Allie

Thryzz is a Caelian adventurer who specializes in the identification and management of supernatural phenomena that manifest throughout the Sol system. At 90 years old, Thryzz is as spry and as jolly as they've ever been, letting age and experience inspire rather than embitter them to the grey shadws of the worlds around them. There's horrors everywhere, Thryzz will gleefully inform you, but we know exactly how to contain them! Isn't that lovely? Fear has roots in uncertainty, in the unknown and unpredictable, but through the light of knowledge we can relieve ourselves of that fear and traverse a vast system teeming with curiosities safe in the understanding that for whatever we may encounter, in our collective library of shared experience we have answers to their dark questions. Shared knowledge is a beautiful thing, and if you hire Thryzz onto your planned voyage, you'll enjoy the benefit of a vast archive of lived and learned experience, as well as a practical application of that experience in warding your starship from maladies from beyond the void.

From the sizzling surface of Sol to the harrowing void beyond Pluto's reach, Thryzz has spent their life seeking out those things which science alone can't explain in any place they may reveal themselves. Whether it's the lingering ghosts of the restless dead or incursions of subspace into our world, mysterious creatures stowing away on outbound starcraft or any thing that makes your jellies tingle, Thryzz is a living encyclopedia of folk wisdom and parascientific fact. They've spent a lifetime traversing the Sol system, seeking out lived memories and pass-down precautions about the unexplainable truths of our universe. Every world has its cryptids- never seen but spoken of in whispers- or cautionary tales about meeting an ill fate if you don't respect a force beyond your comprehension; we all grew up with them, and those stories all have roots in something which is known but not fully understood. What Thryzz has done is they've taken those stories and woven them into a profession, coming to know the roots of the unknowable and building a set of wards and seals to stitch these stray threads back into the quiltwork of the universe. That's a whole lotta words, but in short: they're a scary-thing hunter, and a damn good one at that.

When one meets Thryzz for the first time, there's two things about them that immediately grab one's attention: first, there's the arm. Thryzz wears a prosthetic limb in place of one of their longer arms, gold in color with two cartridges of water at the shoulder. Caelian prosthetics work a bit differently than most other species, using water pressure inside a thick chambered sleeve to bend and articulate rather than using motors or servos. Hydroprosthetics allow a Caelian to channel their innate electrical properties into a very conductive limb and discharge a larger-than-normal shock with controlled precision through the metal fixtures of their limb. Second, there's the other arms. Thryzz has a series of curious markings inked into their semitranslucent outer membrane, a mix of sacred geometries and Caelian prayer scripts, which they assure you grant them protection from harm. When both arms link together at the hand, Thryzz can form a large circle in front of or around themselves or a companion and feed a specific amperage of electrical power through their limbs, powering their wards. In this way, neither ghost nor ghast nor subspace shift will bring harm within its boundaries. This ward has saved their life many times, they will assure you. And those who have hired Thryzz onto their crew can attest to its power.

While Thryzz is an independent adventurer, the allure of good credits and the promise of an encounter with the paranatural are all it takes for a starfarer to enlist them onto their crew. Timberwolf in particular has hired Thryzz onto the Ermine when Bryce and his crew set out to salvage a particularly gloomy shipwreck, one which is assuredly a graveyard for some bitter or wrathful spirits. Emily, Timberwolf's security professional, swears she witnessed Thryzz ward off a poltergeist attack with their ringed, tattooed arms and disrupt it with a burst of electricity from their prosthetic limb strong enough that she "could feel in her teeth." Cargo haulers like Kessler will occasionally hire Thryzz onto a voyage if the superstitious among them read a mix of solar flare forecasts and ionic stormcloud predictions as the potential for warp current disruptions to allow tendrils of subspace into reality. They tell stories of Thryzz marking their ship's hull with chalk glyphs prior to takeoff, and of witnessing the static incursions of subspace brought out by intersecting storms bend safely around their approach, seeing an horrific and certain death crackle just beyond their ship's windows. It's even been rumored that Thryzz has teamed up with the infamous Jade Hawk in hunting down ancient temples on various worlds filled with magic traps protecting powerful relics, sensed out and dispelled by Thryzz's warding marks. The Jade Hawk seeks to destroy these relics, and Thryzz asks only to learn how they work before they are ushered from a world they're deemed too dangerous to inhabit. They are a true adventurer, taking on any task that calls for their skills for the joy of growing wiser and sharper from the experience.

Lately, Thryzz has found themself on Titan Garden. There's long been rumors of a Terran blood-curse, one which grants supernatural power and immortality to a once-living person at the cost of earning Sol's direct fury. Walking in shadows, it's said that these Terran cryptids have begun to spread from their home planet, inflicting their blood-curse onto other species, its properties interacting with their natural abilities in curious ways. Folktales call them "vampires", and it's said that they build power and influence within a notable concentration of people, who they depend on for nourishment- Thryzz suspects that an independent colony like Titan Garden might be an alluring host for such a paranatural lifeform, and so they've arrived to investigate; to collect stories, to learn about odd encounters with the indescribable, to document scars and bite marks and assemble a catalog of shared experiences into a deeper understanding of vampiric behaviors, and learn who or what might have found an inviting home in the Saturnian frontier worlds. When dealing with cryptids, Thryzz believes that compassion and diplomacy are best practice for first contact, but should said cryptid see a meal in their jellies, then a trusty Caelian steelcutter and an enormous jolt of electricity often make for a good plan B. The important part of lived experience is that you continue living to enjoy it, after all!

Liz and Alice are a pair of older Terrans who run a small clinic and hostel in Titan Garden's A-District. An inseparable duo, they live a quiet life and try to use their wealth of experience together to help lost, frightened and troubled souls find stability and a path forward out of their hardships. Alice- the woman in blue- has a gentle and sunny disposition, always looking to find the upside of an upside-down situation. Her wife Liz- in orange- is the more assertive of the pair, believing in the innate good in all people but never shying away from setting boundaries or confronting caustic or hostile people head-on. The both of them believe in second chances, and if you find yourself adrift in the Outer Belt, they've got a warm bed and a hot meal for you on Titan, with a welcome invitation to stay as long as you need until you can get back on your feet and feel the wind at your back once again.

The Ambling Alleycat is a small hostel tucked away near a train line crossing the Garden's south sector, looking from the outside like any other residential building. A repurposed home, the Ambling Alleycat serves two main functions: on the ground floor, in the back of the house, it's a walk-in health clinic where Alice offers her medical practice to all starfarers, no questions asked. There's a number of reasons someone might choose to visit the Ambling Alleycat instead of Titan General Hospital, and there's a limit to what Alice can offer without needing to refer a patient to Titan General itself if life-saving care is on the line, but Alice's clinic will always do what it can for a visiting patient with compassion, discretion and dignity in mind. The second function of the Ambling Alleycat is its bed-and-breakfast service, offering warm beds and hot meals to anyone who might need it. Liz manages this aspect of the business, maintaining a comfortable and inviting reading room in the front of the house, stocked with shelves of old books she's collected over her lifetime, accented by the soft glow of an old TV set. Upstairs, she maintains two floors of bedrooms, some arranged with bunk beds for multiple guests and some set aside for private accommodations, for those who would prefer the space. She cooks a big breakfast every morning, diner-style, good and filling. Guests are welcome to take a book and a plate up to their room, it's what they're there for. They operate the Ambling Alleycat on a sliding scale, often allowing their guests their services free of charge- for them, some things are more important than credits.

For those who know about it, the Ambling Alleycat has a reputation for being a safe place for starfarers who need to get back up or get away from something or someone else. It's not uncommon for someone looking to get out from under someone else's thumb to turn up at the Ambling Alleycat, where Liz and Alice will provide for their needs and, importantly, keep nosy pursuers out of their business. Privacy and dignity are important to the pair, and whether it's station security, an unfriendly rival or a controlling spouse, neither Liz nor Alice will compromise the safety of the guests under their care for any reason- they can't be bought and they won't be intimidated out of the way. Alice is a healer, she prefers to avoid confrontation where she can; Liz, on the other hand, is a wall between her charges and whoever might be harboring unkind intentions towards them. Some of those folks will see the grey in their hair and take them for pushovers, and they're quick to learn how far a sixty-year-old woman can throw them, with those who don't take the hint quick to find themselves on the business end of an old mop. Those folks hadn't been clued in to the Ambling Alleycat's reputation yet, but when they test their luck, it's often a swift and firm moment of understanding.

They don't often tell their stories, about where they'd been or who they'd met, but occasionally, if you're staying at the Alleycat and the mood seems right, they'll tell you about how they came to be the way they are. A long time ago, when the pair were young, they were both living in a deep space colony- Station 313, a number familiar to some older starfarers. A self-contained Terran mining outpost, Station 313 served as a living space for workers and their families running mineral extraction operations in the Jovian asteroid cluster. It was also the site of a major viral outbreak which claimed the lives of most of the station's inhabitants, an event that found it a footnote in the news of the time. Alice was stationed in the colony's infirmary, and Liz worked in the mess hall; when the virus outbreak took place, the pair ended up meeting each other, banding together and rallying other residents to combine their efforts and stabilize their situation, ensuring as many people could survive a biological catastrophe until help could finally reach Station 313, tucked away in the cold depths of space- they also kinda, sorta, fell in love with each other in the process. It was a long while before anyone reached 313, but when help arrived they were surprised to have found survivors at all; it was by working together and lifting each other up that Liz and Alice lived through the outbreak on 313, but it's clear that the events had imprinted on them in a way that seemed tenaciously hopeful, that they wanted to be a safe haven for starfarers elsewhere to outlive their own crises, whatever that may be. And so they founded the Ambling Alleycat here on Titan, opening their doors to whoever might need a friend in dark times.

Liz and Alice had lived a long and adventurous life together, they'd found truths about themselves together and they've grown old together, and today they live quietly together, out of the spotlight and news cycles their stories had found them in in the past. There's always a light in the window at the Ambling Alleycat; there's always someone at home when safe harbor is needed. They'll tend to your health, feed you a hot meal and let you retreat safely upstairs to a bed that is yours as long as you need it. You may hear rumblings downstairs but they're always quelled. You might stay a while, taking an old book off one of the bookshelves to read in your bed, opening it to find a folded piece of paper tumble out from between the pages. An old mining company worksheet printed on one side, and on the back, a pen-scrawled poem written in cursive; a picture painted in pretty words for a woman who meant the world to the author, misplaced over the decades. A ray of sunlight piercing the gloom. Hope in hard times.

You feel you're in good company, here. Things will work out just fine.

Every starfarer who runs the currents of Sol's trade routes has heard the legends of Captain Rockford. A Terran whose aura outstrips his stature, Captain Rockford is a starship captain known for leading his cargo hauler through treacherous sectors of space, taking on jobs that other captains would turn down out of self-preservation and somehow seeing those jobs through to completion. He's a very stoic commander, his resolve unwavering even in the face of spiraling calamity, but he's also not an outwardly-compassionate one, sparing no time to tend to crewmembers whose morale may be broken in the heat of the moment- he won't scold you, he won't console you, he'll simply step around you and make the most of what resources he has on hand to see his ship and his crew through the thick of a storm. The way in which he inspires his crew is to simply act and let them follow; the captain isn't scared, why are you? Grab that rope and help out. We're all making it through this.

Captain Rockford commands a large Callistan cargo vessel called The Arrogant Mule, running large shipments long distances through the most expedient possible routes in order to see vital supplies delivered to needy locations in a timely manner. What "the most expedient possible route" entails can occasionally involve electrical storms, bandit activity, xenofauna migration patterns, unstable warp currents or even a history of lost ships and reported hauntings. He doesn't lead his ships into certain peril, mind you, he instead charts risks through sectors where peril is likely but not certain, finding a timing and a course that minimizes tremendous risk for the opportunity to save time on a shipment over traveling the current charted trade routes, regarding warp currents as being "fickle and shifting things, not to be trusted". Thus far in his career The Arrogant Mule has been successful in these ventures, which has earned Captain Rockford and his crew an almost mythical status as a ship that the Void itself wouldn't dare to swallow. How an old Captain learns to tread lightly across these mousetraps is the tale of a lifetime.

As the story goes, Captain Rockford has spent his whole life aboard one starship or another, and knows the crafts and their operations inside and out. He was born inside a cargo hauler forty or so years ago, where his family lived in the unseen little gaps between the walls. Sleeping in a matchbox with an old spool for a nightstand, the young Rockford would spend his days scurrying about his home, watching the crew work and listening to the Captain and his mates give their orders, and seeing where and how their crew carried them out. He learned a lot through observation and occasionally he'd see a job was done poorly, and would dart out from his little spots in the walls to try it himself before scurrying away again to watch the outcome, and if he did the job right. They say a good Captain should be able to perform all roles on a ship, and young Rockford took this to heart, learning from his very earliest days through seeing and doing, sneaking peeks at schematics from Engineering and overhearing the Quartermaster complain about lacking this supply or that before those shortages impacted the crew in the mess hall. When he finally came of age and left the walls of his home, the young Rockford set out to prove himself among a fresh crew, on a new ship, working his way quickly from the very lowest ranks into a position of leadership and trust, pouring the foundation of his own future command. These days he sleeps in a very, very big bed, alone in his Captain's quarters.

Given his short stature it's understandable to think that Captain Rockford has some unique challenges in commanding his crew. The Captain knows to delegate his work, and trusts his First, Second and Third Mates to relay his orders to his crew. To be seen is to be heard, he feels, so Captain Rockford has taken to carrying a large red flag on a baton with him- he uses the baton to pole vault off the floor and onto tables or consoles, and waves the large red flag to help convey visual commands to his crew members. He'll also use this baton to knock open panels, grates and airducts on his ship, allowing him an unprecedented freedom of movement throughout his vessel. His voice is small, but it is gruff and fierce, and where he can he will use The Arrogant Mule's intercom system to broadcast direct commands among his crew, and when this isn't available the echo of the ship's hull will have to suffice. Those who have sailed with Captain Rockford pick up the rhythm of his command and trust his old wisdom, as he always seems to know the way through calamity; he always finds the little gaps in the walls of imminent doom. After a while of sailing under his command, the crew learn the flow and see results, and when they tell tales in port city taverns of what they'd seen and where they'd been, their fellow starfarers almost don't believe them. The ship's logs don't lie, and so the intrepid Captain Rockford and his crew have etched their names into the storied tomes of legend.

The men assure you these tales are tall but they're as true as the Captain's good name. Through a roaring ion storm, Captain Rockford navigated The Arrogant Mule between deadly bolts of energy by reading the pulsing colors of deep space clouds, knowing when and where to weave the ship in order to pass through the unpassable. When the ship was assailed by a shaded whale, the Captain instructed his crew to eject the galley's reserve of Callistan spice out the airlock, knowing the taste of those scattering granules is repellant to this specific subspecies. When a ghastly crew of starfaring ghosts latched onto The Arrogant Mule as it passed through an uncharted graveyard, it was Captain Rockford who talked them into moving on, though no man among the crew knows how or what he said, they all swear that after a fortnight of haunting the ghosts all disembarked in unison. Many a bandit has tried to sack The Arrogant Mule, finding such a cargo hauler outside the major trade routes to be an irresistable prize, but when they board the ship to try and take it Captain Rockford climbs into the walls and activates a series of traps, swinging panels and blasting hot steam at the intruders, sealing them into hallways with shuttering fire doors or shocking them with electrical currents; the men fight hard but the way their Captain fights with them, it is as if the little commander wields the entire ship itself in their defense. He is a ferocious fighter.

The stories always sound outrageous, they certainly have to be embellished, but the men stand before you and attest to their truth, their ship logs confirming departure and arrival times and recording the dreaded routes they charted in the course of their duty. How can such a feat be true, they'll be asked, and no matter the story, the answer is always the same: Captain Rockford always finds a way.

Cliff is a heavily-customized Android manufactured by the United Robotics Corporation. Originally designed as a labor transport vehicle operator, he's long since fashioned himself into an animal wrangler, becoming light and nimble enough to swiftly navigate large areas of land in an efficient amount of time. As a mineral lifeform he imagines himself as being born of the mountains themselves, and in reflection of this quality he harbors a deep love and respect for those forms of life which inhabit those mountains, who have not come to the thick of the space age on their own. He's a folksy fella, understanding of the little ways we spark friction between one another but still seeing the value beneath the warts and scars, always ready with a mote of wisdom to try and help make coexistence that little bit easier. He's pretty quick for his seven-and-a-half foot stature, and he still enjoys that trademark United ruggedness, but sometimes getting out of the way of trouble is a more useful quality than being able to tank it with your face, and this is a big reason Cliff has fashioned himself in the manner you see before you today.

United Androids are not known for their nimbleness, moving at a light jog at their very best in exchange for being the most stubbornly-indestructible sentient lifeforms in the whole of the Sol system, going so far as to run on Venusian crystal memory technology in order to grant them a heat tolerance well above their peers. Cliff's different. Over many decades, Cliff has shed the bulk of his stock chassis and equipped himself with lighter protective options in order to reduce his encumbrance and allow him to use his strength for mobility, and not just for manual labor. Essentially replacing plate mail with leather armor, Cliff uses an array of dust covers and a long insulated jacket to keep his Android skeleton protected from the elements, lending him a distinct and fashionable look styled in his favorite shade of red. His feet have been modified beyond the United standard specs, foregoing deployable stabilization posts in favor of better arch flexibility and support, allowing him to sprint at speeds comparable to an average Callistan. Capping off his self-styled redesign, he's replaced his standard-issue United bucket helmet with a slimmer metal dome that is better able to accommodate the wide brim of a shaped leather hat. Keeps the sun out of the ol' optics, Cliff'll tell you.

What Cliff does with all this unencumbered mobility is go out into the wilds of space and negotiate the expanse of civilization with the local wildlife just learning about it as it arrives at their doorstep. Generally, there's two main prongs to Cliff's work: First, he's often called when native fauna have territorial disputes with Solar colonies, coaxing an animal back to the safety of the wilds; out of the homes, businesses or traffic routes that might lead it into trouble. He wrangles wildlife in this manner with the animals' safety in mind, understanding full well the measures a moonside colony will take to remove an unknown animal who might wander into a space that it remembered being a good place to eat a few seasons ago. It can sometimes take a little bit of patience, a little understanding and a little bit of elbow grease, but a professional like Cliff intervening to redirect a large or dangerous animal out of the speeding path of civilization is largely preferable to the alternative. He is a staunch advocate for homesteads and colonies building on Saturn's moons with respect for nature, rather than in spite of it, but he understands the reality of the situation and works how he can to make sure wilderness settlers can get along with their chosen neighbors.

The other half of Cliff's work is a byproduct of these nascent colonies. Saturn has many moons, and on many of them offworld homesteaders look to build a home away from the bustle of modern life and return to something that feels "natural" to them. They'll bring crops to grow and livestock to sustain them, but oftentimes these cozy stories end in catastrophe. Sometimes the homestead fails and the animals that lived there, bereft of owners, wander off into the rest of these largely-unsettled worlds. When life on a homestead becomes an invasive species, it's Cliff's job to come in and reclaim these alien creatures, bringing them out of the wilds and finding them a new home they're more acclimated to. Sometimes the animals are civilization encroaching on the world, rather than the world encroaching on a civilization, and in either case Cliff's job is to intervene and ensure that these animals can safely navigate the complications of a space-age lifestyle they might not fully understand.

Being an animal wrangler, Cliff ends up working a lot with Savannah, one of the occasional shades to darken the doorstep of the Ox & Carriage pub on Titan. Savannah has a direct line to a lot of Saturn's homesteaders, new and old. She appreciates that Cliff tends to look at his work with compassion for the animals involved, treating them not as a nuisance or an invasive element but as sparks of life who maybe aren't quite up to speed on what all these new property boundaries are about. When Savannah learns about a failed homestead, she'll often tell one of the local salvage crews about its location so they can clean up the mess, but she'll also let Cliff know so he can track down what wildlife might now be competing with the locals in their niche to hopefully wrangle them in and bring them home- Savannah always makes room to take care of the animals Cliff de-introduces from the local ecosystems, tending to their needs, rebuilding their trust and finding them compassionate new homes. The pair work well together, and Cliff is happy to have Savannah's ear on the ground.

Occasionally, though, Savannah will learn about homesteads that don't act so compassionately, who might mistreat their livestock or inflict themselves upon the wildlife native to their chosen moon. When she learns about a toxic homestead she'll be sure to pass a word along to Cliff as quick as she can, and the pair will posse up to pay these cases a visit. Sometimes the invasive wildlife Cliff needs to wrangle is the self-styled king of their moon; a person who set out into the wilds of Saturn not to live in harmony with it, but to break it and press it under their thumb, and what they need is seven feet of iron and a venomous carapace to show up and straighten them out before they cause any lasting damage. That's the third thing Cliff and Savannah do. They don't talk much about those jobs. Long as the animals are taken care of, there ain't a proud tale there to brag about. Some work just needs doing, that's all there is to it.