Who doesn’t feel their blood stir when they hear Free Trader Beowulf’s distress call? I’ve attempted Solo Traveler Campaigns before, and…now I am back to try again. I’m using Mongoose 2nd Edition, plus some of Zozer’s solo rules and also Mythic GME, and playing in Fantasy Grounds to assist with table generation, combat tracking if I can’t avoid every fight, and record keeping. Home brew setting. Starships are TL 12 because I want to be able to use those in the core rule book. Other technologies range from TL 8 to TL 10. And while I let ChatGPT generate her crewmates, I rolled my MC myself and she will be played with my usual snark, because that’s the way I roll.
7B87A7 to start
Art 0, Athletics 0, Drive 0, Animal 0
Dad says what you gonna do with your life?
So yeah, my name’s Nise. Nise Kalil. I was born out here in RimCon, a little world called Pinter Patel, and as you can tell, my family is from PanGal, Sagitar stock. Pinter Patel? What can I say? Lots of livestock, ranching. Dairy cattle, of course. At least when grandfather was alive, now…yeah, after secession for beef as well. Beautiful sunsets. Never realized how beautiful til I saw some on other worlds. Pinter Patel’s are the best! But, perhaps I’m biased. ‘Home is where the heart is’ after all, so goes the Treburne saying.
1d3-1 siblings
Family? In addition to my parents, my older sister, Naanya, got married while I was at University. They’ve got two daughters and is about six months along with number three. I hope it’s a boy! Dad always wanted a son but so far, nothing but girls! He used to joke about going drinking with the bull in the barn sometimes just to get away from all the estrogen in the house! Poor guy!
My younger sister, Shiya, got married last year to a guy named Jiten. I took some leave to attend the wedding. Beautiful ceremony where they did the usual spiel about Founding a new household, sowing the seeds of two different families and nurturing the next generation. Blah, blah, blah, but the party was great! There were these friends of Jiten from Karsgrad’s Ridge, Abeka and Kusi. He’d met them in the army and these two guys, by the Founders they could dance! Oh, the three of us, and Abeka’s brother, Jax, partied all night. I wonder if I might be able to look them up next time I’m there? Anyway, she’s prego too. So, yeah, I’m feeling old. Just call me Aunt Nise. Or maybe, fun Aunt Nise?
Term 1: University
Art 0 (becomes art 1), Astrogation 1. Edu +1
Graduate with honors (start career with a promotion roll, so two promotion rolls term 1)
End university with Art 1, Astrogation 2, Edu +2
Prank went bad, got a Rival
Anyway, I was always a sharp kid, good at school, decent at my chores, but I spent way too much time dreaming of far off places, painting worlds from my imagination. Dad was really worried I might never make anything of myself, but I absolutely did not want to just be a rancher’s wife! Not when there is a whole universe to see!
I kind of got the bug for living in the space lanes when I was sixteen. Dad had started selling beef cattle a few years before, and a trader ship had landed outside the ranch to pick up fifty head. Well dad and the captain went off to town, dad was going to show him the sites, and this ship’s hand was supposed to load up the cattle. Well, he didn’t know the first thing about cows, and wasn’t firm enough, and they busted out of the guide rails he’d set up. Then he freaked out, and nearly got trampled, but I sounded the horns and spooked them, then he and I got on a couple of dad’s bikes and I coached him how to get them properly corralled and back to the ship. We got them loaded shortly before dad got back, and he told me about living on a Free Trader, seeing different worlds, different sunsets. And I thought that sounded…really good.
So…I talked my dad into letting me apply to university. Now, you know there aren’t any universities in RimCon, so I applied to every university I could in Humanis and PanGal space to study veterinary science. Yeah, I wanted to be an Astrogator or ship’s Engineer, but what university is going to train a foreigner for those skills? Well the universities on Owusu, Muller and Espinosa were the only three that extended invitations, and….well, who wants to share a bedroom with eleven strangers? I tossed the two invites from Humanis in the trash and booked transit to Espinosa. Turns out, my friend Enrique Sanchez had also been accepted for Veterinary studies there, but while I was minoring in Art, he was minoring in Athletics. We really never had much in common before, but two kids travelling 26 weeks across Pan Gal together, booking ship after ship, sharing a stateroom to save money? By the time with got to Espinosa we were thick as thieves
It’s a good thing too because Pan Gal? Yeah, they think their friendly and open minded, but no. Not unless you’re a non human maybe. I was assigned a dorm room with a girl named Sabrina Felipe, a fellow Veterinary student, Maran stock like Enrique, and at first, I thought we’d get along alright, but…you know, Iearned to read after the language unification act and RimCon uses a lot of Humanis words, maybe as many as it does PanGal words, so it is plain as day where Enrique and I are from, even with 26 weeks to figure out how PanGal’s say things. So, ‘Hey traitor! Who let you in?’ does not exactly get a friendship off to a good start. So…yeah, fun times at University from day one.
Well, I met with my student advisor, Doctor Jose Casano, to help plot out my class schedule and as we were selecting classes, we accidentally hit Astrogation 101 while trying to click Art 101. Turns out, there was no block on my enrollment. Yeah, a RimCon can’t be admitted for Astrogation or Engineering, but you can certainly take the classes…and with Dr Casano’s help, even discreetly change majors. So I did. And so did Enrique after I told him about it that afternoon. Yeah, Casano probably shouldn’t have let us, but he is a pacifist and very sympathetic to the RimCon secession.
So Enrique and I had class after class together, but otherwise, I was on my own. Enrique at least had his teammates on the Football squad to pal around with. Art majors tend to be a little more private? Or sensitive? I know I certainly got a lot more sensitive being called ‘flesh eater’, ‘blood drinker’ and ‘savage’ after I let slip that my family raises cattle for meat as well as milk. Being friendless was lonely, stressful, and it did wonders for my GPA with nobody to hang out with, no party invitations and not much else to do but paint, study, and run Astrogation simulations.
Well, after about three years of being a social pariah, I’d had enough! One day, Sabrina was really getting under my skin and…no, I shouldn’t have done it, but I did. She and her friends were having a big end of semester party, and she was in charge of bringing drinks. She had this punch she liked to mix, a red punch, kind of sugary with a bit of alcohol, but a deep red. Well…a bit of starch based thickener, and a tiny dose of feromias, the synthetic bloodclotter, and mixing it into the punch made something with the taste and texture of, I don’t know, a blood wine?
I wish I had seen how it went down, but if I had ever once been invited to anything by anyone, I’d have never pulled such a prank. I hear there were people puking all over the place in disgust, and it took less than an hour before I was brought up before a disciplinary committee and being recommended for expulsion. By the void! The party wasn’t even over and they’d woken the dean to consider kicking me out!
Thankfully, he delayed the decision for a couple of days and a hearing was held. Dr Casano pleaded my case, pointing out my superior grades and that I’d never caused any trouble before, and the committee decided to let me finish out my degree.
My new roommate was a girl named Eliza Torres. She didn’t talk much, so we got along alright. She didn’t seem to have any friends either, but I got the impression she was just a loner. She was two years behind me, but I think she ultimately ended up in the scout service as well. Relay pilot I believe. Suits her.
Anyway, I graduated top of my class. Legit valedictorian but they couldn’t really give that to a foreigner…not in Astrogation, anyway. Enrique graduated as well, though…he stopped talking to me after the incident. His teammates gave him a lot of grief over what I’d done, and he even yelled at me a good twenty minutes when I tried to ask what was wrong.
We didn’t even return home together though we had big plans to stop and explore several of the ports we’d seen on our way to Espinosa. It was a lonely trek back home. Middle passage. Berthing with people I don’t know every single jump! Whew!
Every now and then, I’ll see Enrique in Port. He astrogates a ship called Velvet Swift. The most I can ever get out of him is a hateful look. So…I guess that’s better than being ignored?
Anyway, that was University for me.
7B87D7
Term 2 Scouts
Pilot (spacecraft)0, survival 0, mechanic 0, Astrogation 0 (NA), Vacc Suit 0, Gun Combat 0
Initial Commission. Succeeds Gain Vacc Suit 1, roll Jack of Trades 1 as bonus skill
Term skill Persuasion 1
End of term promotion succeeds
Gain Streetwise 1,
Improved relationship, gain Ally
Oh, that picture? Yeah, taken on a beach on Pikwaro. Yeah, you can tell from the giant mushrooms in the background that it had been a Spug world. Lots of fighting there during the 2nd and 3rd before Humanis….maybe secured it? Anyway, that guy I’m with? That’s Apfi. Humanis Marine. He was assigned as my security escort while I was doing survey work on the planet. We spent a lot of time together…just the two of us in a rover, me cataloguing ridge lines, collecting plant and animal samples for the labs, but mostly just mapping things out. Camping out in the wilds, even checking out an old Spug tunnel…that was ..creepy as hell. Apfi wasn’t the least bit worried, but he had that rifle of his up the whole time. Normally, I hate ground work, but I was available so I ended up dirtside for nearly six months. When an actual scientist arrived to replace me, Apfi requested a two week leave to show me the sights in Xavi, THE main city on Pikwaro. And, people sometimes say Humanis are serious, and hard to read…bullshit! That guy knew every bar, concert venue and sports arena in the city. We were blowing and going! We’d hear some band performing and throw ourselves onto the dance floor all night, then get up early the next morning, watch a football match …and they play rough in Humanis! Then, we’d go to the gym where we ran into a couple of women from his unit who were off duty. He’d been showing me some moves over the past few months whenever the weather wouldn’t let us do any field work, so he was able to talk me into wrestling them, and .. okay, that was a mistake! Gerti nearly ripped my arm off before I remembered to cry ‘Yield’! Oh, she was tough! And then we’d hit another dance club. Probably the funnest two weeks of my life! But then his leave was over. He went back to his unit and I got a better assignment, plotting potential mineral deposits in Belt 784. Glad I didn’t end up pregnant, but it wasn’t for his lack of trying. Not that we’d have gotten married or anything. I can’t imagine trying to raise a family on a Humanis Marine base. Sharing the kitchen and living room with five other families, all with kids. Then sending the kiddos to boarding school instead of teaching them at home? Communal living is not for me! But…we’ve stayed in touch. He’s a Captain now.
“How’d I get assigned to study a formerly alien inhabited world? Yeah, I don’t really know anything about Xenobiology. Never took a class in it. Sure, I did read that book by Dr Fletcher on Hydrissians, and the one by Dr Akuna about Spugs, and the one by Dr Nguyen about Mephalians, and the one by Dr Kabil about Drantak, but not seriously. I figure, read the one book on a topic by the top researcher in a field gives at least some casual familiarity, but I don’t know much more than the average person. But basically, I was just the nearest scout available, and they figured from my transcripts that I wouldn’t be hopelessly lost on all of those analysis tools that the previous team left behind. But I mean, they had manuals. How hard is it to read a manual? Anyone could have done it.”
Term 3 Scouts
Rolled Gun Combat 1 (slug)
Promotion Pilot (space craft) 1, Promotion bonus skill Mechanic 1
Exemplary service, bonus on. Muster roll
The ribbon? Yeah, I was supposed to sew that onto my dress uniform but never did. Not because I didn’t earn it but because I knew it would just hang in the closet, so I framed it instead. Yeah, so as I said, I was basically a surveyor for the CSS. Plotting asteroids, calculating comet trajectories to ensure a planet won’t get struck by something floating around its sun’s orbit after a thousand years or so. Routine stuff. But, you know, in space, there is a lot of ..space. I know, duh! In space there is space, that’s why they call it space. But what I mean is that, there are belter colonies and private, corporate stations all over the place and…not all of them are on the books. And sometimes, they aren’t where they are supposed to be. Now, Belt 793 is supposed to be off limits. A little too close to Spug space and neither Humanis nor the Conclave want to see a sixth Spug war. But I’m out there surveying, and come across this massive mining platform with two Far Traders, RimCon registry, just sitting out there where nobody is supposed to be. Well, of course I flag it, but then I get a sensor tag from a pair of interceptors. By the void, how does someone get fighter interceptors this far out? Someone high up in somebody’s navy is backing this little pirate platform! So I bug out, fast as I can, but they are hot on my tail. Thankfully, I had skimmed right when I entered the system so, after a few months on just maneuver drive, I still had a pretty full fuel tank. Not enough to warp to safety, but enough that an hour of skimming would make up the difference. So I head to the giant. This is one of the few belts that has one as far as we have documented, and I’m skimming while dodging pulse fire. I take a hit to stern and have to lock everything down, but nothing critical is blown …just the fresher, the lav, the mess…and one of the staterooms. Thankfully, not the one I’d been using. But I skip system, get back to Humanis space, put into port and report my findings to the local admiralty to deal with. Spent a lot of time with the hangar crew helping fix up that ship. That mission could have gone much, much worse. Got a commendation for it. Not sure if the platform was dismantled or not. Could still be out there.
Leave service rank 3, 4 rolls, one at +1
30,000 cr, weapon, ship share, scout ship
Nise Kalil
Start age 30
7B87D7
Art (visual media) 1, athletics 0, Drive 0, Animal 0, streetwise 1, Astrogation 2, Pilot (spacecraft) 1, survival 0, mechanic 1, Vacc Suit 1, gun combat (slug) 1, persuade 1, Jack of Trades 1,
A rival from university, a “romantic” ally, 30,000 cr, Ship share, a scout ship?
–
Tweaked background skills from Carouse and Streetwise to Drive 0 and Animal 0 to suit developing backstory
–
Oh yeah? RimCon as a language? Yeah, with both PanGal and Humanis worlds in the Confederacy, the council passed a language unification act to marry the two tongues together without forcing half the population to abandon every word they know and their total sentence structure. Personally, I think it was a stupid law to pass. Instead, we should be pushing the Conclave to certify a single unified galactic language. Yeah, that might never happen, but my parents and grandfather grew up speaking PanGal. I learned RimCon so there are words I’d be taught in school that my parents had not only never heard, but couldn’t even pronounce. PanGal doesn’t even have glottal stops! But yeah, the Conclave might not get to it for another fifty years anyway, if ever. I just think it would suck to have three generations in one household each having learned a different language as kids, and not fully understanding what each other is trying to say. Anyway, that’s just my opinion. And what do I know? I’m just some…idealistic ex scout from the Conclave, so of course I have high hopes for what I think they should do, but I don’t have a vote. Even Rimward altogether doesn’t have a vote. Not in the Assembly anyway.
–
The Crew of the Wayward Lark
Chief Engineer: Mara Kade
Age: 39
Background: Belter / industrial tech
STR 8 / DEX 6 / END 9 / INT 9 / EDU 8 / SOC 5
Skills
Engineering-2, Mechanic-1, Vacc Suit-1, Gun Combat-1 (shotgun), Electronics-1, Pilot 1, Astrogation 1, Carouse 0
Personality
Tough, practical, not polished
Direct, blunt, not social
Distrusts “clean hands” types
Loyal once you prove useful
(Bickers with her roommate, Lysa)
“If it breaks, Mara fixes it. If she can’t fix it, you’re in trouble.”
“So, about the crew. Mara is RimCon, Humanis stock, and she’s got that serious “put up or shut up” Humanis attitude. The hair style too! Why her parents named her Mara, I can’t even guess. I figured they had to be hardliners against the secession given how she is. But if I can just get her to crack…just a little. Humanis types know how to party! You can’t stay that wound up all the time and not cut loose!”
Medic / Steward Hybrid: Lysa Chen
Age: 32
Background: Clinic-trained, some corporate experience
STR 5 / DEX 8 / END 7 / INT 10 / EDU 10 / SOC 7
Medic-2, Steward-1, Admin-1, Carousing-1, Gun Combat-0, Streetwise 1, Advocate 1, Drive 0
Capable, observant, socially competent
Calm under pressure
Notices everything
Keeps opinions to herself until needed
🔁 Redundancy
Can:
assist with cargo/passenger management
handle basic admin duties
Not helpless in a crisis
(Pretends she’s only Voss’s friend out of guilt, but it’s all an act)
“Lysa keeps us alive—and keeps paying customers happy enough to come back”
Chen, she’s…odd. She’s Treborn, and I mean actual Treborn. She seems lonely all the time, like she doesn’t really feel like she fits in. But she won’t talk about it. Puts on a happy face, makes a great meal, passengers love her, but she’s got something eating her up inside.
Deckhand / Utility Spacer: Jax Rourke
Age: 27
Background: Drifter, worked multiple ships
STR 9 / DEX 8 / END 8 / INT 7 / EDU 6 / SOC 6
Vacc Suit-1, Zero-G-1, Mechanic-1, Gun Combat-1 (SMG), Streetwise-1, Broker 1, Survival 0
Easygoing, adaptable
Knows how to stay out of trouble
Knows when to run
(Sexual Partner- secretly hooking up with Mara)
“If something needs doing and no one else is assigned—it’s Jax.”
“Jax is Humanis stock, but those long dreads of his tell you he’s RimCon in an instant! He is bold, confident beyond his skills, works hard, plays harder. Oh my God! Get him in a club and he dances like there is no tomorrow, and he is always down for a pickup game against another crew no matter the sport!”
Captain Arlen Voss
Age: 46
Background: Career Merchant (7 terms)
Reputation: Reliable, cautious, not flashy—but still in the game
STR: 6 / DEX: 7 / END: 7 / INT: 10 / EDU: 11 / SOC: 8
Pilot-2, Astrogation-2, Broker-2, Admin-2, Engineering-1, Vacc Suit-1, Gun Combat-1 (slug pistol), Streetwise-1, Carousing-1, Jack-of-all-Trades-1, Diplomat 1, Electronics 1, Medic 1, Art 0
Career History (7 Terms Summary)
Early Terms (1–2)
Started as junior crew / purser’s assistant
Learned cargo, manifests, and the real economics of trade
Mid Career (3–5)
Promoted to pilot and trade officer
Ran routes between:
Mishindi’s Loom
Karsgrad’s Ridge
Learned: where margins are real, where people lie
Late Career (6–7)
Became captain (or acting captain), Took on debt share in a ship, Lost one crew member on a bad run (important detail)
Current Situation
Commands (or co-owns) a Far Trader
Carries moderate debt
Keeps a tight crew
Avoids:
unnecessary risks
Thornmark unless profit justifies it
Smart, competent, but not physically imposing
Patient, Practical, Reads people well
Knows when a deal is bad
Risk-averse (sometimes misses big opportunities)
Holds grudges quietly
Doesn’t fully trust new crew… yet
(Openly jealous of Jax’s youth, vigor- or perhaps his secret affair?)
“You don’t get rich out here. You survive long enough to stay in business.”
This skills package is for campaigns where trading and commerce are the primary activities of the Travellers.
Skills:
Pilot 1 (Mara)
Electronics 1, (Jax)
Medic 1, (Arlan)
Streetwise 1, (Lysa)
Broker 1, (Jax)
Advocate 1, (Lysa)
Diplomat 1, (Arlan)
Astrogation 1 (Mara)
Some Background Skills:
Mara → Carouse 0
Lysa → Drive 0
Jax → Survival 0
Voss → Art 0
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