Samus Aran from Metroid (Nintendo)

I’ll get this out of the way: Tam Connor was designed during my high school years around the same time as Sin.  While Sin started as a boomerang-hurling boy with a fairy friend (Legend of Zelda), Tam was the female bounty hunter in outer space (Super Metroid).  So, she is heavily influenced by one of the greatest female video game characters ever designed, Samus Aran.  Sin has changed the most and maybe I’ll do a deeper origin of him in the near future, but today is Tam Connor.

She began as a human lost in space and took on being a bounty hunter to survive.  I gave her an armored suit for a few months, but switched it to a strange outfit that had energy manipulation abilities.  She joined up with the immortals of Immortal Wars and a one of my original fantasy characters to make the Femme Fatales, which was a high school that has been tossed.  Tam went to bed for a few years while I designed Windemere and returned around the year 2000.

Samus Aran from Nintendo

Her return was stemmed from a desire to write a series where there are no humans.  Everyone was a type of alien and Earth was either a distant nuisance or not even mentioned.  This is where Tam Connor the human became Tam Connor the Dorian.  She still looks humanoid being bipedal and having four limbs.  Only I gave her fangs that can inject a paralytic into her enemy and energy-draining suction cups in her hands.  The Dorian race are energy vampires and they attempted to rule the galaxy, but were beaten back by the other races.  The Dorians realized their insatiable hunger was a problem, so they designed suits that absorb ambient energy and keep their hunger in check.  Tam has one of these suits, which makes for a few ‘suit is damaged’ scenes.

Her origin changed too.  Tam’s father was a bounty hunter who captured a fellow Dorian for a bounty.  He was seduced, they had sex, and the woman escaped.  She returned a year later to deliver a baby girl because she didn’t want to deal with her.  So, Tam grew up in the bounty hunting life and followed her father who always got by.  Eventually, he was killed by a bounty that Tam killed at the age of 10.  Her robotic nanny became her navigator and pilot after some fine-tuning and she set out to survive.  The story starts with Tam at age 21 and deciding to do more than get by.  Like Luke Callindor, her goal is to be great, but it’s to overshadow her father instead of be like him.  There’s a lot of parental issues with her and she could turn out to be a hate-fueled character.

I should point out the weapons here.  Tam’s series is unique for me because it is currently the only non-Windemere story.  It could be in the same galaxy or dimension, but she will never go there.  When the final battle of Windemere happens, Tam won’t be around unless I get a lot of people wanting her to be there.  The problem is that she has the sci-fi weaponry with various grenades, energy weapons, and futuristic technology.  Her weapons are called Gauntlets and they’re flexible gloves that run up to the elbow.  There is a slot on the forearm, which is where you load the ammo cartridge and these can vary in energy attacks.  Tam is a dual-wielder and carries a variety of ammo on her belt.  Her Dorian nature makes her an agility and speed fighter, so the laser fights should be entertaining.

The big question for me is what to do about her stories.  She began with a single series of short stories where she goes after the Top 10 bounties to prove herself.  After that I thought of a story where she was involved in an annual bounty hunter contest where they ‘hunt’ each other and some chosen criminals in a section of the universe.  Then came her being given a list of ‘criminals’, the rise of the Dorian nation, and a final story where her original enemy ‘The Parasites’ (Metroid!) rose up to threatened everyone.  Of course, Tam was painted as a traitor after the Dorian War and they have to let her out of jail to get her help.  I’m not sure how to run a lot of this.  A long, chapter-by-chapter story seems out of place with her.  In fact, I’m leaning a bit toward going the Conan the Barbarian route with Tam Connor.  Each book will be a collection of short stories that follow the same plotline, but can be read in any order.  I have time to figure this out, I guess.

So, there’s my space bounty hunter.  It’s nice to get one of these origins out to the public again.