Hello Condemned! I hope you’re having a great week. Today, I have another card to spoil for you. This time, it’s a new Condemned. Not only that, but I’m doing something a little bit different this time around. Instead of just showing off the card and talking about it, I’m going to merge this with the “Meet The Condemned” posts I’ve done in the past. So if you just want to see the card, scroll down. Otherwise, buckle up, let’s talk about this guy!

The moon of Titan is a hard inhospitable place. Dust storms can and will kick up at a moment’s notice, covering everything in a fine, dusty sand that gets everywhere. Where Io is cold, Titan is not. Early Terraforming worked too well, drying the planet and warming it well beyond the happy zone humans usually need. The result is a hot, barren planet where the sunlight gets caught and stays there, baking everyone and everything. The first settlements broke down almost immediately due to the dust and the heat. Anything mechanical seized up and stopped working within days, if not hours. Solar generators worked fine when they weren’t covered in dust. Which wasn’t as often as most settlers would want…

As a result, most people went underground. A vast network of caves and tunnels were carved out of the rock, and canyons created to provide some shelter from the dust storms. These cave colonies became hubs for everything a settler would need. Some never left, some had no choice but to leave…

The Hawk was one of the latter.

The Hawk

Real name: Julian Morello

Age: 42

Height: 5′ 8″ (173 cm)

Blood type: AB

The Hawk was born in Serpentza Crevice, a long, winding canyon colony that is the 3rd colony founded on Titan. His grandparents were all settlers hoping for a change in their fortunes. Sadly, the stories they were told were fabrications at best. They thought the colonies on Titan would be a paradise, an oasis in the desert. They were headed for better living, which wasn’t actually there. His parents met in one of the many subsidized housing projects set up for foreigners who were duped this way.

Morello wanted out, but he had no chance of surviving outside the canyon’s safety. To venture out into the wilderness meant certain death without the appropriate protective gear. You need a cover to keep from breathing in the dust, you need shade from the hot sun, and you need food and water to sustain you. The only way to leave the canyons is when you’re rich or dead. You can’t afford it otherwise.

For decades, people in the housing projects told tales of the first colonies, that there are some with old world tech that’s worth a fortune. Nobody ever believed any of these stories, of course. Did they? All the known early colonies were raided long ago for anything useful or salvageable. Now they’re just run down husks of metal and poly-composite plating. And that’s assuming the sands haven’t claimed them.

That didn’t stop Morello from believing that was his ticket out. When he was 24, he caught wind of someone talking about a new abandoned colony someone found. One that hadn’t been touched since it disappeared under the sands. One of his neighbors was gathering people to help him go scavenge anything of value, to try and get out of the sorry existence they called living. Morello was in from the beginning. He wanted to go so bad. He wanted to take part in the excursion, to find something cool, and make a fortune off of it. But his neighbor said no.

He was too young, they said. He didn’t know what was valuable, they said, He’d break something and set off an alarm, they said, It’s dangerous, they said. Excuses went on, and on, and on. But he was determined to get there. Borrowing a dustcloak from his grandparents, he snuck onto the transport ship the day of the departure. It wasn’t hard to blend in, there were over a dozen grown men along for the ride, all covered head to toe in similar garb. Nobody recognized anyone in the group. It took almost 6 hours to reach their destination: a late era settlement. It had just poked through the sand about 3 months prior. Nobody quite knew how it was found, who discovered it, or anything of the sort. They just saw an antenna tower and solar array and knew they hit the jackpot. Old solar systems were still viable thanks to proper positioning in the canyons. People loved finding them. Most guys started working on dismantling the solar array while Morello looked around. There were buildings in the area that looked like he’d be able to work his way into and see what’s inside.

The first building’s door was jammed shut, the motor mechanism destroyed by sand and time. He didn’t have anything that would pry it open, either. He went over to the next building and was able to barely work a door open enough for him to slip inside. This building was pristine. It had tons of old tech: computers, biome monitors for growing plants for food, and even weapons near the door! This room was a total jackpot, and nobody else knew it existed! Looking around further, it looked like there was even a side tunnel that led to a building still buried under the sand. He just had to go check that one out…

Inside, it looked like a medical wing, but something was off. Like it was more than just medical, like there was research going on here. Sitting on a desk was a round, blue object. It looked kind of like a binocular for one eye, but there was this little flare around the side that made it look like it wasn’t meant to be held. It looked like the screen was missing, but there was a little glowing light that was kind of hard to make out. He held this piece of tech up to his left eye to get a closer look. That’s when it attacked his face.

Three metal hooks shot out of the device and attached it to his eye. He could feel it digging into his eyeball, worming all the way inside. The pain was so excruciating that he passed out. When he finally came to, the pain was mostly gone, and he could see just fine. Albeit with some new changes. There was a heads up display over his vision now, something that wasn’t there before. He realized this was an early model ocu-mon, something that would have made him very rich if it hadn’t just bonded with his body. He was both overjoyed and disappointed in his fortune. So much for selling this, he thought. He looked around some more, when he heard screaming outside. He stuffed as much as he could into a small bag he brought with him and then grabbed a weapon from by the entrance. He looked outside, and what he saw terrified him.

The party he came with was long gone. Instead, it was a different group of scavengers. And they had the misfortune of activating the colony’s defense system when trying to rip something out of another building. The automated turrets had activated and were shooting anything that moved. It was a bloodbath! The ocu-mon highlighted a handful of targets for him, and he fired his weapon, perfectly hitting each of them: one, two, three, four…the turrets blew up and the other scavengers dropped like flies. Shocked by his sudden skill, he wormed his way out of the crack in the door and looked around. Two scavengers were making a speedy getaway on one craft while leaving their fallen comrades behind with another. Morello didn’t feel like chasing them, they had no reason to be targeted. He grabbed the bag of one of the fallen scavengers and hopped on the other hovercraft.

He flew out in the direction he thought led to Serpentza, but he couldn’t see far enough into the distance to find it. There were no rock formations to go off of. He was well and truly lost. A quick check of the speeder craft showed a nav beacon that said “home” on it. Figuring it was as good a place as any to start, he turned on the auto pilot and headed for that destination.

It took him not to Serpentza, but Highwind Cliff. Highwind was the largest of the colonies on Titan, built into a giant cliff face. Morello turned off the auto pilot and navigated towards the entry point for Highwind. He didn’t know this colony, nor did he know where to go for a quick bite to eat, much less sell the stuff he found. He set down in the first clear area he saw and asked about junk dealers. With a clear direction, he started heading there, only to get stopped along the way. When questioned, nobody believed he found an old settlement. They all thought he had killed someone for this scrap and speeder. He didn’t have his papers, of course they thought that! Charged with murder due to the blood on his clothing and burglary for the theft, he was quickly swept into an SSIP prison. The evidence was overwhelming.

Guards tried removing the ocu-mon from his face upon entry, but it was so attached to his skull that they didn’t feel like chancing it. This little piece of tech made him very popular in prison. He was a frequent target from people that wanted the “wild tech” attached to his face. That heads up display, however, would help him identify weak points to capitalize on. So he suddenly got good at fist fighting without even realizing it. This put him in the hole, repeatedly. The Condemned Protocol was enacted when had spent 15 years behind bars. When it first started, he sat it out for a bit. He didn’t want to get his hands dirty. He didn’t like having to fight people, and he certainly didn’t enjoy watching it. But that ocu-mon would highlight the fighters as though they were fighting him and not each other. He could see weak points, open opportunities for strikes, everything. This was his chance to do something to ease the boredom.

His first match was over almost as quickly as it started. A one-two punch combo knocked out his opponent, a young hotshot who thought he could bully his way to victory. Left dazed on the ground, The Hawk curb stomped him into the afterlife with thunderous applause throughout the arena. “Okay, I could get used to this…” he thought as he held his head up high. He had found his calling in The Arena, like every other Condemned before and after him.

The Hawk was an interesting character to design. His personality was fleshed out with Lahiru when it came time to do the artwork. We had discussed a couple different backgrounds and styles before eventually settling on the space cowboy gunslinger you see here today. I knew that I wanted to set his backstory on Titan, I knew I wanted to lean into something drawing from the American Southwest and/or Sub-Saharan Africa. Titan is a dangerous, dusty, arid planet. It would make sense that people leaving Earth who stood the best chance of survival came from those geographic regions.

Mechanically, The Hawk changed quite a bit with the addition of his artwork. Initially, he cared about Impact Weapons. But with the change to being more of a gunslinger, I needed to adjust accordingly and take him more in the direction of Ranged Weapons. There’s more One Hand Ranged Weapons on the horizon, so this seemed like the perfect switch. The mechanics felt fine with Impact Weapons, so the change wasn’t nearly as drastic as a full rewrite. And since he’s a common card, he’s a prime candidate to pick up in Booster Draft!

But anyways, with The Hawk finally part of the whole spoiled set, we are now up to:

I’m making headway, slowly but surely. The hard part for me right now is a lack of funds. If you’re able, pick up a booster pack from Enter The Arena. Each sale helps me afford the art needed to finish Chaotic Assault. Once this is all finished, I’ll launch the Chaotic Assault Kickstarter and get the new set out to market. Speaking of, go follow that kickstarter. Every little bit helps, yeah? But with that, it’s time to wrap this up. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in The Arena!