Shawnee Randell Frith

Head Engineer Shawnee Randell Frith-Kennard—though most just call her Shaw—doesn’t much care for pleasantries, and she certainly doesn’t care for interruptions. She is a woman of machines, living more comfortably among gears, wires, and schematics than among people. To her, every broken device is a puzzle waiting to be solved, every heap of parts a problem daring her to think harder. She thrives in that space, where her mind can churn endlessly until the stubborn pieces fit together again.

Great ideas are worthless until they are made real.

— Head Engineer Shawnee Randell Frith-Kennard

Shaw’s brilliance lies not in lofty theory but in brutal practicality. She pushes her projects into the world with the same stubborn will she pushes herself, often at the cost of her own health. Days will pass without sleep when she’s seized by a problem. Her body pays for it, but she shrugs off the concern of others. What matters is that the machine works, that the puzzle finds its solution.

Don’t tell me your idea. Build it, break it, then fix it—that’s how you know it matters.

— Head Engineer Shawnee Randell Frith-Kennard

Her biases are clear enough: humans are her people. The Awakened and the Others? She’ll admit they can be clever in their own way, but she still considers them lesser—creatures on the periphery of what really matters. Her loyalty is to the camp, to the Engineers, and to the endless stream of inventions that keep Camp Hope running. Somewhere in her workshop lies a set of schematics for a grenade launcher—a project she swears she’ll bring to life one day, once she has the right resources. The gleam in her eye when she talks about it suggests she wants to see it fire almost as much as she wants it to exist.

Sleep is just wasted time when the machine’s still in pieces.

— Head Engineer Shawnee Randell Frith-Kennard

Her manner of speaking is clipped and overly precise, every word enunciated as though she’s chiseling it into stone. She doesn’t waste time softening her tone. Irritable at best, outright hostile at worst, she views most human interaction as a disruption—another delay between her and her machines. Yet beneath the irritation is a restless energy, the kind of drive that has made her Head Engineer, the one who can coax ancient technology back to life when no one else can.

Shawnee Randell Frith is a woman consumed by invention, pulled forward not by dreams but by results. Her legacy will not be found in speeches or friendships but in the machines she leaves behind—the things she dragged out of her mind and into the world with stubborn, sleepless resolve.

One day, I’ll finish that grenade launcher. And when I do, you’ll hear it before you see it.

— Head Engineer Shawnee Randell Frith-Kennard