Jessica Rogers

Original art by Eddy-Shinjuku

> “
> Just a girl from a small town in ***way*** over her head.
>
>

— Jessica, when asked who she is.

Jessica Rogers is a bounty hunter and drifter originally from The Mormon Armada. She doesn't like talking about her home, and prefers to focus on her current objective: saving up enough money to go to a nice medical college within Unionist Space. Jessica has a dual-nature: plucky, optimistic nurse ready to serve and cutthroat mercenary, switching between the two as it suits her.

## Backstory

Jessica left The Fleet six months ago and refuses to talk about why or life as a spaceborn humwn. She teamed-up with Starglide Custodial Services, originally because she thought it was an honest cleaning company. Upon being given a gun and told to shoot, something dark awakened inside Jessica.

She is known around Space Station 069 as a charming young girl with a fascination for alien species.

## In the Story

### The Orion Vargas Bounty

Jessica joined her crew on a mission to take out the Orion Vargas Gang, situated in the local asteroid cluster LASZ-0137, according to information exchanged from Kentucky Hellraiser (for a favour). Before heading to their base, she recommended checking out the settlements that were recently terrorised by the gang on the planet Jeano.

Upon reaching the smallest of the three settlements, she slowly realised that this village was extremely culty. Unnerving her greatly, Jessica expressed her desire to get out of here ASAP to her crewmate Xangur, over browsing landspeeders. Unfortunately, the crew was too poor to afford any landspeeders, and a tractor wouldn't do for long-distance travel, so Jessica decided to buy some heavy-duty rope instead. Undoubtedly, this would come in handy later.

After being invited into the city hall and talking to the witnesses, their leader, Pastor John, told the party about a *local boy who joined the gang*, as well as a *collection of antique silverware* that was stolen. Jessica promised to return these two things for the town and, overjoyed, the pastor invited everyone to play horseshoes. Bronk immediately agreed, and Jessica agreed reluctantly.

The party then left, refusing their request to stay the night, citing the need to bring Bart Baxter, the local who teamed-up with the Vargas Gang back home post haste. Jessica was relieved to finally be out of there.

The group travelled around the planet, gathering clues, but the most Jessica got involved-in was seducing a barkeeper to tell us about the "secondary business" (gambling) of the local saloon.

After leaving Jeano, Jessica guided Xangur around the asteroid as he infiltrated, using Myad's scans for reference. After landing, Jessica did not participate much in the fighting, opting to take out the gang members at range with her stun rifle.

After clearing out the base, a strange man approached in tricked-out armour. He requested a share of the loot, despite not contributing to the fighting and hiding behind the asteroid (according to Myad's scanners) the whole time. Jessica shot him in the chest with her newfound laser rifle, unsure if he was hostile or not. The lone mercenary quickly fled as Xangur chased after him.

Unfortunately, he was too quick for the Reptilian and escaped in his spaceship. Jessica knew it wouldn't be the last time they met, so she prepared a backup plan.

### The Darkko Mission

While sailing back to Jeano, Bart regained consciousness and pleaded with the party not to take him home. Taking his pleading as just drug-induced ramblings, Jessica tried and failed to ease Bart's worries. Bronk ended up having to carry the struggling Bart on his shoulder, back to the church. By now, doubts started filling Jessica's mind. Despite the promise of reward, she is unsure if this is really the *right* thing to do.

The party gathered in the "town hall" along with the reverend and the rest of the town. The villagers seemed overjoyed to have their precious cutlery back, but treated Bart with scorn and admonished his reckless behaviour. Seeing their treatment of Bart stirred Jessica's memories of her childhood as a part of The Holy Mormon Armada and she quickly pulled-back. She offered taking Bart under her wing and teaching him right from wrong herself -- after all, he's already been tainted by the outside world.

The reverend reluctantly agreed and Jessica returned her half of the reward to the town, while Bronk kept his. Although Jessica isn't particularly worried about these fanatics, she knows there are elderly and children amongst those affected, and... She couldn't imagine the pain they would feel losing any more members of their disjointed little family.

Then, the party left Jeano for home at Space Station 069. After landing, Jessica took off Bart's restraints and pointed him in the direction of the bar for help. He seemed quite grateful, though reluctant to thank any of us, probably due to his ego. We returned with almost all of the members of the Vargas Gang alive (1 dead, 1 released) to Sheriff Wexler and were given quite a hefty sum. After stocking up for the journey ahead, we headed for the *Squidbilly Ghettos*, to search for a squidbilly that owes Hellraiser quite the sum -- Darkko.

As we approached the asteroid colony, we were radioed-in to dock at their hangar -- quite a step above our previous planets' furnishings. A group of armed guards greeted the group, asking them what they were doing in the Asteroid Belt. Jessica, quick on her feet, convinced them that the party was a group of traders looking for somewhere to get some fuel. The guards pointed us in the direction of the marketplace and we headed-off, after going through decontamination.

Jessica called Hellraiser on her PDA asking for more info on Darkko, but Hellraiser was unable to tell us much more than he was a sketchy guy who ran a scrap shop with his brother, Garrek.

After browsing the shops, the party met a scrap shop owner called Supa, who told us that Darkko stole supplies from them and pointed us in the general direction of his shop. Xangur thanked the shopkeeper for his help and we headed-out.

Along the way, Jessica was harassed by a sickly, homeless squidbilly that tried selling her some strange antique. Jessica managed to talk some information about The Family -- a seemingly omnipresent organised crime group on The Wharf -- from the homeless squidbilly, and gave her a couple credits for her info.

**TO BE CONTINUED**

## Trivia

* Jessica's portrait was made using the online media synthesis program Artbreeder
* Jessica's unofficial theme song is Wherever I May Roam - Metallica
* Her home ship's name "Raamiah" is a reference to Rannoch, the home of the Quanari in the video game series *Mass Effect*. It also means "the thunder of god" in Hebrew.
* Jessica's xenophilia is a reference to Captain Kirk from *Star Trek: The Original Series*, who also slept with countless alien space babes
* Jess Rogers's name is an homage to Buck Rogers from the eponymous 1979 television series *Buck Rogers in the 25th Century*