A Stargrave Crew

My mates at Axes and Ales have started a Stargrave campaign and I thought I should put something together to “muscle in”. First I needed a storyline so here goes:

The Ashfall Syndicate doesn’t really seem to be chasing treasure in the usual sense.They go into places where other teams have already failed,stations that have been ripped up, vaults that might collapse at any time, and whatever caused the disaster could still be out there and still active. Their work isn’t really about tidy success stories or profits wrapped up in a neat little package. It’s about taking something worth keeping out of the ashes while you still can—before the fire dies down, or before it suddenly starts up again. Out on the edges, their name still seems to carry some weight. If the Syndicate is the one handling this job, it probably means the threat is real.

At the heart of everything is Kade Varr, who some people call the Half-Man. He used to be a corporate retrieval officer, which meant he’d go into facilities that had been compromised and lock down anything valuable before a rival company or the authorities got there. That career ended on Ilyx-9, when a relic vault suddenly burst open, tore through his team, and left him broken on the deck. The company rebuilt him, replacing bones with metal and organs with machines, and then turned around and billed him for it. Kade disappeared before anyone had a chance to collect what he owed. Now he works for himself, and he seems quiet and steady, with a fake eye that looks like it picks up more than you’d think.He doesn’t really trust relics, but he still can’t seem to keep himself away from them. Something he picked up on Ilyx-9 has stuck with him, and it seems to kick in whenever certain artifacts are nearby.

Lira Voss, the Syndicate’s first mate, didn’t come aboard in the usual way. In the end, she found Kade. She says she could hear him even before they ever met, almost like a signal traveling from far away that somehow led her right to him. Lira calls it “resonance” rather than magic, but it still feels like it works the same way. When she’s around, things tend to act up: systems glitch, doors open on their own, and people often lose track of what they were about to do. She keeps her cool, talks clearly and to the point, and somehow comes across as confidently sure about things she really has no business knowing. Kade keeps her close, not because he trusts her, but because whatever changed him also seems to know who she is.

The rest of the crew are specialists who came together because circumstances pushed them into it, not because they have any real loyalty to one another. Jesgrik, no one knows his family name, is a burner guy, who mainly uses flamer weapons. He now carries a heavy, flamethrower weapon, and he uses it not only to take down enemies but also to shape and control the space around him. Rook is a gunner who holds his heavy bolter like an old friend, and he looks most at ease when the hallways are raining with gunfire. Silas Kreel, the sniper, comes across as distant, almost like a ghost. He got on board after he took out a rival captain from a long distance away, and then he simply asked if he could be hired. He usually hangs back, keeps quiet, and works from a spot where he can watch everything, and most of the time the crew doesn’t even notice he’s done something until the danger is already taken care of.

Kamsin Vale, a safecracker, works with a different kind of precision. He was trained in the same corporate setup Kade used to be part of, but after he used it to her advantage, they forced him out. He looks at locks, vaults, and relic interfaces as puzzles he’s supposed to solve, not just obstacles blocking his path. Whether it’s a physical lock, an encrypted system, or even something totally unfamiliar, it rarely stays locked for long once he starts working on it. He’s really into old relic technology, and sometimes it comes off as a little obsessive, especially when those devices respond in ways that make them seem like they might not be totally dormant

Under them are the runners, a rotating crew of replaceable hands who carry the gear, help secure targets, and are usually the first to get hit when things turn dangerous. They tend to move quickly, keep things light, and usually don’t stay in one place for very long. Kade usually doesn’t bother to learn their actual names until they’ve been on more than a few missions. “Most of them don’t.” The people who make it start to understand how the Syndicate really operates: move fast, take only what you truly need, and get out before whatever’s hiding beneath the surface fully comes to life.

The Greywake, their ship, seems to mirror the crew who sail her. It’s a salvage cutter that’s been kept going with mismatched panels and whatever practical repairs do the job, not something that’s supposed to look polished. It’s not particularly fast, but it runs quietly, and out in the dead zones between systems, that kind of quiet often makes the difference between making it through and disappearing. The Syndicate has a reputation that follows them around: they’re known as the crew that takes the jobs everyone else avoids, they’ve made it out of encounters with active relic phenomena, and they usually leave a place with one particular item gone rather than wiping the whole site out.

People have been quietly saying that Kade’s former employers are still trying to track him down, not just for the money he owes them, but also for whatever it is he’s carrying. Some people say Lira can somehow picture what the inside of a vault looks like before anyone even opens it, almost like she’s been there already. With the Ashfall Syndicate, the truth is usually slippery and hard to nail down, and this time is no different. What seems pretty is that whenever they turn up, something already feels a little wrong, and by the time they leave, something you’d want to hold on to is missing.

Next some figures. I have enough figures ( I can’t believe I just wrote that) that will fit in without painting any more. Here is a first cut just picked quickly from the shelves.