Hopper Morrison

Hopper Morrison
Personal
Affiliation	Black Warriors Morrison's Extractors
Profile
Position(s)	Pirate leader
Profession	MechWarrior

King Hopper Morrison was the founder and leader of Morrison's Extractors, one of the most rapacious pirate bands in the thirty-first century.

Physical description

Hopper Morrison is described as a tall, gaunt man. His thick black hair is kept to a short buzz and a small gold crow is tattooed on his right cheek. He often wears dark leathers and carries a Star League-era pistol on his hip.

History

Morrison began his career as a company commander in the Black Warriors Pirate group of the Circinus Federation. In 3032, his men stumbled on a small cache of lostech on an isolated planet while resting there between raids. Though it wasn't a major find, the cache included BattleMechs, some of them with Star League-era technology. Rather than return to the Federation with their booty, Morrison and his battalion deserted, keeping the contents of the cache for themselves and founding their own pirate group called Morrison's Extractors. They then proceeded to search for a suitable world to establish a base of operations.

By 3040, Morrison led his renegades to a Periphery planet called Dijonne, which he renamed Pain. It soon became the Extractors main base, but unlike other pirate groups, the planet’s population was generally left alone, with the pirates only charging them for protection. Hopper would later acquire a second planet, the generally abandoned Port Veil which he would name The Rack.

Over the next decade, Morrison would stage many successful raids against Lyran worlds. The fruits of his efforts would produce two modern ‘Mech regiments along with the ire of the Lyran High Command. Following the Clan invasion’s postponement, Morrison and his band were prioritized for destruction. Even Archon Katrina Steiner offered a sizable bounty and Lyran military support to whoever could deliver Hopper's head. Time and again, however, the Extractors would successfully escape the grasp of Lyran forces.

Morrison’s enemies weren’t limited to only law-abiding peoples. His Extractors fought whoever he determined if it produced desired outcomes. For example, Morrison’s Extractors would becoem responsible for destroying two battalions of Simonson's Cutthroats in 3056. While most of the survivors ended up joining the Extractors, a few stragglers successfully fled, vowing revenge against Morrison.

By 3059, Morrison’s ambitions expanded to covet new worlds. He became determined to either shatter or dominate the neighboring Rim Collection, an aspiration he certainly had the means to accomplish. However, the mercenary group Able's Aces were his main obstacle as they were contracted by the Rim Collection to provide security across its handful of worlds. Morrison’s efforts to whittle away the Aces managed to recruit two of Aces to secretly support his cause; one of these was an intelligence officer who remained in the Aces as a mole while the other was a skilled MechWarrior believed to have been killed in action.

Caldarium

On the planet Caldarium, Extractor forces ambushed and destroyed a full company of the Aces and their aerial support in the battle of Birdsong Ridge. While scavenging destroyed machines, Morrison recruited one of the surviving Aces, Benjamin Rassor, who accepted the offer as a “simple contractual agreement”. Morrison would give him a Mad Cat OmniMech as the price of his betrayal and employ him to lead future efforts against his former unit.

Gillfillan’s Gold

By 3061, Morrison had destabilized the Rim Collection enough to consider an attack on its capital word, Gillfillan’s Gold. By playing individual planets against the others or even making them pay for protection, the Extractors sought to make the Aces lose their security contract or even shatter the Collection outright. Having conducted a number of such maneuvers, Morrison determined that time was ripe to strike the Rim Collection’s capital and fulfill his ultimate goal one way or another.

However, Major Jerry Able, leader of the Aces, had suspected that Hopper had become more ambitious than the average pirate. His attacks were less so for looting and more so for political outcomes, giving Major Able some insight into Morrison’s next move. The Aces anticipated Morrison’s move and orchestrated an ambush on Gillfillan's Gold. The ruse succeeded and in 3062 the Extractors were routed from the planet. Incidentally, the Aces’ success was in part due to Benjamin Rassor’s brother, Harley Rassor, who had only recently been recruited into the unit.

The Rack

Soon after, the Aces followed the pirates to The Rack, liberating the planet and destroying most of the Extractors in the process, including the traitor, Benjamin. However, Hopper's King Crab ‘Mech escaped the battle, apparently deprting from the planet thanks to a hidden Leopard class DropShip.

Personality

Morrison was a greedy, ruthless, and cruel man. He was considered the perfect pirate lord: fearless in battle, but only fighting when he believed that doing so will yield considerable profit. Morrison has also proven to be very cunning: his recruitment of two Able's Aces members serves as recent testament to this characteristic.

His determination to acquire great wealth is rumored to be to compensate for a childhood spent in poverty. Other rumors hint that Morrison is mentally unstable, though he apparently has had no problems commanding his people. Additionally, his restrain with the population of Dijonne/The Pain shows than even the bloodthirsty King could be pragmatic and tolerant.

A more trivial rumor about Hopper Morrison is that he renamed Dijonne to The Pain simply because he couldn't spell Dijonne, though this tidbit remains unconfirmed.

BattleMechs

Hopper Morrison piloted a King Crab..

Notes

• Morrison always carries a neural whip.
• Most of the fierce reputation of the Extractors was due to the natural cruelty of Morrison himself.

Bibliography

• The Periphery, 2nd Edition
• Field Manual: Mercenaries, Revised
• By Blood Betrayed (novel)
• Planet Digest: Pain in Shrapnel #10