The Good NPCs of Alien Base

Here I take a closer look at the three NPCs, Johan Hensler, Tara Seven and Chembles, whom the crew of The Ace of Spades found in my recently completed Alien Base scenario. Although they didn't play a big part in the scenario, two of them were important enough to warrant me creating fully developed NPC character sheets for them. I lacked the information to fully develop Chembles' character.

Johan Hensler is a Grade 8 human engineer, making him the highest Grade NPC who has appeared in my campaign so far. He is 47 years old and was born on Sol 6vii (Titan), a moon of Saturn. His life path began as an Everyman (16 years), followed  by 4 years at university where he attained a Bachelor (Hons) degree in engineering. He then spent five years as a craftsman, learning how to fix and repair mechanical devices. The lure of space and exploration led him to serve two tours of duty, lasting eight years, as a space jockey, where he mainly worked in the ship's engine rooms. Qualifying as a fully certified engineer he enlisted with the Survey Scouts and spent three tours of duty, each lasting four years, with them, leading to his present position of chief engineer aboard the DSX Timothy. Johan is a hale and hearty character who enjoys good quality whiskey, but only when off duty.
Johan was present mainly as a tool for the games master to use to keep the game moving apace. Any time the players showed evidence of bogging down, or had gotten themselves into a fatal situation, the games master could use Johan to keep the game going. However, my party was so skilled and competent that Johan was barely needed at all. The figure of Johan is from the Denizen Miniatures range of 25mm scale sci-fi crew members and he is SF26 male crew member/guard, priced at £1.45.

Tara Seven is a lowly Grade 4 Auroran space jockey, who is very secretive about her anti-psionic inertial powers. Born on the ice planet, Aurora 4, Tara spent her childhood learning about computers and became a competent hacker. At age 13, she left home and travelled to Achamandra where she enrolled at university, studying computers and attained a Bachelor (Hons) degree and a Masters degree. She enlisted as a space jockey on the DSX Timothy as a Survey Scout. She is 22 years old and was the youngest crew member on board the DSX Timothy when it was attacked by the Npurth insectoids. Like all Aurorans, Tara has light sky blue skin and white hair, however, her eyes are blue, in contrast to the normal hazel or green. As a culture, Aurorans are outgoing, and at least among themselves, boisterous. They are fond of food, drink and parties. Tara, in contrast to the norm, is more withdrawn. She is also more used to strangers and machinery, still a rarity on Aurora. Also, somewhat in contrast to the "norm," if such a concept can be applied to large numbers of the wildly variable human animal, she is somewhat stuffy about sex.
Tara is a polite young lady that will not usually volunteer information. She is aware of her inertial abilities, but really never thinks of them. She will not inform anyone of her inertial powers unless it is obvious that a player is attempting to use psionics. If they are hiding their psionics, as Danica did, she will be unaware of the havoc she is wreaking. She will just begin to get tired and will eventually need to rest. The debilitating effects of the constant need to neutralise local powers will be obvious, although Tara is not normally a whiner, she will begin complaining of tiredness. The players should pick up on that clue themselves. Tara, herself, will put it down to nervous tension in a hostile environment. Tara served no immediate purpose in this scenario other than for the introduction of psionic inertials. Her main part would have been in the sequel, Derelict. If running Alien Base as a stand alone adventure and you didn't wish to introduce inertials into your universe then Tara could safely be eliminated altogether from the adventure as a needless complication. I disagreed with this and very much wanted to include her.
The figure of Tara was sculpted by me, and so is unique.

Chembles is a Grade 7 Pnarm scientist, specialising in chemistry and has a deep distrust of robots, computers or other cyber-intelligences. Full rules for creating and running Pnarm characters were to be presented in part three of this campaign set, Slaveworld, which sadly, never appeared. What little information about Pnarms that was available is presented here. Pnarms are intelligent molluscs and have light blue or greenish colouring, sometimes trimmed with red. Internally, Pnarms are organised rather like terrestrial nautiluses, the spiral shell is chambered and the body occupies only the last chamber. In normal Pnarms, the first seven chambers of the shell (starting from the smallest) house the air-maker and chlorine under pressure. The air-maker is connected by hoses to the Pnarm gills. Thus, the Pnarm is independent of the atmosphere, so long as his chlorine holds out. The remaining chambers are used for storage, like a built-in backpack, and hatches are cut into the shell at appropriate places to facilitate this use. Pnarms normally move at one third the normal human walking pace. They are equipped with 24 tentacles. Pnarms are trained for one particular discipline as they enter adulthood. These include chemistry, electronics, mathematics, etc. These skills are intuitive, i.e. the Pnarm will never be able to explain just why he does something in just that way, or even duplicate it perfectly. In this way they are somewhat like great chefs.
Chembles was meant to serve several purposes in the scenario. One was to provide hints about the slavers and their base, i.e. he was the local "rumour mill". Another purpose was to help. Some of the locations of the base were very deadly. Chembles was provided with considerable skill in chemistry, and whilst chemistry is not often considered a combat skill, Chembles is very good at whipping up weird formulas on request. He could, for example, use human saliva, blood, sweat, bits of  a fingernail, ear wax, hair, food, drink, paint off a wall, dust, in short, any weird substance the games master could imagine.
Suffice to say, I had to sculpt the figure of Chembles myself. Both Chembles and Tara were sculpted earlier this year, the first figures I've sculpted for a long time.