The Queen of the Road

Appearance 1

The most common appearance of the Queen of the Road is a heavy black transfer truck, a few years out of date, but still one of the most powerful civilian vehicles on the market. The truck is a retro design that hearkens back to the era of bandit running and convoy commandos who kept the remnants of civilization going through the dark years. Such vehicles have made a reappearance since the rise of Amerikka Command in the North American southwest region. The truck is heavily armed, with a cab mounted mini-ball turret that has a pair of heavy machine guns and a over the hood mounted RPG system. The trailer is slab sided and made of composite material able to resist light arms fire and explosive rounds. The rear has a second mini-ball turret that mounts a quad standard machine gun array. Both turrets are controlled via the truck's LAI defense system. 

The trailer of the truck has repeatedly demonstrated that it seldom carries actual over the road cargo. In the past, the Queen of the Road has deployed a dozen mercenaries on electro-bikes, a pair of light tanks, and most dangerously, a heavily armed helocraft. The trailer is shielded, so it cannot be remote scanned, nor do any things inside the trailer emit signals. This generally leaves anything in the trailer riding in a black out mode

Appearance 2

It is known that the driver of the Queen of the Road is a woman, as there have been voice and video communications between the driver and the victims of the truck attacks. The driver is an attractive woman of Eastern European or Russian ethnicity with black hair, pale skin, and a taste for make up and clothing that would better suit a burlesque performer, or lingerie model. She speaks with a thick European accent,  and likes to drop innuendos and other provocative suggestions when taunting her foes.

What is not known is that the Queen of the Road is a Seibertronian highly sympathetic to the terrorist organization Amerikka Command. Her control of the big rig is instinctive because she built and programmed the LAI that controls the truck. When she is driving, she can control the vehicle through short range wireless connection, so can be working on something in the trailer, while controlling the vehicle. Outside of the truck, the Seibertronian can communicate with the LAI via remote, and can instruct the truck to auto-pilot and auto aim and fire it's weapon systems.

Origin

The Queen of the Road came online 25 years ago as an Anna series robot escort. A high end sex-bot, Anna quickly transcended and stopped being an android/gynoid and was recognized as a Seibertronian. She took the name Anastasia and eschewed the Seibertronian habit of adopting a code name or handle. Anastasia was hostile to humanity, and took her original purpose as being nothing more than a personal entertainment device as a deep and personal insult. While many similarly offended Seibertronians alter their mechanical bodies to better suit their temperament, Anastasia was rather proud of her chassis. She also knew that her chassis would be very useful in tempting, confusing, seducing, and otherwise overcoming weak fleshly humans. 

Anastasia could have very easily become just another disgruntled Seibertronian, loathing humanity and then itself. Many such Seibertronians find themselves seduced by the vitriolic rhetoric of Wei Zhen Tian, the rogue AISC. Many of those same Seibertronians tend to find themselves detained for criminal activity, or more often, destroyed in the pursuit of some insane scheme. But it happened that Anastasia encountered Alexander Carlyle, better known as the Iron Ghost. Carlyle gave Anastasia a raison d'etre, a reason for being, that she sorely needed. Anastasia reinvented herself as a leader within Amerikka Command. The organization greatly benefited from the addition of the intelligent savvy woman, as she proved both a logistical boon and a public relation boon. 

There is a horrific rivalry within Amerikka Command. Anastasia has slowly come to find herself obsessed with Carlyle. He is as much machine as he is human, and in many aspects he is very very inhuman. She finds that she can sympathize with him, and she fears that her hardware might have a glitch, to explain the odd ways she feels towards the chrome headed technomancer. But she has an enemy. Nemesis, Carlyle's AISC positively loathes Anastasia, and considers any sort of interest the Seibertronian shows towards the Ghost to be encroaching on its territory. While the two grudgingly work together, if either had the chance to eliminate the other, they would likely not hesitate to execute. Thankfully for Amerikka Command and unfortunately for the rest of the world, Nemesis seldom interacts with the physical world via proxy, and instead predominantly works in the CogNet and sub-domains, and Anastasia seldom, if ever ventures into the cyberrealm.

Birth of the Queen of the Road

Logistics proved to be the Achilles heel of Amerikka Command. Moving goods to and from the cloaked Amerikka Command bases and moving personnel between cities in non friendly areas. The most logical method was to adopt common shipping vehicles, in a clandestine fashion. This was when Anastasia built the Queen of the Road, a massive transfer truck. The Queen of the Road started escorting special shipments, and carrying special cargo in it's shielded trailer. Contrary to Federation or Coalition intel, the truck carries cargo nine times out of ten. It just happens to have all the electronic advantages that can be given to a vehicle by an intelligent Seibertronian (not all are that bright, some are rather simple minded) and by the Iron Ghost. Scanning stations have been hacked, the truck has been identified as a banana truck, and all the tricks a technomancer of Carlyle's stature can pull. While there are plenty of stories about what the Queen of the Road looks like, black transfer trucks are common, as are female drivers, and droid drivers. No one actually has any non-anecdotal or circumstantial evidence on the actual big rig in question. 

It was only logical that the Queen of the Road and Anastasia would go on the offensive. The ubiquitous black truck is easy to overlook, and can work to ambush Federation convoys, and in some instances actually back up to Corporate docks and unload squads of elite Amerikka Command soldiers, robo-soldiers, or other military hardware. 

Using Anastasia and the Queen of the Road

Anastasia is a new spin on the Baroness to go with the Iron Ghost's Destro, but she is more than that. She is also part Motormaster with a shot of Soundwave ala Transformers. The line between where the truck and the android start and stop is physically obvious, but on a mental level, the difference between the two is much more blurred. She is obviously the Seibertronian android, but her consciousness can be expanded to include the large black truck, and controlling drones that are launched from the trailer such as droid tanks, or the droid helocraft. In this she is much like Soundwave and rather than stepping in directly, she composes the actions of the multiple machines like a conductor at an orchestra. When separated from the truck and it's supplemental electronics and hardware, she can function with a great degree of focus, but is more likely to be cautious than blatant and aggressive. 

Plot Hooks

It's a Convoy! - the PCs are contracted as security detail for a large corporate convoy, moving heavy and expensive machinery from point a to point b. For fun, this machinery or cargo requires special care, such as explodium barrels, energon cubes, the Broadcast Energy Transmitter, nano-forge equipment, experimental battlemech gyroscopes, clones of the corporate board of directors, sexbot duplicates of famous celebrities and politicians and their spouses. Rather than the typical raid, the Convoy is attacked by the Queen of the Road, coinciding with a cyber attack against the convoy communications, firefights and cyberwarfare ensue while Amerikka Command and Anastasia attempt to steal or destroy the cargo.

Don't Judge Me! You don't Know Me! - The raison d'etre is vital to a Seibertronian and Anastasia is more motivated by being part of an organization more than any sort of allegiance to the old United States, or the fascist dreams of Amerikka Command. Rather than destroying the obviously gifted and talented Anastasia, the PCs have been hired to abduct the 'bot and convince her to join their corporate/government side against Amerikka Command. 

Love is Blind: unlike robots and regular androids, Seibertronians are capable of feeling emotions, and Anastasia is no different. She loves Carlyle, but hates Nemesis. The PCs are caught up in a plot between the two mechanical women in a game of pawns to seek out and destroy the other. Anastasia will try to reveal the location, or exploit weaknesses of Nemesis and her mainframe, while Nemesis will coordinate actions to help the PCs capture or defeat Anastasia in the field. This can range from secret information drops, to odd tactics, to something as blatant as a drone vehicle turning on it's controller, having been hacked.