Excerpts form the character sheet:

Name: Jimmy Crane

 Race: human

Description: young red head with pale skin

XP (spent): 15 (to build his skill)

Skills:
PSA: technician 

Computer 1

Artist skill (creative writing) 1

Equipment:

Survival pack

File computer (audio in/ visual out) 1 kg

 Credits: 20cr

Background:

Jimmy, though being a technician PSA, has aspirations of being the great writer of Frontier space. He’s bounced from job to job, mostly being fired from writing jobs for to much creative license. Down on his luck he signed on with Farway Freight and got a birth on the Sereana Dawn. He views the pirate attack that destroyed the Dawn and marooned him on Volturnus as an opportunity of a lifetime. He’s been dictating into his file computer faithfully every day but has run out of water and is now near death.

Medical Record: Loss of gross motor control, semi delusional, and stumbling due to dehydration.

GM's notes:

Jimmy was created using the artist PSA from SFM9 and the same 15exp build as the PCs

Originally I had thought to have a movie producer do the story of the volturnus expedition. while the PCs are on to the next campaign. and have that color NPC reactions in a variety of ways- maybe even have stalkerrazzi and idealistic hero worshipping pain in the but young kid npc basically bugging the PCs from time to time.

But now I think I'll have starving writer Jimmy tag along and be a nudge while writing his "great novel" in the end since he's not a good writer he can only sell it as a screen play for a lump sum of 5000cr. Its the tri-vid producer who twists the story inside out- since there are 2 yazerians in the party they get merged into 1 character in the tri-vid plus a lot of distortion of the story. Jimmy may or may not even get a writer credit and thought the tri-vid will be a hit, he wont see any of the money. Then when he turns up again in that campaign the PCs can be mad at him but he isn't really responsible for screwing up their story and he really didn't profit from it.

I don't think the artist skill would be terribly useful for a player character unless the campaign had a lot of down time and the player could try to produce sellable art. or as a "cover" in an urban based campaign or for a spy.

But I think an NPC with computer and artist (creative writing) skill would make a good researcher who'd be a benefit to the party.