Sage Maschenny is stoic, methodical, and too tired to waste motion, but he still meets people with care and keeps his promises. Once a prodigious Atmospherics Engineer, he was shunted into bureaucracy after an “accident,” where he learned to survive, bypass, and break the corporate systems he despises.

Sage spent most of his life working for NanoTrasen. He and his wife, An Ten de Zara, a paramedic, were sent to a remote outpost shortly after their daughter Elise was born. When the station came under attack, Sage shielded Elise from an explosion and fell into a coma. Years passed before he woke; An was long-dead to a local epidemic, and Elise had grown into a young adult.

While he laid unconscious, An died to an epidemic, and Elise grew up to take his place as the station’s Chief Engineer. NanoTrasen’s neglect and the outpost’s meager resources left little hope of restoring Sage properly. Unable to afford advanced treatment, Elise had to choose lesser options on his behalf: an ill-fitting mechanical foot and jaw, then a living prosthetic made from a genetically modified parasite to replace his lost tail and feed him through nerve damage that left him able to swallow only water. When Sage finally woke, he found his wife gone and his daughter grown. With nothing else to return to, he resumed work as the station’s Reserve Overseer.