Freelance
TravellerThis article was originally posted to the pre-magazine Freelance Traveller website in 1997, and reprinted in the September/October 2019 issue.
Arorrbar-Harroga 2B3C99 Age 54 Cr 7,000
9 terms Corsair Pilot
Pilot-7, Navigation-3, Ship Tactics-1, Grav Vehicle-2, Vacc Suit-0,
Shotgun-2, Sensor Op-1, Instruction-1, Persuasion-1.
Pocket Scout (Hijacked), Shotgun & Ammo., Battered Body-Armor, Vacc. Suit,
Dagger.
Homeworld: Starport A, Medium, Standard, Wet World, Mod. Pop., Mod. Law,
Avg. Stellar.
Arorrbar-Harroga is a member of a minority Vargr subspecies, the Kokasha (Vilani & Vargr, p.63). He is typical of his subspecies in most regards; physically weak, but possessing enhanced mental abilities. Arorrbar is witty, bright, and well educated. He was born towards the end of the Long Night on an average world near the edge of the Vargr Extents on the frontier with the Vilani. His parents were killed during a Corsair raid against his world conducted by Vilani Slavers. He managed to escape the death and destruction of this raid, and vowed revenge.
Arorrbar’s physical statistics are abysmal; a fall down a short flight of stairs even in his youth would have been enough to send him to the hospital. From an early age he has lived on the wrong side of the law, usually Vilani law. His career has been that of a pilot, crewing on several pirate cruisers that have preyed upon merchant and military starships of the surviving worlds of the old Ziru Sirka. He has retired far into Vargr middle age with only a shotgun, body armor, a vacc. suit, a handful of cash, and a desperate need to run. Old enemies, bounty hunters, law-enforcement officers, and the military forces of more than one Pocket Empire have hunted him across a dozen worlds. At the end of many years, he finds himself deep within unfriendly human space, wasting away from the effects of disease and old age.
His years with the space raiders have given Arorrbar an incredible level of starship-piloting skills (Pilot-7). He can fly almost any spacecraft in existence, and knows stunts that would make average pilots turn white with terror. His missions as a pilot aboard numerous pirate starships were always aimed against the Vilani forces and their interests. He now rests easy knowing that his parents have been avenged.
Arorrbar has style. He knows how to drive the humans around him crazy, and he also knows how to make those humans laugh. Children of any race find him to be a warm ally full of stories, and female Vargr find him irresistible. He enjoys excitement too much to care about death.
At present, we find Arorrbar older and much weaker; a bad fall would now be likely to kill him, and he is racked with chills. His job, money, and all his friends have just vanished in the holocaust of an alien revolt. Arorrbar was fortunate enough to have made it to the spaceport, and after hijacking a small vessel, escape off-planet. Arorrbar managed to escape with nothing but a filthy spacesuit, an assortment of battered and mismatched body-armor, a dagger, and a shotgun and ammunition. After marooning the hijacked starship’s small crew on a suitable planet in a neighboring system, and purchasing supplies with credits taken from the ship’s safe, he has decided to head for an uncharted area far from Vilani space. As his pirated ship shifts into jumpspace, Arorrbar coughs frantically, itching his greying muzzle. He ponders the future and wonders what dangers await him ahead in the emerging manrealm calling itself the Third Imperium.
Note: This character was inspired by and draws heavily from an article entitled "Flawed Gems Shine The Brightest" written by Roger E. Moore in Polyhedron #63.