Gabriel Hampton
Former Staff-SGT Gabriel Woolsworth Hampton
Written by: Null Kit
Despite his alleged and untimely death, the founder and former CEO of Dragoon Tactical Investments Ltd. continues to influence Raleigh and its shadowrunning community with his presence, and so an article was deemed necesarry for this data-cache.Mental characteristics
Personal history
As with anybody whose history intertwines closely with Knight Errant's less scruptulous operations, much of Gabriel's history is kept in the sort of files that people would pay good money for, but every now and then slivers can be gleamed from what few public appearances he made. We'll be focussing on what we know to be true, or at least true enough for our purposes.
What we know to be true about Gabriel's upbringing was that he was a second-generation immigrant, born in Raleigh to an Ork father and human mother. Understandably, anti-metahuman bigotry made an impact on his family's life, something that would later define Dragoon's equal-opportunity employment measures. He talks a lot about growing up as a latchkey kid, since ork-friendly employment was limited and money understandably tight, keeping himself busy with the usual kid shenanigans of stealing apples and car-stereos. Ares was working its megacorp charm on the town, and one of its bit baits was offering education and scholarships to potential future-recruits. Gabriel naturally grabbed onto the opportunity and didn't look back since.
Showing both high physical aptitude and great test results, Gabriel was taken into Knight Errant's regimes the moment he graduated from high-school. Gym-class was replaced with exhausting physical drills, and general education was geared towards military and corpsec logistics; Not only did Gabriel survive, he thrived, taking to the faux-military stylings of Ares like a duck to water and showing an enthusiasm to the esperit-de-corps that would make any weary recruiter shed a tear.
If paydata salvaged from an Azzie infogathering run is to be believed, Hampton still managed to get booked for multiple misdemeanors of petty-theft, wreckless driving and vandalism. All kept hushed by KE wanting to protect its potentiall asset, of course...Much of what happened next is still the topic of speculation, even amongst people who should by all means be in the know. What we do know is that Gabriel found himself operating in HTR since his twenties, and that he got a reputation for having a cautious if somewhat unaggressive stance on tactics, showing preference for 'tried and tested' methods over cowboy play-it-by-ear shenanigans, something which gained him many friends among his peers and subordinates throughout his career. The brass though, hoping their star-pupil would be the next big thing, were less impressed with this mindset, and so despite his decades of service, Gabe never rose above the rank of Staff Sergeant.
It's also entirely possible that he was indeed offered promotions but turned them down to stay in the field, if what happens in the future is anything to go by.Even as his first opportunity to retire passed him by, Gabriel would chomp at the bit for any and all opportunity to take to the field, his decades of experience giving him an unmatched confidence in issuing orders and maintaining control of the situation. Unfortunately, what endeared him to the boys on the field once again became the ire of his superiors: There was no doubt that Gabriel was as competant a tactician as they say, but even with the various pieces of cyberware he's had installed over the years, his body was slowing down beneath him, and every field-op he was in would rack up more and more medical-charges as he continued to push himself past what his body could handle. Eventually, Staff Sgt Gabriel Hampton was taken before the brass and given a choice: Either sit himself behind a desk for the rest of his career, or accept an honorable retirement, with an 'other-than-honorable discharge' as the unspoken third option. Gabriel weighed his options and decided to retire, but made his disdain with the matter far clearer than Knight Errant could anticipate.
Ares went to great lengths to stop any story leaking from the retirement-party, but the securicam footage of Hampton concussing the mayor's bratty son-in-law with a commemorative pocket-watch still get passed around Lone Star's offices.Knight Errant made one mistake with their star-pupil, in that they mistook his fiercely passionate participation in field-ops as a means to an end, when the fight itself was all that mattered to him. Ultimately, reality stepped in and despite his somewhat ignonimous response to retirement, it was inevitable at that point. Having lived a spartan life outside of his career, Gabriel Hampton was left sitting on a pile of money he had no idea what to do with and little in the way of friends to share it with. Upon deciding that dying on a pile of money in his studio-apartment wasn't the end he'd like, Gabriel began investing his money into the initial properties and licenses that would become Dragoon Tactical Solutions, which would in turn dominate Raleigh as one of the the primary providers of corporate security and become a pain for every shadowrunner operating in the Raleigh area. The rest of the story seldom needs repeating as it's all public. Gabriel initially took a more passive role in training new recruits and giving counsel to any and every matter of security in Raleigh when he wasn't managing Dragoon as its founder and CEO. All of that changed however the moment he could afford the Leonization treatments that would bring him back to the prime of his life, where he stepped down as CEO and once again took to the field with all his decades of experience in a body that wouldn't fail him for a long time. Details of his apparent death in his condo are scarce, with most sources stating a simple heart-attack caused by a hereditary heart-defect exacerbated by age and subsequent leonization, but without any known living next-of-kin or heirs to his small empire of war, anybody's guess is as good as mine.
As an aside: Since his official announcement of death, any time a large incident took place that involved Dragoon's HTR Unit stepping in, any operator with a concealed face would be accused of being old Gabe himself, having faked his death for some reason or another.
Honorary & Occupational Titles
Founder of Dragoon Tactical Investments Ltd.
Life
2002
2074
72 years old
Children
Pronouns
He/Him
Eyes
Steely blue, prosthetic
Hair
Black, kept in a neat high-and-tight cut.
Skin Tone/Pigmentation
Dark brown, with patches of vitiligo induced pale skin
Height
6'1''
Aligned Organization
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