# Luca Voss

> is the kind of man you'd pass on a trail and remember the backpack before you remembered the face. Mid-thirties, lean, dark hair kept short. Grey-green eyes that stay level and still. His hands are the most notable thing about him: calloused, precise, always slightly dirty, with a pale burn scar across the left. Muted layers, worn boots, a watch with more functions than style. (App 2, Cha 4 (Measured Authority))

## Identity

- **Player:** dorje (NPC)
- **Chronicle:** Vail
- **Breed:** Homid
- **Auspice:** Philodox
- **Tribe:** Glass Walker
- **Concept:** Conservation technologist, warder of the boundary between Weaver and Wyld
- **Rank:** 3
- **Deed Names:** Counts-the-Wires, Root-and-Wire, Silent-Wings
- **Nature:** Architect
- **Demeanor:** Judge

## Attributes

| Physical | | Social | | Mental | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Strength | ●●○○○ 2 | Charisma | ●●●●○ 4 | Perception | ●●●●○ 4 |
| Dexterity | ●●●○○ 3 | Manipulation | ●●●○○ 3 | Intelligence | ●●●●○ 4 |
| Stamina | ●●●○○ 3 | Appearance | ●●○○○ 2 | Wits | ●●●●○ 4 |

Specialties:

- Charisma: Measured Authority
- Intelligence: Systems Thinking
- Perception: Anomaly Detection
- Wits: Pattern Recognition

## Abilities

### Talents

- **Alertness** ●●●●○ 4
- **Leadership** ●●●○○ 3
- **Primal Urge** ●●●○○ 3
- **Subterfuge** ●○○○○ 1

### Skills

- **Animal Ken** ●○○○○ 1
- **Crafts** ●●●●○ 4
- **Drive** ●○○○○ 1
- **Etiquette** ●○○○○ 1
- **Stealth** ●○○○○ 1
- **Survival** ●●●○○ 3

### Knowledges

- **Computer** ●●●●● 5
- **Enigmas** ●●●○○ 3
- **Investigation** ●●●○○ 3
- **Occult** ●●○○○ 2
- **Rituals** ●●○○○ 2
- **Science** ●●●●○ 4
- **Technology** ●●●●● 5

Specialties:

- Alertness: Perimeter Monitoring
- Computer: Networks
- Crafts: Electronics
- Science: Ecology
- Technology: Sensor Systems

## Backgrounds

- **Allies** ●○○○○ 1
- **Contacts** ●●●○○ 3
- **Resources** ●●●○○ 3
- **Rites** ●●○○○ 2

## Background Details

### Allies

- A mycologist at CU Boulder who thinks Luca is running a long-term alpine soil study. Provides access to lab equipment, published research, and occasionally asks why the samples he sends her keep coming back with anomalous readings she can't explain.

### Contacts

- Local county building inspector who tips him off about permit applications near the caern boundary, especially anything related to the mine property.
- A LoRaWAN hobbyist in the Colorado maker community who helps source hardware and troubleshoot firmware without asking why someone needs sensors rated for sub-zero operation at 10,000 feet.
- A wildlife corridor researcher with Colorado Parks and Wildlife who shares data on animal movement patterns, migration disruptions, and unexplained die-offs in the Vail backcountry.

### Resources

- Research grants laundered through a legitimate alpine ecology nonprofit, supplemented by quiet consulting fees from environmental advocacy groups who don't ask how he gets his data so fast. Enough to fund sensor hardware, drone components, server infrastructure, and the occasional bribe to a contractor. Not wealthy, but never short on parts.

## Gifts

### Breed

- Persuasion
- Reshape Object

### Auspice

- Scent of the True Form
- Truth of Gaia
- Strength of Purpose
- Call to Duty
- Wisdom of the Ancient Ways

### Tribe

- Diagnostics
- Control Simple Machine
- Plug and Play
- Cybersenses
- Intrusion

### Other

- Sight from Beyond

## Rites

- Rite of Talisman Dedication (Level 1)
- Rite of the Questing Stone (Level 1)
- Rite of the Opened Caern (Level 1)
- Prayer for the Prey (Minor)
- Rite of Binding (Level 2)
- Rite of Summoning (Level 2)
- Rite of the Shrouded Glen (Level 3)

## Advantages

| Trait | Permanent | Temporary |
|---|---|---|
| Glory | 2 | 2 |
| Honor | 7 | 7 |
| Wisdom | 4 | 4 |
| Rage | 3 | 3 |
| Gnosis | 5 | 5 |
| Willpower | 7 | 7 |

## Status

- **Health:** `OOOOOOO` (O unhurt, / bashing, X lethal, * aggravated)
- **Experience:** 150 total, 150 spent, 0 unspent

## Merits and Flaws

- Merit: **Computer Aptitude** (mental) (1 pt)

## Possessions

### Carried

- Ruggedized laptop (Dedicated): custom-built ThinkPad in a Pelican shell, runs his monitoring suite, SSH terminals, and spirit-signal correlation software. The desktop wallpaper is a live mycelium conductance graph. He can read it the way a cardiologist reads an EKG.
- Leatherman multi-tool (Dedicated): the one object he is never without. Wire strippers, pliers, knife, screwdrivers. The handle is worn smooth from years of use. More sacred to him than any klaive.

### Owned

- Ornithopter drone complement: three bird-scale flapping-wing drones with owl markings, perch-capable, near-silent, low EM signature. Stored in a padded case in the research wing.
- Drone control tablet: hardened Android tablet with custom flight control software, LoRaWAN mesh relay built in
- LoRaWAN gateway hardware: three solar-powered gateway nodes positioned around the bawn perimeter
- WiFi HaLow camera nodes: six 802.11ah cameras in weatherproof housings, positioned for coverage with minimal footprint
- Mycelium interface probes: custom-built bioelectric sensors that read conductance changes in the mycelium mat, connected to the LoRaWAN mesh
- Soldering station and component stock in the research wing
- A battered copy of 'Mycelium Running' by Paul Stamets, heavily annotated in two colors of ink: black for science, green for spirit observations
- An encrypted NAS in the research wing running his correlation software, scraped EPA datasets, and open-source environmental monitoring code he still contributes to under a pseudonym
- A burner laptop for public WiFi work: scraping corporate filings, monitoring mining company permit activity, contributing to citizen science platforms. Never touches the caern network.

## Sept

- **Name:** High Branch
- **Caern:** Near Vail, Colorado
- **Type:** Wyld
- **Level:** 2
- **Totem:** Owl
- **Leader:** Sky-Watcher-Who-Remembers

Warder of the High Branch caern. Responsible for all detection, surveillance, and perimeter security systems bridging Weaver technology and Wyld spirit awareness.

## Appearance

- **Age:** 34
- **Sex:** Male
- **Nationality:** American
- **Hair:** Dark brown, kept short and practical
- **Eyes:** Grey-green, steady
- **Battle Scars:** A pale burn scar across the back of his left hand from a soldering accident that happened during a Wyrm incursion. He was re-routing a camera feed and didn't flinch.

| Form | Height | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Homid | 5'10" | 165 lbs |
| Glabro | 6'2" | 210 lbs |
| Crinos | 8'0" | 380 lbs |
| Hispo |  | 280 lbs |
| Lupus |  | 120 lbs |

## Description

Luca Voss looks like exactly what his cover says he is: a field researcher who spends too much time outdoors and not enough time sleeping. Medium height, lean without being thin, the kind of build you get from hiking sensor equipment up mountain trails instead of going to a gym. His hands are his most notable feature: calloused, scarred, always slightly dirty around the nails, with the precise quick movements of someone who works with small components. He wears layers appropriate to altitude and weather, nothing flashy, nothing memorable. Muted earth tones. Hiking boots that have seen real use. A watch that cost more than it looks like it did because it has altimeter, barometer, and compass functions he actually uses.

His face is unremarkable in the way that serves a Glass Walker well: you'd pass him on a trail and remember the backpack before you remembered the man. Grey-green eyes that stay level and still while the rest of his face is politely neutral. When he speaks, it's measured and precise. He chooses words the way he chooses components: fit for purpose, nothing wasted.

HOMID: Everything above. He could be any researcher at any alpine field station. The only tell is the stillness. He watches a room the way he watches a data feed: looking for the anomaly.

GLABRO: Broader, harder. The jaw squares. The hands get heavier. The pleasant neutral expression goes flat and watchful. He looks like a park ranger who has dealt with too many poachers and stopped filing reports about it.

CRINOS: Compact for a Crinos, built more for endurance than raw power. Grey-brown fur, dense and practical. Not imposing by Garou standards, but precise. He moves in Crinos the way he works: economical, deliberate, nothing extra. His eyes stay the same steady grey-green, which is somehow worse than if they changed.

HISPO: A stocky, broad-chested wolf with dense grey-brown fur. Built like a working dog, not a show dog. Watchful.

LUPUS: A grey-brown wolf of medium build. Unremarkable except for the eyes, which track everything with the patience of something that has been watching for a very long time.

## History

Luca Voss was scraping EPA compliance data from a mining company's public filings before he knew what a Garou was. He was a grad student at CU Boulder, ostensibly studying alpine soil ecology, but his side projects told a different story: open-source air quality sensors deployed near Front Range industrial sites, firmware contributions to citizen science monitoring platforms, a talk at a small Defcon village about using LoRaWAN mesh networks to catch illegal dumping in watershed areas. Nobody remembered his face from that talk. They remembered the sensor design.

The First Change hit him at a research station above treeline. He was running a soil conductance experiment when the readings spiked in a pattern that looked biological. He followed the signal into the field at dusk, found the mycelium mat pulsing with something his instruments couldn't name, and the wolf came out of him like an electrical discharge. The Glass Walkers found him three days later, still in Crinos in a collapsed research tent, surrounded by destroyed equipment and shredded data printouts.

They recognized what he was immediately: not just a new Garou, but a new Glass Walker who already spoke the Weaver's language and the Wyld's, even if he didn't know it yet. His First Change had followed a spirit signal through mycelium. Most Glass Walkers come from boardrooms and server farms. Luca came from the place where data meets dirt.

The sept called him Counts-the-Wires. It was reductive and slightly dismissive, the way Cliath names often are. The weird new Glass Walker who stared at soil readouts and counted cable runs instead of doing anything impressive. He kept it without complaint. The name was accurate, and accurate was enough.

He earned Root-and-Wire at Fostern by proving what the sept's traditionalists didn't want to admit: that his sensor networks and the mycelium's spirit-layer were reading the same signals through different instruments. He built a correlation model that predicted a Wyrm incursion twelve hours before the Theurges felt it in the Penumbra. The name acknowledged both halves of what he does. Root for the Wyld. Wire for the Weaver. Neither one sufficient alone.

He came to the High Branch caern four years ago at the invitation of Sky-Watcher-Who-Remembers. The alpha had a specific problem: the old Warder had died in the mine raid, the sept's detection capabilities were gutted, and the remaining members didn't have the technical literacy to rebuild what was lost. Luca walked the bawn for three days before he agreed to stay. He assessed the mycelium network, the existing infrastructure, the spirit ecology, and the Gauntlet thickness at thirty-seven points along the perimeter. Then he drew a line on a topographic map and said: cables end here.

Rebuilding the bawn's detection network was his Adren challenge. Four layers: mycelium as primary perimeter, LoRaWAN environmental sensors, WiFi HaLow cameras, ornithopter drones shaped like owls. Each layer a judgment about where the Weaver serves the Wyld and where it must stop. The ornithopter design earned him the name the sept uses now: Silent-Wings. The drones look like Owl's children. They fly without sound. They see without being seen. Owl approved, and the sept recognized it.

He does not enter the Wyld core with electronics. That line is inviolate. He drew it himself and he enforces it, including against himself. His multi-tool crosses the line. His laptop does not. This is not a rule imposed on him. It is a judgment he rendered, and he will not revisit it without cause.

The mine situation concerns him. His sensors detect intermittent anomalies from that direction: temperature fluctuations, wildlife corridor disruptions, mycelium conductance spikes that correlate with nothing in his weather data. The seal is holding, but the readings suggest it is not holding comfortably. He has reported this to the alpha in measured terms and precise language, and he continues to monitor.

He is patient. He is precise. He is very, very good at his job. And he is quietly certain that patience and precision are not going to be enough for what is coming.

## Notes

- WARDER FUNCTION: Responsible for all four layers of the High Branch detection network. Layer 1: Mycelium (Wyld, primary bawn perimeter). Layer 2: LoRaWAN sensors (Weaver, environmental/motion). Layer 3: WiFi HaLow cameras (Weaver, visual surveillance). Layer 4: Ornithopter drones (Warder's mobile asset).
- NPC RULE: NPCs use by-the-book gift costs (level x3 in-type, level x5 out-of-type), not house rule costs.
- CREATION BASE: Attributes 8/5/3 (Mental/Social/Physical). Abilities 13/9/6 (Know/Skills/Talents). Backgrounds 6 + 3 freebie. Freebies 20.
- FREEBIE SPEND (19 total: 20 base - 1 merit): Willpower 3 to 7 (4fp), Gnosis 1 to 3 (4fp), Computer 3 to 4 (2fp), Technology 3 to 4 (2fp), Crafts 3 to 4 (2fp), Science 3 to 4 (2fp), Backgrounds +3 dots (3fp). Total: 19/19.
- FREE RANK-UP GIFTS: Fostern free L2: Call to Duty (Philodox 2). Adren free L3 in-type: Reshape Object (Homid 3). Adren free L2 out-of-type: Sight from Beyond (Theurge 2).
- XP SPEND (150 total): ATTRIBUTES (40): Wits 3-4 (12), Stamina 2-3 (8), Dexterity 2-3 (8), Charisma 3-4 (12). ABILITIES (57): Computer 4-5 (8), Technology 4-5 (8), Alertness 3-4 (6), Investigation 2-3 (4), Enigmas 2-3 (4), Survival 2-3 (4), Primal-Urge 2-3 (4), Occult new to 2 (5), Leadership new to 3 (9), Rituals new to 2 (5). GIFTS (39): Control Simple Machine GW1 (3), Truth of Gaia P1 (3), Plug and Play GW1 (3), Cybersenses GW2 (6), Strength of Purpose P2 (6), Intrusion GW3 (9), Wisdom of the Ancient Ways P3 (9). GNOSIS (14): Gnosis 3-4 (6), Gnosis 4-5 (8). Total: 40+57+39+14 = 150/150.