The Crew and Starting Ship

The Crew

Five people crew the Ember Drift. They have been flying together for two years. They bought the ship as a group, they are still paying it off, and they have learned by now which arguments are worth having and which ones to let go before someone says something that sticks.

They are not heroes. They are working professionals with a ship, a debt load, and enough skill to stay employed in a part of space where employment is not guaranteed.

Players choose one character each. If your group has fewer than five players, leave the remaining characters as background crew who are aboard but not at the center of events. Any character can be played; no role is required.

Full character sheets with complete stats are in Chapter Twelve. The entries below are who these people are.

Davan Kel

Human — Engineer

Davan keeps the Ember Drift running. That is not a small job on a ship this age, and he treats it like the serious craft it is. He is calm in emergencies because emergencies are just engineering problems that have become urgent, and he has been solving engineering problems since he was old enough to hold a wrench.

He does not talk much, but he is not unfriendly. He talks to machines the way some people talk to pets, in practical terms, with genuine affection. When something breaks, Davan already knows why it broke before anyone else in the crew has finished being alarmed.

He grew up on a Funtari industrial station in the outer Confederacy, which means he learned to repair things without the right parts, on a schedule that did not account for human comfort. That upbringing stuck.

What Davan is good at: Keeping the ship functional, improvised repairs, diagnosing system problems, staying steady when systems fail around him.

What Davan is less comfortable with: Social situations he did not prepare for, having to ask for help, leaving a problem half-fixed.

Senna Vael

Ilyari — Pilot

Senna flies the Ember Drift with the same precision she applies to everything: measured, efficient, with very little wasted motion. She is ambitious in the quiet way of someone who knows exactly where she is and exactly where she intends to be in five years, and is already calculating the route.

She grew up in Shoiyan-aligned space but spent her early career working Irnan-licensed transit routes, which means she understands Irnan authority from the inside. That understanding is not warmth. She knows how Irnan inspectors think, how Irnan paperwork flows, and how to read a Directorate officer's body language during a boarding check. She has complicated feelings about all of it.

When authority she does not respect tells her what to do, she complies and files the experience away. She does not perform gratitude.

What Senna is good at: Piloting in tight conditions, course calculation, recognizing Irnan procedure and bureaucratic patterns, keeping her composure when other people are panicking.

What Senna is less comfortable with: Situations that require improvisation over preparation, being told she made the wrong call when she knows the numbers.

Yessica Morn

Felina — Gunner and Muscle

Yessica is loud, direct, and runs toward trouble. This is not recklessness; she has thought about it and decided that the crew needs someone who moves when it matters, and she is the person who can do that. She is protective of her crewmates in the specific way of someone who has decided these are her people and she is not interested in revisiting that decision.

She is not subtle. She knows she is not subtle. She has found that not being subtle is often more effective than people expect, because most people assume that someone who is openly aggressive must not be thinking, and Yessica is nearly always thinking.

She keeps her ration pack situation organized with the same discipline she applies to weapons maintenance. A Felina who does not eat correctly is a Felina who makes mistakes, and Yessica does not make avoidable mistakes.

What Yessica is good at: Ship gunnery, personal combat, threat assessment, making fast decisions under pressure, keeping the crew together when things get loud.

What Yessica is less comfortable with: Waiting while other people handle things, negotiations where directness is not welcome, long periods of low-protein rations.

Corin Ash

Dhoran — Negotiator and Face

Corin reads people well. It is a skill he developed early and has spent years refining, and it shows in the way he enters a room: he has already noticed the power dynamics, the tensions, and the exits before he finishes his first sentence. He is smooth in the way that suggests practice rather than ease, and warm in the way that occasionally makes people trust him more than they intended.

He carries a quiet history he does not talk about. Something happened before the Ember Drift, something that put him on an independent crew rather than continuing whatever he was doing before. He has never said what it was. The rest of the crew has learned not to ask directly.

What the crew does know is that Corin is good at making deals, good at extracting information from conversations, and good at finding the version of a situation that works for everyone. He is also, when it comes down to it, good in a fight, which people do not always expect from someone who looks like he spent his life at a negotiating table.

What Corin is good at: Negotiation, reading NPC motivations, finding angles in difficult social situations, functioning as the crew's representative in formal contexts.

What Corin is less comfortable with: Situations where honesty is required and complicated, his past catching up with him, being physically underestimated.

Rhi

Ssarathi — Medic and Scout

Rhi is patient in the way of someone who has learned that most problems reveal themselves if you give them enough time to do so. They are observant, quiet in the way that is not absence but attention, and they notice things: the detail in a room that does not belong, the change in someone's breathing, the temperature differential that suggests a system is running wrong.

They are the crew's medic, which means they have seen the crew at their worst and remember all of it without judgment. They are also a capable scout, which means they have a habit of knowing the layout of a space before anyone else does.

Rhi adapted their environment for their coiling body years ago with the pragmatic thoroughness of someone who has been solving that problem since childhood. The Ember Drift has specific modifications in Rhi's quarters, their station, and the medical bay. These were not expensive. They were necessary, and Rhi put them in themselves.

What Rhi is good at: Medicine, first aid and trauma stabilization, reconnaissance, moving quietly, noticing what does not fit.

What Rhi is less comfortable with: Situations that move faster than their careful assessment approach allows, environments that have not been adapted for their body and where there is no time to adapt them.

Crew Relationships

The five members of the Ember Drift crew have been flying together for two years. That is long enough to stop being strangers and not quite long enough to stop surprising each other.

How they came together: Davan, Senna, and Yessica found the ship first. The Ember Drift was a distressed sale from a company that had gone under, and the three of them could not cover the purchase alone. Corin came in as a fourth partner because he had the capital and wanted out of whatever he had been doing. Rhi joined three months later when the previous medic retired to a station posting. They applied, Yessica approved them on the spot, and the rest of the crew agreed.

The debt: The Ember Drift is a high-hours Model 20, bought at 122,500 credits through Vorin Holding, a Funtari fringe lender that asks no questions about a crew's history. The crew put up 30,625 credits between them as the 25 percent down payment and financed the remaining 91,875 credits at 4 percent a month. The payment is 3,675 credits a month. They have made twenty-two of them and still owe about 75,000 credits. Vorin Holding is patient when payments arrive on schedule and not patient at all when they do not. A third missed payment puts the ship on the relay bounty boards.

How they operate: They vote on major decisions, but Senna has de facto authority in the cockpit and Davan has de facto authority over the ship's mechanical condition. Corin handles contract negotiations. Yessica handles security. Rhi handles medical. When something falls outside those lanes, they argue, come to an agreement, and move on.

They do not always like each other. They trust each other. Those are different things, and in this part of space, the second one matters more.

The Ember Drift

Light freighter, Model 20

The Ember Drift is a Model 20 light freighter built by the Antaean Openframe Consortium. It is fourteen years old, which means it has been enough places and carried enough cargo that the original factory configuration is almost entirely theoretical. The crew has added things, replaced things, stripped things out, and improvised things when replacements were not available.

From the outside, the ship looks like what it is: a narrow structural spine supporting a forward crew section, a mid-section cargo frame, and engine clusters at the rear. The external cargo clamps are bolted to a frame that has been rewelded at least twice. The sensor array on the dorsal spine is a different model than the factory spec; it is better. The paint scheme is a faded deep blue with a rust-orange accent stripe that Yessica put on the forward section three months ago and that Senna has formally objected to twice without result.

From the inside, it is a working ship: tight corridors, efficient use of space, every surface holding something. The cargo bay smells like engine exhaust and metal polish. The common area has a table that is slightly too large for the space. The galley has a coffee machine that is, by unanimous agreement, the most important system on the ship and the one that will be repaired first no matter what else is failing.

Ship Statistics (Adventure Use)

Installed Systems and Modules

The Ember Drift carries the following modules beyond its core required systems (hull, reactor, sublight engines, maneuvering thrusters, navigation suite, sensors, communications, life support, fire control, defensive control, and damage control):

The ship also carries two weapon hardpoints. One forward-facing light kinetic cannon is currently mounted on the starboard hardpoint; the port hardpoint is unoccupied.

Crew Stations

What Works Well

The Ember Drift's sublight engines are the original Openframe factory installation, and they are in excellent condition. Davan rebuilt them eighteen months ago with salvaged components from a scrapped Openframe courier, and the result is an engine suite that performs above the design spec. The ship is not fast, but it is reliable, and it holds its speed in conditions that would tax newer ships.

What Is Always a Problem

The cargo bay's port-side loading seal does not close correctly. It requires two people to manage, one to hold the manual latch bracket and one to push the lever through the binding mechanism, and even then it takes three tries on average. The correct solution is a replacement part that costs 800 credits. The crew has been getting by with the two-person method for eight months.

The Ember Drift in Play

For the purposes of this adventure, the GM does not need to track every heat threshold or power load interaction. When the ship does something, the relevant crew member rolls the appropriate check, the GM describes the result, and play continues.

If a ship fight occurs, each crew member at their station takes one action per round. Senna moves the ship. Yessica fires. Davan keeps systems operational or manages damage. Rhi can monitor sensors or coordinate. Corin can direct the crew or manage any passengers. The GM applies damage to Hull Points or System Points as appropriate, and the crew responds.

The Ember Drift is not a warship. It is a freighter with one weapon and no deflection screens. If the crew gets into a straight fight with the Directorate patrol cutter at Harrowspan, they will lose. The adventure is designed so that outcome is avoidable through choices that are more interesting than shooting.

What the Crew Is Doing

Three days ago, in the licensed cargo bay at Port Meridian, a Funtari merchant named Caelis Vorn offered the crew a straightforward transit job: pick up a sealed medical supply container, transport it to a clinic at Saint Orra's Rest, collect payment on delivery. The pay is 1,600 credits, split however the crew likes.

The route includes a standard resupply stop at Harrowspan Station, a waypoint in the outer Verge. Harrowspan is not glamorous, but the fuel depot is reliable, the station master is known to the crew by reputation, and the stop adds only half a day to the overall journey.

The container is currently loaded and secured in the cargo hold. It is sealed with a commercial-grade lock that Vorn has the code for, and the manifest lists it as medical supplies: analgesics, wound closure compounds, diagnostic reagents.

The crew is two days out from Harrowspan. Nothing has gone wrong yet.