Jack (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thoughheavenfalls) wrote2015-04-09 08:03 pm
thoughheavenfalls) wrote2015-04-09 08:03 pm
Entry tags:
this is totally not an app I am using nope.
Please note: headcanon will be marked in purple text.
Character Information:
Name: John, but he prefers to be called Jack and nearly everyone does. Last name is unknown.
Canon: Borderlands
Canon Point: The Pre-Sequel, which takes place between Borderlands 1 and Borderlands 2; during the story mission Intelligence of the Artificial Persuasion, while Jack is in Concordia.
Age: Unspecified, but his daughter Angel is already an adult during the first game; Jack’s canonpoint is at most a year after that. In an ECHO where Angel is a little girl Jack already sounds a mature adult, so he probably wasn’t a teen father; if Angel is minimum 18 during the first game, then Jack is at least 37 at this point in canon.
Reference: Here, though anyone can edit so grain of salt and all that.
Setting:
General
Borderlands is set in a futuristic world at an unspecified time in the human future. Six galaxies have been heavily colonised to the point of people making references to ‘the universe’ in the same manner as someone might say ‘the planet’ to indicate a much larger whole.
No mention of Earth is made. Implications are that few people nowadays care about an itty bitter planet where human life happened to evolve, though pop-culture and myth have persevered. People do still talk in hours and days without much in the way of conversion, so it’s likely that Earth hours have long since become an accepted standardised system.
Most planets are named after Greek myths. The planet which serves as the setting for Borderlands is Pandora, with its geostationary moon Elpis.
Pandora
Pandora is a frontier planet on the edge of the galaxy. Though it has some fertile areas, for the most part Pandora is a wasteland—either desert or tundra. Pandora’s native flora and fauna are usually lethal in nature, made more so thanks to human intervention changing the seasonal and mineral makeup of the planet. There are a number of Eridian ruins on Pandora.
The main population of Pandora comprises of descendants of Altas Corporation’s original colonists and the workers, families and convicts Dahl Corporation left behind when they abandoned the planet. Most of the people on Pandora are either bandits or one lost meal away from becoming one.
Pandora’s moon, Elpis, was colonised by Dahl as a mining satellite and experienced a human-caused near-cataclysmic event called the Crackening which has changed its terrain and made its surface unstable. Most residents live in the spaceport Concordia.
The Eridians
The only evidence of aliens are the Eridians, who have been a mysterious archaeological influence from the time humanity became spacefaring. Not much is known of them due to their extinction long before humanity colonised space, but they appear to be insectoid and relied upon rechargeable energy-based weapons which were built from a powerful and dangerous substance called eridium.
For the most part Eridians have simply achieved a mythical status among the borderland planets. On Pandora, especially, are tales of great caches of Eridian technology and wealth, known as Vaults, which serve as a kind of Holy Grail tale to many of the borderland planets.
The Vaults are real; there are at least two on Pandora and one on Elpis, and many others undiscovered through the galaxy. Of the confirmed Vaults one is a prison for a giant interdimensional being called the Destroyer and the second contains a massive biological AI called the Warrior. The Eridians sacrificed their entire civilisation in order to lock the Destroyer away and left recordings of their history in an artefact in the Vault on Elpis.
Those who search for the Vaults are called Vault Hunters. On Pandora, the phrase has become synonymous with ‘superhero’ and ‘freedom-fighter’. Vault Hunters currently relevant to Jack are Roland, a mercenary with natural leadership skills, and Lilith, a reckless siren with denial issues; both helped kill the Destroyer and are now aiding Jack in his quest to save Elpis.
Sirens
Sirens are women with ‘superpowers’. Sirens are born, not made, with tattoo-like birthmarks up one side of their body. They are only ever born women; there are only ever six of them. Each’s power is unique, but all are an aspect of dimensional manipulation called phasing.
For instance, Lilith can phasewalk into an underlying dimension, removing herself from sight and harm, and re-emerge with an explosion of fire. Angel can phaseshift her surroundings—that is, manipulate the physical nature of her environment. When plugged into a chair which connects her to technological systems like an AI, she can use her siren powers to hack nearly every kind of software.
The sirens are connected in some way to eridium, since they can use eridium to boost their powers—at risk of becoming addicted. This connection also links them to the Eridian interdimensional tech which defines the Vaults and the Vault key. Humans have not otherwise achieved dimensional technology.
The corporations
Most of the Borderlands universe, or at least the galaxy in which the games take place, is run by corporations after ‘the corporation wars’, in which the previous system of government collapsed. This happened long enough ago that the current generations have accepted corporations as a legitimate form of government, but not so long that they don’t recognise the corporations as tyrannical.
The corporations maintain individual power through private armies and handle everything from mining interests to technological development to biological research, competing for the same technology. They can own whole planets but are not averse to co-existing on any single one so long as lines are toed.
Hyperion is Jack’s employer and widely considered the most ruthless and tyrannical of the corporations. It has a board of directors and a CEO, Harold Tassiter, who has a grudge against Jack due to jealousy of Jack’s talent and charisma. Hyperion is nearing the end of constructing an orbital station, Helios, over Pandora; Helios is currently under attack by the Dahl Lost Legion.
Atlas is the oldest and most prestigious of the corporations and first colonised Pandora. Though they have not held interest in Pandora for a long time, their mercenaries, the Crimson Lance, were the main martial power there up until the end of Borderlands 1.
Dahl is a highly militant and industrious corporation who held mining interests on Pandora until they were driven off by Atlas. Dahl’s hasty retreat involved abandoning everyone they had brought to Pandora, while one of their legions—the Lost Legion—broke away and secretly settled on Elpis to defend the Vault there.
Technology
ECHOs are the main form of communication and are basically glorified smartphones/tablets/health display indicators/recording devices/whatever else. The ECHOnet is pretty much a galaxy-wide internet/entertainment system.
The New-U Cloning systems are a respawn game mechanic, but the Pre-Sequel justifies their in-world existence as a means for corporations to employ a near-limitless supply of mercenaries; I’m therefore inclined to accept them as canon. At least two corporations build them (Hyperion and Dahl). They require a DNA input, but afterwards can ‘resurrect’ any individual as a clone, complete with memories up to the point of their death.
The Fast Travel System is a method of instantaneous transportation, though it requires access to any individual fast-travel station to do so and an initial DNA input before the individual stations can be used. They are often incorporated with a New-U system, though not all New-U systems are Fast Travel.
Digistruct is short for digital construction. Using scanned parts, a digistruct station quickly creates a solid object according to the scanned specifications. Digistructs are primarily used for public vehicle depots, but are also used for inorganic item dispensers (like munitions). Digistructs cannot create properly organic objects; digistructed food items, for instance, are inedible.
Eridium is the element upon which the Eridians built their technology. It has a dormant and an active state, as it was unknown on Pandora prior to the opening of the first Vault. It’s a powerful source of energy whose exact qualities are unknown.
Elemental weapons are guns that charge their bullets with an ‘elemental’ type and can ‘infect’ their target (ie with burn damage). The most common are fire, electric and corrosive weapons (fire to burn flesh, corrosion to melt armour, electricity to drain shields). Flash-freezing ice-based munitions are only available on Elpis due to its unique atmosphere. Explosive rounds always cause extra boomy damage.
Laser weapons can also be charged with an elemental type. Otherwise, they’re frikkin’ lasers, man. Enough said.
Personal shields are also common with a variety of bonus attributes (eg activation of a damaging elemental nova when the shield depletes). These are electrical in nature and protect against bullets until they’ve depleted and need to be recharged.
Other random pieces of technology include cloaking, gene-splicing and personal oxygen masks. And robots. Many of them are AI to some—or even a complete—degree, though they are generally treated as tools, toys or pets.
Personality: Jack is like a nuclear warhead with a dozen connected bugs in the system which sends it spiralling toward meltdown. A psychologist would diagnose him as a narcissist with sadistic tendencies. His most defining characteristics are his love and his lack of self-esteem. The former drives his motivations; the latter defines the manner in which he pursues them. It’s the latter branch which is, at this point, contributing the most to his development. At this canonpoint Jack is capable of concern, self-sacrifice and reason; that being said he’s also controlling, paranoid, vindictive and sadistic.
To begin with, we need context. Jack was raised and abused by his grandmother; he states in an interview that he ‘spent most of his time coding, being smacked around by my grandmother, the usual’. She killed his cat after he neglected to make his bed just once and yet he references her calling him ‘her favourite grandson’, which shows that Jack was emotionally as well as physically abused. This lay the roots for his narcissism—being simultaneously abused and praised, lacking self-esteem while clinging to an illusion of worth.
Jack is obsessed with being a hero. While the cause is never outright stated by canon, this makes sense as the product of an abused child seeking escape. Heroes don’t give up and are inherently full of worth, and that’s something Jack needed to survive his childhood. It’s likely due to this that he’s capable of loving at all. Jack’s most narcissistic tendencies arose as a product of canon, long after his wife disappeared. Though we only have conjecture on their relationship, all implications are that her disappearance is due to Angel rather than to Jack, in which case her absence isn’t due to a breakdown in the marriage. As well, Jack only devolves after her disappearance, which implies he was stable during their relationship. Therefore it seems likely that Jack’s relationship with his wife was honest and she was able to manage his narcissism while it was in its minor form and his sadism remained unrealised.
Given the above, Jack’s wife would have been his first and only means of emotional support and legitimacy, and the means by which he gave himself agency and legitimacy. When she disappeared, his love transferred to a very young Angel. His family gave him purpose and cause to be the hero he wanted to be as a child himself, and without anyone to manage his neuroses Jack fixated on those emotions as his driving force. Prior to his sadistic awakening Jack was still reasonable, since his only methods for engaging in his surroundings were through the same means and emotions as everyone else; at this point he has only just made the realisation that he is a sadist, and hasn’t yet been confronted with what that means in terms of self-empowerment. He’s still somewhat reasonable as a result.
Jack understands that heroism involves self-sacrifice and mercy; while escaping Helios, Jack chooses to stay behind to facilitate the PCs’ escape and when confronting a mole in Hyperion, Jack initially lets the man live. His condition as a narcissist means he needs the construct of heroism to prompt him to being concerned for others, which makes his good-natured emotions selfish in their own way; the show of those emotions is intended to reflect on his goodness as a person rather than the status of those around him. That doesn’t mean the feelings aren’t real, however—just that it’s his only means to express them, albeit in a twisted form which has the potential to become even more twisted if left without help. Even at this stage Jack has kept Angel essentially imprisoned ‘for her own good’ for at least ten years, ever since his wife disappeared—an extreme act which is nevertheless out of misplaced love, and evidence that Jack’s condition needs outside help to manage.
In the end it’s the other branch of traits which, in combination with the lack of support Jack receives, strangles out any positivity in the latter. The combination of them all with the contribution of his hero complex has put him at risk of outright delusion. All his actions thus far have been objectively justifiable, but without proper intervention he could soon reach a point where he sees his actions as necessary and therefore inherently righteous, rather than necessary but morally objectionable. The following all contribute to the development of that delusion.
Jack’s coding hobby would have been his only means of control as a child; a programmer literally defines technology, and technology defines the universe. This coupled with Jack’s obsession with heroism has turned him controlling, though this is especially emphasised once he became Angel’s sole parent. Angel, being a siren, has to be simultaneously protected from others while others are protected from her, which means that Jack needs to control everything around them in order to maintain that balance. Everything about him is a tool to market himself. Charisma is the tool he uses to manipulate people; ambition is the tool to manipulate society; coding is the tool by which he manipulates his environment. He literally works within the system—and then remakes the system to his own specifications, whether this is in terms of software, tech or corporate policy.
That being said, Jack isn’t so controlling that he feels the need to micromanage. His goals are more important to him than the individual steps—as long as those steps occur on his own terms and contribute to his goals, he would drop his own plans for someone else’s and even admits when he’s been short-sighted. This says something about the genuineness of his feelings for his family, wherein performing what he feels is his duty to them is more important than being technically right.
Jack’s paranoia was begun by his abusive childhood, but compounded by abuse in his adult life. Tassiter constantly dismisses, ridicules and degrades him, while everyone else calls him a ‘low level programmer’ even though by the Pre-Sequel he’s in charge of his own orbital station and has a great deal of influence with Hyperion’s board of directors. Up to his canonpoint it seems like Jack has to some degree taken this sort of barrier in stride as part and parcel of a career in a corporation (though he does display some justifiable bitterness). It isn’t until a former Hyperion employee, revealed to be a corporate spy, literally shoots Jack in the back—moments after Jack showed him mercy—that the paranoia turns into active suspicion. Soon after this is Jack’s canonpoint.
The sadism is directly related to the betrayal by this former Hyperion employee, called ‘the Meriff’. The Meriff’s attack fails and Jack kills him, and it’s this event that’s Jack’s sadistic awakening. Prior to the Pre-Sequel it’s clear Jack lacks the assertiveness necessary to take violent revenge; though he had presumably killed or at least injured some Dahl soldiers in his escape from Helios, they were all matters of clear self-defence. The Meriff, however, surrenders after his attack fails, and Jack kills him anyway while in the midst of rage. It’s clear afterward that Jack experiences an intense emotional release from doing so, and his surprise makes it obvious it’s the first time that’s happened. It’s the first time he feels properly empowered to hand out justice to a definable enemy; it turns his previously explosive but helpless anger into righteous and addictive wrath. The paranoia gives him cause to be wrathful; the sadism makes him want to. Early indications are that he is already more assertive, due to the need to take command during the attack on Helios, but discovering this aspect of himself will only make him more so in the future.
Appearance: Jack is about 5’11 and brunette with styled wavy hair and a little goatee, and heterochromatic eyes (left green, right blue). He’s good-looking enough to have a reputation for it.
He’s inordinately fond of the colour yellow, so there’s usually yellow on his clothes somewhere, but at this point in his canon he dresses a lot like a modern space cowboy; jeans, leather jacket, T-shirt, holstered pistol … wrist-lasers. He always wears what looks like a watch on his left hand, though in reality it controls one of his personal gadgets. Oddly enough, even though the remote-control is on his left wrist, he wears a glove on his right hand.
In terms of demeanour, Jack is either casually amiable or intimidatingly focussed. Even though he’s not trained as a soldier, he seems to have some knowledge of self-defence and is fluid in movement—like a man who knows who he is and what he wants, and expects to be noticed, even when he’s not in motion.
Have a picture, and the beginning of this clip is a decent example of his mannerisms. Also, bonus ‘wow I’m a sadist’ moment.
Abilities: Jack has no known special powers. Although Jack does have some knowledge of self-defence, the Pre-Sequel is his first time in a battle, so he has no military training. What he does have is intelligence and technology. (Tech is listed in his inventory section.)
Jack is a coder; he spent most of his childhood coding, and even though it isn’t a skill he has used in the recent past some of the devices he controls—which no one else does—indicates that he was good at it. In Borderlands 2 it becomes clear that he designed and built a machine for Angel which enables her to act as an AI in nearly any software environment. He’s evidently able to hack into software and programs, and did so while he attempted to further his career.
Though Jack is a programmer, he also seems to have some knowledge of engineering. This knowledge isn’t extensive (later on in the Pre-Sequel a more accomplished engineer manages to dupe him into sabotaging a project he himself oversaw) but it’s enough to follow along and effectively administrate other Hyperion engineers. While many of his gadgets are implied to have been built by those other Hyperion engineers, the fact that his wrist-lasers are unique (and were unique before his slide into homicidalness, implying that he didn’t just murder the engineer who made them) suggests he built them himself.
All that being said, although hired by Hyperion as a programmer Jack has designs in corporate business, and by the time of the Pre-Sequel seems to be putting all his tools and skills to use in an administrative role and to gain the board of directors’ approval. He therefore also has a good knowledge of corporate policy and company workings, historical precedent and galactic geography. At this stage in canon he makes sure he understands the system, even if he plans to break it.
Suitability: Jack is from a canon which is all about forging one’s own way … albeit most of the time in less-than-moral ways. He’s built himself and his reputation up from worse than nothing even in the face of constant opposition in the form of his superior, and a setting which allows him to define it is a setting in which he would flourish.
That being said, the fact that he won’t have all his burgeoning corporate resources at hand will put him back in a situation where he needs to redefine his surroundings, but at a psychological point where he’s more assertive and aware of his abilities.
Inventory: Items which need no further explanation: clothes on his back, silver pocket-watch, Hyperion employee ID, his ECHO. Presumably the ECHO contains a translation function, since everyone seems to speak English; the only example of non-English is a couple of Spanish corollary characters who use occasional phrases.
A set of wrist-lasers. They’re single-shot but can be switched to beam-mode. They are the only kind of laser of their kind seen in any of the games, as most laser-based weapons come in the form of submachineguns which are either/or rapid-fire single-shot/energy-beam, not both.
Jack’s remote-control wrist-band generates a couple of Digi-Jacks—digistructed holograms. Though not real, because they’re digistructs they’re solid; their wrist-lasers do real damage, they can crib off real shields for extra defence, and when they run out of power their explosive deconstruction really hurts. They’re also talkative. And narcissistic.
Although Jack primarily relies on his wrist-lasers, he does also carry a gun in its holster. He’s a company man so it would be of Hyperion make, which means it has high accuracy and low recoil. It’s probably a corrosive weapon, since that is the element of choice in playable Jack’s skill-sets (save the very specific skill which is the only exception, described below). As well, corrosion appears to be his element of choice during his fight in Borderlands 2.
A personal shield. Shields are usually shown via a blue bar over the character’s health, yet Jack doesn’t have such a bar in the Pre-Sequel; I’m still inclined to think he has one for several reasons. Firstly, he wouldn’t neglect such an obvious safety precaution. Secondly, in the beginning of this clip Jack gets shot in the back and is unharmed. Thirdly, he has a tech-skill which involves a kind of nova usually generated by shields—explained below.
Most energy novas are tied to shield-depletion and have the appearance of a ring around their user. Jack’s can be activated independently, though presumably is still generated by his shield, and takes the shape of a bubble; it’s impossible to dodge save by giving him distance. It’s most likely a shock-nova, dealing electrical damage, since the playable version of him has an electrical skill which performs a similar function.
In-Character Samples:
Third Person: Something was ticking. What the friggin’ hell was—oh. His pocket-watch. Duh. Jack slumped in the Meriff’s chair and swung on it and listened to the hum of tech and life-support outside the Meriff’s window. God, this sucked. Whenever people talked about heroic quests no one ever mentioned the part about waiting for stuff. It was almost enough to make Jack wish he was back on Helios, surrounded by Dahl meatheads and getting shot at. He’d never realised how exhilarating that could be.
Without shifting Jack dug around under his butt to find his pocket-watch and brought it out to take a glance. How long could it take to bunny-hop across a freaking moon? Seriously? Sure, okay, the Vault Hunters had to get to the fast-travel stations before they could use them, which meant some travel-time, but come on. How badly could they have been side-tracked in the space of a few freaking hours? Had they forgotten about the giant freaking laser that was currently—oop, there it went again.
Purple light shone across the desk and Jack clicked his pocket-watch shut and jumped to his feet to go to the window. Helios loomed over Elpis like some giant … loomy … thing. Its Eye glowed as the laser shot out, and Jack gripped the window-frame so the quake of it hitting Elpis’s surface didn’t make him stumble.
Crap. Crap crappity crap. Sure, he’d built the damned thing—but it was meant to be used against the murdering bandit hordes on Pandora, not the innocents of Elpis. Well, relative innocents. It wasn’t powerful enough to blow up Pandora; it would’ve been perfectly safe to use against the planet. Elpis was too unstable to take the damage for more than a couple of days, and if Elpis blew up that would destroy Pandora. What the hell was that Zarpedon chick thinking?
“God!” Jack shoved himself away from the window and spun, running his hands through his hair. Was there anything here for him to do besides freaking wait?
He got two steps into a pace before his foot hit the stain in the carpet and he stopped to stare down at it. The blood had been cleaned off the desk and a couple of claptraps had cleared away the Meriff’s body, but it’d take a lot more than a few scrubs to clean the place where the Meriff had lain in his own juices. Just thinking about it made Jack’s heart race and his blood rush. Shooting at the Dahl meatheads hadn’t done that, or at least not in the same way; Jack wasn’t sure why. Maybe because for them it hadn’t been personal—but the Meriff had betrayed Hyperion and then tried to shoot Jack in the freaking back right after Jack had decided to let him go. Jack had shown him mercy, for the love of God! And the Meriff had shot him! Right in the back! If it hadn’t been for Jack’s shield he’d have been perforated!
Grrgh, just thinking about it made Jack angry. He clenched his fists and took a few deep breaths. It was okay. The Meriff had got his. Jack had made sure of it. Friggin’ traitorous asshole had deserved it, too, and it had felt so freaking good, being the hand who dealt out the justice for once. Jack could get used to that—to being the hero.
Network: [HANDSET] audio;
Sooooo … This is Jack, I’m new.
[The words are drawled, as though the speaker is not quite taking things seriously and mocking the need for an introductory phase.]
I could get into that whole thing about how I’ve gotta go, and I do, ’cos this place sucks and I’ve got a planet to save, but hey, if I’m stuck in some kind of spacial time-whammy you’ve gotta make the best of it, am I right? So I just have one question for you kids. Anyone know where I can get me some of that awesome goo? Or another console? Because they are friggin’ awesome and I need to make a few more blow up before I really start tinkering.
And I mean, come on, these are the only things I can see around here that are worth tinkering with. Trams? Talk about a throwback to twentieth century AD. Where’s the fast-travel system? Where’s the friggin’ spaceport? Do you people seriously just walk everywhere? God, there isn’t even so much as a vehicular digistruct depot.
Anyway. Goo-bombs. Whoo. Awesome.
Character Information:
Name: John, but he prefers to be called Jack and nearly everyone does. Last name is unknown.
Canon: Borderlands
Canon Point: The Pre-Sequel, which takes place between Borderlands 1 and Borderlands 2; during the story mission Intelligence of the Artificial Persuasion, while Jack is in Concordia.
Age: Unspecified, but his daughter Angel is already an adult during the first game; Jack’s canonpoint is at most a year after that. In an ECHO where Angel is a little girl Jack already sounds a mature adult, so he probably wasn’t a teen father; if Angel is minimum 18 during the first game, then Jack is at least 37 at this point in canon.
Reference: Here, though anyone can edit so grain of salt and all that.
Setting:
General
Borderlands is set in a futuristic world at an unspecified time in the human future. Six galaxies have been heavily colonised to the point of people making references to ‘the universe’ in the same manner as someone might say ‘the planet’ to indicate a much larger whole.
No mention of Earth is made. Implications are that few people nowadays care about an itty bitter planet where human life happened to evolve, though pop-culture and myth have persevered. People do still talk in hours and days without much in the way of conversion, so it’s likely that Earth hours have long since become an accepted standardised system.
Most planets are named after Greek myths. The planet which serves as the setting for Borderlands is Pandora, with its geostationary moon Elpis.
Pandora
Pandora is a frontier planet on the edge of the galaxy. Though it has some fertile areas, for the most part Pandora is a wasteland—either desert or tundra. Pandora’s native flora and fauna are usually lethal in nature, made more so thanks to human intervention changing the seasonal and mineral makeup of the planet. There are a number of Eridian ruins on Pandora.
The main population of Pandora comprises of descendants of Altas Corporation’s original colonists and the workers, families and convicts Dahl Corporation left behind when they abandoned the planet. Most of the people on Pandora are either bandits or one lost meal away from becoming one.
Pandora’s moon, Elpis, was colonised by Dahl as a mining satellite and experienced a human-caused near-cataclysmic event called the Crackening which has changed its terrain and made its surface unstable. Most residents live in the spaceport Concordia.
The Eridians
The only evidence of aliens are the Eridians, who have been a mysterious archaeological influence from the time humanity became spacefaring. Not much is known of them due to their extinction long before humanity colonised space, but they appear to be insectoid and relied upon rechargeable energy-based weapons which were built from a powerful and dangerous substance called eridium.
For the most part Eridians have simply achieved a mythical status among the borderland planets. On Pandora, especially, are tales of great caches of Eridian technology and wealth, known as Vaults, which serve as a kind of Holy Grail tale to many of the borderland planets.
The Vaults are real; there are at least two on Pandora and one on Elpis, and many others undiscovered through the galaxy. Of the confirmed Vaults one is a prison for a giant interdimensional being called the Destroyer and the second contains a massive biological AI called the Warrior. The Eridians sacrificed their entire civilisation in order to lock the Destroyer away and left recordings of their history in an artefact in the Vault on Elpis.
Those who search for the Vaults are called Vault Hunters. On Pandora, the phrase has become synonymous with ‘superhero’ and ‘freedom-fighter’. Vault Hunters currently relevant to Jack are Roland, a mercenary with natural leadership skills, and Lilith, a reckless siren with denial issues; both helped kill the Destroyer and are now aiding Jack in his quest to save Elpis.
Sirens
Sirens are women with ‘superpowers’. Sirens are born, not made, with tattoo-like birthmarks up one side of their body. They are only ever born women; there are only ever six of them. Each’s power is unique, but all are an aspect of dimensional manipulation called phasing.
For instance, Lilith can phasewalk into an underlying dimension, removing herself from sight and harm, and re-emerge with an explosion of fire. Angel can phaseshift her surroundings—that is, manipulate the physical nature of her environment. When plugged into a chair which connects her to technological systems like an AI, she can use her siren powers to hack nearly every kind of software.
The sirens are connected in some way to eridium, since they can use eridium to boost their powers—at risk of becoming addicted. This connection also links them to the Eridian interdimensional tech which defines the Vaults and the Vault key. Humans have not otherwise achieved dimensional technology.
The corporations
Most of the Borderlands universe, or at least the galaxy in which the games take place, is run by corporations after ‘the corporation wars’, in which the previous system of government collapsed. This happened long enough ago that the current generations have accepted corporations as a legitimate form of government, but not so long that they don’t recognise the corporations as tyrannical.
The corporations maintain individual power through private armies and handle everything from mining interests to technological development to biological research, competing for the same technology. They can own whole planets but are not averse to co-existing on any single one so long as lines are toed.
Hyperion is Jack’s employer and widely considered the most ruthless and tyrannical of the corporations. It has a board of directors and a CEO, Harold Tassiter, who has a grudge against Jack due to jealousy of Jack’s talent and charisma. Hyperion is nearing the end of constructing an orbital station, Helios, over Pandora; Helios is currently under attack by the Dahl Lost Legion.
Atlas is the oldest and most prestigious of the corporations and first colonised Pandora. Though they have not held interest in Pandora for a long time, their mercenaries, the Crimson Lance, were the main martial power there up until the end of Borderlands 1.
Dahl is a highly militant and industrious corporation who held mining interests on Pandora until they were driven off by Atlas. Dahl’s hasty retreat involved abandoning everyone they had brought to Pandora, while one of their legions—the Lost Legion—broke away and secretly settled on Elpis to defend the Vault there.
Technology
ECHOs are the main form of communication and are basically glorified smartphones/tablets/health display indicators/recording devices/whatever else. The ECHOnet is pretty much a galaxy-wide internet/entertainment system.
The New-U Cloning systems are a respawn game mechanic, but the Pre-Sequel justifies their in-world existence as a means for corporations to employ a near-limitless supply of mercenaries; I’m therefore inclined to accept them as canon. At least two corporations build them (Hyperion and Dahl). They require a DNA input, but afterwards can ‘resurrect’ any individual as a clone, complete with memories up to the point of their death.
The Fast Travel System is a method of instantaneous transportation, though it requires access to any individual fast-travel station to do so and an initial DNA input before the individual stations can be used. They are often incorporated with a New-U system, though not all New-U systems are Fast Travel.
Digistruct is short for digital construction. Using scanned parts, a digistruct station quickly creates a solid object according to the scanned specifications. Digistructs are primarily used for public vehicle depots, but are also used for inorganic item dispensers (like munitions). Digistructs cannot create properly organic objects; digistructed food items, for instance, are inedible.
Eridium is the element upon which the Eridians built their technology. It has a dormant and an active state, as it was unknown on Pandora prior to the opening of the first Vault. It’s a powerful source of energy whose exact qualities are unknown.
Elemental weapons are guns that charge their bullets with an ‘elemental’ type and can ‘infect’ their target (ie with burn damage). The most common are fire, electric and corrosive weapons (fire to burn flesh, corrosion to melt armour, electricity to drain shields). Flash-freezing ice-based munitions are only available on Elpis due to its unique atmosphere. Explosive rounds always cause extra boomy damage.
Laser weapons can also be charged with an elemental type. Otherwise, they’re frikkin’ lasers, man. Enough said.
Personal shields are also common with a variety of bonus attributes (eg activation of a damaging elemental nova when the shield depletes). These are electrical in nature and protect against bullets until they’ve depleted and need to be recharged.
Other random pieces of technology include cloaking, gene-splicing and personal oxygen masks. And robots. Many of them are AI to some—or even a complete—degree, though they are generally treated as tools, toys or pets.
Personality: Jack is like a nuclear warhead with a dozen connected bugs in the system which sends it spiralling toward meltdown. A psychologist would diagnose him as a narcissist with sadistic tendencies. His most defining characteristics are his love and his lack of self-esteem. The former drives his motivations; the latter defines the manner in which he pursues them. It’s the latter branch which is, at this point, contributing the most to his development. At this canonpoint Jack is capable of concern, self-sacrifice and reason; that being said he’s also controlling, paranoid, vindictive and sadistic.
To begin with, we need context. Jack was raised and abused by his grandmother; he states in an interview that he ‘spent most of his time coding, being smacked around by my grandmother, the usual’. She killed his cat after he neglected to make his bed just once and yet he references her calling him ‘her favourite grandson’, which shows that Jack was emotionally as well as physically abused. This lay the roots for his narcissism—being simultaneously abused and praised, lacking self-esteem while clinging to an illusion of worth.
Jack is obsessed with being a hero. While the cause is never outright stated by canon, this makes sense as the product of an abused child seeking escape. Heroes don’t give up and are inherently full of worth, and that’s something Jack needed to survive his childhood. It’s likely due to this that he’s capable of loving at all. Jack’s most narcissistic tendencies arose as a product of canon, long after his wife disappeared. Though we only have conjecture on their relationship, all implications are that her disappearance is due to Angel rather than to Jack, in which case her absence isn’t due to a breakdown in the marriage. As well, Jack only devolves after her disappearance, which implies he was stable during their relationship. Therefore it seems likely that Jack’s relationship with his wife was honest and she was able to manage his narcissism while it was in its minor form and his sadism remained unrealised.
Given the above, Jack’s wife would have been his first and only means of emotional support and legitimacy, and the means by which he gave himself agency and legitimacy. When she disappeared, his love transferred to a very young Angel. His family gave him purpose and cause to be the hero he wanted to be as a child himself, and without anyone to manage his neuroses Jack fixated on those emotions as his driving force. Prior to his sadistic awakening Jack was still reasonable, since his only methods for engaging in his surroundings were through the same means and emotions as everyone else; at this point he has only just made the realisation that he is a sadist, and hasn’t yet been confronted with what that means in terms of self-empowerment. He’s still somewhat reasonable as a result.
Jack understands that heroism involves self-sacrifice and mercy; while escaping Helios, Jack chooses to stay behind to facilitate the PCs’ escape and when confronting a mole in Hyperion, Jack initially lets the man live. His condition as a narcissist means he needs the construct of heroism to prompt him to being concerned for others, which makes his good-natured emotions selfish in their own way; the show of those emotions is intended to reflect on his goodness as a person rather than the status of those around him. That doesn’t mean the feelings aren’t real, however—just that it’s his only means to express them, albeit in a twisted form which has the potential to become even more twisted if left without help. Even at this stage Jack has kept Angel essentially imprisoned ‘for her own good’ for at least ten years, ever since his wife disappeared—an extreme act which is nevertheless out of misplaced love, and evidence that Jack’s condition needs outside help to manage.
In the end it’s the other branch of traits which, in combination with the lack of support Jack receives, strangles out any positivity in the latter. The combination of them all with the contribution of his hero complex has put him at risk of outright delusion. All his actions thus far have been objectively justifiable, but without proper intervention he could soon reach a point where he sees his actions as necessary and therefore inherently righteous, rather than necessary but morally objectionable. The following all contribute to the development of that delusion.
Jack’s coding hobby would have been his only means of control as a child; a programmer literally defines technology, and technology defines the universe. This coupled with Jack’s obsession with heroism has turned him controlling, though this is especially emphasised once he became Angel’s sole parent. Angel, being a siren, has to be simultaneously protected from others while others are protected from her, which means that Jack needs to control everything around them in order to maintain that balance. Everything about him is a tool to market himself. Charisma is the tool he uses to manipulate people; ambition is the tool to manipulate society; coding is the tool by which he manipulates his environment. He literally works within the system—and then remakes the system to his own specifications, whether this is in terms of software, tech or corporate policy.
That being said, Jack isn’t so controlling that he feels the need to micromanage. His goals are more important to him than the individual steps—as long as those steps occur on his own terms and contribute to his goals, he would drop his own plans for someone else’s and even admits when he’s been short-sighted. This says something about the genuineness of his feelings for his family, wherein performing what he feels is his duty to them is more important than being technically right.
Jack’s paranoia was begun by his abusive childhood, but compounded by abuse in his adult life. Tassiter constantly dismisses, ridicules and degrades him, while everyone else calls him a ‘low level programmer’ even though by the Pre-Sequel he’s in charge of his own orbital station and has a great deal of influence with Hyperion’s board of directors. Up to his canonpoint it seems like Jack has to some degree taken this sort of barrier in stride as part and parcel of a career in a corporation (though he does display some justifiable bitterness). It isn’t until a former Hyperion employee, revealed to be a corporate spy, literally shoots Jack in the back—moments after Jack showed him mercy—that the paranoia turns into active suspicion. Soon after this is Jack’s canonpoint.
The sadism is directly related to the betrayal by this former Hyperion employee, called ‘the Meriff’. The Meriff’s attack fails and Jack kills him, and it’s this event that’s Jack’s sadistic awakening. Prior to the Pre-Sequel it’s clear Jack lacks the assertiveness necessary to take violent revenge; though he had presumably killed or at least injured some Dahl soldiers in his escape from Helios, they were all matters of clear self-defence. The Meriff, however, surrenders after his attack fails, and Jack kills him anyway while in the midst of rage. It’s clear afterward that Jack experiences an intense emotional release from doing so, and his surprise makes it obvious it’s the first time that’s happened. It’s the first time he feels properly empowered to hand out justice to a definable enemy; it turns his previously explosive but helpless anger into righteous and addictive wrath. The paranoia gives him cause to be wrathful; the sadism makes him want to. Early indications are that he is already more assertive, due to the need to take command during the attack on Helios, but discovering this aspect of himself will only make him more so in the future.
Appearance: Jack is about 5’11 and brunette with styled wavy hair and a little goatee, and heterochromatic eyes (left green, right blue). He’s good-looking enough to have a reputation for it.
He’s inordinately fond of the colour yellow, so there’s usually yellow on his clothes somewhere, but at this point in his canon he dresses a lot like a modern space cowboy; jeans, leather jacket, T-shirt, holstered pistol … wrist-lasers. He always wears what looks like a watch on his left hand, though in reality it controls one of his personal gadgets. Oddly enough, even though the remote-control is on his left wrist, he wears a glove on his right hand.
In terms of demeanour, Jack is either casually amiable or intimidatingly focussed. Even though he’s not trained as a soldier, he seems to have some knowledge of self-defence and is fluid in movement—like a man who knows who he is and what he wants, and expects to be noticed, even when he’s not in motion.
Have a picture, and the beginning of this clip is a decent example of his mannerisms. Also, bonus ‘wow I’m a sadist’ moment.
Abilities: Jack has no known special powers. Although Jack does have some knowledge of self-defence, the Pre-Sequel is his first time in a battle, so he has no military training. What he does have is intelligence and technology. (Tech is listed in his inventory section.)
Jack is a coder; he spent most of his childhood coding, and even though it isn’t a skill he has used in the recent past some of the devices he controls—which no one else does—indicates that he was good at it. In Borderlands 2 it becomes clear that he designed and built a machine for Angel which enables her to act as an AI in nearly any software environment. He’s evidently able to hack into software and programs, and did so while he attempted to further his career.
Though Jack is a programmer, he also seems to have some knowledge of engineering. This knowledge isn’t extensive (later on in the Pre-Sequel a more accomplished engineer manages to dupe him into sabotaging a project he himself oversaw) but it’s enough to follow along and effectively administrate other Hyperion engineers. While many of his gadgets are implied to have been built by those other Hyperion engineers, the fact that his wrist-lasers are unique (and were unique before his slide into homicidalness, implying that he didn’t just murder the engineer who made them) suggests he built them himself.
All that being said, although hired by Hyperion as a programmer Jack has designs in corporate business, and by the time of the Pre-Sequel seems to be putting all his tools and skills to use in an administrative role and to gain the board of directors’ approval. He therefore also has a good knowledge of corporate policy and company workings, historical precedent and galactic geography. At this stage in canon he makes sure he understands the system, even if he plans to break it.
Suitability: Jack is from a canon which is all about forging one’s own way … albeit most of the time in less-than-moral ways. He’s built himself and his reputation up from worse than nothing even in the face of constant opposition in the form of his superior, and a setting which allows him to define it is a setting in which he would flourish.
That being said, the fact that he won’t have all his burgeoning corporate resources at hand will put him back in a situation where he needs to redefine his surroundings, but at a psychological point where he’s more assertive and aware of his abilities.
Inventory: Items which need no further explanation: clothes on his back, silver pocket-watch, Hyperion employee ID, his ECHO. Presumably the ECHO contains a translation function, since everyone seems to speak English; the only example of non-English is a couple of Spanish corollary characters who use occasional phrases.
A set of wrist-lasers. They’re single-shot but can be switched to beam-mode. They are the only kind of laser of their kind seen in any of the games, as most laser-based weapons come in the form of submachineguns which are either/or rapid-fire single-shot/energy-beam, not both.
Jack’s remote-control wrist-band generates a couple of Digi-Jacks—digistructed holograms. Though not real, because they’re digistructs they’re solid; their wrist-lasers do real damage, they can crib off real shields for extra defence, and when they run out of power their explosive deconstruction really hurts. They’re also talkative. And narcissistic.
Although Jack primarily relies on his wrist-lasers, he does also carry a gun in its holster. He’s a company man so it would be of Hyperion make, which means it has high accuracy and low recoil. It’s probably a corrosive weapon, since that is the element of choice in playable Jack’s skill-sets (save the very specific skill which is the only exception, described below). As well, corrosion appears to be his element of choice during his fight in Borderlands 2.
A personal shield. Shields are usually shown via a blue bar over the character’s health, yet Jack doesn’t have such a bar in the Pre-Sequel; I’m still inclined to think he has one for several reasons. Firstly, he wouldn’t neglect such an obvious safety precaution. Secondly, in the beginning of this clip Jack gets shot in the back and is unharmed. Thirdly, he has a tech-skill which involves a kind of nova usually generated by shields—explained below.
Most energy novas are tied to shield-depletion and have the appearance of a ring around their user. Jack’s can be activated independently, though presumably is still generated by his shield, and takes the shape of a bubble; it’s impossible to dodge save by giving him distance. It’s most likely a shock-nova, dealing electrical damage, since the playable version of him has an electrical skill which performs a similar function.
In-Character Samples:
Third Person: Something was ticking. What the friggin’ hell was—oh. His pocket-watch. Duh. Jack slumped in the Meriff’s chair and swung on it and listened to the hum of tech and life-support outside the Meriff’s window. God, this sucked. Whenever people talked about heroic quests no one ever mentioned the part about waiting for stuff. It was almost enough to make Jack wish he was back on Helios, surrounded by Dahl meatheads and getting shot at. He’d never realised how exhilarating that could be.
Without shifting Jack dug around under his butt to find his pocket-watch and brought it out to take a glance. How long could it take to bunny-hop across a freaking moon? Seriously? Sure, okay, the Vault Hunters had to get to the fast-travel stations before they could use them, which meant some travel-time, but come on. How badly could they have been side-tracked in the space of a few freaking hours? Had they forgotten about the giant freaking laser that was currently—oop, there it went again.
Purple light shone across the desk and Jack clicked his pocket-watch shut and jumped to his feet to go to the window. Helios loomed over Elpis like some giant … loomy … thing. Its Eye glowed as the laser shot out, and Jack gripped the window-frame so the quake of it hitting Elpis’s surface didn’t make him stumble.
Crap. Crap crappity crap. Sure, he’d built the damned thing—but it was meant to be used against the murdering bandit hordes on Pandora, not the innocents of Elpis. Well, relative innocents. It wasn’t powerful enough to blow up Pandora; it would’ve been perfectly safe to use against the planet. Elpis was too unstable to take the damage for more than a couple of days, and if Elpis blew up that would destroy Pandora. What the hell was that Zarpedon chick thinking?
“God!” Jack shoved himself away from the window and spun, running his hands through his hair. Was there anything here for him to do besides freaking wait?
He got two steps into a pace before his foot hit the stain in the carpet and he stopped to stare down at it. The blood had been cleaned off the desk and a couple of claptraps had cleared away the Meriff’s body, but it’d take a lot more than a few scrubs to clean the place where the Meriff had lain in his own juices. Just thinking about it made Jack’s heart race and his blood rush. Shooting at the Dahl meatheads hadn’t done that, or at least not in the same way; Jack wasn’t sure why. Maybe because for them it hadn’t been personal—but the Meriff had betrayed Hyperion and then tried to shoot Jack in the freaking back right after Jack had decided to let him go. Jack had shown him mercy, for the love of God! And the Meriff had shot him! Right in the back! If it hadn’t been for Jack’s shield he’d have been perforated!
Grrgh, just thinking about it made Jack angry. He clenched his fists and took a few deep breaths. It was okay. The Meriff had got his. Jack had made sure of it. Friggin’ traitorous asshole had deserved it, too, and it had felt so freaking good, being the hand who dealt out the justice for once. Jack could get used to that—to being the hero.
Network: [HANDSET] audio;
Sooooo … This is Jack, I’m new.
[The words are drawled, as though the speaker is not quite taking things seriously and mocking the need for an introductory phase.]
I could get into that whole thing about how I’ve gotta go, and I do, ’cos this place sucks and I’ve got a planet to save, but hey, if I’m stuck in some kind of spacial time-whammy you’ve gotta make the best of it, am I right? So I just have one question for you kids. Anyone know where I can get me some of that awesome goo? Or another console? Because they are friggin’ awesome and I need to make a few more blow up before I really start tinkering.
And I mean, come on, these are the only things I can see around here that are worth tinkering with. Trams? Talk about a throwback to twentieth century AD. Where’s the fast-travel system? Where’s the friggin’ spaceport? Do you people seriously just walk everywhere? God, there isn’t even so much as a vehicular digistruct depot.
Anyway. Goo-bombs. Whoo. Awesome.