Freelance Traveller

Kvinne Vaskebjørn

profiled by Joshua Levy

This article originally appeared in the November/December 2017 issue.

This character is designed to be an NPC Patron for a Corporate Repo adventure (Freelance Traveller, May/June 2017, page 32), but she can also be a Patron for many other types of adventures. She’s a great Patron to have, from the point of view of those working for her, but does come with some baggage which might cause the adventurers future problems.

Notes on character creation: this character was created with the Cepheus Engine rules, with some house rules applied. Many home planet details were added using Eclipse Phase: Astrometrics by Mephis James. This character has just under 2 skills per term, so if your Traveller Universe has more skilled characters, or less skilled, you should adjust accordingly.

Kvinne Vaskebjørn 786953 Age 50
8 terms (1 Marine, 7 Merchant); Assistant Director of Subsector Operations for Special Projects
Skills: Liason-4, Bribery-1, Leadership-3, Admin-2, Advocate-2, Steward-1, ZeroG-1, Tactics-1, Vehicle-0, Broker-0, Battle Dress-0, Comms-0, Demolitions-0, Gun Combat-0, Melee Combat-0, Gunnery-0.

(Most of the zero level skills are from Marine basic training, and that was a long time ago, so those skills are pretty rusty, even for zero level skills.)

Raccoonids

(Editor’s Note: Raccoonids are based on the material at http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Raccoonid, but according to the author are more common in his setting, and are more likely to leave their homeworlds and enter services other than the Scouts than implied by that article. A typical Raccoonid settlement will be about 1000-3000.)

Kvinne Vaskebjørn is part of a Raccoonid settlement of a few thousand on planet. Within this community she enjoys a higher effective SOC stat than shown above. She is one of the richest Raccoonids on-planet. She has a trophy husband, the executive director of a charity focused on Raccoonid issues. (The referee should decide if its area of expertise is food, mental health, education, legal, disease, or something else, but it will not be controversial in any way.)

Home Planet

(Name unspecified) C330628-D Lo In

Several average, industrial starports, small planet, small population, thin atmosphere, little water, small population, direct democracy (bureaucratic government), high law, and high tech.

Note that this is non-standard for Cepheus Engine, which requires In(dustrial) worlds to be pop 9+.

Kvinne Vaskebjørn’s home planet was a tiny rock ball (barely big enough to form a sphere under its own gravity) which orbits very close to a young, population I, F-type star. Being a population I system, both the star and its planets are high in metals. Mining is the biggest industry on the planet, and various metal intensive fabrication industries are also important. KH is a major long-term exporter from this planet.

History

Kvinne learned the value of hard work early, and the importance of not being dependent on physical labor. The Imperial Marines were her ticket off-planet, but an injury in her first term of service meant that she would not have a long, successful career in the Marines. She has an artificial leg because of this, and the referee should decide if it is noticeable or not. She then got a job with the Kjøpmann Hus (KH) Corporation. She distinguished herself as a hard worker, willing to do tasks that others tried to foist onto co-workers. She was also organized and detail oriented.

She has risen steadily up the ladder at KH. She would likely have risen more quickly if she had not been so obviously low SOC, and at this point, has probably risen as high as a low SOC, commoner, Raccoonid can go.

Personality

Ms. Vaskebjørn’s personality is described differently, depending on who is doing the talking. Her superiors (C-level executives, business unit presidents and vice presidents) describe her as “unrefined” or even “uncouth” but “successful” and “driven” (but also “strident” and “over aggressive” if they don’t like her). People who work for her describe her as “solid” and “predictable”. They commonly say she “thinks before acting”. Kvinne describes herself as a hard worker, who has earned every promotion she’s ever gotten by doing the work that others mostly talk about. From an animal totem point of view, she would be a Badger: hard working, tenacious, tough, forceful, and compact.

The Kjøpmann Hus Corporation

Because Ms. Vaskebjørn has worked for Kjøpmann Hus since her early 20s, it is important to understand that company in order to understand her. Kjøpmann Hus has a thin layer of genteel nobility at the top. Under that layer is where the real work gets done. The C-level executives (Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer, etc.) and also the Presidents and Vice-Presidents of the various Business Units are all Imperial nobility, who got where they got via money, connections, and Imperial politics. They value good manners, lively cocktail party conversation, droll humor, and being a good “cultural fit” (i.e., like them). Below them are the Executive Directors and Senor Directors who are in charge of actually getting stuff done, and who have much wider range of skills, personalities, and backgrounds.

KH is a huge shipping/transport firm, specializing in moving bulk cargos. It spans several sectors. (Bulk cargos, in this context, are anything that does not travel in standardized shipping containers.) Common products moved by KH include vehicles, food (especially industrial food like corn, juice, sugar, etc.), ore, bulk liquor, occasionally mass produced machinery (such as computers, computer components, and general purpose fabricators), etc. In the past, KH has tried with little success to vertically diversify (by selling the products they import, or by assembling products out of parts produced by others, just prior to export).

KH runs its operations in a strictly legal way. However, they do have very close relationships with many planetary governments and sector level imperial families, so if they do break the law, it would be in the areas of influence pedaling and conflict of interest.

Plot Hooks

Ms. Vaskebjørn is in charge of “special projects” which is an “everything else” department. One of the things she is responsible for is Corporate Repossessions when one of KH’s transports is seized or stolen. (In my Corporate Repo campaign, she is the main patron, for this reason.)

But she could need a team of adventurers for some other mission related to KH’s business: going after pirates, rescuing crew or cargo, dealing with corrupt politicians, businesspeople, or unions, etc. Finally, her stature in the Raccoonid community, and her husband’s charity, could also result in character missions.