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My first draft is complete! I'm quite happy with how it turned out. Right now, anyway.
[beebox4=650px]
Once, what feels like a lifetime ago, Kira was the child of poor parents on Kuat, destined to spend her life doing tedious, boring and dangerous jobs for minimal pay. Once, she was the kind of person that cared so much about credits and what they could do for her that she was bold enough to leave Kuat and make her own way in the galaxy.
Before coming to Ziost and experiencing what she describes as "enlightenment," Kira was a merciless, savage mercenary lacking in any kind of morals and willing to do almost any job given to her, provided the credits were worth the risk. She killed, extorted, tortured, pirated and guarded, so long as she got paid adequately. And if she wasn't paid well enough, then she simply took what she wanted by force. Once, in a different life, she did not understand what it meant to be enlightened.
In truth, that time was not so long ago. Under a year ago, in fact (or only a couple years, I haven't decided.) Now, however, she is a changed woman. Some would say an enlightened woman, whereas others would say a corrupted and twisted woman. Kira is one of the most devout worshipers and followers of the Sith in existence. Well, that she is aware of. She would assert that she is the single most loyal and devout follower they possess, even going so far as to give herself the title of Priestess of the Sith.
These days, Kira's life revolves around the Sith and her devout belief in them. She is the epitome of what she thinks a believer should be. She holds services that the faithful may attend, holding sermons and giving offerings of blood to the beings she worships as gods via the use of an altar in a makeshift church. These offerings are rarely more than the cutting of a hand or arm so that it bleeds onto the altar. Never fatal and never removing the limb. Usually she uses her own blood, but occasionally will allow a member of the faithful to volunteer. On very rare occasions, Kira has been known to sacrifice a living being to the Sith. This is often a willing volunteer, but she longs for the day when she has the chance to sacrifice a living Jedi on her altar.
Kira was born on Kuat to a pair of poverty-stricken humans that worked at a nearby holding of the Kuat Drive Yards. They worked extremely hard all day and made next to nothing for their efforts. While her parents were working, Kira spent her childhood getting up to no good. Her mother was forced to hand her off to some neighbours during the day, since she had to work in order for them to be able to afford to live. Kira was not the easiest child to handle, however. From the moment she knew how to crawl she was a terror. She touched things she shouldn't be touching; she sneaked away from her caretakers to go find something interesting to do; she drew all over the walls and generally made a mess; and she hated being told what to do.
Perhaps this is why it was so easy for her to sneak away when she was a child. Her neighbours agreed to look after her while her parents were working, but perhaps they just didn't care very much. They had more pressing issues to deal with than the bratty kid of the couple next door. And so they turned a blind eye whenever she did something bad, so long as that bad thing wasn't done to them or anything they owned. She thought she was being sneaky, but she never once got punished by them for sneaking out to go run around the city and play with the neighbourhood kids. It was a rough life, but the freedom and control it gave her were too good for her to ever want to give it up. Regardless of the amount of times the older kids stole her hard-earned credits from her, it was all worth it in her small, childlike eyes. The freedom to do what she wanted when she wanted, which she had convinced herself was won when she successfully sneaked out of her caretaker's house, drove her like nothing else.
Throughout her childhood, Kira was quick to learn the value of credits. For her, the value was most often whatever she was willing to do to acquire them, followed by whatever she was willing to take in order to keep them. She beat up younger kids and stole credits and items from them countless times. In turn, she was beaten up and any items she hadn't hidden were taken from her by older kids, who were in turn beaten up by adults, who were in turn beaten up by other adults, and so on. Kira has her fair share of old, barely visible scars from her time as a child. All things considered, she came out of it quite well. No broken bones and no permanent injuries. Just scratches, cuts, bruises and an often-injured ego.
The life of the poor was not a kind one, and Kira's own experiences instilled in her a yearning for something more. In her idealised imaginings, there would one day be a time when she would have as many credits as she pleased. She would be able to spend them on whatever she pleased and no one would be able to take them away from her. But that was just a fantasy. She would later realise that the galaxy doesn't work that way. One day she would come to the realisation that her experiences as a child were a very base and primitive version of what life is actually like. But before she could come to that realisation, she first needed to grow up and get off Kuat, for even as a child she knew she didn't want to spend her entire life working in some dirty, dangerous factory. Nor did she want to spend her life on the streets of her home city, beating up teens and other adults for the pitiful amounts of credits and valuable items they had on them. No, Kira had bigger dreams than that.
When her parents found out that she'd negotiated passage off world, they weren't anywhere near as distraught as she thought they would be when she told them. She'd expected tears, yelling and refusals to let her go. The then-fifteen year old Kira, however, underestimated the crushing weight of having to pay for three people instead of just two. Her parents very much supported her choice to leave. They made remarks about how they were so happy she was getting out of the life they were stuck in; about how they wished above all else that she wouldn't have to live the way they did. Although these words were true and they did want the best for her, they also wanted the best for themselves, and having one less person to feed and clothe would make their life a lot easier.
After Kira left Kuat, she never returned. To this very day she hasn't been back. At first she considered sending some of the credits she made back home to her parents, but quickly decided against it. They were her hard-earned reward and were a result of the decision she'd made to improve her station in life. Her parents had made their choice long ago, and had long ago come to terms with it.
The details of Kytana's negotiations with the ship captain that had agreed to give her passage off world were simple. She would serve on his ship, doing basic things like cleaning and manual labour. After about a month on the ship, the captain decided she had more potential than he'd thought. She was fast, had a good pair of eyes on her and learned quickly. And so, one of the times when they stopped off at Nar Shaddaa, he took her off the ship and to a shady weapons merchants. He told her that if she was to be a full member of his crew and not just the kid he kept around to clean things so he didn't have to, then she'd have to know how to use a blaster. On top of that, she'd also have to know how to fix any issues a ship may have. But the weapon came first.
He paid for it - on the condition that she pay him back out of her wage, which she would now be receiving as a full member of the crew - and let her choose whatever weapon took her fancy. In the end she chose a blaster rifle with a medium range, which could extend to long if you put a scope on it. The merchant made sure to inform her that its range was still nothing like a proper sniper rifle, but it would out-range most standard issue blaster rifles. As merchants do, he also played the weapon up when he saw she was interested in it, trying to convince her that it had no short-comings. Good ammunition capacity with hard-hitting blaster bolts that could penetrate any armour in just one or two hits; superior range to most weapons; well made and sure to last a lifetime. She didn't believe him, of course. It was in his best interest to talk up every aspect of his merchandise, so although she knew nothing about weaponry, she did know that he was full of it. She still bought it, though, along with a blaster pistol she convinced her captain she'd need along with it.
Kira spent multiple years on that ship. They did everything from smuggling to piracy, and made quite a tidy profit from it. The captain took the lion's share of the loot, of course, but Kira got paid a tidy sum to keep her happy. It was only when she was approached by an enemy of her captain's that she realised how much he'd been ripping her off. What was a tidy sum of money to her was in fact next to nothing, which this man was more than happy to explain to her in great detail. Knowing this, she agreed immediately when he made her an offer. For a large sum of credits - half of her captain's current stash of credits, plus a ten percent bonus for "being so cooperative" - she would disable the ship's security cameras and let this man and his crew on board, where they would then proceed to kill the captain and every member of the crew that wasn't her.
At the time Kira was only eighteen, and still quite inexperienced. She'd let this man rip her off big time, for when she'd done as he asked, he took her former captain's ship and sold it. The amount of credits she'd gained was nothing in comparison to that. There was nothing she could do about it, though. Except learn. Everything, regardless of how it seemed at the time, was a potential lesson. That was how she'd seen things and how she survived. She learned and adapted quickly, and as a result she survived. Even at this moment, stranded on Nar Shaddaa with no ship, no crew mates and no friends, she learned. The first thing she did was buy herself some armour. If she was to not only make a living, but to thrive and become rich, she would need armour to go along with her blaster rifle and blaster pistol.
Over the next few years, Kira made something of a name for herself. At first it was simply as "that rookie that somehow didn't die in that firefight" and other such things, as her peers marveled at her luck. A rookie with some weapons training but no combat experience somehow managing to survive the deadly underbelly of the galaxy was intriguing to some. Intriguing enough that she managed to acquire quite a few jobs over the years. She wasn't picky. Bounty hunting; security for both ships and establishments on planets; assassination. Anything that she could do without her own ship and without her own crew.
She didn't join another crew again. She'd learned her lesson and decided that if she was going to be part of a ship crew it would be as the captain. She did join an organisation, though, and through this went against her own word, for during her years as a member of this organisation, she spent time on many different ships, partaking in piracy, bounty hunting, security, armed escort, extortion and many other things. She spent four years with this outfit, partaking in many different criminal activities. It was through this organisation that she first encountered the Sith. Or rather, the criminals and mercenaries that worked for the Sith.
Even now she doesn't regret her actions when she first encountered them. She killed them, stole from them and intimidated them every chance she got. She saw them as enemies and as rivals, and as such took every opportunity to beat them down. Her outlook only changed when she heard a couple of her comrades discussing how much those criminals and mercenaries got paid. That one thing caught her attention more than anything else, and thinking back, it did make sense. They had always had more on their ships and on their persons than anyone in her outfit. Now, at twenty-six years of age, Kira considered herself a veteran. She considered herself more than experienced enough to handle negotiations with a rival faction, especially when she came offering her services.
Not everything went smoothly, though. Someone picked up on her plans and followed her to the meeting place she'd organised with a contact she had, who in turn had gotten her in touch with who she needed to speak to. Luckily for her, her former comrades arrived late. By the time they arrived to the meeting place, both her contact and the woman he'd brought with him had left. She still remained, though, and if they couldn't foil her attempt to betray them, they could at least kill her. There were only two of them, though, and after she injured one they both fled like cowards.
Everything else went quite smoothly, and after a handful of jobs to prove herself, Kira was being sent to Ziost, where she was told something called the Sacred Band of Ziost lived. It was on this planet that her transformation truly happened. During the month she'd spent with her new outfit not much had changed other than an increased amount of credits. But here? On this planet? Here she discovered the truth. Over the course of her time on Ziost, as she was exposed more and more to the code and creed of the Sith, she came to realise how irrelevant and powerless she truly was. Such mundane and primitive creatures as herself had no chance of ever rivaling such powerful beings as the Sith, beings that commanded the very thing that held the galaxy together.
Kira had never been a religious person. Quite the opposite, in fact. She'd always scoffed at people that claimed to be faithful to one religion or another. On Ziost, however, something took hold of her. An idea. A very simple thought. That thought bloomed, and a beautiful, dark flower is what it became. Over the course of nine months Kira underwent a transformation; what she calls an "enlightenment." She took off her armour, put away her blasters and invested herself in the ideals and beliefs of the Sith. In time, she came to view them not as mere mortals with a special gift. She came to view them as gods themselves, with the Dark Side of the Force being not their superior, but their heavenly tool.
Now, at the age of twenty-seven, the dark flower that bloomed in Kira's mind has fully grown and fully come to fruition. To her, it is a beautiful and wonderful thing to behold. Now she sees herself not as a mere member of the Sacred Band of Ziost, but as the Priestess of the Sith. As the link between the powerful beings she views as gods and the mere mortals that she claims to guide. She performs rituals and services; gives offerings and praise; provides insight and advice for the faithful when they need it. She now very much sees herself as the leader and guide of the more devout and faithful sections of the Sacred Band. And not even once has she wondered what the people she knew before would think if they could see her now.
Some kind of mid-long range blaster rifle
Mediumish armour from her time as a mercenary
Probably a blaster pistol of some kind
Other things
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KIRA TANATA
NAME KIRA TANATA AGE 27 FACTION SACRED BAND OF ZIOST
NAME KIRA TANATA AGE 27 FACTION SACRED BAND OF ZIOST
Personality
Once, what feels like a lifetime ago, Kira was the child of poor parents on Kuat, destined to spend her life doing tedious, boring and dangerous jobs for minimal pay. Once, she was the kind of person that cared so much about credits and what they could do for her that she was bold enough to leave Kuat and make her own way in the galaxy.
Before coming to Ziost and experiencing what she describes as "enlightenment," Kira was a merciless, savage mercenary lacking in any kind of morals and willing to do almost any job given to her, provided the credits were worth the risk. She killed, extorted, tortured, pirated and guarded, so long as she got paid adequately. And if she wasn't paid well enough, then she simply took what she wanted by force. Once, in a different life, she did not understand what it meant to be enlightened.
In truth, that time was not so long ago. Under a year ago, in fact (or only a couple years, I haven't decided.) Now, however, she is a changed woman. Some would say an enlightened woman, whereas others would say a corrupted and twisted woman. Kira is one of the most devout worshipers and followers of the Sith in existence. Well, that she is aware of. She would assert that she is the single most loyal and devout follower they possess, even going so far as to give herself the title of Priestess of the Sith.
These days, Kira's life revolves around the Sith and her devout belief in them. She is the epitome of what she thinks a believer should be. She holds services that the faithful may attend, holding sermons and giving offerings of blood to the beings she worships as gods via the use of an altar in a makeshift church. These offerings are rarely more than the cutting of a hand or arm so that it bleeds onto the altar. Never fatal and never removing the limb. Usually she uses her own blood, but occasionally will allow a member of the faithful to volunteer. On very rare occasions, Kira has been known to sacrifice a living being to the Sith. This is often a willing volunteer, but she longs for the day when she has the chance to sacrifice a living Jedi on her altar.
Biography
Kira was born on Kuat to a pair of poverty-stricken humans that worked at a nearby holding of the Kuat Drive Yards. They worked extremely hard all day and made next to nothing for their efforts. While her parents were working, Kira spent her childhood getting up to no good. Her mother was forced to hand her off to some neighbours during the day, since she had to work in order for them to be able to afford to live. Kira was not the easiest child to handle, however. From the moment she knew how to crawl she was a terror. She touched things she shouldn't be touching; she sneaked away from her caretakers to go find something interesting to do; she drew all over the walls and generally made a mess; and she hated being told what to do.
Perhaps this is why it was so easy for her to sneak away when she was a child. Her neighbours agreed to look after her while her parents were working, but perhaps they just didn't care very much. They had more pressing issues to deal with than the bratty kid of the couple next door. And so they turned a blind eye whenever she did something bad, so long as that bad thing wasn't done to them or anything they owned. She thought she was being sneaky, but she never once got punished by them for sneaking out to go run around the city and play with the neighbourhood kids. It was a rough life, but the freedom and control it gave her were too good for her to ever want to give it up. Regardless of the amount of times the older kids stole her hard-earned credits from her, it was all worth it in her small, childlike eyes. The freedom to do what she wanted when she wanted, which she had convinced herself was won when she successfully sneaked out of her caretaker's house, drove her like nothing else.
Throughout her childhood, Kira was quick to learn the value of credits. For her, the value was most often whatever she was willing to do to acquire them, followed by whatever she was willing to take in order to keep them. She beat up younger kids and stole credits and items from them countless times. In turn, she was beaten up and any items she hadn't hidden were taken from her by older kids, who were in turn beaten up by adults, who were in turn beaten up by other adults, and so on. Kira has her fair share of old, barely visible scars from her time as a child. All things considered, she came out of it quite well. No broken bones and no permanent injuries. Just scratches, cuts, bruises and an often-injured ego.
The life of the poor was not a kind one, and Kira's own experiences instilled in her a yearning for something more. In her idealised imaginings, there would one day be a time when she would have as many credits as she pleased. She would be able to spend them on whatever she pleased and no one would be able to take them away from her. But that was just a fantasy. She would later realise that the galaxy doesn't work that way. One day she would come to the realisation that her experiences as a child were a very base and primitive version of what life is actually like. But before she could come to that realisation, she first needed to grow up and get off Kuat, for even as a child she knew she didn't want to spend her entire life working in some dirty, dangerous factory. Nor did she want to spend her life on the streets of her home city, beating up teens and other adults for the pitiful amounts of credits and valuable items they had on them. No, Kira had bigger dreams than that.
When her parents found out that she'd negotiated passage off world, they weren't anywhere near as distraught as she thought they would be when she told them. She'd expected tears, yelling and refusals to let her go. The then-fifteen year old Kira, however, underestimated the crushing weight of having to pay for three people instead of just two. Her parents very much supported her choice to leave. They made remarks about how they were so happy she was getting out of the life they were stuck in; about how they wished above all else that she wouldn't have to live the way they did. Although these words were true and they did want the best for her, they also wanted the best for themselves, and having one less person to feed and clothe would make their life a lot easier.
After Kira left Kuat, she never returned. To this very day she hasn't been back. At first she considered sending some of the credits she made back home to her parents, but quickly decided against it. They were her hard-earned reward and were a result of the decision she'd made to improve her station in life. Her parents had made their choice long ago, and had long ago come to terms with it.
The details of Kytana's negotiations with the ship captain that had agreed to give her passage off world were simple. She would serve on his ship, doing basic things like cleaning and manual labour. After about a month on the ship, the captain decided she had more potential than he'd thought. She was fast, had a good pair of eyes on her and learned quickly. And so, one of the times when they stopped off at Nar Shaddaa, he took her off the ship and to a shady weapons merchants. He told her that if she was to be a full member of his crew and not just the kid he kept around to clean things so he didn't have to, then she'd have to know how to use a blaster. On top of that, she'd also have to know how to fix any issues a ship may have. But the weapon came first.
He paid for it - on the condition that she pay him back out of her wage, which she would now be receiving as a full member of the crew - and let her choose whatever weapon took her fancy. In the end she chose a blaster rifle with a medium range, which could extend to long if you put a scope on it. The merchant made sure to inform her that its range was still nothing like a proper sniper rifle, but it would out-range most standard issue blaster rifles. As merchants do, he also played the weapon up when he saw she was interested in it, trying to convince her that it had no short-comings. Good ammunition capacity with hard-hitting blaster bolts that could penetrate any armour in just one or two hits; superior range to most weapons; well made and sure to last a lifetime. She didn't believe him, of course. It was in his best interest to talk up every aspect of his merchandise, so although she knew nothing about weaponry, she did know that he was full of it. She still bought it, though, along with a blaster pistol she convinced her captain she'd need along with it.
Kira spent multiple years on that ship. They did everything from smuggling to piracy, and made quite a tidy profit from it. The captain took the lion's share of the loot, of course, but Kira got paid a tidy sum to keep her happy. It was only when she was approached by an enemy of her captain's that she realised how much he'd been ripping her off. What was a tidy sum of money to her was in fact next to nothing, which this man was more than happy to explain to her in great detail. Knowing this, she agreed immediately when he made her an offer. For a large sum of credits - half of her captain's current stash of credits, plus a ten percent bonus for "being so cooperative" - she would disable the ship's security cameras and let this man and his crew on board, where they would then proceed to kill the captain and every member of the crew that wasn't her.
At the time Kira was only eighteen, and still quite inexperienced. She'd let this man rip her off big time, for when she'd done as he asked, he took her former captain's ship and sold it. The amount of credits she'd gained was nothing in comparison to that. There was nothing she could do about it, though. Except learn. Everything, regardless of how it seemed at the time, was a potential lesson. That was how she'd seen things and how she survived. She learned and adapted quickly, and as a result she survived. Even at this moment, stranded on Nar Shaddaa with no ship, no crew mates and no friends, she learned. The first thing she did was buy herself some armour. If she was to not only make a living, but to thrive and become rich, she would need armour to go along with her blaster rifle and blaster pistol.
Over the next few years, Kira made something of a name for herself. At first it was simply as "that rookie that somehow didn't die in that firefight" and other such things, as her peers marveled at her luck. A rookie with some weapons training but no combat experience somehow managing to survive the deadly underbelly of the galaxy was intriguing to some. Intriguing enough that she managed to acquire quite a few jobs over the years. She wasn't picky. Bounty hunting; security for both ships and establishments on planets; assassination. Anything that she could do without her own ship and without her own crew.
She didn't join another crew again. She'd learned her lesson and decided that if she was going to be part of a ship crew it would be as the captain. She did join an organisation, though, and through this went against her own word, for during her years as a member of this organisation, she spent time on many different ships, partaking in piracy, bounty hunting, security, armed escort, extortion and many other things. She spent four years with this outfit, partaking in many different criminal activities. It was through this organisation that she first encountered the Sith. Or rather, the criminals and mercenaries that worked for the Sith.
Even now she doesn't regret her actions when she first encountered them. She killed them, stole from them and intimidated them every chance she got. She saw them as enemies and as rivals, and as such took every opportunity to beat them down. Her outlook only changed when she heard a couple of her comrades discussing how much those criminals and mercenaries got paid. That one thing caught her attention more than anything else, and thinking back, it did make sense. They had always had more on their ships and on their persons than anyone in her outfit. Now, at twenty-six years of age, Kira considered herself a veteran. She considered herself more than experienced enough to handle negotiations with a rival faction, especially when she came offering her services.
Not everything went smoothly, though. Someone picked up on her plans and followed her to the meeting place she'd organised with a contact she had, who in turn had gotten her in touch with who she needed to speak to. Luckily for her, her former comrades arrived late. By the time they arrived to the meeting place, both her contact and the woman he'd brought with him had left. She still remained, though, and if they couldn't foil her attempt to betray them, they could at least kill her. There were only two of them, though, and after she injured one they both fled like cowards.
Everything else went quite smoothly, and after a handful of jobs to prove herself, Kira was being sent to Ziost, where she was told something called the Sacred Band of Ziost lived. It was on this planet that her transformation truly happened. During the month she'd spent with her new outfit not much had changed other than an increased amount of credits. But here? On this planet? Here she discovered the truth. Over the course of her time on Ziost, as she was exposed more and more to the code and creed of the Sith, she came to realise how irrelevant and powerless she truly was. Such mundane and primitive creatures as herself had no chance of ever rivaling such powerful beings as the Sith, beings that commanded the very thing that held the galaxy together.
Kira had never been a religious person. Quite the opposite, in fact. She'd always scoffed at people that claimed to be faithful to one religion or another. On Ziost, however, something took hold of her. An idea. A very simple thought. That thought bloomed, and a beautiful, dark flower is what it became. Over the course of nine months Kira underwent a transformation; what she calls an "enlightenment." She took off her armour, put away her blasters and invested herself in the ideals and beliefs of the Sith. In time, she came to view them not as mere mortals with a special gift. She came to view them as gods themselves, with the Dark Side of the Force being not their superior, but their heavenly tool.
Now, at the age of twenty-seven, the dark flower that bloomed in Kira's mind has fully grown and fully come to fruition. To her, it is a beautiful and wonderful thing to behold. Now she sees herself not as a mere member of the Sacred Band of Ziost, but as the Priestess of the Sith. As the link between the powerful beings she views as gods and the mere mortals that she claims to guide. She performs rituals and services; gives offerings and praise; provides insight and advice for the faithful when they need it. She now very much sees herself as the leader and guide of the more devout and faithful sections of the Sacred Band. And not even once has she wondered what the people she knew before would think if they could see her now.
Equipment
Some kind of mid-long range blaster rifle
Mediumish armour from her time as a mercenary
Probably a blaster pistol of some kind
Other things
Armour
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