The Reptilian is an arms dealer caught on the wrong side of the posthuman war, transformed against his will into a hideous creature… but still really good at weaponsmithing, so why give up what you’re good at, right?

Concept and Art: Thom Chiaramonte

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The Reptilian

Name: Guillermo Ortiz
Affiliation: n/a

Attributes;

Melee: 50
Reflex: 15
Muscle: 20
Vigor: 40
Acumen: 10
Observation: 50
Will: 30

Life: 125
Influence: 90

Abilities:

Mutation: The Reptilian has undergone an involuntary, permanent biological mutation, which continues to evolve over time. His skeleton, and most of his biomass, have enlarged and elongated, giving him a falsely reptilian appearance. As a result of the mutation, he enjoys certain physical enhancements, including increasingly resilient, natural body armor [20 AP to physical and energy attacks, 30 to thermal attacks], increased night vision [+3CS to Observation], and hyper-sensitive olfactory glands [+4CS to Observation].

Neurotoxin Spray: The Reptilian can spray a neurotoxin from the spiny flanges along his spine, causing an area effect attack [10 RV], with targets requiring a Vigor Save or suffering blindness for 1d10 rounds, as well as damage [20 DP] that ignores physical and natural resistance to injury.

Weaponsmith: The Reptilian is a brilliant designer and engineer, with expertise in crafting weapons technology, developed from years as a weapons engineer and a lifelong passion for scratch-building innovation. He is constantly developing new weapons and armor, derived from a variety of traditional and cutting-edge technologies. Weapons may be designed at the discretion of the GM [40 IV]. For every day spent on development, one Intensity Level of damage effect or armor resistance may be designed into the object, or one additional type of deployment may be included in a composite design, up to an Intensity Level of 50 points.

Origin:

Experimental black-market weapons engineer Guillermo Ortiz was doused in a lethal concentration of heavy metals during a pre-dawn raid of his warehouse laboratory in Mexico City. While managing to escape the police dragnet he found, to his horror, that his body was undergoing uncontrollable mutations, giving him a scaly, reptilian appearance and a deformed skull and spinal column. Partially maddened by the blood poisoning from the accident, and enraged by the destruction of his lab and confiscation of his equipment by the authorities, he studied the duty patterns of the officers responsible for his ruination, and schemed for retribution.

Two months later, severely mutated and driven by a primal hatred for his foes, he hurled himself through the front doors of the local station which housed the evidence impound for the investigation, tearing the skeleton crew of police administrators apart, and squatted within the darkened building. As the officers returned from their shifts, they were picked off one by one and eaten alive by the psychotic Ortiz, and soon law enforcement officers from surrounding neighborhoods had gathered at the site of the seized station, set up barricades, and demanded hostage release and the surrender of the barricaded criminal element within, not realizing it was the work of a solitary, mutated man

. After receiving no response, a SWAT team entered and tripped a sophisticated booby trap Ortiz left for them, detonating the building and killing several of the officers outside. Meanwhile, Ortiz escaped in the fire and set up a new laboratory in an abandoned paint factory, assembling a new weapon development house and became the most sought-after weaponsmith for the Mexican underworld, which would increasingly seek defenses against the growing surge of posthuman adventurers in Central America and the United States.

Despite his macabre appearance, The Reptilian would grow to enjoy a certain mystique and street-level fame, blurry snapshots or artist’s likenesses being printed onto posters, T-shirts and other paraphernalia and worn by the youth throughout Mexico, growing eventually to become a cool status symbol for the Central American university culture. The increased awareness of his existence would cause difficulty for The Reptilian, but he largely ignored it, until a popular shirt design depicted a stylized illustration of his head, presented in the familiar Che Guevara propaganda imagery. In response, The Reptilian had the designer located, a 19-year old Biology student, and broadcast a viral internet video of him eating the boys head, because, as Ortiz stated in the broadcast, ‘Che was a punk.’

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You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Universe Gallery.

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3. TRDL Character Factory, No. 06: Surujin