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Saturday, October 21, 2023

The Return of Mad Willie

Christian has threatened to join us on Saturday night for the online Five Parsecs From Home campaign. He indicated he would like to reprise his role as Mad Willie - a character he played in our Savage Worlds Sci-Fi campaign over a decade ago! There was just no way I could say NO to that!?

Mad Willie

  • Species/Type: Baseline Human
  • Reactions: 1
  • Speed: 4
  • Combat: +0
  • Toughness: 3 
  • Savvy: +1
  • Luck: 
  • XP: 0
  • Background: Low-Tech Colony
  • Motivation: Adventure
  • Class: Technician
  • Homeworld: "Glasgae IX" though there is no known record of such a planet... 
  • Gear: 2x Handgun (12”/1/0/Pistol), Loaded Dice
  • Notes: +3 Credits

Mad Willie is a skilled repairman, able to patch together various bits of the ship whenever called upon. He is less interested in actual preventative maintenance - Meetoktu can handle that. (Meetoktu? What a bloody fairy name). But he is good at getting the ship's engines and computers going again when they stop working. He is also a good man in a tight spot, blazing away with his heavy pistols.

However, people call him Mad for a reason. For starters, he wears a kilt and balmoral, which he has clearly made himself. The kilt is a length of reinforced syn-weave that has obviously been clumsily stitched together and painted plaid. Willie has been seen patching up the paint job several times, but if pressed claims that his brush is actually a sewing needle, and that he is only making repairs to his beloved kilt. Willie claims that he hails from the planet of Glasgae IX, but no such planet has ever existed. When asked about it, he makes up stuff that often contradicts his last story. If pressed, he gets twitchy, and starts reaching for his pistols. His accent ranges from Scots to Irish to something like Russian at times.

Then there is the robots issue. His previous captain had a perfectly good hospitality robot, but then it blew up. Willie denied responsibility, but seemed much more at ease after the robot was gone. Willie hates and fears robots. The more primitive and clankier, the worse. "Och, I hate them clanky buggers. They give me the willies, stomping around and eating people." Note that Willie does not fear any andriod that appears fully human - "That's nae a robot - it's a person, ye eedjit!". But once an android got cut and started bleeding lubricant, and Willie freaked, and killed it. This caused some trouble. Probably why he ended up in trouble with the law, and ultimately, how he ended up as part of the crew of The Æthelwulf

Willie also believes that lasers are harmless, despite any and all evidence to the contrary. Anyone shot with a laser is a "wee scared bairn - it's just a flashlight, for christ's sakes!" Anyone killed by laser fire is a hypochondriac, even if missing body parts. "Ach, the poor bugger must really have thought those things are real. The mind is an amazing thing." This means that Willie will basically treat anyone with a laser as an unarmed delusional fool, ripe for the picking. When shot with a laser, Willie will firmly blame the damage on something else, no matter how improbable. "Laser burn? Dinna be a fool, lass. I was standing by a window, and there was a solar flare. Didst tha nae seeit? Lasers. I like thee, lass, but th'art sometimes a wee bit daft." He does have a healthy respect for Plasma weapons, and other such stuff, it's just lasers that he believes to be a scam.

Willie is starting to realize that people don't mean "Mad" in the same way that he does. This is causing him to become madder. Willie is starting to think that it would be cool if he started to learn how to blow things up...

"Explosions in me cabin, what do ye mean? That smoke could've come from anywhere. I was probably just jimmying the turbo-oscilliator. Hey, why don't you keep yer big nose to yuirself anyways, ye big fookin' smarty-pants?"

Yeah... this is going to be great... 





2 comments:

  1. He certainly sounds like a character you want in a campaign!
    Best Iain

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Christian comes up with the best characters... It will be interesting to see what happens if they recruit a bot to the crew... or face any opponents armed with lasers!

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