Named after Earth’s highest peak, Everest Danilo MacLaine is the secondborn son of August Eusébio MacLaine Ⅱ and Oona MacLaine (née van Coevorden).

The MacLaine family were wealthy framers who had grown their fortune through the cocoa bean trade; owning several large, domed greenhouses near the southern pole of Mercury, protected against solar flares and temperature extremes. Granted a distinctively rich and astringent taste profile thanks to engineered soil and lengthy day/night cycles, their genetically modified produce was optimised to be small but extremely concentrated. Their farm, situated some two-hundred kilometers from the megacity of Roerich, was nestled within a verdant tropical region of Mercury popular among affluent holidaygoers. Everest spent his childhood divided between his family’s idyllic arcology, and Roerich, where he schooled. Though he was instilled with a dogged work ethic by his father, and made to contribute long hours of labour to the farm from a young age, he enjoyed many privileges of which the vast majority of humanity would only endeavour to possess. He had prodigious intellect, which was nurtured by his family via the funding of private education. His work ethic and boundless ambition, coupled with his family’s undeniable advantages, placed him among Roerich’s most exceptional minds. While his older brother, the dutiful August Eusébio MacLaine Ⅲ, sought to moor himself to the family business, and Wolf Ayrton MacLaine, his whimsical younger brother, pursued a career as an architect in Roerich, Everest’s dreams were farther-flung. He, from a fairly young age, compacted himself to venture out into the galaxy and make a great fortune of his own in the corporate world.

At eighteen, Everest relocated to Earth, pursuing further education at the illustrious London School of Economics, where he studied economics, corporate law, and trade strategy. His professors admired his bold, lateral thinking, even when it made him disruptive in class. Following graduation, he set his sights on the Jovian moon of Europa — a veritable wellspring for any zealous capitalist. There, he quickly landed a competitive internship as a venture analyst at an investment branch of Tarleton Interstellar: a shipping and logistics megacorp that plied their trade in interplanetary trade routes, freight security, and commercial Anchor transit. He worked under Michael Yaisen — a charming man with an open-door policy, precise attention to detail, and the endearing habit of taking a great interest in his colleagues: never forgetting a name. Whilst initially working on lucrative short-term arbitrage opportunities, Everest’s prospects expanded when Yaisen took an interest him; first publicly praising him, then preening him as his protégé. By his mid-twenties, Everest had experienced a meteoric rise at Tarleton. He’d been welcomed into an exclusive corpo ‘inner circle’, had built a reputation for exceptional business instinct, and accrued a small fortune.

At his zenith, at one of the glitzy rooftop cocktail parties Everest had found himself regularly attending, he was invited to a hushed discussion with Yaisen and one of his former colleagues; a private investor named Leroy Hán. Yaisen convinced Everest that he was ready for the ‘big leagues’ and wanted to tip him off on a deal he had privately spearheaded for Tarleton — the majority acquisition of Myeongnim Logistics — a shipping enterprise that was legally entitled to exclusive freight rights for the moon of Telesto. Yaisen coyly admitted he intended to “go all in” and co-invest alongside the company to reap personal profit, not just corporate incentives. Based on the flawless documentation, this was the coup of a lifetime; with permits, Anchor agreements, and projected profit margins accounted for. Convinced this was the opportunity he’d been waiting for, Everest hastily liquidated his holdings and poured every last heliocredit he had into the venture. Soon after, along with Everest’s cosign, Tarleton completed the majority acquisition of Myeongnim Logistics.

Over the course of three days, Everest’s life collapsed. Myeongnim Logistics didn’t exist — and it never had. Yaisen and Hán had seduced a variety of their colleagues and acquaintances into investing in the deal, legitimising the company — which, it turned out, was nought but their shell company; all documents forged, all promises lies. Within hours of Tarleton’s acquisition, both of the fraudsters vanished from Jovian blocspace. Everest was left as the face of the failure, forced to answer to Tarleton executives. He, along with several other mid-level corpos who had fallen for the same scam, was the subject of a lengthy internal investigation. While he was found not to be guilty of foul play, still in possession of worthless Myeongnim shares, he was nonetheless fired for his negligence. Betrayed by his mentor, penniless, jobless and near-enough hopeless, Everest thought himself as Icarus in freefall. After spending a few weeks in a state of shellshocked malaise, he dragged himself back to his feet, emboldened somewhat by the encouragement of a few close friends, but most crucially by the desire to reject defeat. He would, by any means necessary, make a success out of himself, or he'd damn-well die trying — and one day, Yaisen and ever other shit-eating snake that he represented, would see him for what he was: a winner.

Everest soon turned his focus to bouncing back, seeking out work opportunities across Europa. He found himself at a disadvantage; while he had not strictly been blacklisted, any corp worth their salt was reluctant to take him on. He learned, however, that he felt no disappointment in rejection. In fact, the whole ordeal with Yaisen had left behind a deep bitterness and mistrust, and generally disenchanted him altogether with Europa. He saw now, behind the eyes of every corpo on the moon, the potential for deceit and exploitation. He needed to find something else. And find it he did, through unconventional means. With his comprehensive investigation of trade routes, he had noticed a sharp uptick in corsair activity across the system in the last few years. Word had it that piracy had been emboldened by a surge in MARQ licenses. Everest had never fancied himself as a gunslinger or a thief, but he was an adventurous heart, a risk-taker, and he'd be damned if he didn't know an emerging market when he saw one. And so, he was bold; he maxed out his loan, sold his apartment, and made his way to the shipyard.

Starry-eyed and sentimental, Everest is enraptured with the universe's beauty, and takes great enjoyment in prospecting its many wonders. A keen adventurer, he is drawn to both place and people, always interested in learning more about his acquaintances, and hoping to turn them into friends. His fascination with the universe, paired with a stubborn refusal to accept defeat, has dynamised him into one of the most belligerently ambitious young men in the solar system. He believes himself destined for greatness, and while he isn't quite sure how said greatness will manifest itself, he is unfliching in his efforts to achieve it. Yet for all of his charm and enthusiasm, Everest's earnestness can often outpace his judgement. He is prone to misreading social situations, particularly when among individuals cut from a different cloth than he, and his romantic heart pulls him to chase colourful detours that others would consider distractions. To many, his inexperience is apparent — he is too polished, too green, never having truly felt what it is like to live within the margins of society. Still, his persistence is undeniable. Even when out of his depth, he has a way of willing opportunities into existence, and of persuading others to share in his vision. Whether he is a trailblazer or a reckless pretender is a matter of perspective.

What he lacks in wisdom and room-reading, Everest makes up for in pattern recognition and analytics. Prior to his unceremonious fall from grace, he was among the most meteoric risers in the corpo climate of Europa. While his reputation may have disintegrated in-atmosphere, his aptitude remains. This shrewdness is evident not only through his business acumen, but also in his ability to adapt on the fly, reshaping plans when circumstances demand it. An intuitive mind, Everest has a knack for finding openings and opportunities that others miss — whether in a ledger, a negotiation, or a skirmish. While he is happy to shirk rules reactively, he is also a great beneficiary of structure. He has found success in methodical process — note-taking, agendas, spreadsheets — which helps to facilitate moments of improvisation in a pinch. He carries this philosophy with him in his leadership style, even as a corsair captain, much to the chagrin of the more lackadaisical among his crew.

Among corsairs and spacers, Everest is a polarising figure. To some, his unflagging optimism and knack for turning setbacks into opportunities mark him as a captain worth following; to others, he is a pretentious Europan dandy playing at piracy. Whether history will remember him as visionary or fool hangs in the balance, very much dependant on the success or failure of his boldest endeavour: captaining the Dullahan. Whatever the case, there is one certainty: Everest MacLaine will not rest until his name is written among the greats.

Everest clings to his corporate wardrobe — crisp shirts, waistcoats, slim trousers — fine-cut and razor-sharp, with most of his attire consisting of cooler-tones of blue, white and grey. Though has learned the hard way that such apparel is not conducive to the rugged and grime-stained life of a corsair, he nonetheless endeavours to present himself well, believing that it is both a facet of good leadership, and an essential component of making strong first impressions when dealing with external matters. While his styling is mostly concordant with that of the Europan yuppie, he is a particularly liberal accessoriser with several fine rings, lockets, wrist-watches and ear-rings in his collection. His groomed moustache and pomade-swept, medium length hair — blond-brown in colour — might be derided by the more hard-nosed among the crew, but would be considered most fashionable indeed among Europan coiffeurs and tastemakers.

An evocative man, he is prone to gesticulation and emotive expression — his face often telegraphing his mood, either by furrowed brow or twinkled eye. Tidy, confident and angular-featured, he might be considered strikingly suave by some, and prætentiously punchable by others. His disarming, expressive mien carries an air of restlessness and amusement, and perhaps a touch of child-like naiveté — punctuated by youthful blue eyes, yet masked somewhat by way of moustache. Whilst his sun-kissed complexion has mostly faded in his time away from Mercury, his skin is nonetheless warmer-toned than most spacers. While his physique lacks the hardened strength of a career soldier, or the wiry agility typical of smugglers and thieves, he keeps a modest measure of both attributes through regular exercise. At six feet, he might be considered tall to some, but is fairly average for a Mercurian, or a spacer, for that matter.

Garran “Gravel” Voith was born on Callisto in 2120, at the heart of Jovian industry. He grew up amid the black-market boom of stimulants, the lifeblood of independence during the Jovian Secession. Factories needed their workers awake around the clock to fuel economic freedom from Sol and Garran quickly learned that selling what the corporations needed was worth far more than their own rules. By his twenties, he was moving contraband in bulk, not just stims but anything that was worth slipping past tariffs and duties. He bribed officials to scrub names from blacklists, compensated inspectors enough to forget their jobs and turned a decent portion of Callisto’s streets into his personal marketplace.

By the 2140s, Garran had been folded into a Jovian outlaw guild, The Syndic Eight, one of the most powerful networks that dominated piracy, smuggling and contraband across Jovian space. His success earned him a strong seat at the council table, where his voice carried real weight. The guild gave him protection, legitimacy and the resources to expand. When one of his corporate allies was posted to a pivotal Transit Anchor, Garran leveraged that connection to build a smuggling fleet, stretching his influence far beyond Callisto. For decades, he was indispensable, the man who could move all kinds of cargo, hush up a scandal and make your shipment appear in the right hands.

Yet his reputation wasn’t only forged in boardrooms and back alleys. Garran was a duelist, infamous for settling disputes at gunpoint. The nickname “Gravel” came from a throat wound that left his voice ruined, wearing it as a badge of survival. For years, he balanced his roles, guild elder, smuggler-king and the last man you wanted to face across ten paces.

But power has a half-life. Over time, his senior contacts aged out of their positions and were replaced by younger, sharper faces. The guild itself began to change, corporatised, polished, no longer built for bruisers and gunmen like Garran. Rivals muscled into his markets while he refused to split his attention between planet and space, losing ground in both. Jovian's corporate overlords shifted their stance, legalising and taxing stimulants that had once made him rich. And finally, the Bloc Crisis slammed Sol blocspace into lockdown, severing Anchor routes that his trade depended on.

His empire didn’t collapse in a blaze; it withered. Contracts dried up, favours went unreturned and younger guild members adapted where he could not. For a man who always imagined he’d go out in a blaze of glory, the quiet erosion of his legacy was unbearable. Garran turned to the very substances he once sold, drowning his bitterness in drink and stimulants.

It was inevitable he’d pick a fight. Half-drunk, half-spun, he challenged a rival duelist to prove he wasn’t finished. Instead, he lost, badly. An ironically cruel bit mercy kept him alive, forcing him to walk away with broken pride and shoddy implants that barely held him together.

Now, in 2178, Garran is no longer a guild elder, kingpin, or feared gunslinger. Instead, he's a consigliere. A relic of another era, too dangerous to dismiss, too ruined to lead. His hands are unsteady, his contacts are old but his tongue is still sharp and his mind still knows every trick of the Anchor lanes.

Cynical survivor. Garran has seen syndicates rise and fall and corporate masters shuffle in and out. It’s left him pragmatic, sardonic and slow to trust idealists.
Bravado masking bitterness. He clings to swagger and sharp wit but the shine is gone. Sometimes it seems as if he’s trying to convince himself he’s still dangerous.
Respected… but pitied. Older spacers remember him as a ruthless smuggler and quick-draw duelist. Younger ones see only the bottle, the tremor and the man who lost the duel that broke him.
Addictive personality. He doesn’t just drink and stim, he chases risk, arguments and conflict. Garran is addicted to being important and spirals when he isn’t.
Despite all this, he’s still invaluable in the right role. The consigliere who knows when to cut a deal, when to stall and when to pull the trigger.

Age: 58.
Build: Broad but slouched, the frame of a man who once commanded presence. Softened by age, stimulants, and drink.
Cybernetics:
Left arm replaced with outdated Callisto-made augments. Plating worn smooth, servos sometimes glitch.
Facial subdermal patches from the final duel, one eye slightly offset, leaving him with a permanent squint.
Style: Wears outdated Solar syndicate fashion long high-collared coats, battered jewellery, boots with old-world flair.
Notable detail: His voice is his most recognisable feature, gravelly, broken, like every word costs effort. It’s equal parts unsettling and iconic.
Aura: The smell of smoke, old liquor and ozone from overworked implants. The kind of presence that enters a room before he speaks.

Strengths
Connections: Decades of favours, bribes and deals mean he still knows people across Sol and Jovian blocs.
Negotiator: Reads people fast, knows what they want and how to twist it. Half threats, half persuasion.
Street wisdom: Can smell a setup, spot a mark and tell when someone’s lying. Instincts honed by surviving long after he should’ve been dead.
Still dangerous. Though slower now, if given time to steady his hands, he can still put a shot exactly where it needs to go.

Limitations
Declining body: Tremors, dulled reflexes and fading stamina. He’s not built for long firefights anymore.
Addiction: Dependent on drink and stimulants. Sharp when dosed right, unstable when he isn’t.
Paranoia: Convinced everyone’s working an angle. Sure, he's often right but it makes him abrasive.
Relic mentality: Stuck in old ways of doing business. Resistant to new methods or tech, which could frustrate other crew.

Criminal record: Long list of smuggling, racketeering, Anchor fraud and bodily harm charges across Federation space.
Cybernetics: Callisto arm, patchwork implants from his duel loss, out-of-date and prone to malfunctions.

Belongings:
- A battered, customised hand-cannon he still carries (symbol of pride, even if his hand shakes).
- A deck of old-fashioned playing cards, yellowed with age.

Reputation nicknames: “Gravel” for his ruined voice but also “The Old Dog” in some circles, usually muttered with a mix of mockery and respect.

Fun fact: Carries around an empty stim-vial on a chain like a talisman. Supposedly the first batch he ever sold, though more likely it’s just a reminder of when he mattered.

Jax Veynar was born aboard the Horizon’s Folly, a small fringe salvage hauler that worked the quiet trade between independent freeports and drifting hulks. The ship was family-run in the loosest sense: his parents, Merek and Sera, captained the operation, with a patchwork crew of blood relatives, old hands, and hangers-on filling out the ranks. Life aboard the Folly was rough but steady. Jax’s days were spent cataloguing scrap, hauling cables, and running errands, always underfoot but too young for EVA or demo work. His father made sure of it — “the black takes kids first.” For Jax, the Folly was simply home: cramped, noisy, but safe, and made brighter by his cousin Rynn’s stories and the games he shared with his friend Lio, another boy aboard.

Everything changed when the Folly went after a military derelict adrift in contested space. The adults whispered arguments in the corridors, and Jax overheard one word that made Rynn go pale: munitions. Still, the gamble was too tempting. The Folly latched onto the wreck, and crews went out with torches and clamps. The first explosion came without warning. A charge bit too deep, or the wreck’s innards were already unstable — no one had time to say. The blast rippled through the derelict and into the Folly, crippling her. Alarms howled, bulkheads warped, and atmosphere vented in rushing streams.

In the chaos, Jax was shoved into an escape pod. The launch sequence fired just as another shockwave struck the hull. The pod blasted free but was crippled by flying debris, its systems failing even as he tumbled clear. Through the viewport he saw the Folly limping away, lights stuttering across her battered frame. For a heartbeat he believed they would recover. Instead, the second detonation bloomed across the void, tearing the ship apart and scattering her crew into silence.

Born to a young misfit couple on Callisto who sold her to one of its many factory estates as a child, Keema was destined for a tough life. She began working on assembly lines soon after the Hollow Mills estate "adopted" her, building holo-hoops and children's data-pads that she herself would never get to play with. At age thirteen, she inhaled her first hit of Lexipand after refusing the drug for years, afraid she would catch the addiction that drove her parents to sell their only child. The gene was quickly triggered, and despite her best efforts, the cycle began soon after. Wake, work, whoosh! Repeat.

It didn't take long for Keema to begin seeking out substances on her own, and eventually she began using money saved for food and rent on purchases of Lexipand. Predictably, compensation from the factory was not enough to cover her newfound extra-curricular activities and basic living expenses. Only a year after she started using, she vacated her position at the factory to enlist with Drego, a black budget, Callisto-based security guild that seemed to be the only option that would provide her with food and shelter in addition to a modest stipend. The guild was known for recruiting and pumping out young enforcers for the purposes of keeping the peace at factories like the one she grew up in. Keema, physically invigorated and optimistic from the drug use, trained hard and strode to be exceptional in her class. In time, she found that she really did enjoy the feeling of wielding a knife in defense, or squinting into the scope of a rifle, and in fact, had a knack for both. She saved enough of her stipend from friendly discounts toward her "medication" that she was able to buy a very cheap ocular implant for her left eye, which allowed her speedy facial recognition and better interfacing with the scopes she was handling.

Throughout her time training with Drego, Keema continued to meet with her local plug in the back-alley of the Quantum Byte. Whether the oxytocin that flooded her brain was natural or synthetic, Keema felt a deep connection with Aydin Aux, whom she swiftly became enamored with. Handoffs every two weeks quickly turned into once a week meetups, and soon the two were hanging out without any pretenses after her security shifts. Keema had never felt so seen or cared for, nor had she ever shaken from belly-laughs, which Aydin was easily able to draw from her. The young man with the softest hands taught her how to find joy in this shithole, how to snort powders, and how to make love.

Life was going quite swimmingly in Keema's opinion. Unfortunately, that opinion was very much skewed due to the addiction that enveloped her. Despite her best efforts to disguise it, her need for consumption stopped for nothing and no one, and her poor performance during security shifts began to cause concern among the Drego officers. Soon she was discharged from the company, declared too much of a liability and a distraction. She would have been devastated at the loss of her livelihood had Aydin not offered to introduce her to Garran Voith, one of the big bosses of The Syndic Eight. Keema immediately ingratiated herself to Mr. Voith, offering up her skills in exchange for employment and protection. Having no other point of reference, Gravel became somewhat of a father-figure in her eyes, and she did everything she could to do right by him and Aydin. It finally felt like she had found a motley family of sorts to call her own, and Keema allowed herself to breathe easily in their company. She spent many years utilizing her training to keep the guild’s smugglers safe on their routes to and fro, keen on making sure the chemicals to alcohol ratio in her system never rendered her an unreliable team member.

It was a grey evening much like most evenings in the slums of Callisto when Keema woke to find Aydin unresponsive in the bed next to her. The image of him lying there with his eyes half-open, jaw hanging slack, completely departed from his body, burned itself into her core. She felt, but did not register, her trembling fingers fumbling with her holophone to call Gravel and inform him that Aydin's body was cold in their apartment from what she thought was probably an overdose of a narcotic they sold: Soma. The rest of the evening was a blur, and when she finally stopped to focus, she found that she was boarding a ship headed for Europa. She spent the next couple of years frolicking about in a manic whirlwind, working as a gun-for-hire and indulging her raging hedonistic tendencies in love hotels, clubs, and dingy bars. Soon the well of available jobs dried up, along with her purse, and she crawled her way back to Callisto in search of her old boss and the possibility of a new gig.

When properly medicated, Keema is loud, jovial, and quick-witted. The hardships she's faced seem to only encourage her upbeat "Life is too short to pout" attitude. People often observe that she has no inkling of the concept of personal space. Always one to run headfirst into the fray, Keema acts first, asks questions later, and will try just about anything once. When she feels connected to someone, she is a fiercely loyal and protective entity. One can usually tell when she is off her "meds” when she becomes the complete opposite of her regularly presented self. So if one sees her dipping into her little red tin, it’s probably best to pretend they didn’t.

Keema stands at an average of 5’8” with tattoos littered around an athletic build. Her red hair falls just past her shoulders and is shaved on the sides. The human eye, her right eye, is a muted green color. Her left eye is a fifth generation ocular implant; it looks slightly glazed over with a gray iris in the center. There are several thin scars on her face from knife injuries and some blemishes due to her dry skin, courtesy of all her drinking; though she still considers herself relatively attractive. She's usually wearing her big black combat boots and loose-fitting clothing, and is always sporting a worn, black leather utility belt that has two small pouches and two sheaths for her switchblade and pistol. There is also a simple titanium band around her right pointer finger that she never takes off.

Like so many exsols born in this day and age, Rol's story, or rather his parents, began within the towering, convulsing strata-communes of Schiaparelli Crater, an arcology tracing its history from Australian and Indonesian colonists that had arrived in the first red waves of 2050. His father, Bo Emberg, was the breadwinner, grinding long and dangerous hours, whilst his mother, Ahn Emsberg , worked as an associate algae farmer at the ponic fields. Life in Schiaparelli Crater was difficult, based on the few anecdotes that his mother told him. The rate of emigration between Earth and Mars was increasing exponentially as conditions on Earth declined. Unfortunately, the rate of terraforming projects and arcology construction was unable to keep up with the demand, resulting in dozens of ramshackle pop habs bordering Martian townships. Populist beliefs of secessionism and separatism were beginning to grow popular again after the Jovian Secession in 2127. In spite of all that, his mother and father afforded a decent life with their combined paychecks. Whilst Bo, a staunch fed nationalist, was content with living life on Mars, Anh saw the stars as the future for their family, fascinated by the adverts of offworld life and prosperity in Jovian propo-mags and wild tales about colonist paradise and freedom on the edge of the Sol Federation from her strata neighbours. It was nothing more than a wild dream and a dream without a catalyst is just a mirage. Had nothing happened, Rol would have grown up a perfectly happy citizen of the Sol Federation.

Unfortunately, it took one day for his parent's life to come tumbling down. Decades of lax maintenance and refusals by the local strata council to refurbish and renew a last gen helium-3 reactor facility where Rol's father worked at led to a fatal leakage of radioactive tritium-3 waste. Approximately three quarters of Schiaparelli Crater was rendered uninhabitable for five years by the incident. To make matters worst, Rol's father was one of the few that had been exposed to the worst of the radioactive fallout. With bioengineering too expensive for them to purchase and medical bills slowly racking up, Bo's fervent nationalistic pride in the Sol Federation was long gone and with another child in the way in the form of Rol, any chance of a peaceful life in the Sol Federation was long gone. He agreed to his wife's urgings to move to the Jovian Commonwealth where they perhaps had a chance of enrolling corporate health insurance that could pay for his bills. Using what remained of his savings, Bo used what contacts he had to purchase an colony bond under Klooseward Inc, a small to medium sized agro-corp that was making waves on Ganymede. It was with one small catch, though, one that Anh only found out at the immigration terminal as oil-slicked rain drowned the black tarmac around them on the spaceport strip.

He'd only had enough money for one ticket.

So, it was onboard a damp and crammed Walden-class shuttle cruiser where Rol's first breath were taken. Upon landing on Ganymede, a quick geneburn and oath ceremony made him an official citizen of the Jovian Commonwealth. The next day, Anh Emberg with Rol swaddled up in a blanket was ushered into a commmunal bunkroom by a Klooseward HR agent and told to attend work orientation in the evening. In a matter of 24 hours, his mother got placed in the role of an administrative agronomist whilst Rol would be nursed in a corporate trade school, subsidised by Klooseward, on learning how to become a colony hand. Compared to most kids his age, Rol learnt more practical subjects that were geared towards transforming him into a child labourer such as how to don an EVA suit in low oxygen environments, how to grow gene-modded spirulina in a bioreactor, how to weld a titanium quarry strut in a pinch and operating a autolifter. When Rol turned ten, he began helping his mother in the agronomical needs of the growing colony. As an agro-tech , life was grueling as he worked from dawn to dusk, refiltering algae tanks, seeding rows of ponic fields and welding structural hab beams with little to no adult supervision. The work was so taxing that fresh blisters would erupt on his skin on a daily basis and welts would sprout where his oversized EVA suit rubbed uncomfortably against his skin. Throughout this gruel punishment, Rol and his mother kept each other company by sharing in their love of cooking as they spent countless evenings skimming off substandard produce and organic ingredients from their colony's harvest to cook for one another in the evening, sometimes cooking meals for their .

When Rol asked his mother one day why they didn't hoard the food for themselves or sell it on the market, his mother simply replied by silently pointing her ladle at the crowds of workers happily talking and eating with one another and said " You can't buy this moment with heliodollars.".

At the age of 20, Rol's efforts eventually led to him becoming the team leader of a 100 man strong colony team where his job changed from maintaining and refurbishing current colony activities to establishing a new colony site on the equator of Ganymede. The effort would involve six years of constant terraforming and construction in a remote, barren ice filled wasteland. Though it would mean seperation from his mother, the opportunity and chance to prove himself in the eyes of his employers did excite him. Rol earned a reputation amongst the agro-colonists of Klooseward as a decent leader who was unpretentious about the rigors and reality of the work they were engaged in. To the consternation of his supervisor and manager, Rol ensured that the life and safety of his subordinates were of the utmost security. His concern for his coworkers was so paramount that he lost his left eye in a space debris shower whilst protecting one of his workers during routine EVA activity. Whilst the work was slow and , the sites managed to pass the regulatory inspections of the Jovian Commonwealth. Life was harsh but consistently so at his colony and for a while, Rol was satisfied.

However, just like his father before him, disaster struck on 2168 when Klooseward Inc was acquired by Gali Agrodynamics, a planetary agricultural conglomerate owning nearly 65% of all agricultural production in the Jovian System. The primary reason for this was the emergence of the Bloc Crisis, the cold war between the two superpower polities decreasing the stock valuation for Klooseward Inc which relied heavily on partnerships with vendors based in the Sol Federation. Upon the day of the acquisition, Gali Agrodynamics announced they would be laying off roughly 75% of their workforce to reconsolidate Klooseward's assets and 'reinvest in autoamted technology in a bloated sector'. Rol's team unfortunately were unlucky as they were one of many who were fired. As they watched years of their hard work being scrapped and systematically repossesed by Gali Agrodynamics transition officers, Rol pondered his next move and upon discussing with his mother a risky idea.

With the funds they had accumulated and with the help of a variable rate loan negotiated with the Jovian Corporate Bank, Rol decided to recruit his former coworkers as staff in a new farm to table eatery serving Jovian and Martian fusion cuisine. The first few months were good but finances began to go into the red as operational and regulatory costs ramped up. Without his mother's knowledge, Rol made a deal with local Ganymedean trafficking operations to use his restaurant as both a money laundering and fencing operation. Although he despised the business altogether and tried to keep it out of sight, Rol saw it as a necessary and hopefully, temporary evil as he held out hope one day that he could be rid off it once the restaurant business became stable.

Disaster struck for the third time yet again when Rol's fencing racket were revealed in an undercover sting operation by the Jovian Civil Authority just a year after it was established. Thanks to the help of his loyal staff who remembered the sacrifices he made for them on Klooseward, Rol managed to escape just as officers surrounded his restaurant and bashed their way through the doors. His mother's ignorance of his illicit behaviours led to no charges being laid against her but half of his restaurant staff were arrested under charges of fencing and illegal trafficking of unauthorised goods. A warrant was issued out for Rol's arrest. Rol fled to the edges of the Kuiper Belt, hiding in a seedy orbital hotel until the coast was clear. Upon reacquiring intersystem radio communications with his mother, Rol found out to his horror that the variable rates on the loan had increased to the point where it would lead her to ruin unless he did something. Rol turned to gig-hunting, primarily in the catering and agro-business on the Kuiper Belt, working two jobs as a japanese food truck cook and a greenhouse operator. His salary was enough to staunch the proverbial flow of blood but it wasn't enough to sew the wound. He needed more heliodollars.

On a ride to his strata-shanty from another long shift at work, Rol chanced upon an advert whilst browsing for jobs on the solar net. The information was brief but it seemed that a trading vessel by the name of the Dullahan was in need of crew members. Urgently. Seeing as he had nothing to lose, Rol sent in his resume and slept, thinking that nothing would come of it.

A call and a meeting the week after had Rol packing his bags once more. The rest, as they say, is history.

Rol is a man of quiet calm and focus, finding a meditative peace and calm in his work, whether it's tending to algae bioreactors or cooking up a feast for his guests. His first and foremost priority is to others instead of himself, viewing himself as a provider and a worker first rather than a friend, sometimes to an worrisome degree. His penchant for his work is passionate enough that he works long hours, sometimes skipping sleep, just to complete the next task.

But behind the cheery smiles and the offers of a hot meal for anyone's hungry stomach, Rol is a man who struggles to remain optimistic in life. His civic values of meritocratic work and benevolence have been eroded over time by countless compromises and having been punished by life two times in a row. Having lived through a life of hardship and laborious work, the former colony hand struggles to reconcile his current status as a wanted criminal and the simple, honest man he wants to be for his mother.

Rol is respected but never to the point of admiration by his former coworkers and his current crew thanks to his dedication to his work and his nature as a work. His relationship with his mother remains fraught, as his omission of his restaurant's illegal operations has resulted in a rift between them, in spite of his attempts to resolve their financial debt. In spite of all this, his unconditional love for his mother knows no bounds and he would do anything to ensure that she remains safe and happy.

From miner trash to colonist rat, Rol has heard all manner of comments on his roughspun and unrefined appearance which he couldn't give less than one heliodollar about. A thick crop of copper hair covers his head like moss and below that, an easy smile scythes through a coarse and unshaven beard. Years of hard life working as a colony hand on Ganymede have bestowed Rol with a stocky and stout figure, usually hidden by his baggy dirt-encrusted poly-aramid slacks. His pan-sized palms are mapped with a canyon of scars and calluses earned from a lifetime of rough work. Rol keeps a functional and spartan wardrobe, consisting of his old EVA gear from his time on Ganymede and a pile of frayed and bleached colony uniforms. The only constants in his daily apparel are his father's Mars Landing Day anniversary beanie and a chipped necklace of Ganymedean las-cut chondrite.

Strengths

Planetary colonisation is a dangerous field and Rol is no stranger to it. Rol's years of experience on Ganymede as a colony hand and later, as a colony project supervisor for Klooseward Inc makes him one an expert in the construction and management of colony habitats, particularly regarding the installation, modification and maintenance of colony agri-tech systems such as algae bioreactors, protein myco-vats, vermiworm farms and a host of other common technologies used to support colonisation.Thanks to his experience supervising construction of his colony in the Ganymedean equator, Rol is savvy in responding to practical problems with ad hoc solutions and limited resources, remaining calm and even-tempered in dire situations.

His education at Klooseward, whilst not equivalent to university education, has given him passing familiarity with cultivation of common crops and rearing of livestock used in both the Sol Federation and Jovian Commonwealth alongside basic skills in operating heavy construction machinery and limited resource management. Rol also is a capable chef thanks to his mother, specialising in various localities of Martian and Jovian cuisine. His business management skills, however, leave something to be desired.

Given his rough and tumble life in all sorts of manual labour, Rol has an hitherto inhuman amount of physical endurance and stamina, able to commit to long periods of physical work without the slightest hint of fatigue.

Limitations

Rol's relationship with his mother and the threat of a looming debt hanging over their heads remains a constant in any decision he makes. He is extremely secretive of providing information about his mother and remains mum whenever moments of conversation or discussion touch upon matters of his family. His current financial situation is also a potential vulnerability if the wrong individual with ill intentions were to be informed about it.

Rol is also completely impotent in combat situations, being about as useful as a wet napkin in any situation that involves violence. Don't ask him to pick up a coil rifle, a gun or anything related to combat situations as Rol is likely to misfire and hit you just as likely as he is to hit the enemy. Whilst Rol may be wanted for criminal activity in the Jovian Commonwealth, he is also a veritable greenhorn when it comes to the finer workings of the underworld, preferring to leave it to others to sort out dirty business and is not familiar with some of the subtleties of operating with criminal elements.

Across the cosmos, many children receive names expressing their parents’ wishes for them. Looking past the fetid waters of the Cấm river to imagine the stars beyond the smog and light-polluted skies of Hải Phòng, Nở Vĩnh’s name expresses her parents’ dream—one shared by much of mankind—that their child might blossom forever. Unfortunately, like many other humans, this dream was smothered in the cradle. Though it was hoped that she would be one of several, the spectre of sickness haunting the Earth kept her an only child—one ever lucky to live at all. She and her loved ones have always been keen to celebrate this victory alone, no doubt, but like billions of others on Earth, these little fortunes are quickly spent.

Vĩnh’s earliest memories are of pain. She was diagnosed with juvenile idiopathic arthritis before she could walk. Her family never had much. After forming a basic treatment plan with doctors, there was nothing left. From then on, it was just about managing, filling in the gaps with hope, and trying their best to take the next step. The physical pain dulled over the years as loneliness took the stage. Running and playing was an option for few children in the city. Video games were expensive, and it hurt to play them for long. Vĩnh’s parents were rarely both at home, and she spent many nights with grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins when both parents’ work schedules overlapped. Though she helped where she could, ever eager to avoid feeling idle and like a burden, Vĩnh was often set to the sidelines as the needs of daily life overran her. Her primary companion became an ageing tablet handed down to her for her schoolwork. Through it, she found a lifelong love.

For Vĩnh, reading became a path to freedom. Through every struggle, she has still found ways to learn. Even as her eyes deteriorated and she went blind in her teens, she embraced screen readers and learned braille to keep up with this love. This stubborn dedication to what she could not lose pointed her in the direction of one the few opportunities the stagnant Earth still offered: higher education. She had one shot, and she pursued it with all her might. Herschel University extended a scholarship—a lifeline—and Vĩnh seized it without hesitation.

On Mars, Vĩnh enjoyed an unfamiliar freedom, not only from university accessibility measures enabling her to live independently for the first time in her life, but also for how the world’s lower gravity enabled her to walk with less pain than before. She studied, enrolled in work-study programs, tutored, and spent countless sleepless nights dreaming of a better life to come—a better life just in reach. She scrimped, saved, pawned, and wheedled at every turn. By her second year, she had enough to put down a deposit on the first of many life-changing augmentations. Student insurance called it a vanity expense. Advisors gave sympathetic nods to Vĩnh’s analyses of the costs and benefits, both objective and subjective, but could offer nothing. To regain her sight, Vĩnh turned to her most reliable friend: research. She found her recourse on Europa, and left the very next break to receive her new eyes. They weren’t the cheapest, but they were close. She awoke from surgery with a repayment plan and black lenses where her eyes once sat. But she could see the world again. And she longed to be able to reach out and experience it all the more.

Further invigorated, she set to work the moment she returned to Mars. She researched with new purpose, and pushed herself harder than she ever had before. She took on retail and restaurants—any place that was willing to look past her strange eyes and faltering smile. As weeks turned to months, her world became a web of abstract numbers. Food was an expense to be minimized in favor of painkillers for performance optimization. Leisure was a commodity to be rationed on an availability basis. Sleep was to be calculated, with work and school taking priority every time. At least the sleep-deprivation migraines sometimes dulled the joint pain. Her college years melted into a hazy blur of grades and profits. In a blink, she had graduated and returned home to prepare for standardized admission tests to law school.

Back on Earth, she returned to her roots of learning by listening, studying as she worked a revolving door of minimum wage shifts. Though her ambitious schedule endured at first, her joints soon began to buckle under the higher gravity. By the end of her stay on Earth, she was faced with the same ultimatum from her body: Scholarship or break trying. By the skin of her teeth, she made it. She begged and pleaded with admissions agents already familiar with her name and with faculty she’d already worked to impress alike. Soon, she was welcomed back to Mars, and promptly returned to work.

By the end of her law degree, she was a shambling husk. She dragged herself across the finish line, and soon after resigned herself to an uncomfortable reality. She couldn’t make it. She had paid off her eyes only two years prior, and still, she could not afford to pay in full for new limbs. She could barely afford a deposit. Her degree was worthless without local certifications to practice. It was an open question whether she could even manage to train under a licensed lawyer and work another job at once. But she couldn’t bear it any longer. She scrounged up loans where she could and leveraged all she had left. Just as with her replacement eyes, her replacement limbs were made for functionality alone, blatantly artificial, yet still better than what she had before all the same.

Vĩnh found an unexpected opportunity as she recovered from surgery. One of her recovery ward-mates directed her to look at positions on Callisto upon hearing of her background. Sure enough, there was an intense demand for lawyers willing to staff offices on the moon, and the export market made Federation training an asset. And so, from her hospital bed, Vĩnh began researching, applying, and preparing.

Callisto was supposed to be an opportunity second to none—a chance at a decent, stable life. Unfortunately, interest waits for none. As she prepared for local certification, it haunted her. As she apprenticed, it loomed behind her, growing larger by the day. Late fees accumulated. Creative shuffling of bills and meagre apprenticeship wages could only do so much to stop the bleeding. By the time she could begin practicing, her medical debt had grown unmanageable. Her student debt piled on top. A second job curbed the bleeding, for a time. Though some instances were exhausted hallucinations, real debt collectors did begin to back off. Maybe, just maybe, Vĩnh could dig her way out of this too.

If only her hardware could take it. She could do without pinkies. She managed with three functional fingers. When she got down to two, her insurance covered bottom-of-the-barrel replacement fingers, made with minimal sensory input and the cheapest materials legally available. But it all still cost her in copays. Vĩnh limped along for months more, scraping together payments and looking for solutions. None came. The walls began closing in, until there were no more reasonable sacrifices to make. Planned obsolescence took the new fingers one by one. Insurance denied her new requests. Vĩnh began grasping at straws. First to go were her medications. The inflammation returned with a passion. Vĩnh crossed her remaining fingers and hoped. She chipped away at her debt as hard as she could. She begged her company insurance provider to approve new arms, hands—even half-decent fingers for the new coverage year. At every turn, she was denied. She received the same garbage as in the year prior. She treated her hands with the utmost care. She minimized wear and followed every maintenance protocol to the letter.

By mid-year, she was back to four fingers across two hands. Left with no alternative, she turned to the black market. She had her left hand’s fingers salvaged to put on the right. In doing so, she broke her left hand beyond repair. The next time, she found another mechanic and salvaged her toes to the same end. She barely limped through the year. Cannibalizing her feet for parts placed new strains on her body—strains which were unsustainable, most of all without her medication. As her performance waned, she could lie to herself no more. There was blood in the water, and it was coming from her. It was surely only a matter of time before her superiors identified her decaying performance, if they hadn’t already nailed her on that. Her coworkers had already noted her toe-fingers and broken hand, after all. The clock was ticking.

All signs pointed towards extralegal measures. All she could do now was dig down. The black market was waiting with open arms. For the last time, she sold off everything she could, pawned the rest, and clawed out loans. She sent her parents a parting sum, then prepared to buy her way to a better life with the rest. This time, the service providers were simply honest about how little they cared about her. For a small fee of everything she had left, the good illegal merchants of Callisto found her sturdy new arms and legs, jailbroke and secured her cybernetics, defrauded her company insurance as much as they could manage, and sent her on her way with a far greater supply of her medication than strictly legal for a pharmacist to dispense. Vĩnh threw fake doctor’s notes and every other lie she could to her supervisors as she scrambled for her final escape. When she found it, she scheduled a resignation notice to send, and hoped they wouldn’t catch her.

Now Vĩnh can only hope that a willingness to do her best and learn will get her far enough to send some money home to her parents.

At her best, Vĩnh is driven and relentlessly optimistic, always ready to face new hardships with positivity and her best foot forward. She prefers to look for the best in situations and in people, and has worked hard her entire life to keep her best foot forward. She is a passionate learner, both from reading and from word of mouth, and is just as happy to share what she herself has learned. Even in fields beyond her familiarity or ability, she will happily listen to an expert share the intricacies of their perspective and nod along. Few coworkers of hers have gone without her peeking curiously past their shoulder, eager to figure out what they might be up to, and all the more interested to have it explained. Similarly, this enduring interest in the novel has made her an excellent listener, ready to hear another’s problems and joys alike with a steady interest. However, chatty as she may be, Vĩnh does not as readily share as she listens. She is not intentionally private so much as she has little interest in her internal world. Those with the inclination to push will not find it difficult to get her to open up, but she will rarely initiate doing so.

As it stands, Vĩnh is scarcely at her best. Recent years still loom large, and her efforts to push the unpleasant down have seen middling success at best. Her smile holds, and a good chat always peps her up all the same, but, in the many moments of silence out in space, when she cannot gorge herself on knowledge and input, she wavers. Her expression maintains a pensive quality past the superficial placid smile. She had never imagined she’d end up here, as a thief, a fraudster, and an associate of criminals. Thirty years of taking the cards she was dealt and playing them as well as she could have only gotten her here. She grasps at straws in her idle moments, trying to imagine a way she could have done it all better—been better. The impossible choices of life gnaw at her. A discussion of right and wrong, of just and unjust, of moral and immoral, sends her spiraling into paradox. A lifetime ago, she resolved to address cases as they came, to follow the law and simply try her best. Now, she debates herself aloud and tears herself apart by facing principle against reality. She tries her best aboard The Dullahan, but as she learns more about her crewmates, she grows only more unsettled. Her guilt hurts worse than any of her joints ever did, and yet there are so many people who seem excited to wield weapons against their fellow men. But if nobody got hurt, would it truly be so wrong to steal something back from the entities which poisoned her home and denied her when she needed them most?

In her old life, she was not easily shaken. Not anymore.

Even with a little height boost from her cybernetic legs, Vĩnh is still shy of five feet, standing at 149cm. She has a somewhat stocky, if rather underfed build. As far as distinctive biological features go, Vĩnh has a smattering of little acne scars on her forehead and jawline, uses her hair to obscure the fact that the outer half of her right eyebrow is missing and scarred-over, and has a prominent chemical burn scar from around her left shoulder to her mid-waist. These distinctive features naturally pale in comparison to Vĩnh’s obvious cybernetics. Her eyes are entirely black, looking similar to the lens of a mobile phone camera. Her prosthetic arms attach to a port at the shoulder, while her legs attach at ports just above where the knee would be. Both are made of the same natural black of carbon fibre, without any remaining identifiable branding on them. In better economic straits, Vĩnh might prefer to do more for herself than cheap lotion for her scars and two-in-one shampoo-body wash for bathing, but vanity is a luxury. Looking “professional” is already an ask in this economy. Working as a privateer, even that is a waste anyway. Her limbs don’t need to feel heat or warmth, and clothing impedes their modularity functions anyway. Therefore, Vĩnh almost exclusively wears shorts with t-shirts, tank tops, and sports bras.

Beyond strengths common to most cybernetic enhancements, Vĩnh’s biggest strengths are immaterial. From years of wandering the internet and databases learning about all manner of things, Vĩnh has become an excellent researcher. If the information exists and can be found by reasonable means, Vĩnh can most often track it down. Even better, so long as she understands what she’s reading, she can often figure out how to apply what she finds. Though she may lack the training, willingness to genuinely try can get one far—and Vĩnh has no shortage of will. She is nothing if not earnest. And for as far as this can take her as a layman, in areas around her adjacent field, she can prove truly formidable. She is intimately familiar with both Federation and Jovian law, and possesses a talent for penetrating bureaucracy. Though all of this education is usually irrelevant aboard a privateering vessel, Vĩnh’s years of double-dipping into minimum-wage work has granted her a more well-rounded base of knowledge from which to work. No problem she can readily address is left to fester aboard The Dullahan.

Well-rounded and driven as she is, Vĩnh is loath to decide that something cannot be done. By no means is she averse to help either; rather, she will readily enlist the help of others to try and force the issue, until she harms herself or others in doing so. Her stubborn insistence on doing more than her best has taken its toll on her—a toll her health could never afford to sustain in the first place. She has implicitly embraced a medical race to the bottom, as the years of pushing and skimping on vital medications accumulate on her remaining joints. She forces herself into coughing fits from effort. Her cheap ocular implants sometimes irritate her face and cause tears. She insists on pushing through any pain that she can bear without collapsing. Despite all of her cybernetics, she has a frail core; her joints show the damage of someone far older. Worse still, this inflexibility has begun to cause problems for her beyond the physical. She will not compromise with herself. The world’s complexity eats at her. Her aspirations of morality render her often sickened by the implications of her work. Her will to action and her wish to do right clash violently within, and no solution is yet in sight. It is only a matter of time before she paralyzes herself when she cannot afford to fight herself.