Character Profile: Alex Movithi

Alex Movithi: Man Adrift

"This could be really good, or really, really bad." -Alex Movithi, more often than he'd prefer

Alex Movithi's story began in 1062, born on the asteroid mining planet Mondas to Alexei and Hilda Movithi, poor junk traders. From a young age he worked for his parents aboard starships, shuttling cheap metals throughout the Mondas system, always dreaming of being an interstellar pilot, seeking to escape the poverty and corruption prevalent throughout Mondas. As soon as he turned 18, he got on the first ship bound for planet Hightower, hoping to join the imperial navy and find adventure.

And adventure he found. When he enlisted in the navy, the subsector was embroiled in the Greycoat Insurgency war. The war was a footnote in galactic history, but to those who lived in the subsector, it was devastating and left lasting scars on everyone there. Others knew it as the Greycoat insurgency or the first Frontier war, the one that interrupted trade for a few years and was a mild inconvenience. Those who lived there knew it as THE war, the only one worth remembering.

The Greycoats were secessionist insurgents from fringe worlds, tired of the Imperium's oversight, fighting to leave and establish their own coalition of worlds. Not that Alex knew any of that. To him, the war was his chance to get offworld and find something to tell his grandchildren about. Young and reckless, he entered in the flight department, the small fighters that flew the most dangerous missions into enemy territory. Every day he flew off, escorting heavy destroyers, providing support in invasions on enemy territory, and engaging the Greycoats in the silent carnage of interstellar dogfights.

Those were the good times, the times he looked back on later and thought to himself, "Those were the good times," as one would expect when reminiscing about the good times. Through all of it he refused numerous commissions, wishing to remain in the thick of combat rather than stand back and order others around. His finest hour came during the Battle of Dessel when the capital ship he served with, the INS Thoth, was surrounded by Greycoat ships. As the dwindling Imperial forces held the insurgents at bay, the Greycoats sent an elite fighter squadron equipped with experimental high-power missiles to penetrate the Thoth's power station. Through a combination of brilliant maneuvering, hard reads on enemy ships and general incompetence from one Greycoat pilot, he destroyed the incoming missiles, allowing the Thoth to hold out until reinforcements came. His valor in combat against the rebels was noted and he was promoted instantly. Suddenly, younger cadets knew his name and asked him for autographs, senior officers tipped their hats at him, and just about everyone in the navy wanted to be his friend. Life couldn't get better for him.

And it didn't. In fact, life got significantly worse.

Alex, having found success in the navy, decided to move on to other things. He had served in the flight department; next to that, anything else would be a piece of cake. Thinking of making it rich, he left the navy, bought a small cargo ship, and sought out a living as a free trader. His ship attracted all types; immigrants and refugees, scoundrels and smugglers, it didn't matter so long as they could pay for their travels. One of his passengers, young Amelia Straffin, joined the crew to hide away from the Mondasian mob and continue her studies.

But times became hard. It turns out that having no experience in the real world outside of the navy had ill-equipped Alex to the rigors of interplanetary trade, and he soon fell upon hard times. He took to gambling, losing 10,000 credits in one night. With contracts being few and far apart, and no longer being able to pay for his ship, he became increasingly desperate. When the ship and its crew stopped at the starport of a small planet called Balthazar, he wrapped a bandanna around his face, stole away from his ship in the dead of night and left the planet aboard a raider ship, leaving his crew with no way off.

Joining the crew of the raider ship he became a pirate, preying on unsuspecting vessels in the darkness of interstellar space. The money he made wasn't much, but it was enough to keep him going. Not that it brought him happiness. Every night his thoughts were haunted by those he had left behind on Balthazar and the memories of his success at Dessel, and how far he had fallen. Once he was surrounded by friends, cheering him on and celebrating his victories. Now he was surrounded by cutthroats who couldn't care less about whether he lived or died. Not that he was exempt, he supposed. Once he was a shining example of the best the Imperium had to offer; now he was taking advantage of those good-natured enough to fall victim to the pirates' bait.

It wasn't long before he made enemies. A large yacht had answered a distress call the pirates had sent out, and Alex and his fellow corsairs were eagerly awaiting the chance to board and seize the ship's riches. As the pirates boarded the craft, they encountered heavy resistance; the yacht's owner hadn't come unprepared. After taking out the guards, the pirates discovered the identity of the ship's proprietor, Baeral, a well-known, high-ranking imperial noble with connections all over the place; Alex had known and served with his brother, a captain in the navy, and he was rumored to have connections to the mob on Mondas. The pirates jumped at the chance to humiliate one of the most influential men in the subsector, belittling him before his whole crew and making him lick their shoes.

Needless to say, this made Baeral angry, and a little sad too. He never forgot the pirates who made a fool of him, and swore his revenge. But then they were gone, and the best he could do was rant before the Duke about cracking down on piracy across the subsector.

Alex never really liked his comrades on the raider ship, and the feeling was mutual; after one disastrous heist, the pirate crew unceremoniously dumped him on the crappiest planet they could find.

Naturally, it was Balthazar.

Struggling to find himself again and looking back on all the mistakes he made, Alex wandered the streets, looking for work that didn't come. It didn't help that the planet was undergoing a civil war. Eventually he found a room, bunking in a crowded apartment with an impulsive noblewoman, a still-bitter Amelia Straffin, and a man he would have forgotten existed if his bulky armor didn't make him take up half the room.

Alex didn't know what he wanted. To make amends, perhaps, to pay back his debt to society and prove that he was still in the game, that he was still the hero that had saved the Thoth at Dessel. Maybe he wanted to find a place where he could do some good in the world.

Or maybe he was exactly where he wanted to be, surrounded by chaos.

Traits and Personality
Alex is 5' 11" with brown hair and two eyes. He usually wears a jacket in grey or brown over his old naval uniform and a bandanna or scarf covering his face. He has a strong sense of loyalty to his comrades, who he refuses to abandon. He is generally a stickler for the rules until somebody else breaks them; at that point he tosses them out the window. As the oldest of the group, he has the most experience, and is pretty skilled in numerous disciplines, a jack of all trades. Alex enjoys playing soccer, drinking and talking with friends, brooding, and sleeping. Things that anger him include the use of force on civilian populations, hypocrisy, and people who talk loudly on their phones at restaurants.

In combat he generally uses a cutlass or a Gauss pistol.

Character Profile: Dame Vanai Cordé

In this first of a series of four posts, we'll explain the backstories, traits, and game statistics for the four player characters in the Travellers' Raid Society. 

Lady Dame Vanai Cordé: Servant of the Imperium

"When I left the Navy, I didn't quite know what I would do next, only that I would hope to be of some service to the Imperium. And yet, after my time in the Navy and my knighthood, it seemed rather- mundane- to take up the family business or a teaching position. Much to the disappointment of my father and my aunt, I ended up becoming a Traveller rather than a more respectable occupation. They are correct in noting that my new career choice does have worse retirement plans, less workplace safety, and fewer opportunities to pay off college debt for my liberal arts degree, but the travel is excellent and the people I meet unforgettable." - Lady Dame Vanai Cordé, Personal Diaries

Lady Dame Vanai Cordé is the leader of this company of Travellers. She was born on the planet Aquitaine in 1068, in the city of Neidong (also known as the City of Scattered Coins) to a family of moderately prosperous means. Her parents, Nathaniel and Soraya Cordé, owned an independent free trader, and together ran the small company Cordé Mercantile, which specialized in transport of luxury and cultural goods to planets on the frontier. Vanai is itself a Vilani name, although her family is majority Solomani Human. Vanai attended the University of Kajaani, majoring in Interplanetary Economics. Upon graduation, however, the War (known to the inhabitants of the subsector as the First Frontier War, not to be confused with the other conflict of the same name), a massive interplanetary conflict extending throughout the subsector, began. This conflict, known simply as 'the War' to those who lived through it, was a four-year conflict between forces of the Imperium and various Loyalist worlds against the Greycoats, a force of libertarian rebels, who were supported by numerous disloyal planetary governments. A theory of involvement by a shadowy conspiracy led by the Kreynos, the militaristic alien species whose empire once included much of the subsector, circulates periodically in certain circles, but is officially denied by the Imperial government. During the War, the Aquitaine planetary government instituted a draft, and Vanai decided to enlist in the Imperial Navy so that she would have a choice in which service to enlist in.

Vanai was accepted into the Imperial Navy's Logistical Branch thanks to her experience in interplanetary trade and economics. She was assigned as a Quartermaster onboard a series of naval space stations in the Aquitaine system, and then onboard the INS Zhang Fei, an Imperial Navy destroyer, having an uneventful first term in service behind the lines, being given a commission and promoted to Ensign for exemplary service. When her ship was deployed towards the front lines in order to fight rebels such as the Greycoats and suspected Kreynos commerce raiders, it stopped on the planet of Guanyin to pick up supplies. She was stranded on the surface when planetary rebels known as the Army for the Liberation of the People, along with offworld mercenaries, overthrew the democratic Republic of Guanyin. She saved the life of Rahul Mishra, a high-ranking diplomat at the Imperial Consulate on the planet, and played a major role in the ensuing evacuation of the diplomats on the surface, including helping the diplomats escape via a smuggler's spaceship, and playing a major role in the Battle of Erlang Station onboard the space station of the same name.

Following this adventure, Vanai was reassigned to the INS Defiance, an Imperial Navy cruiser, as Quartermaster. The ship saw intense action along the frontier, participating in at least six space battles. Ensign Cordé was injured at one of these battles, but continued in service. While traveling through what was believed to be an uninhabited system, Defiance encountered a Kreynos warship, which was apparently guarding a covert Kreynos colony in the system. Vanai was impressed by the Kreynos's martial discipline, and her ship left the system around two weeks later, after reaching an agreement to gather needed fuel and supplies from the Kreynos colony world.

In her third term, INS Defiance continued fighting in the War, taking part in numerous actions against Greycoat commerce raiders. When the ship was assigned to investigate a suspected Greycoat base in an otherwise abandoned system, they found that the base was destroyed. She was part of the landing party which investigated the base for clues. They were attacked by a party of Kreynos marines, where Vanai was nearly killed by a Krey rifle round. Forced to escape into the wilderness with their commanding officer killed, they were evacuated by a shuttle from Defiance, only to find that a Kreynos cruiser had jumped into the system in order to prevent word of the attack from getting out. The ensuing battle was long and brutal. Although a flight of Imperial missiles were able to destroy the Kreynos ship's jump drive, Kreynos railgun rounds penetrated the bridge of Defiance, causing major damage and killing many of the Imperial ship's bridge officers, including the captain. Vanai and the other junior officers continued the fight from the auxiliary bridge, with Vanai staffing the tactical officer's console. Despite taking dozens of casualties and severe damage, Defiance was able to escape out of the system.

The Imperial government and Duke Harris ultimately decided to deny all knowledge of the battle, judging that they would be unable to fight a war against the Greycoats and the Kreynos at the same time. However, Defiance was retired with full honors, and many of the surviving personnel were promoted, including Vanai, who became Lieutenant Cordé. Vanai was also knighted for her service to the Imperium, becoming a Honour Knight, having no lands or inheritable title. Dame Cordé left the Navy soon after. On a whim, she took a middle passage trip to the planet Balthazar, where she first met the people who would form the core of her future party of Travellers.

Traits and Personality

Vanai is 5' 5" tall, with black hair and brown eyes. She typically wears plain, utilitarian clothing, although she does enjoy dressing up on formal occasions. Personality-wise, she is determined but also stubborn, with a strong sense of duty. She sees herself as the long-suffering voice of reason in her band of travellers, as well as its moral conscience. Politically, she is strongly in favor of the Imperium, and a member of the Social Democratic party on Aquitaine. She's cautious, and prefers to make plans beforehand instead of leaping into action. She enjoys drinking tea, reading, writing in her diary, and overcoming logistical and bureaucratic challenges. She doesn't suffer idiots. Things that anger her are corruption, apathy, and inequality.

In combat, Vanai uses an autorifle, an automatic pistol, and her Navy-issue rapier for fighting in vacuum or on a spaceship.