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Old 12-28-2018, 12:40 PM   #7
Icelander
 
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Default Crew of the Penemue, Ideally with Familial Connections to Kessler's History

I've added some names and backgrounds for crew members of the yacht Penemue in the first post, but I'm still missing a lot of individual crew.

The Penemue is owned by the billionaire J.R. Kessler of Galveston, the PCs' Patron in Monster Hunting matters, but the PCs will live aboard it. Well, at least, two PCs will have permanent staterooms there*, a situation which started a few months before the start of play, with other PCs actually having homes and not being weird murder hobos who live with their eccentric centenarian boss (and his retinue) on a yacht.

Considering Kessler's sense of obligation toward employees, former and current, and his feudal insistence on absolute loyalty in return, it makes sense that he'd not only provide substantial assistance to the children of people he employed in his younger days, but that he'd also prefer to hire such children for sensitive positions which require living in close proximity to him. So, employees should, as much as possible, be the children or grandchildren (or at least relatives) of former Kessler retainers or, alternatively, old army buddies from his WWII or French Indochina War days.

So, for example, two surviving former Legionaires in their 80s, from the 1er Bataillon Etranger de Parachutistes (1er BEP), own houses next to Kessler's compound on Domincia. I've not named them yet, but one was Belgian and the other Swiss, though they've had Domincian citizenship for over three decades now. If these men had any active, intelligent, adventurous descendants between the ages 20 to 67 in 2018, it's highly plausible that Kessler would employ them in trusted senior positions, at least if they showed any ability.

Kessler will also have former security personnel who worked for him between 1955-1985, who are by now too old to carry a gun and sail into adventures, but who might have children or grandchildren ready for the task. Between 1955-1970 or so, Kessler had a couple of bodyguards in his household and occasionally hired mercenaries for security when he visited dangerous places. Mostly, he'd have done so through former Legionnaire contacts, of course.

Kessler employed more bodyguards and mercenaries in the 1970s and 1980s, largely because he could no longer trust to his own skills and aging body, so he had to hire a team of mercenaries for many things which he'd have done himself with a couple of friends in the 1960s. Mercenaries working on behalf of Kessler were involved in various murky doings in Africa and elsewhere during the period between 1969-1981, growing his wealth from substantial to astronomical in the process, as he acquired shares in petroleum fields, gas lines and mines yielding not only copper, gold and diamonds, but also more exotic metals, such as cobalt, titanium, uranium.

Around 1982-1985, Kessler started to actively recruit highly skilled former military and intelligence personnel, both from veterans of the French Foreign Legion (with whom Kessler retained links of tradition and affection) and any other professional military where Kessler could extend tendrils of influence, for permanent positions in some of the Private Security Contractors he had established. By somewhere around 1985-1987, Kessler had developed and fielded what amounted to his own special operations team and has retained that capability since.**

Actually, in the modern day, he could probably field more than one team. With the number of former SOF operators and other military veterans in the crew of the Penemue, Kessler is effectively protected at all times by a Personal Security Detail that rivals that of many heads of state, for quality, if not quantity. Then he has a primary field team, consisting of the PCs, a couple of experts and a security element of former SOF operators. A number of Kessler's regional agents will also be protected by highly skilled mercenaries / PSC close protection experts who are former SOF or have equivalent training and experience useful to monster hunters.

Aside from salaried employees, however, Kessler will be able to call on numerous former SOF operators who know about his activities, but do not work full time for him, but are more than willing to take lucrative commission work. These will be former employees, relatives of former employees and friends and people Kessler tried to recruit, but who proved unwilling to accept full-time employment, which likely would have carried with it relocation.

Does anyone have suggestions for character names, short backgrounds and descriptions of looks and personality for the crew positions I still haven't filled in the first post?

Or any commentary in general?

*I'll try to get them to accept sharing a stateroom, as the yacht is only 150 feet long and space is not actually infinite on it. Especially not given how many other people live there, the fact that it has a sizable library, a fully-equipped machine workshop with a lot of gunsmithing tools and a weird room full of alchemical and thaumaturgical equipment.
**Though he lost some eight operators in 1995 and it took him considerable time to replace them.
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Last edited by Icelander; 12-28-2018 at 02:08 PM.
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