Rutgers van de Rosse is not from the Five Sisters subsector. In fact, he is not from anywhere. Rutgers grew up a child of travallers, his home almost always a ship of some sort. He was an experienced travaller by the time he joined the Scout Service, more at home in a ship than on the soil of a world.

His first few years of service saw him paired with a senior scout Sandy DeBeers, a older Vargr, known for his blond fur, who showed Rutgers the ropes. The younger Scout was a fast learner and was subsequently assigned to a new ship. It was here his work on the sensors of the Amgarh gave the Imperium access to crack the language of a newly discovered species of altered humans. These humans have the ability to communicate via natural radio through antennae, but no ability for speech. It was Rutgers work that figured out their communications and helped the Imperium make first contact. This gained Rutgers a strong ally within the high ranks of the Scout Service, and a minor noble in her own right, Dame Sandra Whalen.

During these years, Rutgers was also called upon by the Marines to assist a unit to infiltrate a behind the lines base in a covert strike ahead of a larger action. Rutgers found himself acting as a scout of old, guiding the unit into position on the surface of the world. It was here he met Amarr Kurrn.

Rutgers would spend the next several years jumping from world to world in his surveys. Most of this was routine Scout Service operations. However, on what he thought was a routine refueling in a gas giant turned out to be anything but routine. During his refueling run of his one man scout ship, Rutgers suddenly lost consciousness. He awakened to telepathic contact of immense aliens who lived in the clouds of this gas giant. They apologized for stopping his ship but it was headed through several of them. Here was a civilization of floating bag, linked telepathically, going back millions of years. While it took some time for him to be believed, this discovery was of significant interest to the Imperium. Rutgers was immediately promoted, and the whole event was classified.

While planetside as all of this was going on, Rutgers was asked to help with signal intelligence, based on his past work. This ended up implicating the Navy with working with Benjamin Arton, who was running for office, to infiltrate the Second Planetary Congress of Karin. The full story did not come up, however, as Dame Whalen’s direction, Rutgers substitutes as the driver for Arton’s opponent, Tabithia Perez. His casual conversation gave her enough ammunition to sink Arton’s campaign.

Rutgers was happy to get back into space, though all was not always what it seemed. On a return trip to civilization, Rutgers found his ship threatened. This would have been a surprise attack, however, Rutgers had already discovered one of his crew might be an impostor. In a daring series of actions, Rutgers was able to overclock his ship’s thrust, dodge the enemy vessels missile fire, eject the impostor Lan Vasquez, and get back into hyperspace. Vasquez did not die, but was picked up by the attackers, though they were none too easy on him.

After that last incident, Rutgers was back to solo work, as it seemed easier than worry about spies. He spent the next four years in peace, alone on his ship, doing the routine work of surveying systems. As he aged, Rutgers found some need for more companionship, so he resigned from the service, turned in his loaned ship, and followed up on a message from Tabitha about flying a ship she bought, the Solar Phoenix.