Confident, almost to the point of arrogance, which also leads into his egotism, in his abilities, luck, and his good looks. He’s incredibly good-humored, able to find a solid joke for almost any situation – but this leads people to think he’s far too flippant, because he takes very little seriously. He’s got a ‘heart of gold’, and a whole lot of his leftover credits goes to helping people, his empathy and soft heart getting in the way of good business practices – he never admits this is why he’s always broke. He’s incredibly sociable and friendly, able to get on with just about anyone, even those who are disagreeable – this has netted him a whole lot of friends and contacts on positive terms.
[bαรic нiรтσяy]
Grew up in a Sith lord’s household, largely protected from but would still occasionally witness the atrocities committed there. His father was one of the Sith’s assistants, particularly in the gathering and study of artifacts – which led to Divarne learning the skill of covertly transporting objects simply by watching his father work. He started out stepping into his father’s shoes, working for the Sith lord, but this exposed him to far more of the Sith’s atrocities, and led to his eventual escape scheme. He lifted several artifacts to fund himself, stole a shuttle, and took off – he was enough of a nobody around there to go unnoticed for almost half a day. He managed to earn sanctuary with the Republic from information he had on the Sith he worked for, and managed to net contacts by pawning the artifacts, leading him to follow the same work pattern he’d had before...just carefully in Republic space to keep himself protected.
[αbiliтiєร]
Divarne hates Force bullshit, and thanks god he didn’t inherit his mother’s powers. Unfortunately, he kinda did, they’re just not obvious for him to notice, and he avoids people with Force powers – because again, he hates that bullshit – so no one’s ever told him. He’d reject it anyway – him being really lucky + skilled makes more sense to him. His powers are influenced entirely by his mood, and are pretty much ‘think positive thoughts and positive things will happen to you’ fueled by magical bullshit to actually make it true. If Divarne is confident he can do something, he can quite literally alter reality so that his chances to succeed in that thing are VERY high (think rolling with advantage in D&D). It works the opposite, as well, though – if his mood tanks, so does his ability to do things. Luckily he’s always over-confident, or he drinks himself INTO confidence (having no idea what he’s actually doing, mind you).
Inspired by @askshivanulegacy and @cole-saberhagen - Not attempting their full HTML setup just yet; just giving the template a whirl with the font i chose.
I may do more of these later.
She’s reliable, always helping so long as she’s able, and to the point of her own detriment if it’s her friends. She overcompensates too much, overdoing things as an attempt to impress and fit in. She’s fiercely loyal, almost to a fault – it takes a lot to get her to turn away. She’s incredibly short-tempered, snapping at things she considers foolish quite quickly, even to friends. Her level of determination is almost so high it borders on foolish – pushing herself much farther than she should. She likes things done her way, and will nitpick when it’s done another way. She’s a huge flirt. She’s, for the most part, an optimist. She’s an extrovert, loving interacting with people, both friends and new.
[bαรic нiรтσяy]
In the aftermath of the Togruta Uprising, the Empire saw an opportunity to enslave the defeated and their families - Rikima’s entire family scattered in an attempt to escape this fate, but Rikima wasn’t one that escaped. It didn’t matter that she was only ten at the time, she was still enslaved - the three years spent in slavery colors her personal morals and loyalties to this day. A Mandalorian clan was hired to take out her owner for espionage. It was never specified what to do with the underlings, so the Mandalorians, hurting for new blood, tested them to see who was worth their salt. Rikima proved herself to be brutishly resistant in combat, and was a bit star-struck when the clan offered to take her and several others in. She found her place among the clan’s beast hunters, excelling as a tracker and frontline combatant. She became somewhat insulated over the years, and avoided contact with those outside her clan unless absolutely necessary.
More recently, the Mandalorians took part in a recent crusade, with Rikima on the frontlines willing to defend her people against a Republic attack. Rikima followed her Mandalore into exile when things went sideways, refusing to bow to the new, fake Mandalore. The time in exile was a long one, Rikima having abandoned her clan due to them bowing to the new Mandalore. When those she was loyal to began to group together and push back, Rikima had found some solace in her time solo, finding it preferable and more profitable. She also disliked some of the methods taken by her people to push back against the other Mandalorians. She still helps her people, and she still calls herself Mandalorian, but she works alone now, mostly taking mercenary work, and trying to mend ties with her old clan.
[αbiliтiєร]
Despite Force sensitivity running in her family (as evidenced by her two daughters that she had to send away due to having inherited them, and fearing what the Mandalorians would do to them), Rikima has inherited exactly none of it. Her abilities rest solely in her brute strength and prowess with multiple weapons. In her younger years she wielded double beskad and focused almost solely on offense, but after an incident that got fifteen seasoned warriors killed, her combat changed to more cautious, and defensive, and she swapped to a blaster and shield generator – she does still carry her beskad though – just in case.
Associates: Lord Aescides - former Csillan acquaintance, Sith handler, and general pain in his ass; Leto - student and eventual target/enemy; Cyrus Hargrave - SIS partner and eventual adopted son; Selim Vervaine - SIS handler; Udesla Massani - engine-grease-coated thorn in his side and eventual adopted daughter [ish], Aur Ferrous, street rat jedi turned adopted son with horns, yes Vel will eventually adopt the entire universe
Personality:
A brilliant blue medic with angry burn scars around his iridescent red eyes, Vel goes through life with a constant grimace and a thick cloud of swears announcing his arrival in three or four different languages. He is crass, blunt, unflinching, practical, and capable of dropping an F-bomb with surgical precision. Vel is a strange combination of extensive/expensive medical training from four corners of the known galaxy… and the ramshackle, stripped-for-parts, flying-on-a-prayer spacer knowhow that kept him alive through all his faction flipping.
Devoted to one ideal – the preservation of life – Vel’s body is a tapestry of scars showing just how much trouble one gets into trying to save every dying soul around. His foul mouth is a [meager] attempt to hide how much of a soft touch he is [and always has been]. Be that as it may, he can understand your sob story and still be 9000% done with your shit.
Vel has seen it all and he’s gonna gripe about everything, end of story.
History:
[WARNING: Roughly 50 years of history here. Please be prepared for a long read]
[Csillan Childhood]
The second son of Arenan, a respected Diplomat for the Ascendancy, Aveln spent his early years as a shy, bookish shadow to his precocious older brother, Avayan. He was Aveln’s closest friend and favorite tutor. It was obvious from the beginning that Avayan would follow in their father’s footsteps as a diplomat; the problem of Aveln’s future was a bit more muddied. Though extremely bright and disciplined, he lacked his brother’s boldness. Their father encouraged Aveln with his customary gentleness, but the rest of his family never saw much potential or had much faith in quiet little Aveln.
All that changed forever during an excursion to the surface of Csilla. What should have been a vacation adventure ended in disaster when the boys were stranded out on the ice. Following behind his braver brother to see the endless white of Csilla’s landscape, a sudden change in the weather combined with rough terrain cost their chaperone her life and totaled the brothers’ speeder.
Aveln, aged 6, followed in his 10-year-old brother’s footsteps; Avayan took the brunt of the freezing winds to shield his younger sibling as they made their way to [relative] safety. When they reached the nearest shelter, it was clear that the recent storm had damaged the heating equipment. They scraped up an emergency beacon and huddled together for warmth. Avayan wrapped his body around his smaller brother, and as the night settled in, Aveln felt Avayan grow cold and still around him. When the rescue team arrived in the morning, they had to pry Aveln out of his brother’s frozen arms with an ice pick.
His brother’s death changed Vel forever. He had felt the most important person in his life gradually die to keep him warm. What’s worse, the decision made no sense. Avayan was the superior sibling in every way - better poised to serve the Ascendency, to excel, to embody the Red Flame. But Avayan had chosen to sacrifice everything to keep his meek and mediocre younger brother safe.
After that horrible night, Vel was no longer able to look at death as a matter of statistics or cost/benefit analysis. Instead of valuing the efficient and cruel pragmatism of the group as a whole, Vel had a desperate need to keep every possible person alive. This made him seem unhinged and emotionally unstable to his fellow chiss; his perceived inability to step back and logically examine the situation was considered an enormous handicap. This eventually cost him his place on the homeworld.
Though their father remained devoted to his last surviving son, the rest of the Kthira family was mortified at Avayan’s choice and made no effort to hide it. Aveln felt the enormous pressure of his brother’s potential crushing him with every whispered disparaging remark and sidelong glance.
After the incident, tiny Aveln constantly bombarded his doctors and nurses with questions - how to treat hypothermia, best tactics for preventing heat loss, recommended cold weather equipment for surface expeditions. He knew it was too late to save his brother, but was still desperate to learn what he might have done, how he might prevent this in the future. Before he was even released from the hospital, Aveln knew he was going to become a doctor.
[CEDF Medic]
With his father’s lofty position and influence, Aveln was placed in the most prestigious medical university on Csilla. He devoted himself to studying medicine and distinguished himself in all coursework and practical exams, but still it wasn’t enough. He wanted to go where he was needed most, and petitioned to train with the CEDF as a combat medic. Again, he far exceeded all test standards and expectations - Aveln quickly became famous for his steady hands and ability to adapt and perform under intense pressure. However, he lacked the same gift and enthusiasm for combat training. Determined to save lives rather than taking them, Aveln frequently earned terrible scores in marksmanship [though he seemed to miraculously gain a steady shot when taking out droids or blasting security cameras].
At the tender age of 11 [something like 16 -17 for a human], Aveln was admitted into the CEDF as a medic on active duty. Still a shy, close-lipped, earnest boy, Aveln was grateful to be far away from the prying eyes, oppressive stares, and constant displeasure of the Kthiras, who by this point were so in the habit of being disappointed that nothing Aveln ever did would be able to change it. Still, every time he returned home on leave, he dealt with his family quietly, politely, and with extreme discomfort.
During this time he caught the eye of Csapla’Escide’Sabosen, a troublemaker with strange powers and a sense of humor so heinous people openly talked of murdering him. For whatever reason, Aescides took a liking to the stiff, awkward, determined-to-behave young medic; he started calling him “Soldier Boy” and draping himself over Aveln at regular intervals. Despite all the trauma of his later life, Vel still remembers those parties with Aesc as the most intense moments of awkwardness in his entire existence.
Though Aveln preferred life as a medic to life as a Kthira, things were not perfect at the CEDF. No matter how many times he tried to shut up and do as he was told, Aveln regularly broke ranks, disobeyed orders, and quietly [almost politely?] undermined authority if it meant he could save just one more life. Eventually, his father’s name couldn’t protect him anymore. To avoid a court-martial, Aveln was summoned home and ordered by the heads of the Kthira family to prove he could follow orders. The alternative was exile.
The first test of loyalty was a political marriage. Barely of age at 12 years old, Aveln was promised to a woman twice his years. His family hoped that the responsibility of marriage would mellow out his strange emotional outbursts. Or possibly give him another outlet for them. Vel went to meet his bride-to-be in sheer terror.
A brilliant engineer whose ingenuity had advanced communications technology across Chiss space, Sev’Esar’Inrokini was nonetheless known more for her temper and her foul mouth than her brilliance. Vesari was full of inventive turns of phrase and precisely calibrated obscenities that she delivered with enough force to make a man stagger on his feet. She was vulgar, commanding, direct, and to Aveln, knee-bucklingly intimidating. The first words she ever said to him were a torrent of expletives, in which the only non-vulgar entries were “sideways,” “never,” “serious,” “he’s a,” and “baby.”
Aveln and Vesari quickly realized that their families had been trying to shove their problem children off in a corner where they wouldn’t have to deal with them. Though he was terrified of his wife at first, he soon realized that despite her gruff mannerisms she was a supportive, engaging, and often hilarious woman. He quickly grew to respect and adore her, and much to the Kthira’s dismay, valued her opinion infinitely more than theirs. They were supposed to mellow each other out [Aveln’s meekness tempering Vesari’s brash take-no-shit attitude, Vesari’s pragmatism curbing Aveln’s idealism] and instead they only made each other more determined to be, well. Themselves.
To cut a long story short, they were exiled very soon after their marriage.
[Imperial Lieutenant]
By far the most devastating part of leaving Csilla behind was the loss of his father – Aveln knew he was leaving his parents childless and staining their names with his exile. In their last goodbye, Arenan assured his son that he only wished for the boy’s happiness. Vesari’s thoughts were “Fuck every last one of those fuckers. Except your dad I guess.” Her husband was beginning to agree.
Somewhat-honorably-discharged for the sake of appearances and sent to the Empire as a “military emissary,” it was made clear to Aveln that he could never return. Since he was raised on Csilla and had never left Chiss space, the many races and human dominance of the Empire left the young medic completely disoriented. He was assigned as a medic for an all-alien forced-conscript squad, and given the most terrifying crash course in non-chiss biology. Though his whole life he had been fed the idea of Chiss superiority, it seemed strange to cling to a society that had banished him forever. And lives are lives, after all. He threw himself into his work and his lessons in Basic and Huttese. Kthira’Vel’Nuruodo was a bit difficult for his squadmates to master, and even Aveln gave them some challenges. He started sticking to his root name - “Vel.”
Vesari was made a military consultant with the more open-minded [or at the very least practical] types at Imperial Intelligence. She had zero interest in agent work, and was present only to share her advances in technology between the Chiss Ascendency and the Sith Empire. Her brash attitude and unwillingness to bow her head to humans got her into frequent trouble. Vel tried to keep her from facing a firing squad. At the same time, he started to talk more like his wife. Which is to say, neither of them were allowed in polite company.
The values of the Empire were baffling to Vel and Vesari, who translated anything to do with the Sith as ‘avoid at all costs’ and anything to do with human supremacy as ‘what the actual fuck.’ Vel started losing his respect for authority (something his wife never really had). He became good friends with the twi’leks, rattataki, and zabraks of his unit, and his wife found a few similar colleagues who valued brilliance over bloodlines. Three years after they were exiled, Vesari gave birth to a girl: Anoemi.
Only months after his daughter was born, Vel had the unfortunate honor of saving a Sith’s life in the middle of a jedi-infested combat zone; he was promoted from his alien-only unit, his new family was relocated Dromund Kaas, and the eyes of the Military, Imperial Intelligence, and even the Sith were upon him. His extensive knowledge of xenobiology and years of experience in the CEDF and Imperial Military made him a highly competent officer. To those willing to listen to a blue skinned soldier, he was a calm advisor and clever tactician [with the ulterior motive of limiting casualties on both sides].
But the air of Dromund Kaas was always lit with danger – and lightning was the least of Vel’s worries. He constantly pleaded with his wife to be cautious, to hold her tongue, to avoid the anger of the many, many humans and sith poised to kill them at the slightest word or glance. Vesari was stubborn – she did not want to raise their daughter to live in cowardice. Vel retorted that if they weren’t careful, they wouldn’t have a chance to raise Anoemi at all.
Anoemi reminded Vel terribly of his older brother. She was patient but precocious, smart as a whip but kind as a kiss [though she did tend to swear like a spacer from the moment she could talk]. He adored her, and wanted nothing more than to keep her safe and watch her grow. As a chiss, she aged rapidly, devouring all Vel’s lessons on biology and military protocol, as well as her mother’s instruction in mathematics and physics. But nothing delighted Anoemi more than music – she switched her favorite instrument every week. With no real friends on Kaas after his transfer and promotion, Vel devoted himself to his daughter and wife. Those nights at home with music filling the air were precious memories for him to the end of his days.
It didn’t last.
Vel returned from his most recent tour of duty. Seven years had passed since his exile, and his daughter had recently turned four. He had been called back to Dromund Kaas to teach medicine to new operatives in Imperial Intelligence. No one is ever happy to be affiliated with Imperial Intelligence, particularly aliens, but it meant an extended period of living with his family again.
Or it should have.
A few weeks into his time on Kaas, Vel returned home to find his wife and daughter missing. He assumed they were merely late coming home from Anoemi’s recital. For some reason, Vesari wasn’t answering her holo, so he decided to walk to the concert hall to meet them. On his way there, he discovered the scene of their murder. Both had been cleanly executed by a single stroke from a lightsaber.
Later, security feeds showed that Anoemi and Vesari had chance-encountered a Sith on their way home. Vesari, despite her brashness, had given the Sith a wide space and tried to hurry past with her daughter. The Sith stopped to speak with them. Vel never received clearance to access the audio. Within seconds, his family was gone. And there was no court, no tribunal, nowhere at all where he could pursue justice. In the end, the caution he had urged hadn’t saved Vesari or their daughter. No amount of service or prestige could change the fact that they were force-blind aliens living in the empire. Dying in the empire.
Vel shuffled through the motions of existence like a walking corpse. He continued to teach, but he was numb through and through, and his instruction suffered for it. Imperial Intelligence wrote him off as a loss. Certain he would die of self-neglect within a year, they assigned him to a post no other medic was willing to take: Personal Attache to Lord Aescides, a Sith assassin notorious for his amorality, caprice, and painful sense of humor.
Yes, that Aescides.
Certain at this point that his life was some sort of black cosmic joke, Vel endured Aesc’s prodding and “Soldier Boy” greetings with gritted teeth. But Aesc’s particular brand of lawlessness and caprice was somehow the perfect recipe for pulling Vel back to reality. With enough nagging or appeals to his sense of humor, Vel was actually able to steer Aesc into cooperating with his efforts to save lives 6 times out of 10. They became a strangely effective team, and Aesc’s protection kept Vel from sharing his late wife’s fate as he brushed shoulders with other Sith. Eventually, Vel provided medical training and hands-on-tutoring to Aesc’s son, Leto. Leto was far too young to be joining Imperial Intelligence, and far too gifted at lying and misdirection for his own good. Vel tried to warn him away, but though Leto respected his teacher, he did not follow his advice.
Vel spent five years in Lord Aescides’ service. During that time, he never once spoke of his wife and daughter. He buried his thoughts and his longing for them in his journal, which he kept locked and sealed six or seven different ways to prevent Aesc from reading it as a prank. Still, the injustice of their deaths and the emptiness of serving the Empire left him more hollow every year. Even though he saved many lives by manipulating Aesc, he knew he needed to leave the Empire forever if he was ever going to be at peace.
Eventually, Aesc was ordered to destroy an entire village on a conquest planet; they were harboring force sensitives. These were direct orders from the Sith Commander, and no amount of teasing, nagging, or attempts at humor could convince Aesc to disobey this time. So Vel got up in the middle of the night, sliced the security feeds, and entered the shuttle bay to steal a small spaceship.
Aesc found Vel before he could leave. His expression was strangely unreadable. Before Vel could explain, Aesc noticed some guards coming, distracted them with Official Sith Business, and left Vel a clear path to escape.
Vel rescued the entire village, crammed them into his shuttle, and flew them to safety behind the retreating Republic lines. He surrendered immediately on the condition that someone would transmit the tactical information he had on the imperial strike force.
[Republic Officer]
With Vel’s help, the Republic extraction had astoundingly low casualties. After several months of debriefing, analysis, and competency testing, the SIS allowed the chiss defector to join the Republic military.
He was 25 years old. He had left his life behind twice. The name he gave the Republic was Velessar – the closest he came to saying his wife’s name again after her death. As the years went on, he began to speak and behave more and more like Vesari as a way of honoring and remembering the woman who had changed the course of his life.
Again, Vel distinguished himself, earning commendations in combat zones across Republic space. He participated in almost every major Republic campaign, from Karideph to Coruscant. On Balmorra, he saved the life of a boy who would become an enormous part of his life many years later. Young Cyrus Hargrave would have died alone in a shell-torn field if not for Velessar’s intervention. Instead, he only lost an eye [and somehow still managed to wink suggestively despite only having one eye left].
Though Vel did still receive plenty of aggression and mistrust due to his blue skin, at least in the Republic he had more ways to win his allies over, or failing that, pursue justice in military courts. But as he became more decorated and seemingly-safe, his commanding officer grew jealous of his success. Her name was Ralis Keritt, a woman of grim determination and violent solutions. And she was sure that the only reason Vel was outpacing her in medal count was because he was secretly a traitor.
Shortly after the Sacking of Coruscant, Keritt produced evidence that Vel had assisted the Imperial Fleet in the most devastating civilian slaughter of the war. Vel was shocked, and denied any involvement. But the holorecordings and data transfer files Keritt supplied were damning – and no one would trust the word of a chiss who had betrayed two governments already over the word of a human officer. Trapped in a cell awaiting death by firing squad, Vel realized that he was going to die on the whims of an arrogant human drunk on power – exactly the same way his wife and daughter had died.
Refusing to let it end that way, Vel knocked out his guard at meal time, switched uniforms, and made a mad dash to escape. Keritt caught him fleeing and tried to take justice into her own hands – when he disarmed her blaster, she went after him with a nearby welding torch. Certain he was about to die, she admitted to fabricating the recordings. Keritt nearly burned out Vel’s eyes before he managed to jab her in the neck with a tranquilizer and run for his life. The burn scars around his eyes and nose were his most prominent distinguishing feature on the bounty posters.
[WANTED: THE OUTLAW VELESSAR]
Banned from Ascendency worlds, a traitor to the empire, and a condemned officer/ wanted man to the Republic, Vel fled to Hutt space. He started a clinic on Nar Shaddaa, though it got hard to keep supplies stocked when people realized he’d never let a patient go untreated. But he had to stay on the move to avoid the endless bounty hunters and SIS agents on his heels. Eventually he earned the favor and protection of Grotunda the Hutt, and served as his doctor for several years. But Grotunda’s treatment of those under his protection chaffed at Vel until he could no longer handle it. In 3647, he sapped Grotunda’s power reserves, vented a sleeping agent into his guard’s quarters, disabled and deactivated all the slave collars in the palace, and once again ran away with a gaggle of refugees on a stolen starship.
It was a bad move, though he couldn’t manage to regret it. Now even the Hutts despised him. Vel fled to the outer rim, serving in refugee clinics or med centers on remote planets desperate enough not to ask any questions. He moved frequently, providing care and protection where he was able and leaving when bounty hunters and military types showed up to threaten the community.
Six years after his stunt at Grotunda’s palace, Velessar was finally caught by SIS Agent Selim Vervaine. Sure he was about to be tried, convicted, and executed within the space of an hour, Vel was surprised to find himself across a dinner table from a soft-spoken young man with a gentle voice and a distinctly imperial accent. Agent Vervaine offered the chiss a deal – if Vel became a medical attache for the SIS, Vervaine would make his previous charges disappear. The Republic would protect Vel from the Empire and the Hutts in exchange for his years of experience as a combat medic.
It seemed too good to be true. Then Vel met his partner and realized, no. No it was not.
Cyrus Hargrave was a brash, cruel, thoughtless, shallow young man with a chip on his shoulder and a hatred for all things Imperial. Neither of them were happy with this arrangement. But as time went on and they survived intense missions and near-death experiences together, they developed a grudging respect for each other. With Selim as their handler, they were an unstoppable team of stealth operatives. Despite everything, Vel began to think of Cyrus as the son he’d never had, though Cyrus was more likely to refer to him as a grandpa. Vel became very protective of Cyrus, advocated for and defended him [but also called him out on his bullshit – something not many other people had ever bothered doing].
Things seemed to be going pretty well until Cyrus, Vel, and Selim were tasked with taking down an Imperial Agent turned Information Broker who had become a thorn in the SIS’ side. The Ex-Cipher and Cyrus became obsessed with one another, and it was all Vel could do to keep Cyrus alive in the midst of their terrible agent games. Cyrus was tortured multiple times, and they were frequently stranded out of contact with each other. Vel begged Cyrus to let it go, but his pleas fell on deaf ears.
In the midst of chasing the Ex-Cipher, Vel and Cyrus met his sister – Darth Ira. She was the most beautiful [and most intimidating] woman Vel had ever seen; unfortunately, she was also determined to kill Cyrus. Vel threw himself between the two of them, and by some miracle, his desperate last-words attempt at flirting caught her just off guard enough to let Cyrus get away. He was surprised by how genuine he was; it had been many, many years since his heart had skipped like that. And for some reason, he couldn’t just ignore it until it went away [even though she was half his age and he felt like the stupidest old romance grandpa in existence].
She didn’t give him her name, so he took to calling her Daten – the highest possible compliment on a woman’s beauty in cheunh.
He later found out she didn’t even speak Cheunh.
It Kept Getting More Complicated. Despite their odd romance, Darth Ira still attacked and nearly killed Vervaine – who once again survived only because Vel physically placed himself between Ira and her target. Cyrus was spiraling into either bloodlust or despair; Vel could no longer tell which. And this Information Broker – there was something painfully familiar about him. Vel knew the whole thing could only end badly. And it did.
Cyrus eventually killed the Broker, but only after he had been hurt enough by the game to feel more hollow than victorious. He now had a death wish. Ira, enraged over the death of her brother, disappeared without a trace. Vel couldn’t blame her – he knew the pain of losing a sibling, and he understood why she might never want to see him again.
He devoted himself to bringing Cyrus back. Selim [still recovering from his injuries after Darth Ira’s attack] worked together with Vel to remind Cyrus that there were plenty of reasons to keep living. Cyrus being Cyrus, the ones that got through to him were a.) more chances to tease Vel and b.) Selim’s ass. But whatever works, right?
Vel officially adopted Cyrus. He was there for Cyrus and Selim’s wedding. And eventually, when his Daten returned and was willing to forgive him, she told him her name: Circe.
Two unfortunate things came to light at that moment:
1.) Her brother was Leto. Vel had killed his own student from all those years ago.
2.) Her father… was Lord Aescides.
Vel decided to mourn the former and completely fucking ignore the latter as much as possible.
Though there was never any peace or reconciliation between Cyrus and Circe, they put aside their differences [mostly] out of love for Vel. Against all odds, after decades of wandering and loss, Vel had a family.
Eventually the SIS released him, and he opened a medical practice on a small moon in the core systems. He and Circe had a son – Avern, usually called Verne. Vel was blindingly happy, and poured all the belated love of his long life into the child of his old age.
It wasn’t perfect. After Lord Aescides died, the ghosts that occupied his mind sought out Circe as their new host. One in particular, the spirit of a fallen Jedi, would not give Circe any peace unless she made regular strikes against the Sith. She was often away from home. “Off on business,” he would say whenever his patients asked. Vel mostly raised Avern alone, though he was frequently visited by Cyrus, Selim, and their adopted daughter, Sereni – not to mention the many other adoptees Vel managed to collect during his time as an SIS agent.
He taught Verne everything he knew about medicine, compassion, and the value of life. He never let a day go by without telling that boy that he loved him. That he was proud of him. The brief weeks when Circe was home from her crusade and the three of them were together were the happiest times of Vel’s long life.
But the years were catching up with Vel. As his body began to give out, Verne would help him home from the clinic every night, hoping Circe would return before his father died. Eventually, Verne sent out a signal calling her back home to say a last goodbye to her husband. It was intercepted by Sith searching for her.
They attacked the house in the night, setting it on fire while Vel and Verne were still sleeping. Verne was only 12 years old. Vel gave Verne his old stealth belt, medical equipment, and keys to the speeder –he kissed his son, then told him to run to safety and never look back. He told Verne he loved him.
Vel’s body was found surrounded by the corpses of three sith in the ashes of his home.
Other Facts:
- Vel wrote in his journal every day of his life from the age of 11 until the day he died. Because he refused to speak of life before the death of his wife and daughter, it is the only record anyone has of his early years.
- Vel’s inventive swearing is often inspired by the antics of his many adopted children, all of whom have terrible senses of humor and way too much enthusiasm. By contrast, Verne never really inspired much profanity [once they got past the diaper stage].
- Musical interludes, particularly quiet, meditative pieces, are an almost guaranteed way to make Vel cry.
- Vel is perfectly willing to take both the Republic and the Empire to task for their treatment of aliens, and will not tolerate any bullshit if he catches a wiff of any of that going on.
Enemies: House Caedron, particularly Darth Rigantis [Casira Kargita/Caedron]
Likes:
- Odd force phenomena [force ghosts in particular]
- Learning new dances and dance styles
- Pulling pranks with like-minded padawans
Dislikes:
- Being touched
- Shackles and confined spaces
- Any situation that prevents him from dodging and/or break dancing away from discomfort
History:
Cor is an only child. His parents were both affectionate but distant by nature, and he ended up being much the same; he is cheerful, polite, and generous to just about everyone he meets, but it’s hard to make feelings stick to him. He floats weirdly through life; it’s difficult to land a solid hit on him, in combat or conversation.
He was trained by his parents and other members of the Luka Sene for most of his life; his force sight is extremely strong and pronounced, so he can detect a whole spectrum of force sensitivity/emotional turbulence/corruption/probably even the last force sensitive person you interacted with. Having grown up on a planet of almost-entirely Miraluka, he’s still learning not to expose these sorts of things in basic, casual conversation. It was news to him that you probably shouldn’t ask people about the gripping emotional baggage that you can sense hanging over them. People often find him rude or insensitive as a result, even though his words and attitude seem deferential and polite. He tends to be very transparent and casual about himself, and will answer any questions about his life story and his feelings [or lack thereof] or honest opinion on a given subject… with the sole exception of his time in Imperial hoc.
When he was eighteen, his mother arranged for Cor to join the Jedi as an emissary from the Luka Sene. He filled a strange role somewhere between transfer student, consultant, knight, and force hound. He grew up surrounded by Miraluka, so the convention of wearing masks to cover his missing eyes was strange to him, and he often … didn’t. His force sight made him perfect for detecting young force sensitives, and his combat training from the Sene Seekers specialized in defense and live-capture of dark side users. As a result, he was very quickly attached to several jedi out on various missions through both republic and neutral space. He shadowed them, learning about the order and answering questions about the Luka Sene at the same time.
About two years after he came to the Jedi, toward the end of the cold war and the beginning of open war between Republic and Empire, Cor was attached to a joint SIS-Jedi mission into imperial space to rescue a hidden colony of force sensitives. His force sight was instrumental in locating them while also running from sith sent to intercept the rescue. Unfortunately, Cor was left behind guarding the entrance to their escape hangar and captured by the sith. He volunteered for it without thinking, on instinct, the way he did most things in life. He was vaguely aware of the price he was paying but also vaguely aware that it was the right thing to do – as usual, the reality of things didn’t hit him. Until he was given to Imperial Intelligence for ‘questioning.’
He spent several months in their custody, being tortured for information about the route his allies were taking to bring the escaped force adepts to Republic space. This continued even after the imperials gave up hope of pursuit, mostly because Darth Rigantis, the sith he dueled to a standstill, was enraged at having lost to a child, barely even a padawan. Incisions were made surgically and cleanly from the corner of his mouth along the path of most of his jaw, then injected with a cruel mix of sith alchemy and the latest experimental slow-acting poison from ImpInt’s labs. Darth Rigantis made it perfectly clear that she had ordered everything that happened to Cor – but that he was not important enough for her to bother punishing him herself. His captors also performed some experiments on the eyeless sockets in his face; House Caedron’s peculiar mixture of sith and imperial intelligence had a collective interest in the Miraluka force sight, and could always use live specimens for study.
His time in ImpInt was the first time Cor wasn’t able to just set something aside or not let it touch him. He learned to hate the people who hurt him and wanted them to die, and wanted to die himself, and finally understood exactly what the Jedi were risking in their fight against the Sith. He distinctly remembers the names and faces of Darth Rigantis, Darth Zeven, and all the participating House Caedron underlings, and sees each of them in nightmares. He wavers wildly between trying to force himself to feel compassion for Rigantis and clinging to his anger and bitterness because it was one of the few things that kept him breathing during that time.
When he lets himself think about it at all.
He was eventually ransomed in exchange for a Sith Lord, but sent back in a sorry state in a very public forum as a way to taunt the republic and a warning to the rest of the galaxy. The Empire used Coronis to say: This is what happens to the Republic’s allies. This is what they allow. He started wearing a very thick, durasteel mask to cover the scars over his empty eyesockets. The scars on his mouth are actually much thinner and less hideous now than they were when he was first ransomed.
He was sent back to his mother and Alpheridies for a time after his captivity, and that was some comfort to him. But after only a short three months, he returned to the Jedi. This time, he came with the intent of fully joining the Order and pledging himself to defend the Republic and stop the Sith Empire. His actual motivations are a bit murkier than all that; bitterness, revenge, a desire to prevent what happened to him from ever happening to his friends in the order – wanting to serve but mostly wanting something, anything, to keep him from thinking about what happened to the boy in that cell.
He has severe dissociative disorder regarding his captivity, and often thinks about the person who endured Rigantis’ tortures as ‘The Captive’ rather than himself. His memories of those days are also extremely vague for the most part [with a few incredibly sharp, poignant memories that keep cropping up in his sleep], and he basically shuts down mentally whenever he’s asked to think about that time. He’s trying to approach the episode the way he used to deal with the rest of his existence – with a smile or a laugh or a shrug, moving on and not letting it weigh him down or stop him from dancing through life. But it’s not really working, and the cracks in his psyche are starting to frighten him in a way he doesn’t know how to articulate or respond to.
Other weird things about Cor:
He’s a dancer, and loves to learn the local dances whenever he visits a new place/planet. Everything from waltzes to tango to breakdancing to swing to whatever the new thing is at the clubs on Nar Shaddaa.
He has a weird bounding way of walking/running everywhere, lots of curiosity and enthusiasm and bouncy hair and a vague smiley expression.
His force sensitivity makes him really aware of force ghosts; they tend to be attracted to him whenever he visits old temples and tombs, for good or ill. He likes meeting them.
He tends to treat any living thing as being capable of conversing with him – grass, gizka, rancors, trees, you name it. He will personify and chat with just about anyone or anything.
Since his return from captivity, Cor does not like being touched. At all. Touch is an intensifier for his force sight abilities and a violation of his already-fragile sense of self and personal space, so he does not care how awkward it might be to avoid physical contact. He tends to dance/twist/spin/yoga-dodge his way out of connection whenever people reach out to touch him. Someone will go in for a handshake and he will back-bend and roll out. Literally.
Nickname: Iphe, Red, Little Miss Science Project, Intelligence’s Latest Failure
Class/Role: Agent/ Operative (dps)
Relationship Status: seriously messed up by a dead half-droid sullen dick of a chiss
Relatives Genetic Donors: Captain Ophera, Keeper/The Minister of Intelligence. Eventually she was all-but-formally-adopted by Loren Fidelis Luz. Loren Luz II considers her to be his half-sister.
Friends and allies: Leto Kallig [it’s complicated], Circe Kallig [best friend], Cae’Sera and Idare Ulally [godmother to their children], Daemon Kraspen, Cyrus Hargrave, Kthira'Vel'Nuruodo
Iphe was designed to look like a victim: thin frame, large blue eyes, freckles, dimples. She spent the first five years of her life entirely in an ImpInt lab, being trained, monitored, and surgically corrected – she was in and out of modification surgeries so often she spent more time sleeping in kolto tanks than in a bed.
The researcher in charge of Iphe’s development turned out to be an SIS plant gathering information on ImpInt’s genetics program; she was the only person who used Iphe’s name and spoke to her outside of regular tests. When the time came for her to be extracted, she took a risk and tried to bring Iphe away with her. She couldn’t bear to leave the little lab rat behind, knowing what Intelligence had in store for her. When she took Iphe out of her tank and offered to take her away, Iphe understood that the agent was a traitor. So she quietly palmed the scalpel from the nearby lab table and killed her when she reached for a hug.
For Iphe, it was the choice between the cold but familiar or the terrifying unknown of the world outside Imperial Intelligence. The loss of the one person who connected with Iphe on an emotional level broke something inside her; Iphe was able to read emotions and manipulate them due to her training, but she lost the ability to connect on an emotional level. Her curiosity about the wildly fluctuating emotions of those around her and her desire to observe emotionally-functional sentients were the main reasons she continued to serve Intelligence. They gave her the opportunity to interact with and mimic the people she was sent to undermine and destroy.
That unintentional test of loyalty convinced Intelligence that it was time to start taking advantage of Project I and getting her some training outside the lab. Iphe was sent to areas of insurgency and placed in foster care or war orphanages. She operated as an observer and sabotage agent, spying on and betraying her caretakers and, when necessary, setting explosives or assassinating resistance officers.
Project I’s efficiency in the field exceeded expectations but was also… deeply unsettling. When she came back from her latest infiltration at age nine, she was taken back to the lab and had a kill switch bomb implanted in the base of her skull. The switch was given to Keeper, and if he failed to reset the switch within the one month time limit, Iphe would lose everything neck-upwards. The switch contained a gene-scanner that prevented Iphe from resetting it herself, hopefully stemming any attempts to steal the switch, seeing as she had no friends or contacts outside of Intelligence to whom she could pass it.
Iphe continued to make great strides as an operative, slicer, and assassin. As a preteen, she learned a great deal from fellow Imperial Agent Daemon Kraspen, who was her co-agent on several missions. Thus began a long ongoing trolling where Iphe relentlessly prodded at the slightest emotional reaction from Daemon. At the age of fourteen she became the go-to agent and tech specialist for the young Sith Idare Ulally, who quickly became extremely fond of her. She found his concern amusing, and teased him about it relentlessly, poking and prodding at all his displays of affection.
During her teenage years, as Intelligence began falling into confusion and disarray, Iphe took advantage of the situation to begin hunting down her kill switch. She gathered information slowly over the years, but could only make so much progress without alerting her superiors. To that end, she eventually made contact with a defected Imperial Agent turned master of Port Nowhere, Leto Kallig.
Iphe offered the information broker insider info on ImpInt, and in turn he helped her narrow down her search for the kill switch. They were an unstoppable pair of stealth operatives and slicers. But Leto was a walking emotional disaster after the trauma he endured as an Imperial Agent, all thinly hidden under an abrupt, stoic veneer. Iphe couldn’t resist reopening those old wounds – he was fascinating to her for all the wrong reasons. At the same time, Leto found some terrible comfort in lashing out at a person he could not actually emotionally scar. Iphe’s taunts turned into a cruel form of flirtation, and things escalated. Basically, Leto found new ways to get her to stop talking.
Eventually, they managed to steal Iphe’s kill switch. Iphe gave it to Leto. He angrily told her that he wanted nothing to do with it – but kept it, and faithfully reset the switch every month to keep her alive. Iphe was gradually realizing that she had a strange fondness for Leto that she didn’t understand. Instead of just observing him, she found herself wanting specifically to see him smile, or laugh, or sleep peacefully for once. But she kept it under wraps, knowing that Leto would not respond well to any sign of tenderness on her part. She stepped between Leto and an SIS scattergun blast during a mission, and carried the spiral puckered scar for the rest of her life. Leto’s gaze would drift to it from time to time, though neither wanted to talk about it.
During the search for her kill switch, Iphe encountered Loren Luz II, who had heard rumors that Imperial Intelligence used his mother’s genes to produce something that could vaguely be defined as his sister. He wanted to make her a part of the family; she found his knife phobia adorable and his emotional investment in her well being to be ridiculous. But endlessly amusing. Unfortunately, Loren II’s knife wounds were brought to the attention of Guileta Luz, who was far less forgiving. The Jedi Master intervened to keep Iphe from harming their brother again.
In their confrontation, Guileta used the force to throw a bevy of emotions at Iphe – regret, repentance, sorrow, and longing – so that she could understand what Loren II was feeling every time he looked at her. What Guileta didn’t realize was just how unprepared the agent was for the sudden influx of feelings she had not had access to for her entire adult life.
Iphe promptly stumbled back, vomited, and ran from the scene, laughing and crying at the same time.
She returned to Port Nowhere and Leto patched up her physical injuries, but everything had changed and they both knew it. Iphe stayed with Leto for a time, realizing she loved him and hoping he didn’t come to the same conclusion. But after one too many tender moments, he sent her away. For her own good, or so the story went.
In her new emotional state, Iphe found herself reliving much of her previous life in her sleep – moments of cruelty she now understood, times when she had ended lives or betrayed marks or what have you, all while finally comprehending the pain she had caused.
Her main sources of comfort during this time were her old friends – Cae’Sera and Idare, and Daemon Kraspen (who eventually defected and became a member of the Luz family). She also eventually reconciled with Loren II. Later, she sought out Loren Fidelis Luz – and he [as he so often did] practically adopted her.
She continued to love Leto from a distance, even as he slowly replaced his limbs with cybernetics and withdrew further and further into his agent games. She tried to call him back from the edge several times, but he never quite heard her. Eventually he got involved in a deadly competition with SIS Agent Cyrus Hargrave, and in the end he lost his life.
Iphe returned to Port Nowhere and made herself at home again while she waited for her killswitch timer to tick down the last days of her life. But when the day arrived, instead of dying, she received a posthumous message from Leto, set to play if he failed to check in on her switch. He informed her that he had modified the switch so it no longer required the regular check in to keep her alive, but by that point it had become habit. So he turned it into his deadman switch instead. The last words on the recording were: “You are free now to live as you please. … And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”
And she responded, alone on Port Nowhere, “For what it’s worth, I’m not.”
Iphe returned to the Ulallies and continued being a devoted ‘Aunt’ to their young children. She also tracked down and eventually befriended Cyrus Hargrave and his mentor, the outlaw Velessar. She made her living as an expert slicer and phantom operative, spending only as much as she needed to maintain her physique and equipment and giving the rest to her loved ones and god children. Eventually, at the age of 35, she was cut down while defending Cae’Sera and Idare’s children from a sith attack on their home.
Personality: In the early years of her life and career, Iphe’s personality was driven almost entirely by detached and amoral curiosity. She had little to live for other than her own amusement, and was known to poke and prod at any emotional wound a poor slob left exposed. Wickedly clever but untouched. She was fascinated by emotional pain and turmoil, and when she couldn’t find it naturally occurring, she wasn’t above causing it.
Iphe’s personality took a dramatic turn after Guileta force-fed emotions directly to her brain. She became sharply aware of the pain of others and spent long nights reliving all the misery she had caused before she knew what she was doing. She became a somber but far gentler woman, withdrawn, quiet, careful. She still showed sparks of her old humor, but with lines of care in her face that spoke of knowledge hard earned through suffering and repentance.
Other Facts:
Project I initially had no set name – the name Iphigenia was given to her by Keeper, after he discovered that he was perhaps the closest thing she had to a father. He may have also leaked certain information about her kill switch to Leto Kallig, in the hopes that Iphe would find the switch and escape the brutal and cold environment that had created her.
Though Iphe didn’t feel or completely understand emotion herself, she was a talented mimic and manipulator. Her big blue eyes and sweet dimpled smile ingratiated her to many eventual assassination targets.
After Leto’s death, Iphe slowly began to act more and more like him: more ghostly, more silent, more withdrawn. This was in some respects a part of her coming to terms with the things she had done in Imperial Intelligence, and partially a means of staying close to him after his death.
Iphe and Leto were both devoted to the Ulally children, and every life day they used to participate in the play the three kids had written. Generally the Ulallys used this as an excuse to try to Parent Trap the two into getting together, for maximum awkwardness on both sides.
When Leto died, Iphe knew that he was the more cunning agent – which meant that, for whatever reason, Leto had chosen to die rather than killing Cyrus Hargrave. She went and found the man who had killed Leto, befriended him, and kept him alive in honor of that choice.
Loren Fidelis was born to the wealthy Corellian Luz family of starship engineers and manufacturers. He was an only child, and his parents drove into him the ideals of duty, hard work, and delayed gratification. They had hoped he would become another engineer, like his mother (for whom he was named). But all that changed forever when the Great Galactic War began.
Loren enlisted immediately. He was twenty years old, full of determination and promise. He made a name for himself as a fighter pilot, but he also served with distinction as a marine. He was eventually recruited as an explosives expert for Infantry Unit 326 (later Havoc Squad) under the command of Jace Malcom. He was deeply attached to his fellow soldiers, and unprepared for the carnage of war. With each companion he lost he gained more of a death wish. After five years of fighting the Sith, he threw himself on an enemy grenade to save his squadmates. But then he received what seemed to be a fate worse than death: he survived, was promoted to Lieutenant, and given an honorable discharge.
Loren had been prepared to die for the Republic, but he didn’t know how to live as a civilian. He made half-hearted attempts at physical therapy and at first refused cybernetic implants for his missing fingers, crippled leg, and mangled face. But at one of his parents’ society parties he encountered the twi’lek Paldo Vrin, Senator for Corellia, who was celebrating his second unopposed election this season. Speaking with the other guests, Loren learned that the man was unsupportive of the Republic’s efforts, corrupt even by Corellian standards, and a rumored war profiteer. But no one was foolish enough to oppose him.
Loren suddenly dove into his recovery. Two months later he was campaigning against Vrin and gaining huge popular support as a war hero and fresh new face for Corellia. But it wasn’t enough. He lost the election with 40 percent of the vote. Still, the soldier in Loren was reengaged, and he was determined to knock Vrin out of his corrupt chair. He began investigating Vrin’s funding and campaign structure, searching for evidence he could bring before the senate to force an impeachment.
During this investigation he met the wildcard Captain Ophera, an ace pilot who had been smuggling goods for Vrin. Though they had a confusing and violent first meeting, Loren eventually convinced the Captain to help him expose Vrin and end his war profiteering as a means of atoning for the crimes she had committed. Many bloody warehouses, backroom deals, and police-chases later, the Senate was impeaching Vrin on Loren’s evidence, and Ophera was outfitting her starship with brand new LuzTech engines.
Loren easily won the election that followed and dove into life as a statesman. Whenever he ran into trouble, Captain Ophera inevitably came back to his side to clean up assassins, safely shuttle important diplomats, and remind him of why the Sith needed to be defeated.
They loved each other. Too much. But the Captain would never leave her starship, and Loren was duty-bound to serve the Republic and Corellia as a Senator. They fought and made up and teased and saved and hurt each other for years. He asked her to marry him twice, and twice she refused. But years later, when Ophera discovered she was pregnant, she decided to keep the child (Loren Luz II) and raise it shipside.
A year after his son was born, Balmorran diplomats approached Loren with a proposition. To ensure a Republic defense of Balmorra, they wanted Loren (as a now-famous figure in galactic politics) to marry into one of the Balmorran Oligarch families. They informed him that he would be doing the Republic a great service by marrying the beautiful heiress Sabine Traken, a weapons development genius and about as close to a princess of Balmorra as they could get.
Loren visited Captain Ophera on her ship one last time. He asked her to marry him. She refused.
The Senator came to Balmorra and courted Sabine. A marriage was arranged. Loren couldn’t shake the feeling that he was betraying Sabine. After all, he was a crippled and scar-faced man in his early thirties, who walked with a cane, had a son by another woman, and… still loved his Captain. She was a beautiful, clever woman of wealth and taste, with a long and promising career ahead of her. Surely she could have chosen a better life partner. But she was twenty one, and certainly old enough to make her own decisions. And she agreed to marry him.
He tried to fulfill all his duties—sending gifts and books to his son, serving the republic, supporting his wife in her efforts to establish a new life on Coruscant. And he began to care very deeply for Sabine, even though he couldn’t quite force Ophera out of his heart. He and Sabine had a child three years after they were married: Guileta Luz. Her birth brought her parents together, and though the war raged on and the life of a Senator was never easy, he was content. He had never seen Sabine so attentive and vivacious as when she was teaching their daughter. Four years later, Sabine was pregnant again, and Loren felt as though their family would be complete with this new addition.
But then Guileta began having strange visions and moving furniture with her mind. Sabine was horrified, and determined to hide the fact that her daughter was force-sensitive. She was not willing to lose her child, not even to an order as noble as the Jedi. But it was impossible to hide a force sensitive child living right next to the Jedi Temple. And when Guileta was discovered, Loren did nothing to stop the Jedi from taking her away. The loss of her daughter sent Sabine into labor early, and she gave birth to their second child. Sabine demanded that the girl be tested for force sensitivity before she would even be willing to hold her. His wife couldn’t bear the thought of growing close to another child only to lose her again. And sure enough, the Jedi found the girl to be force sensitive. She was taken away immediately; Loren barely had time to name her before the Jedi departed the hospital. He called her Eli’Zan.
His marriage ravaged by the loss of their children, Loren threw himself into politics. But the war was growing darker, and allies and enemies grew harder to distinguish. When his old friend Harron Tavus needed safe passage through the war zone of Karideph, there was only one person Loren knew he could trust to bring the Republic strike team behind enemy lines. He called on Captain Ophera for what he promised would be the last time. After much persuasion, she agreed to do him this one last favor. Her ship was shot down by imperial agents while she provided covering fire for Tavus and Jedi Master Orgus Din.
By this point their son, Loren II, was ten years old. The Senator hadn’t seen him in person for years. When they met for Captain Ophera’s memorial ceremony, Loren was desperate to care and provide for his son, the one child he had left in the galaxy. But it was clear the boy despised him, and blamed him for his mother’s death. And Sabine clearly resented the fact that young Loren would receive all the resources and affection that they were not allowed to show to her daughters. Less than two months later, the boy disappeared into the underworld of Coruscant. Loren scoured the underworld for him, but couldn’t find a trace.
With all of his children gone, his first love dead, and his wife coldly wrapped in her grief, Loren focused on the only thing he had left: the Republic. He grew a beard to cover his scars and received cybernetic implants to replace his missing fingers. The Republic transitioned into a cold war—a state that matched Loren’s war-worn heart.
Personality: Loren Fidelis prefers immediate action to words, open dialogue to mind games, and total war to subterfuge. He is, however, adept with both ends of the spectrum. His career choice has worn his soldier edges down and turned him into a calculating, sharp-minded diplomat and statesman. But he still knows the difference between genuine kindness and niceties; he finds that harsh truths are often the kindest gift he can give in a galaxy full of sycophants and flatterers. While his occupation requires a certain amount of no-nonsense social savoir-faire about galactic politics, to his friends he is gentle, generous, and achingly open-hearted. In his own way, he can charm with the best of them; his son got those flirtation skills from both parents. Loren has always taken his duties seriously, as a son, a soldier, a senator, and so on. He has a sense of humor about it—though his jokes tended toward graveyard comedy after he enlisted—but he never let anything keep him from doing what was expected of him. The greatest conflicts of his life have been when his sense of duty struggled with his compassion.
Loren has always striven to put the Republic’s needs ahead of his own. The high price he has paid over the years in service to that ideal has grayed his hair but never frayed his resolve.
Other Facts:
Loren usually starts a first encounter with a joke about being a scar-faced cyborg cripple. It addresses the elephant in the room, and whether or not the person laughs tells Loren a lot about him/her.
He searched desperately for his son for years after the boy ran away. Several Imperial agents used the promise of a lead on Loren II’s location in an attempt to bribe the Corellian senator. He hated himself for not taking those bribes.
Though it was arranged, and Loren was still in love with Captain Ophera when they were married, he did learn to love his wife, Sabine. He realized it after Guileta was born. But he gave up any hope of Sabine returning his feelings after he agreed to send their daughters away to the Jedi. The gulf between them has seemed impassable ever since.
When he first became a senator, he wore his facial scars proudly and did nothing to hide the missing fingers on his right hand. After the Sacking of Coruscant and the beginning of the Cold War, he grew a beard to cover his scars and began wearing gloves to conceal his injuries. It didn’t seem like the time to rattle sabers when so many people were in need of aid and relief after the war.
SWTOR Character Profiles: Captain Opherin/ Loren Luz
Name: Loren Luz II
Nickname: Lor, Captain Opherin/ Captain Lorne/Captain Quickdraw, and about a thousand other aliases as necessary/entertaining. “Captain Oaf” is a favorite of his close friends.
Class/Role: Smuggler/ Gunslinger (dps)
Relationship Status: tattooed hands that match a certain jedi murderball's four pointed star.
Relatives: Senator Loren Fidelis Luz I (father), Captain Ophera (mother), Sabine Traken-Luz (stepmother), Guileta Luz (half-sister), Eli’Zan Luz (half-sister)
History: Son of the ace pilot Captain Ophera and the Corellian Senator and war hero Loren Fidelis Luz, Loren II was born adrift in a sea of stars. He always felt more at home in hyperspace than anywhere else, and was learning starship maintenance, piloting, and galactic trade routes before he could spell. Raised by his single mother with a crew of shiftless spacers, Loren learned quickly to love strange, eccentric people and the oddities of the galaxy. He was taught to seek freedom over blind service, clever tactics over brute force, and loyalty to people rather than ideals.
He remembers his early childhood like some far-away dream; his mother’s teasing affection and constant warmth, the endless parade of faces (human and alien) that joined their ship and expanded their family. He even has some happy memories of holo-calls and meetings with his Father, though those memories are tainted now.
When he was ten, his mother left him behind for the first time in his life. Though she tried to keep it secret, Loren overheard that this mission of hers was a favor for his father—something about carrying high-value targets behind enemy lines. And when she didn’t return, heartbroken Loren felt that the senator had betrayed and murdered his mother. After her memorial service, Loren threw her Senatorial Medal of Service back in his father’s face.
He spent two miserable months with Senator Luz and his wife, Sabine Traken-Luz, a beautiful but cold woman who seemed to hate him for no reason. Loren decided that she was simply jealous of the senator’s affair with his mother, and the two engaged in endless spiteful banter whenever they were forced into the same room. He could tell that his father wanted to make amends and to raise him well, but life on Coruscant was wretched, lonely, cramped, and bitter compared with the life he’d known with his mother. Loren ran away as soon as he knew how to evade the Senator’s body guards, hiding with several of Ophera’s old contacts to evade his father.
He soon had opportunity to regret his decision; the Mandalorians blockaded Coruscant just before young Loren could book passage off world. Lack of food drove Coruscant’s underworld into chaos. The old crew member Loren was staying with was shot over a black market deal, and Loren found himself a street urchin in the starving underbelly of the Republic’s capital. He made money where he could, running packages, spying for various gangs, and modding weapons with the armstech knowledge his mother had given him. He gathered together and cared for a rag-tag troupe of fellow orphans, though he was only an orphan by choice. When food stuffs were particularly desperate, he would lead them up to the Jedi Temple, where acolytes and padawans would ration out handouts for the needy. During these visits he befriended a Twi’lek named Neyara, an administrator at the temple. He had a hopeless crush on the compassionate young woman, who went out of her way to care and provide for his crew of misfits.
When Hylo Visz broke the Mandalorian blockade and her ships descended like angels, full of food and medical supplies, Loren knew he needed to leave Coruscant behind forever. He left his orphan companions in Neyara’s care and earned a place as cabin boy, arms technician, and general ship-savant on one of the victorious smuggler crews. He saved every credit from every gun he made, every delivery they ran, and every sabaac game he won. Loren wanted his own starship, and nothing in the galaxy was going to stop him. A short seven years later and many adventures later, he’d earned the credits necessary to purchase a Corellian XS freighter—the same model as his mother’s lost vessel. He couldn’t wait to return to Coruscant and thank Neyara in person for her encouragement over the years and the care she had given his ground-bound friends in his absence.
But then the Sith struck Coruscant. Loren arrived mere days after the carnage of the Sacking, and the capitol was in shambles. None of his street friends had survived, and there was no sign of Neyara amongst the Jedi aid workers. He knew that if she were alive, she would have been among them.
While he was in the city, Loren took on a job searching the rubble of the Jedi Temple for supplies, relics, and abandoned weapons—the usual underworld goods. But he found something else entirely. Poking through the ruins, he discovered a still-active console with access to the Jedi Temple’s archives and personnel data. He searched through for information on Neyara, and was astounded to find that she had been a mentor to a girl named Guileta Luz. Loren searched the archives further and found another name: Eli’Zan Luz. Their documentation and holo-profiles confirmed his suspicions. He had half-sisters among the Jedi.
Loren had just lost so many friends in the blink of an eye. He was desperate for a family to fill the fresh void in his heart. He had to find his sisters, and he knew the one woman who could point him toward them. The problem was that she hated him. But Sabine Traken-Luz hadn’t seen him in eight years, and probably thought he was dead. Putting on his best senate-aide disguise, Loren infiltrated the Senate Tower to speak with his stepmother about her Jedi daughters.
Unfortunately, he over-estimated his acting abilities. She realized who he was within five minutes, but he still managed to weasel what he needed out of the surprised and outraged woman. His sisters had survived the Sacking of Coruscant; they were with the other Jedi on Tython. Loren ran into his father just as he was leaving Sabine’s rooms; Senator Luz fell into tears of joy at the sight of his son, alive and well and full grown. But Loren was still spitefully unwilling to reconcile with his father, and he bolted out of the tower.
Loren took a job for the Jedi Order, shipping supplies and salvaged artifacts from Coruscant to Tython; the whole thing was just a cover so he could infiltrate the new Temple and find his sisters. And perhaps the Force was guiding him, because he found Guileta and Eli’Zan in the first hour after he arrived. 18-year-old Loren charmed his baby sisters instantly with his jokes and gifts and stories of the galaxy. Guileta, aged fourteen, was a bit more reserved, though Loren was one of very few people who could make her smile touch her eyes. Eli’Zan, on the other hand, loved her brother with reckless abandon, and was overjoyed whenever he visited afterward (always in various disguises, mostly for the sake of making his sisters laugh).
Loren took to the stars, taking lovers and making friends across the galaxy as his mother had before him. His incredible aim and crackerjack reflexes got him out of the scrapes his smart mouth got him into. He was constantly evading his father’s attempts to end their estrangement whilst trying to make a name for himself as a heroic spacer captain. As he continued his travels, he found himself drawn to the plight of refugees from the various assaults of the Sith Empire. He has thoroughly outfitted his Freighter as a nimble getaway vehicle, and spends most of his time rescuing helpless parties from the midst of the Republic/Imperial conflict.
Personality: Loren is a rake and a show-off, constantly making smart remarks. He’s a lover of life: good food, good company, finely-tuned hyperdrives… the usual stuff. And he’s a sucker for a sob story—somebody in this crazy galaxy has to stick up for the little guy. In his mind, the galaxy takes itself too seriously, and everyone—sith, troopers, jedi, the whole lot—should take a step back and laugh at themselves. But he’s honestly a bit of a sad clown. The death of his mother and perceived-betrayal by his father (not to mention the hatred of his stepmother) weigh heavily on his heart. He’s determined to look for the good in people anyway, but he can only crack another bitter joke when his cynical suspicions are confirmed. Loren would rather laugh at his enemies than waste time with hate, but there are lines you shouldn’t cross with him. Slavery is a big no no. So is xenophobia. Murdering innocents, too—whether you’re a sith lord or a republic official making a ‘difficult call.’
Other Facts:
Almost all of Loren’s childhood heroes and major influences were women. Most of his close friends are also women (and many of them Jedi to boot). This doesn’t stop him from being a shameless flirt, though. He likes to mix things up.
Loren actually likes being named for his Grandmother. It’s the fact that he shares the name with his father that made him take an alias. He tends to introduce himself as Opherin, only letting close friends in on the family name.
Because of Neyara and his sisters, Loren loves teasing Jedi and trying to pull them out of their code-mandated serenity. He’s very good at pressing force-sensitive buttons.
For Loren, crew is family. Expect him to be a relentless tease/nag/well-meaning busybody from the moment you join up.
