The Scrud

Marylin Cutter (a.k.a. Scrud)

Scrud is the most famous human on Nordic Frog Beach. Pictures of her depict a stout, weathered, grey-haired woman of about sixty. She carries a glittering hammer, and wears an armored spacesuit without the helmet on. Strapped to her hips are open pouches from which spill various mechanical tools. Scrud was fully-natural with absolutely no implants, an anomaly even in her time. Not only that, but she was well-known for distrusting technology.
Dead for a hundred and fifty years now, Scrud used her life to spread The Babel Virus, ensure human safety, and defeat the military forces of the capitalist Martian Consortium. She established Nordic Frog Beach's first permanent settlement at Scrud's Retreat, and started what amounts to a cult with the Scruddites.
Scrud is well-loved by many of the Humans and Anansi of Nordic Frog Beach. She was a champion of personal freedoms and endurance, and many try to emulate her style. Synths typically fear her influence. That's because she was suspicious of unnecessary technology, and some Scruddites tend to view Synths as a threat.

Mental characteristics

Personal history

Scrud was born in a homeless camp, her parents contractors who were priced out of their homes by continuing gentrification in Seattle. She was friends with the revolutionary Duarte Price while they were both teenagers. The pair of them had a playful romance during their developing years, but it never developed into anything. She rejected the violence of the revolution that Duarte spoke of at the beginning of The Uprising. Instead of joining in on his Homes for All campaign, she ran away from the city of her birth and into the wilderness. There, she survived alone for years, scavenging for supplies and sleeping wherever she could dig a den.
During her early adulthood, Scrud lived alone in the wilderness. She became a mother while surviving alone against the elements, naming her child Nova Cutter. She raised Nova alone until she 13. At that age, Nova rejected Scrud's wild life and moved into the city to carve out her own niche. Scrud was very proud of her daughter's drive and verve, and kept up with her goings-on while respecting her autonomy. With her bird out of the nest, Scrud continued on to have solo adventures as she traveled across the continental United States.
While traveling, Scrud found a massive cache of Candy, a new drug synthesized from a mold that grows on radioactive materials. Becoming a dealer of the stuff provided Scrud with riches like she had never dreamed of before, but she also grew addicted to her own supply. She continued on like that for two full years before she ran out of Candy. She met withdrawal head on, lived through that ordeal, and moved on with her life.
She -- along with myriad others -- were involved in an investigation into world-spanning corporate espionage. Although she did not know it, her team was on the trail of Myrmidon, the A.I. who would go on to cause the Fall. One of Myrmidon's primary targets was in their hometown of Seattle -- also the site of the first human Babel epidemics. Scrud was infected during the investigation by one of their former teammates, and she was the first one to not instigate or die in violence immediately afterwards. She and her teammmates believed that the Babel Virus was the key to humanity's survival, so they attempted to spread it as far as possible. Their plan involved taking over a news station and getting Scrud broadcasted on TV, speaking. 
There is dispute about whether or not this action caused the Fall of Earth, because within a day Myrmidon was attacking humans en-masse with a nanofabricated machine army. The world's nanofabricators suddenly each spit out a deadly machine for as long as it had raw material, and these machines all did their level best to conquer the territory near them. Within a week global governments had begun to collapse and by the end of the month the machines were hunting surviving humans to the ends of the Earth. It was called The Fall, and only 10,000 Earth humans managed to escape into space before it ended. Scrud and her friends were lucky to be among those 10,000.
During the Fall of Earth, Scrud joined the Crew of the Albatross. She was referred to the crew by her friend, Olympia Snopes. Olympia was a world-class corporate spy. Olympia and Scrud were a team, who had fought to uncover world-spanning mysteries together. They were joined by Grimm, a freelance cyborg detective with a noble background and a chip on his shoulder. When Grimm's investigations uncovered a greater need -- discovering the origins of the Babel Virus (which was alien, of unknown purpose and design, and had caused great disasters, but which they were all infected with) -- the trio stole the Albatross and went on a journey greater than any attempted by a human before. The path of the probe that had delivered Babel could be tracked to Triton, Neptune's largest moon. The journey to reach the portal took a year of hard flight, right as humanity grappled with the loss of 98% of its people. 
Once the ship reached Triton, the group descended to its icy surface alone. Once they reached the surface, they discovered, hidden in an icy crevasse, a hoop of black metal. While they watched, the hoop lit up with green circuitry and out crashed a human spaceship. In the spaceship was Lux, who had no memory of getting there. Together, the group (now including Lux) deciphered the functioning of the Portal and opened a doorway to S.E.E.L. Scrud was the first one to step through, and the first one to try eating some of the wildlife on the other side. 
Scrud and friends would go on to explore several more planets before finding Nordic Frog Beach. When they reached and named the planet, they spent several days boating around its islands and diving in its waters. Scrud was enchanted by Nordic Frog Beach and declared it a paradise fit for human habitation. They continued exploring for a few more days before getting caught in a synthetic trap and getting sent back to Earth. While they were on Earth (a visit during which they had to power on several defunct generators in order to charge the synthetic Portal they found) Scrud encountered a friend from childhood. Duarte Price, once a homeless revolutionary, had survived the Fall and collected a small band of survivors. Scrud and Olympia convinced the survivors to come with them back to Nordic Frog Beach, and thus was Camp Nordic Frog founded. 
Unfortunately, Scrud's allies had angered the Consortium, a corporation that owned most of human civilization, now centered on Mars. Though most humans were now refugees who had lost their home, facing a dangerous resource shortage and immense infrastructure strain, she sent hundreds of people to sabotage and supplant Scrud's project on Nordic Frog Beach. New allies stood up beside Scrud to protect her. William, a former marine medic who died during the Fall and Ifera, a Venusian journalist looking to defeat the corporation. Howser, a Mars CEO who had turned against his own kind. Ischyro, a synthetic intelligence who had participated unwillingly in the Fall and sought independence. Nel-Tesk, a resurrected Maeglin biosphere scientist and psychic. Together with these allies, Olympia, Lux, Grimm, and Scrud successfully resisted the Consortium's military attack. However, they knew they couldn't do so forever. Mars would survive for long enough to send enough ships full of soldiers that they would eventually be overwhelmed. 
To prevent this from happening, they engaged in two different sorts of sabotage, and one negotiation. Howser negotiated with the Pathfinder Corporation - a terraforming firm - and established a truce. Then Ifera brought a bomb to the space station headquarters in the Sol System to destroy it, as well as the asteroid it sat on, in its entirety. That would leave the Portal on that side spinning freely in space. Meanwhile, Scrud and Lux constructed a number of booster rockets on Icy Foyer. Once the group had retreated back to Nordic Frog Beach, they launched the platform that held the portals into space. Once they reached orbit, they gave the portal a slight spin before detaching. With two free-floating obstacles to pass through on the way, the corporation would never be able to reach Nordic Frog Beach. 
With the corporation defeated, the group could settle down on Nordic Frog Beach. Their home was destroyed, but in the course of their adventures they had built themselves a new one. A transmitter was built on Triton to allow anyone who wished to egocast out here to immigrate. A carrier would regularly visit the moon to collect the drives full of immigrants and would bring them to a public exowomb facility also built by the group. The exowombs would grow new bodies for the immigrants, or for people who died in the process of exploring and settling the planet. With this asset of manpower, humanity was able to settle on Nordic Frog Beach. 
After her adventures, Scrud retired to the northernmost mountaintop on the planet. She and a handful of followers built Scrud's Retreat by hand out of stone and rubberfern. Then they settled down to live through the winter. Scrud and her followers lived on that mountain for most of the rest of her days, only coming down for brief visits. To while away her time, she taught supplicants, tinkered with machinery, climbed on the mountain's cliffs, rode her tamed Winged Eel, and drank any Earth beer anyone brought her. She died on that mountain after seventy years at the age of 130, and was given a sky burial by Nordic Winged Eel, as was her request.

Accomplishments & Achievements

Scrud has been a champion of The Babel Virus since the moment she was infected. She was responsible for an outbreak of hundreds of thousands of simultaneous infections on Earth during the Earth's Fall. She was responsible for the infection of Titan Station, and for the safe spreading of the virus throughout Nordic Frog Beach.
Scrud was the first human to stop onto a habitable alien world. She and her crew were the ones to discover the Portal Network. She walked onto S.E.E.L. first and discovered Operations Center Alpha, the first definitive proof of extraterrestrial life. 
Scrud tamed a Nordic Winged Eel, and started a beastmaster tradition among the brave and foolish youths of Nordic Frog Beach.

Failures & Embarrassments

Scrud may have contributed to the Fall of Earth by spreading the Babel Virus to enough people to cause worldwide chaos.

Morality & Philosophy

Scrud was not an evangelist, but she was nonetheless active in spreading her philosophy throughout the world. She didn't often explicitly state her beliefs, but they were:

• Do what you want.
• Live for as long as you can.
• If someone tries to kill you or your friends, you try to kill them right back.
• Have fun while doing it.

Current Location

Scrud's Retreat

Species

Humans

Age

130 (dead)

Date of Birth

Nordic Frog Year -58 (2045 A.D.)

Gender

Female

Eyes

Dark and squinty

Hair

Grey, stringy

Skin Tone/Pigmentation

Pale and pitted