Day 19 of the 30 Day Star Wars OC Challenge from @smuggler-captain that I’m doing with @lessdenied! Previous posts are tagged with #30dayswchallenge. Yay, I am back to my regular writing schedule!
This is another deviation from the questions-as-written, since Teh’s personal history doesn’t follow the canonical in-game storyline. So instead! A little bit about Teh’s feels on family, on friendship, and on feels themselves.
“What the hell does genetics have to do with family?!”
Teh’laen’s perspective on “family,” and what that word even means, is non-traditional at best. After all, the people who raised her didn’t contribute any genetic material to who she is and who she’d become. As a result of that disconnect between biology and bonding, she’s never really bothered to distinguish between equally-meaningful relationships depending on genetics. She was adopted into the Va’shuvrk family, fully and completely, and the bonds between her and her deceased parents and siblings remain a pillar of her sense of self.
As such, the idea of “adopting” people with whom she’s forged a deep, lasting connection into the web of relationships that she calls her family is and always has been a core feature of how she relates to others… Even if she doesn’t necessarily couch it in those terms.
Essix is Teh’s best friend and has been for nearly twenty years. She has, on multiple occasions, risked her life to protect him—and has instigated more fistfights than she can count in response to someone dismissing his importance to her as, “It’s only a droid.” Essix is family in Teh’laen’s mind; anyone who says differently is gonna catch these hands and possibly a stunbaton to the back of the knee. But she’d be hard-pressed to slap a label on the bond between them. “Brother” doesn’t really fit and “son” is too, well, parental. (That said, she does adore spoiling him with new upgrades given the slightest provocation.) Essix is family; why does it need to get any more specific than that?
The process of adopting someone into what she considers her family is gradual, but once Teh forms that kind of attachment to someone, she’s not shy about it. Lover, friend, protege… Whatever the nature of their relationship, Teh is open and enthusiastic about it. It may take a while for such a relationship to reach that point of trust and intimacy—after all, the sorts of people with whom Teh’s associated on a daily basis for most of her life aren’t the most trustworthy in the Galaxy—but once it does, Teh accepts it wholeheartedly.
Teh’laen’s formed more of these sorts of relationships in the very recent past—and formed them more quickly—than she used to over the span of years. Her relationship with Cassbria (”Cass”) Temar is by far the most notable attachment; Teh’s had lots of lovers and plenty of serious relationships, but the depth of her feelings for Cass is practically unprecedented, and the fact that Cass makes Teh want to look beyond the immediate future is entirely unprecedented.
There’s a notable exception to Teh’laen’s policy of not worrying over labels and distinctions: her friendship with Naga’se, a fellow Twi’lek whom Teh met almost by chance. Teh’laen’s bond with Naga’se—Naga for short—has very swiftly evolved to the point of blurring Teh’s concepts of friendship and family. The two have become sisters, in every sense that matters to either of them. Both Teh and Naga lost their sisters to tragedy at a young age, and the similarities between Teh’laen and Naga’s sister, and between Naga and Rai’laen, led to the Rutian and the Lethan becoming surrogates for the person the other had lost. Does the distinction between friend and sister matter at all to Teh’laen? Not in the slightest, at least semantically. But Teh’laen’s attachment to Naga fills the void in her life left by Rai’laen’s loss.
"Oooh, yeah, genetics, right. You know that I'm only marginally more closely related to you than I am to a grophet, right? If we're talking about genomes and shit?" -Teh’laen to Hirani, her biological fraternal twin.
Teh’s relationship with Naga as surrogate sisters is a stark contrast to Teh’s ambivalence (occasionally veering into antipathy) regarding her recently rediscovered biological family: Gnoxis, her Sith Lord mother, and Hirani, her fraternal twin sister. Hirani—having been raised from infancy by the Jedi—is eager to make up for the family she never had, as is Gnoxis, who was deprived of the family she wanted to have. Teh’laen had a family that she lost, and presently has the family that she found, and is deeply resentful of her blood relations’ implication that an accident of birth should make them more important to Teh than the bonds she’s forged of her desire and volition.
Day 26 of the 30 Day Star Wars OC Challenge from @smuggler-captain that I’m doing with @lessdenied! Previous posts are tagged with #30dayswchallenge.
Today’s topic is one of Teh’laen’s favorites: FOOD. Teh’s a hedonist who thrives on novelty and variety, and the culinary traditions of the Galaxy’s myriad cultures offer nearly infinite variety.
[tl;dr: Teh’laen, in the present-day, shares a tale with Cass about her time on Nar Shaddaa with her sister Rai’laen, to explain her culinary choices. Immediately follows the events of Day 11.]
“So what’s for dinner, Rai?!”
Teh’laen grinned as she followed the question into their squalid apartment, barely edging through the gap left by the malfunctioning door. The self-satisfied expression died at the sight of her older sister Rai’laen slumped in one of the kitchen’s two rickety chairs, pressing an icepack to her swollen cheek.
Rai opened the one eye that she could open and gave her little sister a slow, sad shake of the head. “Not funny, Teh.”
Her windfall momentarily forgotten, the teenaged Twi’lek rushed to her sibling’s side. Slender, red-skinned fingers gently closed around green, and she gingerly pulled the icepack away from her big sister’s face.
A sharp hiss issued from behind sharply-pointed teeth, half sympathetic pain and half fury. The rich green hue of Rai’s skin was marred by an ugly greyish-brown bruise that darkened nearly to black around her swollen eye.
“Goddess’ Divine Tits, Rai! What happened to you?”
One shoulder jerked upward and fell just as abruptly in a stiff shrug. “I’m fine. Or I will be. Some spacer caught me in the act.” Teh’s pursed lips opened and Rai’laen cut her off; protest, question or outrage, it wouldn’t have changed anything. “Please tell me you had better luck than I did.”
Teh’s heart broke at the desperation in Rai’laen’s voice. She covered with a bright, beaming smile she didn’t truly feel and dug the credstick out of its hiding place. “You tell me, sis.”
She held it out in the palm of her hand and Rai took it with trembling fingers. Her eye widened at the value stored in the simple bit of plastoid. Her jaw worked, and after a false start, she managed an awed whisper. “Two… two thousand credits?”
Teh’laen smirked and folded her arms over her chest. “So. Foodcubes for dinner again tonight? Or do ya want something with a little flavor?”
Cassbria stared at Teh’laen across the tiny bar in the XS Freighter’s galley. “That’s why you refuse to stock your ship with foodcubes? Not even for emergency rations?”
The Lethan shrugged without turning to look at Cass as she bent over the small range. The overlap in their tastes for done-ness required a keen eye and an intuitive cooking technique that bordered on precognition: Too far in one direction and Cass would start making cracks about taking her meal to the vet; too far in the other and Teh started proposing that they cook all their meals with a blaster.
“See, Cassy, you’re thinking about long-haul freight runs and the prospect of losing power and drifting in deep space. My work meanwhile…” Out of respect for Cass’ past and present occupation as one of the Republic’s stalwart defenders of law and order, Teh avoided the p-word. “Let’s just say I’m never far from the hyperlanes for good reason.”
“Still. In the space you’ve filled with just one of the fifty-odd spices you keep onboard, you could fit a month’s worth of foodcubes.”
Teh snapped off the heat and expertly flipped the two filets of… She honestly couldn’t really remember what the animal was called, but it tasted good and went well with practically anything. They landed on the bed of meche leaves Teh had arranged on each plate, and the Twi’lek grinned over the bar at Cass as she pared off a slice and popped it into her mouth.
Mmm. Needs more lombaspice, I think.
Teh swallowed the bite and gestured lazily in the air with her fork. “A month living on bland, flavorless chunks of some so-called ‘food’ that’s got the consistency of durafoam? I’d rather you just gimme a blaster with a single charge.”
The Twi’lek’s melodrama elicited a nearly-audible eyeroll from Cass. “Your priorities might need some adjusting, sweetie.”
Red lips parted in a broad grin. “Nah. Eating’s one of life’s greatest pleasures. What’s the point in keeping your body alive if your soul shrivels up and dies?”
Day 25 of the 30 Day Star Wars OC Challenge from @smuggler-captain that I’m doing with @lessdenied! Previous posts are tagged with #30dayswchallenge.
In the very recent past...
“Home’s wherever they’re least likely to shoot you outta the sky soon as they see ya.”
The insistent warning-beeps from the ship’s console summoned Vinkess’ words from Teh’laen’s memory. She grinned to herself as Essix calmly input and transmitted her clearance codes as the Yimeh’Dizoh came in for its final approach. Setting the Krayt’s Den’s air-defense cannons to automatically target any unauthorized craft that got too close had led to a number of unpleasant misunderstandings, she had to admit. On the other hand, given how many times her overzealous security arrangements had prevented the previous owners of the items she stole—not to mention disgruntled customers—from turning her little slice of Tatooine real estate into a glassy crater, she counted it as worth the trouble.
The smuggler, thief and occasional privateer smoothly centered the XS Freighter over the hangar’s opening with practiced ease, and the ship descended gently on its repulsors. She and Essix ran through the power-down sequence barely seconds after the landing gear touched the deck plating. Twi’lek and droid were both anxious to get out of the cockpit, having long since run low on energy. Hopping from one planet to another did her body’s rhythms no favors; she wasn’t sure what time it was locally—and “dark” didn’t really count as a time. The horizon was just barely starting to lighten as they landed, and without looking at her chrono, she suspected it was a couple of hours ‘til dawn.
Essix whistled a question at her and a fierce yawn kept her from answering for several seconds. “Yeah, go ahead and power down to recharge. I wanna get this stuff unloaded first, then I’ll do the same.” Her droid chirped an acknowledgement and whirred out of the cockpit and down the open loading ramp.
Teh’laen followed at a significantly more sedate pace. The three loader droids waited patiently at the foot of the ramp. She wracked her sleep-deprived brain, trying to remember what she’d been thinking just moments earlier. Oh, right. “Boys? Would you be so kind as to unload Aurek Hold?” The three massive, quadripedal droids—half again as tall as she was and three times as broad—beeped in response and trundled up the ramp.
It was a testament to just how many hours had passed since her last sleep that one of the loaders had to gently nudge her awake. Not even the clanking of their footfalls had brought her back to wakefulness. One of them made a questioning sound and she nodded. “Yeah. Right. Sorry. Uh, put the munitions…” She looked around the hangar and the various and sundry goods stacked in bays around the perimeter. “Put those in Bay Eighteen.”
She walked over to the droid hefting a long crate. The lid had been blasted partially open during the fight; it was only Teh’s incredible luck that the transport’s emergency bulkheads slammed shut before it, too, could be sucked out into space. Through the charred hole in the crate’s lid, she saw the golden glimmer of auradium bars, stamped with serial numbers and the seal of the Imperial Treasury. “These go in the vault.”
The droids turned and went about carrying out her instructions. With that taken care of, she strode to the blast door that Essix had left open and stepped out into the central plaza of the Den. She should have turned left and taken the lift up to the terrace and her quarters; her body badly needed sleep. Instead she turned right and went up the stairs, wandering through the Den for reasons she couldn’t explain.
Teh’laen had lived in a lot of different places, after she and Rai’laen had fled Ryloth. Some she’d liked and some she very much had not. Aside from the Yimeh’Dizoh, though, she’d never really had a place that felt like it was where she belonged. The old warehouse the Stormriders had used as a base of operations was the closest she’d come, but even that… Nah.
She found herself wandering to the far end of the Krayt’s Den. The wristlink on her left gauntlet had synced up with the Den’s internal sensors as soon as she’d landed. Aside from herself and the staff, there were only two other humanoid life signs in the place. Naga’se and Lystra had apparently made up from their latest difference of opinion and were occupying one of the guest rooms. Maybe I should just stop calling that one a guest room and call it their room. The couple spent the night at the Den practically every night they were in Teh’s little portion of the Outer Rim and always in the same room. They’d accidentally left behind so many of their belongings that the staff had taken to collecting Naga’se’s and Lystra’s things when they left the Den, and as soon as they heard the two were inbound, putting the room back the way it had been left.
As she retraced her steps, she passed one of the loaders making its way to the room she called her vault. Teh’laen patted the big droid on one of its arms and, with a smile, muttered, “Thanks, big guy.” The defense systems guarding the entrance to the vault recognized both owner and helper and stood down, and the droid stepped inside. She grinned to herself; on any planet less arid than Tatooine, she’d call the contents of that room her “rainy day” fund. As it was, she thought of it as her “When I Want to Retire and Buy Myself a Small Moon” fund.
Silence greeted her when she stepped off the lift on the terrace that, to her mind, formed the heart of the Krayt’s Den. The weapons-check kiosk had been locked up tightly. From the look of it, a few blasters had been left behind by patrons who left the bar in such an altered state that they either couldn’t remember or couldn’t be trusted with weaponry. The Krayt’s Den attracted a certain clientele that could charitably be described as shady; Teh’laen had discovered long ago that alcohol, shady characters and blasters were a volatile, often explosive mixture. “No guns allowed in my bar” was a hard and fast rule of hers, and for the most part, her customers respected it; those that didn’t were removed.
The main bar and dance floor were dark, quiet and empty of all save the tiny vac-droids that waged a never-ending war on the sand that blew onto the terrace. And except for Ket, Teh’laen mentally added as a sound like a rockslide crushing a porcelain shop ripped through the still night. How can someone so small snore so loud?
The Twi’lek dancer with the pale orange skin was curled up in a tight ball on Teh’laen’s favorite sofa, in the owner’s private booth. A couple of the Den’s other employees had mentioned that Ket sometimes stayed past closing to take advantage of the HoloNet connection and get some studying done; the holographic, annotated mockup of some sort of molecular structure slowly rotating in the air above the table confirmed the rumors.
The Lethan padded over and bent over, flicking off the holoprojector. The young woman asleep on the couch shivered lightly in between snores; the desert nights could get positively frigid. Teh’laen slipped out of her jacket and laid it over Ket like a blanket, murmuring a soft “good night” in Ryl before turning to the door to her own chambers.
The door slid shut behind her and she made her way by instinct to her bed. Hanging and folding could wait for when she was feeling inclined; as it was, she left a trail of discarded clothing from the door to the bedside. The soft glow of the chrono on her bedside table both confirmed her suspicions—she was laying down just as the suns were coming up—and gave her enough light to make out the form of someone in her bed.
Teh’laen smiled warmly at the sight of Cassbria sprawled across Teh’s side of the bed. The Echani with the azure hair lay with Teh’laen’s pillows hugged to her chest. Her head was propped on a small, handmade stuffed bantha the two of them found last time they were in Anchorhead. The husband of one of the moisture farmers Teh bought the Den’s water supply from made the kitschy little things to sell for extra creds, and Cass had been immediately enamored of it. Unbeknownst to her love, Teh had gone back and bought a dozen more of the endearingly-hideous things. It had taken Cass nearly two full weeks to figure out how “her” bantha kept moving from room to room—and on a couple of notable occasions, stowed away aboard her ship.
She came around to her side of the bed and paused with one knee resting on the edge of the mattress. Cass had been spending more and more nights at Teh’s place, even staying over when Teh’laen was offplanet. Her partner hadn’t known the Twi’lek was coming home tonight; for that matter, neither had Teh. Her heart swelled as she gazed at her lover’s expression of gentle restfulness, and it began to race when Cass’ opalescent eyes fluttered open and she gave the Lethan a sleepy smile.
“Teh? ‘S that you?”
Teh’laen climbed into bed and swapped places with the pillows. Cass’ arms tightened around her, and Teh gave her partner an affectionate squeeze.
“Hey, gorgeous,” she whispered softly. “I’m home.”
Teh’laen, looking feisty as always, comes up from behind and gives Cass a surprise hug! Teh’laen is of course mine and Cass (Cassbria) belongs to a friend!
This is the ammmmmmmazing work of @fabulosaurus, who brought this to life and made it look even better than it did in my head! Go check out her work, her commissions are open!
Day 13 of the 30 Day Star Wars OC Challenge from @smuggler-captain that I’m doing with @lessdenied! Previous posts are tagged with #30dayswchallenge.
How does your OC define “good” and “evil”? “Right” and “wrong”? Do they bother to consider such things at all? What are your OC’s priorities? What’s the first thing they consider when making a decision? Are they Dark side or Light side? Somewhere in between?
“Ugh. Fine. I’ll take a crack at it. ‘Good’ is doing nice stuff, and ‘evil’ is doing not-nice stuff.
“Oh, don’t give me that look. You know I’m a career criminal, right? I’m probably not the best person to talk about right and wrong.
“Look. I take stuff that doesn’t belong to me. Sometimes, maybe even most times, the people I take it from aren’t the rightful owners either, but I’m not gonna pass myself off as some sort of benevolent bandit. I get paid to take stuff from people who usually want to keep their stuff. The people who pay me to do it usually aren’t paragons of virtue, either. I mean, were you really expecting some nuanced and well-thought-out treatise on morality? ‘Right’ and ‘wrong’ aren’t concepts I lose a lot of sleep thinking about.
“You know how I decide whether to do something or not? I ask myself two questions: ‘Do I wanna?’ and ‘Does the idea make me uncomfortable?’ I mean, fuck! I’m a hedonistic, self-centered, thrill-seeking pirate and thief, with appallingly bad impulse control, unhealthy coping mechanisms, and the self-preservation instincts of a spice-addicted porg with a concussion. I’m not what you’d call ‘overly contemplative’ when it comes to questions of ethics.
“You know what I care about? In that order: my survival; my friends; my happiness my ship; my stuff; and after that, absolutely everything else.
“Ughhhh specifics? I don’t like hurting people, or killing. I’ll do it when I have to, but it’s not something I enjoy and I avoid it when I can.
“Unless the nerf-fucker’s got it coming. Then I let myself enjoy it. A little bit.
“Oh and I try not to steal from the poor. That’s just shitty. Like, they’ve got it hard enough, and you’re just gonna take what little they have?
“…
“…
“Sigh.
“You know the third question I ask myself? ‘Would Cass look at me any different?’
“Goddess, my life was so much easier when all my friends were just as unprincipled and amoral as me. But now that I’ve got real, meaningful ties to people who—frankly—think I’m a better person than I really am… I feel an obligation to be more like the person they see when they look at me. And it’s an obligation I don’t even resent! These people are a horrible influence on me.
“Ever since I got involved with Cass, it’s been harder. I mean, don’t get me wrong—she’s the love of my life, in no small part because of how fucking good she is, and she doesn’t even seem to put any fucking effort into it. It’s equal parts endearing and infuriating.
“There’s a part of me that admires and maybe even envies her moral compass and her ability to care. I don’t know that I’m capable of it, though. I’m trying, but… I dunno. I try to stop and consider whether the Teh that Cass sees when she looks at me would do it. Time’ll tell if that’ll make me a better person: the ‘fake it ‘til you make it’ school of ethical behavior.”
