unreasonable when they see Cobra Force coming and there's Little at this late date that Claw can do about that.

Claw learned about the wonders of Pay day and Beer from Joe Little. He has discovered the wonder of continued education. He found that revenge is a dish best served by someone else, usually Lady Idun, and that no matter how many times he nods and agrees with Markus Wellington, nothing he says will ever make any real sense.

Later - In 2371, Claw met and talked to Captain Li'ira from the USS ShiKhar She convinced him to leave Cobra Force and join Starfleet. Claw did and is seen in ST-OM Rondo in Green, where he is part of Liira's crew.

Epiphany Trek' In 2388, Claw under went Major body reconstruction at Stoner Labs, and emerged a good deal different.

Meta

Claw was a roleplaying character from a game almost entirely different from Star Trek. In Garry Stahl's "Olde Phoenix Inne" game I had Claw meet Li'ira, and she insisted on recruiting and adopting Claw into the Shikahr Crew. The required rewriting some of the background that Claw brings with him, in order to fit into ST-OM and Epiphany Trek. I like Claw. I also like how rewriting non-Trek Games into the Background makes my Trek Game Worlds seem to have more depth and unpredictability.

Jayphailey 10:17, January 12, 2010 (UTC)