Character Name: Ask
Alias: Asq (used almost exclusively by Corvus)
Species: Rodian
Gender: Male
Age: 31
Height: 1.63 m
Move: 10/12
Homeworld: Rodia
Rank: Chief Engineer / Senior Engineering Officer
Occupation: Chief Engineer on the Ka'rta Tor, co-owner of the light freighter The Wanton Vixen, former smuggler, ship systems engineer, slicer-adjacent mechanic
Duties: Ask oversees a capital ship's propulsion, reactor output, power grid, shields, weapons maintenance, sensors, life support, damage-control teams, droid labor pool, and repair schedules
Allegiance: Alliance Navy - officially; privately, Ask's first loyalty is to the lives of the engineers under his command.
Reputation: The technician who can coax a hyperdrive through a blockade - and charge you extra for the miracle.
APPEARANCE
Lean and quick-moving, Ask has olive-green skin, large black Rodian eyes, and a small cluster of metal data studs along one antenna. His patched flight jacket conceals a compact toolkit, spare power cells, and at least two devices that are technically illegal in most civilized systems.
He is a charismatic rogue when a deal must be made but becomes unnervingly focused on (and around) damaged machinery. Ask treats starships as living things: he listens to their engines, talks to their navicomputers, and takes sabotage personally.
STORY FACTORS
Reputation: Rodians are notorious for their tenacity and eagerness to kill intelligent beings for the sake of a few credits. Certain factions of galactic civilization (most notably criminal organizations, authoritarian/dictatorial planetary governments and the Empire) find them to be indispensable employees, despite the fact that they are almost universally distrusted by other beings. Whenever an unfamiliar Rodian is encountered, most other beings assume that it is involved in a hunt and give it a wide berth.
PERSONALITY
Ask comes across as a quietly intense, 'duty-first' engineer whose outer discipline masks dry humor and deep loyalty.
Core Characteristics:
- Publicly disciplined, privately sharp: In public he's controlled and professional; in Engineering Control he's sarcastic and blunt, using humor as pressure relief.
- Safety-obsessed pragmatist: He's nearly obsessive about safety protocols because he sees the ship as a "fragile city" of systems that can't all fail at once.
- Exacting and laconic: He demands precision but doesn't waste words; he shows care through competence, not speeches.
- Loyal to the ship and crew: His loyalty is conditional on respect - for the vessel and the people who keep it running. He treats ships as having "personality" and "emotional memory," not just hardware.
- Ambitious yet practical: He wants results and advancement but won't gamble lives or the ship for showy heroics.
- Funny under pressure: Stress brings out his wit rather than panic, which helps stabilize his team in crises.
- Protective to a fault: He repeatedly puts himself in danger against slavers, pirates, and remnant forces because walking away from people in trouble is, to him, "bad business."
Ask is the steady, sardonic backbone of the engineering department: a no-nonsense, safety-first leader who loves his ship like a living thing, respects competent crew, and quietly does the dangerous, unglamorous work that keeps everyone alive.
Motivation:
Wealth, freedom, technical mastery, and eventually owning a legitimate shipyard that no criminal organization can take from him.
Quirk:
Names every major component of his freighter using sign language and gets offended when others use serial numbers.
COMMAND ROLE
Ask directly commands the Engineering Department, approximately 1,000 personnel aboard the Ka'rta Tor:
- Reactor-control and main-engine crews
- Hyperdrive, sublight-drive, and navigation-support technicians
- Shield, sensor, communications, and power-distribution sections
- Turbolaser, ion-cannon, missile, and tractor-beam maintenance crews
- Hull-repair and damage-control parties
- Astromech, maintenance-droid, and labor-droid units
- Shipyard liaison officers and quartermasters
