Eddie Patch Kowalski

Gender: Male

Age: 53

Group: Mechanic / Engineer

Game: Lunar Veil: A Firefly Tale (Formerly known as Browncoats Unite: Back to the Black)

Physical Appearance

Patch is a big guy at 6’3”. Broad-shouldered and a barrel-chested older man with graying hair that was once blond and blue eyes. He maintains a military hair cut and a clean-shaven face. He has a bit of a paunch with large arms and broad calloused hands from a lifetime of blue-collar work. He dresses in a very salt of the earth retiree with colorful Hawaiian shirts and sturdy engineers pants that have been patched up one too many times. He also has khakis for when he had to “dress up”. Heavy work boots scuffed to the point the metal in the toes are showing through are his favorite.

Job / Skills

Patch has been around ships and vehicles his whole life and was a repair bay trainer for a good portion of his career. He can work on just about any ship or vehicle with enough time and patience. Because of parts shortages during the Unification War, Patch earned his nickname for his knack at jury-rigging to get ships back into action quickly. The ability to manufacture unavailable parts on the fly also made him a decent blacksmith and machinist. He also became pretty adept at haggling to get components he needed in a pinch. Patch owns a retired military training rifle.

Back Story / History

Edward “Patch” Kowalski is a born wrench jockey. Patch was born to a working-class family in New Paris on Bernadette. From the time he was a kid, he found himself under a hood or inside an engine bay of his dad’s ship repair shop. There was something simple about it, it all made sense to him. It was...zen. Patch wasn’t the brightest student in school, but he was doggedly persistent, having just good enough grades to qualify for Engineer training when he was old enough to enlist. Patch took his affinity for all things mechanical and really stood out during his military training, so much so that he was only put through basic training so that the bulk of his time would be spent on his engineering training with a focus on ship engines. Patch loved being in the military. Everything about it appealed to him. He took to the structure like a duck to water and he was quite good at his job. He moved through the lower ranks quickly and, after a few years, landed the job that would define the majority of his career: Engineer Trainer. He loved teaching all the fresh recruits about the ins and outs of the various Alliance ships and taught his students a number of tricks that you wouldn’t find in the manuals. It was his students that gave him the nickname “Patch”. It was during the Unification War that he cemented that nickname. Frequent supply shortages in the repair bay forced him and his crew to get creative in order to quickly turn ships and vehicles around and get them back into the action. Patch received several commendations for his team’s resourcefulness from the base commander during the War which he quietly holds in high regard as some of his greatest achievements. He keeps them in a leather binder in his footlocker and they go with him whenever he travels. After the War ended, Patch had already racked up nearly 30 years in the Service. Budget cuts brought about an offer to retire with a final promotion, Master Staff Sergeant. Patch reluctantly accepted knowing he couldn’t do this forever. Retirement didn’t suit him well. He always felt like there was nothing to do. He tried traveling and moved around several planets in the Core, but it wasn’t very interesting for him. He always felt like a tourist. After about a year and a half of this, he reached out to his old CO to see how things were going. Luckily for him, they weren’t going so well. Productivity for the Engineering crew slumped after Patch left and while it since improved, it never fully recovered. Too old to re-enlist and his CO not wanting to negatively affect Patch’s pension, he brought Patch on part-time as a consultant for the crew. And with that, he was back. It wasn’t quite the same, but he was in his element and that was good enough for him. He picked up where he left off and formed bonds with the new young engineers, showing them the tricks he picked up over the years. But it couldn’t last forever. A few years on, his CO announced his retirement. His replacement, wanting to make his mark, restructured the whole Engineering program on the base, which meant Patch would have to retire from his beloved job for a second time. Back to being a gorram tourist. He got tired of the standard cruise ship fare with their preplanned routes and “excursions” and set out to make things a little more interesting. He’d plot his own course. So, he began booking trips on smaller vessels, cargo haulers, anything going anywhere more interesting than where he was. It didn’t take long for that to get boring, so he sought out old friends at the Veterans Hall. Instead, he found a bunch of washed up, mothballed soldiers sitting around, telling the same stories and waiting to die. He tried to bring in a bit of life into the place, but soon he got sucked into their malaise and became just another lump at the bar counting time as he listened to the same stories get retold.

Hooks / Interaction Hints

Born on Bernadette in New Paris
Blue-collar family & has a thick Brooklyn-like accent
Career military as an engineering trainer
Never saw actual combat
When his training rifle model was to be retired, he got permission from his CO to buy his. It’s one of his prized possessions and is kept in tip-top shape.
He’s only fired a weapon in Basic Training...over 30 years ago.
Tends to be frugal and sensible and good at haggling.
Went through Basic with Jago Deckard and they keep in touch on occasion

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This character is owned by: Yule