Name	Sheng
Faction	Autobot
Function	Warrior
Alt Mode	Hovertruck
Type	OC

Profile

"I don't believe in miracles. I rely on them."

Sheng is cool, calm, and level-headed, even in the thick of battle. Possessed of a keen intellect, she is quite likely to look at a situation from every perspective to gain additional insight. On duty, she can usually be found guarding Rodimus Prime or assisting the Autobot scientists in their research.

Her troubled past has forged her into a hard and icy soldier and left her unable, or unwilling, to allow anyone close to her. Skilled in most forms of combat, she prefers to close the distance with her enemies, using her claws as opposed to her disruptor. In her hovercraft mode she is distinctly agile, utilizing her speed and dexterity to avoid her foes. Her deadly talons are her own greatest weakness, limiting her tactile efficiency and forcing her to remain distant from her comrades.

Skills: Climbing, Singing, Gymnastics, Dancing

History

Built sometime before the Second war, Sheng was, originally, part of a battle unit. The initial time of creation is uncertain, as is the original number of members of the unit, as their creator as killed and, indeed, several of the unnamed creations were killed as well, in an explosion of unknown origin (she’d just come on line, all she knows is something went boom and suddenly the person that was saying he was their creator was one with the landscape, she was coming back online on the floor with ringing audios and there was a lot of secondary explosions going off).

As they were originally designed, most of this unit had stealth technology, and their roles was to either set up traps or sneak into bases and kill designated targets or stuff as many bombs as possible into as many hidey-holes as possible, then get out of the base.

Preferably without being noticed… usually the ‘without being noticed’ part didn’t work out so well. This includes the ‘foam’ incident.

As the second war drew to a close, Sheng and her remaining creation mates found that they didn’t fit into the utopian civilization that sprang up after the war. So when a call went out for volunteers for a new colony being set up in the outskirt of known space, close enough to the pirating ‘through-fares’ for warriors to be useful, most of the surviving creation-mates jumped at the chance. They were upgraded, all of them giving up their stealth packages as no longer necessary, and getting new alternate-modes.

Alteron (All-ter-on) is a planet about six times the diameter of Earth with an orbit that, were it around the Sun, would put it between Venus and Mercury... closer to Mercury. A planet of unbroken desert with gold sand, a lot of gold rock, and jags of black and red rocks, the wind never stops there, and the air pressure is somewhere between earth-normal and Venus. Sandstorms are common and can blanket segments as large as North and South America without difficulty. This is not a nice place to take your summer vacation. Time passed, and Alteron grew into a massive colony, easily 1 million strong, with high amounts of energon and supplies; and the weapons and skill to keep it safe from normal attacks.

Perhaps they should have seen it coming.

The Decepticons found out about the location of the colony and the energy and supplies it had amassed and attacked, using ships there were, basically, mass-production facilities for drones. Betrayed from within, almost all of the original Command Staff were killed from orbital fire when they met at a central location for a meeting. The only remaining members of the Chain of Command were Sheng, second in command of security, and Whitewind (the traitor) who had been third in the overall CoC. Whitewind became the new commanding officer, and Sheng functioned as both head of security and second in command, something she did her best at, but had no training for.

Despite Whitewind’s high position, the war between the decepticon forces sent out and the Alteronians dragged on for a good number of centuries. During the war, the Alteronians upgraded/redesigned themselves to be completely undetectable on their home planet. Their energy signatures were pushed through their heat sinks to read as ‘heat’. They cycled the heat of the desert planet through them so that they were the same temperature as their surroundings. Largely due to the high metal content of the sand and stone on the planet surface, careful reworking of the metal of their armor and paint meant that to radar, they read the same.

They held on, they fought, they died and they sent out calls for help.

No help came, as the Autobots were both tight on resources and (as far as those on Cybertron knew) Optimus Prime and Megatron had just been killed on a mission in space.

But with the commanding officer a Traitor, … even if the people below ignored orders that made no sense or seemed likely to get them killed… sooner or later, you will fall. Whitewind managed to get the codes for the various security points into the primary base of Alteron, and let the Decepticons in. The colony fell, and the Decepticons experimented on the survivors, testing out new technologies, new designs, and more.

Time passed, and in the year 2005, an unknown transformer landed on Alteron and, stealthed, broke into the main base and released those Alteronians that still survived.

In one night, the Decepticons were killed. As far as Sheng and the others know, Whitewind was among them. After honoring their dead, the survivors took stock. Sheng decided to return to active duty among the Autobots, five Alteronians decided to accompany her. One of them, Boom, was a creation mate.

…The problem with finding Cybertron was A: none of those that left really knew that much about flying shuttles and B: Cybertron has this annoying habit of MOVING. So after several probably interesting and probably humorous years later, they found Cybertron again and attempted to land.

…Worth repeating is that none of them really knew how to fly a shuttle, and they’d yet had to land on a planet. Suffice to say it didn’t go that well and the shuttle crashed in neutral territory, killing two of the three Alteronians onboard. Sheng rejoined the Autobot and had several interesting adventures.

Recently called back to Alteron for unknown reasons for nearly a decade (as her player had a run of bad luck with computers, trees, hurricanes, cars and being broke for 5 years) Sheng has come back to active duty again. She has a secret, a plan, and she’s not talking about what she was doing in that ten year span.

So let us see what the future holds.

Notes

• Sheng has talons, not retractable claws. Think ‘Lady Deathstrike’. In an early RP, Depthcharge created a set of gauntlets that generate a forcefeild (based on his own) around Sheng’s talons, allowing her to hold things without slicing them to bits.

• Another gift from early on was a heating blanket that would probably cook a turkey put on it in a hour or less, and two heavy-duty heating lamps. She LIKES the heat.

• Sheng’s endostructure is made up of an (as far as anyone’s been able to figure out) unbreakable crystal with interconnected joints that also creates a frame around her laser core and CPU. She literally can not get rid of her talons or get a new size/body. Yes Sheng knows where this crystal is from and where the tech the cons came up with to alter it to its ‘unbreakable’ state is. She has no plan to share this information.

• While Sheng, when she was ICly created had stealth tech, she does NOT have it anymore. IF she was on Alteron she would effectively seem to be ‘permanently’ stealthed/invisible, but that doesn’t apply in the modern day and off said desert planet. Pretty much anywhere but Alteron Sheng is about as far away from ‘stealth tech’ as you can get, what with her heat signature (although she still does not put out an energy signature, it still gets filtered through her heat sinks)

• No matter how many times Sheng tells people that she just a simple warrior, they don’t seem to listen. She’s ended up as the Junkion-Autobot liaison and unofficial Autobot-EDC liaison and midway or a bit higher in the ranks before my computer died and all the other ‘fun’ stuff occurred. I really have no clue how she managed it.

• Sheng is actually a little TOO optimized to blend and work perfectly on Alteron. Her heat signature is as obvious as a neon-bulls eye in an empty field, and her systems HATE the cold.

• Sheng was built to solely be a melee fighter, relying entirely on her battle-unit creation mates for covering fire. It’s a mentality she’s never gotten away from and she usually has to have someone smack her upside the head verbally or physically before she even remembers that she has her pistol/disruptor.

• Five years ago at least, RL time, Sheng and Scourge had quite the rivalry going on (She got him to chase her away from his intended prey to the Sonic canyons and sort of used his sweepcraft mode as a springboard to escape). The fact that by sheer dumb luck she kept getting away from him in later battles did not help matters. My guess would be that, in the time she’s been gone, Scourge has forgotten about her and the rivalry is forgotten. Sheng is ICly very happy with this.

• Sheng was, when I originally played her, severely phobic of torture, being forcibly put in repair mode or the like. In the ten year IC span she’s been gone, Sheng has faced and, for the most part, conquered those fears.

• Yes, she does have a ‘secret’ plan. Right now it’s out of Sheng’s range of skills, but she’s trying to sort out ways to get it to work. Time and patience will tell… possibly

• Sheng has a big collection of precious and semi-precious gemstones and metals she’s collected over the centuries from asteroids/Alteron/etc. She generally thinks of them as useless except for pretty things to carve into various shapes for gifts. Even with Andi telling her they were worth a lot, Sheng doesn’t really believe it, I mean besides a sort-of useful tip for a drill bit, what use is a diamond?

• There are other Alteronians in the universe. The last time Sheng talked about them; there were around 50 other survivors that stayed on the planet. There was a passing reference to rebuilding/recruiting more members but no further mention was made if that plan worked or not. ICly, three or so Alteronians had players and were OCs here, but then returned to Alteron for one reason or the other. Other Alteronians have done limited cameos as puppets, usually just a short scene to check in or deliver some news.

• The mysterious stealthed figure who released the survivors is known to Sheng, but she ain’t talking.

• Boom was not one of the three Alteronians on the shuttle that crashed on Cybertron.

• There are tons beyond tons of raw supplies, processed supplies and energon on Alteron. Why Sheng has never told any of the CoC about this is a secret she intends to keep. If you think your character might figure out that ‘gee, there’s supplies there’ feel free to have him/her mention it ;)

• ICly there are four creation mates that Sheng knows are alive and out there… Somewhere. Another creation mate who ‘took another path’ and three that are MIA. The other four are, as far as she knows, are listed under KIA.

• Sheng's name actually does mean something. Well, two meanings.
  • Swahili for 'young' a joke off the fact that Sheng is old.
  • The sound a blade makes as it's drawn, and the IC reason for her name.

Logs

Players

Sheng was/is created/played by her player… who has yet to find time to play any other characters anywhere else.