Felix Champlin is the hacker and communications specialist aboard The Scapegoat, played by Scott. Born in 2649 on New Lucerne, Felix has a prosthetic right leg (from the hip down) that causes him chronic pain, which he sometimes manages with drugs. He prefers machines to people, works from a foldout three-screen “data slab,” and is driven by one overriding goal: rescuing his brother.
Backstory
Felix’s younger brother, Petey Champlin, was a journalist and field medic working undercover for Blackout Press inside Omnitek Holdings, investigating the corporation’s prisoner conversion program under the pen name “Dox Ryker.” Felix, Petey, and two accomplices broke into Omnitek’s orbital data vault above Polyphn and discovered Operation Red Wing: Omnitek’s scheme to buy prisoner contracts and digitize the prisoners’ consciousness as AI test subjects, killing the bodies in the process. Petey was killed during the heist by a device that copies consciousness and destroys the body; his digitized mind remains trapped in Omnitek’s servers, running through nightmare simulations.
Felix escaped, changed his face and voice, took on a new name, and infiltrated Omnitek under a new identity to track the vault as it relocated. Roughly two years later, Felix, under his new identity, was assigned to an Omnitek unit called Echo 3, where he first met Thorne; the two ran several missions together before going their separate ways. Felix later hacked the mission applicant list that got him assigned to Dr. Elara Voss’s crew, not realizing she had already selected him independently. His goal in joining was to reach the vault, now relocated near Prometheon Technologies Station.
Powers and Growth
During the crew’s exploration of an alien digital space, Felix received knowledge directly from Dr. Elara Voss, gaining a bonus to his technical skill that applies specifically to alien-tech interfaces. He can manipulate alien gel-mold interfaces with his programming skill, and made a working copy of Buddy AI’s source code and personality after hacking it at Scrapjacks. That copy has since helped run the Scapegoat’s systems.
Gear
Felix carries a stun baton, a knife, and a Stauser pistol, and wears Secure Clothing for armor. His readied gear includes his dataslab, a line shunt, and a metatool.
Character Spotlights
Free Patreon bonus content exploring Felix’s early life covers his childhood discovery of a gift for hardware at a coastal electronics dump, and a teenage repair of his neighborhood’s water reclaimer that shaped his belief that systems fail because people stop asking the right questions.
Appears in: Ep 1, 9, 10, 11, 15, 18