Wade Baker, Starship Captain
Name: Wade Baker
Race: Human (Arithian)
Height: 5’11â€
Weight: 183 lbs.
Age: 30
Hair: Brown
Eyes: Brown
Occupation: Starship Captain
Personality: Wade is something of a wide-eyed traveler. He never wanted to be anything other than what he became; a starship captain in the Arithian fleet. He is brave, outgoing, and has a great love for adventure. Many of his crew comment that he is a natural leader, friendly with everyone yet slightly aloof, always aware of the needs and wants of those around him and prepared to contend with them in order to achieve his goals. When he’s not at work Wade is actually fairly quiet and reserved, preferring to spend most of his down-time resting and researching his next great adventure.
Appearance: Taller than some men but not all, Wade has a slender athletic frame more suited for swimming than lifting weights. He has a strong jawline and short, dark brown hair in a standard military cut. He is clean shaven and has deep brown eyes that match his hair. His hands and feet are slightly larger than average, but seem to suit his lithe arms and legs. He generally moves with precision and confidence.
Weakness: Wade’s absolute lack of familiarity with arcana makes him 10% more susceptible to all offensive magic.
History: Wade grew up the only child of loving parents on the space-age planet of Arithia. He generally did well in school and at playing sports, but was never really a standout until he was named captain of his high school baseball team. While not the best player, his natural leadership qualities brought out the best in those around him, and his team went on to take the championship. Realizing that he could be a leader among his peers only solidified what Wade had always known; that he wanted to become a starship captain.
Following secondary school Wade enlisted in Starship Military Academy and began a long eight years of learning and training. He learned everything a captain needs to know and then some, receiving a broad array of skills he would need on his upcoming missions. He passed through officers’ schooling with the best grades of his life, and was named captain of the intergalactic explorer ship Aurora. His first three six-month missions went nearly perfectly, as he and his crew of sixty men and women explored new galaxies, charting star systems and habitable worlds in search of potential colonies and intelligent life.
On his fourth mission, something went horribly wrong with the star drive as they came out of a scheduled hyperspace jump, the final jump en route to examine a comet headed for a world called Althanas. With the main engines disabled the pilot settled into orbit around Althanas in order to avoid destroying the ship. They ended up stranded with a damaged hyperdrive, too far away from both Arithia or any other space-age planets to make it on sub-light engines.
Determined to save his crew, Wade ordered a scan of Althanas and found it was the home of many people. He sent out a distress call and then formulated a plan.
While he was discussing things with his advisors, the main life support system failed. Since the auxiliary system could not support the full crew, he ordered everyone except for a half dozen essential personnel into their stasis pods. As they followed his orders, auxiliary life support began to fail.
Both life support and the hyperdrive required parts made from a rare Arithian material known as prevalida. Fortunately, their scans showed that Althanas was not only inhabited, but contained significant deposits of prevalida on more than one of its continents. Not wanting to risk anyone else’s life, Wade ordered the remaining crew into their stasis pods, putting them on a six month timer in case he couldn’t return. His plan was to fly a small one-man vessel down to the planet, find some prevalida, and bring it back so that the ship’s advanced PRGs could break it down and construct the parts needed to repair the hyperdrive and life support.
As he entered the planet’s atmosphere his heat shield malfunctioned, and the craft took heavy damage. He’d been intending to set down on a tiny prevalida-rich isle of the coast of a large land mass, but overshot the landing site and crash landed in the water next to the southernmost continent. He managed to get ashore carrying his personal equipment, still determined to find some prevalida and return to the Aurora to save his crew, even if he could not envision a way to repair his descent vessel.
And so the greatest adventure of Wade Baker’s life began...
Skills:
General Acumen: Wade has all the knowledge and skills that one would expect of a well-educated thirty year old man who grew up in a space-age world.
Leadership: Wade is a natural leader, and furthermore received specific leadership training before becoming a captain in the Arithian fleet. He knows to gain and maintain the support of the people around him, and bring them together to accomplish great things over time.
Tactical Mind: While not necessarily the smartest man on the planet, Wade does have a keen mind for strategy. He is a competent chess player, and received training in battle tactics before becoming a captain. This mostly applied to space battle, however many of the principles are transferable.
First Aid: Wade has fairly advanced first aid training, knowing how to respond to most physical injuries and maladies.
Brawler: Wade is barely an above average fighter, but his military training alongside some lucky punches landed in bar fights give him some powerful self confidence.
Perception: As a trained starship captain who tends to pay attention to his surroundings, Wade is more likely to notice significant details than the average person. This can include both environmental things like noticing a shift in the breeze and a change in the clouds indicating coming rain, and personal things like reading body language and interpreting tone.
Space-Age Acumen: While he is by no means an engineer, Wade grew up and lived his entire life around a high level of technology. With enough time and the correct parts, he might just be able to do something as advanced as say, repairing a damaged life support system on board his ship.
Inventory:
Plasma Resource Gatherer (PRG)
Universal Interpretation Implant (UII)
Compressed Air Gun (CAG) with ten tranquilizer darts
Steel combat knife
Abilities: All current abilities are functions of the above listed items.
PRG: Using the Plasma Resource Gatherer, Wade can break down and collect up to 50 lbs of raw materials. This can be of a single resource type, or a mixture of different resources. The PRG can then output the gathered resources in a new shape, allowing Wade to essentially “draw†whatever he needs to build i.e. shelter. This can be difficult and time consuming. When empty the PRG weighs 25 lbs, so it weighs 75 lbs when full and can be difficult to manipulate. It is the approximate size and shape of an average leaf-blower, but can be easily set down on an attached tripod. The PRG requires only seconds to harvest extremely lower tier resources such as grass, sand, and clay, but more sturdy materials take longer. Five seconds is required to harvest each pound of tier 1 materials such as oak or copper, and ten seconds is required to harvest each pound of tier 2 materials. The PRG cannot harvest or produce anything above tier 2. When crafting the PRG takes only about one second per pound of output.
UII: The Universal Interpretation Implant is a microscopic implant in Wade’s right temple. It is a sophisticated piece of technology which allows him to understand and speak any spoken language in real time. This does not extend to animal sounds or other sub-languages, only languages which Wade could realistically learn given time. The difference is the UII allows him to instantly learn a language as soon as he hears it spoken, and intuit correct words and pronunciations.
CAG: The Compressed Air Gun is a small pistol which is fairly delicate despite being made of steel. It holds a clip of ten tranquilizer darts. When switched on it produces a low hum, and fires darts at the approximate speed of an arrow fired from a longbow. Each dart contains enough tranquilizer to put an average human down for 1 minute (2 posts) if it strikes them in the head, neck, or torso. However if it strikes an extremity it will only make them woozy for approximately one minute before they are able to shake it off.
