Sheriff
Trading Post Proprietor
You are the Sheriff of the mining port town of Freefall, on the Border Moon Ataraxia. You came here as a colonist with your wife, the Trading Post Proprietor, from your homeworld of Bellerophon almost eleven years ago. After a heartbreaking go as a farmsteader, you sold your stake and moved into town to set up shop. It was a good move. Freefall is one of the few places on Ataraxia that the Magistrate doesn’t own outright, and you were soon elected Sheriff by the townspeople.
Most of your town’s residents either work in the mine or cater to the miners’ needs. You feel for these indentured drudges; the Magistrate treats them as little more than slaves. When the Magistrate’s wife, Lady Syra was alive, she would sometimes visit and help lighten the miners’ burdens. She’d see to it that the worse neglects were addressed, anyway. Since her death during a tour of Freefall Mine, however, things have slid downhill so badly that some of the miners have actually taken up arms in revolt. That one’s always been a dangerous mine, but the last straw for them was the big cave-in of the Freefall Minehead which killed almost an entire shift of miners.
You see your town as a haven from the depredations of the Magistrate and his kind, but you are also pragmatic enough to understand that you must at least appear to cooperate with the powers that be. You have an uneasy truce with the Local Crime Boss, a ruthless young gangleader from Ataraxia’s capital city who controls shipping for the Magistrate and shakes down locals for protection money. You would dearly love to put her away, but as long as the Magistrate sits on the bench on Ataraxia, you know you have no chance of convicting her of anything.
The recently-arrived Feds might be able to bring her down, although as a former Independence sympathizer the idea of taking orders from a Purplebelly sorta sticks in your craw. But facts are facts, and an Alliance dropship just touched down west of town, so they’ll be bossing everybody around soon enough.
Mostly, you just try to keep the peace in the Safe Area around Freefall Trading Post, keep supplies rolling into the Trading Post and the drums of titanium dioxide powder rolling onboard transport ships (when the mine’s running, that is,) and try to keep the local folks from coming to harm. You don’t much care what happens to the mercenaries and other thugs who drift in and out of port, as long as they don’t mess with the locals. A transport, the Waxwing, just docked last night. Hopefully, it's bringing supplies, not trouble....
Doctor NPC
You are the only doctor within 600 miles of Freefall. You came to Ataraxia from your homeworld of Londinum on a government grant program – the Alliance Terraforming & Colonization Commission paid for your medical education in exchange for a six-year stint as a doctor on a colony moon. When you arrived, you spent the last of your travel money in the Alliance duty-free shop in the capital city on a tiny piece of ataraxite, the moon’s famous gemstone. You sent it to your mother with a note saying how it reminded you of how Ataraxia looked from space, a lovely little green and gold gem in the blackness of the ‘Verse.
You wish you had it to do over again. Ataraxia is a terrible place, run by a tyrannical Magistrate and subject to random Reaver attacks. The only hope for its future lies with the freeholders who seek to establish farms and ranches in the Back, since the miners are virtual slaves of the Magistrate. But there have been more deaths than births lately, since neither the Magistrate nor the Feds seem too interested in stopping the damned Reaver raids. To make matters worse, some of the more violent elements among the miners (ex-Independence agitators, most likely) have recently taken up arms against the Magistrates hired goons, as if the mining accidents haven’t been danger enough for them. You’ve been busy plugging up the holes they like to put in each other ever since.
The Sheriff does what he can inside his little Safe Area around the Trading Post (or, to tell the truth, what the Magistrate and Local Crime Boss will let him.) True, you’re making a little money for the first time since you landed here over three years ago; but you dream of a nice quiet residency in a clean modern Core hospital or Alliance MedStation, instead of stitching smelly thugs back together in the side room of a dusty colonial Trading Post. You’ve just heard that the Feds have landed west of town; you don’t know if this will mean more carnage or less, but you aren’t optimistic. You’ve noticed that everybody tends to be a little less civilized out this way, even the Alliance personnel. Oh, well, two years, eight months, one week, five days, and twelve hours to go and you can pack your MedKit and leave. Not that you’re counting….
Longshoreman NPC
You work out of the Freefall warehouse, loading and unloading transport ships, delivering goods to their purchasers, and collecting kickbacks for your boss. You work for the Local Crime Boss, who prides herself in getting a piece of every bit of traffic into or out of Freefall.
You grew up on a farmstead east of Freefall, and were among the first generation of colonists’ children born on Ataraxia. You are also a Browncoat sympathizer whose father and uncle died fighting the Purplebellies, and whose mother was lost to Reavers many years ago. You were too young to enlist before the War ended. Left without a family, and with a deep hatred of Alliance authority, you drifted into a life of petty crime in the port town of Freefall before being recruited into the Crime Boss’ gang.
The transport ship Waxwing docked last night with a cargo of supplies for the Trading Post. Hidden among those supplies is a shipment of arms and MediPaks for the miners’ revolt, which you will be expected to conceal in the warehouse until it’s time to sneak them past the Feds. The Boss will let you know when it’s time. In the meantime, keep your eyes and ears open….
Shepherd NPC
You are an ordained Evangelical Christian Missionary posted by your order to minister to the colonists of the Border Moon Ataraxia. You have lived on Ataraxia for three years now, and in that time have found justice and mercy and forgiveness to be in mighty short supply. To make ends meet, you have set up as undertaker in the little mining port town of Freefall - it’s about the only place on the moon where the Magistrate of Ataraxia doesn’t call all the shots. He is not a godly man. Most of the area’s residents are indentured miners, little better than slaves in the eyes of the Magistrate, but there are a few freeholders who are trying to make a go of it as farmers out in the Back. Problem is, an isolated colonist never knows when Reavers might just drop in uninvited. Reavers must be demons, no human soul could do unto others as they do.
When you first came here, you were full of the Spirit, so sure you had the answers folk needed to hear; now, you’re not even sure you were asking the right questions. You’ve buried a lot of good folk in the past three years, and it looks like more will be coming soon now that the miner’s strike has turned violent. Since the Freefall Mine collapsed and the surviving miners took up arms, mercenary thugs have poured into Freefall looking for easy pickings in the mayhem. The Sheriff seems a good man, but this uprising thing is bigger than any one man can manage to keep from spilling into town. Hopefully, the Alliance troopers who recently touched down west of Freefall will be able to settle things down. In your sideline profession, there’s such a thing as having business be TOO good. You’d much rather save souls than plant ‘em.
Local Crime Boss
You are the ambitious young gangleader of the crime ring that controls shipping into and out of Freefall, a tiny mining port town on the Border Moon Ataraxia. Hey, it’s not much now, maybe, but it’s yours and you intend to make the most of it. The famous Adelei Niska started with even less, and look at him now, his own shiny space station and a private army of thugs. Some guys have it all. And you want every penny of it for yourself.
You were born to some comfort woman slave-girl in Ataraxia’s capital city and abandoned on the doctor’s table; no one even knows her name. An elderly preacherwoman, Shepherd Zill, took you in, but she died of heart failure when you were eight and you’ve been on your own ever since. You hitched a ride to Freefall with a mercenary you were sleeping with when you were sixteen. He had come out to the boonies because he’d heard the Magistrate was hiring prods to help keep the miners down. He lasted about six months, when he got paid his back wages and you saw your opportunity. You had noticed a power vacuum in the way shipping was handled, so you used Loverboy’s former money to hire a couple of thugs of your very own and moved into the warehouse. You’ve been running the show here in Freefall ever since. You and the Magistrate have an understanding: he leaves you alone and you don’t make any more trouble for him. Your hired thugs can watch over the town just as easy as his hired thugs can.
In fact, you and the Magistrate had a much bigger deal going before this whole “revolt” bull**** blew up. Seems the Old Boy’s miner-slaves hit a vein of the rare gemstone ataraxite in Freefall Mine about eighteen months back. Now, since ataraxite is a byproduct of Alliance terraforming, the Feds figure they own all the ataraxite on the planet and will immediately take over any mine that contains it. This strikes you as an unbusinesslike attitude on their part, but it does create an opportunity for an entrepreneur such as yourself. The Magistrate had a large quantity of an extremely valuable mineral in the ground that he needed to arrange to ship off-world real quiet-like; you have the connections to get it to where it will fetch the highest prices.
Hell, you even brought in a couple of smuggling specialists from off-world to get a network established, all set to go. As a security measure, the Magistrate had arranged for the miners who found the vein to have a tragic accident so he had an excuse to seal off that chamber temporarily, but then the Magistrate’s bleedin’ heart bitch of a wife started nosing around Freefall Mine. She was babbling about “mine safety,” but you can smell a snitch. Fancy nose-in-the-air posey like her, Lady Syra your pigu, that bitch had Fed Agent written all over her. So you had Ol’ Lotus Lady whacked right in the mine, all neat and quick and clean and quietlike, and not even the Magistrate to know it was a hit. He had a thing for the bitch, though you couldn’t really see it yourself. She looked high-maintenance, bad for business.
Anyway, Boo-Hoo the Witch is Dead, a lovely funeral and such, everything’s all lined up ready to go, when the gorram mine has to go and collapse on the rest of the gorram miners’ heads. Gos se mine-slaves, you just can’t get good help nowadays. Now it’s all calamity and uproar, what with the miners shooting at the Magistrate’s prods, and the Feds dumping down on top of us with their sticky-beak Inspector, and a fresh load of guns just in on the transport ship Waxwing that need to be smuggled out to the revolting miners. Even the Sheriff has been nosing lately, and he usually knows better. The boys may have to have a friendly chat with the local constabulary.
But, now here’s the really interesting thing: them revolting miners, they’ve been paying for their repeaters and MedPaks not with cash nor coin, but with GEMS. Gold ateraxite, and sometimes even the super-rare white ateraxite – one gemstone of that white ateraxite is worth two thousand Alliance Credits on the streets of Sihnon, while each gold one’s worth a good five hundred Credits to any fence anywhere in the Core.
So you’re thinking, maybe those mine-boys aren’t as dumb as they look, maybe; you’re thinking that maybe they know a back way into that mine, maybe even one that the Magistrate doesn’t know about. Now, good business is all about cutting out the middleman and passing the savings on to, well, you. And right now, it looks like the Magistrate is in the middle between the Feds and the miners. Bad place to be, for him anyway.
But hey, business is business. You don’t see anything wrong with making a tidy profit while he twists. In fact, a real genius, a Niska, would make it look like HE was the one what had his bitch whacked, and get him out of the way for good and all….
Crime Boss' Thugs
You two are the Local Crime Boss’ hired muscle. You work as a team, usually. “Accidental” deaths are your specialty, but you also go in for arson and extortion, whatever pays the bills. You grew up together in the alleys of Eavestown on Persephone, doing odd wet jobs for even odder Bosses. You flew into the little port town of Freefall on the moon Ataraxia on the local freighter run about eighteen months ago. You heard the Crime Boss needed a really high-class “accident” and she was willing to pay. Turns out it was some hoity-toity Mansion-Hag needed to meet her destiny, the Magistrate’s wife lady Syra no less. It wasn’t nothing to get her, she kept going down into the unstable Freefall Mine. All it took was to hand her a mining hat with a Grizwald rigged inside on a light sensor – them rich bitches never think to look into something before they put it on. Soon as she’s in complete dark, Pop Goes the Grizzly and she’s the latest victim of that unsafe Freefall Mine, with a pile of fresh mine slag where her head used to be, just waitin’ for the lights to come up.
You two are right proud of that hit, actually, got the idea from an old Purplebelly trick during the War. But of course, mum’s the word. The Boss was so impressed, she put you both on salary. It’s nice to feel appreciated, like you belong….
Indentured Miner
You are an indentured miner on strike, assigned to a work crew in Freefall Mine on the Border Moon Ataraxia. . Like virtually all of your fellow miners, you were enticed to Ataraxia after your release from the Alliance Resocialization Center on Osiris. Like your fellows, you discovered that conditions on Ataraxia were far worse than you had been told when you signed the “Terms of Transport & Indenture.” Unfortunately, you are all indentured to the Magistrate of Ataraxia, who also happens to be the only judicial representative on the planet with the authority to hear your case. Direct appeals to Alliance officials off-world have fallen on deaf ears – the Magistrate is an extremely influential man. You personally have eight years left on a ten-year indenture, or you have the option of buying back your indenture for the sum of two thousand Alliance Credits – if the Magistrate agrees to accept the buy-back, that is. Under Alliance law, he cannot refuse, but on Ataraxia, the Magistrate IS the Law.
You were part of the work crew that gave a guided tour of Freefall Mine to Lady Syra, the Magistrate of Ataraxia’s wife, about three weeks ago. She died in the mine during the tour, and you fled to avoid being blamed. Folks later said it was just an accident. Now, that’s a dangerous mine, no two ways about it, but you kinda think something more sinister happened to her.
The day of the tour, there were a couple of workers you’d never seen before in the tour-guide crew. When one of them handed Lady Syra a hard-hat to wear, you coulda sworn you saw something taped inside at the back as she lifted it to put it on. You didn’t think nothin’ of it at the time, but later, down in the mine…. Anyway, you all are down in the third chamber entrance, that one’s new and it’s pretty rough, when the lights go out – no big deal, happens all the time in that old mine. As soon as it gets dark, there’s a POP! sound. We all switches our helmet lights on, and there’s Lady Syra on the floor, the back of her skull caved in, rubble everywhere, and her hard-hat lying about three meters away. We checked her pulse, she was dead. Well, we all panicked and got the Hell outta there, you know what would happen to us if the Magistrate got ahold of us. We ran away into the Back, and was found by some of them Bronwcoat Resisters comin’ to seize the Freefall Mineheads. Well, that sounded better than starvin’, so we all joined up for the fight. We’re good as dead anyway, if the Magistrate ever finds out we was there….
Strike Leader
You are the elected leader of the Brotherhood of Indentured Mine Workers on the Border Moon Ataraxia. You have come to Freefall to act as spokesman for the striking miners of Freefall Mine; conduct negotiations with the Magistrate and Alliance representatives; and secretly direct the guerilla activities of the militant wing of the Brotherhood, the armed group nicknamed the “Browncoat Resistance.”
You are a former brevet captain of the 45th Independent Brigade. You were an intelligence officer during the War, captured as a POW during the final weeks before the surrender of the Independence. Like virtually all of your fellow miners, you were enticed to Ataraxia after your release from the Alliance Resocialization Center on Osiris. Like your fellows, you discovered that conditions on Ataraxia were far worse than you had been told when you signed the “Terms of Transport & Indenture.” Unfortunately, you are all indentured to the Magistrate of Ataraxia, who also happens to be the only judicial representative on the planet with the authority to hear your case. Direct appeals to Alliance officials off-world have fallen on deaf ears – the Magistrate is an extremely influential man. You personally have eight years left on a ten-year indenture, or you have the option of buying back your indenture for the sum of two thousand Alliance Credits – if the Magistrate agrees to accept the buy-back, that is. Under Alliance law, he cannot refuse, but on Ataraxia, the Magistrate IS the Law.
You used the collapse of Freefall Mine to whip up a frenzy of anger among members of the Brotherhood, in order to start the Browncoat Resistance and thereby gain some leverage. Your hopes were to seize or sabotage as many mineheads as possible – the Alliance is bound to sit up and take notice once the titanium ore stops flowing. With the Feds looking over his shoulder, the Magistrate would have no choice but to negotiate. So far, your plan has worked. Dropships filled with Federal troops have been landing by the contested mineheads all over the planet. You hope that they are here to talk, not fight, but you are prepared to resist if the Feds try to take the mineheads away from you by force. Your position is that the Resistance will not surrender a single minehead they hold until the Magistrate agrees to accept the buy-back of any indentured worker on Ataraxia, and further agrees to the re-negotiation of the Terms of Indenture for those remaining.
The Brotherhood has been secretly (and illegally) stockpiling ataraxite, a rare gemstone, in order to fund the resistance and eventually buy back the freedom of its members. Ataraxite’s only known source is the planet Ataraxia; since ataraxite is a byproduct of Alliance terraforming, the Feds figure they own all the ataraxite on the planet and will immediately confiscate undocumented stockpiles and take over any mine that contains it. For these reasons, gold ataraxite is worth around 500 Credits per gem on the black markets of the Core, while the ultra-rare white ataraxite is worth 2,000 Credits or more per gem. The trick, of course, is getting the gems to market. You have been dealing with the Local Crime Boss to obtain arms and MedPaks for the Resistance. She is a vicious and greedy snake, but she does have connections and has always been willing to deal. She has accepted gems as payment in the past. Perhaps she could help you convert your ataraxite stockpile to cash (if she doesn’t kill you for it first.)
This is your secret weapon against the Magistrate: you happen to know from survivors of the Freefall Mine collapse that Freefall Mine contains the richest vein of ataraxite even discovered. The Magistrate is bound to know about the vein, but you can bet your pigu that he has somehow “forgotten” to report this fact to the Alliance Terraforming Commission. The trick is how to let him know that YOU know, without getting bumped off by his hired assassins OR spilling the beans to the Feds. The entire game is up if the Feds find out what Freefall Mine really contains.
The other option is for the Brotherhood to neutralize the Magistrate somehow and assume control of Freefall Mine itself, again without the Feds discovering about the vein of ataraxite.
Browncoat Resister
You are a fighter in the Browncoat Resistance, the militant guerilla wing of the United Brotherhood of Indentured Mineworkers on the Border Moon Ataraxia. You and your brethren have seized the two mineheads west of the port town of Freefall and intend to hold them to the last man. Your only hope for better treatment at the hands of the Magistrate of Ataraxia is to cut off supplies of titanium ore until he comes to the negotiation table.
You are a former infantryman of the 45th Independent Brigade. You, along with the rest of your unit, were captured as POWs during the final weeks before the surrender of the Independence. Like virtually all of your fellow miners, you were enticed to Ataraxia after your release from the Alliance Resocialization Center on Osiris. Like your fellows, you discovered that conditions on Ataraxia were far worse than you had been told when you signed the “Terms of Transport & Indenture.” Unfortunately, you are all indentured to the Magistrate of Ataraxia, who also happens to be the only judicial representative on the planet with the authority to hear your case. Direct appeals to Alliance officials off-world have fallen on deaf ears – the Magistrate is an extremely influential man. You personally have eight years left on a ten-year indenture, or you have the option of buying back your indenture for the sum of two thousand Alliance Credits – if the Magistrate agrees to accept the buy-back, that is. Under Alliance law, he cannot refuse, but on Ataraxia, the Magistrate IS the Law.
Your group crushed the prods the Magistrate sent to drive you off; you were better equipped than they expected. Now, your Strike Leader tells you that the Magistrate is coming personally with his armored skiff, and that Federal troops are landing all over the planet – is it Serenity Valley all over again?
Magistrate
You are the Magistrate of Ataraxia. You were born and raised on Londinum into a family of minor nobility, and have spent decades rising to your current position as the virtual ruler of a recently colonized Border Moon. You wooed and married the extraordinary Lotus Companion Lady Syra, and she greatly aided you in your rise to power until her life was snuffed out in an alleged accident in Freefall Mine. Her death has shaken you like no other event; you do not think you realized how profoundly you loved your wife until she was taken from you. She bore you a daughter, a headstrong and willful creature who is as unlike her subtle and discreet mother as it is possible to be and still qualify for Companion training. Her only grace in your eyes is that she looks much like her mother. Your daughter went off to school when she was twelve, and you have seen little of her until her return to Ataraxia two weeks ago to attend her mother’s funeral. She has proven as stubborn and intractable as you remember her to be. If only she had been a boy - you deserve a son who could rule with you, not a devious harpy in silk robes, as your heir.
You are simultaneously the chief executive, the largest landowner, and the supreme judge on Ataraxia. You hold exclusive mineral extraction rights to the entire moon - with the exception, of course, of the rare gemstone ataraxite, all veins of which belong to the Alliance since the gem is a byproduct of the Alliance’s terraforming efforts. All this basically means that, as far as Ataraxia’s colonists are concerned, you ARE The Law. This also means that you have made many enemies, and must be on your guard at all times. You have always been an ambitious, perhaps visionary man.
Now you find yourself at Freefall again, that canker of a town, that pimple on your pigu. Freefall is just that, a free port – you do not own the port or the part of the town that the locals call the Safe Area. It is the one place on Ataraxia where you might be subject to the jurisdiction of another official, the local Sheriff; fortunately for him, he is not a fool and has always remembered his place. For the town’s sake, it had better stay this way. Your official line is that you have come to Freefall to put down the a particularly vicious cell of the Browncoat Resistance and re-open the mineheads that have been seized by these outlaws, to restore law and order. You have, however, two other reasons for personally attending to this particular mine uprising.
First, your gut tells you that your wife’s death was no accident. The collapse of the Freefall Mine entrance means that any physical evidence has been destroyed, but you are still interested in blaming someone. You suspect that Browncoat bastard, the Strike Leader, arranged her “accident,” as just one more piece of his agitation and rabble-rousing. Lady Syra was always inexplicably kind-hearted towards the Browncoat scum that you generously offered to employ as indentured workers when no one else would have them. Whenever any of them were killed, due to their own shoddy workmanship usually, she would go to their aid. You imagine that her death might have been used by the Strike Leader to further stir the malcontents to take up arms. You wouldn’t mind an opportunity to interrogate a Browncoat captive or two.
Secondly, and more critically, you have just been told that a dropship loaded with Federal troops and, worse yet, a Terraforming Inspector has just touched down west of Freefall with orders to investigate the Freefall Mine collapse. Normally, you would welcome such help in suppressing the rabble. The problem is that, a few months before the collapse of the mine entrance, an incredibly rich vein of ataraxite was discovered in Freefall Mine. After you disposed of the work-crew of indentured scum who struck the vein and might be inclined to blab about it, and had that chamber temporarily sealed off, you contacted the Local Crime Boss whom you allow to control shipping into and out of Freefall. Your thought was to arrange for the discreet shipment of the ataraxite from Freefall Mine to the worlds of the Core, where you are told that it would bring a fantastic sum on their black market. The money from such a deal would allow you to finally and completely consolidate your hold on this moon, and perhaps reach out to another.
Just as the deal was about to go down two weeks ago, the Freefall Mine entrance collapsed, prompting the Alliance Terraforming Commission to take an interest in the stability of Ataraxia’s substrate. It is imperative that this flunkie Terraforming Inspector not be allowed to discover or report the existence of that vein of ataraxite in your mine, or the consequences for your future could be quite dire indeed.
Magistrate’s Daughter NPC
You are a Companion-in-training in House Lotus, one of the Core’s most respected Registered Companion Houses and your mother’s former House. You have lived and studied in the Companion Training House on the Core world Osiris since you were twelve years old. While your mother, the beautiful Syra, visited you often, your father, the Magistrate of your birthplanet Ataraxia, has never set foot in the place. Suddenly, just two weeks ago, you found yourself weeping over your mother’s grave, standing next to a father you hardly know on a brutal little moon you have come to despise. You are not even sure you want to know the Magistrate better – in his affairs, he is as vicious and money-grubbing as rest of this moon he calls home, even as he is gentle towards you and your entourage. The very night of the funeral, he tried to give you your mother’s ataraxite necklace, an almost priceless possession, but you could not bear the thought and this upset him. What are the cold gemstones of this harsh rock compared to the warmth of your mother’s smile? Your mother seemed to love him, she gave up her glamorous career as a registered Lotus Companion to marry him, but you can’t for the life of you understand why. All he seems to care about is lording it over the poor desperate souls he has lured to Ataraxia to enslave. He rants whenever you ask questions about the details of your mother’s death, ridiculously blaming her demise on the rebellious indentured miners he has mistreated until they could stand it no longer, but you are certain that he is hiding something behind all the bluster. And you are going to find out what it is.
Your mentor, and your favorite House Bodyguard, both generously agreed to accompany you on this unpleasant journey. Your mentor was apprenticed to your mother at one time, just as you are to her now. If it had not been for this interruption in your training, you might have stood for full Guild Registration within the year, but now? Now, it seems more and more important to you to find out about this world your mother chose to call home, especially to find out why it killed her. Who could strike down a Lotus Flower as lovely and wise as Syra? What use is Companion training if one is still vulnerable to brutality? Above all, WHY did she have to die? Who stood to gain from her death, or lose if she lived?
Your mentor wants you to leave now and return to Osiris, but your friend the Bodyguard might be persuaded to help in your inquiries among the denizens of the port town Freefall. Syra visited Freefall often, to help care for indentured miners injured in the frequent mining accidents. Perhaps one of them has information you could use. As much as you loath Ataraxia, you do not want to leave it without some answers….
House Bodyguard
You are a Bodyguard of House Lotus, authorized to accompany registered Companions when House duties require travel to dangerous environs. You are also often employed as a courier, and occasionally as an investigator for senior Guild members. You, and others like you, are part of the reason why House Lotus is such an influential political force behind the scenes on your homeworld Osiris and beyond. You have served House Lotus for ten years, primarily at the Companion Training House on Osiris, where you regularly shadow apprentices during training exercises outside the Training House. You were hired for primarily for your intelligence, discretion and tact; and only secondarily for your weapons skill. Your main job is to sense trouble before it happens and reshape the situation when possible; when not possible, your job is to guarantee the Companion you guard an escape route.
You have accompanied the daughter of the Magistrate of Ataraxia and her registered Lotus Companion mentor to the young woman’s homeworld, on the occasion of her mother’s funeral. Her mother, the almost legendary Lotus Companion Syra, was buried two weeks ago. The Magistrate’s daughter is convinced that her mother was murdered, and she has asked you to help her investigate the circumstances surrounding her death. While your primary duty is to get your Companion and her apprentice safely back to the Training House on Osiris, you are sympathetic to her plight and will help her – within reason, that is, and provided that these inquiries do not delay their return too long. Her mother’s death is not Guild business, since Syra had withdrawn from registered Companion status many years ago, and so you cannot really justify the allocation of House resources in its investigation past a certain point. That said, you are fond of the Magistrate’s daughter and will do what you can in the time before your entourage’s transport lifts off from this blighted moon, Ataraxia, and its squalid little port town Freefall.
Companion House Chaperon NPC
You are a registered Companion of House Lotus, based on the wealthy Core planet Osiris. You have traveled with your apprentice from the Companion Training House on Osiris to her original homeworld, the frontier moon Ataraxia. Knowing Ataraxia’s lawless reputation, you have persuaded a House Lotus bodyguard to accompany the two of you. Ataraxia has proven to be every bit as desolate and boorish a place as you feared it might be, its only saving grace being that it is the soul source of the coveted gemstone ataraxite. You have just come to the town of Freefall from the funeral of the Magistrate’s wife, Syra, who was your apprentice’s mother, your personal friend and one-time mentor, and also once a former Companion of your House.
Your apprentice, who has studied under your tutelage since she was 12 years old, has a difficult relationship with her father, the Magistrate. Your entourage has been staying at the Magistrate’s mansion for the past two weeks as his guests, so he is owed the courtesy due a man of his position. You must admit you consider him to be a ruthless and ambitious opportunist, intelligent but almost completely unscrupulous; however, you are also certain that his wife was one of the few people in the ‘Verse whom he truly loved and respected. Your apprentice suspects some sort of foul play in the death of her mother, and resents her father’s over-quick willingness to blame her demise on the abused and overworked miners he has virtually enslaved on this harsh moon – especially when it is well-known that Syra was outspoken in her advocacy of better treatment for Ataraxia’s indentured class.
Your apprentice is conducting an informal inquiry into her mother’s death. In your eyes, your apprentice’s zeal in personally discovering the circumstances of Syra’s death is beginning to border on obsession, and could distract her from completing her Companion training if she is not returned to Osiris as quickly as possible. After all, these sorts of things are far better handled by the sorts of rough men who are most easily managed by a skillful Companion. Has your apprentice learned nothing from you?
You have come to Freefall to find the captain and book passage on the Waxwing, because it is the transport ship scheduled to leave Ataraxia the soonest.
Smuggler Pilot
Vendor NPC
You are two pissed-off bad guys. You and your partner, the Smuggler Pilot and the Gem Vendor, left your homeworld Sihnon almost a year ago to fly to this little turd-town Freefall on some Border Moon ball of gos se called Ataraxia, all because the Local Crime Boss said she had something big needed arranging. She even sent a couple of greenish gems along as earnest payment. Turned out they were ataraxite. Vendor almost wet his pants, the stuff’s that rare. You fenced just the two of them for almost twenty-four hundred credits - the gold’s good for about 400 to 500 per gem, while the white’ll bring 2,000 or more. Also turns out that Ataraxia is the only known source of ataraxite, but the catch is that the Feds have decreed that every last piece of it rightfully belongs to the Alliance. It’s a byproduct of terraforming, so they figure it’s theirs by rights. Well, that’s what you’re there for, isn’t it, to get around such anti-free market thinking?
So you get here, and there’s this revolt against the Magistrate going on, and the miners are all armed and belligerent-like. Who’s gonna dig these gems, you wonder?
You’ve been cooling your thrusters here, waiting for the hook-up and watching your downpayment get eaten up while the dumb-**** miners shoot holes in the dumb-**** prods and the prods return the favor, and every day it’s “Just hold on, almost in the bag,” from the Boss. She makes you two wait much longer, and it’s gonna be her HEAD in a bag when her thugs aren’t looking. You need to be shown the goods and negotiate the terms. Freefall isn’t exactly an ideal vacation spot.
Oh, and here’s the friggin’ icing. Because of the gorram miner’s revolt, an entire dropship full of Feds just dumped out west of town, damn near on top of where you hid your gorram ship. Your ship got flagged on the Fed database on your way in; turns out there’s a warrant on Persephone for the two of you. Again. You weren’t planning on going that way anyway. Problem is, with a Fed dropship that close, all antennas up and sniffin’ the wind, they’ll ID your pigu and blow it out of the sky before you fidget in your seat. Gorram Feds, what do they care if a bunch of Browncoat throwbacks decide to stage a reenactment anyway?
So, unless you can score soon and grab another ride, you’re stuck on this rock for the duration of hostilities. A transport, the Waxwing, landed last night that would do nicely if you wanted to leave in a hurry. Now all you need to do is get your hands on the Boss’ stash of gems….
Mercenary
You are a professional soldier of fortune who drifted to the port town of Freefall on the Border Moon Ataraxia because you heard that some trouble had blown up between the Magistrate of this little dirtball and the local dinks. You don’t know that much more, and you don’t really care, you’re just looking for the next job. Whichever side pays best, that’s the side you’re on, and if something better comes along – well, like they say, in Crime and Politics, the situation is always fluid. Crime or Politics, as long as the money’s good, you’ll throw lead wherever they want it thrown. If the local action isn’t priced right, maybe there are some other jobs that could be pulled to compensate you for your time and trouble in dumping down on this heap of gos se….
Waxwing Pilot
You are the pilot of the Class C Light Bulk Transport Waxwing. You have been with the ship for about a year and a half, hired after the demise of the previous pilot in a gambling dispute on Persephone, your homeworld. The Waxwing is your first interplanetary transport position, but you have many years’ experience as a pilot of “globehoppers,” the heavy supersonic atmospheric transport vessels used to move goods between major cities on larger planets. You were pleasantly surprised to discover how much easier interplanetary flight is, at least, that is, while you’re in the sky. You’ve discovered that there are many places in the ‘Verse that are far less friendly than Persephone, and Ataraxia is one of the nastiest. You guess what it lacks in charm, it makes up for in excitement. At least you’re getting the chance to learn how to handle a gun.
You get along well with your transport’s small crew. The engineer is clever and funny, and the First Mate has saved your pigu on more than one occasion. Your captain has proven himself to be a fair-minded and reliable man, although you sometimes wonder about his business sense. Why in the ‘Verse would anyone make regular runs out to such god-forsaken hellholes like Higgin’s Moon and Ataraxia, where the jobs often involve questionable dealings and shady characters, when there is safer, steadier, and more lucrative work to be had in the Core? Perhaps it has something to do with his time serving as a Independent’s MedShip pilot during the War. You don’t know, and he’s not inclined to discuss the matter much. So now, you’re all back on that dirtball Ataraxia again, just in time to get caught in the gos se hitting the ventilation unit. If anybody can figure out how to turn a buck on this blow-up, however, it’s your captain.
All in all, you’re happy with the Waxwing for the time being. You don’t really care what the jobs are, as long as none of them cost you your license and you get paid your percentage on time (which is 10% of the net take, BTW.) Someday soon, you’ll have enough interplanetary experience to hire onboard a heavy transport and make some REAL money….
Waxwing Captain
You are the captain and owner of the Angel Class C Light Bulk Interplanetary Transport Ship Waxwing. The Waxwing is a converted combat MedEvac ship once used by the Independents to lift severely wounded Browncoats off the battlefield to orbiting MedStations. You know, you were there, piloting her. The Alliance went easy on you after the surrender, mostly because of your crew’s reputation for picking up anyone who needed help regardless of the uniform they wore. You just happened to save the lives of a few influential Purplebellies, they pulled some strings once they made it back home, and you found yourself master of this former “angel of mercy.”
You and your engineer wife have both been with the ship through the War and ever since. While you two were born and grew up in the same hometown on Boros, your real home is Waxwing. The ship has been both mother and child to the two of you, a part of your family. You lost your crusty old pilot to a hit man on Persephone about 18 months back, and your First Mate suspiciously jumped ship without warning at your last port of call, but the new pilot is working out well and crew can be replaced. It doesn’t take a lot of hands to run an Angel Class C anyway.
You touched down at Freefall, a port town on the Border Moon Ataraxia, yesterday evening. You have been making regular supply runs to Ataraxia for some time now, backhauling drums of titanium dioxide to the smelters on Persephone, then finishing the run by hauling titanium parts to Osiris or Londinum. Sometimes you pick up a passenger or two, if there’s room.
You’ve been running more than titanium and tourists, however. Your wife sometimes teases you that you never really took off your angel’s wings, but just changed their color some. Your runs to places like Higgin’s Moon and Ataraxia have shown you how terrible the lives of many of the Browncoats you once struggled to save have become. Crooked Magistrates enticing and then virtually enslaving desperate, decent former Independent soldiers, it makes your blood boil – especially since the Feds seems to be turning a blind eye. What do they care in the Core as long as the ore keeps coming?
So, when a former officer of the 45th Independent Brigade approached you one hot night in Freefall and asked if you ever dealt in firearms and medical supplies, and offered to pay in the rare gem ataraxite, what choice did you have? None that you could see. Worlds should belong to them as work ‘em. People still have the right to try and live free, Alliance or no Alliance. The hardest part was when that goon caught up with you on Persephone and popped your pilot before you dropped the guy. The thug was trying for you all, lucky he was an amateur. You still don’t even know who sent him. Probably the Magistrate of Ataraxia – your hold then was full of the rifles and Medipaks that the miner’s revolt is using right now. But why not just call the Feds if he knew where you were and what you had?
The new pilot doesn’t know about your little sideline as an arms smuggler. That hit man tracking you down like that shook you – you’re not sure who you can trust anymore. Bottom line is, you need jobs to keep flyin’ so you don’t end up bankrupt and grubbin’ mud for some Magistrate like the rest of these poor Browncoat bastards. The revolt has disrupted titanium dioxide production on Ataraxia, and you are looking at the extremely unpleasant prospect of hauling all the way back to Persephone empty unless you can scrape up some paying passengers or some cargo bound offworld. What you’re gonna find in a hole like Freefall is anybody’s guess….
Engineer
You are the engineer for the Angel Class C Light Bulk Interplanetary Transport Ship Waxwing. As long as you have your toolbox and the right RepairPak, you can fix anything that’s made of metal - it’s your thing. You and your husband, the Captain, met in school on Boros and have been inseparable ever since. When he went off to help the Independents, you followed and did what you could to keep his ship safe and to staunch at least a little bit of the carnage in that stupid War. He has a noble streak that has come close to getting him killed on more than one occasion, but it’s also much of what you love about him.
You converted the Waxwing from an obsolete combat MedEvac ship to a bulk transport with your own hands. In the War, you and your then-pilot husband flew her down onto the battlefield to evacuate wounded Browncoats, and anyone else who needed help, to orbiting MedStations. Everybody who’s heard the story thinks it sounds romantic, but it was scary as hell and you hope never to go back to times like those again. You’ve patched Waxwing up more times than you can even count. You know every rivet in the ship, and have probably replaced every one as well – Waxwing has had a rough life. Waxwing is your world. She stayed with you after the War; your husband thinks it was a stroke of dumb luck that she’s still yours, but you think it was that the ship just couldn’t bear to be parted from you two – silly as that sounds, she’s your baby. She talks to you and tells you when something’s wrong, and you’ve been known to confide in her on occasion.
Angels are not as maneuverable as some ships, but they are tough and tolerant of abuse. Good thing, too, because, since the miner’s revolt on Ataraxia started, pickin’s have been slim and you’ve had to make due with worn-out parts. Your ship has been running guns and supplies for the miners right under the Magistrates nose, but the miners pay in the gem ataraxite. Since they’re probably mining the gems illegally, they have no papers, so the damn things have to be fenced on the black market before they’re worth anything to you and yours.
Things have gotten scary since the Ataraxia revolt. Some bastard killed your old pilot on Persephone; your husband thinks he was one of the Magistrate of Ataraxia’s thugs, but you think the whole attack had to do with the fact that you guys were trying to sell those damn gemstones to the kind of lowlifes who deal in such traffic. Then the First Mate took off, who knows why, not even a goodbye. The new pilot is good, though, and a sweet guy, but he’s a little wet behind the ears for the kind of rough-and-tumble you get on worlds like Higgin’s Moon and Ataraxia. You pray no one else in your little crew-family gets in the way of some other thug’s bullet.
You put down at Freefall, a ****ty little port town on Ataraxia, last night. Captain’s worried about having to haul back to Persephone empty; he doesn’t say anything, but you can see it, this whole “angel of vengeance” gunrunner thing is really starting to wear on him. You, too, for that matter. Yeah, the ex-Browncoats on Ataraxia are getting screwed and are right to fight it, but don’t you all have the right to live free, too?
You just want to find something to haul that pays and get the hell out of there, quick. Things are about to get ugly in Freefall….
Alliance Federal Inspector
You are a Federal Terraforming Inspector dispatched from your homeworld Greenleaf to investigate reported subterranean anomalies in the substrates around Freefall Mine on the Border Moon Ataraxia. There have been an unusually high number of mine collapses on this Border Moon, and you are tasked with erecting and maintaining a network of sensor stations to gather data for analysis. You will be contacted by your superiors via radio at regular intervals, and authorized to fine anyone caught tampering with these sensors or otherwise hindering you in your duties. A unit of Federal troops, Alliance Task Group 7, has been assigned to aid and protect you.
Ataraxia is a geologically unusual moon. The underlying instability of the moon’s substrate has been suspected by the Commission for some time. The commission is seriously considering the suspension of all mineral rights and mining licenses on Ataraxia. A number of unique and difficult-to-explain formations appeared during the planet’s terraforming process, the most notable being the crystallization of the mineral ataraxite. This mineral is greatly prized on Core worlds as a rare gemstone, since Ataraxia is its only known source. It is a green mineral that forms an iridescent oxidation layer when cut and polished; usually, the oxidation layer has a golden hue, but some especially rare deposits form a translucent milky white oxidation layer. The crystallization process and physical properties of this new mineral are not fully understood; and it is a standing order for all Alliance citizens that any naturally-occurring deposits (as well as pieces brought to the surface) are to be reported and/or surrendered to the nearest Alliance Terraforming Agent for Alliance Terraforming Commission study.
Alliance Federal Task Group 7
You are a member of the Alliance Federal Task Group 7, a dropship unit, dispatched from the Alliance Cruiser Vargo to the Border Moon Ataraxia. You have been assigned to the environs around the port town of Freefall and the associated Freefall Mine. You are accompanied by a Federal Terraforming Inspector, whom you are instructed to protect as she investigates allegations of subterranean terraforming flaws in the Freefall area. You touch down on Ataraxia at 1230 hours on 28 July, local time.
Your mission:
-Quell hostilities in the Freefall area by separating the violent striking miners called the Browncoat Resisters from the forces of the Magistrate of Ataraxia.
Control traffic into and out of the minehead area to prevent tampering with the investigation site.
-Cooperate with local authorities in re-establishing order in the community. Provide needed services to locals as the situation warrants. The Freefall Safe Area is the jurisdiction of the Sheriff, while the Free-fire Area is within the Magistrate of Ataraxia's jurisdiction. Your Commanding Officer is authorized to override these jurisdictions in the event of a breakdown in order.
-Monitor all air traffic in the environs, and call in intercepts of any unauthorized vessels entering or leaving the airspace of the Freefall investigation site.
-Enforce the judgment of the Federal Terraforming Investigator, should she require that any person or persons in the Freefall area be voluntarily interrogated, and/or Bound by Law
