Russel Portis

Russel “Rusty” Portis

Russel could never really understand his lot in life. He was always calm, cool, and collected. Some would confuse his demeanor for uncaring. Even though his father, Dr. Dexter Portis, was a brilliant cybernetics specialist and engineer, his research could never get the funding. Dr. Vegapunk was always one step ahead of him.

At birth, destiny was already pushing its heel to Russel’s throat. At a young age he was diagnosed with osteomenos, a degenerative bone disease, the same one that took his mother. He was frail and slow his whole life, and as he grew up, he became closer and closer to death.

Hell-bent on ensuring he wouldn’t lose his only son the same way he lost his wife, Dr. Portis dedicated his life to finding a cure. Years of failure brought him to the brink of madness until he read a report about Vegapunk’s new technological breakthrough. The Pacisifista!  Dexter may not be able to cure his son’s bone disease, but if he didn’t have bones to degenerate, maybe he could survive or even thrive.

Russel was elated to be able to assist his father in his experiments. He full understood the risks and what the end goal would ultimately entail. They didn’t call Dr. Portis a genius for no reason though and he managed to replace all of Russel’s bones with a wapometal skeleton. While ultimately a success, the procedure wasn’t without its complications. The bones in Russel’s hands were just too small for Dexter to replace without severely damaging his tendons and skin, so he instead built him completely robotic hands. Russel was ultimately cured, and he was much more than a human now. He was super strong, fast, and durable! And with the shape changing qualities of wapometal, he would be able to grow up like a normal kid!

Sadly, the news of Russel’s newfound lease on life soon reached the powers that be and Vegapunk himself came down to see the results. They quickly confused Russel’s calm and thorough attitude as some sort of programming. “I’ve seen this with Bartholomew Kuma! Your son isn’t alive anymore! You’re a monster!”

Russel tried to explain that he volunteered for the procedure but Vegapunk and the Marines shut down Dexter’s lab and put a black mark on his name. These people had no vision, no sense of scope of what his father was doing! Who wouldn’t want to be better than they are? In order to try and escape this nightmare, they moved to Karate Island in the south blue, but the Marine base there poses plenty of opportunities to show how awful people are.

Dexter spent his days from then on doing nothing but drinking and sulking around the house. No one would hire him for anything but menial labor. His depression was slowly killing him and Rusty fears he’ll never recover. Russel does mostly odd jobs around town to help scrape by. His improved strength and endurance really help.

To kill time between jobs, Russel started exploring their new island home. There’s a quaint little monastery on a hill past the forest that encircles their town, with a single monk maintaining the holy grounds. One day while exploring the monastery, the monk approached Russel and introduced himself.

“Hello there, my name is Shi Yan Du. I’ve seen you around here a few times recently and you have a very strange energy about you! It’s almost as if you’re not entirely human.” The two immediately hit it off and Shi Yan Du offered to teach Russel how to control his strength and defend himself. The Way of the Thousand Fists is a very fluid and smooth fighting style, and you’d think someone who was practically a robot wouldn’t be able to move in such way. Thank goodness Dexter was ahead of his time! Other than Russel’s hands and a small metal port above his shoulder where he keeps his robotic skeleton fueled up, he’s completely indistinguishable from a regular human. He usually wears gloves to keep from drawing unnecessary attention to himself.

As time passed, Russel was able to make friends on the island. They call him Rusty because of his red hair. An amusing nickname considering he’s also a cyborg; because of his father’s reputation and your average Marine’s ego, they’ve had may scrapes with the base and nobles on the island, but always manage to come out on top or get away before having to face the big guns.

The Nobles on the island overtax the rest of the citizens of the island and the Marines frequently hustle the small businesses for free food or supplies with the threat of military force. To make things worse, Rusty now has a 50,000 berry bounty on his head. It isn’t much and Rusty suspects Vegapunk actually reviewed his father’s work and now wants the tech for himself. Thankfully, the only picture they had was from when he was a small boy, so not many people recognize him.

Rusty plans on getting off of the island with his best friend Anna, and set sail to find out what the world really has to offer. He wants to become renowned and clear his family name - to show people his father’s great vision! He will show the world the gift his father gave, and make him proud.

Dungeons and Dragons a la One Piece: Introduction and Characters

Hey all! 

It's been a while since I've posted and I'm sorry. Work got crazy and we weren't allowed to stream or post HS videos for a while. Now I'm just waiting for open beta of Heroes of the Storm so I can start streaming that.

In the meantime, I've started a D&D 4e game with a bunch of friends and wanted to share our adventures. The setting of the game is the One Piece universe, so some things have changed. 

First: It's a no magic universe. Anything particular "magical" about the various classes is changed to be more scientific.

Second: The classes got a One Piece wash over to make more sense for the universe. Here are the following Races and how they've translated:

Human - Human

Bugbear - Large Human (like Whitebeard of Doflamingo)

Halfling - Ex-Noble (like Sabo)

Elf - Ex- Noble (like Sabo but for the more offense oriented)
Dragonborn - Fishman (Dragon breath was turned into Uchimizu) 

Thri-kreen - Crustaceous Fishman

Warforged - Cyborg

The classes available were:

Fighter

Barbarian

Rogue
Ranger

Artificer

Monk

Warlord

We also have three Devil Fruit users starting off on the crew. The Devil Fruits are: 

Iki Iki no Mi – Breath Breath Fruit

This fruit gives the user the power of super breath. This allows the user access to feats that standard “enhanced breath powers” would provide (Vacuum Breath, Ice breath, machine gun breath, etc.)

Gemu Gemu no Mi – Sports Sports Fruit

This fruit provides the user with several sports related powers. They gain a massive boost to their Athletics score, become extremely skilled in every sport, can quickly pick up a new sport and become professionally skilled in it in a matter of minutes. They can also gain several sports based powers. They can shoot flaming basketballs out of their hands, throw compressed air like footballs, repel projectiles with an invisible bat, etc.

Toka Toka no Mi, Model: Armadillo - Lizard Lizard Fruit, Model: Armadillo 

This fruit allows the user to transform into an Armadillo Lizard, an Armadillo Lizard hybrid, and atheir base form. 

While in animal or hybrid form, the user may shoot out their spiny plates doing ranged weapon damage, use their claws to do melee weapon damage and gain an assortment of abilities. 

Now, let's meet our characters I'll do each one one at a time to avoid tl;dring it. I would include pictures of the crew, but I can't draw so if anyone out there wants to help with some artwork for my crew's adventures, I would greatly appreciate it.

We have:

The lovely Dr. Anna Montana, the Sport Human. (Named after Joe Montana, obviously).

Anna was raised by her father, a Marine Captain. She looked up to him as the hero of Justice he was perpetrated to be! She thought he was out there every day, saving the world from evil and making it a better place. 

As she got older, she trained and trained to join the Marines when she was old enough. She wasn't very strong, but used her natural intellect to create potions, formulas, and alchemical compounds to help heal, defend, or damage her enemies. She too wanted to make the world a better place, make it safe for everyone. 

Anna shared her dream with her father and his Marine buddies one night when they returned for leave but didn't get the reaction she was expecting. They all started laughing at her as hard as they could. At first she thought it was because she was still young, but then they all started patronizing her. "That's cute for you to think sweetheart." "What's a pretty thing like you going to do as a marine?" "If your husband going to keep the house?" "You should marry a marine, not be one." 

She ran out of the house blind with anger and tears and ran to the local monastery. She hid their for hours trying to think of what to do when a hand, bright of immaculate silver reached out for her. Enraptured with this supposed holy visitor she reached out for it. She was lifted up by a monk with metal hands. 

"Greetings young one. My name is Russel, but you can call me Rusty," the monk said. Anna noticed his hands were indeed silver in color. Mechanical hands that felt warmer than any hand she had held before. They instantly became close friends. Russel is constantly encouraging Anna and never pokes fun at her ambitions.

By his side, she has gone from trailing after marines to getting into fights with them. Out on the sea, close to the action itself Anna can see that these men aren't the symbols of justice they claim to stand for. The way they roughshod over each town and poor citizen they come across. She's lucky her father hasn't caught wind yet. If she stays lucky, he won't know what's what until it bites him in the face. In one particular town she met a Fishman pirate name Karkinos Rey who defended the poor citizens from the injustice of these corrupt public officers. Karkinos, Russel, and Anna ended up fighting many Marines together and the two of them were invited to join his crew. 

Along their adventures, Anna found a Devil Fruit she has seen in an encyclopedia, as fate would have it, she was wrong. After eating it, she soon found herself beating everyone she came across in chess, volleyball, racing. If it was a sport, she was the best at it. After a while she soon developed the ability to conjure ethereal sports equipment that she can use as weapons. She uses this combined with her alchemy to create pretty sticky situations for her enemies (sometimes literally.) And while she doesn't have any formal schooling, she's the ship's doctor. Who needs a fancy degree when she has the miracles of science and her powers.