- Joined
- Sep 7, 2014
- Messages
- 532
- Reaction score
- 90
T
[fancybox4=http://i.imgur.com/zAzAK2h.png]
[/fancybox4]
[fancybox2]Age: 26 years old
Gender: Male
Species: Human
Height: 6'0" (183cm)
Weight: 200lbs (90.7kg)
Hair: Dark Brown
Eyes: Blue
Skin: Caucasian
Distinguishing Features
- The scars from a vine cat slashing him on his lower back[/fancybox2]
[fancybox2]
Appearance
Heritage and the brutal initiation of the Sacred Band both came together to make an incredibly athletic and well-muscled man. In endurance and strength alone he's no slouch and these things show in his physique. But so does hard living - with a complexion that has become scarred by bitingly cold winds and brilliantly burning sunlight. His hair is a mess for its length, but kept short - to avoid somebody grabbing it he would reason. His attire is simple and makes no disguise of who and what he is: with sturdy and reliable clothing under armor being the common daily wear.
Personality
Essja is driven and passionate - he can't hide how he feels and he is totally unafraid to speak out about those sorts of things. When he's happy he'll laugh and smile, and when he's excited he'll drum his fingers and pace about . . . even if most of what he does these days is scowl and frown. His heart is out on his sleeve to be out there for anybody to see them and he's never had any cause to see a downside to this. Of course this means he has a terrible Sabacc face, but he's never been one for gambling anyways so he's never worried about it.
'Friendship' with Essja is most often defined by just how useful you can be and what you do for him. Do you wish to be a good, long-term friend? Then make yourself useful and make sure that he has a need of whatever you can offer for a long time. Credits are a good idea. He's slow to trust. Firstly, because outsiders and strangers are trouble as a general rule. Secondly the more people he keeps near him, the more mouths can tell the Jedi where he is, the more pockets need to be lined with a cut of a job's take, and the more hands that can drive a knife into his back.
When some people hear that he fancies himself a Force hunter, they get concerned. They associate a hunter with somebody who is in it because they enjoy the chase, the pride of bagging a 'worthy' foe, and the honor in a fair hunt won. Essja isn't so morally bound and in the end he's in it to add another body to the pile and more credits in his account. The man has as much reverence to an 'honorable hunt' as anybody else who starts a fight looking to live - not. At. All. 'Fighting dirty' is really just what idealists like to call realists getting an upper hand, he would say.
Sexuality: Bisexual
Relations
[fancybox2]Force Sensitivity: No
Skills & Abilities
- Fluent in Galactic Basic
- Fluent in droidspeak
- Fluent in Mandalorian
- Passable in Twi'leki
- Extreme environment survivalist
- Trained and experienced tracker
- Trained and skilled marksman
- Trained and skilled in hand-to-hand combat
- Trained and capable pilot, in atmo and vacuum
- Trained in first-aid techniques
- Mentally disciplined to be resistant to mental manipulation through the Force
- Mentally disciplined to reduce his signature in the Force[/fancybox2]
[fancybox2]
[fancybox2]Gear
- An encrypted two-way communicator
- A datapad for sorting and handling information
- Grappling hook launcher, with cable and grapple
- A rebreather for hostile environments, or underwater
- Several sets of stun cuffs
- An auditory frequency modulator
Weapons
- Kagebō
-- Each half has been modified to have a tonfa-style grip
- A vibroknife, often kept tucked in his boot
- Harlaw heavy carbine
- Twin B-8R blaster pistols
- Mk 3 "Firespray" Pyrotechnic Munitions Devices
- SA-38G "Supernova" grenades
- MZ-99 "Smackdown" grenades
- SCKO knockout grenades
Armor
- Arbitrator P.A.K.
-- Enhanced with scatterweave weave and plate coating
-- Built-in UA-8 "Jumper" Mobility Enahncers
Vehicles
- None
Ship
- An Alabaster-class escort freighter
-- Registered, 'Destiny'
Droids
- An M-series utility/astromech droid
-- Designation, M6-F00
-- Equipped with a heavy blaster
Pets
- None
Other Properties
- None[/fancybox2]
[fancybox2]
[/fancybox2]
[fancybox2]Faction Missions
- Booked from Thyferra
-- (Open) Thread | Thread Link | OOC Link | Complete
-- The Jedi hunter is sent alongside Crius Durante to sow chaos in the Xozhixi spaceport.
- Fleeting Fools . . .
-- (Ask) Thread | Thread Link | In Progress
-- The Jedi hunter is dispatched alongside Moff Arpha to track down and deal with two Barabel Jedi.
Combat Threads
- Of Sith & Prideful Boasting
-- (Ask) Thread | Thread Link | In Progress
-- Essja makes a rather prideful boast about his fighting abilities. Darth Solum overhears him.
- Going to Hell
-- (Ask) Thread | Thread Link | In Progress
-- Essja is sent alongside Ailsa Elva Myrna and the Sith Drallic Vess to exterminate members of a Light Side cult.
Social Threads
- None
Other
- None[/fancybox2]
[fancybox2][/fancybox2]
[fancybox2][/fancybox2]
[fancybox2]Faceclaim: Tom Hardy
Speech: #e21d1d[/fancybox2]
Essja Dreytila
Faction: The Sith Brotherhood
Rank: A Brother of the Sacred Band
Homeworld: Concord Dawn
Current Residence: Transient
Faction: The Sith Brotherhood
Rank: A Brother of the Sacred Band
Homeworld: Concord Dawn
Current Residence: Transient
[/fancybox4]
[fancybox2]Age: 26 years old
Gender: Male
Species: Human
Height: 6'0" (183cm)
Weight: 200lbs (90.7kg)
Hair: Dark Brown
Eyes: Blue
Skin: Caucasian
Distinguishing Features
- The scars from a vine cat slashing him on his lower back[/fancybox2]
[fancybox2]
Heritage and the brutal initiation of the Sacred Band both came together to make an incredibly athletic and well-muscled man. In endurance and strength alone he's no slouch and these things show in his physique. But so does hard living - with a complexion that has become scarred by bitingly cold winds and brilliantly burning sunlight. His hair is a mess for its length, but kept short - to avoid somebody grabbing it he would reason. His attire is simple and makes no disguise of who and what he is: with sturdy and reliable clothing under armor being the common daily wear.
Personality
Essja is driven and passionate - he can't hide how he feels and he is totally unafraid to speak out about those sorts of things. When he's happy he'll laugh and smile, and when he's excited he'll drum his fingers and pace about . . . even if most of what he does these days is scowl and frown. His heart is out on his sleeve to be out there for anybody to see them and he's never had any cause to see a downside to this. Of course this means he has a terrible Sabacc face, but he's never been one for gambling anyways so he's never worried about it.
'Friendship' with Essja is most often defined by just how useful you can be and what you do for him. Do you wish to be a good, long-term friend? Then make yourself useful and make sure that he has a need of whatever you can offer for a long time. Credits are a good idea. He's slow to trust. Firstly, because outsiders and strangers are trouble as a general rule. Secondly the more people he keeps near him, the more mouths can tell the Jedi where he is, the more pockets need to be lined with a cut of a job's take, and the more hands that can drive a knife into his back.
When some people hear that he fancies himself a Force hunter, they get concerned. They associate a hunter with somebody who is in it because they enjoy the chase, the pride of bagging a 'worthy' foe, and the honor in a fair hunt won. Essja isn't so morally bound and in the end he's in it to add another body to the pile and more credits in his account. The man has as much reverence to an 'honorable hunt' as anybody else who starts a fight looking to live - not. At. All. 'Fighting dirty' is really just what idealists like to call realists getting an upper hand, he would say.
Sexuality: Bisexual
Relations
- Family
- Cassir Dreytila - Father - Deceased
- Nu'ada Alavi - Mother - Deceased
- Erri Dreytila - Fraternal Twin - Deceased
[fancybox2]Force Sensitivity: No
Skills & Abilities
- Fluent in Galactic Basic
- Fluent in droidspeak
- Fluent in Mandalorian
- Passable in Twi'leki
- Extreme environment survivalist
- Trained and experienced tracker
- Trained and skilled marksman
- Trained and skilled in hand-to-hand combat
- Trained and capable pilot, in atmo and vacuum
- Trained in first-aid techniques
- Mentally disciplined to be resistant to mental manipulation through the Force
- Mentally disciplined to reduce his signature in the Force[/fancybox2]
[fancybox2]
Strength
⌂⌂⌂⌂⌂⌂⌂
Dexterity
⌂⌂⌂⌂⌂⌂
Constitution
⌂⌂⌂⌂⌂⌂⌂
Intelligence
⌂⌂⌂⌂⌂⌂
Wisdom
⌂⌂⌂⌂
Charisma
⌂⌂⌂⌂
[/fancybox2]⌂⌂⌂⌂⌂⌂⌂
Dexterity
⌂⌂⌂⌂⌂⌂
Constitution
⌂⌂⌂⌂⌂⌂⌂
Intelligence
⌂⌂⌂⌂⌂⌂
Wisdom
⌂⌂⌂⌂
Charisma
⌂⌂⌂⌂
[fancybox2]Gear
- An encrypted two-way communicator
- A datapad for sorting and handling information
- Grappling hook launcher, with cable and grapple
- A rebreather for hostile environments, or underwater
- Several sets of stun cuffs
- An auditory frequency modulator
Weapons
- Kagebō
-- Each half has been modified to have a tonfa-style grip
- A vibroknife, often kept tucked in his boot
- Harlaw heavy carbine
- Twin B-8R blaster pistols
- Mk 3 "Firespray" Pyrotechnic Munitions Devices
- SA-38G "Supernova" grenades
- MZ-99 "Smackdown" grenades
- SCKO knockout grenades
Armor
- Arbitrator P.A.K.
-- Enhanced with scatterweave weave and plate coating
-- Built-in UA-8 "Jumper" Mobility Enahncers
Vehicles
- None
Ship
- An Alabaster-class escort freighter
-- Registered, 'Destiny'
Droids
- An M-series utility/astromech droid
-- Designation, M6-F00
-- Equipped with a heavy blaster
Pets
- None
Other Properties
- None[/fancybox2]
[fancybox2]
History
A hound is always going to be a hound.
Its in his spirit and his bones.
Nothing can change that.
That was one of the last bits of wisdom my dad passed onto me before he finally bit the bullet. He'd always considered himself a hound - the alpha of our family who had carried on a long and fabled tradition. His father. His father before him. And his father before him. They were all a tough breed of hound that had been perfected more and more with each generation. They'd hunted the fiercest predators and most elusive prey across the whole of the outer rim and beyond without ever hesitating. It was through him was how I learned almost everything that I knew about how to track and fight a man. He passed on knowledge and skills and wisdom - but the most important thing he passed onto me were his dying words. That nobody can change the hound's nature.
Nobody - not the hound, government, or some monks with glowing swords - can change a hound's nature.
Another thing that he taught me was that, no matter how vicious a hound you might be, you should look after your pack. The mother who raised you, the father who trained you, and the siblings who stood next to you when nobody else would give you the time of day or a scrap to eat in rough times. Your pack is the most important thing you have because they were there with you at the very beginning and they'll likely be the only ones with you at the end. Our 'pack' was small when you didn't count all the aunts, uncles, and 'old working buddies' who'd stop by all the time. There was my mother - a Force-sensitive who'd put her skills to work as a bounty hunter like my father, of course my father himself, and my twin sister Erri. Almost as soon as we were out of the womb our parents had strict regimen and discipline in place for us.
That wasn't to say we weren't allowed our fun, or that we didn't get into our share of trouble as teens. It meant things like when my sister Erri came home crying one day because some older punks had tried to beat up on her, we didn't call their parents and complain. My dad took Erri and I back out where those kids normally liked to hang out and sent us to kick their asses. Of course we got licked pretty hard but we gave as good as we got, and so long as we kept getting back up and not letting a shiner here and there stop us our dad and mother wouldn't be disappointed. Erri and I grew as close as two siblings good - we had each others backs because when you grow up on a planet with a whole history of warriors, you're expected to fight for everything you want and have.
Then one day when we were just coming into our early teens, our dad introduced us to a burly and mean-looking Twi'lek woman who he just called Chaavla. Came to learn under her 'teaching' that it was Mando'a for somebody rough or unruly, or even criminal. Come to think of it we learned a lot of Mando'a that first year with her. Most of it was profane. But she was Chaavla and for as long as our parents had us learning how to properly survive under her tutelage, we were her ver'dika, and we'd act as such. What that mostly entailed in those early rigorous months was sitting in the courtyard getting our asses soundly kicked while our mother or father watched from the back porch when one or neither of them was away on a job. But soon we started to get better and once we were smart enough to start making her sweat from more than just the sun, that was around the time my sister's sensitivity began to show itself.
One day Chaavla had just put me on the ground and I swear sailors in orbit heard my ribs cracking when she did it. My sister certainly did. She started screaming and running for our instructor, jumped clear over me, and delivered a full-on superman punch that busted one of Chaavla's teeth clean out of her mouth. Our mom had been . . . in the kitchen maybe? I don't know. But she came running out of the house because she had apparently 'felt' my sister's anger when it happened. Chaavla didn't even seem pissed but later that day our parents got in a shouting match over comms because Chaavla and our mom were insisting that she needed to go somewhere dedicated to training people like her while dad was going on about how the 'pack looked after its own' and that family like ours couldn't spread itself out like that. Eventually our mom won, though. She was more of an expert than he was and even she felt she couldn't really train Erri like she deserved. So just like that a couple of monks in robes show up at the house a few weeks later asking if my sister is home - as if they couldn't feel her presence walking up to the door.
They told me how they were Jedi and they planned to take my sister to one of their temples to train. I asked if I'd get to visit her and I was told that I wouldn't be able to for a good while during her early training. We didn't cry in front of them even as much as we wanted to because we'd been raised different than all that, but the Jedi said they'd need the day to prepare some things anyways. Our dad had come home for this and our mom had been staying off contracts to make sure she'd be here. He just paced around the house smoking through a whole carton of cigarettes and glaring off into space. She kept at our side assuring us that it'd all be okay and that we wouldn't be apart forever - that we'd see each other within the year at least. And with me being young and foolish, I thought that night was feeling what it was like to have some part of me ripped away.
We tried to go on. Chaavla trained me in everything from nature survival to hand-to-hand fighting until one day my dad decided that I was finally able to take up the work - maybe because he was still angry and torn up about Erri being taken away by the Jedi. We still wrote and called from time to time, and while my mother was always happy to hear of news from my sister it seemed like my dad had in some way written her off as gone for good. Like it was her fault that she'd been born with our mom's gift or something. Regardless of why he decided then that I was old enough or if he even really felt it, at seventeen years old I was old enough to go with my father on a contract. Funnily enough my sister was apparently considered old enough to wield a lightsaber and follow a Knight to train her. Different dressings to the same sort of path I suppose.
Then like that our family started to fall apart. I was twenty four and running a job on Taris with our dad when some member of the local talent with a heavy blaster pistol got a lucky shot on my dad when he jumped out from a blind-spot. Got that shot off before either of us could drop him and our dad was already on his last few minutes before I'd even ran over to him to check. And you know in all those vids where its raining while a man holds somebody close dying in his arms? Yeah that's some hot bantha dung. It was sunny and so hot I'd been boiling inside my armor for the better part of the day, and now here I was doing everything I could to try and stabilize my dad while he keeps gasping and wheezing and telling me to knock it off so I don't waste the kolto.
He took me by my collar and pulled me close. Actually told me h e was proud of me for the first time - said I'd grown into a hound just like him and my mom and all those generations past. Told me that if I didn't have anything else in this life, it was that I knew who I was, and could always count on that. I took his body back to his ship - my ship now - and had 'Foo' plot a course back home. I didn't need to think about sending a message to our mom about what had happened because she was in the business the same as he and I. But Erri? That took longer. The whole trip back and three cartons of Dad's cigarettes if you want some estimate on how long. She told me she was sorry that she couldn't make it to the funeral because her master had her doing something to help a small village somewhere. I told her I didn't hold it against her and neither did Mom.
Of course then Mom had to get hit. Messed up bad on some contract on Kashyyk. Chaavla had come nearly pounding the door down to let me know what had happened. They'd managed to get her to a hospital on Onderon, where she was stable but in a bad state. I took myself off the market and put together my funds to help with her bills and her treatments. Ended up selling her ship to keep those life support machines running non-stop. Chaavla agreed to help out by alternating with me on local jobs. If one of us was away on some local work, the other was in the hospital room right at our mom's side. Of course I wrote Erri and told her the situation. She said she'd come to us and see if there was anything she could do to help. Then two weeks later as our mom's condition got only worse, I get a message.
Some Jedi Knight. Said he'd been Erri's master during her training as a Padawan. Told us how one her way to see our mom at the hospital that she'd been pulled off-course by an assignment from the Jedi. Local pirates along the way or something. He said that she had died but then tried to make me feel better with all those platitudes strangers offer - about how she was brave and noble in the attempt, that she'd been a good friend to others, and that she'd be sorely missed. Like he knew anything at all about her. Like he'd seen her in childhood and had that bond that only a pair of siblings could share.
I don't know if my mother could sense that we'd lost Erri. Maybe that was it. Why it seemed like she just stopped fighting and she plummeted. Doctors told us that at this point all the kolto tanks and treatments were doing was keeping the body alive more than the person. Pulling the plug on my mom was probably the hardest thing I'd done in my life up to that point because it was admitting just how alone I was right then. And of course you know who I blamed.
The Jedi had been the ones who had taken my sister. The one person closer to me than anybody else I'd ever had in my life.
They'd ripped my family apart when we were still teens and then they'd sent my sister off to die in some hellhole in a fight that wasn't hers to fight in the first place. They'd forced her to leave me totally alone in this mess of a galaxy. But then Chaavla told me she could sympathize with how I felt. Said they were called the 'Sacred Band of Ziost' - that she had once been a Sister among them. Told me that if anybody could understand how I felt about what the Jedi had done to my family, it was them. And she said she could take me to them if I was willing to try joining their ranks.
I agreed, not knowing that the damn Jedi had sent one of their own to check on me. Maybe my sister had been concerned. Maybe they were just wanting to make sure I wasn't going to do what I was about to do. But a few days after I'd agreed and was going to meet Chaavla at the starport, one of those damned monks cut me off and told me he could sense my motivations and all that other crap. I could have dealt with that crap but then - then he had the nerve to drag my sister into it. He started talking about how this wasn't the path she'd want me to take and just how disappointed she'd be in me.
Its blurry. I can't remember if Chaavla got the drop on him first. Or if he went for his saber. Or maybe I just shot at him.
He was a beast of a fighter and kept me backpedaling for almost all of the fight. All I remember is Chaavla got the killing blow on him with a few shots to the back when he was focused on me. After that we left his body, got in my ship, and blazed for Ziost as fast as we possibly could. There I began the first steps of my initiation into the Sacred Band.
It was a brutality I'd never experienced before.
Almost every day was a new threat to my life. I fought the environment around me. I fought my instructors. I fought my peers. Really I fought my peers the most. We all wanted to prove we could join the ranks and become Brothers and Sisters of the Sacred Band. As I fought and started to prove myself, I was put through other grueling tests and training. I would spend hours in rooms that would shift - searingly hot and bone chilling, darker than night and brighter than the heart of a sun, silent enough to hear my own heartbeat or a deafening roar - as I'd try and focus and channel my mind while some Sith would lord over me and probe at my mind through the Force to test and push me to the point of breaking.
Failures were met with harsh reprimands and physical punishment. Success was met with slightest reprieve. I was cast out into the harshest places on Ziost with barely anything more than the clothes on my back with the demand that I survive, and upon return I only had enduring it again to look forward to. Brutality, cruelty, and strength were all redefined for me over those long and grueling days.
They took everything that I was and broke it down into its most raw, bare components. They turned me from an angry bounty hunter into a conditioned and disciplined killer. They demanded everything that I was. They offered the revenge I wanted.
And here I am now.
A hound with a taste for Jedi blood.
Its in his spirit and his bones.
Nothing can change that.
That was one of the last bits of wisdom my dad passed onto me before he finally bit the bullet. He'd always considered himself a hound - the alpha of our family who had carried on a long and fabled tradition. His father. His father before him. And his father before him. They were all a tough breed of hound that had been perfected more and more with each generation. They'd hunted the fiercest predators and most elusive prey across the whole of the outer rim and beyond without ever hesitating. It was through him was how I learned almost everything that I knew about how to track and fight a man. He passed on knowledge and skills and wisdom - but the most important thing he passed onto me were his dying words. That nobody can change the hound's nature.
Nobody - not the hound, government, or some monks with glowing swords - can change a hound's nature.
Another thing that he taught me was that, no matter how vicious a hound you might be, you should look after your pack. The mother who raised you, the father who trained you, and the siblings who stood next to you when nobody else would give you the time of day or a scrap to eat in rough times. Your pack is the most important thing you have because they were there with you at the very beginning and they'll likely be the only ones with you at the end. Our 'pack' was small when you didn't count all the aunts, uncles, and 'old working buddies' who'd stop by all the time. There was my mother - a Force-sensitive who'd put her skills to work as a bounty hunter like my father, of course my father himself, and my twin sister Erri. Almost as soon as we were out of the womb our parents had strict regimen and discipline in place for us.
That wasn't to say we weren't allowed our fun, or that we didn't get into our share of trouble as teens. It meant things like when my sister Erri came home crying one day because some older punks had tried to beat up on her, we didn't call their parents and complain. My dad took Erri and I back out where those kids normally liked to hang out and sent us to kick their asses. Of course we got licked pretty hard but we gave as good as we got, and so long as we kept getting back up and not letting a shiner here and there stop us our dad and mother wouldn't be disappointed. Erri and I grew as close as two siblings good - we had each others backs because when you grow up on a planet with a whole history of warriors, you're expected to fight for everything you want and have.
Then one day when we were just coming into our early teens, our dad introduced us to a burly and mean-looking Twi'lek woman who he just called Chaavla. Came to learn under her 'teaching' that it was Mando'a for somebody rough or unruly, or even criminal. Come to think of it we learned a lot of Mando'a that first year with her. Most of it was profane. But she was Chaavla and for as long as our parents had us learning how to properly survive under her tutelage, we were her ver'dika, and we'd act as such. What that mostly entailed in those early rigorous months was sitting in the courtyard getting our asses soundly kicked while our mother or father watched from the back porch when one or neither of them was away on a job. But soon we started to get better and once we were smart enough to start making her sweat from more than just the sun, that was around the time my sister's sensitivity began to show itself.
One day Chaavla had just put me on the ground and I swear sailors in orbit heard my ribs cracking when she did it. My sister certainly did. She started screaming and running for our instructor, jumped clear over me, and delivered a full-on superman punch that busted one of Chaavla's teeth clean out of her mouth. Our mom had been . . . in the kitchen maybe? I don't know. But she came running out of the house because she had apparently 'felt' my sister's anger when it happened. Chaavla didn't even seem pissed but later that day our parents got in a shouting match over comms because Chaavla and our mom were insisting that she needed to go somewhere dedicated to training people like her while dad was going on about how the 'pack looked after its own' and that family like ours couldn't spread itself out like that. Eventually our mom won, though. She was more of an expert than he was and even she felt she couldn't really train Erri like she deserved. So just like that a couple of monks in robes show up at the house a few weeks later asking if my sister is home - as if they couldn't feel her presence walking up to the door.
They told me how they were Jedi and they planned to take my sister to one of their temples to train. I asked if I'd get to visit her and I was told that I wouldn't be able to for a good while during her early training. We didn't cry in front of them even as much as we wanted to because we'd been raised different than all that, but the Jedi said they'd need the day to prepare some things anyways. Our dad had come home for this and our mom had been staying off contracts to make sure she'd be here. He just paced around the house smoking through a whole carton of cigarettes and glaring off into space. She kept at our side assuring us that it'd all be okay and that we wouldn't be apart forever - that we'd see each other within the year at least. And with me being young and foolish, I thought that night was feeling what it was like to have some part of me ripped away.
We tried to go on. Chaavla trained me in everything from nature survival to hand-to-hand fighting until one day my dad decided that I was finally able to take up the work - maybe because he was still angry and torn up about Erri being taken away by the Jedi. We still wrote and called from time to time, and while my mother was always happy to hear of news from my sister it seemed like my dad had in some way written her off as gone for good. Like it was her fault that she'd been born with our mom's gift or something. Regardless of why he decided then that I was old enough or if he even really felt it, at seventeen years old I was old enough to go with my father on a contract. Funnily enough my sister was apparently considered old enough to wield a lightsaber and follow a Knight to train her. Different dressings to the same sort of path I suppose.
Then like that our family started to fall apart. I was twenty four and running a job on Taris with our dad when some member of the local talent with a heavy blaster pistol got a lucky shot on my dad when he jumped out from a blind-spot. Got that shot off before either of us could drop him and our dad was already on his last few minutes before I'd even ran over to him to check. And you know in all those vids where its raining while a man holds somebody close dying in his arms? Yeah that's some hot bantha dung. It was sunny and so hot I'd been boiling inside my armor for the better part of the day, and now here I was doing everything I could to try and stabilize my dad while he keeps gasping and wheezing and telling me to knock it off so I don't waste the kolto.
He took me by my collar and pulled me close. Actually told me h e was proud of me for the first time - said I'd grown into a hound just like him and my mom and all those generations past. Told me that if I didn't have anything else in this life, it was that I knew who I was, and could always count on that. I took his body back to his ship - my ship now - and had 'Foo' plot a course back home. I didn't need to think about sending a message to our mom about what had happened because she was in the business the same as he and I. But Erri? That took longer. The whole trip back and three cartons of Dad's cigarettes if you want some estimate on how long. She told me she was sorry that she couldn't make it to the funeral because her master had her doing something to help a small village somewhere. I told her I didn't hold it against her and neither did Mom.
Of course then Mom had to get hit. Messed up bad on some contract on Kashyyk. Chaavla had come nearly pounding the door down to let me know what had happened. They'd managed to get her to a hospital on Onderon, where she was stable but in a bad state. I took myself off the market and put together my funds to help with her bills and her treatments. Ended up selling her ship to keep those life support machines running non-stop. Chaavla agreed to help out by alternating with me on local jobs. If one of us was away on some local work, the other was in the hospital room right at our mom's side. Of course I wrote Erri and told her the situation. She said she'd come to us and see if there was anything she could do to help. Then two weeks later as our mom's condition got only worse, I get a message.
Some Jedi Knight. Said he'd been Erri's master during her training as a Padawan. Told us how one her way to see our mom at the hospital that she'd been pulled off-course by an assignment from the Jedi. Local pirates along the way or something. He said that she had died but then tried to make me feel better with all those platitudes strangers offer - about how she was brave and noble in the attempt, that she'd been a good friend to others, and that she'd be sorely missed. Like he knew anything at all about her. Like he'd seen her in childhood and had that bond that only a pair of siblings could share.
I don't know if my mother could sense that we'd lost Erri. Maybe that was it. Why it seemed like she just stopped fighting and she plummeted. Doctors told us that at this point all the kolto tanks and treatments were doing was keeping the body alive more than the person. Pulling the plug on my mom was probably the hardest thing I'd done in my life up to that point because it was admitting just how alone I was right then. And of course you know who I blamed.
The Jedi had been the ones who had taken my sister. The one person closer to me than anybody else I'd ever had in my life.
They'd ripped my family apart when we were still teens and then they'd sent my sister off to die in some hellhole in a fight that wasn't hers to fight in the first place. They'd forced her to leave me totally alone in this mess of a galaxy. But then Chaavla told me she could sympathize with how I felt. Said they were called the 'Sacred Band of Ziost' - that she had once been a Sister among them. Told me that if anybody could understand how I felt about what the Jedi had done to my family, it was them. And she said she could take me to them if I was willing to try joining their ranks.
I agreed, not knowing that the damn Jedi had sent one of their own to check on me. Maybe my sister had been concerned. Maybe they were just wanting to make sure I wasn't going to do what I was about to do. But a few days after I'd agreed and was going to meet Chaavla at the starport, one of those damned monks cut me off and told me he could sense my motivations and all that other crap. I could have dealt with that crap but then - then he had the nerve to drag my sister into it. He started talking about how this wasn't the path she'd want me to take and just how disappointed she'd be in me.
Its blurry. I can't remember if Chaavla got the drop on him first. Or if he went for his saber. Or maybe I just shot at him.
He was a beast of a fighter and kept me backpedaling for almost all of the fight. All I remember is Chaavla got the killing blow on him with a few shots to the back when he was focused on me. After that we left his body, got in my ship, and blazed for Ziost as fast as we possibly could. There I began the first steps of my initiation into the Sacred Band.
It was a brutality I'd never experienced before.
Almost every day was a new threat to my life. I fought the environment around me. I fought my instructors. I fought my peers. Really I fought my peers the most. We all wanted to prove we could join the ranks and become Brothers and Sisters of the Sacred Band. As I fought and started to prove myself, I was put through other grueling tests and training. I would spend hours in rooms that would shift - searingly hot and bone chilling, darker than night and brighter than the heart of a sun, silent enough to hear my own heartbeat or a deafening roar - as I'd try and focus and channel my mind while some Sith would lord over me and probe at my mind through the Force to test and push me to the point of breaking.
Failures were met with harsh reprimands and physical punishment. Success was met with slightest reprieve. I was cast out into the harshest places on Ziost with barely anything more than the clothes on my back with the demand that I survive, and upon return I only had enduring it again to look forward to. Brutality, cruelty, and strength were all redefined for me over those long and grueling days.
They took everything that I was and broke it down into its most raw, bare components. They turned me from an angry bounty hunter into a conditioned and disciplined killer. They demanded everything that I was. They offered the revenge I wanted.
And here I am now.
A hound with a taste for Jedi blood.
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[fancybox2]Faction Missions
- Booked from Thyferra
-- (Open) Thread | Thread Link | OOC Link | Complete
-- The Jedi hunter is sent alongside Crius Durante to sow chaos in the Xozhixi spaceport.
- Fleeting Fools . . .
-- (Ask) Thread | Thread Link | In Progress
-- The Jedi hunter is dispatched alongside Moff Arpha to track down and deal with two Barabel Jedi.
Combat Threads
- Of Sith & Prideful Boasting
-- (Ask) Thread | Thread Link | In Progress
-- Essja makes a rather prideful boast about his fighting abilities. Darth Solum overhears him.
- Going to Hell
-- (Ask) Thread | Thread Link | In Progress
-- Essja is sent alongside Ailsa Elva Myrna and the Sith Drallic Vess to exterminate members of a Light Side cult.
Social Threads
- None
Other
- None[/fancybox2]
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[fancybox2]Faceclaim: Tom Hardy
Speech: #e21d1d[/fancybox2]
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