Post by Karma on Apr 27, 2014 3:00:01 GMT -5
Name: Jetta Ty
Age: 33
Race: Human
Birth place: Coruscant
Height: 5’7”
Weight: 128 lbs
Eye Color: Green
Hair Color: Brown
Appearance:
Jetta has a very symmetrical face with the 'golden ratio' as it's called in the biz. Her eyes are neither too far apart or too close together. Her mouth is exactly as wide as her pupils are set. Her nostrils do not exceed the inner boundary of her eyebrows. Her ears are the right size for her head, her cheek bones and jaw are in proportion and her chin is slightly smaller than her chin is wide. And because each feature is perfectly average, her features are statistically likely to please the greatest number of people. She is, mathematically speaking, 'beautiful', if only by omission of outstanding deviations.
Because all her features fit within an average measurement, she can be styled in whatever way the industry wants, which is a valuable trait in a model. Want a rough-and-tumble look? Pierce her pointed nose and coat her angular brows in high-pigment colors. Edgy? Rim her round eyes with heavy liner and emphasize her sharp cheekbones with dark blush. Glamorous? Leave the eyes alone and coat her plump lips in red. And the angular hairstyle she wears, chin length on one side of her face and nearly shoulder length on the other, well that’s the sort of hairstyle that could go with anything. This pliability of appearance may very well come in handy in other professions as well.
In her line of work, she understands how much a unified presentation affects the way people think about what ‘beauty’ is, and admittedly her tastes have been shaped by her industry. She carries herself in an ultra 'pretty' way, delicate movements, straight back, and self-contained posture. She does have a taste for high-end clothes and playing with her figure – which means she absolutely hates the armor she has had to adopt since running from those thugs. A full suit of body armor does nothing for anyone’s figure. And don’t even get her started on helmet hair! And walking delicately? Not possible. The transition has not been easy.
Her build is actually not very small-boned – she has broad shoulders and long limbs. Her slender figure, then, has been entirely the result of very controlled maintenance: work outs that tone without bulking up, a strict diet to eliminate fat, and crunches, sooooo many crunches. The result is that she looks thin, but carrying just enough muscle mass not to appear unhealthy, because unhealthy doesn’t sell. The simple fact, though, is that she is underweight and the 'tone' she carries to keep from looking skeletal isn't enough to translate to athleticism. The more she has to lug around body armor and blasters, undoubtedly this will change, but for now she looks – frankly – woefully wimpish.
The hand-me-down armor she’s using is mismatched and has seen a great deal of wear and tear, but its integrity is good and it fits well enough to do its job. It’s fire-retardant fabric with armor plates strapped over it to protect vital areas. Crude, hardly elegant, but effective enough for a starter set.
Personality:
It’s easy to think that someone like Jetta is weak-willed or just weak in general, given her pampered history and life of relative ease. That would be a mistake. She has lived a life of luxury and she is very used to that, but she has had to work for what she has in a very difficult business. Modeling requires long days and a level of commitment to her work that far surpasses the eighteen hour holoshoots she was often subjected to.
It requires strict management of her body and schedule, from what she puts in it and on it, to how she walks, stands, and moves. It takes a great deal of care, like avoiding physical spills, scrapes, scars, burns, and illness of any kind that might harm her image or keep her from being able to attend work. She’s faced sexism, harassment, assumptions about her morals or intelligence, willful invasions of her privacy, and deliberate false accusations. She's had false friends and real ones and she's learned how to tell the difference. And she knows the threat of stiff competition from people younger, more scandalous, and more exotic looking than she is. She's even gone through several re-inventions, which should prepare her for the re-invention she must face now. Despite all of these challenges, she has always stood by what she wants out of life and who she is, and that takes guts, determination, and grit.
But now, her new goal requires an entirely different kind of stubbornness. She hasn’t faced the challenges of worry, grief, and inherent danger. She’s certainly never had to hurt anyone before and doesn’t know what it’s like to be the target of people who want to hurt her. The stress of trying to save her husband without knowing anything about the world he lives in will be new for her, and her life to date has ill-equipped her for it.
She has strength, willpower, even intelligence, but now, she’s got to earn the experience to be able to do what she hopes to do. And experience is a difficult and dangerous teacher.
Profession: Newb bounty hunter.
Previous Faction/Rank: Fashion, super model rank, retired.
Equipment: Two blaster pistols with a close-range stun setting.
A set of hand-me-down hydraulic pressed armor, similar to this.
Cee-four, a slightly modified protocol droid.
Starship:
The Rusty Bucket, a light freighter-class vehicle with a name and appearance meant to make people overlook her. She looks a little in disrepair, chipped paint, small in stature, and equipped with exactly the sort of equipment that civilian scouts would use if they had been swindled into buying more than they needed for an ill-fated treasure hunting expedition: long-range sensors, built in cargo nooks, and overpowered foils to allow for a wider range of available landing spots on planet. That’s the ship’s cover story. Treasure hunter. What’s not readily obvious is that she also has increased power running to her boosters and engines that allow for tight maneuverability. She’s a getaway machine, purchased and outfitted solely to give someone a jump on pursuers while on the run. Surely the idea was to get away from a bounty without angry family shooting you down, but now that she’s on the run from the hutts, the ship is just as suited to that job, too.
Skills:
Jetta has a fierce runway walk and is very good at putting an outfit together.
Basic self defense.
Basic 'how to point and shoot a blaster' with very little practical application.
'People' or 'fame' skills like how to handle the press, how to handle people with outrageous egos, and how to bargain.
Attributes:
Physical Strength: 4
Intelligence: 5
Speed: 4
Leadership: 1
Unarmed: 4
Melee Weapons: 2
Ranged Weapons: 4
Bio:
Jetta Ty was born Jetta Lawson, daughter of well-to-do corporate owners based out of Coruscant where the family owned one of many townhouses. She and her older brother were privy to every privilege growing up including tutors, fine schools, and all the quality time with their nannies that they could ever wish for. Her privileged upbringing also came with all of the expectations and training a child could not wish for, like charm school, reminders over posture, and raps on the knuckle for picking up the wrong eating utensil. This was all necessary training for being able to navigate their upper crust world without embarrassment, in much the same way combat training helps Jedi in later life, but as a child it certainly didn't seem fun.
Their parents were not uncaring nor absent, despite their reliance upon nannies to do the bulk of their child-rearing. The children had time with their parents during daily dinners or on family vacations taken several times a year to some of the most beautiful or prestigious places in the galaxy where they often met celebrities, politicians, and other high-flung figures. They also never missed an event, like a recital or a horseback riding exhibition, and they were always eager to host their friends for sleepovers and parties. They were good parents, even if they weren't involved in making lunches or helping with homework.
On one family trip when Jetta was fourteen, the family introduced her to a photographer staying at their resort, at first because he was a famous personage and Jetta was so in love with fashion already. She originally thought to be a photographer or a fashion designer herself. The photographer, though, remarked that Jetta's appearance was actually quite given to photographing. By the end of the weekend, he told the family he wished to use Jetta for a spread in a holozine he was doing. Unable to tell their daughter no, her parents agreed, and Jetta was the face of a clothing line for a brief-lived campaign that came out when she was fifteen.
She quickly garnered the attention of agents and modeling bureaus who wished to represent her. At fifteen, the attention was pleasing, and made her feel wanted in a way her parents and nannies hadn’t really, despite being very loving and providing. Modeling surrounded her with people who wanted to be around her, even if, as she would later realize, they were only interested in being a part of her rising success. The friends she upset by breaking appointments were just 'jealous' of her success, her agents told her, and for a few years she believed them.
For now, she was just content to be the center of a great deal of attention. Her career was highest from the age of fifteen to seventeen, when her coltish limbs, charmed backstory, and malleability made her an asset. When she started to fill out and be less of the fashion standard for height and weight, she had to work a little harder at it, and that’s when she learned a hard lesson about the industry and about fair-weather friends. By the time the fashion industry’s interest in her had dulled down to an infrequent holocall, she was able to pick out who her real friends were (her parents still supported her, even if her agent didn’t!) and cottoned on to the fickle nature of the work she did.
Her stubbornness was tempered in this failure, though, because she had absolutely no intention of giving up. Despite its fickle nature, she loved fashion and modeling. She loved the glitz and the glamor, the luxury and the pomp, and she even loved the challenge of it. So she got a new agent, who advised her to leave Coruscant for a fresh start on Corellia, where she would be a recognizable but new face, and that’s exactly what she did, reinventing herself as a more mature, experienced model people could recognize. The trick worked and her career was revived with a steadier if not clamorous line of clients.
It was on Corellia that she would meet Nash Dar’ken, a charming but altogether different sort of man from those she was used to. He was shopping in one of the megacenters on Corellia in the storefront of an upscale designer, looking a little awkward and out of place. She barely registered his presence until he approached her to ask for help. He didn’t know what went together, he explained, and he had an important event to attend. He wanted to be sure to blend in, in appearances anyway. Charmed by his honesty and eager to help, she dressed him, made him try on several different suits, and eventually picked out the one she liked best, ‘though she thought he should buy them all.’ He grinned and said he would, if he had anywhere to wear them… dinner with her, for instance. He got her comm channel number for his efforts.
The next night, she was in attendance for a gala opening in one of the poshest new buildings on Corellia, a wall of windows showing off the glittering skyline on all sides. To her surprise, she ran into Nash there. After a bit of flirtation and dancing, Nash said he had someplace to be and made his exit, promising to give her a call, but he wouldn’t need to. Nash was a bounty hunter, and when he could tear himself away from his date he followed after the owner of the flat they were all partying in, his current target. Next thing anyone knew, an unseen window in the next apartment exploded outward and two men leapt out, landing in a speeder and zooming off.
No one recognized the men in the speeder, but her.
When they met for dinner, she confronted him, but he didn’t deny that he was there or that he had kidnapped someone. He explained what he did for a living, explained he usually brought in really nasty sorts that were too big time for local police forces but not big time enough to involve the Jedi, and that the guy he had taken out was wanted for hiding Republic secrets in the artwork he sold. He cracked that he wasn’t going to tell her until their second or third date, but wow, if she was going to be this nosy she was going to have to get him drunk. She didn’t find it funny at the time, but later, his sense of humor would be one of the things that kept their relationship strong for so long.
They continued dating. He wasn’t at all the sort of person her agent or even her family thought she should be seeing, but that was part of the attraction. Neither of them knew the first thing about the other’s world, so they were both an escape, from pretentions and posing for her, from double-identities and adrenaline for him. Despite coming from such different backgrounds, their personalities just worked together, and they were at ease together. Together, their lives seemed doable. So after a year of dating he asked her if she would like to do their lives together from then on.
They made up another identity for him, one that would fly with the press and keep their relationship at once public and secret. After all, he had a lot of enemies, and she had a lot of really nosy frenemies. So Nash Dar’Ken became Garen Ty, a businessman who had made his fortune on the Outer Rim and was often ‘away on business.’ He met her parents, her agents, her friends, and they bought a home together in one of the snazzier high rises in Coronet.
As a housewarming gift, Nash introduced her to the house 'butler', Cee-four. Cee-four was a repurposed protocol droid reprogrammed to oversee all the other servant droids in the house, including the security system, and also to act as an assistant and companion droid for Jetta, including managing her appointments, keeping up with contacts, and screening calls and meetings. He was even given reinforced hydraulics in his limbs so that he might carry her shopping bags. There was another purpose to Cee-four, which she would not learn about until many paragraphs later.
Their life seemed charmed, and it stayed that way for many, many years. Certainly, they fought, and they faced every challenge a married couple can face, and more. He had to get used to seeing her working with other men; she got jealous of the women who became parts of his ‘cover’ while on the job. He was older than she was and wanted kids, but she had no intention of giving up her career for them for a while longer. In short, they fought, they learned more about each other, sometimes they considered splitting up. But then, they learned to compromise, they learned to read each other, and they overcame those problems. They were a good couple despite their differences, and for ten years they were happy.
During these years Nash insisted on Jetta learning self-defense ‘just in case’ anything should ever happen to him. Though most of the people he worked for were more reputable sorts, he knew that he was making enemies, and while he did his best to keep his two lives separate, he wanted her prepared for anything. She agreed, ‘but don’t expect me to bulk up and become some kind of Jedi Meathead, because I won’t.’ He agreed, and for the duration of their marriage, they trained together – very casually, perhaps, but enough to make her familiar with the tools in her arsenal if she should ever need them.
About three years ago, though, Nash became increasingly insistent about seriousness in their lessons. One time, he accidentally hurt her when he insisted she try to get out of a hold without any instruction or help from him. They fought for the first time in years, before he finally cursed and walked out. He just wanted to make sure she was safe, he said as he slammed the door behind him. They made up, but the moment stuck out to her.
Another time, Nash came home from a job insisting that they needed to move. Their Coronet apartment had become their home, comfortable and upgraded exactly to suit them. They knew the neighbors and the neighborhood, and they were even thinking of finally having a child. She couldn’t understand his sudden desire to move, so they fought again. They did move, but now it was obvious that their relationship was troubled. She imagined all of the worst things – that he was cheating with someone in the neighborhood, perhaps – but never did she imagine the right worst thing.
Things settled down when they were in their new apartment. They fell into their old routine, happy, easy, and close. She even thought again about children, but before she could put her mind to it seriously, something terrible happened and disrupted every plan she and Nash had for the future. Nash had left for a job a few weeks before. She was alone in her apartment, fast asleep, when Cee-four suddenly came to life giving the following alarm: perimeter breach, intruders in the house.
She and Nash had practiced this. She got out of bed, rushed for the bathroom, and climbed into the ductwork from the access panel in the linen closet. A rope was pre-installed; she used it to haul herself up into the overall ventilation shaft for her floor. Her progress was slow. Every time the air recycling cycled on she had to hold her breath and duck her head to keep the rush of tens of thousands of citizens’ air from stealing the moisture from her eyes and lips. She had a hard time remembering Nash’s instructions and at one point broke down in tears, believing herself lost. By the time she made it out of the ductwork following the marks he had left there, she was shaking and harrowed. She kicked the cover off to step out into the bright light of daytime still clad in her nightshirt. She had been in the ducts for hours.
She kept to the plan they had talked about. She walked down the bustling Corellian streets to a nearby storage facility, where she accessed a pod Nash had hired in a false name. She put in her code, retrieved the swoop within and the fake identification details he had created for her, just in case. She donned her change of clothes, bemoaning the rat’s nest that her hair was, but at least now people wouldn’t be staring at her cartoon underwear. She steered the swoop to the local starport, a massive port with hundreds of starships coming and going every day, and with her new identification details she accessed ‘her’ ship stored at one of the drydocks.
As she stared at the starship in its drydock, she again felt tears welling from the feeling of helplessness and strangeness of playing through a scenario that she had never really believed she would need. Like the ‘in case we crash’ motions she went through every time she boarded an interstellar shuttle, she just thought, it was one of those things you have to know, as if just knowing the procedure would stop the worst from happening. But here she was, boarding a dilapidated old clunker of a ship with a new identity she didn’t even know the name of yet. The Rusty Bucket the ship was called, and she snorted, because that was exactly his dumb sense of humor. And then the tears flowed harder, because she didn’t know if she would ever hear him make another dumb joke again.
By the time the ship had been moved from storage to a landing pad for liftoff, she had recovered herself well enough to start thinking of how she was supposed to pilot the damn thing. Did ships have autopilot programs? She had never had to think of things like that a day in her life. She boarded the ship, thinking that there might be more information on board, but when she entered the hangar she had been moved to she found Cee-four waiting for her, to her delight. She asked how the droid had got away, but he simply went on about a 'mad man’ in the apartment and she thought the stress of the intrusion must have short-circuited something in the droid.
(In actuality, Cee-four was talking about the alternative programming that kicked in when Jetta was in danger. After she escaped through the ventilation shaft, the mercenaries followed her into the bathroom, and Cee-four determined she was in danger. At that point, secondary programming kicked in and overrode control of the droid's body, attacking her pursuers. Cee-four has no built-in weaponry, but the reinforced limbs proved weapon enough in the tight quarters of the restroom, where he could use such tools as the toilet bowl, the shower hose, and the hard tiled surfaces as weapons. The 'mad man' who knocked out the mercenaries in the bathroom was the droid himself, running on this secondary programming. When Cee-four no longer had proof that Jetta was in immediate danger, the secondary programming deactivated and Cee-four defaulted to his usual non-violent programming.)
When Jetta posed the problems facing her to Cee-four, he offered to access her ‘emergency contacts.’ Jetta had never set up an emergency contact list. The droid explained that the contact list was on his 'secondary drive' which Jetta hadn't known existed. Together they searched through the contacts, until she came across one of Nash’s fake names. She told Cee-four to call it on the ship's comms, and while Nash didn’t answer in person, the other end of the holo frequency played a message to her.
Nash’s voice explained that if she was calling this number she must be in danger and walked her through what to do in that case. His voice gave her a tour of the tiny ship, showed her to the cargo bay where a pair of blasters and a set of armor ‘he thought might fit’ were waiting for her. He also explained that the ship held a databank of all his jobs to date and all the contacts or sources he had picked up along the way. He told her about the emergency contacts and said if she had any questions or needed any help that she could contact them, and he hoped they would help.
But then he continued. If she didn’t hear from him, if he had been hurt in any way, or even if she didn’t know what had happened, he told her don’t contact anyone. Just run. Go home. Find her parents. Tell them what happened. Get herself a couple of body guards and just forget about him. Move on. Be happy.
She had no intention of doing that. She might have been through hell in the last day, but she couldn't just give up on him without even knowing what happened to him! Maybe that was the smart thing to do - go home to mom and dad, start over, marry someone suitable - but no one had ever accused her of being smart. She got the first contact that sounded promising on Nash’s emergency list and put their location into the navcomputer.
Nash was the love of her life. The one. The only. And if he was in trouble, no matter how ill-equipped she was to take the dangers on, she was going to find him. She would talk to whoever she needed to. She would pay whatever price. She would find him, and she would bring him back home.
What You Don’t Know Could Kill You
And certainly what Jets doesn’t know about her husband’s disappearance could end up killing her. For more than twenty years now, Nash has been getting results and earning himself a name as a bounty hunter. He never did work exclusively for the ‘good guys’, but he always took jobs he knew wouldn’t get him tangled up in anything bigger than he was - until he was contacted by a hutt associated with the Hutt Cartel. To refuse would be suicide. To fail would be worse. But to succeed would make him a continued target of hutt job offers, which he didn’t want. Nevertheless, it was the lesser of three evils, and he took the job, which as he had feared made him the target of other offers.
His most recent job was for Garno, a hutt based on Nar Shaddaa who wanted a genetic engineer for his pet project brought in alive. Unfortunately, the geneticist knew that the hutt was coming for him and had no intention of letting his work get into the hands of their ilk. He had a suicide tooth planted into his head, and he activated it, not only killing himself but wiping all his databanks of information. The hutt blamed Nash.
As far as Garno was concerned, Nash owed him a fortune for the lost information and expertise. Nash refused to give him anything that had Jetta’s name attached to it, but others were more forthcoming. How did he afford the ship he had and the clothes he liked if he didn’t have a fortune stashed somewhere? They believed he was holding out, and Garno engaged in many ways of breaking Nash’s spirit, forcing him to pit fight in his throne room unarmed and often bound, against other bounty hunters come to try their hand at the same geneticist prize.
Eventually, Nash came up with a 'brilliant' plan. He would give Garno something worth a fortune, a slave, one easily recognizable to the galaxy and therefore carrying with her a great deal of prestige. His wife! To his very small credit, he had no intentions of leaving her with the hutt once he had won his freedom. He planned to go, gather strength and forces, and take her back, but it was a plan that came from utter desperation and psychological trauma. In his moment of weakness, desperate to escape the torture of the hutt, he latched onto any plan that would spare him and honestly believed he could get her back later despite overwhelming odds in trying to do so. So he gave up Jetta’s identity and location in return for his freedom.
Garno agreed, assuming the information proved good, but no one counted on Jetta getting away. Now, Nash is still in Garno’s custody and may even be helping the hutt try to track her down. Meanwhile she is on a mission to save him from same hutt at all costs, ignorant of his betrayal or the nature of her enemy. She must make contacts, she must earn a reputation, she must earn allies, and when that is done, she must face one of the most formidable enemies in the depths of space. Will she be able to pull it off, or will she find this is too much for her? And what happens when she finds out her husband was the one who started her off on this path in the first place?
Da da daaaaaaa. ;)
RP Sample:
“Easy, gorgeous. It's a blaster, not a bomb.”
She could hear the smirk in Nash’s voice as she shifted her grip on the blaster for the tenth time. She cocked her eyebrow, glancing over her shoulder at him where he stood behind her.
“It's as dangerous as a bomb,” she told him petulantly. “I dunno why you're laughing.”
“Well, pro tip, sweetheart,” he chuckled, moving to guide her hand with his. “The other end's the dicey one.”
She threw an elbow at his gut, but he bent out of the way with a hitch of his breath. He took the hint, though, and moved to lean against the side of the booth they were using at the local shooting gallery. He relaxed, crossing his arms and his ankles as he watched her set up her shot. She rolled her shoulders to relieve the tension she still felt over holding a dangerous weapon, bent her neck to the side to crack it, resettled her feet. Then she lifted the blaster again toward her target, and he grimaced. Yikes. She was so afraid of that damn blaster she was practically leaning away from it. Gonna have to work on that… hopefully without looking like he was working on that. He uncrossed his arms.
“So,” he said for diversion, “How is it that you can walk down a runway wearing next to nothing, with billions of people watching you, but you get nervous about holding a blaster?”
“What?” she replied distractedly as she flicked off the safety. “I'm always covered up.”
He snickered as he stepped behind her. “Parts of you are covered up.”
“The important parts!” She tilted her head to look down the sights of the barrel, keeping focused on her work. He snorted at her stubbornness.
“They're all important to me.” He watched over her shoulder as she took aim, noting the problem areas of her stance. With subtle guidance, he moved his hands around her waist and let the incidental brush of their bodies shift her into a sturdier frame. He placed a kiss beneath her ear when he was through, but she bent her head away from his distraction.
“Don't you dare get flirty now,” she threatened. “I wanted to go to the opera. I bought a new dress, with a slit up to here,” she gestured at her neck with the blaster, “but you --”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” He caught hold of her wrist to stop the gesticulating blaster, breathing a sigh of relief when nothing got blown to bits. “Damn, baby. Mind the dicey end.”
“Don’t call me 'baby' when I’m holding a blaster.”
She would have liked to pretend she wasn't upset about her brilliant date being postponed for something tedious like the firing range, but she was disappointed. She hardly ever got to see Nash, or at least that's how it felt. He worked now more than ever, and though she would have liked to concentrate on their settling down and having a baby, instead he seemed more involved in his bountying than ever. The pistol had almost become a symbol of all the other things she was tired of coming between them, and all she really wanted was to stop being the bounty hunter's wife for one short evening and go out on a date with her husband! Was that too much to ask? She set the pistol down onto the shelf before her with a reckless clatter.
His good mood soured quickly. For half a moment he was genuinely sorry that he had broken up her plans for the evening, but then he remembered why this was so important to him and why she had to learn to protect herself. His eyes fell away from hers.
“It’s just been a while since we worked,” he finally said. “I can't always be here, and some of the people I’m working with lately...” He trailed off and when he lifted his gaze to her he saw concern bleeding into her pout. He switched gears, his smile replacing the worry in his expression. “Aw, I just want to know you’re safe, that’s all.”
She smiled a little. His concern was touching, but they had been living together this way for thirteen years. Surely there was no reason to fear things would suddenly change now? And even if there was some danger of that, it seemed a little belated to worry. She had made her choice a long time ago. If she could deal with the risk for the last decade, she could deal with it now. She was made of sterner stuff than he realized. And if she had to be an amazonian warrior bride just to prove that to him, well, maybe she would. So she reached again for the pistol.
“I knew what I was getting into when I asked you for another date.”
His head bobbed back like she had swatted him on the nose. He protested, “I asked you for a second date!”
Her grin blossomed as she lifted the blaster to take aim again. “That's what you think. That dress was totally asking for another date.”
He tilted his head, pretty sure she was just trying to make him regret their training session, but he asked her anyway. “So what is a dress with a slit up to here asking for?”
She smirked, laughing as she sighted through the blaster’s guide. “Guess you'll never find out!”
She fired off a shot at her target, envisioning a snappy ending where she got a bullseye right between the dummy’s eyes. (Is that what you called it? A bullseye?) Instead, she missed the target entirely, causing something to spark and sputter from the ceiling overhead. Nash cleared his throat.
“It’s, uh…” He sniffed, placing his hands on his hips as he inspected her damage. “It’s a good thing we’re practicing.”
Her shoulders fell as they stared jointly at whatever was now hanging off the shooting gallery ceiling. "Yeah," she agreed despondently. So much for that snappy comeback.
Then she threw another elbow at his gut. “Hngh!”
Age: 33
Race: Human
Birth place: Coruscant
Height: 5’7”
Weight: 128 lbs
Eye Color: Green
Hair Color: Brown
Appearance:
Jetta has a very symmetrical face with the 'golden ratio' as it's called in the biz. Her eyes are neither too far apart or too close together. Her mouth is exactly as wide as her pupils are set. Her nostrils do not exceed the inner boundary of her eyebrows. Her ears are the right size for her head, her cheek bones and jaw are in proportion and her chin is slightly smaller than her chin is wide. And because each feature is perfectly average, her features are statistically likely to please the greatest number of people. She is, mathematically speaking, 'beautiful', if only by omission of outstanding deviations.
Because all her features fit within an average measurement, she can be styled in whatever way the industry wants, which is a valuable trait in a model. Want a rough-and-tumble look? Pierce her pointed nose and coat her angular brows in high-pigment colors. Edgy? Rim her round eyes with heavy liner and emphasize her sharp cheekbones with dark blush. Glamorous? Leave the eyes alone and coat her plump lips in red. And the angular hairstyle she wears, chin length on one side of her face and nearly shoulder length on the other, well that’s the sort of hairstyle that could go with anything. This pliability of appearance may very well come in handy in other professions as well.
In her line of work, she understands how much a unified presentation affects the way people think about what ‘beauty’ is, and admittedly her tastes have been shaped by her industry. She carries herself in an ultra 'pretty' way, delicate movements, straight back, and self-contained posture. She does have a taste for high-end clothes and playing with her figure – which means she absolutely hates the armor she has had to adopt since running from those thugs. A full suit of body armor does nothing for anyone’s figure. And don’t even get her started on helmet hair! And walking delicately? Not possible. The transition has not been easy.
Her build is actually not very small-boned – she has broad shoulders and long limbs. Her slender figure, then, has been entirely the result of very controlled maintenance: work outs that tone without bulking up, a strict diet to eliminate fat, and crunches, sooooo many crunches. The result is that she looks thin, but carrying just enough muscle mass not to appear unhealthy, because unhealthy doesn’t sell. The simple fact, though, is that she is underweight and the 'tone' she carries to keep from looking skeletal isn't enough to translate to athleticism. The more she has to lug around body armor and blasters, undoubtedly this will change, but for now she looks – frankly – woefully wimpish.
The hand-me-down armor she’s using is mismatched and has seen a great deal of wear and tear, but its integrity is good and it fits well enough to do its job. It’s fire-retardant fabric with armor plates strapped over it to protect vital areas. Crude, hardly elegant, but effective enough for a starter set.
Personality:
It’s easy to think that someone like Jetta is weak-willed or just weak in general, given her pampered history and life of relative ease. That would be a mistake. She has lived a life of luxury and she is very used to that, but she has had to work for what she has in a very difficult business. Modeling requires long days and a level of commitment to her work that far surpasses the eighteen hour holoshoots she was often subjected to.
It requires strict management of her body and schedule, from what she puts in it and on it, to how she walks, stands, and moves. It takes a great deal of care, like avoiding physical spills, scrapes, scars, burns, and illness of any kind that might harm her image or keep her from being able to attend work. She’s faced sexism, harassment, assumptions about her morals or intelligence, willful invasions of her privacy, and deliberate false accusations. She's had false friends and real ones and she's learned how to tell the difference. And she knows the threat of stiff competition from people younger, more scandalous, and more exotic looking than she is. She's even gone through several re-inventions, which should prepare her for the re-invention she must face now. Despite all of these challenges, she has always stood by what she wants out of life and who she is, and that takes guts, determination, and grit.
But now, her new goal requires an entirely different kind of stubbornness. She hasn’t faced the challenges of worry, grief, and inherent danger. She’s certainly never had to hurt anyone before and doesn’t know what it’s like to be the target of people who want to hurt her. The stress of trying to save her husband without knowing anything about the world he lives in will be new for her, and her life to date has ill-equipped her for it.
She has strength, willpower, even intelligence, but now, she’s got to earn the experience to be able to do what she hopes to do. And experience is a difficult and dangerous teacher.
Profession: Newb bounty hunter.
Previous Faction/Rank: Fashion, super model rank, retired.
Equipment: Two blaster pistols with a close-range stun setting.
A set of hand-me-down hydraulic pressed armor, similar to this.
Cee-four, a slightly modified protocol droid.
Starship:
The Rusty Bucket, a light freighter-class vehicle with a name and appearance meant to make people overlook her. She looks a little in disrepair, chipped paint, small in stature, and equipped with exactly the sort of equipment that civilian scouts would use if they had been swindled into buying more than they needed for an ill-fated treasure hunting expedition: long-range sensors, built in cargo nooks, and overpowered foils to allow for a wider range of available landing spots on planet. That’s the ship’s cover story. Treasure hunter. What’s not readily obvious is that she also has increased power running to her boosters and engines that allow for tight maneuverability. She’s a getaway machine, purchased and outfitted solely to give someone a jump on pursuers while on the run. Surely the idea was to get away from a bounty without angry family shooting you down, but now that she’s on the run from the hutts, the ship is just as suited to that job, too.
Skills:
Jetta has a fierce runway walk and is very good at putting an outfit together.
Basic self defense.
Basic 'how to point and shoot a blaster' with very little practical application.
'People' or 'fame' skills like how to handle the press, how to handle people with outrageous egos, and how to bargain.
Attributes:
Physical Strength: 4
Intelligence: 5
Speed: 4
Leadership: 1
Unarmed: 4
Melee Weapons: 2
Ranged Weapons: 4
Bio:
Jetta Ty was born Jetta Lawson, daughter of well-to-do corporate owners based out of Coruscant where the family owned one of many townhouses. She and her older brother were privy to every privilege growing up including tutors, fine schools, and all the quality time with their nannies that they could ever wish for. Her privileged upbringing also came with all of the expectations and training a child could not wish for, like charm school, reminders over posture, and raps on the knuckle for picking up the wrong eating utensil. This was all necessary training for being able to navigate their upper crust world without embarrassment, in much the same way combat training helps Jedi in later life, but as a child it certainly didn't seem fun.
Their parents were not uncaring nor absent, despite their reliance upon nannies to do the bulk of their child-rearing. The children had time with their parents during daily dinners or on family vacations taken several times a year to some of the most beautiful or prestigious places in the galaxy where they often met celebrities, politicians, and other high-flung figures. They also never missed an event, like a recital or a horseback riding exhibition, and they were always eager to host their friends for sleepovers and parties. They were good parents, even if they weren't involved in making lunches or helping with homework.
On one family trip when Jetta was fourteen, the family introduced her to a photographer staying at their resort, at first because he was a famous personage and Jetta was so in love with fashion already. She originally thought to be a photographer or a fashion designer herself. The photographer, though, remarked that Jetta's appearance was actually quite given to photographing. By the end of the weekend, he told the family he wished to use Jetta for a spread in a holozine he was doing. Unable to tell their daughter no, her parents agreed, and Jetta was the face of a clothing line for a brief-lived campaign that came out when she was fifteen.
She quickly garnered the attention of agents and modeling bureaus who wished to represent her. At fifteen, the attention was pleasing, and made her feel wanted in a way her parents and nannies hadn’t really, despite being very loving and providing. Modeling surrounded her with people who wanted to be around her, even if, as she would later realize, they were only interested in being a part of her rising success. The friends she upset by breaking appointments were just 'jealous' of her success, her agents told her, and for a few years she believed them.
For now, she was just content to be the center of a great deal of attention. Her career was highest from the age of fifteen to seventeen, when her coltish limbs, charmed backstory, and malleability made her an asset. When she started to fill out and be less of the fashion standard for height and weight, she had to work a little harder at it, and that’s when she learned a hard lesson about the industry and about fair-weather friends. By the time the fashion industry’s interest in her had dulled down to an infrequent holocall, she was able to pick out who her real friends were (her parents still supported her, even if her agent didn’t!) and cottoned on to the fickle nature of the work she did.
Her stubbornness was tempered in this failure, though, because she had absolutely no intention of giving up. Despite its fickle nature, she loved fashion and modeling. She loved the glitz and the glamor, the luxury and the pomp, and she even loved the challenge of it. So she got a new agent, who advised her to leave Coruscant for a fresh start on Corellia, where she would be a recognizable but new face, and that’s exactly what she did, reinventing herself as a more mature, experienced model people could recognize. The trick worked and her career was revived with a steadier if not clamorous line of clients.
It was on Corellia that she would meet Nash Dar’ken, a charming but altogether different sort of man from those she was used to. He was shopping in one of the megacenters on Corellia in the storefront of an upscale designer, looking a little awkward and out of place. She barely registered his presence until he approached her to ask for help. He didn’t know what went together, he explained, and he had an important event to attend. He wanted to be sure to blend in, in appearances anyway. Charmed by his honesty and eager to help, she dressed him, made him try on several different suits, and eventually picked out the one she liked best, ‘though she thought he should buy them all.’ He grinned and said he would, if he had anywhere to wear them… dinner with her, for instance. He got her comm channel number for his efforts.
The next night, she was in attendance for a gala opening in one of the poshest new buildings on Corellia, a wall of windows showing off the glittering skyline on all sides. To her surprise, she ran into Nash there. After a bit of flirtation and dancing, Nash said he had someplace to be and made his exit, promising to give her a call, but he wouldn’t need to. Nash was a bounty hunter, and when he could tear himself away from his date he followed after the owner of the flat they were all partying in, his current target. Next thing anyone knew, an unseen window in the next apartment exploded outward and two men leapt out, landing in a speeder and zooming off.
No one recognized the men in the speeder, but her.
When they met for dinner, she confronted him, but he didn’t deny that he was there or that he had kidnapped someone. He explained what he did for a living, explained he usually brought in really nasty sorts that were too big time for local police forces but not big time enough to involve the Jedi, and that the guy he had taken out was wanted for hiding Republic secrets in the artwork he sold. He cracked that he wasn’t going to tell her until their second or third date, but wow, if she was going to be this nosy she was going to have to get him drunk. She didn’t find it funny at the time, but later, his sense of humor would be one of the things that kept their relationship strong for so long.
They continued dating. He wasn’t at all the sort of person her agent or even her family thought she should be seeing, but that was part of the attraction. Neither of them knew the first thing about the other’s world, so they were both an escape, from pretentions and posing for her, from double-identities and adrenaline for him. Despite coming from such different backgrounds, their personalities just worked together, and they were at ease together. Together, their lives seemed doable. So after a year of dating he asked her if she would like to do their lives together from then on.
They made up another identity for him, one that would fly with the press and keep their relationship at once public and secret. After all, he had a lot of enemies, and she had a lot of really nosy frenemies. So Nash Dar’Ken became Garen Ty, a businessman who had made his fortune on the Outer Rim and was often ‘away on business.’ He met her parents, her agents, her friends, and they bought a home together in one of the snazzier high rises in Coronet.
As a housewarming gift, Nash introduced her to the house 'butler', Cee-four. Cee-four was a repurposed protocol droid reprogrammed to oversee all the other servant droids in the house, including the security system, and also to act as an assistant and companion droid for Jetta, including managing her appointments, keeping up with contacts, and screening calls and meetings. He was even given reinforced hydraulics in his limbs so that he might carry her shopping bags. There was another purpose to Cee-four, which she would not learn about until many paragraphs later.
Their life seemed charmed, and it stayed that way for many, many years. Certainly, they fought, and they faced every challenge a married couple can face, and more. He had to get used to seeing her working with other men; she got jealous of the women who became parts of his ‘cover’ while on the job. He was older than she was and wanted kids, but she had no intention of giving up her career for them for a while longer. In short, they fought, they learned more about each other, sometimes they considered splitting up. But then, they learned to compromise, they learned to read each other, and they overcame those problems. They were a good couple despite their differences, and for ten years they were happy.
During these years Nash insisted on Jetta learning self-defense ‘just in case’ anything should ever happen to him. Though most of the people he worked for were more reputable sorts, he knew that he was making enemies, and while he did his best to keep his two lives separate, he wanted her prepared for anything. She agreed, ‘but don’t expect me to bulk up and become some kind of Jedi Meathead, because I won’t.’ He agreed, and for the duration of their marriage, they trained together – very casually, perhaps, but enough to make her familiar with the tools in her arsenal if she should ever need them.
About three years ago, though, Nash became increasingly insistent about seriousness in their lessons. One time, he accidentally hurt her when he insisted she try to get out of a hold without any instruction or help from him. They fought for the first time in years, before he finally cursed and walked out. He just wanted to make sure she was safe, he said as he slammed the door behind him. They made up, but the moment stuck out to her.
Another time, Nash came home from a job insisting that they needed to move. Their Coronet apartment had become their home, comfortable and upgraded exactly to suit them. They knew the neighbors and the neighborhood, and they were even thinking of finally having a child. She couldn’t understand his sudden desire to move, so they fought again. They did move, but now it was obvious that their relationship was troubled. She imagined all of the worst things – that he was cheating with someone in the neighborhood, perhaps – but never did she imagine the right worst thing.
Things settled down when they were in their new apartment. They fell into their old routine, happy, easy, and close. She even thought again about children, but before she could put her mind to it seriously, something terrible happened and disrupted every plan she and Nash had for the future. Nash had left for a job a few weeks before. She was alone in her apartment, fast asleep, when Cee-four suddenly came to life giving the following alarm: perimeter breach, intruders in the house.
She and Nash had practiced this. She got out of bed, rushed for the bathroom, and climbed into the ductwork from the access panel in the linen closet. A rope was pre-installed; she used it to haul herself up into the overall ventilation shaft for her floor. Her progress was slow. Every time the air recycling cycled on she had to hold her breath and duck her head to keep the rush of tens of thousands of citizens’ air from stealing the moisture from her eyes and lips. She had a hard time remembering Nash’s instructions and at one point broke down in tears, believing herself lost. By the time she made it out of the ductwork following the marks he had left there, she was shaking and harrowed. She kicked the cover off to step out into the bright light of daytime still clad in her nightshirt. She had been in the ducts for hours.
She kept to the plan they had talked about. She walked down the bustling Corellian streets to a nearby storage facility, where she accessed a pod Nash had hired in a false name. She put in her code, retrieved the swoop within and the fake identification details he had created for her, just in case. She donned her change of clothes, bemoaning the rat’s nest that her hair was, but at least now people wouldn’t be staring at her cartoon underwear. She steered the swoop to the local starport, a massive port with hundreds of starships coming and going every day, and with her new identification details she accessed ‘her’ ship stored at one of the drydocks.
As she stared at the starship in its drydock, she again felt tears welling from the feeling of helplessness and strangeness of playing through a scenario that she had never really believed she would need. Like the ‘in case we crash’ motions she went through every time she boarded an interstellar shuttle, she just thought, it was one of those things you have to know, as if just knowing the procedure would stop the worst from happening. But here she was, boarding a dilapidated old clunker of a ship with a new identity she didn’t even know the name of yet. The Rusty Bucket the ship was called, and she snorted, because that was exactly his dumb sense of humor. And then the tears flowed harder, because she didn’t know if she would ever hear him make another dumb joke again.
By the time the ship had been moved from storage to a landing pad for liftoff, she had recovered herself well enough to start thinking of how she was supposed to pilot the damn thing. Did ships have autopilot programs? She had never had to think of things like that a day in her life. She boarded the ship, thinking that there might be more information on board, but when she entered the hangar she had been moved to she found Cee-four waiting for her, to her delight. She asked how the droid had got away, but he simply went on about a 'mad man’ in the apartment and she thought the stress of the intrusion must have short-circuited something in the droid.
(In actuality, Cee-four was talking about the alternative programming that kicked in when Jetta was in danger. After she escaped through the ventilation shaft, the mercenaries followed her into the bathroom, and Cee-four determined she was in danger. At that point, secondary programming kicked in and overrode control of the droid's body, attacking her pursuers. Cee-four has no built-in weaponry, but the reinforced limbs proved weapon enough in the tight quarters of the restroom, where he could use such tools as the toilet bowl, the shower hose, and the hard tiled surfaces as weapons. The 'mad man' who knocked out the mercenaries in the bathroom was the droid himself, running on this secondary programming. When Cee-four no longer had proof that Jetta was in immediate danger, the secondary programming deactivated and Cee-four defaulted to his usual non-violent programming.)
When Jetta posed the problems facing her to Cee-four, he offered to access her ‘emergency contacts.’ Jetta had never set up an emergency contact list. The droid explained that the contact list was on his 'secondary drive' which Jetta hadn't known existed. Together they searched through the contacts, until she came across one of Nash’s fake names. She told Cee-four to call it on the ship's comms, and while Nash didn’t answer in person, the other end of the holo frequency played a message to her.
Nash’s voice explained that if she was calling this number she must be in danger and walked her through what to do in that case. His voice gave her a tour of the tiny ship, showed her to the cargo bay where a pair of blasters and a set of armor ‘he thought might fit’ were waiting for her. He also explained that the ship held a databank of all his jobs to date and all the contacts or sources he had picked up along the way. He told her about the emergency contacts and said if she had any questions or needed any help that she could contact them, and he hoped they would help.
But then he continued. If she didn’t hear from him, if he had been hurt in any way, or even if she didn’t know what had happened, he told her don’t contact anyone. Just run. Go home. Find her parents. Tell them what happened. Get herself a couple of body guards and just forget about him. Move on. Be happy.
She had no intention of doing that. She might have been through hell in the last day, but she couldn't just give up on him without even knowing what happened to him! Maybe that was the smart thing to do - go home to mom and dad, start over, marry someone suitable - but no one had ever accused her of being smart. She got the first contact that sounded promising on Nash’s emergency list and put their location into the navcomputer.
Nash was the love of her life. The one. The only. And if he was in trouble, no matter how ill-equipped she was to take the dangers on, she was going to find him. She would talk to whoever she needed to. She would pay whatever price. She would find him, and she would bring him back home.
What You Don’t Know Could Kill You
And certainly what Jets doesn’t know about her husband’s disappearance could end up killing her. For more than twenty years now, Nash has been getting results and earning himself a name as a bounty hunter. He never did work exclusively for the ‘good guys’, but he always took jobs he knew wouldn’t get him tangled up in anything bigger than he was - until he was contacted by a hutt associated with the Hutt Cartel. To refuse would be suicide. To fail would be worse. But to succeed would make him a continued target of hutt job offers, which he didn’t want. Nevertheless, it was the lesser of three evils, and he took the job, which as he had feared made him the target of other offers.
His most recent job was for Garno, a hutt based on Nar Shaddaa who wanted a genetic engineer for his pet project brought in alive. Unfortunately, the geneticist knew that the hutt was coming for him and had no intention of letting his work get into the hands of their ilk. He had a suicide tooth planted into his head, and he activated it, not only killing himself but wiping all his databanks of information. The hutt blamed Nash.
As far as Garno was concerned, Nash owed him a fortune for the lost information and expertise. Nash refused to give him anything that had Jetta’s name attached to it, but others were more forthcoming. How did he afford the ship he had and the clothes he liked if he didn’t have a fortune stashed somewhere? They believed he was holding out, and Garno engaged in many ways of breaking Nash’s spirit, forcing him to pit fight in his throne room unarmed and often bound, against other bounty hunters come to try their hand at the same geneticist prize.
Eventually, Nash came up with a 'brilliant' plan. He would give Garno something worth a fortune, a slave, one easily recognizable to the galaxy and therefore carrying with her a great deal of prestige. His wife! To his very small credit, he had no intentions of leaving her with the hutt once he had won his freedom. He planned to go, gather strength and forces, and take her back, but it was a plan that came from utter desperation and psychological trauma. In his moment of weakness, desperate to escape the torture of the hutt, he latched onto any plan that would spare him and honestly believed he could get her back later despite overwhelming odds in trying to do so. So he gave up Jetta’s identity and location in return for his freedom.
Garno agreed, assuming the information proved good, but no one counted on Jetta getting away. Now, Nash is still in Garno’s custody and may even be helping the hutt try to track her down. Meanwhile she is on a mission to save him from same hutt at all costs, ignorant of his betrayal or the nature of her enemy. She must make contacts, she must earn a reputation, she must earn allies, and when that is done, she must face one of the most formidable enemies in the depths of space. Will she be able to pull it off, or will she find this is too much for her? And what happens when she finds out her husband was the one who started her off on this path in the first place?
Da da daaaaaaa. ;)
RP Sample:
“Easy, gorgeous. It's a blaster, not a bomb.”
She could hear the smirk in Nash’s voice as she shifted her grip on the blaster for the tenth time. She cocked her eyebrow, glancing over her shoulder at him where he stood behind her.
“It's as dangerous as a bomb,” she told him petulantly. “I dunno why you're laughing.”
“Well, pro tip, sweetheart,” he chuckled, moving to guide her hand with his. “The other end's the dicey one.”
She threw an elbow at his gut, but he bent out of the way with a hitch of his breath. He took the hint, though, and moved to lean against the side of the booth they were using at the local shooting gallery. He relaxed, crossing his arms and his ankles as he watched her set up her shot. She rolled her shoulders to relieve the tension she still felt over holding a dangerous weapon, bent her neck to the side to crack it, resettled her feet. Then she lifted the blaster again toward her target, and he grimaced. Yikes. She was so afraid of that damn blaster she was practically leaning away from it. Gonna have to work on that… hopefully without looking like he was working on that. He uncrossed his arms.
“So,” he said for diversion, “How is it that you can walk down a runway wearing next to nothing, with billions of people watching you, but you get nervous about holding a blaster?”
“What?” she replied distractedly as she flicked off the safety. “I'm always covered up.”
He snickered as he stepped behind her. “Parts of you are covered up.”
“The important parts!” She tilted her head to look down the sights of the barrel, keeping focused on her work. He snorted at her stubbornness.
“They're all important to me.” He watched over her shoulder as she took aim, noting the problem areas of her stance. With subtle guidance, he moved his hands around her waist and let the incidental brush of their bodies shift her into a sturdier frame. He placed a kiss beneath her ear when he was through, but she bent her head away from his distraction.
“Don't you dare get flirty now,” she threatened. “I wanted to go to the opera. I bought a new dress, with a slit up to here,” she gestured at her neck with the blaster, “but you --”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” He caught hold of her wrist to stop the gesticulating blaster, breathing a sigh of relief when nothing got blown to bits. “Damn, baby. Mind the dicey end.”
“Don’t call me 'baby' when I’m holding a blaster.”
She would have liked to pretend she wasn't upset about her brilliant date being postponed for something tedious like the firing range, but she was disappointed. She hardly ever got to see Nash, or at least that's how it felt. He worked now more than ever, and though she would have liked to concentrate on their settling down and having a baby, instead he seemed more involved in his bountying than ever. The pistol had almost become a symbol of all the other things she was tired of coming between them, and all she really wanted was to stop being the bounty hunter's wife for one short evening and go out on a date with her husband! Was that too much to ask? She set the pistol down onto the shelf before her with a reckless clatter.
His good mood soured quickly. For half a moment he was genuinely sorry that he had broken up her plans for the evening, but then he remembered why this was so important to him and why she had to learn to protect herself. His eyes fell away from hers.
“It’s just been a while since we worked,” he finally said. “I can't always be here, and some of the people I’m working with lately...” He trailed off and when he lifted his gaze to her he saw concern bleeding into her pout. He switched gears, his smile replacing the worry in his expression. “Aw, I just want to know you’re safe, that’s all.”
She smiled a little. His concern was touching, but they had been living together this way for thirteen years. Surely there was no reason to fear things would suddenly change now? And even if there was some danger of that, it seemed a little belated to worry. She had made her choice a long time ago. If she could deal with the risk for the last decade, she could deal with it now. She was made of sterner stuff than he realized. And if she had to be an amazonian warrior bride just to prove that to him, well, maybe she would. So she reached again for the pistol.
“I knew what I was getting into when I asked you for another date.”
His head bobbed back like she had swatted him on the nose. He protested, “I asked you for a second date!”
Her grin blossomed as she lifted the blaster to take aim again. “That's what you think. That dress was totally asking for another date.”
He tilted his head, pretty sure she was just trying to make him regret their training session, but he asked her anyway. “So what is a dress with a slit up to here asking for?”
She smirked, laughing as she sighted through the blaster’s guide. “Guess you'll never find out!”
She fired off a shot at her target, envisioning a snappy ending where she got a bullseye right between the dummy’s eyes. (Is that what you called it? A bullseye?) Instead, she missed the target entirely, causing something to spark and sputter from the ceiling overhead. Nash cleared his throat.
“It’s, uh…” He sniffed, placing his hands on his hips as he inspected her damage. “It’s a good thing we’re practicing.”
Her shoulders fell as they stared jointly at whatever was now hanging off the shooting gallery ceiling. "Yeah," she agreed despondently. So much for that snappy comeback.
Then she threw another elbow at his gut. “Hngh!”
