The Adventures of Victory Rizzo

09 Nov, 2025

I wrote the following a few months ago after being curious about Tempest Company from Mothership's A Pound of Flesh. My home campaign game has taken place aboard Prospero's Dream for about 8 sessions but hasn't had a lot of interaction with Tempest yet. I decided to randomly roll up a character and see what it might be like to play solo and sign on with the mercenaries. This story is the result of the first solo session. Rolled up a job, rolled random encounters, npcs, everything.

It's especially interesting for me to re-read now after playing Over/Under.

Chapter 1: The Otomo Parcel

“You’re going to have to ditch the hair.”

“Fuck off. Only a chump recruit would shave before they even got paid. I’m no green marine,” she took her time signing the last line of the contract, really dragging out the moment while the desk officer stared at her wavy blonde mop with growing frustration.

His scowl turned into a faint little smirk as she marked the last elaborate swirl of her initials and slapped the stylus down on the dataslate. A printer beside him chitter-vomitted out a paper work ticket which he tore and reviewed silently.

“Trial job. Prisoner transfer, just you and the perp, wages forfeit to prove your commitment. Prove you can handle your shit. Mess up and you’re going straight to the Court. See the quartermaster for some manacles, head over SIT bridge to the central spindle. Pick up the package at these coordinates.”

He slapped the slip down on the counter, finger tapping a low res image of an androgynous face covered in wild flame tatts, “Former Court executioner Otomo. Bring ‘em back here. No stops along the way, can you handle that, recruit?”

“Yessir,” the salute was crisp, even if her tone wasn’t. Tempest Mercenary Company didn’t seem to ooze discipline, at least, compared to her old unit. Did they even salute?

Outside the towering brutalist headquarters, the streets of Prospero’s Dream were jam packed. A panoply of rimspace’s best and worst. She was grateful for the power assist built into her armor as she shouldered through the dense crowd.

Being shorter than average made it hard to see far in the tight thoroughfare. Inside her right gauntlet, her ring finger worried at the pilot light ignition switch of the gauntlet flamer until she stopped herself. The vibe of the station was going to take some getting used to. No reason to let her guard down, but also snapping on some random just trying to get from A to B wasn’t a good look.

Rubbing shoulders with obvious rim-scum would set anyone on edge, but then there was also a palpable mix of freedom and exuberance oozing out of every storefront, barker, busker, and cyber-modded body. It had only been a day since getting booted from Her Majesty’s Last Edict’s crew, but she at least had a job already. What a place to be marooned.

Her clomping armored boots came to a halt as the crowd before her abruptly parted, and she quickly joined them on reflex, like a herd animal. The street fell quiet.

A towering figure was making its way down the middle of the street, seven feet tall, naked, and trailing some mass behind him. As he neared, lights flickered out, screens turned to static. Some fell to their knees. Victory denied her reality. She found herself pressed back against the others around her, using all of her willpower not to piss herself and sprint away. A hallucination. Or, if it was real, nothing to be afraid of, surely.

As it, no... definitely HE, approached, she could make out that a mass of wires emerged from his cranium and dragged meters behind him like a train. His gate was purposeful but slow. In the shadows behind him, a multitude of other figures followed. They were unformed, with sanded down features that lacked orifices. Size, shape and gait varied but they still moved as one.

A man lifted a gun toward the towering figure but it exploded with a sudden pop, leaving a bloody stump in its absence and raw screaming to break the silence.

She looked down, away, elsewhere, through the floor.

It took several minutes for the procession to pass, and in their wake, the machines around them sprung back to life, lights flickered on, and the sudden blast of some dirgefunk from a nearby speaker made her jump. In the distance the last of the retinue faded as they turned a T-junction.

All around her, people returned to their business, shook, but mostly kept it together. If it weren’t for a quietly sobbing stall worker nearby, she’d have questioned her own sanity even more. Maybe bad caff cartridges? Gas in the air? She would ask questions, but later.

She pressed on to her destination with cold sweat itching down the sides of her spinal rig and soaking through the underfabric of her getup. The HUD in her visor showed her destination just another block up, a small access tunnel into the bowels of The Court.

Before she could knock, the nondescript hatch opened, and a couple of Tempest Co. heavies in exo-suits clambered forth, scanning around. One approached her, a full two feet taller.

“Cute armor, probie,” only his dirty toothed smile was visible under the tinted visor. He gave her shoulder a little shove.

The advanced battle dress was no exo-suit, more like its much weaker sibling, but instead of resisting the shove she twisted her torso to the side, causing him to lurch forward and down close to her, just where she liked ‘em.

The pilot ignition on her gauntlet flamer popped to life and hovered against his chest, pointing up toward his chin and curling his stache, “It’s ‘recruit’ for now, ‘probie’ when I get back to base, and ‘Sir’ soon enough. Now give me my fucking cargo so I can be on my way.”

His companion laughed and hauled the prisoner out through the bulkhead door as Victory and Dirty-teeth disengaged. She could tell he was boiling in his silence, so she didn’t press him further, it seemed like a tomorrow problem.

Otomo and Victory exchanged a quick glance as they sized each other up. They looked strange, even for Prospero’s Dream. She slapped her own manacles on their wrists so the heavies could release their set. A tether snapped to her harness on the front of her armor.

“Your tatts look different than the pic.”

“I’m bad at commitment.”

Otomo led with hands cuffed behind their back. Victory’s gauntlet resting on the stained detainment coveralls between Otomo’s shoulderblades, guiding with a slight pressure, ready to push or shove as needed.

“I wouldn’t go flashing that flamer around too much, waste of O2, no one will like it,” Otomo’s voice was tinged with sass.

“No one’s meant to, get steppin’. You ever see a tall guy, naked, wires out the head, big crowd of melty mannequins in tow?”

“Sounds like Caliban.”

Her tongue flicked the comms frequency switch in the jawguard of her helmet, “Recruit Rizzo en route. Are the streets still… Calibanned?”

“Affirmative, delay or re-route. Permission to kill twenty… twenty minutes granted.”

“Copy.”

She steered Otomo into the nearest shop, some sort of warp core vault, an odd find so far away from the docks. The eager saleswoman ducked back into the office when she caught sight of the merc and her captive.

Otomo seemed chill, not talkative, but Victory prodded here and there as they passed the time. Otomo had powerful enemies, Victory’s new bosses apparently. Didn’t seem fair, not much ever was.

They left when the route was clear. Victory took her time, unsure of what fate awaited Otomo, but positive that a longer stroll was at least a minor gift she could offer at little expense.

A new distraction loomed ahead, but festive this time. The crowd pressed in to get a good look and maybe a touch at the dancers as they passed. Clad in enough to cover, but showing enough to ignite the ole imagination. Moving with snakes of light.

This was certainly a higher standard of entertainment than Victory was used to shipboard. PFC Shelley flopping around on the gallery deck of Her Majesty’s Last Edict like she could keep a beat or dip a hip was a fucking joke compared to this.

A wildly modded cyborg undulated right at her, brandishing his gimmicky light-snake like some sort of temple offering, and although she knew that his enticing smile was practiced and affected, it worked. She almost felt used as he whipped around her, flashing chrome sinew and a mane of hair down to his back. He backbend offered her a small card from the light-snake’s mouth and damned if she didn’t reach for it with the hand that was minding Otomo.

She took the card, and in that moment she could sense Otomo wanted to make their move. Snake mesmer was already gone, off into the crowd, and tension broke as Otomo let out a pent breath.

“Too slow. I wouldn’t do a recruit like that, not when we’re having such a nice stroll.”

Victory smiled at them and flicked her eyes to the card, ‘Stellar Burn’. She cached it for later.

The rest of the trip to HQ was uneventful, but each step dinged the morale. An officer and a few R4’s were there to meet them. She handed over the tether.

“If they toss me back in the docket you should come see the fight.”

“I will.”

“Cheers Vic.”

“Later O,” her lips pursed as the R4’s marched Otomo off down the passageway.

“Congrats, probie,” the desk officer tossed her some dogtags. She caught them and read. ‘R1-RIZZO’ etched over a logo, a nice ‘we’re-definitely-not-the-bad-guys skull chewing on a lightning bolt’ logo.

---END TRANSMISSION---