NPC: Isabel Workhel
Overview
| Attribute | Description |
|---|---|
| Role | Crack Mechanic, Engineering Prodigy |
| Alignment | Chaotic Good |
| Affiliation | Lucido Miners Guild (Contractor), Independent |
Portrait
Profile
| Attribute | Description |
|---|---|
| Full Name | Isabel Workhel |
| Species | Human |
| Age | 21 |
| Physical Description | Small and wiry, constantly vibrating with nervous energy. Her coveralls are stained with three different colors of hydraulic fluid. She wears heavy magnetic boots and often has a pair of pilot goggles pushed up into her hair, which she has recently tried to tame into a flat ponytail, though her attempts are shoddy at best. |
| Personality Traits | Electric, Jumpy, Overworked. She talks faster than she thinks, often using technical jargon as a shield. |
| Known Weaknesses | Tunnel Vision: When she is solving a mechanical puzzle, the station could be exploding around her and she wouldn’t notice. She is also dangerously naive about Guild politics. |
Background
Isabel was born to a mechanic family as the youngest sister of three brothers (Jonas, Kael, and Micah). Her parents owned the repair shop on Beaven Point and were considered the best in the System.
Though her parents are no longer on the station, Isabel only remembers a time where Artem Rieman frequented the store. He would have hushed arguments with her father late at night. One day, when she was 13, she woke up to her brothers telling her that their parents had “left.” Searches yielded nothing. To a terrified 13-year-old, it looked like abandonment, but as an adult, she suspects foul play. She took over the difficult repair work while her brothers manage the business side and the heavy lifting.
Skills and Abilities
- Mechanical Savant: Isabel can diagnose an engine fault just by listening to the hull vibration. She can fix Tech Level 4 (advanced) gear with Tech Level 2 (primitive) tools.
- Small Target: She knows the ventilation shafts and maintenance crawlspaces of Beaven Point better than the station architects.
- Jury-Rigging: Can bypass almost any digital lock or ignition sequence given 30 seconds and a screwdriver.
Equipment and Resources
Notable Equipment:
- “The Zapper”: A heavily modified laser welding torch. It’s a tool, but she has tweaked the output so it can cut through plasteel armor or serve as a dangerous short-range weapon.
- Holo-Rig: A wrist-mounted computer that projects schematics over her work.
Resources:
- Isabel’s Workshop: A chaotic hangar filled with half-cannibalized ships. It contains millions of credits worth of spare parts, if you know where to look.
- The Brothers: Jonas, Kael, and Micah. They aren’t great mechanics, but they are big, protective, and carry heavy wrenches.
Goals and Motivations
- Primary: Keep the station’s life support and gravity generators running (they are failing, and she is the only one patching them).
- Long-Term: Find out the truth about her parents. She is currently trying to decrypt an old data-drive she found in the shop attic.
- Financial: Support her three brothers, who aren’t as talented as she is.
Key Relationships
Allies
| Name | Reason |
|---|---|
| Frederike Bannink | The closest thing Isabel has to a mother figure. Frederike scares off the worst claim jumpers who try to stiff Isabel on payment. Isabel maintains Frederike’s cyber-arm for free. |
| Her Brothers | She loves them, even if she has to fix their mistakes constantly. |
Enemies
| Name | Reason |
|---|---|
| Artem Rieman | She distrusts him instinctively. She remembers his voice from the night her parents vanished. He tries to act like a benevolent “uncle,” which creeps her out. |
| Guild Assessors | They constantly try to underpay her or demand she prioritize Guild ships over independents. |
Romantic Interest
None (Currently). She is too busy, though she gets flustered around pilots who treat their ships with right.
Typical Activities
- Percussive Maintenance: Hitting a console with a wrench to make it work (it usually does).
- Crawlspace Scavenging: Disappearing into the walls to steal copper wire from unused sectors.
- The “Graveyard Shift”: Working 36 hours straight on a critical repair, fueled by stim-caf.
Story Hooks
- The Black Box: Isabel finds a flight recorder in a scrap ship that was supposedly “lost” years ago. The data on it implicates Artem Rieman in a smuggling ring—or worse, her parents’ disappearance. She needs the PCs to decrypt it before Rieman finds out she has it.
- Sabotage: Someone is sabotaging the air scrubbers on the lower levels. The Guild blames Isabel’s “shoddy work.” She needs the PCs to clear her name and catch the real culprit (likely an OEG agent).