Freelance Traveller

Ghoeghoe

profiled by Timothy Collinson

Ghoeghoe 6A46CB-F, age 54, Cr25,000
female Roth Thokken Vargr
rank: 6 Psion/Wild Talent

Homeworld: Zungsandon (Angfutsag 1828) C5757CC-6 Ag, NI

Characteristics: STR 6 (+0), DEX 10 (+1), END 4 (-1), INT 6 (+0), EDU 12 (+2), CHA 11 (+1), PSI 15 (+3)

* Language 0 would normally be supplanted by Language 1, but here represents some ability in an additional language

** Thakaks are herbivore grazers found in Forest terrain and Alien Module 2: Vargr, p103

Skills: Telepathy 3, Teleportation 3, Deception 2, Survival 2, Clairvoyance 1, Deception 1, Gun combat (energy) 1, Language 1, Science (psionicology) 1, Stealth 1, Streetwise 1, Awareness 0, Art 0, Drive 0, Language 0*, Melee (infighting) 0, Science 0, Seafarer 0, Telekinesis 0

Equipment: Pension: Cr20,000, Weapon: Thakak-bone** body pistol (2D+1 damage)

Relationships:

Ally: Zuk – “Fur” – a Vargr female, who as it happens is a kagra (littermate) of Ghoeghoe, who has been given the honorary title of Groomer but is more an administrative assistant to Ghoeghoe.

Contact: Naghsasa – a mentor Ghoeghoe met in her late 20s who she travelled with and learned ‘ways of the world’ that her nanny and tutor had neglected to include in their curricula

Rival: Dhengghue – a Vargr Ghoeghoe challenged for leadership of a workgroup they were part of but just failed to replace him. Later in life, he challenged Ghoeghoe for leadership of her growing band and in turn failed rather spectacularly.

Background

Ghoeghoe is a powerful psion who has had no formal training but, together with very strong kfaegzoukhin (charisma), has become a well-known, well-liked and in some quarters well-feared zoukhinku (pack leader) of a group of acolytes interested in learning what she will teach and hearing what she will say. Ghoeghoe is 1.6m – tall for her people, scrawny, has mottled red-brown fur and a short snout (she might almost pass for a wide nosed hairy human if she covered her ears).

She was born in 1055 on Zungsandon where she’s spent much of her life. She was born into a reasonably wealthy family but was actually raised by a nanny and tutor when her parents were killed in a gravitic speeder accident. Like all of her subspecies she has been blind from birth but is skilled enough in her use of acute hearing and her abilities with clairvoyance that you could go for some time before realizing this. She is superstitious and will leave a pawmark on the lintel of any door behind which she sleeps or lives.

When she was still a teenager, she describes how she had a strange encounter with an unknown entity. She actually has no memory of this event but has developed a great tale about this strange being she calls the Elder who for three days spoke to her and taught her how to use her psionic ability. She lives in a secluded part of Zungsandon with a tight group of followers in a compound and a much larger pack living in a town that’s grown up a kilometre or two away. Ghoeghoe has developed quite a history concerning the Elder and his teaching that’s entirely her own invention. She conducts bizarre rituals to ‘explain’ her powers as a gift from the Elder. These can range from shaving fur to burn with incense or a low chantgrowl which is extremely eerie particularly when dozens of followers join in. The mystique around her has been further enhanced by a second three-day meeting with the Elder eighteen years after the first encounter when she was 36. She has a theory that she is about to meet him for a third time if an eighteen-year cycle holds good.

Ghoeghoe has developed a Talent for Clairolfaction (remote smelling) and this is amongst the skills she teaches to her followers. Related to that is an ability to exude any desired scent or to deprive a target of their sense of smell entirely for 1D hours. Other strange powers include an artform which burns images using Telepathy – although this is one thing Ghoeghoe hasn’t really mastered, a rather fully developed dream sharing philosophy-cum-religion-cum-science, and retrocognition – sensing events in the past. This latter Clairvoyant Talent is the one which Ghoeghoe uses to explain how she knows what the Elder said to her despite an initial amnesia about the time. Very few of her followers have managed to develop any skill in this area. Other rumoured powers include shapeshifting, hair growth, and paralysis but none of these have any evidence to support them.

Ghoeghoe can, and does, every month or so spend up to 1D days without a filter mask to impress her followers and to improve her powers she tells them. She uses her Teleportation talent to remove the dangerous particulates in the atmosphere that she’s breathing although this does require some concentration and she will usually spend these days in private meditation. One rival, trying to challenge her leadership many years ago, accused her during the dhuellngae of having a genetic modification which allows her to breath Zungsandon’s atmosphere unaided and that the whole bit about the Elder is simply a fraud. Ghoeghoe’s response was typical: “I have no need to defend myself from such rrga,” and promptly telekinetically moved the “foul tasting creature” 50m north to the centre of a pond where she ‘dropped’ him into the water. Such a feat might be considered hard enough but given that Dhengghue was a tubby 70kg, her prowess was given further mystique. There is no truth to the rumour that she used the crude epithet about the challenger because she had bitten him in a fight previously. But Ghoeghoe isn’t above encouraging such a rumour or even starting it. She has kept her gun combat ability a tightly guarded secret and may play up to the ‘helpless’ female stereotype in certain situations but is anything but. In situations which warrant it, she carries a thakak-bone body pistol modified to cause 2D+1 damage.

Estranged in their puphood, Zuk is an interesting ally of Ghoeghoe. Zuk had departed Zungsandon as a loner and travelled the worlds to rimward of Angfutsag sector before returning after a couple of decades of exploration. Hearing about her kagra’s coterie, Zuk came to investigate what was going on and happened to be on the scene when her own telepathic powers revealed an attack on Ghoeghoe. Zuk was able to kill the assailant, reunite with her littermate and has been rewarded for for service with a position very close to Ghoeghoe. Zuk has a passing familiarity with three major polities: Hezeraek Connective (a subsector and a half rimward), the Authority of Joekghr (3 or 4 subsectors spinward) and the Third Empire of Gashikan (4 subsectors spinward/rimward) and briefs Ghoeghoe on ‘outsiders’ whether they come as pilgrims, potential usurpers or simply the curious.

Fond of saying: “Zariko vargr ouzeghz llurr.” (A non-psion is like a Vargr without a tail.)

Patron Encounters

For both adventures, it is unlikely that Ghoeghoe will be encountered by Imperials, but Vargr PCs might venture as far as Zungsandon.

A Planty Idea

Requirements: Investigate, Science (botany), Starship
Rewards: Cr100,000 for a full cargo. Psionic testing and training.

Players’ Information

Ghoeghoe has received teaching from the Elder that there is a way of stopping the equatorial fires which, in a decade or two will make the atmosphere breathable. The snag is that it requires planting vegetation across the belt which is unknown on Zungsandon. Indeed, the Elder could only show Ghoeghoe a mental image of the woody, deep-rooted plant. She’s got one of her best ougzarroes artists to burn what she says is quite a good representation of the plant onto a slate of lacquered tree bark. She wants to hire the PCs to search the sector for the right plant and return enough of it – a cargohold full should do – that her followers could begin to cultivate it and spread it across the region.

Referee’s Information:

1. Wherever Ghoeghoe has got her idea from, and the PCs may or may not believe her stories about the Elder, she is quite correct. But the time frame is off; she didn’t want to discourage her followers, but it will take more like 50 years.
2. The particular plant is indeed in Angfutsag sector, but only on one world. It could be a long search.
3. As 2 but there is some problem with harvesting/exporting the plant from the world, or transporting it back to Zungsandon, or both.
4. The story is true enough as far as it goes, but it is part of a larger plan to accumulate enough Credits to join the oligarchy. Ghoeghoe’s charisma is certainly up to it, but now she needs the cash.
5. As 4 but Ghoeghoe’s plan is actually to destabilize the oligarchy and take power into her own hands.
6. As 4 but rather than do anything to reduce the fires, the plants increase psionic power if ingested in the right formula. Ghoeghoe intends to use the cargo to improve her own abilities and, if successful, those of her followers.

They’re after Me

Requirements: Starship
Rewards: Cr50,000

Players’ Information

Ghoeghoe begs the PCs to smuggle her off world and take her as far from Zungsandon as they can. She has received threats from a cabal of the oligarchs who can see her power and influence waxing and are convinced she is plotting to at the very least disrupt the government with her high charisma and at worst try to take over as a dictator. She’s pooled all the money she has and can get her hands on to buy passage off world. (Actually, she’s kept Cr5000 aside for future spending).

Referee’s Information:

1. Ghoeghoe’s fear of the oligarch’s is true and the threats are real. Indeed, her life is in danger even though she has no intention of usurping any power other than that which she already has.
2. The oligarchs are right to fear her. Ghoeghoe is indeed plotting a coup (see A Planty Idea option #6 for one possibility) but she still needs to get off world as quickly as possible to avoid death.
3. As 2 but in addition, Ghoeghoe will use any stop at another world to raise support for her in terms of both followers and military support in order to affect her coup. Her high charisma and her mental powers will help her to do this whatever the initial reactions of the locals.
4. As 1 or 2 but she has a cargo of a certain plant with psionic awakening or development properties which she wants to take with her. The high law level means a customs search is inevitable.
5. The oligarchs have no interest in or fear of Ghoeghoe. She is suffering from a paranoia as her body and mind fail to cope with the extent of her psionic ability which uses all too freely.
6. It’s not the oligarchs who are out to get her. It’s the Elder. Ghoeghoe has discovered that the third visit of the entity will boost her powers to an extent her mind won’t be able to cope. The Elder will indeed return in the next 1D months and the PCs will have a very powerful and ancient alien being on their trail.

Zungsandon (Angfutsag 1828)

C5757CC-6 Ag, NI

Zungsandon is a minor world in Angfutsag sector which has been populated, like many around it, by Roth Thokken Vargr who are little known in the Vargr Extents much less Charted Space beyond. If anything is known about the subspecies, it is that they are born blind and are usually psionic. The former means that infrastructure is geared around scent and touch rather than vision which can be disorienting for sighted visitors who will find no visual signage – or pictorial advertising, for that matter. The latter attracts Zhodani research groups to the sector although none are currently known to be on Zungsandon.

Some ten million sophonts live on this relatively small world that supports agriculture and aquaculture. Unfortunately, natural fires burning across equatorial regions put enough particulate matter into the air that respirators must be worn and the atmosphere is officially rated as tainted. Typical sophonts can usually survive 1D hours in the atmosphere but take 1D damage per hour thereafter. One curiosity about the world is that its hydrographic percentage is 50% to three decimal places.

The government is a charismatic oligarchy formed of a dozen Vargr – the exact number changes frequently – who have acquired the greatest wealth. They are generally very popular as there is something of a culture of public service amongst them and charisma is gained by not serving one’s own interests first. There are no governmental factions. The law level of 12 is, perhaps, high but charisma for the population may be easily lost through infractions.

One odd cultural difference involves sex. Any visitors who are not blind are expected to mate with a local within three days in an effort to increase the population and widen the gene pool. Non-Vargr visitors are rare enough that this cultural more has not really been put to the test with a wider travelling community.

Author’s Notes

Aliens of Charted Space: Volume 1 for Mongoose 2nd edition gives the same details for the Roth Thokken subspecies of Vargr as the 1st edition Alien Module 2: Vargr but doesn’t give the additional traits table which has been used here.

No data is provided on TravellerMap.com for Angfutsag sector so Zungsandon is entirely invented from the core out.

The custom mentioned in the final paragraph is based on rolling Cultural Differences: 6/3 – unusual customs: sex. Core Rulebook, p.255.