Malcolm
"There are only two more beautiful things in this world than a car with a secret compartment - booze and cousin Sally. Dude, don't look at me like that. She's hot."
Bio and Background
Malcolm Kincaid was born to a massive Irish family that is seeded throughout Tacoma and Puyallup. Malcolm was the third of five children, and spent most of his childhood helping out as an extra pair of hands at various extended family businesses. Many of those businesses and ventures turned out to be shady or downright illegal. By the time he had become an adult, Malcolm's only real frame of reference for surviving in the world was that playing by the rules was done on an as-needed basis. And mostly for suckers, to boot.
Malcolm's parents, Arthur and Colleen, opted to homeschool him because of the need for manual labor when he was young, but by the time he had reached his late teens, it was obvious that he was bright enough to make some use of formal education. Since he had demonstrated an aptitude for working with machines, particularly cars and motorcycles, the family scraped together enough money to send him to a vocational-technical school for two years. As time went on, Malcolm came to resent having his life dictated by the needs of a sprawling, dysfunctional family. Although he has no particular urge to live legally, he would have liked to have had a more "normal" childhood.
On a more personal note, much of the family, including Malcolm's parents, has sympathetic ties to various Sapien Supremacist groups, like the Humanis Policlub. While a vaguely anti-meta undertone permeated Malcolm's upbringing, the fallout of the birth of his younger brother Alex made Malcolm distinctly uncomfortable with that portion of the family culture. Alex was a Nobilis, and Malcolm's parents were sufficiently disturbed at the idea of raising an elf that they gave Alex away to Malcolm's aunt Carol to raise, since she doesn't have problems with metas and always wanted a child of her own. Now that Alex has gotten older and is about ready to start living on his own, Malcolm is sharing an apartment with him. He gets a break on the rent and gets to piss off mom and dad; what could be better?
At 26 years old, Malcolm wants nothing more than to work for himself, and Shadowrunning strikes him as the best way to do it. Now that he's finally scraped together enough money to pay for a DocWagon contract and has managed to get a place of his own, he feels that he's just about ready to go independent. With little education, a lot of shady skills and his formative years behind him, Malcolm doesn't exactly want out of the criminal life - he wants to experience it on his terms, get away from the creepy Humanis element and not feel like he's being taken for granted by a big, faceless apparatus. Two out of three ain't bad, right?
The major family business that Malcolm has been a part of is his uncle Robert's garage. He still works part-time there when Rob needs the labor, in exchange for access to the garage for working on his own projects. The garage operates as a normal auto repair place, but is also known among local go-gangers and underworld types as a place where vehicles of all kinds can be modified, disguised or even sold for spare parts.
Aside from the garage, most of Malcolm's illegal work when he was younger was acting as a courier. People rarely expect a ten-year old to be carrying drugs or a firearm in a backpack. As he got older, Malcolm kept with the general idea and started doing real smuggling, mostly to Salish territory. All of his vehicles are modified to carry hidden cargo. One of Malcolm's grandmothers is Salish, and her family keeps in touch, so most of his immediate family picked up the language and some coordinate illegal activities across the border. Malcolm's major point of contact among the Salish is his fourth cousin Jean. She usually picks up whatever he can get out of Seattle or provides the goods he needs to bring into the city. Malcolm actually stole the Suzuki Aurora he has off the street so that he would have a faster option for carrying very small cargoes.
Malcolm has also dabbled in forgery of electronic documents. A great-uncle gave him a credstick reader for his 20th birthday in exchange for work on compromising some certified credsticks. Although he doesn't do that kind of thing often, the reader does make it easier to accept payment for various odd jobs. While he doesn't qualify as a decker, Malcolm knows his way around the Matrix as more than just a regular user.
One thing Malcolm has never been hugely comfortable with is fighting. After getting harassed by a ganger while transporting a few optical chips, Malcolm persuaded his cousin Amy to find a stun baton for him just in case he needed to defend himself. Although he has learned how to use a firearm, Malcolm prefers not to deal with the paper trail. On his 21st birthday, Malcolm was taken to a pub by a few cousins for a first drink and, unbeknownst to him, his first barfight. He didn't take well to brawling and ended up using his stun baton on one of his cousins and dragging him out of the building. Colleen was exceedingly displeased, which Malcolm ended up seeing as a plus.
Although Malcolm's extended family supplies a lot of contacts, it is not as monolithic as even Malcolm sometimes feels it is. In particular, the Tacoma Kincaid branch that Malcolm hails from tends not to get along with the Puyallup Kinkades. The latter has a more pronounced tendency toward gang involvement and thuggish behavior in general, which the former sees as beneath them, low economic standing or no. As one example, a fight broke out at the last "family reunion" over "Aunt Lisa's brat pack that made our Sally cry at her prom." Malcolm stunned one distant cousin and locked him in a closet.
The apartment Malcolm shares with Alex is actually a rented warehouse converted into a living space. It's mostly got the amenities of a low lifestyle, but with lots and lots of extra space and privacy, used by Alex for magical work and by Malcolm for his electronics shop. The lot in back provides storage space for Malcolm's vehicles, and eventually he'd like to build a garage. Malcolm also pays rent on a tiny apartment in the same block as the garage in case he needs another place to crash for a night.
Personality
Malcolm might be liked more than he is if he could keep his abrasive, sarcastic sense of humor in better check. As it stands, he's just got a few friends that are used to him. He's okay with that, though, as it means he has people to worry about. Also, for someone who was brought up in a criminal environment, Malcolm has had relatively little exposure to the world outside Tacoma. He's inclined to believe that he's better at the sorts of things he does (forgery, electronics work, smuggling) than he really is due to a lack of reference points. This is liable to come as a bit of a shock to him once he starts running the shadows and gets a feel for just how small of a pond he grew up in.
Contacts
Uncle Robert: Malcolm feels closer to his uncle Rob than either of his parents. Robert was one of the few elder family members that encouraged Malcolm to learn to do whatever came naturally to him. He owns the Tacoma garage that Malcolm works part-time at and which contains his Vehicle Shop. Since Malcolm hasn't been on speaking terms with his mother for a few months, he is currently Malcolm's primary contact for the rest of the family. It was Robert that made the suggestion that Malcolm get some real education when he turned 18, and when Malcolm participated in the hijacking of a delivery van to get at the goods it was carrying, Robert let Malcolm repaint it, forge a title for it and keep it so that he would have a high-cargo vehicle to work with. The original plan had been to chop it up for spare parts so that it couldn't be tracked down, so this was a major concession on Robert's part.
As the youngest member of his generation (41), Robert's position in the informal clan hierarchy is shaky at the best of times. Like Malcolm, he feels that they have the manpower to break into the local criminal scene full-time (rather than just having groups of small-time dabblers here and there), but unlike Malcolm, he's wary of dealing with the mob (see Jimbo below), mainly due to being older and wiser. When Malcolm does manage to finally go independent, he will be as much of a contact for Robert as vice-versa.
Harry: Harry owns a junkyard and operates a towing service on the outskirts of Tacoma, and is both Robert's and Malcolm's primary source of car parts. While he figures from sheer volume that the two of them are involved in illegal activities, he doesn't know for sure and doesn't really care to know. Harry also collects old vehicle owners' manuals as a sort of hobby. Malcolm would love to be able to read a few of them, but they're in very poor shape.
Jean: A fourth cousin to Malcolm, Jean is his business partner when it comes to smuggling around the Salish-Shidhe Council, in that she's the one who receives whatever he moves across the border from Seattle and hands off whatever he's bringing back, if anything. They generally work well, but Malcolm's rebellious streak is causing problems for her in the Salish side of the hierarchy because they're worried that he's going to drop everything and leave at some point. Malcolm keeps a picture of Jean in his car as a prop for a "visiting my girlfriend" story for customs officials. She finds it less amusing than he does.
Jimbo: Malcolm's time spent in school, while short, did manage to expand his horizons a little bit. Jim was in most of Malcolm's classes and, as it turned out, was a part-time getaway driver for his own "family organization," which was a lot bigger and more organized than Malcolm's. Since meeting Jim, Malcolm has it in his head that the family could stand to cultivate a closer relationship with the mafia as their ticket to something bigger. Most of the older members of the family know that that has its own share of problems and are less enthusiastic about the idea. Jim and Malcolm spend a fair amount of time talking cars and going to the pub to plan out amazing jobs that will never happen.
Owen: Technically Malcolm's nephew despite being only a few years younger than him, Owen is a police officer working for Lone Star who has the family's interests firmly in mind. Although they have yet to actually need a cop on the take on their side, most figure it's only a matter of time. Malcolm helped Owen with his English classes in high school in exchange for some time on a firing range. Malcolm isn't a fan of firearms, but figures he'll need to use one eventually. Owen is particularly sympathetic to Malcolm's wish to work on his own, as he is similarly outside the family structure now and also finds the anti-meta undercurrent to family politics distasteful.
Amy: Malcolm's second cousin Amy is a fence. Although they do have business arrangements, their friendship was seriously strained a year ago when Malcolm's character killed Amy's in an RPG. Malcolm insists that he had a perfectly legitimate and compelling reason for doing so. Amy thinks Malcolm was just sore that she wouldn't loan him the money for a batch of parts for his van.
Dann: One of Malcolm's few friends outside the family, Dann grew up in the same neighborhood as Malcolm. Malcolm is a little jealous sometimes of Dann's complete education and decent-paying job as IT head for a local community college. Dann has been known to provide Malcolm with computer and electronics parts that are getting phased out in favor of better hardware.
Moira: Malcolm's aunt Fiona recently gave him contact information for a fixer when he started making noises about going independent. This was most likely to spite her sister Colleen, whom she's been feuding with for a few years since Owen's father got in a fight with Fiona's husband. Thus far Malcolm's mainly been asking Moira to keep an eye out for employment, but he likes her no-nonsense, business-first attitude.
