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Joe. What can I say about Joe? The first thing, I suppose, is that I'm finally beginning to see that there is more to him than I had originally thought. I'm embarrassed to reveal that I fell neatly into his trap, and I've no doubt that he finds that amusing. No matter--if it's true, I deserve it. At first glance, Joe appears to be little more than a very large, physically imposing troll fellow without a great deal in the brainpower department. He's quite enthusiastic and tends to get a bit overexcited, leading me to believe that he isn't very old (although I have difficulty discerning troll ages, and he has never told me how old he is). There's no doubt about the fact that he has a crude streak which I find highly offensive and annoying. For example: he once, after returning from a particularly unpleasant run that involved breaking into Chicago, proceeded to strip naked and hose himself down on the tarmac of Sea-Tac Airport. Now, while we admittedly could all have done with a shower at that point, I thought a little restraint might have been warranted. The last thing I was in the mood to look at at that particular point in time was Joe's spectacularly outsized posterior region. Despite this crude streak, though, Joe has proven himself on numerous
occasions to be a trustworthy, skilful, and highly reliable member of the team.
He handles most of the heavy-weapons duties we may require, and has also of
late proven himself to be a pretty fair substitute for a rigger (as much as
anyone can be without a vehicle control rig or a datajack, at any rate.)
However, the aspect of Joe that I find most intriguing surfaced a bit more than a year ago, after a very odd run that had us all convinced that we had met and interacted with Fate herself, among other equally improbable entities. Joe is a Native American, although I do not know enough about the various tribes to identify the one to which he belongs. Since he joined the team, his heritage has always seemed very important to him, but prior to this run, it had manifested itself (outwardly, at least; I'm not, nor do I wish to be, privy to his inner thoughts) in things like his hairstyle, the Native American prints on the bag he carries, his admiration for Sitting Bull, and so forth. After we came back from wherever it is we had gone (I am convinced it was a metaplane, though I don't know which one), Joe began showing a still greater interest in things Native American, and in particular things shamanic. Now, let me clear one thing up before I go on: Joe is a mundane. Not only is he a mundane, but he is a heavily-cybered mundane. As you may have noted if you read my thoughts about Ocelot, or his about me, Ocelot's aura shows faint flickers of what could have been--it's a bloody shame that he wasted it, but it's still obvious that it was once there if you know what to look for. With Joe, I can state without fear of contradiction that he is 100% mundane. When I look at him on the astral plane, his aura shows, as I'm fond of joking with my cybered friends, "two ears and a toe." So why is it, exactly, that he occasionally seems able to commune with Bear? Bear. As in the shamanic totem. He claims that ever since he "met" Bear at
a party (same metaplane--don't ask) he has felt drawn to the totem.
I've studied shamanism at some length, but I've never encountered any other
cases of, for lack of a better term, "lay shamans" of a particular totem. Joe
At any rate, I have noticed a decided change in Joe's temperament since his encounter with Bear, and the change has been for the better. He seems more focused now, more content with himself. I wish I could say that he has lost the crude streak, but that, sadly, is not true. I don't think Joe and I will ever be close friends; our temperaments are
too disparate. But as a teammate, I have come to respect and value him
for his unfailing loyalty, his contribution to the team's combat effort (he is
a truly frightening force when wielding his two-handed combat axe), his
insights, and his newfound spirituality. He'll probably rib me unmercifully
when he reads this, but I would miss him should he decide to leave the team.
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has manifested no magical abilities, but somehow, apparently with the aid of
a ceremony involving meditation and peyote, he has been able to communicate with
the totem in some limited fashion. I wouldn't have been so inclined to believe
it if I hadn't seen it for myself, during an attempt to speak with a ghost
who was trying to contact us.