The REAL story of Ekim Lam

By Uwe A. Reuter

It all started out when Mike Lam on Consimworld’s FITG board mentioned he sometimes adds Characters to FITG portraying the players themselves. Now some may think that sounds silly, but somehow I liked that idea. After toying a bit with it I wrote the rules for Minor Casts, some kind of under-characters giving the rank-and-file of each side some face. One of them initially was a Bounty Hunter of cause. Shortly afterwards I revamped the array of both sides’ set of characters and felt was one Imperial Character short. In the end I upgraded that Minor Cast to a real Character - a Pronoxian Mercenary named Ekim Lam (Mike Lam, yes very creative I know) working for the Empire – a kind of Imperial Agan Rafa but more of a bounty hunter than a leader.

Months later, I made contact with Charles Duke who at the same time as me was working on a redo of FITG. Our versions were developing in very different directions, but we were still able to exchange an idea here or there. Charles liked the idea of adding some characters and added Ekim Lam as he was at that point to his game. To equal things out a bit between the Empire and the Rebels in his version, Charles then went further and also created a Rebel Character - Linori Lindi, a Yester with PSI powers. Charles managed to present two aspects which had not been included in FITG this way – a picture of the only Star-Faring race still lacking a face, the Yesters and a psionic. PSI-Powers are something that perhaps will not make it into my version, but I definitely had to agree that a Yester Character was something the game really lacked before.

For balancing reasons, I could not add yet another Character to either side of my version. But by this time I already had established Bounty Hunters as a game-mechanism of its own in my version (they possibly show up during Searches if you are curious). And so it came that the concept of Ekim Lam as a Pronoxian Mercenary was dropped and the concept of Ekim Lam as a Yester Information Trader was born for my version. I want to thank Charles here again for the reminder that the Yesters were pitifully underrepresented in the game.

The picture of (my) Ekim Lam was of cause not drawn by myself. It is an Iari from the GURPS Alien Races sourcebook. The style of the drawing matched the original cards so well and the general demeanor of the picture was such a fitting mix of caution, reservation and ambiguity – it was just a chance too good to pass up.”