Ronin Sanchez

Ronin Sanchez was a made thing with a salary. A dynastic family — he only ever calls them “the management” — paid for the full bespoke-protection package on a small, fast, expendable candidate: a second pair of arms, enhanced eyes, a threat-assessment neural co-processor, reflex tuning. The contract said the mods were company property until paid off. The salary said he’d be paying them off for thirty years. He wore their tailoring, drank their whisky, guarded their heir, and was, for about a decade, exceptional at it.

The wetware is why he talks the way he does. It never stops computing — angles, exits, casualty projections — and somewhere in the conditioning they burned out whatever filter sits between the calculation and the mouth. He states the odds. He states them to clients, to their enemies, at dinner parties, at funerals. “There is a ninety-seven percent probability this route gets you killed. It’s your money.” The management found it charming right up until the night he was correct: he called the ambush, was overruled by the heir himself, and carried what was left of the young man home on two of his four arms. Someone had to be blamed, and it wasn’t going to be the family’s own dead golden boy. Dismissed for cause. Contract voided. Which left one accounting problem: the mods in his skin are unpaid property, and the management’s retrieval agents have a standing instruction to repossess them — ideally, but not necessarily, without the rest of him.

He drank his severance, then his savings, then everything but the last good suit — re-tailored, four sleeves, immaculate — down the lanes to the one system where nobody scans a new hire and nobody repossesses arms: the Thides System. MacMillian “security” is the bottom of the barrel, which is exactly why it’s the only door open to him. This is his last option. He gives the crew’s survival odds daily. They are not good. He stays anyway.

📄 Background handouts & references (offered to Sean / Tim): The Management - Chattel Lien and Retrieval Order (Sanchez) · The Management - Certificate of Dismissal (Sanchez) · Four-Arm Gunwork (Ronin Sanchez).

The old sheet, honored: kept from Sean’s original — Extra Arms 2, Extra Attack, 3D Spatial Sense, Combat Reflexes, Ambidexterity, Acute Vision 2, Deadeye, Alcohol Tolerance, SM −1 at 4’9", the full pilot/nav suite, guns-knife-grapple skillset, the vices (drink, cigars, temper, stubbornness), and the Enemy (former master’s family → “the management”). Cut by Tim’s rules: Wealth (Wealthy) — inverted to Dead Broke, which is the story now. Cut for the new tone: Bloodlust, Callous, Guilt Complex, Revulsion — replaced by the K-2SO suite.

Sean’s additions (2026-07-03): Cooking 11, Sleight of Hand 12, and Sex Appeal 11 added; card playing was already covered by Gambling 11. Funded by cutting six filler points: Soldier, Running, Urban Survival, Escape, Body Language, and the redundant Guns (Pistol) — see the skill-table notes.

The K-2SO suite (Sean’s request): Truthfulness (can’t flatter, can’t soften), Odious Personal Habit (quotes your survival odds, deadpan, unasked), Bad Temper (the mood swings), Stubbornness, plus quirks 1 and 5. Flavored as conditioning damage: the threat-assessment wetware runs constantly and the filter between calculation and mouth was burned out. If Sean wants the “bipolar” reading made mechanical rather than flavored, the honest GURPS trait is Manic-Depressive [−20] (B143) — swap out Bad Temper + Truthfulness + OPH and rebalance 5 pts — but as drafted it stays playable rather than clinical.

Crew fit: reads as the second gun / wheelman with half a face (Streetwise 12, Carousing 12, Savoir-Faire 12 — he can get into the room; whether he should be allowed to talk in it is the comedy). The roster’s remaining gap is the tech — worth noting for the fourth player. Parallel warning: like Six, he’s modified property on the run from his maker. Distinct enough (indentured citizen vs. vat-grown asset; repo-men vs. bounty) but Tim should confirm he’s happy with two variations on the theme — or it’s a feature: the dead end is where that kind of person washes up.

Cheaper build lever (if Tim balks at Extra Attack): drop Extra Attack 1 [25] and buy the Dual-Weapon Attack (Beam Weapons) technique up from default instead (~5 pts) — two shots at a defense-penalized foe, 20 pts freed for HT 12 + Basic Speed or deeper skills. Less cinematic; mechanically leaner.