Silas Kenning

Full Name: Silas Harmon Kenning
Occupation: Owner, Kenning Security Consulting
Alias(es): none
Species: Human, Uncursed (Irombian)
Allegiance: to the people of the Street
Religion: Agnostic
Social Status: Street Rat, but with substantial income and resources

Age: Late sixties
Eyes: Brown
Hair: White, tightly curled, peppered with some black and grey
Height: 160 cm (5'3")

Physical Notes: Slender, wiry build. His skin is a deep, rich brown, with darker age spots scattered along his hands and cheeks. His left leg is a cybernetic replacement from the knee down, chrome-plated steel and carbon-fiber composite.

Behavioral Notes: Crusty and cranky, but with a heart of gold. Reads a lot, including literary masters from all five continents. Computer genius. Doesn't sleep much.

Supernatural Abilities: None

Armament: Has a gun safe stocked with a wide assortment of weapons, from cold-iron hunting knives to semiautomatic shotguns to large-caliber pistols.


Personality and Appearance

Silas is a hard-nosed, hard-working, and practical man. He believes that "when you do the work, you'll understand the work," and therefore places more value on apprenticeship and other hands-on forms of learning than on formal education. He is an auto-didact who has learned most of what he knows through reading obsessively, and then putting the information into practice.

Silas believes in helping people who need it — not because of any sort of religious conviction, but because they're fellow sentient beings who are in trouble. He is deeply skeptical of "topsiders" who claim that they want to help the Street Rats, because most of these people aren't acting from pure motives and don't have the stomach to get down in the dirt and do something practical to make a difference. He believes in building systems from the bottom up, rather than the top down — which is why he created Kenning Security, as a way for the Runners' Guild and its customers to hold each other accountable, rather than depending on the government or some other powerful organization to impose order.

Background

An old runner who outlived all his enemies, Silas opened Kenning Security Consulting in order to bring more stability and fairness to the world of the Street.

Silas used to live in the same apartment building as Callie Linder. She tried to steal from him when she was nine years old, because she had heard that he had money and she needed food and medicine for her mom. Silas's tripwires caught her, and rather than turn her in to the authorities, Silas gave her a job. Over the years she became his apprentice, learning everything he could teach her about being a runner.

Current Activities

Kenning Security Consulting is the impartial arbiter of all business involving the Runners' Guild. He brokers contracts, keeps records of all the deals, holds funds and merchandise in escrow, and makes sure that clients and runners alike fulfill their contracts fairly. If you try to cheat someone, Silas will expose you to the rest of the community — and there's nowhere you can hide where he can't find you. Inhabitants of the Street see him as a combination of a godfather, a middle-man, and a guardian angel. Everyone from Malcolm ard'Valos to the lowest Street Rat trusts him as an honest, square dealer — and everyone knows not to cross him, too.

Organizational Membership

Silas is a member of the Runners' Guild. While he doesn't do missions anymore, everyone in the Guild knows him and treats him with a respect bordering on reverence.

Home

Silas lives at Kenning Security Consulting, his warehouse-cum-fortress on Street level. His loft overlooks the vast server floor where his computer network is housed.

Known Allies

Known Enemies

  • None (he outlived them all)

Story Appearances

The Lost and the Least

Sources

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Author's Notes

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