[Mass Effect/Fluff] Help me populate a Systems Alliance support squad

[Kiero]

This worked out really well the last time I crowdsourced NPC generation (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?241109-Mass-Effect-Fluff-Help-me-populate-a-Systems-Alliance-Marine-company/) to the Playground, so I'm going to do it again.

We've got a Mass Effect backup game soon to start, provisionally titled "Spacebase (http://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/MtE_Spacebase)", set in 2179 on a remote asteroid observation post. It's a hollowed-out rock which is used to monitor a pre-spaceflight civilisation on a water planet below. Originally found by an asari science team, they discovered Prothean relics as they explored, eventually realising those ancients had used the base for exactly the same purpose. The Prothean find has overtaken the original team - it's now a big deal with everyone wanting in on a piece of the archaeotech potential. After much negotiation with the Asari (http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Asari) Republics (who stepped in to make it all official), the Systems Alliance (http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Systems_Alliance) have been granted access for a science team of their own to explore the base. Only a tiny proportion of the interior has been explored and catalogued so far, it's all early days.

That science team will comprise about ten specialists in various fields - archaeologists, biologists, linguists and so on. The team is led by one of the PCs, a Lieutenant Commander who's an engineer and scientist and veteran of virtually every conflict since the First Contact War. Supporting that science team, ensuring they can focus simply on their area of expertise and not mundance concerns like where the food is coming from or how to get equipment is a support team. Their Team Leader is another PC, my character, who is a Marine Gunnery Chief and biotic. We haven't decided yet whether he's there by special request of the Commander, or the military bureaucracy fouled up somehow, but he's a combat leader assigned to manage a team of tech support specialists. For added administrative tension, he's a Marine and they're all Navy (the Marines are a subordinate branch of the Navy in ME), and one (but only one or it'll get tedious) of the team really resents being put under a Marine. He may have been brevetted Operations Chief for this assignment so that he at least isn't outranked by anyone in the squad.

What I'd like people to put forward are ideas for that team. They'd comprise a name with a paragraph-long biography. They'll cover the following roles:

Maintenance
Communications
Logistics
Medical
Food Service


So that's five people, who should be Enlisted or NCOs (see ranks (http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Codex/Humanity_and_the_Systems_Alliance#Systems_Alliance :_Military_Ranks)), though the Medical role might be a 2nd Lieutenant if they're a fully-qualified medical professional (though newly commissioned and inexperienced) rather than an experienced corpsman. I'd like to get a good mix of gender, ethnicity and nationality, also of origins (whether from Earth, the colonies or spaceborn).

This is a serious game, but colourful and comic stuff is allowed, just not outright silly. After all my character is deliberately being put in an absurd situation for the (OOC) laughs of the players. The best ideas will end up in the game (and you'll get to hear us as usual on our podcast site (https://insanitywetrust.wordpress.com/)).

[genmoose]

Here's a few potential candidates for your team:

Name: Serviceman 1st Class Yumi Sato
Role: Communications
Physical Description: 5'4" tall and approximately 100lbs. Sato is a lean woman of blended Japanese ancestry. She has short black hair that falls neatly just above her shoulders, fair skin and a thin smile. Her most striking physical feature is her violet cybernetic eyes.
Background: Yumi was born on her family's transport ship in 2157. Due to an accident involving an under protected view port and a solar flare she was left completely blind at the age of 18 months. Due to the initial rarity of ocular implant technology she didn't regain her sight until just before she signed up with the Systems Alliance Navy in 2175. Her family settled on the colony world of Amaterasu and setup a shipping company. Working for her parent's company her hearing became very keen and she learned how to sense a great deal about a person through their tone of voice; emotions, stress levels, honesty, etc. Her family traded with various aliens over the years and she took great pride in learning their verbal queues and idiosyncrasy.
She showed great aptitude for verbal communications and was trained as a commo and signals specialist out of boot camp. Her ability to understand subtle verbal nuance was not lost on her commanders who put her in various roles that required understanding subtext behind official communications. Unfortunately while her eyes let her see perfectly well to do her job, her depth perception is not so great, making her a particularly lousy shot.


Name: Service Chief Alex Bartovsky
Role: Logistics
Physical Description: 5'10" and 180lbs. Bartovsky is of average build; he doesn't spend anything beyond the mandatory time on PT but he isn't exactly bursting out of his uniform either. He has short buzzed brown hair, olive skin, dark eyes, a square jaw and a charming smile.
Background: Bartovsky was born on Elysium in 2150 and had an unassuming childhood earning mediocre grades and not really excelling at much of anything. He joined the Alliance Navy on the promise of a little adventure and some solid college money but stayed in once he got the hang of the Navy bureaucracy. He isn't that good at fighting or technical problems but he's amazing at 'working the system'. Previous commanders have said that Bartovsky always knows which form to fill out to either get what you need or keep people off his trail.
Once he learned how the system worked, he started making it work for him. He's known to be able to obtain non-standard items from back channels and contacts outside of the Alliance. Need a 10 gage inverted pulse modulator right away? No problem, I'll be on the next standard shipment. Need a Salarian mono-molecular knife or a bottle of Turian brandy? No problem if you have the credits.

[Kiero]

Thanks, genmoose, that's a great start.

Name: Service Chief Lee Caruso
Role: Maintenance
Physical description: 6'4" tall and 230lbs. Caruso is a big, brawny guy who knows his size intimidates a lot of people, but also comes in handy doing his job. He has a mane of curly black hair as long as regulations will allow, a close-cropped beard, green eyes and olive skin.
Background: A son of miners from Zorya on the Ismar Frontier, Caruso spent much of his childhood repeatedly repairing equipment overcome by fungi and humidity, and taking pot-shots at the local wildlife. While he grew to excel at the former, he was never more than passable at the latter. His preferred approach for dealing with overly aggressive fauna was to hit it with a sufficiently heavy tool. Having no interest in meeting an early end to an industrial accident or from some tropical disease, he signed up with the Alliance not long after reaching adulthood. His technical aptitude served him well, his issues with authority, particularly taking orders from anyone he felt knew less than him, less so. In spite of numerous insubordination charges and having been demoted a couple of times, he's made Service Chief and appreciates the autonomy NCO rank gives him. As well as the right to boss servicemen around. He has a gift for both repair and jury-rigging low and high tech, but doesn't play so well with others when he's not in charge.

[Kiero]

The NPC setup is still slightly in flux, we may come up with another role entirely for my PC, which will mean we'd need a logistics officer (probably a 2nd Lieutenant) who'd be Team Leader instead.

[Kiero]

Talking of the Logistician, I had an idea:

Name: 1st Lieutenant Jessica Rai
Role: Support Team Leader
Physical description: 5'9" tall and 150lbs. Has an athletic build and clearly spends a lot of time in PT. Fair skin, long black hair and dark eyes.
Background: Daughter of First Contact War veteran Rear Admiral Geoff Warrington and Nobel-laureate Chandima Rai, Jessica had every advantage in life. She grew up in the UK, went to the top education establishments and participated in sports at a high level. But rather than take the high-powered internship in the Alliance bureaucracy her parents had hoped for, she took a commission with the Alliance military. She wanted to give back in a much more meaningful way than pushing papers around. In order to avoid any special treatment linked to her father, she took her mother's name in service. On passing out she applied for command of a marine company, but was instead offered a logistics role in a high-profile assignment on joint exercises with the Turian Hierarchy. At every turn her attempts to get front line duties have been denied and she's been given career-enhancing, but safe roles instead.

[Kiero]

Here's another one:

Name: 2nd Lieutenant Emily Vogel, MD
Role: Medical
Physical description: 5'6" tall and 130lbs. Medium build, with reddish-brown hair in a short bob, blue eyes and tanned complexion.
Background: A native of Terra Nova, Vogel always wanted to be a doctor from the earliest age she could remember. While she did well at school, her family was of modest means, and she could never afford to put herself through medical school independently. That left the Alliance as her best option for qualifying without picking up huge debts. Training to be a doctor was both hard and fulfilling, but she was surprised to find how much military life suited her. Newly-commissioned and on her first assignment, she's eager to see more of the galaxy and its inhabitants. While she's been diligent about spending the mandatory time on the firing range, she really hopes she'll never have to use her service weapon. In her mind she's supposed to save lives, not take them.

[Noedig]

To clarify, you'd like 5 NPCs of varying roles, all military background, but no COs. Yes?

[Kiero]

I've just been struck with the random notion that Bartovsky has a VI assistant who does all the admin called Jobsworth.


To clarify, you'd like 5 NPCs of varying roles, all military background, but no COs. Yes?

Yes; preferably non-combatants in the main, since they're support people not marines.

There may also be room for up to 10 scientists/engineers/archaeologists of both military and non-military backgrounds, but I have to confirm with the GM whether or not she is looking for suggestions on those.

[Kiero]

First session is tonight, so there's approximately 7 hours left if anyone wants to get in on this. We might not get introduced to all of them, but it's possible.

[Kiero]

We may be playing this again tonight. If anyone has any ideas for a Food Service specialist, or better ones than those already listed, please post them.

[Noedig]

Mess Sergeant Citta Sekariaperum. Age 28. World of origin: Earth (Bangladesh). Nickname: 'Sriracha'

A chef of surpassing quality, however strangely chose not to pursue what would have been an undoubtedly successful career in the top kitchens of Terra, and potentially beyond. She chose instead to enlist and put her skills to a better use than 'helping rich people stuff their fat, slobbering faces.' Soldiers are often said to fight like lions and eat like beggars. Citta enlisted in order to turn this little idiom on its head, insisting that they should instead eat like kings when the situation allows for it.

She specializes in Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, Indian, Thai, and Oriental foods, and as her nicknames suggest, dearly loves spicy foods. Were it up to her, the word bland would never have come into existence. She finds Western foods boring at best, noting with particular revulsion all of the 'Slavic garbage.'