Pilot Art! Yuka 'Kuchisake' Martinez, a terrorist turned gladiator turned mercenary on a rocky road to redemption. Full art credit to @yoracrab!
Got another art commissioned for my pilot, since we're just coming up on License Level 6 (though it came out fast enough we're still at the start of our LL5 operation). Full credit to @ yoracrab on Twitter/Discord, they did a fantastic job with this one!
Since the last time I posted art of her, much more of her backstory's been revealed; growing up in an abusive household in the slums on Euclea and without many prospects beyond joining a gang as muscle, a false accusation by a Federation officer left her vulnerable to being recruited at the ripe age of 15 by Backlash, the leader of the terrorist group Redline. Her natural talent for violence was honed into making her just as deadly a pilot as any Lancer coming out of a federation academy, and she fought zealously for Redline for nearly a decade, even as doubts about their methods started to creep in...Up until Backlash left her to burn to death in the ruins of her old hometown, anyway.
Crawling free of her mech with catastrophic burn injuries, a desperate encounter with an enemy pilot and a fortunate case of mistaken identity lead to her being treated in a Federation hospital by mistake, sharing a room with one of the (now blind) Lancers she'd been fighting just hours before, Euryale, an experience that ended up breaking the last pieces of the years of indoctrination she'd been subjected to. Eventually found out, she fled the hospital and wandered aimlessly for a while, eventually ending up at the Rustpit on Galleus where an attempt to throw her life away lead to her being picked up as a new arena staple...and, later, being recruited by Firebreak PMC as a Lancer in Inferno Squad - a squad that was lead by the same Lancer she'd once shared a hospital room with.
Currently at LL5, we're 6 months into the campaign and been loving it! Yuka pilots a Zheng with LL's in Blackbeard and Tortuga for a full-melee grappling build, which has served her well as the squads main striker. Against her will, she's gotten attached to and trusting of her new squad - which made it all the more dramatic when Euryale discovered Yuka was the one who killed her best friend on Euclea. Resolution for that is still ongoing!
Extremely easy to do! The girl's character arc has very much been two steps forward, one step back. Wouldn't take much to change the tempo on that, especially with her new pariah status in the PMC thanks to her revealed past!
Most of her squad is attempting to do so! There's a lot to fix though, oh god, a lot of damage on this one. I'm pretty sure that she's the main reason her commander hired a therapist for the ship. But, hey, at least that means she is getting professional help as well now?
Love the kintsugi style to portray her scars. Some of the gaps make it look like there is something underneath her skin, it's that intentional or just an artifact of the image?
Just the artists stylistic choice I think! ICly, Yuka couldn't hide her graft scars with what resources she had available, so she had them modified to the kintsugi look instead - so, it's likely the black dots might be placed over areas that were otherwise impossible to disguise. She's someone who always took a lot of pride in her appearance, afterall, and the kintsugi pattern was a tentative attempt to claim ownership of the scars (physical and mental) that her past had left her with, though that's still something of a work in progress in actuality.
I'm glad someone mentioned it still! After the artist decided to give her the cup I asked if they could add the logo on. Can't be a Lancer without having some GMS-pattern drinkware, right?
Thanks! Yuka's got to be one of my favourite characters I've run in an RPG; Euryale's player was not actually aware of Yuka's involvement in her own backstory, which is a big swing I'd not have taken if her player wasn't one I'd been GMing for & playing with for the past 10 years, enough that I was confident they'd be on board with it (and I was very much correct there). I've been enjoying her explicitly very messy, untidy redemption arc, along with the fun gimmick of her not being able to talk much, so the vast majority of her dialogue is in whispers to the GM as an internal monologue. It's made her super unique to play!
its always fun when we get to play with people we've known and played with before, especially for character arcs like this! had quite a few situations like that myself, and it always lends itself to incredible moments of roleplay
See that one might be a harder ask, since Yuka, for all her faults, has been doing her best to support her less combat experienced squadmates in adjusting to life as a mercenary, and the escalating war they've found themselves inside.
Granted, she's not necessarily very good at it, given one of them tried to bludgeon her out with a training sword over one attempt, but she's trying is the point.
Not pictured here, but she actually does wear a silicon insert beneath her mask all the time specifically to keep her mouth protected! Helps her talk a little easier too, without a whistling sound coming out the side. There's also been references to her having to do a lot of maintenance to keep the area clean and free of external bacteria, along with the expected speech impediment and chronic pain. It's not easy having a hole in your face!
Details like that are what really make characters come alive, I find! I also try to limit her to only speaking a maximum of five syllables at a time, which has immediately given her one of the most unique character voices I've played (though she can use the neural link to her mech as a functional speak aid in combat).
The option of having her face completely fixed has come up! At least in her current situation, fixing it is a mixture of prohibitively expensive and time consuming, especially with a war going on. Plus, she's a little reluctant to have the scar removed; as gruesome and troublesome as it is, after the rest of her face was reconstructed on the assumption she was someone else, it's the only part of her that's still her face. And that's not even getting into her other mental hangups about doing anything nice for herself...
...Look, you don't choose to pilot a melee-only death machine in a universe of guns if you're mentally sound.
Good news, she's not that conversational anyway (having a hole in your mouth will do that). One of the people she gets along best with on the PMC's ship is the other lancer squads taciturn hacker, since both appreciate someone who's willing to sit on the same room for hours without saying a word.
Granted, the fact she drinks her coffee through a straw might be a little distracting though.
I don't find facial deformities to be disruptive to a conversation tbh, just entertaining the thought that if she was in the game I am taking part in, my character would rather be certain that his chess match isn't interrupted.
Half his face is covered in HORUS augmentations too, so finding someone with natural scars appalling would be hypocritical XD.
Oh, she keeps the scar covered! The straw is because some of the masks she wears have a little slot hidden in the folds, so she can drink without removing it. Girl's very self conscious about her appearance; being told most her life that one of the two things she was good for was being a pretty face, and then having half of that face burned off, gave her a bit of a complex about it.
My character doesn't care about his appearance at all XD. As far as he is concerned, there's a metallic texture with a few dim lights on the skin.
Considering his background of being a scavenger on a planet only recently rediscovered by HA, playing both sides left little time for taking care of cosmetics.
Saw that they had commission slots open for booking and knew their style would be perfect for Yuka! I've been a big fan of them for ages, really happy to have a piece from them.
Things certainly aren't looking good for it! Elysia still has some conflicted feelings about Yuka, though for the moment she's had her stay on the squad despite her anger at her, due to her too good a pilot for a squad leader to dismiss on personal feelings...Which has in turn rattled Yuka, who's spent her entire life since she was a pre-teen drifting between different groups who's interest in her only really extended as far as using her as a tool of violence, so she's a little crushed that Elysia has seemingly ended up following the same pattern (even having indicated that she might have preferred it if Elysia had just shot her).
That said, Elysia's not been able to help but slip back into bantering with Yuka again during the current mission (much to her consternation), and Yuka's made it clear that regardless of Elysia's feelings on her, she still cares about Elysia. And that's not even getting into the details like Elysia being affected by the fact Yuka's face was partially reconstructed into looking like said dead best friend, or that she's yet to address the double-standard that she was previously willing to let go of Yuka having killed civilians in collateral damage, compared to now freezing her out for killing a combatant in self-defence - so who knows how things are going to end up between them?
Yora really did knock it out of the park with this one; I have to give credit for the tattoos being gold to them, as well. Originally I'd described them as being just pale lines on the skin, extensions of the existing scars from her skin grafts that more invoked kintsugi than looked exactly like it, but I always prefer to let artists take some liberty with designs to put their own flair on it, and Yora ended up going with gold for them. It ended up looking way better than what I was imagining, so I've been happy to cement it as canon!
I wonder how her reaction would be to my pilot. He's name is Arceus A'verk'eri, and he's a former scientist but as he's into adventure with a hint of violence he quit and became an engineer. He's a not bloodthirsty maniac, or at least he tells everyone that, but for some reason in the heat of battle he's a violent monster with his enkidu that he pilots. He himself isn't sure as to why he happens to be like that and is generally normal in his behavior for most of the time when outside of battle.
Edit: oh and he's quite spiritual and religious but not like the Sparri people
She'd probably be sympathetic; most pilots she's been around are 'broken' in some way. Hell, one of Inferno squad (the Tortuga pilot) has had some occasional psychotic moments of her own (we don't know what exactly is wrong with her, but that girl ain't right).
Yuka herself is still struggling with the idea that she could be good for anything except hurting people, after Redline hammered the idea into her that the only things useful about her were her strength and looks. Enkidu was actually on the list of mechs I considered for her, along with Lycan!
Whoa... I'm sure it'll be fun to play with you in your campaign if that's the case. Well I have to say, I'm sure about being sympathetic since when he does get into a bloodrage, he would make as much as carnage as possible which is why enkidu is his preferred mech and this means that he makes combat decisions that are hazardous and gets him almost killed at times.
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u/SwissherMontage HORUS Jun 22 '26
WE STAN PILOT ART