Rax

Biography
Rax "just Rax" Ortega is a black market broker based out of Eravate. He deals in virtually anything that can' be obtained by normal means, and deeply involved with the local criminal elements of Eravate (except for pirates, which he has remarked can be a nuisance, since they occasionally hit shipments of illegal goods!).

Not much is known about Rax's past, except that he seemed to have had a hard family life in his youth. His mother apparently sold his father out for a generous bounty, and he doesn't seem to be in touch with his brothers. He works with a large number of runners and informants, and both buys and sells illegal information and equipment. Until recently, he did his most sensitive business from a large underground smuggler's emporium in the bowels of an abandoned deep-crust mine on Eravate's main planet. The location was secure in the sense that local Authority never visited the spot, but immensely dangerous in that is was crawling with mysterious, burrowing predators locally known as "rats".

After the smuggling den was overrun by these creatures, Rax disappeared and was presumed dead. This wasn't the case, however, as he turned up months later in Eravate. He was in the smuggling hideout when it was overrun and lost an arm to one of the creatures, but managed to escape. The exact details of how exactly he did so remain a mystery, as he doesn't like to talk about the experience. The loss of the facility also resulted in Rax losing most of his clientele and personal wealth, and he was forced to start over as a low-level tech hustler.

Personality
Outwardly, Rax is rough, sarcastic, antisocial individual. Once you get to know him, he becomes a rough, sarcastic, antisocial individual who is always ready with a drink and a job. He is a knowledgeable network hacker as well, though his skills are largely self-taught and augmented by his ready access to illegal bypass software. He has been known to work pro bono if the situation merits it, as when he drunkenly helped Matt Lehman track down Kyndi after she sabotaged the artifact retrieval job. Whether this was because he himself had given the task to Matt or to satisfy his own amusement is unclear.