<div class="floatright">(http://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/thumb/0/0f/Benedictcasual.jpg/400px-Benedictcasual.jpg)</div><strong>Player:</strong>Ebb<br/><strong>Name:</strong>Eric Cavendish<br/><strong>Actual Age:</strong>24<br/><strong>Apparent Age:</strong>24<br/><strong>Gender:</strong>Male<br/><strong>Sexuality:</strong>Heterosexual<br/><strong>Appearance:</strong>Thin and angular, with a shock of dark hair and somewhat androgynous features. Pale blue eyes, long pianist's fingers, very little body hair.<br/><strong>Nationality:</strong>New English birth, then became a citizen of The Institute when it seceded. Technically now a citizen / possession of the US Federal Core.<br/><strong>Languages spoken:</strong>Inherent: English, Korean, Mandarin, Latin, Spanish. With augmentation: approximately 30 others.<br/><strong>Modifications:</strong>Military grade-equivalent* cranial implant with extended memory tank, hardwired socket behind left ear. Psychological personality graft, with physical override switch located on left temple. Left eye is artificial, includes camera, EM sensors and short range (0.5m) holographic projector. (Primarily useful for "Let me show you what I'm talking about" display -- projections are obvious holograms).<br/><strong>Specific skills and abilities:</strong>Expert hacker; if he can connect to it, then given enough time he can own it. Adept at cyberspace navigation and modification. Superior piloting / driving skills. Heavy weapons control (turrets and other security systems). Decent shot with a pistol. Workable knowledge of several branches of engineering and hard sciences. Classical pianist, with near eidetic memory for music.<br/><strong>Weapons and/or equipment:</strong>Sirius Augmented Processing Pack (SAPP), a backpack sized electronics unit that plugs into a cranial hardwired socket to provide additional processing capability and storage, and can be configured with an external deployable dish to provide a narrowband satellite internet link, given an available line of sight to the sky. Collapsible quadcopter drone with camera link. Surveillance camera 'sticky' grenades. Contact supercapacitor taser.  Smith & Wesson Bodyguard III 380 pocket pistol w/laser sight (concealed). May carry a heavier gun and/or body armor, depending on mission. Electronics toolkit.<br/><strong>Weakness:</strong>Relatively unskilled in close combat. Difficulty understanding normal human emotions makes undercover assignments difficult. May experience withdrawal symptoms (tics, nervousness, irritability, paranoia) when disconnected from a constant data feed. Sociopathic tendencies.<br/><strong>Personality:</strong>With his personality graft turned off, Eric is cold and sociopathic. The world is one very detailed single-player game, and he is the only 'real' person in it. With the graft active he becomes a bit more 'human', but can be prone to inappropriate humor and the sort of occasional lack of self control associated with teenage boys. In either mode he comes across as extremely intelligent.<br/><strong>Bio:</strong><br/>Until the age of sixteen Eric exhibited debilitating symptoms on the autism spectrum, coupled with extraordinary intelligence. He was selected for a research project at The Institute** in an attempt to control the worst of his illness without depressing his natural abilities. After extensive gene therapy and retraining, Eric was fitted with a prototype "personality graft", a psychological overlay sampled from his own consciousness but grown "in vitro" within a computer simulation. Essentially the alternate personality represented what Eric might have become had he been born "normal" and grown to the age of 18. Eric has had this enhancement for six years now and has become very comfortable in its use, though the graft itself has not developed past the age it was when implanted.<br/><br/>In return for the benefits from the program Eric entered into a ten year period of indenture with the Institute. He became a valued member of one of the Institute's datastrike teams, raiding rival research institutions (academic and corporate) around the world and recovering valuable data in what became known colloquially as "The Geek Wars". Two years ago, however, the Institute was attacked and acquired by the National Security Agency, part of the diminished but still powerful United States Federal Core. At that time Eric technically became the property of the USFC, but a last-ditch defense effort by the Institute AI resulted in their personnel and inventory records being hopelessly mangled before the NSA could take possession. As a result Eric, who was on field assignment at the time, is now de facto a free man until such time as the NSA catches up with him.<br/><br/>To survive he has taken freelance assignments with various mercenary groups, though finding work and forming connections does not come easily to him. He has no reservations about signing on with IRON FIST for as long as they will have him; it means someone else has to deal with finding assignments and filling out paperwork. He has developed a close attachment (for him) to IFFY, the IRON FIST AI, and a somewhat stickier and more troublesome relationship with Francine Littlejohn, IFFY's programmer.<br/><br/>* Under DARPA contract, engineers at The Institute were responsible for the development of many of the technologies used in the standard military-grade cranial implants. Eric's implant is not military, but was designed by many of the same men and women, with an emphasis on covert intelligence. There are no gun-link capabilities, for example, but the data encryption is equal to what one would find on a military model.<br/><br/>**Previously known as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, this independent city state leveraged its deep research laboratories and base of computer skills to break away from the Republic of New England, though it maintained friendly relations. The Institute was at the time ruled by an AI known as "Sharkey".