CHARACTER Ogoun "Gorge" Dambe

[Ogoun Dambe]

Name: Ogoun Dambe
Alias/Handle: Gorge
Age: 28
Ethnicity: Nigerian
Birthplace: Lagos, Nigeria
Current Residency: NightCity
Appearance: Ogoun Dambe is a big man. Taller than average and larger in size due to a mix of his innate heritage, chemically supplemented body and cyberware to support his enhanced build. His form is more akin to a horse or rhino in terms of raw muscle mass, tendons and large tubings of veins that stretch all over his torso, arms and legs. He sports minimal cyberware on his face aside from traces of subdermal armor, A neural link for the most basic of things, but aside from this Ogoun prides himself on staying as "human" as possible and being the strongest there is.

• Height: 6ft 5in
• Weight: 282lbs
• Eye color: Hazel
• Complexion: Melanated, with tribal white tattooed face marks and scarification marks all over his body from subjecting himself to drugs and chemicals to get him into peak physical performance.

Background:

• Family Ranking: Urban street kid of Lagos underbelly.
• Parents: Though Ogouns father died when he was child, His mother and younger brother still live in Lagos.
• Childhood Environment: Spent on the Street, with no adult supervision. After his fathers death Ogoun became the adult of his household and was tasked with all the same duties as his father, only Ogoun came to find a better and riskier source of income.

Personality:

• Stoic and Resilient
  • Ogoun is not a sentimental man by any means. In fact he is rather stoic when not in combat.
• Prideful and Independent
  • "I would be nothing, if not for my pride."
• Loyal but Brutal
  • Loyal to those that he respects or paid by for a price
• Ambitious and Stubborn
  • Has the drive and urge to be the best

Friends:

• The "Animals" of Pacifica

Enemies:

• TBD

Lifepath / Role:

• Solo
  • Special Skill: Combat Sense - Enhanced reflexes and intuition in dangerous situations, allowing them to sense threats, react faster, and plan tactical moves.
• Bodyguard

Skills:

• Dambe
• Brawling
• Wrestling

Language(s):

• Yoruba
• Hausa
• English

Cyberware:

• Subdermal armor (Advanced) - HL cost: -8
• Gorilla Arm (Right) - HL cost: -2
• Reinforced Skeletal frame - HL cost: ???
• Neuroport - HL cost: 0

Bioware:

• Grafted muscle
• Muscle lance
• Toxin binders

Empathy:

= 4

Humanity:

= 40 - 10(or more?) =

Gear & Style:

• "Juice"
• Animal hormones
• Adrenal stims
• Brass knuckles
• NightCity Dashiki pants /w baggy tank top
• Two piece black suit

History:

Ogoun Dambe was born into the chaos of Lagos, Nigeria, a megacity defined by its booming trade economy and lawless sprawl. The eldest son of a dockworker and a street vendor, Ogoun grew up in the unforgiving slums, where survival demanded strength, cunning, and resilience. When his father was killed in a workplace accident, Ogoun, only 10 years old, stepped up to support his family. Life in Lagos's underbelly forged him into a fighter long before he ever stepped into a ring. His break came in the underground fighting pits, where he began competing in brutal no-holds-barred matches. Inspired by traditional African martial arts such as Dambe, Ogoun used raw talent, discipline, wits and unrelenting determination to rise through the ranks. But unlike most fighters in Lagos's thriving underground scene, Ogoun refused to embrace the growing trend of cybernetic augmentation.

The "Natural" Warrior

To Ogoun, cyberware symbolized weakness—a dependency that undermined the human body's natural potential. While his opponents installed neural reflex boosters, hydraulic muscles, and subdermal plating, Ogoun remained unaugmented, training his body to its peak potential instead and boasting about the power in biological mastery over machine. At first, his rejection of cyberware earned him ridicule from other fighters. They called him primitive, outdated, and overconfident. But when Ogoun carefully defeated one heavily augmented opponent after another, his detractors were forced to respect his skill. Fans began calling him the "Natural Warrior", and the name stuck. By his early 20s, Ogoun had become a living legend in the underbelly of Lagos. His minimal cyberware—limited to small neural implants required for regulation in official matches—made him a spectacle in a fight scene dominated by chrome and steel. Fighters with triple his enhancements couldn't match his tactics, strategy and mastery of technique. But his defiance also earned him powerful enemies.

A High Price

Ogoun's fame brought him into conflict with the Egba Boys, one of Lagos's most influential gangs, who controlled much of the underground fight scene. When Ogoun defeated their champion, Dauda "Steel Jaw" Alade, in a high-profile match, the Egba Boys took it as a personal insult. They demanded Ogoun throw his next fight in exchange for his family's safety.

Ogoun refused and assisted his family to flee.

The gang retaliated swiftly. On the night Ogoun personally planned to leave Lagos, he was ambushed by the Egba Boys. In the brutal beating that followed, Ogoun was disarmed—literally. One of the gang members hacked off his right arm at the shoulder as punishment for his defiance. Beaten, humiliated, and left for dead, Ogoun was smuggled out of Lagos by sympathetic friends who saw no other way to save his life. They gave him medical aid

A New Perspective

When Ogoun arrived in Night City, he was a broken man. Stripped of his reputation, his earnings, and his pride, the loss of his arm forced him to confront his beliefs about cyberware. For years, he had rejected augmentation as a shortcut for the weak—but now, missing a vital part of himself, he had no choice. With no other options, Ogoun agreed to have a cybernetic arm installed and bent his own views. At first, Ogoun hated the arm. Its cold, mechanical nature felt alien to him, a symbol of his failure and his betrayal of everything he had once stood for. But as he rebuilt himself in Night City's underground fight scene, Ogoun began to see cyberware slightly different. His replacement arm gave him strength and versatility he had never known... But it was not his flesh.

The Animals

Ogoun's rising reputation in Night City's underground arenas quickly drew the attention of the Animals, a gang renowned for their obsession with physical dominance and raw strength. The Animals stood apart from other gangs for their disciplined focus on pushing the boundaries of the human body. They prided themselves on natural enhancement—using specialized supplements, intense training regimens, and biochemical boosters to build their strength—and only resorted to cyberware when their natural limits could no longer be surpassed. This philosophy intrigued Ogoun! Unlike the chrome-obsessed fighters he had encountered in Lagos, the Animals didn't view cyberware as a shortcut or a replacement for hard work. Instead, they saw it as a final tool, used only when the body's potential had been fully realized. This approach resonated with Ogoun's core belief in the strength of the natural human form, but it also challenged him.

For years, Ogoun had rejected cyberware entirely, seeing it as a crutch for those too weak or impatient to hone their natural abilities. Yet the Animals embodied a philosophy that was dangerously tempting. Their disciplined enhancement of the body appealed to his deep respect for physical mastery, while their use of cyberware to break past natural barriers forced him to confront the limits of his own ideals. Ogoun admired the Animals' pragmatism, but it conflicted with his deeply ingrained values. He saw their skeletal reinforcements and muscular enhancements—carefully selected upgrades that amplified their natural power without replacing it—as both impressive and deeply troubling. To Ogoun, their methods blurred the line between augmentation as a tool and augmentation as a dependency.

The Catch

In Night City, Ogoun quickly realized that the fighters here were unlike anything he had faced in Lagos. The competition was fierce, and his raw, unaltered form seemed no match for the machines and cybernetically enhanced brawlers that filled the underground rings. Despite his natural strength and discipline, his string of defeats began to wear on him. Each loss gnawed at his confidence, and the doubt began to settle in: Was his body really enough to face these opponents, or was he doomed to fall behind, outpaced by the relentless march of technology? He pushed himself harder in training, but no matter how much he ran, lifted, or fought in the ring, it was never enough. His competitors, with their enhanced reflexes, augmented limbs, and superior strength, had the advantage. His tactics did not work against them! His pride in his natural form, once his greatest strength, began to feel like a weakness. The nagging thought that perhaps his body could never truly compete in this new world began to cloud his mind. Desperation drove Ogoun to seek out the Animals, knowing that their style of combat was rooted in physical prowess, and their philosophy—enhancing the body's natural abilities while avoiding over-reliance on cyberware—held a strange appeal to him. The gang's brawlers were brutal and relentless, their sheer power making up for what they lacked in finesse. At first, Ogoun trained alone, grinding through the pain, but soon, his path collided with theirs. He began training with them, learning their way of fighting, which was raw, primal, and fueled by their animalistic nature.

In time, Ogoun became a student of their brutal discipline. The Animals taught him how to channel his ferocity into a more calculated, savage style of brawling—fighting with an almost preternatural strength that pushed the human body beyond its natural limits. They showed him how to embrace the use of supplements, designed to enhance the body's endurance, strength, and reflexes, pushing it further than he ever could have imagined. Under their guidance, Ogoun slowly accepted the need to augment his body with substances that fueled his growth. He started to consume the same growth-enhancing cocktails they took, feeling his body burn with new vitality. The doubt that once plagued him began to fade as he felt his body evolving. His muscles became denser, his reflexes sharper, and his stamina unbreakable. Yet with each new step into enhancement, Ogoun couldn't help but feel a gnawing conflict—was he still Ogoun Dambe, the fighter who rejected cyberware, or was he becoming something else?