Karrie Norton

Karrie Norton, known to her Unitologist handlers only as Vandal, was an engineer whose actions opened the way for the Necromorph outbreak that consumed Titan Station in 2511. A recent convert to the Church of Unitology, she was given a secret assignment she did not understand, and by the time she grasped what the Church had made her do, the Sprawl was already falling. Her last hours were spent trying to undo the disaster she had set in motion.

Origins#

Karrie Norton was born in space, aboard a colony ship bound for the world of Borealis, and she had never set foot on planets such as Earth or Mars. By 2511 she was working as an engineer and had recently joined the Church of Unitology. Eager to prove her devotion to the faith, she accepted a secret assignment from the Church aboard Titan Station, the city known as the Sprawl.

The sabotage of the Sprawl#

Shortly after arriving in the Government Sector, Karrie was contacted by Tyler Radikov, the man who would direct her work. He told her that her code name was Vandal and that under no circumstances was she to reveal her real name to anyone she met. A voice filter disguised her identity, concealing even her gender.

Tyler set her to vandalizing power boxes in rooms throughout the station's core systems, work that would disable communications and cut power across parts of the Sprawl. When Karrie asked why she was being made to carry out these particular tasks, Tyler told her only that she was not authorized to know. She completed the sabotage without understanding its purpose.

The outbreak#

With the work done, the first Necromorphs began to appear. Karrie was directed toward a tram to reach another sector, and on the way she received a message from the Unitologist Daina Le Guin, who told her that she had just unleashed the Necromorphs aboard the Sprawl and that her death would be glorious. Karrie answered that the Church would pay for what it had done.

She was then contacted by an outraged Director Hans Tiedemann, who had traced the acts of sabotage to her RIG. Karrie apologized, explaining that she had not known her tasks would harm the Sprawl, and promised to try to fix the damage. Tiedemann ordered her to restore power to the quarantine seals on one of the crossover tubes, and she hesitantly agreed.

Tyler made contact again, and though Karrie suspected he had left her for dead, he claimed he too had been kept ignorant of the Church's plans and proposed they work together to escape. She agreed. Working with directions from both Tiedemann and Tyler, she was tasked with locking down the station's doors, a job that carried her across several sectors. When she finally reached her objective and cut the power, she learned that Tyler had deceived her once more: rather than sealing the Sprawl, she had locked its bulkheads open, allowing the Necromorphs to spill from the Government Sector into the Public Sector. She cursed his name.

Death at the reactor core#

Tiedemann ordered Karrie to the reactor core to prevent a meltdown. When she arrived she found a giant Necromorph wound in and around the core. She fought the creature, and near the end of the struggle it tried to drag her down beneath the reactor. Wounded and stripped of her helmet, she managed to break free, but she was too badly hurt to go on and slumped to the ground. She tried to reach Tiedemann with word of her success and a plea for help, but no reply came.

Some time later only her helmet remained where she had lain, with a trail of blood leading away from it. Her drifting corpse was among the dead left on the Sprawl.

Character#

As a new convert, Karrie at first seemed eager to prove her loyalty to the Church, but she renounced it the moment she understood what it had tricked her into doing. She declared that she would tell everyone what had happened and that she was willing to testify against the Church to Hans Tiedemann. Though she spoke often of her exhaustion and of how slim her chances of survival had become, she was remorseful and wholly determined to fix her mistake and stop the Necromorphs from spreading, even at the cost of her own life.

For all her resolve she was also somewhat naive and easily manipulated, trusting Tyler Radikov again after he claimed ignorance of the Church's true aims. She accepted his help and remained friendly with him through the crisis, appreciating his humor and asking about his life on Mars. Only when he betrayed her a final time did her anger surface, and she swore that she would kill him.