Freelance Traveller

profiled by Rodney Basler

[Author's Note: Teauearl is a male Aslan that was rolled up at the Origins convention in 1981 using the Book 4 Mercenary rules and the JTAS #7 article on the Aslan. Since this was long before the Alien Races books came out, there are none of the special skills like Tolerance or Independence. Dewclaw was the only skill listed in that article. He survived both the scheduled game and a couple of open games, and was admitted into a friend's campaign where I played him for several years.]

Teauearl, male Aslan, current age 35; Rank: O3 (Book 1 equivalent - 2)
UPP: AA9A85
Combat Rifleman - 2, Heavy Weapons - 1, Auto Weapons - 2, Handgun - 2, Dewclaw - 3
Demolitions - 3, Combat Engineering - 1, Wilderness Survival - 1, Vacc Suit - 1, Instruction - 1, Mechanical - 1, Streetwise - 1, Interrogation - 1, Computer - 0

Purple Heart, MCUF, MCG, 2 combat command ribbons.

As a "second son", and an Imperial citizen, Teauearl left home early and joined the Army, serving in the Infantry and receiving the MOS of machinegunner (thus violating the ancient principle that the gunner or A-gunner is invariably the smallest man in the squad). While posted very early to Commando school, he chose to remain in the infantry when he re-upped, partly due to a desire to remain with his friends, and partly because the nature of commando operations clashed with his Aslan sense of honor. After attending OCS, was sent to cross-train with the Combat Engineers, learning some of the skills that have served him best in the years since. Reenlisting for his third term, he finally transferred to Commando operations, returning to the school as an instructor in hand-to-hand combat (or is that "dewclaw-to-gland combat" ?) The seeds of his deep cynicism were planted with he realized how few Aslan were in his class - he was there to teach humans to defeat Aslan in close combat. It was his posting to the Intelligence school that was the last straw. Frustrated by the underhanded methods of gathering intelligence, and personally disillusioned about being asked to spy on his fellow Aslan (though he was rapidly finding himself fitting into neither society well), he resigned his commission at the end of his term.

Teaming up with some friends from the service, he found a ready market for his skills. Much to his chagrin, many of the earlier tickets were of questionable morality, but they were able to parley their earnings and a reputation for success into a well-trained mercenary company, armed and equipped to TL12 standards. With the outbreak of the Fifth Frontier War, the company suddenly found themselves in a seller's market, and took a lucrative ticket on Efate offered by the Imperial Navy.

As that ancient expression goes, "It seemed like a good idea at the time," and the fighting in those cold, wet jungles was unlike anything that Teauearl had ever experienced. He was used to fighting while horribly outnumbered, and had fought on both sides of guerilla conflicts; nevertheless, the sheer fiendishness and brutality of the Ine Givar rebels was offensive to his sense of honor. How was one to respond to an enemy that would herd kidnapped civilians in front of their columns as 'mine detectors'? Teauearl had to simply swallow his fury and start planting secondary claymore charges 50 meters back up the trail to take out the rebels following the prisoners. Then, in one night, their forward fire base was completely overrun in a series of human-wave attacks, both by Ine Givar and by civilian captives with explosives strapped to their bodies and prodded forward at gunpoint.

As positions all over Efate fell and the Imperium had to abandon the system, Teauearl and his companions found themselves cut off deep in enemy-controlled territory. With their company reduced to about 15 men, they ironically found themselves in a more familiar situation: without orders and free from the requirement to hold terrain, they turned guerilla on the rebels, leaving a path of destruction up their supply train. That trail finally led them to the mountain base where the rebels received supplies and advisors from their Zhodani masters.

The party managed to evade detection long enough to steal a ship and escape, but Teauearl was overwhelmed and captured. He would like to be able to say he was heroically covering his companion's retreat, but while he was in the rearguard, it was simply a case of being in the wrong place when one's luck ran out. He remained a prisoner for over a month, resisting extreme physical interrogation, even to the point of biting out his own tongue when he felt himself cracking - only to have the rebels bring in a Zhodani telepath that ripped every last shred of information out of his brain.

Teauearl was rescued by his companions when the Imperium recaptured Efate, but his revenge slipped away as the Zhodani advisors managed to elude them in a frantic chase through the snow-covered mountains. While he recovered in a navy hospital, his companions (in their captured ship) were ordered forward with the fleet - only to misjump. They were never heard from again.

Finally out of rehab, Teauearl is at a loss for what to do next. The promised land grants somehow evaporated once the war ended, leaving him with both a deep sense of resentment toward the navy, and with a feeling of personal failure. He has spent the last few years doing odd jobs, working as a bodyguard or doing demining operations, having had extensive experience with Zhodani explosive ordnance. He has been looking for employment in an Aslan-led mercenary unit - some place that pays properly with land, not credits; but has increasingly been entertaining thoughts of signing on with a Vargr corsair band as long as it will take him over the Zhodani border where he can take his revenge on the honorless bastards that raped his brain.

Teauearl is physically large compared to humans, but smaller and wiry compared to his fellow Aslan, and is beginning to feel the first signs of middle age. His time as a guest of the Ine Givar and Zhodani have left him with frightful scars, and though his tattered fur is slowly regrowing, it cannot hide the burn scars of what looks like several games of noughts-and-crosses played on his chest and back with a hot implement. His tongue still has not been replaced or regenerated (more out of stubborn pride than anything), and he is forced to communicate slowly with a hand-computer.

He is particularly noted for his skill with the 'explosive ambush', and the trail of landslides, collapsed bridges, and destroyed convoys on a dozen worlds in the coreward part of the Marches are his calling-card. In combat, he tends to remain near the squad automatic weapon, often operating the machinegun himself. Especially when fighting Zhodani, or Zhodani-armed troops, he fires sporadically for the first four combat rounds, picking individual targets while everyone sprays their gauss rifles at maximum ROF. On the fifth round, while everyone is standing around like bozos reloading their empty weapons, he breaks cover and takes out the officer or the soldier with the PGMP - both, if they are standing too close together.

His time spent in the wet and cold of Efate have left him with the quirks of a compulsive attention to cleaning his weapons and to personal hygiene (mildew in the fur is a terrible thing). He also has a neurotic attachment to psi-shield helmets, though recently he has been getting over this (for a while it was almost a tinfoil-in-the-hat situation).

If met between jobs, he will usually be dressed in a well-worn set of BDUs in the blue-green color of the vegetation on Efate, a heavy automatic pistol as a sidearm, and a small hand-computer hooked to a throat mike that translates what's left of his voice into something understandable. It is a little disconcerting at first when he speaks out of a box on his belt. His drab, efficient appearance easily stands out from his more flashily-dressed fellow Aslan; he is a landless failure and he knows it, and makes no attempt to hide behind fancy kilts and metallic embroidery. He will not be too far from a set of bronze and titanium EOD tools, a metal detector, a chemical sniffer, and an inertial locator; he usually has a pair of nonmagnetic crimping pliers in his cargo pocket and a small continuity tester hanging from a lanyard or tucked into his breast pocket. In addition, hidden on his person will be a small custom-made body pistol - it is a flat, 4-barreled pistol (rather like the COP .357 or the gun used by Leon in "Blade Runner"). It fires 12mm magnum rounds, and the slugs are basically hollow-base wadcutters with a 5mm accelerator rifle round swaged into it. [It does 3D of damage at Close range and 4D at Short, but it is nearly impossible to hit anything at Medium or longer ranges. Recoil is a bitch and the muzzle flash almost counts as a weapon itself.]

When it's time to dance, he carries an LMG or a belt-fed autorifle, and uses DS rounds whenever possible to help open up body armor. Anyone foolish enough to try to get inside the LMG's range finds themselves on the wrong side of his dewclaws.