Sewell Burditt

Art by Railroad

A lifelong navigator both on starships and ocean-faring vessels, **Sewell Burditt** is a Systems Alliance veteran currently employed by the Holun-Myeri Exploratory Fund.

## Biography

Born towards the end of the Second American Civil War, Sewell was a river rat throughout his childhood. Spending his days swimming, boating, fishing and otherwise exploring the Mississippi River and its various southern-leg tributaries. His father a cargo freighter crewman and his mother an elementary school teacher, he spent his childhood in the love of family rather than the lap of luxury.

Finishing his education at 18, he hired up with his father's ship straight out of high school. The elder Burditt, having moved up to the role of ship's navigator, taught the boy all he knew in the moments he was able to break away from his own responsibilities.

Discovering his son had a knack for his work, Sewell's father suggested in 2129 that he push towards the stars. Earth, and the seaborne cargo industry held nothing but the same for the younger Burditt, but space was new, adventurous and ripe for opportunity. Somewhat vicariously, he pushed his son towards navigation in space.

While he didn't take to the idea initially, Sewell eventually came around to his father's line of thinking. Day in, day out he was working the same job as his father before him, travelling the same routes and charting the same seas. Space would be something different, space would be something exciting. In 2140 he was hired by the small intersolar freight colony known as GaiaFreight. Completing his training in 2142, he was assigned to various hauling missions between Earth and the research outposts and colonies on Luna, Mars and several asteroids in the belt. Most notably, he hauled back the famed researcher Mateus Silva after his archaeological mission which uncovered the Prothean archives on the red planet.

When the Systems Alliance was founded in 2149, the struggling company made an exchange with the nascent supra-government organization. The Alliance would buy out the company, gaining all of their assets including vessels and experienced shipmen, and in exchange, the corporate officers would get a portion of the buyout. An experienced vessel navigator, Sewell was commissioned as an Second Lieutenant.

Burditt's years in the Alliance went by quickly and, as he would recount, were some of the best of his life. His skills were always kept sharp by the vast expanse unknown to humanity, and he put in months of important work from hauling colonization equipment to the new worlds of Terra Nova and Shanxi to carrying valuable excavation equipment from various prothean sites in the Bahanak Frontier. His longtime vessel, the *SSV Danube*, was a part of the Systems Alliance Second Fleet, and as such he only saw action during the First Contact War when Admiral Kastanie Drescher reclaimed Shanxi towards the end of the conflict.

Unfortunately for the skilled navigator, his status as an uneducated officer resulting from a buyout hindered his promotional prospects severely. He remained a First Lieutenant until his retirement in 2174, his only promotion a coming as a gift for his twenty years of service by a commanding officer with an overdeveloped sense of pity.

Returning to Earth in the months afterward, Sewell felt a loss of purpose. His mother and father had passed away before his military service, and the only woman he had ever loved, Galia Husik, his high school sweetheart, had been killed mere months after their graduation, years ago. Alone and without direction, Sewell turned to vices: Alcohol and cigarettes.

Sewell wrestled with his demons for years, hopping between jobs at the Port of South Louisiana. His veteran status and résumé as a skilled navigator allowed him to be hired easily even as the black marks on his records continued to stack up. Drinking on the job, smoking in public places, general disregard for coworkers safety. His loss of self-control finally caught up to him in late 2180 when, as a result of his inaction, two freight workers were nearly crushed by a remote tug under his control. He was immediately fired and arrested, charged with criminal negligence and sentenced to public service and a rehabilitation clinic.

In the Bluebonnet Center for Recovery Sewell found a new start, slowly pulling himself out of his alcohol addiction and fighting the nicotine kick. He spent most of his days cleaning and maintaining the nearby nature center for the city of Baton Rouge, and it was on one of these maintenance tasks in 2181 where he was tracked down by a member of the Holun-Myeri Exploratory Fund, where he was confronted with an offer that was too difficult to pass up.

## Armament

Sewell avoids combat, but is prepared just in case. He utilizes an M-3 Predator heavy pistol and carries with him a set of Frag Grenades. He accepted the standard-issue HMEF Wayfinder armor.