Barkeep

Mr. John McCall (a.k.a. Barkeep)

Written by: Null Kit

To the public he's a humble and rather shy barkeep by the name of John McCall, a proprietor of a modest gastro-pub called The Hungry Devil and a former soldier of the CAS armed forces, honorably discharged by way of purple-heart. A man who stays out of the public eye out of preference, running his own eatery in Raleigh by the name of the 7 Bones Gastro.
To the shadows, he's The Barkeep, a fixer and founder of The Cabinet. A man who went from a verified nobody to a fixer of terrible capabilities in too small a period of time for suspicion to be unreasonable. I write this information in the knowledge that if I know anything about the man tentatively called John McCall, it's because he wants me to know these things, and if he didn't want me to know then there isn't a single damned thing I could do about it.

Mental characteristics

Personal history

John McCall's past is, in contrast to everything else about the man, something of an open book. Born to unremarkable parents in an unremarkable conservative upbringing, his grades and fitness-marks as a student made him a target for local, foreign and private recruiters alike, a target he did nothing to minimize, an opportunity to live out his military passions. Fast-tracked into basic training and OCS, John made an unremarkable grade in standards of physical fitness but showed exemplary marks in academics and leadership, with collected records and commentary from instructors and teachers alike suggesting a future position in the CAS' military brass to be inevitable.
As with any member of the CAS forces, commissioned officer or not, John would start from the bottom, and he was shipped overseas as a 2nd lieutenant to earn his stripes the old-fashioned way, and promptly returned back in startlingly short-time sans an eye and leg.

Judging from the amount of red-tape and black-lines on the related files and all the veterans sworn to secrecy on the matter, the operation was neither normal nor succesful. Or so I hear...

— Anonymous poster

For most members of the sixth-world's militaries, a missing limb or eye isn't much an issue, with some of the more cybernetically-inclined considering it a rite of passage to have something replaced with milspec chrome. But for John that would never be the case. A rare physiological abnormality made both cyberware and cloned replacement-organs simply unable to take hold healthily.

The jury is out on whether or not such 'sensitive system' cases are a biological matter or a thaumaturgic one, but the result is the same: A severely impaired ability to take on cyberware and bioware, with unwholesome consequences of trying to force the matter on the body.

— ESP-NPC

Truth be told, it was fortunate to have been caught after only the cybereye had been implanted and hastily removed. Ask a nurse and you'll get plenty horror-stories of implantees ripping stitches open and tearing out prosthetic organs...

— Frangelico

With his mobility and eyesight hampered to levels that would deny him any participation in field-operations, McCall would never attain the mandatory experience as an infantryman to apply for the positions of leadership he aspired to, and the brass decided in hushed words to simply give him an honorable discharge and a pension, rather than fruitlessly convince him of the joys of rear-echelon duties.
What inspired John to follow up his dreams being broken by opening a gastro of all things isn't information I'm privy to know of. All I know is hat John's pension along with the credit that banks are willing to fleece enlisted men with gave him sufficient financial clout to open up an eatery on modest property in downtown Raleigh. The area opened to little fanfare and while reviews were consistantly praising, nobody was ever turned away for lack of free seating.
An even bigger mystery, one that I fear of getting killed for should I solve it, is the mystery of what customer inspired John not only to put his training and talents to illicit use, but to take a role as niche as a dedicated fixer for shadowrunning. Whoever this man was, dealing with them must have been dealing with the devil himself, for John was in short-time abundant in both morally-questionable talent and even more morally questionable requests for such talent.
John's history from thereon would be inseperable from the history of The Cabinet itself.

Personality Characteristics

Motivation

If we are to take the barkeep's 'official' history as truth, his speculated motivations are obvious: Power. Had 2nd Lieutenant John McCall's life gone as he wanted it to, he would have potentially been in the top brass of one of the six world's largest armed forces, and instead he's been relegated to a crippled purveyor of food and booze. Having a dedicated team of criminal mercenaries at his beck and call must be a substitute that scratches that itch perfectly.

Savvies & Ineptitudes

The Barkeep is, above all else, a fixer, a guy-who-knows-a-guy taken to the next level. People come to him with problems, and he formulates solutions with the resources at hand or within reasonable reach, for a moderate price. A tactician, negotiator and opportunist of the kind seldom seen outside of the corporate-court.
For what litle consolation it is to any with a grudge against the man or his runners, while the Barkeep has managed to aptly compensate for the physical impairment of his missing body-parts with a commanding position and a semi-automatic shotgun, the reality remains that physical combat is something he takes justified strides in avoiding whenever possible.

Wealth & Financial state

While the financial assets of his public persona are a trivial matter to enquire upon, the exact measures and reaches of the Barkeep's assets can only be guessed upon in the most vague of terms. On top of the measurable presence of multiple shadowrunners and what physical goods he keeps on his property, the Barkeep has cultivated a frighteningly large stock of favors, debts owed and friends with assets of their own, making acquisition of nearly anything he could want or need a simple message away.

Metatype

Human

Ethnicity

American-Caucasian

Alignment

Lawful Neutral

Year of Birth

2053 27 Years old

Pronouns

He/Him

Eyes

Brown

Hair

Brown

Skin Tone/Pigmentation

White

Height

5'9''

Weight

180lbs.

Aligned Organization

The Cabinet

Ruled Locations

• 7 Bones Gastro

Connection Rating

4