Verity Vyshaan, Jedi Battlemaster (WIP)

[Neology]

“May you live in interesting times. May you find what you're looking for.”

Name: Verity Vyshaan
Race: Sephi
Age: Eighty-two.
Birthplace: Coruscant

Allegiance: The Jedi Order
Status: Jedi High Councilor
Rank: Battlemaster

Height/Weight: 5'8”, 144 lbs
Appearance:

At a hair above average human height, Verity is shorter and more athletic than most Sephi women – not that she's known many others to compare herself to. With a lissome build, sun-kissed skin, and an easy smile, Battlemaster Vyshaan exudes the cheerful vitality of a woman in the prime of her life. She moves with unaffected confidence whether on or off the battlefield.

Rounded shoulders lead seamlessly to long limbs, sweeping shoulder blades, a muscular core, and wide hips. Her legs taper nicely – powerful thigh to knee to calf and finally, slightly over large foot. The arms are of a similar build, well defined, ending in fingers that are long and thin, with prominent knuckles.

Verity wears her hair loose, mousy brown locks that fall in layers just short of her shoulders. The tips she stains a deep blue with alkanet dye, matched by facepaint in the same color to honor her long-dead master. She bears a tattoo of the Jedi crest on her left shoulder, picked up some fifty years ago in celebration of the Treaty of Mandoa. Her eyes are a clear powder blue, often glinting at some private joke.

She can most often be found wearing the traditional tunic, obi, britches, and boots of the Order, though she typically forgoes the outer cloak. Streetclothes, when appropriate, are typically chosen in neutral colors and in form-fitting cuts. Additionally, the Battlemaster maintains a old but otherwise typical set of Republic Battle Armor.

Personality:

Ships/Vehicles: None personally owned.

Lightsaber:
Verity's carries a dual-phase saber with an unusual indigo blade. The hilt is finished in electrum, giving it a pleasant gold sheen. Some wear is apparent – scratches and burns to the casing and grip, but the inner workings are meticulously well maintained.

Equipment: Lightsaber, utility belt (contains: survival rations, comlink, grappling spike launcher, holoprojector, holomap, aquata breather, Jedi beacon transceiver, glowrod, and basic tool kit,) holdout blaster, spare power pack, standard Republic body armor (in storage.)

Stats:
Strength – Above Average
Agility – Above Average
Intelligence - Average
Charisma - Superior

Force Stats:
Telekinetic- Adept
Telepathic- Apprentice
Body- Master
Sense- Apprentice
Protection- Expert
Healing– Adept
Destruction– Unskilled

Force Training:
Force Valor - Master
Battlemind - Expert

Lightsaber Training:
Shii-Cho - Master
Makashi - Adept
Soresu - Master
Ataru - Adept
Shien/Djem So - Master
Juyo - Specialist

Combat Training:
Broken Gate - Master
Blasters - Expert
Mounted Guns - Adept
Heavy Weapons - Adept

Other Training:
Persuasion - Expert
Tactics - Expert
Navigate Bureaucracy (Jedi Order & Republic Senate *Only*) - Expert
Piloting - Adept
Military History - Apprentice
Acrobatics - Apprentice
Repair - Novice
Gardening - Novice

Languages:
Galactic Basic - Fluent
Huttese – Fluent
Binary – Understood only


Biography:

Part I - Origin
“Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.”

Sarisa Fallon, Wayfarer Technology's sales representative of the year three times running, was not ready to have a baby. Strictly speaking neither was her paramour, a local speeder mechanic by the name of Crix Wessiri. Ultimately, he never got much say in the matter. Ms. Fallon cut all contact the moment her condition began to show.

Months later, at Coruscant's Vyshaan Medcenter, Sarisa gave birth to and subsequently abandoned a healthy baby girl. Blood tests simplified what might have otherwise been a tragic and complicated situation – the infant was Force sensitive. The Jedi were happy to take her in. The elderly woman dispatched from Acquisitions gave her a name. Verity, for the truth is inextricably tied to the Lightside of the Force, and Vyshaan, for the place they found her.

Part II - Youngling
“We know what we are, but know not what we may be.”

Verity's earliest memories are happy ones, interspersed with occasional moments of confusion. Under the care of the Jedi fosterers, she developed from a fussy infant into a energetic and loquacious child. She made friends easily, often guiding teary new arrivals around the playrooms and gardens.

Naturally curious, it was only a matter of time until she learned that her situation was unusual. No people, no family. For months after she wavered in doubt, never straying too far from one instructor or an other.

At age four, Verity was assigned to the Bear clan along with eleven other children. Enjoying a slight headstart over the newer students, Verity took to the regiment of study and training quite naturally and, over time, her adventurous spirit began to reemerge. Often, this was to her detriment. Records on the matter persist in her file, recalling chores and meditation assigned 5 times for leaving her bed at night, 15 times for being on the roof without permission, and once for swearing.

Seasons came and went, and Verity's particular talents began to take shape. Though an average student in most other respects, she livid for the afternoons: physical training and, later, saber practice. That hilt in her hands made every boring history text, every minute of silent contemplation, so so worth it.

Interlude I - Chosen
“Almost. It's a big word for me. I feel it everywhere.”

A few weeks after her 12th birthday, Bear Clan's instructors presented Verity with an unexpected choice. An older student had been chosen for training as a padawan. She could, if she wished, take his place in that year's Apprentice Tournament, set to take place at the end of the month. Do well, and she would almost certainly draw the attention of a master – a most coveted fate among her fellow clan mates. While the following months would see most of them to masters, there was some small pride to be found in being among the first.

There was little in the way of preparation, though Verity recalls those days passing with unbearable slowness. Then, quite simply, the day of the tournament was upon her.

In a bowl-shaped white training room, Verity fought five rounds under the watchful gaze of some two dozen strangers. Her quick, confident strikes won her first to three burns in four of these, though she was defeated in the fifth round. Her opponent, a zabrak girl, took the defensive and waited, letting Verity tire herself out. The match ended when she knocked the saber out of Verity's hands.

There was a wait in the infirmary that afternoon – one of the other had children broken an arm. Verity fidgeted in her seat incessantly, cheeks burning with shame as she waited to have her burns looked at. Eventually, the Knight seated next to her, a bronze-skinned Kiffar with blue clan tattoos on each cheek, took note and prodded her into conversation. Defensive at first, she gradually opened up to the curious young man, up to and including pantomime maneuvers from the day's best matches.

Jedi Knight Tomas Konshi made for a wonderful audience, greeting her successes with appreciative oohs and aahs and her defeat with advice. She found herself disappointed when he had to leave, vanishing into a private room with one of the healers.

A month later, an instructor pulled Verity from lunch to give her the news. Knight Konshi had spoken to the Council, securing their permission to take a student.

Part III - Padawan
“So tell me then, why do fireflies choose to shine on the darkest of nights?”

Verity spent that first evening meditating in the rotunda chapel and, the next morning, took her vow of service before the Council. That afternoon she said goodbye to her clan mates, paying one last tearful visit to collect her clothes. The novelty of having her own room soon cheered her, however, austere furnishings and all.

In the days that followed she was uncharacteristically shy, not entirely sure what to make of her new master. Konshi was genial and talkative as he limped around the temple, new padawan in tow. (She'd been mildly disappointed to learn the injury came from a speeder bike accident rather than something exciting.) She'd simply expected … Well, a stolid master with gray in their hair. Tomas smiled too much, laughed too easily.

Still, Verity's misgivings faded day by day, and she became quite comfortable with her master's daily routine. Exercise and saber practice in the morning, two hours to herself after lunch, study and meditation in the evenings. Konshi was a fastidious teacher – she would spend days, occasionally weeks, practicing a single strike until it became second nature, muscle memory.

For the first two years her master kept his activities limited to Capital City, often playing Jedi bodyguard for one dignitary or another. Politically savvy for a Guardian, Konshi taught his padawan to listen to and learn from these men and women whenever possible, but not necessarily to trust them. He stressed that they were especially terrible at staying out of trouble, having the absolute worst instincts when things went wrong. That aside, the job was usually quite boring. It only went bad once during Verity's apprenticeship, cementing her respect for her master from there on.

Her master had been tasked with escorting Senator Yana Trebil's armored speeder from the Senate tower to her home after a controversial vote. Verity rode in the back of the convoy, sharing a luxury speeder with a pair of Trebil's hirelings. She remembers seeing a slight shimmer in the air and then the sight of the first speeder engulfed in flame. It crashed, warped but not broken, on the roof of a nearby tower. No second shot came, and she screamed at the driver to land their speeder. By the time Verity got there, Konshi had already helped the injured senator clear of the wreck. Though bleeding and burned, he hunched over Yana, keeping pressure on a wound in her side until paramedics arrived to take over. Once safely in the ambulance, Konshi dropped the effects of Batlemind and lost consciousness more or less immediately.

Navigating Coruscant Grand Medical by herself was a little bit terrifying, but Verity soon noticed a strange phenomenon among people outside the temple. They saw her as a Jedi, not as a child, and deffered to her robes and saber hilt. (They seemed quite unable to tell a training saber from the real thing, curiously.) She used this attitude to her advantage, insisting to her master's attending physician that Konshi needed to be transferred to the Jedi temple whenever possible. He was moved that evening.

Under the care of the Jedi healers, Tomas recovered within a few days. He was visited once by Master Melina Straden, the formidable Thyrsian woman who'd trained him to knighthood. Though their acquaintance was brief, Verity was deeply enamored by Melina's reputation – Dark Jedi hunter and the best duelist of her generation. She struggled to be on her best behavior, fighting down a dozen questions. The opportunity to ask them was gone all too soon, for Master Straden departed as soon as Tomas was back on his feet.

Months later, they traveled to the Jedi enclave on Dantooine. Verity loved it there, relishing the chance to explore and the novelty of grass and trees that weren't walled in behind glass. Under her master's instruction, the lanky teen spent long afternoons practicing outdoors, learning to call on the Force to strengthen her body and focus her mind.

The spring in which Verity turned 17 was unseasonably warm and likely to lead into a hotter summer. Even Jedi tempers ran hot in such weather and Verity was no exception. She remembers, with some contrition, pestering her master endlessly about lightsabers. It was a relief when he announced that they'd be heading off world. A mission from the Council of Reconciliation had presented itself. They would leave as soon as possible.

The Ithorians held their planet, and every life upon it, as deeply sacred. Under normal circumstances, they would never have invited two Jedi to walk the planet's surface. There was always some poaching; native flora and fauna occasionally showed up in galactic markets. This was different, and the Ithorians were desperate – these poachers had murdered an Oracle.

Konshi and Verity went down to the planet's surface with what supplies they could carry and strict instruction on a Ithorian belief, the Law of Life. For any life taken, whether plant or animal, two must replace it. Though her master seemed calm, Verity regarded their shuttle flight down to the planet with extreme suspicion; what if she stepped on something?

Her master's response was simple – she wouldn't. Over those first few weeks, he taught her to use the Force to sense her way about. The effort tired her quickly and their progress was slight, mostly in and around the area of Oracle Jii Modron's murder. Eventually, Konshi would range further out, sometimes days at a time, leaving Verity to practice alone. Searching a jungle on foot was no small task, and progress was painfully slow. When a breakthrough finally came, it was from an unexpected source.

Verity rose early that morning, waking to day 4 without news from her master. Worried, she stuffed her pockets with ration bars, filled her canteen, and struck out to find his path. Confidence and concern carried her through to mid-afternoon, but by dusk she was tired, hungry, and quite lost. She rested the night in a grove of Bafforr trees, falling into a deep sleep among the twisted roots.

She dreamed, and the Bafforr trees filled her mind with the strange visions of jungle beasts (for trees have no eyes of their own.) They showed her the poachers camp: a fence that stung like biting insects and a stone burrow, all shadowed by the concentrated urine-stink of captivity. They showed her the Jedi camp, where her master waited, sleepless, staring back at her through her borrowed beast's eyes. Finally, they showed her a knife, buried inches deep into blue crystal bark.

Upon waking, she searched for the knife. It proved real enough by day, a confirmation for the rest. She tore a long strip of fabric from her sleeve and wrapped the knife, then pulled it out of the tree. Fragments of hardened sap came with it, the largest sized to fit comfortably in her palm. She pocketed both and started back to camp.

Konshi scolded her for wandering off, but listened intently to her as she described her dream. Postcognition on the knife confirmed the truth of her vision. They discussed a plan as they traveled through the afternoon. Tomas would go in and she would make sure that none of the poachers fled in their ship. Ithorian law enforcement would be waiting for them on the herdship, but could not offer support on the planet's surface as their religion forbade it. He did not think it likely that these men would accept surrender, though it was a Jedi's obligation to offer it.

Her master was right. What was killing one more man against whatever punishment the Ithorians would exact? Verity waited, crouched in the dark by the freighter's landing struts, shivering despite the heat. The caged beasts were restless. Konshi was taking too long.

A human made for the shuttle, blaster in hand. His fear of her master was an unexpected shock, intensely vivid. Verity launched out of cover and into his path, yellow training saber igniting. Several blaster shots went in the air. Verity struck the side of his knee with a Force-enhanced kick, felt and heard the joint tear. The man screamed and fell, blaster writhing uncontrolled in his hands. She turned her saber to deflect the bolt, but with no warning, at point blank range, the effort was quite useless. The shot hit Verity in the stomach – she remembers the heat and pain, like touching a hot stove but bigger, and an odd sense of distance. A long moment later, she collapsed beside the injured poacher.

Verity briefly came to, some time later, in a bed in a white room. (A patient room at the herdship's largest medcenter, though she didn't recognize it at the time.) Tomas dozed nearby, his familiar presence comforting in that strange place. She drifted in and out of sleep.

In the weeks that followed, her master caught her up on what had happened. He'd taken the poacher's ship and brought her to the herdship for help. She'd needed surgery. The Ithorian doctors were very good; they'd saved her life. Konshi had been forced to return planet side, cleanup that took well into the following afternoon. The captive beasts were released. Everything that could be torn down or powered off, was.

Of the nine poachers, only three survived, including the man Verity had injured. The Jedi would remain on the herdship through Verity's recovery and beyond, at least until the bulk of the legal proceedings were settled. The surviving poachers faced imprisonment and a staggering number of fines. The dead would be cloned (twice, of course) in accordance with Ithorian religion. To Verity's initial disappointment, her master did not celebrate their victory. Quite the opposite, in fact - Konshi was unusually withdrawn and reflective for months afterword. Still, on one thing he finally relented: it was time for Verity to have her own lightsaber. After all, she already had the first piece.

Verity meditated with her Baffor crystal daily during her recovery, working with only a few interior pieces at first. While her crystal was of sufficient luster and diaphaneity to work as part of a lightsaber, there was no record of any Jedi having used one going back through several centuries. Getting the setting right would take dozens, if not hundreds, of attempts. Konshi counseled patience and fetched her new parts, incentivising her physical therapist's recovery goals with particularly interesting pieces.

Young Jedi heal quickly and Verity was up and walking around by the end of the month, faintly shocked by how quickly she tired and how weak her limbs felt. Strength and endurance would have to be won back bit by bit. Frustrated and thoroughly sick of her hospital room, she begged her master to leave Ithor soon. Konshi reluctantly agreed; the mission was complete and Verity was well enough to travel. He contacted the Council and made arrangements to travel back to Coruscant.

Though Tomas and Verity returned to the temple for the first time in several years, they soon fell back into old patterns. Verity still preferred to take her physical training in the morning, though for now it was under a Jedi healer's careful supervision. She spent the afternoons on her saber, taking it apart and putting it back together again and again. The first time she tried to turn it on the blade was too unfocused, damaging the emitter before she shut it off. She replaced the part without comment to her master. She would not try again until it felt right.

Months passed and her master resumed his work for the Council, accompanying various dignitaries in and around the Senate tower. Verity tagged along once or twice a week. She never found it quite as boring as before, having seen how dangerous it could be. Still, it would be years until she fully understood the need for a Jedi presence near the heart of Republic politics. At the time, she simply found it curious that the Council so often provided extra protection to people who often had their own guards.

Once she was fully recovered, Konshi started her saber training in earnest. Already proficient in the basics of Form V, Verity took to its intermediate techniques with boisterous enthusiasm. Additionally, Tomas had her practice Force Valor at every opportunity, newly reassured that the power would not be a crutch.

Verity's eighteenth birthday came and went and yet she'd made no further progress on her lightsaber. Most padawans had real weapons by her age – an observation made up almost entirely on the spot. She sulked. She damaged training remotes in practice, prompting at least one written complaint (submitted to her master by a surly Duros repairman.) There was only one thing left to do, almost as bad as giving up: admit she needed help.

Irene Mott, a somewhat eccentric member of the Jedi artisans and saber crystal specialist, provided an answer almost immediately. A slight imperfection in the stone diffused too much light, creating a wide, unfocused blade. She could trim it down and have it ready for use that afternoon. Stunned, Verity babbled out her agreement. She spent most of the day in Mott's crowded workshop, trying to be unintrusive. When Irene presented her crystal, cut down and polished from a rough prism into a properly faceted gemstone, Verity hardly recognized it. Thrilled, she hugged the older woman in thanks and returned to her room, already planning how to alter the setting for the new shape.

Two days later, Verity presented a working lightsaber to her master. The hilt design was deliberately simple: the standard chromed durasteel and rubberized grip of many first lightsabers. The Baffor crystal produced a blue-violet blade, deeper than the standard Guardian blue. Konshi rewarded her with an extra hour of saber practice, gently praising his student for seeking Irene's expertise.

Later that year, Tomas received their next mission: accompany Master Jasmille Deming and her padawan to Naboo and protect them while Jasmille arbitrated a dispute between two of the larger citystates. They would leave together in three days. Excited to travel again, but skeptical of spending all her time with another padawan - a child, Verity packed up her few possessions and loaded a datapad with books on Naboo to read on the way.

As it was, Verity had ample time to get to know Jasmille's padawan: Neyla, the very same zabrak girl that had bested her as children. The first day was quiet, with neither girl quite sure how to approach the other, but eventually boredom won out. The austere Jedi ship offered little in the way of entertainment, but it did come equipped with a Dejarik table. Neyla broke the ice with an invitation and they formed a tentative friendship, though Verity still lost more often than not.

Master Deming's negotiations with the Naboo took weeks, soon stretching into months. Verity and Neyla both took on the occasional small mission for their masters. Though they encountered nothing so dangerous as the poachers on Ithor, the time was well spent. The padawans worked together as relative equals, practicing outside the master-student relationship for the first time in their lives. They argued very often.

Neyla faced her trails on Naboo, to which Verity was an occasional accomplice. The experience left her wondering what Tomas had planned for her. When questioned, he was tight lipped on the matter, insisting that she had at least two more years of training to go. They returned to Coruscant ten months after they'd left, an uneasy truce secured.

Six months after Verity's twenty-first birthday, Konshi revealed his intention to submit her experiences on Ithor to the council as her Trials of Skill and Flesh. She had his permission to begin preparing for the Trial of Spirit. Weeks later, after a day of fasting, Verity meditated in an empty chamber of the Tower of First Knowledge. Konshi's former master, Melina Straden, supervised.

Verity opened her eyes within the vision and found herself standing in a field of black. Behind her stretched a wavering line of gray. Ahead, it branched and blossomed into color. Every choice she might make, everything she might do, laid out before her, expectant. Some threads stretched further than she could see while others violently terminated into scattered embers.

It looks like a tree, she thought, and then it was. A gray trunk that led to bright branches laden with fruit, some ripe and some withered. She reached out, touching the trunk.

And Verity was in another place.
She was listening to a hard hearted woman cry.
She was listening to an old Jedi recite the code.
She was listening to her master chide her in his cheerful, clever way.
She was on the battlefield, surrounded by enemies but with friends at her back.
She was alone in the shadow of a faithless murderer who thrilled at the feel of a lightsaber in her hand.

Verity drew her lightsaber and fought. And she lost, experiencing a curiously painless execution at the end of the apparition's indigo blade – twin to her own. She woke up on the cool stone floor with Master Straden peering down at her with something like concern.

She tried again the next week, facing the same vision as before – with the same results. And so it was for almost two months before she took a different approach. She walked past the shade, and it followed her for a time but could not touch her. A flat disc of white rose against the horizon and burned it away. When she awoke, Master Straden offered her congratulations.

Interlude II - Knighting Ceremony
“Let no one think of me that I am humble or weak or passive; let them understand I am of a different kind: dangerous to my enemies, loyal to my friends.”

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