Thiel Granz

Thiel Granz
Str:7 Dex:10 End:7 Int:11 Edu:8 Soc:5
Age 42
ex-Thief (1), ex-Experienced Free Trader (3)

Skills:
Melee (blade) 2, Sensors 2, Stealth 2,
Broker 1, Comms 1, Deception 1, Gun Combat (energy pistol) 1,
Jack of all Trades 1, Persuade 1, Pilot (spacecraft) 1, Zero-G 1, Streetwise 1, Mechanic 1

Advocate 0, Athletics 0, Computers 0, Recon 0, Streetwise 0, Vacc Suit 0

Equipment:
Stunner pistol (pending purchase - TBD), Subdermal Armor, Blade (muster benefit - TBD), Ship Share, 45,000 credits

Homeworld:
Sentinel

History:
Thiel's mien is unassuming and not very impressive: pudgy and slump-shouldered with a weak chin and thinning sandy hair. But his eyes twinkle with intelligence, and he's much quicker than he looks. There's usually a shy but friendly grin on his face. Most people find him quite likeable.

Thiel was a foundling, and to this day does not know anything about his parents or family. He grew up at the Sentinel Shelter for Indigent Youth under the auspices of the religious sisters of the Order of Radiant Mercy. Early on, one Sister Piera noticed his sharp mind and low self-esteem, and took him under her wing. She told him that he could achieve great things if he believed in himself. She also instilled in him a sense of loyalty and fair play that would often prove to be his downfall.

A medium-sized criminal organization, known as the Vaccuum Cleaners, had a contact within the Shelter who alerted them about promising young prospects. Sent by the contact to a "job interview", Thiel was suprised to find himself shanghaied onto a shuttle and taking part in a heist of cargo from an orbital transport. Thiel acquitted himself well and found himself trained and serving as a lookout on many such heists. He learned how to hide effectively in the airlocks and corridors of the spaceships and ports of Sentinel, as well as how to take out a watchman with a well-timed stunner shot.

Before long a slightly older man in the Cleaners crew, Gorgi Tonis a.k.a "the Nose", befriended the young Thiel, filling his head with dreams of great wealth and treating him to tastes of the good life. Thiel enjoyed his new work and with the Nose's guidance, he rose quickly in the organization. Later, Thiel stumbled on evidence that Gorgi had been tipping off a rival gang about lucrative targets, but loyal to his patron, he declined to report this to the gang leaders. A few years later, this decision would come back to haunt him when Gorgi dropped a dime on the head of the Cleaners, allowing the authorities to roll up the whole organization. Thiel barely avoided arrest himself. Enraged, he confronted Gorgi, in the process revealing that he knew far more about Gorgi's extracurricular activities than the latter had imagined. Soon Thiel heard on the street that Gorgi had some heavies out looking for him in order to rearrange his face. Wanting to remain whole in body, he signed on to the tramp freighter Howler as a deck hand, and left Sentinel behind.

Thiel had not thought much beyond getting off-world as quickly as possible, but found that life on the crew of a merchant freighter agreed with him. He quickly picked up the skills of working in zero gravity as the Howler plied the minor trade routes of the Deeps. A couple of years into his service, Thiel was approached by a detective, Jinn Mackree, who was looking for someone to provide information on a couple of noble passengers traveling incognito. Always on the lookout for an extra credit, Thiel jumped at the chance. Using stealth skills honed during his time with the Cleaners, Thiel was able to keep the passengers under observation and provide a complete report on their conversations. (Unbeknownst to him, this report was passed along to the Marquis Harim Samadar.) Thiel continued to perform occasional odd jobs for the detective in the future. Shortly after reaching his 30th birthday, Thiel had worked his way up to assistant sensor operator on the Howler.

Near the end of his second term on the ship, the captain picked up a mysterious cargo on the edge of the Great Rift. The Howler then made a series of jumps, arriving a system not far from Sentinel. The ship's computer immediately blared alarms: the system was under military restriction, with unauthorized vessels subject to being fired upon without warning! The captain told the panicked crew that the people he was delivering the cargo to had arranged everything, they'd be in and out quickly, and promised that everyone's share of this deal would be worth twice a year's pay. The Howler skulked in an asteroid belt for half a day before the captain received a pinpoint transmission. He took put the Howler on a slow trajectory deeper into the system then ordered all systems powered down. Suddenly, a pair of unmarked destroyers, also powered down, loomed ahead. The Howler docked with one and the captain personally supervised transfer of cargo to the mystery ship. A nervous Thiel continually scanned the passive sensor readouts for threats. He could tell there was some sort of planetoid a little further in system that seemed to have a few ships in orbit around it, plus some fuzzy traces and comm traffic much further out on the opposite edge of the system. But nothing came close, and he breathed a sigh of relief when the Howler decoupled from the destroyer and began a slow ascent out of the ecliptic heading for jump distance.

When the captain ordered the Howler's systems powered back on, Thiel risked a quick active scan. His relief turned to horror as the picture became clear. The planetoid was a Naval shipyard; the ships in orbit around it were in drydock under construction or repair, helpless; the traffic on the edge of the system were distracted naval pickets trying to run down an elusive intruder. Worst of all, the two destroyers were stealthily approaching the Naval base. Their EW systems appeared good enough that they'd be able to get the shipyard well inside their launch envelope without being detected by the Navy. But to the Howler's sensors high above and to the rear, the destroyers were an open book. The radiological signatures were as clear as daylight. Suddenly Thiel realized what the mysterious cargo must have been - nukes. The ships were [###############], and Thiel was about to witness a massacre.

Without stopping to think, he sent an urgent comm message warning the shipyard about the impending assault. The destroyers must have picked up the transmission and immediately went active, accelerating towards the station at full speed, hoping to get to attack range before a defense could be prepared. But one aging cruiser in orbit around the station, due for decommissioning, had not yet been fully disarmed. An engineer on the ship (one Jordan Ross) worked a minor miracle getting its reactor fired up and its systems online in record time. The cruiser was able to head off the attack, sustaining heavy damage but blasting one of the enemy destroyers out of space and holding off the other long enough for more help to arrive.

Thiel was nearly put out the airlock by his enraged captain. But luckily for him the Howler's first officer Hara Obiedelies grew up as a Navy brat. Hearing what had happened she stepped in and relieved the captain. There was a brief struggle, but most of the crew backed her, and soon the Howler was headed back in system broadcasting a surrender message. In the aftermath, the Howler's captain was executed. In her testimony, Obiedelies she gave full credit to Thiel for his actions, but as the ranking officer as well as a member of a prominent naval family, she ended up with most of the honors. The Howler was confiscated, but Obiedelies was able to leverage her accolades into ownership of another Free Trader, the Wandering Wave. Thiel happily accepted her offer to join her as chief sensor operator.

Thiel served under Obiedelies for two mostly uneventful terms. Once Thiel briefly succumbed to temptation and agreed to smuggle a black-market cargo into Howotro High Port. But when his captain casually greeted him on the bridge the next morning, he knew he could not go through with it. He didn't mind risking his own reputation, but could not bring himself to risk Hara's. Still, he didn't fully realize how much he loved her until she unexpectedly delayed the Wandering Wave's departure from port and checked herself into a hospital. She died just two days later from advanced cancer which she had kept hidden from her crew. Thiel couldn't bring himself to set foot on the Wave again. Instead he drifted from port to port for a few weeks, until he received an unexpected invitation to a ceremony on Howotro...

Allies, Contacts, Rivals, Enemies:
Enemy: Gorgi "the Nose" Tonis. Ex-petty criminal, now bounty hunter. Fears that Thiel may still have some dirt on him from crime days on Sentinel. (This isn't true as far as Thiel knows, but he might know something that he doesn't realize is significant.)

Contact: Jinn Mackree. A detective that Thiel has done a bit of work for on the side during his Free Trader days.

Goals:
Thiel is a little bit adrift right now, as his beloved captain recently and unexpectedly died, leaving him without a ship to serve on. Despite that, Thiel is convinced that some day, his bad luck will end and fortune will smile on him, and he'll make a big score of some kind. He's always looking for some scheme with a big payoff.

Also, Thiel is a foundling and has no idea who his family is. It's not actually something that he thinks about much or actively seeks information on. But if some relevant info dropped into his lap, he'd probably be interested in pursuing it... and/or, he could get caught up in the agenda of someone who knows more.