Rock Lavey

Rock Lavey carries himself like a man holding very still so nothing spills. Steady hands, a flat clinical calm that only cracks when someone young is bleeding — then something behind the eyes goes very far away for a half-second before the training takes back over. He watches everyone’s breathing without meaning to. He answers to “Lavey,” “Rock,” or nothing at all, and visibly dislikes “Doctor.”

He was the surgeon other surgeons called. Then his own son got sick — or hurt — and he was the one holding the chart. Under pressure, exhausted, certain, he missed something. To fix it he spent his savings, then his practice, then borrowed far past anything he could repay. The child died anyway.

What came after took the rest: a negligence finding on planet Wu, a revoked license, creditors who don’t forgive, and a marriage that didn’t survive the empty chair. He ran — out past the gates and the tax lanes, to the frayed end of the charted dark, to the Thides System, where the only employer hires any warm body with no questions and nobody runs a records check on the new “security” hire. MacMillian is the bottom of the barrel, which is exactly why it’s the only door open to him. This is his last option.

📄 Background handouts & references (offered to Jay / Tim): Wu Recovery Bulletin - Skip-Trace Abstract (Lavey) · Wu Medical Board - Notice of Erasure (Lavey) · The Last Chart (Rock Lavey) · Field Trauma Card (Rock Lavey).

Crew connection to Six: Lavey is the one person who scanned Six, learned what he is — and said nothing. The doctor who could have turned him in for the bounty and chose mercy instead. Six owes him a wordless debt; Lavey owes Six nothing and helps anyway. The campaign’s two debtors, bound by a kept secret. His new Sense of Duty (player party) widens that bond to the whole crew — he will not leave any of them behind, and they read it in how he moves in a crisis.

The “sharp eye” (rebuilt): with Sensitive gone, this is now Intuition (the diagnostic hunch), Photographic Memory (perfect recall of faces/charts/doses), Detect Lies 12 + Body Language 13

• Lip Reading 13 (reads people), Danger Sense 12, and Street-Smart (reads the room and the street). He notices what’s wrong the way a clinician notices a wrong vital.

Two separate threats (don’t conflate them):

• The debt (modeled by Dead Broke) — the money he borrowed and lost trying to save the child. The creditors are back home; they explain why he owns nothing, not who walks onto the station.
• The charge (modeled by Secret) — a planetary negligent-homicide warrant from planet Wu. As a Republic citizen, the Thides Federal Marshal won’t extradite him on another world’s charge. But the bounty is portable, and the ticking clock is word of it reaching Thides, after which freelance bounty hunters can come to take him in. It’s freelancers, not the law, so the crew can fight, bribe, hide, or outrun the threat.