HEX, CODEMANCER

The most prolific hacker in Angel City, Hex’s past is shrouded in mystery. He’s wanted by the ACPD, megacorps, and crime syndicates for a long list of “crimes” and grievances. His work can be found hidden deep in the code of thousands of servers across Angel City. There are few places on The Net his reach doesn’t extend and even fewer he doesn’t know about.

Hex was born to a poor family in the slums. His parents both worked long hours to support him and his younger sister Maria leaving them to their own devices for sometimes days at a time. Hex  spent those hours playing on the family computer, a gift from his programmer uncle.

Hex learned how to how to code before he learned to spell his own name. Programming comes to him more naturally than speaking. To  call him a savant would be greatly understating his ability. By the time he was 10, he had hacked into several high security servers of the Angel City government. When he showed his Dad he was proud of him, but also gave him a warning that would stick with him his entire life.

“These people think they own this city and the people in it. Never forget that they’re wrong, but never let them know that you know that.”

Hex’s Dad taught him a deep distrust of the government and those in power. He taught him about how his grandfather had been a revolutionary and fought for freedom and reform in their home country, and how the government imprisoned and executed him for it. He taught him about their family history and the history of Angel City. All of these lessons shaped his young mind and built up a deep hatred for the corrupt government and a passion for freedom and equality.

As he entered his teenage years, Hex’s hacking activity became more and more politically motivated. He searched the things the powerful wanted to hide and found them. During an election, he uncovered a corruption scandal involving a popular candidate for district and leaked the details to the press destroying their campaign. After seeing first hand the way his talents could create change in the city, he grew emboldened and started to take greater and greater risks to expose the powerful.

While trying to find dirt on Angel City’s largest  megacorp Omnis, Hex got caught by an advanced security protocol which managed to trace his encrypted connection back to his family home. Panicked, he told his Dad who told him to immediately wipe every possible trace of his activity from every device they owned and pack his things. He followed these instructions and then his Dad sent him and his sister to visit their uncle on the other side of the city. As he hugged Hex goodbye at the mag train station, he whispered something into his ear.

“Never stop fighting. Never look back.”

Those words still ring through Hex’s memory to this day. 

An Omnis private security force showed up at their front door about 30 minutes after his Dad got back from the mag train station and took him in for “questioning.” Hex hasn’t spoken to him since, but he’s never stopped looking.

Hex blamed himself for his father’s disappearance and fell into a deep depression for months. His Uncle did everything he could to try to help him work out of it, but his sense of guilt and self loathing were strong and he became more and more withdrawn. He would sometimes go days on end searching through encrypted Omnis databases looking for clues about where his Dad was. 

One day, after months of trying, he managed to get access to some max security clearance files from the Omnis Executive suite and he found something that would change his life forever…it was a report about an investigation into an underground organization that was running some kind of simulated fighting ring which was known on the streets as The Neuroscape. The report had very few details, but it explained that this fighting ring was suspected to be connected to two former dark web hackers who went by the aliases R3D and BLU3.

This caught Hex’s attention and he immediately started scouring The Net for more information. He searched for weeks and found almost nothing about this organization or R3D and BLU3 except for a few images of a mysterious symbol painted on walls throughout the city. It looked like a null symbol, but he couldn’t find any more information about what it meant or where they came from.

Hex continues to search for information about The Neuroscape to this day. Over the years he’s found rumors and theories here and there, but the mystery still haunts him.

The search for The Neuroscape helped pull Hex out of his depression. As he came back to life, he resumed his work uncovering corruption and stoking revolution in Angel City. Over time, he began to build a network of other hackers who shared similar goals and they started sharing information and working together to take down corrupt politicians and organize resistance movements in the slums of the city.

Inspired by the elusive symbol he had been searching for, he named this coalition Null Legion. As a symbol of the anonymity and equality of this group, Hex started wearing a mask emblazoned with the null symbol on it and releasing encrypted videos sharing their manifesto and motto.

“Unseen, unforgiving, unstoppable.”