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Originally Posted by johndallman
If one is willing to be an upstart, yes. Finish compulsory education at age 18. Three years in the RFA, which is a civilian job with military connections, age 21. Four-year engineering degree, age 25. Set up as a jobbing engineer with your only practical experience the RFA, age 25.
British-influenced systems start compulsory education at age 5, and you're ready for university at age 18. They also don't control the plain title "engineer," but experienced engineers are expected to have professional body memberships that he lacked when he set up. The Caribbean is pretty relaxed about that kind of thing.
He is pretty smart, and I did him this way because I wanted him to be fairly young when taken on.
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That all sounds fine.
Quote:
Originally Posted by johndallman
Casual cricketer, loves sailing, amateur radio.
Girlfriends in every port, two of them with children.
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Excellent.
Quote:
Originally Posted by johndallman
My thought was that their personalities just fitted together well. The junior engineer role is an alternative.
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The
Penemue requires three 'engineers', i.e. people who can man the engine rooms, as part of the crew.
In play, I've only established one of these people*, the Second Engineer, Carlos Camacho, who has been part of the
Penemue's crew since 2011 and who was a Machinery Technician in the USCG between 2003-2011. Camacho's father also worked for Kessler, as part of his deck crew on the Penemue in the 1970s and 1980s, but took a job in one of Kessler's land-based companies when he had a family.
As a college-educated engineer, Gilbert can clearly be a plausible boss for Camacho
by now. In 1995, of course, Kessler had recently suffered the loss of sixteen men working for him, who disappeared inside the Vile Vortex, and was hiring people for
Penemue not merely as a pleasure yacht, but with the fact that it served as a base against unnatural threats very firmly in mind.
Liking Gilbert would have been a very big help, but discovering that he had an agile mind and was able to take the supernatural in stride might have been something that made Kessler decide to give him a job that some would say should have gone to a top ex-military expert in his forties or fifties.
After all, Kessler can always hire more shooters or experts with appropriate skills, but someone who'll accept the fact that the
Penemue's engines break down at roughly ten times the rate of a ship without all those magical energies around and still manage to keep them sweet, well, that's a pearl beyond price. Especially if he'll accept help from those with magical gifts in keeping the engines in running order.
Do you have any preference on how Gilbert should look? A casting photo (a picture of someone you imagine as him) or the name of someone I can Google to find such a thing?
From the description, I imagine a sunny smile with twinkling eyes, someone who looks like he's bursting to tell you an off-colour joke or amusing anecdotes, at which he'll laugh the loudest.
*As the first adventure was set in port over the Christmas vacation, there was only a skeleton crew aboard.