We have a slightly sillier installment for you this week. I was looking through my Facebook memories the other day and was reminded on this silly character concept for a Star Wars game that my girlfriend jokingly helped to inspire. I felt the desire to give him game stats and unleash him on the universe in a special edition of The Weightroom.
Ahnol’tchuck [Nemesis]
Brawn 5
Agility 3
Intellect 3
Cunning 3
Willpower 3
Presence 5
Soak Value: 6
Wound Threshold: 18
Strain Threshold: 16
Melee/Ranged Defense: 1/1
Skills: Athletics 4, Brawl 3, Charm 2, Coercion 2, Computers 1, Coordination 2, Discipline 3, Leadership 2, Mechanics 2, Melee 2, Negotiation 1, Resilience 4, Vigilance 3
Talents: Adversary 2 (upgrade difficulty of all combat checks against this target twice), Brace 2 (As a maneuver, remove two setback dice from the next skill check based on disruptive physical obstacles that would make the check more difficult), Feral Strength 2 (+2 damage to one hit on successful Brawl or Melee checks this character makes), Heroic Fortitude (may spend 1 Destiny Point to ignore the effects of of ongoing Critical Injuries on any Brawn or Agility related checks until the end of the encounter)
Abilities: Flex (Ahnol may use his Brawn characteristic instead of Willpower when making Coercion checks to physically intimidate someone) , Pump You Up (as an action, Ahnol can make a Hard Charm test. If successful, he can grant a number of allies within Short Range equal to his Presence a boost die on their next Athletics or Resilience check), Wookiee Rage (when Ahnol suffers any wounds, he deals +1 damage with Brawl and Melee attacks. When suffering a Critical Injury, he deals +2 damage with Brawl and Melee attacks)
Equipment: heavy clothing (+1 soak value), datapad with exercise catalogue, tour dates, and a half completed exercise and diet book, R2 unit
Ahnol’tchuck, or Ahnol to his friends was born to a pair of garage mechanics in an off-world space station and has never actually seen his home planet of Kashyyyk. He grew up around droids and tools and spent much of his younger days learning the ins and outs of small repulsorlift engines and droids. While he proved to be adept at the work, he never had much of a passion for it. He spent as much time as he could get away with exploring the station and one day found a fully stocked and unused gym set up. It turns out that it was built when the station was first commissioned in order to earn several tax breaks for promoting employee health, but was quickly forgotten about once production was in full swing. He began to play around with various exercises that he read about and saw performed in the gyms holos, quickly growing to love the primal act of moving as much weight as he could. He started to spend more and more of his free time here watching his body grow and change as he continued to challenge himself, staying up late or getting up early in order to get his workouts in.
Eventually, the day came when his family’s contract on the station was up, and so the young Wookiee was forced to leave his safe haven behind. They were able to book a contract planetside at a small garage on the fringes of one of the smaller settlements. Ahnol was despondent for a while – there was no sort of gym in the area and his family wasn’t making enough for him to even order his own equipment.
Then one day inspiration struck – the shop specialized in repairing astromech droids, specifically the ubiquitous R2 unit. He grabbed a couple of defunct units and set up shop in a small corner of the garage, utilizing the droids as impromptu weights, adding parts or disassembling them in order to change the weight. It wasn’t perfect, but Ahnol stuck with it and began to dial in his form and his program, once again starting to see the results that he had seen in the station’s fully appointed gym. Several of the other employees started to talk about what the young Wookiee was doing. Curiosity turned to admiration at Ahnol’s dedication to his idea and word began to spread farther and farther, eventually attracting the attention of a small time holo producer who came to the garage see what exactly was going on. He was instantly impressed with the Wookiee’s natural showmanship and charisma and pitched the concept of an instructional exercise holovid.
Tune it Up almost instantly became an intergalactic success. The R2 unit was so common and ubiquitous that it could be found pretty much anywhere. Ahnol was catapulted into stardom from the series of videos. Since then, he has turned his attention towards using his star power to land roles in other movies, finding ready roles in a variety of action holovids on the market. He hasn’t forgotten what made him a success though – he has opened up a chain of garage gyms across the galaxy that contain nothing but droids instead of more traditional strength training equipment.
Ben Erickson
