Guns for Hire Armas

This is a page for tracking information about Armas Laine, the main character of Guns for Hire.

Armas Laine
Heritage: Finnish, Maori
Languages: English, Te Reo, Finnish, Russian, Turkish, Italian, German
Occupation: Mercenary
Affiliations: Winter (through "Ogrimmir"), Summer (through Whaitiri's Graft), Divines (through Godling) Triads, Mafia, Wyld Goblins, the Valkonen family.
Appearance: Conan chin, dark skinned, blue eyes, brownish red hair (more dark rust than red).
Capabilities: Pissing off his enemies, making his allies question his judgment and common sense, constantly irritating everyone with tricky wordplay. Armas possesses two magical bloodlines: a Summer-aligned bloodline from his Maori ancestors and a Winter-aligned bloodline from his Finnish ancestors.
History:
Equipment: Armas favors layered ballistic armor, using both low-profile armored clothing and military-grade supplemental armor. He has been known to use arrow charms tuned to protect against bullets. He wears two hold-out rigs containing matching Taurus Raging Judge revolvers (five-shot, 3" cylinder, 3" barrel). He often uses a customized magic AA-12 shotgun, and is rarely without his magic rifle Keihäs (equipped with an elf's short sword as a bayonet). Additionally he often carries an ancestral spirit weapon, a greenstone mere pounamu knife from his Maori grandfather.

• Finnish Mosin Nagant M28/30, Keihäs: Bolt action, 7.62x53mm/7.62x54R, 5 shot internal magazine. 730 mm (29 inch) barrel. Overall length: 1,287 mm (50.7 inches). Weight: 4 kg. Notes: The rifle is known for inevitably forcing its owners into close-quarters fights, until they have beaten someone down, and drenched the rifle's stock in blood to further stain the wood. But so long as it is so sated, the gun is unerringly accurate-more so than the already formidable rifle should be. Armas has continued to feed the rifle, and now the vampiric qualities of the weapon have improved to the point where it can devour a body whole through a wound. Provides a +15 Magic Item Bonus to shots.
• Allenaethos' Blade: A fine elven sword, fused to Keihäs, functioning as bayonet. The former owner's blood is in Keihäs' stock, granting a synergy between the weapons.
• Mere pounamu: A greenstone knife, empowered as a spiritual weapon; it heats in the presence of spiritual entities and cuts such creatures with exceeding ease despite its bluntness. Empowered further by Whaitiri to be able to cut anything with time, and to feed her what it cuts. Currently broken and under repair and upgrade by H&H.
• Auto Assault-12 (AA-12) Taste of Ruin: Automatic, 12 gauge, 8-round box or 20-round drum, 457 mm (18 inch) barrel. Overall length: 991 mm (39 inches). Weight: 5.2 kg (less magazine). Notes: Looted from the corpse of ex-IRA terrorist O'Conner, upgraded by the Wyld Goblins into a magic weapon designed to negate all but the most intense regeneration abilities of foes. Covered in the fangs and bones of unknown magic creatures, and very distinctive-looking. Provides a +5 Magic Item Bonus.
• Mateba Model 6 Unica Autorevolvers (the Matebas): Semiautomatic, .454 Casull, 6 round cylinder. 152 mm (6 inch) barrel. Overall length: 275 mm (10.83 inches). Weight: 1.35 kg. Notes: Originally part of a set of four identical weapons looted from the twins Lachlan and Tyson, all designed specifically to be able to become empowered as magic weapons. Two of the four were sold to an anonymous buyer through Holland&Holland. The other two Armas kept. The weapons became magically empowered in the middle of a fight with the Doonongaes and have been imbued to possess a magical quickdraw function. They have also since proven to be more accurate and devastating than they would otherwise be and reworked to handle magical ammunition by Johan Strauss. Due to the way they were empowered and reworked the weapons read as demonic to those with the proper magical senses. One gun mounts a thermal scope, the other an IR scope. Provides a +5 Magic Item Bonus.
• SVT-40 custom, AVT-40 Sniper: Notes: "...an SVT 40 sniper variant that was reworked into a functioning AVT-40, complete with one twenty-round clip. A prior owner has also re-machined a great many parts-recently, within the last decade as I understand it... the first-shot accuracy issues, the barrel shifting, the scope's poor mounting-all of it has been maximally resolved... all bullets will be compelled to attempt to follow the first shot, and can shift a few degrees in trajectory per hundred feet or so." Note: Provides a +10 Magic Item Bonus, but can only single fire as the magic empties the magazine on application.
• M-16 (lower) GatMalite (upper) rotary light machine gun: Automatic, 5.56x45mm NATO, belt fed from munitions drum. Notes: This is a bullet-hose, plain and simple. When using depleted uranium rounds it can defeat most types of body armor. It mounts an under-slung FN40GL enhanced grenade launcher and side-mounted MAUL shotgun.
• Tokarev TT-30 Pistol: Single action, 7.62x25mm (can also fire 7.63x25), 8 round magazine (closed bolt), 116mm (4.6 inch) barrel. Overall length: 194mm (7.6 inches). Weight: 910g. Notes: Owned by Russian Commissar in charge of a penal battalion during WWII, who used the pistol exclusively for field executions. The gun's upper receiver is engraved with 'Ни шагу назад!' (Not One Step Back!), and the muzzle itself is stained dark red. Bullets fired by this gun are compelled to seek out throats.
• Buntline Special Revolver, 'Iron Trick': Single action, .45 Long Colt cartridge, six-shot, 16" (406mm) barrel. Note: Provides a +10 Magic Weapon/Artifact Bonus to shots.
• Taurus Raging Judge 'The Lonesome Judge': Double-action revolver, .45 Colt/.410 bore (454 Casull), five-shot, 3" cylinder, 3" barrel. Note: One of a pair of pistols Armas began the quest with, the other was destroyed by a Draconic fireball. Is currently entirely mundane in form and function.

Notes: Keeps his word, unless the word was given under duress. Not entirely amoral, but can become impossibly caught up in the moment.

Bloodlines

>CURRENT BLOODLINES STAT BAR CAPACITY:

• [WINTER ENERGY: 160]
• [SUMMER ENERGY: 40]

Winter Bloodline Abilities

• >[ Winter Bloodline Innately understood mechanics, each classified as a tenent of his Winter Bloodline's core function(It is from this base that all he does will flow from.): ]

>1:--The Amorphous Soul-Armas' own soul can look however he wants it to look-and can be changed more easily than chakras re-assigned. At the drop of a hat, or even mid battle, Armas could attempt to change how others percieve his own soul. Even further-but more dangerously-it is almost exactly as easy to sculpt his own soul. It is a wonder if his innate curiosity will guide him to ever-more experiments without proper prior research-but if he can survive learning about his soul's traits, piling up experience at still dangerous internal soul-sculpting, Armas could spiritually become anyone... everyone.

>2:--The Reincarnate Prelate-Armas soul, so amorphously defined, can avoid being claimed by death should Armas' body fail. Each in-game week, Armas will regenerate ten 'lives' worth of energy, reflected as tenths of his winter energy pool. Armas' soul is not in danger of harm, no matter what happens to his body, unless one of the following two conditions are met: 1 the attack on Armas can directly harm souls or 2 he no longer has enough energy left to reincarnate. Once Amen's bindings are properly dealt with, nothing is left to stop Armas from using this ability. Keep in mind that until Armas can safely look at his own soul, it will be particularly hard to properly gauge how much Winter energy he has left.

>3:--The Lordly Imposition-Armas can exert his will on nearyby souls he can percieve, attempting remote soul manipulation. While disposed towards this ability, Armas' strength in it is not near so great as his own soul sculpting prowess. What's interesting is that no transmission medium is used-no 'weaving it into vibrations' or any such thing: The will of the user is simply tested against the resistiveness of the target.

>4:--The Chakratic Bloodline-Because Armas' chakras are tied up with an entire bloodline-specifically, one that is itself comprised of three seperate bloodlines, he has many times the energy of his contemporary chakra users-in general, once Armas becomes legitimately skilled with chakras, only similarly bloodline-linked Chakra users, Dragons, or upper tier courtly beings that possess an inclination for chakra manipulation would have a reasonable chance of overpowering him.

>5:--The Godling-The Divine energy of the final piece of his Winter Bloodline seems to resonate with the Divine material of his Summer Line, and that of his very soul. Armas has now been reclassified from 'Practitioner' to 'Godling'. Note this does not provide any intrinsic power to Armas-it's largely a reflection of his realized immortality. Nevertheless, being a Godling makes Divine Artifacts easier to manipulate, and Divine entities, in general, easier to interact with.

>-Armas is now able to expend marginal amounts of energy to attempt to impose his will on freshly dead souls. The more innately magical the target was in life, the higher the cost, and the lower the chance of success. (For instance, Binding the Reaper's soul[completely mundane] cost us 2 Winter Energy)

>-Armas has innate magic item detection abilities thanks to the Einher portion of Gleb's heart. So far he has proven to be best at detecting and interpreting magic weapons.

>-Armas can use Lordly Imposition as a work-around to use his amorphous soul to make 'soul-guises'. They do not seem to demand energy but instead concentration. The bigger the difference to Armas' actual soul, the harder it is to keep it on. Likewise, the more 'alien' the soul-guise concept is to Armas, the harder it is to make it. Armas can practice a given soul guise so that it demands less and less concentration to use, like learning a accent. Once Armas has begun making the soul-guise via Lordly Imposition, it then switch to internal manipulation. However, Armas can still not see his soul, so cannot tell by himself if he is relaxing his soul-guise.

Summer Bloodline Abilities

>-Armas, unless wounded in such a manner he cannot eat before dying, can prevent his own death by cannibalization, or the consumption of magical beasts.

>-Even one bite of qualifying food will drastically slow bloodloss.

>-This has no impact on his ability to process normal meats, fruits or vegetables, nor does it impact his need to eat regularly.

>-Instantly fatal injuries (such as a headshot) will not allow this healing ability to be activated.

>-Armas can heal a week's worth in a day, so long as he supplies himself with sufficient amounts of the required meat.

>-Healing cannot take place if foreign elements are still inside the body-bullets, shrapnel and such must be manually dug out first.

>-Due to the damages his soul sustained in the feeding (and the damages to his Finnish bloodline's heritage) Armas' soul will be treated as 'spiritually weak' until enough time and events have passed for it to recover (expected recovery timeframe is several months)

>-The damage to Armas' Winter aspect will not recover over time, and makes any potential interactions with Winter court members or scandinavian mythological creatures harder.

>-Armas' absorption of Whaitiri's flesh will classify him as 'friend' to many creatures in the Summer Court.

Hybrid Bloodline Abilities

• [HYBRID TECHNIQUE: SPIRITUALLY FUELED REGENERATION (S.F.R.)]

>-Armas performs a type of instant regeneration by pooling both of his bloodlines powers to survive nigh-instantly fatal wounds. Amount depends on the damage to his body.

Traits

Background Traits

LOW PROFILE GRADUATE

>-Armas did not draw attention, good or bad, in either of his training programs. As such, he is slower to be identified as ex-military by any given legal system. This trait provides no combat bonus.

Combat Traits

SPEAR OF THE GHOST (LV4)

>-Whenever Armas has a knife or spear-like melee weapon in hand and is facing a foe that relies predominately on sight or hearing to detect and target foes, he is able to use his goblinoid training to perform super-human acts of evasion, keeping himself out of the spaces foes target. This abilities effectiveness is directly related to the light-levels of the area in which he is fighting-the more shadowed and gloomy, the more effective Armas will be at avoiding enemy attacks-and notice.

>-Lunging thrust techiques, be it with bayonet or knife, are now Armas' specialty in armed combat, plying both the brute force of his Maori training with the cleaner form of his more recent training, allowing the quality of his thrusting strikes to approach the level of 'master' (Level 3 attack, human peak).

>-Slashing, slicing and all other methods of attack with knives or spears are still as before (Level 2, expert but a notable number of mortals exceed this skill level)

>-When fully submerged in shadow, Armas can use his symbiotic shadow to help augment his movement speed-and can immediately change his momentum at whatever rate he can withstand without blacking out-or putting undue strain on his shadow (Armas' Level 2 combat mobility can become Level 3-or, at max output (bad idea for your soulshadow but when has that ever stopped you) Level 4 mobility would be possible. For reference, Level 3 mobility is beyond mundane human reach-but could be seen by humans and not be considered unnatural. Level 4 mobility would be immediately identified as inhuman if witnessed.

>-Armas now thinks of SOTG as having a HIGH and a LOW stance, as described above. Feel free to direct him to use either any time he is using SOTG. Jukenjitsu CAN become a middle stance, but would either need a great deal more learning and use, or to have more, similar/complementary style's fundamentals absorbed into it to make another Armas Special Style.

>-SOTG Gain: Armas can now choose the 'Ego-less' fighting style the Goblins practice. It has bonuses to distorting many forms of magical perception, particularly spiritual ones. To mundane senses there is no discernible difficulty in reading an Ego-less fighter. Armas' Ego-less mode of combat is, in general, less precise, slower, has more forceful attacks, and is more creative in attack transition than Armas' default form of fighting. Any time you wish Armas to use this mode, prompt him to use 'Ego-less mode'. Be aware this only applies to melee combat, the same as his newly differentiated stances.

BLIND SPOT BRAWLER (LV3)

>-This Level Three Combat trait lets Armas automatically move towards for blind spots in melee combat-it does not in any way make him more lethal, or more durable-it merely makes it harder to concretely target or strike him.

AETHERIC AMBUSH EXPERT (LV3)

>-Armas can perform at peak capacity during the initial few seconds of an ambush and will not hesitate or stall during this time period unless forced to do so.]

>-Armas may not know much about spiritual matters-but he's torn his soul down and watched it grow anew, he's split it in twain and pulled it from the mouths of gods-all the while vigilant. As a result of his surpassed tribulations, he has gained a bonus.

>-Armas can, once per spiritual interaction with an entity, attempt to forcibly pull his soul away from any perceived energy.

>-Armas' is in general more resistant, able to fend off things like possession more capably.

GAMBLER'S GRIM GUTS (LV3)

>-Armas is particularly resistant to being debilitated by shock, and if entering it in an identified 'danger' situation, he can ride the adrenaline to stay functional longer than normal-at the cost of a lessened grasp of his own physical condition, and increased difficulty identifying details or in any way shifting his thoughts once they've started down a specific route. This is automatic and requires no input from players-but will NOT be put into effect when injuries include serious head trauma.

TAIAHAN RIFLEPLAY (LV2)

>-Armas holds a long-handled mace, a spear and a staff, all in one, a vicious, brutal weapon with a method of use to suite.

>-As a result Armas approaches fighting with similar weapons from a somewhat unique viewpoint that allows for a good deal of positive adaptation.

HOT HANDS (LV2)

>-Hot Hands greatly reduces Armas' chances to drop or fumble any objects he's manipulating with his hands, and increases his ability to unflinchingly handle material hot enough to scald or burn flesh as necessary.

>-This Trait's shooting benefit is in minimizing and adding a safety net to the time in between shots, and when switching weapons on the fly.

REKINDLED RIFLEMAN (LV2)

>-Armas' shooting is no longer the well-honed efforts of an unskilled workman, instead being the burgeoning rifle work of a legitimate adept of the craft.

>-This Trait will harmonize with HOT HANDS-and the direction of the new trait (rapid/short range versus precise/long range) will be determined by which of the two traits hits level three first ]

COMPETENT CHAKRA CONQUEROR (LV3)

>-Armas has started the journey of unraveling the mysteries of chakra, and while his current knowledge base is quite sparse, he aims to correct that.

>-Armas now handles Chakra with more precision.

>-Armas is now more capable at dealing with unexpected events where Chakra is concerned!

>-Armas can now get a rough sense of how much effort a given person is putting into a Chakra orientation if he has sufficient time to observe them (minimum five seconds)

Combat/Mental Traits

ANIMAL EMPEROR (LV2)

>-This trait doesn't exist and was a hallucination on the part of Armas' concussion-addled mind.

Mental Traits

REALISTICALLY RAPID RELIABLY RECURSIVE RADICAL RATIONALIZATION (LV6)

>-Armas can reason and make intuitive leaps objectively even on subjects where he would normally be subject to heavy bias.

>-Armas has grained greater deductive and intuitive insight into situations he finds himself in!

>-This Level 5 Mental Trait lets Armas include the positive aspects of his Negative traits in his rationalization of how to handle situations. In this example, he is using his paranoia of there being even more explosives to assume the presumed external speakers that projected the German's voice also double as bombs in some format. It also reduces the risk of Paranoia level up so long as postulations contain a sufficient amount of accuracy to them.

>-So long as he hasn't had a long string of mistaken intuitive leaps, Armas can auto-detect faulty reasoning if the issue involves a previous mistake. Example: Armas will automatically detect when a theorized approach would make him directly conjoin Summer and Winter energy to his own detriment, without having to initiate the plan.

>-If Armas has a long string of mistaken theories that trigger this ability, he temporarily loses the ability to automatically filter until he can 'get his head on right' again with at least three out of five theories being accurate.

>-BASICALLY, Armas is now 'protected' from poorly planned experiments or assumptions so long as they deal with topics he at least partly understands, so long as the protection isn't abused. If abused until it stops working, demonstrate rational thought in lieu of the Trait to reactivated it.

Social/Mental Traits

MASTERFULLY MEANDERING, MILITARISTIC MACHIAVELLIAN MANIPULATIVE METHUSELAH (LV7)

>-This trait predisposes Armas to forming roundabout, cunning and subtly harmful plans with which to lay low enemies with greater resources at their command.

>-Armas is more inclined to play forces against each other to reduce the number of threats he personally will have to face.

>-Armas feel comfortable lying and misrepresenting the truth-while not a master deceiver, he can fool most individuals with sufficiently well-thought out deceptions. (Leaving this to me rather than coming up with the lie yourself gambles on how effective I think Armas should be at the moment.)

>-Where possible, in any situation where Armas is considerably outnumbered, he will, in the planning state, seek whichever plans involve him directly engaging the least number of opponents, and in general gravitate towards plans that are personally less risky.

>-When actively in a given combat situation, Armas is prone to using overwhelming force as fast as possible in an effort to overwhelm and crush opponents before they can become notable threats.

>-Thanks to years in the military in multiple branches, Armas is predisposed to plans that involve flash bangs, explosives, or debilitating gas to shape the battlefield before attempting personal entry.

>-Armas' familiarity with this facet of himself has made it second nature to use in any situation-unless specifically told not to, Armas will reflexively attempt to manipulate situations to his benefit with wordplay as he identifies appropriate situations.

>-(Armas' feeling on what is an 'appropriate' situation is based on the rough averaging of how he's been played to date-which may differ from your own individual idea of what he should and should not try to manipulate. So keep an eye on this.)

>-MM,MMMMM Trait auto-activated, auto-evolves to level seven: NO NEW GAINS

>-Manipulation abilities increase.

DANGEROUSLY DAPPER & DEBONAIR DISCUSSION and DEBATE (LV5)

>-Prerequisites: Ambush Expert.

>-DD allows Armas to continue negotiating unimpeded, be he at a conference table, on a phone call, or at gunpoint. So long as he is not chemically compromised, environmental stresses have a lessened impact on his ability to converse or interact socially with others.

>-So long as Armas has even one second, he can instantly recollect himself from anything save a direct mental attack.

>-Armas is now more skilled at plying the lingo practiced by the magical community.

>-Improves existing discussion in dangerous circumstances ability.

Haggle Traits

WON'T EVER TAKE NO (LV4)

>-For Armas, the golden rule of trade is that there is no such thing as a final sale, deal or anything-a bargain isn't done until the exchange has taken place-and by that same token, a rejected offer can simply be pursued again. This improves Armas' baseline haggling ability, and lowers the prices at many shops-but his pushy attitude will give negative modifiers with certain vendors.

>-WETN Now allows Armas to auto-reject initial offers in trade with individuals known to haggle.

>-Armas is now able to attempt haggling against more resistive targets

WORD LIKE GOLD (LV3)

>-While some mortals eye Fae dealings askance, and steer clear of the supernatural pacts and sometimes lethal wordplay, Armas has charged forward, continuing to make contracts and transactions as he has with any others he's met. Between his forthright approach and his (thus-far) blemish free record of keeping his word, most Supernatural entities will view pacts with him more along the lines as they would those with other fae than Mortals. Supernatural stock placed in Armas' word of honor has increased.]

Negative Traits

PROFOUNDLY PERVASIVE PARANOIA! (LV3)

>-Armas now has a harder time determining which theories offered to him by posters are accurate or worth acting on, and is now more inclined to go after the doom-oriented theories than he was previously.

>-Armas is now more prone to letting his paranoia guide his musings on any given subject, as applicable.

>-Armas can no longer recognize paranoia within his own thoughts, and needs an external source to correct him.

>-This trait likewise influences Shadowbro, hewn from the same soul.

>-There will be absolutely no direct in-quest warning when Armas begins operating under a paranoia-driven false assumption-you as posters have to catch him or suffer the consequences.

>-In addition to the prior effects, Armas is now more susceptible to mental attacks that are built around playing off a person's doubts or suspicions than he was before.

>-Armas has a harder time trusting simpler plans that fit Occam's Razor than before, even if they are superior to more convoluted or obscure options.

>-Armas is now more able to commune with both Fear Spirits and Prophetic spirits-but only those of an innately chaotic nature.

>-Armas's thoughts and plans are now harder to read or predict, magically or mundanely, thanks to his frequent revisions based on potential issues real and imagined.

REFLEXIVE RETENTION (LV2)

>-Armas will attempt to keep anything he is allowed to use on even a temporary basis unless given a good reason not to (couldn't with Triad equipment since he was unconscious). This can have potential negative repercussions if Armas (I.E. The Posters) doesn't take note of when he should make sure to return everything he is loaned that can be pocketed.

GREEDY GRABBER (LV2)

>-Armas now requires a double application of SUST to ignore a suggestion that plies his greediness, and in general values traits built around long-term sustainable greed over those that do not.

>-Sister trait to Reflexive Retention. When either skill hits Level three, the two will conjoin and turn Armas into a compulsive thief as a byproduct of his goblinic training. This can be to his advantage, in picking a foe's pocket mid-battle, but can also create social issue.

>-Armas is now considered sufficiently Greedy he could actively call upon Mammon with the aid of any Demonologist, or any other greed-oriented magical being. The effectiveness of this call varies based on circumstance.

Secret Traits

TO SCOFF AT THREE

>-ARMAS' HIDDEN TRAIT: TO SCOFF AT THREE NOW MAKES IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR HIM TO BE FORCIBLY BOUND BY DEALS BUILT AROUND A RULE OF THREE: ANY SUCH OATHS WILL BE LAIN ON HIM WITHOUT GENUINE EFFECT.

Special Traits

SHUT UP STUPID THOUGHTS

>-Armas can now recognize situations that would be highly disadvantageous to attempt to haggle in-this ability is far from perfect, and needs considerable work-but at least he's beginning to grasp there are in fact people he should not dick about with.