Rim Templates

"Rim" Templates represent occupations who exist on worlds far from legitimate authority. They tend to be strongly associated with crime, survival, rugged independence of poverty.

List of RimTemplates

• Assassin: The Assassin is the rim counterpart to the spy. Where the spy elegantly infiltrates for pure access to information, the assassin infiltrates for the purpose of brutal murder. She is the shadow who waits for you in your bedroom, the taste of poison in your tea, and the sound of sudden, unexpected violence. She is not a gun for hire; she leaves such crass methods to the Bounty Hunter and the Commando. She is a master of the blade, the knife, even the hand, any instrument of death that brings her close to her target. Outside of the Space Knight, few can approach her mastery of esoteric combat methods.

• Bounty Hunter: The Bounty Hunter straddles the lawful words of the Core and the lawless worlds of the Rim. They walk where lawmen fear to tread and offer justice to those who have no other way to get it, but they offer only the justice of the blaster, and it costs credits. Outsiders sometimes mistake them for assassins, vigilantes, hired guns, mercenaries or thugs, but a Bounty Hunter is a very specific profession: the Bounty Hunter seeks his target, recovers them, and deals with them, and then expects to get paid. The Bounty Hunter excels at combat, but their combat skills focus on the recovery or defeat of a single, high-value target, someone typically too difficult for normal security forces to take down. They also learn to fight alone or in small teams, unlike commandos or security agents who can rely on back-up. They also learn to be quick on the draw, because in the criminal underworld of the Rim, situations deteriorate quickly. Bounty Hunters also excel at finding those who don’t want to be found. They cultivate underworld connections, or call in favors with administrators, to learn more about their target. They walk dark, rain-soaked streets or the dusty roads of alien worlds to track down the last-known associates or a target. They close in and then arrange a final ambush meant to defeat or capture the target. Then they bring him back in. Bounty hunters tend to be a varied lot. They run the gamut from silent, brutal, armored juggernauts to deceptively attractive women with a nice smile, a willingness to talk to you at the cantina bar, and a hidden neurolash stunner in her gloves. Most learn to specialize in a particular sort of target, learning the specific tactics necessary to take down psychics, aliens or cyborgs.

• Con Artist: The Con Artist is equally at home with street gambling or a begging scam on the streets as he is sweeping princesses off their feet in royal courts and beating the house in some alien casino. The Con Artist glides from one social encounter to another, changing who he is based on who people want him to be, but always with an angle of more money, more fame, more power, always looking for the next big score. The Psi-Wars galaxy brims with shady characters, from a street-corner snake-oil salesman, to a corporate grifter, to a fake fortune-teller, to the alluring charms of a Ranathim dancing girl, to the Maradonian princess with dubious genetic claims but fantastic fashion sense.

• Frontier Marshal: Like the bounty hunter, the frontier marshal represents the law of the core in the lawless frontier of the rim. Unlike the bounty hunter, he's there to stay, often protecting its citizens while maintaining law and order. He throws the bandits out of towns, tips his hat respectfully to the locals and keeps the local drunk safe in a prison cell until he sobers up. He understands his world and invests deeply in it, becoming a master of its layout, and learning to survive even the harshest of circumstances. The frontier marshal is a master of the pistol, though he can expand into the rifle or various weapons, and in finding people and bringing them to justice. The frontier marshal differs from the bounty hunter in being a master of survival, choosing a single planet type that he excels at (similar to the Survivor background). The frontier marshal often “goes native” and comes to take on the culture of those around him, or might even be from an unusual culture. As a result, he has quite a few options for expanding social contact with aliens. The Frontier Marshal is also closely related to the Security Agent: both represent characters with a focus on criminal investigation, but the Frontier Marshal solves crimes in the lawless frontier, while the Security Agent is typically far more urban.

• Scavenger: One can find nearly anything in the Galactic Rim, if one knows where to look. The Scavenger excels at going to remote, hostile places and delving deep into the ruins and wreckage there to find lost treasures. On the junk world of Grist, wastelanders journey across toxic expanses to explore the millennia old wreckage for ancient artifacts. Junkers lurk at the edges of battles, waiting for the fighting to die so they can go in and salvage spare parts from derelict craft. Asteroid miners and prospectors sit in cantinas, spilling tales of the strange things they encounter during their journeys to anyone who will buy them a drink. Archaeologists scour jungles and deserts in search of the last remnants and the ancient ruins of some lost, alien civilization. The scavenger masters, first and foremost, the fine art of finding useful things. They can pick out useful parts and secret doors with ease. Many scavengers are technically minded, able to repair and reactivate what they find, or at least turn it into spare parts for something else, but others prefer to sell what they find, or turn it over to museums (usually for a profit). Of course, if people could easily reach it, it would have already been scavenged, so most Scavengers master the art of travel in hostile environments. They scavenge the ships caught in the gravitational anomalies in the accretion disc around a black hole, or the wreckage in the ashen wastes of a desolate, uninhabited world, or in the remotest, iciest worlds on the edges of a solar system. This need to “go forth” to find their filthy lucre makes Scavengers natural adventurers. Naturally, scavengers face a great deal of peril. They must fend off wild animals, pirates and rival scavengers. They must evade traps and security systems that remain active in ancient derelicts or ruins. They often face supernatural threats in psychically unstable regions. Thus, scavengers tend to be a hardy lot, able to fight well, with an uncanny sense for danger and typically more than a little luck. Those without tend to end up dead.

• Smuggler: Everyone wants something, and not all of those things are entirely legal. Sometimes, wealthy aristocrats want forbidden delights, or crime bosses want a shipment of slaves or arms; other times, the starving refugees of a war desperately want food that the besieging force denies them. The smuggler is willing to serve all those needs… for a price. The smuggler is a master of space travel. She excels at navigation and piloting, and while she's no fighter ace, she's no slouch at space combat either. Unlike the fighter ace, her focus is on the corvette rather than the starfighter, though she might not fair too bad in a starfighter in a pinch. All smugglers also specialize in some technique to get past blockades. Some rely on unusual routes or swift starships. Others rely on their wit and charm, or on social connections within the star port itself. They also excel at getting their passengers to strange or exotic locations, thanks to their mastery of space navigation. They also navigate the underworld well, whether or not they themselves are explicitly criminal.

• Warrior: Where the fighting men of the advanced core rely on technology, wits and training to overcome their opponents, the aliens of the Rim often rely on sheer, brute strength and their ancient traditions of war. The warrior is the strong man of the galaxy, and a trained martial artist who, in contrast to the quick and graceful Assassin, uses martial arts that emphasize tenacity and might. On worlds that lack advanced technology or among communities that lack the funds to access advanced technology, the warrior often serves as the champion for the weak, or the elite bodyguard for the powerful. In both cases, they tend to be well-regarded for their service. Alternatively, warriors also represent barbaric brutes whose uncivilized manner alienates those around them, and they leverage their strength to take from the weak.