Name: Newton Quesada
Alias/Handle: Newt
Age: 45
Ethnicity: Mexican-American
Birthplace: Los Angeles, South California
Appearance: Newt stands 6'2", a once lanky man out of shape from years of drug abuse and netrunning chairs. He keeps his physical augmentation austere, aside from obvious optical implants. His wardrobe is dated, faded patterns once bursting with color from another time, a cooler time, a better time in his eyes. Lots of floral patterns, psychedelia, and desert wear, a far cry from the streetwear of 80s Night City.
Background:
Family Ranking: Suburban
Parents: Alive, Estranged, living in New Jersey
Childhood Environment: Safe, suburban upbringing in Burbank, South California
Personality: A cynical, disillusioned ideologue, longing for a time he never really lived through. Scatterbrained from drug abuse and too much time in the Net, distant but always talks the real shit when shit needs to be said.
Friends: Dead and gone
Enemies: Corpo rats
Lifepath / Role: Rockerboy (once upon a time), Netrunner
Skills:
- Main Skill: Interface - Allows them to connect to the Net, hack systems, control tech remotely, and bypass security.
- Guitarist
- High Drug Tolerance
- Skilled in hacking bioimplants
Language(s): English (Native), Spanish (fluent), Japanese (conversational)
Cyberware:
- Kiroshi Optics (Basic)
- Neural Link
- Enhanced Liver
Empathy: 7
Humanity: 66
Gear & Style: Newt intentionally keeps a low-profile style, Hawaiian style shirts, denim jackets, khakis, etc. the look of old man to the young punks of NC, but anything low-key flies with the washed-up rocker. He's known to sport a single revolver, usually in plain sight holstered in sand-blasted leather on his hip. Not many have seen him draw it, but a piece for show is a piece nonetheless when it comes to a confrontation.
History:
Everyone in the music scene of Night City remembers Non-Blue Haze. In the late 60s the media hailed them as the Grateful Dead for a generation oppressed by the corporations, the next evolution of the hippie dream 100 years on. Their style of free-form psychedelic rock built on the mind-bending riffs of Newt Quesada's guitar and the angelic voice of front man Panther Rodriguez presented the youths of California with an opportunity to look just beyond the stifling megacity corridor of the west coast, out into the desert, where like-minded individuals were smoking and doping away their woes, on the time and the dime of the corporations. Non-Blue Haze were rockers of a different kind, not hellbent on burning down the system like Samurai, but to simple drop out, and prove there was more to life than the corporate 9-5. Some say that by '69 there were Hazers in corporate offices smoking DMT on their lunch breaks. But the good vibes never last, do they?
Between 2065 and 2070, Non-Blue Haze toured all up and down California, their anti-work, anti-corp, and anti-war sentiments were a refuge for the down-trodden, especially as California was besieged by the NUSA during the Unification War. In 2070 the hot word on the street of Night City was war. In 2071, it was murder. A year after the Night City became fully independent at the end of the war, NBH had found themselves a huge following in the city, but the rock and roll lifestyle was catching up. The entire band were seasoned drug users, but whereas the rest of the band had stayed true to their roots as psychonauts, lead singer Panther Rodriguez had turned to anything but, and among his favorite substances was chrome. A true embracer of the cyberdelic movement he'd helped to shine, Panther was addicted to cybernetic implants, and the proscription painkillers that came along with them. In May of 2071, Non-Blue Haze shattered with Panther's murder-suicide of lover and band bassist Rhiannon "Raypunk" Mitchell. The affair was blown up into a high profile case by the media and the Night City government, a tragic tale of drug-abuse and cyberpsychosis, issues that plagued the streets manifested by devilish rockers who, it appeared, were getting what they deserved. It was only another year until the bands former drummer, Kirk Korrado, died in a drunk driving accident in Heywood, after a series of DUIs.
By the early 70s, the last man standing was Newton "Newt" Quesada, the band's renowned guitarist, now a shell of a man.
Born in 2036 in SoCal, only son to middle-class corporate programmers, he initially excelled in school, where he studied to become a netrunner. However it was through the net that he discovered his love for music, especially of the rebel kind that bended the rules. His discovery of the Cyberdelic movement, the use of cybernetics as a means to consciousness expansion, paved the way for Net's musical stylings and the foundation of Non-Blue Haze, the other members of which he met through the Net. NBH was formed in 2060 on a weekend trip to Tijuana, Mexico, and went on to play all around California. In the years the band played together, Newt Quesada became an avid user of both psychedelic drugs and the net, pushing the envelope of netrunning deep into pre-krash parts of the net, what he saw a kind of parallel to the consciousness expansion promised by the psychedlic movement. Of course, he was never into getting as chromed out as his musical partner, Panther, which may have ultimately saved him from the same fate.
In the late 60s, he became increasingly anti-corporation, seeing their increasing control of every aspect of daily life, including their increased centralization of the Net, and their desire to control the very minds of those whom they essentially owned via contract. Anti-corp lyricism became a staple of the band, and Newt rose to fame alongside the group. Following Panther's cyberpsychosis, however, and the collapse of the band, Newt's life spiraled down into the streets of Night City.
Disillusioned by the past, terrified of the future, and cynical of the here and now, Newt turned to all sorts of drugs, and alcoholism. He continued to spend days on end in the Net, growing his capacities as a netrunner, quickly pissing away his musical fortune and eventually needing to scrape by taking jobs like a common merc. Hacking, decrypting, netdiving, all sorts, though usually only in an anti-corpo capacity. He may have lost his way, but he maintained a respect for the little guy that would never be replaced, not even for a eurobuck. In time, Newt turned to his favourite pastime, hacking the bioimplants of corps and dosing them with mind altering chemicals, assuming what he say as the role of a trickster-god, fucking with the system using their own minds. It is the purest expression of his cyberdelic movement, in a way that his old band had never truly reached. They'd touched the hearts and minds of people, but suits aren't people, and they need to learn peace and love the hard way.
Last edited: