Haugstad
Human Techie 3
Played by Kenneth Newquist
Description: Haugstad is most often found wearing a thick black-leather cloak that enshrouds a battered and patched deep-space jumpsuit. The many pouches and pockets of the jumpsuit are overflowing with snippets of wire, forgotten transistors, myriad tools, and assorted other technological dandruff. He wears several timepieces on his arms, and keeps a hidden, spring-loaded dagger up his right sleeve. Heavy black combat boots round out his attire.
Haugstad wears his wiry black hair cropped short and his mud-brown eyes would be completely unremarkable if it weren’t for the frenzied intelligence that sends them constantly skitting around, looking for some new technological mystery to unravel. He carries with him a set of proper Engineer regale for important occasions it consists of a heavy, navy-blue black cloak set over a light-blue jumpsuit. Like his normal cloths, he’s stuffed various tools and materials into his formal jumpsuit, but has exercised some small degree of judgment, and removed anything that might be construed as a weapon.
As an Engineer, Haugstad is capable of throwing himself completely and utterly at a problem, committing all of his mental resources to solving it (often at the expense of everything else in his life, including his health). As a human being though, he is often distracted by technology, and finds it hard to spend more than an hour without working on some project (often taken from one of his myriad pockets, which hold any number of non-functioning trinkets).
History: Haugstad was born and raised an Engineer. His dreams begin and end with the guild, and until recently he could not truly imagine a life apart from it, even for a few months. This devotion has led him to climb through the guild’s lower ranks, and his hunger for knowledge rather than his thirst for power insure that he will continue to rise.
Although he always thought himself content to fiddle in the depths of one of the guild’s great starships, tinkering with new weapons and old tech, he recently found himself unexpectedly driven out into the wider universe in search of ever greater innovations and discoveries. This wanderlust which overtook him one day with the power of the vision (but without the annoying supernatural visuals) has taken him to a half-dozen worlds, and introduced him to a handful of minor nobles, church underlings, and notable merchants. Most will never remember him, but for each he was able to perform some minor repair, or craft some minor item. He was paid well for each task, but more importantly, with each he was able to learn something new.
Like many engineers, Haugstad is obsessed with cybertech, and has already begun augmenting his human form with technology. To date his improvements have been minor—an arm harpoon he has yet to use in combat, and an ether ear that allows him to spy on radio transmissions. However, he dreams of future additions to his form, such as a coveted second brain or an engineer’s eye.
Philosophy: Haugstad lives and breathes technology, worshiping it in ways most others reserve for the Pancreator. For him, working with, repairing, or creating technological items verges on a religious experience, and he cannot understand why others especially the more fanatical members of the Church view technology as sinful, and merging with it to be a form of heresy.
Still, he does understand that others do not share his passion, and as a result, seeks to make himself as useful as possible to whomever he can. His hope is that if he proves himself and his guild indispensable to as many lords and priests as possible, they will have no choice but to continue to maintain the status quo. He almost never mentions his feelings about technology, preventing him from being accused of outright heresy, but actions often speak almost as loudly as his words would have.
His particular area of interest is in weaponry, followed closely by Second Republic gadgets. Both interests have served to further his personal agenda of enduring himself to the church and to nobility.