Slicer

Of the 8 Career Skills, choose 4 to get a free rank. Of the 4 Specialization Skills, choose 2 to get a free rank.

Spy Career Skills: Computers, Cool, Coordination, Deception, Knowledge (Warfare), Perception, Skulduggery and Stealth

Slicer Specialization Skills: Computers, Knowledge (Education), Knowledge (Underworld) and Stealth

In a war, the vast majority of those who fight use weapons, explosives, and other tools of violence and destruction to confront the enemy. There are warriors, however, who do battle with codes, data packets, lightning-quick programming skills, and intuitive rewiring of communication networks to unmake the enemy's plans and reduce his technology to just so much useless metal, plastic, and wires. These tech warriors are called Slicers.

Computers and electronic systems are the battlefield of the typical Slicer, but he is also skilled at the arts of breaking and entering and other covert actions. Most Slicers also know their way around the streets and the criminal world, even when they are working legitimately for a military, government, or corporate organization.

There is a feeling of community where Slicers are concerned, even among those who are directly opposed to one another. They know they operate at a different level from everyone else, understanding technology in a way the vast majority of the galaxy's population never will.

For the Slicer, the secrets of banking, security, communications, droids, automated systems, vehicles, ships, and everything else involving a computer are his to manipulate or take. Any Slicer might be a minor god of a given system of networked machines but for the interference and opposition of other Slicers. Recognizing that only those of their kind can hope to challenge them gives most Slicers a sense of superiority, or at least a smug security in their value to those without such skills.

Those Slicers working for the Rebellion are often more altruistic than their compatriots elsewhere in the galaxy, though more than a few are with the Alliance simply because they need protection from the Empire and its allied corporations. Most Slicers work directly with Alliance Intelligence, but there are those adventurous types who prefer to be part of special teams sent into the heart of areas under Imperial influence. There, they can do battle directly with their counterparts, proving their superiority while serving the cause.

Potential Backgrounds

  • Freerunner: Slicer freerunners must enter and leave secured locations to gain access to computing systems. Given the tricky configurations of computer cores and Imperial facilities, Slicers may need to personally retrieve physically isolated information. Freerunner skills help them get into otherwise inaccessible areas.
  • Law Enforcement Agent: Slicers may have backgrounds as law enforcement officers with technical and computer skills. Officers who previously investigated computer fraud and intrusion cases know state-of-the-art cyber-defense systems and techniques, and how to defeat them.
  • Makeup Artist: Slicer holographic technicians excel at altering and enhancing holographic and video transmissions. They don’t so much slice a system for information as manipulate it to achieve their desired effects.
  • Performer: Slicer performers might be exceptionally good at crafting deceptive effects or spectacular distractions via their slicing abilities. Backstage crew members, directors, producers, and actors might better understand cameras and sensors, ways to deceive them, and ways to deceive others through their use.
  • Psychologist: Slicer psychologists can analyze massive amounts of data. They may design programs to reveal tendencies within large populations. They can also investigate Imperial programs in a counterintelligence capacity.
  • Repo Specialist: Slicer repo specialists are highly adept at accessing ship computer systems to enter and take control of the targeted craft. They can parlay this skill into slicing much more complex systems on military craft and in other situations.