Shona Carano

Background

There can only be one left

Shona Carano is a living legend of Aristeia! who has returned to claim what belongs to her in her own right: the Bahadur title.

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SHONA CARANO | Weapon teacher and living legend

The audience ratings of the primal show Yajurveda dramatically dropped at the start of the fourth season. Vissiorama gathered all their brilliant minds to seek a solution. After some deliberation, the executive management of programming approved Jake Wilson plan, an ambitious young man who was the deputy director of Maya’s marketing department. Wilson offered himself as the executor of the operation and straw man, so that Vissiorama’s reputation wouldn’t be affected in case something went wrong.

Wilson gathered and studied the profile of several candidates whose common traits were youth, good physical condition, combat experience, and the mastery of some exotic weapon. He also valued the existence of moral principles that were easily manipulated. After an exhaustive screening process and a subsequent rejection of the first candidates, it was the turn of a neoterran fencing champion, Shona Carano, who didn’t hide her involvement with a pro-human movement that denounced the labor invasion of synthetics in various areas of the society, as well as in several Maya shows.

Jake Wilson, pretending to be an activist from another anti-synthetic group, contacted Shona to help them disrupt a Yajurveda battle. The plan was to sneak her in one of the shows, where she would defeat the synthetics before the cameras, and this way, demonstrate the superiority of humanity. To achieve such a feat, Shona needed an exceptional weapon. In addition to access to the show, Wilson gave her detailed information about the whereabouts of a sword, an almost mythical object, placed in the Caledonian mountains of Ariadna.

Shona managed to get a sword comprised of Teseum, and with Wilson’s help, stormed in during a Yajurveda broadcast - confronting all the synthetic fighters in a legendary epic melee that ended with Shona raising her victorious sword over a mountain of lifeless synthetic bodies. She was immediately arrested, and released after a short negotiation with Vissiorama. Jake Wilson incriminated himself, following his own script and disappearing from the scene. This had been Yajurveda’s touch of death. The audience cheered Shona’s performance, that was being reproduced over and again in the spectator comlogs all over the Human Sphere. No one wanted synthetic fighters anymore, and so Yajurveda would become Aristeia! and Shona, its first great addition. However, Shona was an consummate fighter who didn’t know how to cope with being a star in the world of entertainment. She decided to abandon the show after several seasons, tired of always being in the first position, but never champion because she didn’t stick to the rules of show business. However, leaving the competition didn’t mean leaving the sword aside. After her departure from Aristeia!, Carano focused on her career as a weapons teacher and became a trainer of the Aquila Guard, the elite of PanOceania’s NeoTerran troops.

Recently, Wally Tortollini, the scourge of Maya stars, has been pouring proven and very compromising information on Carano - evidence of her involvement of Vissiorama and its interruption in Yajurveda. That includes the telemetric data that shows that the parameters of the synthetics would have been reduced to magnify her most lauded feat.

Twenty years later and angrier than ever, Shona Carano has reappeared in the surprise presentation of a new team named after the five-times-Bahadur, Final Boss. As he explained, Carano showed up at the damn door of his mansion, with her old Tesseum blade with a new and modern PanOceanian grip. With her chin pointing at him defiantly, she said, “I’m on your team. Like it or not, I’m in”.

She went straight to training after the visit.She seeks now triumph without tricks. She’s motivated to claim what she lacks and belongs to her by right: the Bahadur title.

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[...]This Bahadur could be considered more than a Legend, since Shona Carano was the first human to participate in Yajurveda (the original version of Aristeia!). The knockout that this legendary champ uses already gives you hints of her playing style: lots of damage at close range. So dangerous![...]

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It needs to be said that it was Shona Carano who converted Aristeia! in what it is today. Before Aristeia!, there was Yarjuveda and a fighting program where the synthetics fought to the death. Shona snuck onto the program with her sword and began to fight, leaving no one alive. That changed everything, the audience dramatically increased and humans were finally allowed to fight in the program. That would be the seed of Aristeia!. She became a legend, but she didn’t have the chance to win the title of Bahadur. Now, that’s her only goal.

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More than twenty years ago, Shona Carano was tricked into starting a revolution that turned the decadent Yajurveda into the show that it is today. She believed strongly that she was fighting to protect humans from being replaced by synthetic workers. What was actually happening was that Shona was being tricked into disrupting a match that was being broadcast live, and ending up standing alone against dozens of artificial warriors.

When the news broke about this deceptive plot, the young Weapon Master made an angry vow to prove her worth and win the title of Bahadur - a title that did not exist at the time.

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Shona was one of those little girls who were enthralled by the resurgence of Mayafictions about swashbuckling that would eventually lead to the creation of Yajurveda, the combat show with synthetics that preceded Aristeia!. But like many others, Shona was convinced that you don’t need a synthetic body or an AI identity to achieve great deeds in combat, whether it’s the real thing or in an arena. So, she trained with every martial arts masters she could find on her home planet of Neoterra until she became a master herself and earned a reputation in the tournament circuit of the PanOceanian capital. As a master, Shona would specialize in both Mão nua (bare hands) and bladed weapons, although with a special preference for swords, her great passion since her childhood fascination with those Mayafictions. She also became one of the voices of the movement against the use of synthetics in Maya shows, defending combat between real humans as the purest form of martial arts understood as a sport and as a spectacle.

However Shona is a woman of action rather than words, and she felt it was necessary to do something about this, something really spectacular that would change the opinions of both the public and the Mayachannel execs. Moreover, Shona knew that a gesture would not be enough, that a symbol was also needed, something that would draw the viewers' attention. Thus, she first ventured in search of a very special weapon, a sword whose history and reputation was the stuff of legend, and one that was hidden deep in the Caledonian wilderness. Although this search was already quite an adventure that she barely escaped alive, it was only the first part of her plan. The second part was to storm into a Yajurveda broadcast, taking on all the synthetic fighters on the show in an epic melee that became legendary, and which would end with her raising her sword victoriously while standing on a pile of synthetic bodies. It was a truly iconic image that’s now part of the history of Aristeia! and of Maya.

This stunt was the coup de grâce for Yajurveda. The audience cheered Shona's performance, replayed over and over again in the comlogs of every spectator of the Human Sphere. Nobody wanted synthetic fighters anymore, and so Yajurveda would become Aristeia! with Shona as its first major player. But a natural-born fighter like her didn’t know how to cope with the star-system part of show business. So, after several seasons, sick of always ending up on top but never becoming the champion for not sticking to showbiz rules, she decided to leave the competition. However, for her, quitting the competition didn’t mean dropping the sword—far from it. After leaving Aristeia! Carano focused on her career as a weapons master, teaching occasional master classes for Bureau Aegis and becoming the instructor for the Aquila Guard, the elite of Neoterra's troops.

After a brief return to the HexaDome thanks to Final Boss (which consolidated her reputation as an unstoppable and lethal fighter who never made any compromises with show-business conventions) Shona would sign a contract with TransEtherea to travel the Sphere in one of their Circulars as head of security. Hers was supposed to be a purely representative role, but a particularly vicious boarding by an alliance of several Yuan Yuan pirate gangs would force her to take a more active role and wield her sword to defend the passengers. These pirates' brutality would leave a deep mark on Shona, who developed a special hatred for them. Months later, this raw hatred would lead to a disagreement with a particularly fat Yuan Yuan that would escalate into a brawl marked by mindless violence and damage to property, a story too long and shameful to be told here. This was followed by the detection of a cell of the techno-terrorist group Equinox, a gang war between several Submondo factions, and a raid by Sygmaa operatives posing as Tohaa troops. It was a journey in which Shona's blade spent little time in its sheath and one that would attract the attention of officers from O-12's Starmada. But Shona, who already had a taste for real action, preferred to remain a free agent. Thus, when PanOceania wanted the surviving Father-Knights to be even more dangerous in close combat to become the new Knights of Justice, her name came up.

In this way Shona Carano has become a special instructor who sometimes takes part in combat actions, balancing this with her tasks as Starmada’s head of security, which always requires reinforcements. And there’s no doubt that she is a superb asset, especially for boarding and counter-boarding actions, where her talent and her steel really shine. Shona knows that any fight will end in only one way: with just a single combatant left standing. This is why that image of Shona standing on a pile of bodies, which became so famous in Maya, is repeated over and over again in every confrontation she’s involved in. Because for this die-hard and relentless duelist, there’s no other possibility but to be the last one standing.

Profile

N4

ISC: Shona Carano, Special Instructor And Aristeia! Swordmaster			Character			Light Infantry
Fury: Non-Impetuous			Training: Regular			Back-Up: Cube
MOV	CC	BS	PH	WIP	ARM	BTS	W/STR	S
4-4	23	11	14	13	2	3	1	2
Skills and Equipment: Martial Arts L4, CC Attack(+1 Dam), CC Attack(AP), Courage, Dodge(+3), Dodge(+2"), Stealth, No Wound Incapacitation, Super-Jump

Loadout

Special Skills

Weapons and Equipment

Melee Weapons

Points

SWC

1

Submachine Gun, Nanopulser(+1B), Flash Pulse

Pistol, EXP CC Weapon

27

0

2 Reinf.

Frenzy

Submachine Gun, Nanopulser(+1B), Flash Pulse

Pistol, EXP CC Weapon

27

0

Note: Introduced in N4. No profile in N3 or previous editions.

Aristeia

Type:

Abilities:

Unit Logo

Infinity the Game

Aristeia the Game

Dossier

Infinity the Game

Aristeia the Game

Current Miniature

Infinity the Game

REF: 282013-0875

Aristeia the Game

Alternate Skins

None at this time.

Out of Production Miniatures

None at this time.

Limited Edition

2020 Limited Edition. Intended to be a Gen Con 2020 event exclusive, but made available for general purchase for a limited time due to the cancellation of Gen Con 2020 (COVID-19 pandemic).

REF: PV53

Unboxed
Originally submitted by James Ho.