Allie

Pixel, short for Ixlbezermedileer (ICKS-uhl-Beh-zer-MED-uh-Leer) is an avian Neptunian and a member of the Timberwolf crew. Being an astronautics engineer, Pixel acts as the all-purpose mechanical caretaker for the Ermine and its warp drive, serving roles that overlap what Amy and Lydia do on their rival ship, the Jackrabbit II. Martian hardware is generally pretty rugged but the Ermine's specialized cargo hold depends on a number of overlapping systems functioning perfectly in order to operate in the vacuum of space, and Pixel takes great pride in assuring his crew that everything will work just fine. Part of his quality assurance can be attributed to his somewhat nervous personality; Pixel tends to imagine the worst outcome of a given situation, but rather than panic about it he sets to work finding pre-emptive solutions to prevent those outcomes from happening. He triple- and quadruple-checks all of his work and is so consistent in his nervous habits he will step back into the ship's kitchen to make sure he didn't forget to close the fridge door all the way, twice, before taking food back to his quarters. It can be somewhat annoying for other crewmembers but there's no denying what an asset having such an attention to detail is when traveling off-world on a job.

Unique among the Sol system's major worlds, Neptune has two dominant sentient lifeforms instead of just one. The long-eared Neptunian tunnelers share their world with the feathery avian Neptunians of the surface. Where Red Raven's Bell is a member of the former group, Pixel represents the latter; avian Neptunians have sharp beaks, long tails and brightly-colored plumage all over their bodies, thick enough to keep them warm on the chilly surface of their home planet. These Neptunians developed their sentience during the process of evolving flight, where they can't fully flap their wings and fly like birds but they can use their feathered bodies to glide on a wind current, even after running for a bit to get started. Their feet have two front toes and one back toe which provide a strong enough grip to lift and carry moderately-heavy objects on a breeze, and their footwear is designed with a hinged midsole to allow this grip to maintain its usefulness.

While they're not quite as rugged as their tunneling counterparts, they have inherent knowledge of flight and have combined their talents with their neighbors to develop some of the Sol system's earliest starship technology. It is because of this collaborate effort, combined with their planet's unique mineral resources, that Neptunian corporations such as Quasar Galactic Systems Specialists are the leading name in starfaring hardware, rivaling or surpassing even Terran starship companies. It is from this rich engineering tradition that Pixel has developed his very thorough skillset.

Pixel came to become a member of Timberwolf after a rather embarrassing encounter by the nascent crew. Bryce, Mahnoor and Alan had claimed salvage rights to a lucrative shipwreck ahead of Amy, Haley, Keera and Slug, boasting over ship comms about showing up late with all that engine power. Red Raven was a bit miffed but they buzzed off, and Timberwolf set about collecting valuables and cutting down bulkheads to store in their cargo hold. They were just about at the end of the job when the Ermine's robotic arm seized up while its claw was inside the cargo hold, depositing a load of scrap metal. They couldn't fly with their bay door open like this so Bryce called in to Titan Garden on the emergency frequency, specifying that they didn't need a tow job, they needed repair assistance. Carol had been on radio dispatch duties that day and, after a bit of a wait, assistance arrived at the Ermine's location- it was Red Raven again! Amy and Slug suited up to spacewalk and repair the malfunctioning hardware while Haley and Keera sat in the bridge and made jokes about Timberwolf getting its hand stuck inside a cookie jar.

Mahnoor was a little embarrassed but Bryce was so mad at this twist of fate, once the service call was completed and Red Raven went home- after offering to tow the Ermine back to Titan- Timberwolf set off right to Neptune to find the best mechanic they could get a hold of. Better than a Mercurian gift is a very high water mark to reach and, unfortunately, a tremendous amount of Neptunian aeronautics talent is already employed by Neptunian companies, but they lucked out in that Pixel had just finished apprenticing with an outfit doing maintenance on transport ships that service Neptune's orbital lake-busting cannons. Bryce, having a cargo hold full of salvage, promised Pixel an adventurous career fixing and dismantling ships all over the Sol system; Pixel very carefully made sure to negotiate a good salary instead of the offered commission percentage, as well as ample vacation time and the autonomy to make executive safety decisions on his own. It is probably one of the comfiest contracts between Red Raven and Timberwolf, but Bryce was willing to make those bargains to get himself a Neptunian mechanic, because he simply couldn't bear to see Amy smile at him like that again. It hasn't happened since on Pixel's watch, but Timberwolf has still run jobs during Pixel's contractually-designated vacation time, and sure enough, once or twice the Ermine has needed a visit from Red Raven, and Amy's smile has gotten smarmier each time Bryce has had to make that video call.

Alan is an android member of the Timberwolf Reclamation & Demolition crew. He is a HAL-5 Human-Astronav Liaison droid manufactured by Delta Astronautical Solutions, working with his ship's crew to convert the complex navigational calculations needed to safely maneuver through multiple orbiting gravitational bodies- as well as the various artificial satellites and known debris moving in between them- by normal means or through navigating warp currents in a way that is digestible to organic crewmembers. Alan has a very matter-of-fact personality, prone to plainly stating unflattering appraisals of unflattering people or situations; his artificial personality did not manifest any kind of humor, although if a white lie is calculated to resolve a dispute with minimal collateral damage he will be known to make statements that omit unflattering elements from his response processes. In other words, he is truthful to a computer-like extreme but has found ways to create tactical lies through omission of sensitive data sets in his observational calculus. Next to Bryce's charisma and Mahnoor's dry humor, Alan is the straightman of the Ermine's bridge.

Alan was originally created as a HAL-4 navigational android, hence him choosing a hAL4n-style name. Creation of androids is very heavily restricted and regulated to ensure an artificial sentience is given free will to find its own way in the universe, as demonstrated by the Neptunian android EV3R, and so very few corporations in the Sol system are equipped to actually build artificial sentient lifeforms. When they launch a new model upgrade line, they offer their previous androids an opportunity to transfer their consciousness to the next model line, letting them produce empty shells while staying within new-life creation regulations. This upgrade process was, incidentally, the napkin-math loophole Haley's former Terran pilot used to possibly put themselves inside their damaged HAL-3. The upgrades are optional, and androids will have to pay for their own new shells, but Delta Astronautics has been caught including battery-inefficiencies in their final EOL patch upgrades to some of their obsoleted production models- the penalties they have to pay to regulators are usually offset by the sales of new shell upgrades to androids looking for improved toolsets and battery life for themselves. While Haley has Amy's mechanical talents to improve her battery efficiency and evade these sorts of EOL patch changes, Alan chose to move up from his original HAL-4 shell to a sleek new HAL-5 model, taking on substantial debt but having access to tools a HAL-3 could only dream of.

Mid-model HAL units were designed with a Terran humanoid appearance in hopes of giving them a warm presence on any starship crew. The HAL-5 line includes many new features that were difficult to include in a humanoid shell, so the designers at Delta made the choice to move away from skeuomorphic android design and instead market sleek high-tech futurism as the new wave of Terran droid shells. Alan's HAL-5 shell features a second set of antenna blades to increase the bandwidth at which he can communicate with ship computers, and both pairs of blades are also retractable, allowing him to wear hats and helmets of all kinds designed for Inner Belt humanoid heads. In addition to this performance boost, Alan's hands are fitted with holovector projection rigs, allowing him to provide dynamic, real-time three-dimensional maps of the Sol system in its present state, rewinding to the past and projecting orbital states in the future. These holovector projections offer live data points outlining traffic and local weather conditions on known worlds, and allow a pilot or navigator to use their fingertips to draw routes through the 3D projections, which Alan will then convert to the appropriate data points to feed into astronav computers. Delta chose to move away from lifelike aesthetics for the HAL-5 so integration of these features would appear a more natural fit, and while the choice to move to a HAL-5 means losing some of an android's old aesthetic uniqueness, the suite of tools makes them extremely desirable crewmembers. In addition to these features, Alan also has interactable 3D games in his holovector projectors; he enjoys sharing his performance advantages whenever he is around Haley, because the very human-like expressions of restrained but obvious jealousy she displays when he's showing off are very amusing. Despite being unique in her own way, it's hard not to feel jealous when Alan just holds his hands out and projects all this cool stuff anywhere he wants.

Timberwolf came to meet Alan in a very simple way- Bryce and Mahnoor were starting up their new demolitions company and Alan had just taken on a bunch of Delta Astronautics debt upgrading to his new shell. Alan simply arrived at the Ermine one day, did not detect any other HAL units interfacing with the ship's computer and inquired about work. Alan's sales pitch was quite simple: in addition to macro-systemic map projections, his holovector projection arrays could also create micro-environmental maps from acquired data, creating real-time 3D models of his actual environment. The utility of such a feature for debris containment and reclamation was very clear, as even with a full set of floodlights it can be hard to see every piece of space junk in an area and even a very small piece of metal could prove dangerous to other starfarers, so having an advanced astronav droid who could plot debris locations in this way was extremely useful to their operation. Bryce welcomed Alan aboard and he's been a loyal member of Timberwolf ever since. Unlike Clover of Red Raven, morality does not factor into Alan's ethical calculations, so when he learns that his new crew will supplement their income with occasional smuggling jobs, that simply means Alan can pay down his Delta debt that much quicker.

It's very useful to find a way to lie, since Alan can simply omit illicit cargo from his calculations when asked about his ship's purpose by local authorities, he can present facts as if he simply did not know what he was helping transport. It is always logical to tell these lies to space cops, since the alternative does not project a positive outcome for him or his debt to Delta. Through these encounters he's gotten much more efficient at factoring Interpol ship patrol locations into his navigational calculus, and thus has reduced such encounters with law enforcement considerably in his time working for Timberwolf. Bryce loves this guy. Haley gets so jealous every time. Alan rather likes such a fuss being made about him, so he's got nothing in particular to worry about.

Mahnoor is a Terran starship pilot working for Timberwolf Reclamation & Demolition, responsible for getting the Ermine safely from point A to point B. She worked as a commercial passenger flight pilot prior to joining up with Timberwolf, shuttling passengers between Terra, Titan and Neptune. Mahnoor is easy-going, having a very dry sense of humor that pairs well as a foil to Bryce's charms and brings a bit of professional levity to in-flight comms channels. While she has a permanent residence in Titan Garden, Mahnoor loves her ships, and she can be found in and around them most of the time she's not up in space.

When Mahnoor was growing up on Terra she used to gaze up at the stars and invent her own constellations, tracing lines from point to point and giving each constellation its own name and backstory. One of her big motivations for becoming a starship pilot was wanting to fly up into space and visit her constellations in person, and this set her on track to study and practice everything she could to someday be able to fly a ship herself. Her family had a garage on Terra and she started out driving little four-wheeled go-karts, moved up to small hovercraft and later to large all-terrain land craft; on to gliders and propeller craft to helicopters and VTOL jets, Mahnoor has ridden every steel horse she could saddle. When she was ready she took a job in a commercial spaceline cabin before moving from copilot to piloting the passenger ships herself. It was her dream come true to breach the clouds and see her beloved constellations from space, but she quickly grew anxious at being stuck along commercial airline routes, wanting to see more of the galaxy and all of its twinkling beauty.

Before hiring on with Timberwolf, Mahnoor met Bryce in the outer shipyard of Titan Garden. Grizzly John had just landed with a big shipment of cargo for the station and Mahnoor had landed a commercial flight in a dock on the other side of the port. They met up in a pressurized crew space, sharing a calcium-rich orange-like fruit juice together, with Bryce starting a conversation that lead to them sharing a bit about themselves with each other. Mahnoor talked about seeing the stars, and Bryce mentioned how someday he'd own that big cargo ship himself and he'd need a good pilot to fly it. Mahnoor joked about keeping in touch before the pair went their separate ways. It was some years later when Mahnoor ran into Bryce on Titan Garden again; Bryce of course recognizing Mahnoor and kicking off another conversation. Recalling their previous talk, he mentioned that he had a ship of his own now- it wasn't the big cargo ship, though, he'd lost that over a Mercurian woman, but he did have a smaller and faster little ship of his own! Mahnoor found the story charming and a little funny, quipping about being impressed anyone could lose a ship of that size, and said that her contract with the commercial starline was almost up, and when she was free she'd meet him again on Titan if he was serious about his offer. Bryce popped into the crew space every day for a month and a half, and when Mahnoor checked in, he was there, true to his word. Amused by the Venusian man's long memory and adherence to his word, she agreed to fly his ship for him.

As Timberwolf's seasoned pilot Mahnoor has developed a friendly rivalry with Haley, Red Raven's android pilot. Her experience flying in major routes gives her a rich knowledge of where not just major traffic flies, but where each world's patrol ships like to hide, so when the Ermine is hauling less-lawful cargo she knows exactly where not to fly. She knows a few of the patrol officers personally from her commercial starline days, so on the chance they happen into some bad luck she's able to cool-headedly chat down a nosy officer. It's saved the Timberwolf crew more than once.

When news of a lost shipwreck surfaces it's her experience with Solar flight routes and Bryce's knowledge of the system's backroads against Haley's built-in astronav computer and Amy's knowledge of how close to a breaking point you can push a starship to see who can land the salvage rights first. Ever since Red Raven hired on their snake-haired Terran they've sometimes seemed able to just pop into space on the other side of the Sun, in defiance of anything Bryce or Mahnoor had ever seen before. Mahnoor's not willing to be bested by machines, however, having spent a lifetime in command of them, so with a little planning and a lot of grit the Ermine can navigate the trade winds of space to best the speedy Jackrabbit to a prize. A dry quip often comes across the pilot comms channels for Haley to hear whenever the Hare ends up taking second place. But there wasn't even an ermine in that story! It doesn't matter, because that day belongs to Timberwolf!

Being a hat trick of demolitions team, shipwreck salvage crew and smuggler means the Ermine flies to all kinds of out-of-the-way spots in the Sol system. Wherever the job takes them, Mahnoor likes to keep an encrypted record in the astronav computer of their destinations. Sometimes, on long flights, she likes to pull up a projection of her destination record and rotate the map in 3D space, lining up the dots just right to find and name her own constellations, not of stars but of points on her journey through space.

Bryce is the owner of Timberwolf Reclamation & Demolition, a debris-clearing service that operates out of Titan Garden. Timberwolf's office is on the opposite end of the docking bay from Red Raven Towing & Salvage; being an orbital sanitation company they also have a license to dock the Ermine inside the Garden itself, just like the Jackrabbit II. Timberwolf, like Red Raven, earns a living through three major sources of income:

1. As a demolitions team, Timberwolf is hired to decommission obsolete satellites and clear dangerous space debris from planetary orbits, keeping trade routes and traffic space safe.
2. The reclamation half of Reclamation & Demolition focuses on salvaging lost shipwrecks and procuring valuable goods and treasures. This item makes Timberwolf direct rivals with Red Raven in being the first to find and claim salvage rights to a shipwreck.
3. The Ermine's large cargo capacity and regular transport of space junk gives Timberwolf a good legitimate cover for their smuggling operation. Where Red Raven pulls off heists, Timberwolf transports unlawful valuables through controlled spaces. They charge a steep fee but live up to the costs.

Bryce is a Venusian man in his 40s and he is the captain of the Ermine. He is charming and charismatic, able to squeeze a disarming chuckle out of most folks with an off-hand joke. Venusians are very tenacious people, coming from a very acidic world. Their skin forms in thick plates, with subtle seams between each callus, and they have evolved beyond the need for pinkie fingers. One of the most notable features of Venusian physiology is their hair, which grows in bright colors and naturally forms shapes and patterns not unlike an insect's carapace. The other notable feature of a Venusian is their regenerative properties, able to heal back physical damage that would incapacitate or kill other Inner Belt hominids. As long as they have a head on their shoulders they can grow back what they need sooner or later. Life on an acidic world is hard so it tends to make hard people.

Like Amy, Bryce got his first real job working on Grizzly John's cargo transport ship. He hired on as a simple loader/unloader of freight but eventually took up the job of being the ship's navigator. Before hiring on with Grizzly John, Bryce used to run petty scams in various starports, conning tired travelers out of their credits and making a dash when the heat was on. As such, Bryce has a very strong intuitive sense of the flow of the Sol system, knowing well where the main warp routes travel and where you can find a pocket of privacy in space to hide out in. He and Amy used to work together to find sneaky smuggler's routes through the system and then let Amy crank the throttle and arrive at their destination port in record time. When Grizzly John retired both Amy and Bryce wanted to take over the captaincy of his ship but he chose instead to sell it, give his crew their severance and use the remainder to buy a large plot on Titan Garden to open the Grizzly Bear Scrapyard. One of the other things Amy and Bryce both inherited from Grizzly John was his bad smoking habit, each one sorta stuck with the nerve-steadying compulsion.

In that specific vein of dadliness he didn't want to hand Amy or Bryce a business, but instead gave them each enough to buy their own ships and start their own businesses. Amy went into the tow truck business and Bryce took up sanitation, but both of them shared a taste for the adventurous life of salvaging shipwrecks. They were steady crewmates before but as rivals Amy and Bryce became active frenemies, each one using their own talent to stake claim in a shipwreck before the other- while Amy and her Jackrabbit use blistering speed to fly directly into the space they think a shipwreck is, Bryce and his Ermine use careful routing to intercept a wreck in its theoretical Solar orbit. Timberwolf and Red Raven pick up different shipwreck leads but occasionally they hit upon the same lead and one will usually arrive to find the other already on site, and it usually swings one way or the other pretty evenly. Depending on the mood they may be willing to split a particularly large ship, but will charge the other a steep fee to share the salvage rights, and then still bust each other's chops when the two crews find each other in the belly of an enormous space hulk.

Salvage is the only area where Timberwolf and Red Raven really overlap; their public service jobs don't conflict, although Timberwolf will occasionally show up to clean the debris after Red Raven tows a ship collision. Their criminal endeavors don't compete either, and like true frenemies the two outfits will occasionally collaborate if they need help with a big job, with Timberwolf's crewmembers lending their talents on a Red Raven heist and Red Raven helping lend their services to help surpass a difficult smuggling obstacle. When it comes to shipwrecks, though, all bets are off and it's every crew for themselves, with Bryce and Amy heckling each other over their ships' comms. There has been one time the Ermine's thruster array malfunctioned and it needed a tow, however, and you'll never guess who showed up to tow them and their payload back to Titan. Amy will never let Bryce live that one down, and he's eager to find something to hold over her head to even the score.