Post by KnightOfTheOrder on Jul 5, 2009 11:41:59 GMT -5
Name: Ginh Su-Nyf
Race: Human
Age: 32
Height: 5’11”
Weight: 175 lbs.
Appearance:
Birth place: Alderaan
Faction: Jedi Order
Rank: Knight - Sentinel
Bio:
Youngling at the Temple:
The life of Jedi Ginh Su-Nyf began on the planet of Alderaan, but that is the extent of that planet’s claim on him. Raised within the Order from around the age of 3, Ginh’s youth was very similar to the experience of his brother and sister jedi - a life consumed by the routine of study, meditation and training. Young Ginh was a sharp student and always took a keen interest in his studies. The thirst for knowledge and understanding that in many ways still drive him was first awakened during his days as a youngling, and he eagerly devoured the teachings of his masters.
It was during this time that he drew the attention of the masters charged with his studies - and not only in a positive sense. For, while his bright mind, attentive attitude and diligent focus were commendable, his impatience and, in some instances, disobedience were less so. He was never satisfied with ending a discussion, debate or inquiry without a satisfactory answer, and exhibited frustration when the conclusion of a discussion was ‘such is the mystery of the Force.’ More than once, in his early days before he learned better, he had openly stated that was not a sufficient explanation, and had twice been caught trying to hack passwords to access material in the Archives above what his age group was cleared to read. While these traits were not uncommon in the young, they led to a growing concern amongst his masters that he lacked the discipline to regulate his desire for knowledge and that such a shortcoming was a dangerous flaw. He did not exhibit the traces of darkness that would cause the masters to truly worry, but his unwillingness to curb his will and trust in the wisdom of his masters to reveal knowledge when he was ready was a trait that ultimately needed to be addressed.
These concerns were addressed with a relatively light touch by his masters, who felt that a youth like Ginh would respond best to guidance rather than punishment, and should be shown the value of patience rather than punished for his lack thereof. This met with mixed success. Ginh was not an openly rebellious student and held great respect for his masters, so when the occasions came where he had to be put in his place for challenging a master’s decision to move no farther with lessons, he responded with forced deference but sincere humility. Forced deference gradually developed into forced patience and, while Ginh was never one to be satisfied with limiting the lessons for the day, he grew to accept it that he had to trust in his masters’ decisions.
By age 11 Ginh was a considered a very successful young student and was expected to be accepted as a Padawan in the near future. His studies had shown that his sharp mind was matched with a piercing perception of the Force, and he was considered one of the most adept students in the telepathic arts. The clarity and depth of images, intents, memories and snippets of coherent thoughts were impressive for one so young, as was his nascent skill in creating illusions. He also was notably more sensitive to stirrings in the Force than many of his peers and exhibited some skill in clairvoyance and danger sense. For all his success in these skills, however, he was merely average in the utilization of the Force in his physical actions, and was decidedly sub-par in other areas such as telekinesis and, most notably, healing. While he understood his lessons in healing and in theory could use the force to heal, in practice he had little to no talent in that field. While able to employ the force to mask pain or exhaustion, or to awaken the unconscious or even initiate a healing trance, much more than this was beyond him. These weaknesses did not seem to bother him, though, in part because he grew adept at employing his strengths to help compensate. While he wasn’t able to move as fast or strike as strong as a Jedi more skilled with employing the Force through his body, he was able to anticipate their moves to match their speed and dodge their blows. While unable to lift as much with the Force as some Jedi, he learned that projecting a startling image or thought often disrupted their telekinesis. Over the next year he began to excel beyond many of his peers as he adapted to using his strengths more quickly than many of his fellow students were able to build their repertoire of skills. He grew to trust his senses and instincts, learned how to understand the empathic perceptions, to silence himself to listen for the whispers of the Force that guided his clairvoyance, and to depend on his ability to catch flashes of another’s thoughts or intent to keep himself a step or two ahead in any competition or game.
As he continued to develop though his training, though, he began to focus more and more on the areas in which his strength resided, devoting not just hours of training and meditation but also reading as much as he could about the potential of the telepathy of the Jedi. Slowly, he began to develop thoughts that deviated from his training. In his studies he had stumbled across the idea that, as we know nothing of reality but our perception thereof, our perception is reality. If the mind was the lens through which beings ultimately experienced their perception, he started to ask himself, at what point did one cross from influencing the mind and begin influencing reality? These thoughts led to a budding arrogance and solipsism, and one day attracted the attention of an Iktotchi master by the name of Narbo Nesis.
Master Nesis, who generally spent little time in the Temple due to often engaging in long-term missions of investigation and intervention, had recently returned from one such mission and was providing a guest lecture in one of the sessions devoted to the further nurturing of the students’ telepathic skills. As with all Iktotchi, the telepathic arts came quite naturally to him and he was quite adept at their use. During the class he was duly impressed by young Ginh’s budding talents, but disconcerted by some of what he perceived in the student. Asking the student to remain behind as the class departed, Master Nesis spent several long minutes gazing into the youngling’s eyes in silence. Finally he declared that Ginh’s problem was that he thought too much. He silenced the protests the youngling was forming by hold up a hand, and continued to state that he did not believe this to be Ginh’s fault. It was merely that the youth had too much time to think, and that this he would remedy. After a brief consultation with the Council Master Nesis was granted permission to take Ginh as his padawan. Within the week master and padawan had departed the Temple, leaving Coruscant, the only home Ginh had ever known, far behind.
Padawan to Master Narbo Nesis:
From Coruscant, Master Nesis took his padawan to a place that he felt would benefit them both for their early training: the harsh, wind-whipped moon of Iktotch. There they spent nearly two years in seclusion as Master Nesis focused on the training of Ginh. When the Iktotchi master had first met him as a youngling, Narbo Nesis had been shocked to encounter the budding arrogance and divergent beliefs that had begun to take root in the student. While the Temple masters’ approach to Ginh had helped to keep him from a darker path, it had fallen short from keeping him on the straight and narrow path that Master Nesis saw as the proper path for a Jedi and he had little intention of using a soft touch to guide his padawan.
On Iktotch, Ginh engaged in a rigorous training program, only complicated by the vicious wind and sandstorms of the moon. Master Nesis was a firm believer in balance - in the Force, the Order, the individual or any other matter. He felt that Ginh’s being allowed to focus his studies in the Temple on his strengths led to unbalanced knowledge and thus a skewed perspective. The training was punishing and dogmatic, and forced Ginh to push himself both mentally and physically. This could consist of hours of meditation in strenuous positions while being required to engage in telekinetic activity, day-long runs through the desert during which the young padawan had to repeat the Jedi Code as a mantra the entirety of the journey, week long sojourns into the desert in which the master provided harsh lessons on survival skills side by side with lectures on Jedi doctrine and endless training regimens in which he his physical conditioning and skills were honed while discussing with, or listening the lectures of, his master the ways of the Force and the Order. These were followed by frequent night-long lightsaber katas during which they repeated mantras of the aphorisms of great masters. It was not all hardship, though. Master Nesis often let his student sleep as much as four or five hours in a night, and prepared him two hearty Iktotchi meals a day. Of course, Iktotchi cuisine consisted of mainly bitter stewed grasses and roots, and Master Nesis had no talent for cooking.
While the constant physical training, the discussions and the meditation through mantras was exhausting, it was effective. Master Nesis succeeded in bringing some balance to his young padawan and instilling in him a deep respect for the purpose of the Order and the traditions and institutions through which that purpose was realized. Ginh came to understand that the Force was not the tool of the Jedi and a sign of superiority; the Jedi were in many ways the tools of the Force and their ability to call upon it was a responsibility to serve. As Ginh continued training under Master Nesis, his path became more clear, his thoughts less dark and, though it could hardly be said he was rid of his arrogance, it was mitigated to the insufferable cockiness of a talented teenager.
Satisfied that his apprentice was on the right path and had come to understand the approach that he felt was proper for a Jedi, Master Nesis ended the isolation he had sought out for the intense initial training. As he felt there were other lessons that life on Iktotch could provide to his student, they remained on the moon that had served as their home for the past two years and moved to the outskirts of one of the main plateau cities of the Iktotchi. There the master continued the training of his now-14 year old student. Training was still intensive but not to the extremes of the early years, and only occasionally did Ginh find himself wondering if his master was secretly trying to kill him. The main difference in their training was in a shift in the focus of training. Specifically, in the desert Ginh’s master had one focus: pushing him through moving meditations in which deep thought was balanced by challenging physical activities, and thereby developing both the physical strength and stamina his student would need while pushing his mind to develop a more mature perspective. Having emerged from the desert, he now had a padawan that was well along in his development, had managed to become passably skilled in areas of the Force that had previously been his weaknesses, was thoroughly competent in Shii-Cho, and was ready to begin learning how to apply these talents.
Upon the commencement of this new phase in training, Master Nesis gifted his padawan with the lightsaber he himself had used during his years as a padawan, and begin instructing him in the defensive styles of Soresu. He explained that, while Jedi must strike as the Force wills, the Jedi himself must never be aggresive, and that Form III prepares the Jedi to defend himself until such time as he must strike to protect himself or others. Moreover, given Ginh’s innate strengths and weaknesses, the Soresu style was one that would cater to his ability to sense the attacks of foes, read their intents and intuitively feel when and where they would create the opening he would need to disarm, disable or, if necessary, strike them down. He also began to engage in a more thorough instruction of his padawan on the use of the Force and on the further development of his telepathic abilities, in which he had great experience due to his races’ innate telepathy. The training was not limited to the skills a Jedi uses when in danger, however. He made a point of teaching Ginh that the skills of the lightsaber and the manipulations of the Force, while called upon more often than one would like, are not the heart of what it was to be a Jedi. To that end he continued his student’s general education, highlighting subjects such as history, the sciences, diplomacy and politics, economics and forensics, and began tutoring him in Iktotchese and, after discovering that Ginh had something of a talent for languages, some of the more common galactic languages such as Bocce, Durese, Huttese and Rodese. Ginh also received training as a pilot at which, much like the native Iktotchi, he excelled.
The most important aspect of the new training in Ginh’s development, though, was not in learning something new, but in unlearning something old. He had grown accustomed to depending on his telepathic senses to keep him a step ahead, and Master Nesis felt that could be a fatal flaw in a Jedi. Life amongst the Iktotchi took that edge away, for in addition with their own telepathic talents and ability to hide their thoughts, most Iktotchi experience limited precognition while on their homeworld. As his training progressed, Ginh was often dispatched to complete tasks within the city or accompanied his master in assisting local authorities when needed, and had to come to grips with the fact that his telepathy only served to help him keep up with those around him. While Ginh found this frustrating on one level, he understood the value in his consternation and worked diligently to retrain himself to use his strengths but not be wholly dependent upon them.
Also of note, it was during this time that the relationship between student and master began to grow. Ginh had quickly developed a deep respect for Master Nesis when they began their training, but he often felt his taciturn master was distant and unrelatable and had an almost formal relationship with him. Whether it was a result of the change in training, or of Master Nesis finally being satisfied that Ginh was not moving towards the dark path, the two began to understand each other during this time and, while Ginh still did not like his Master’s cooking, he did begin to actually like his master.
It was another two years before Master Nesis declared that the time to leave Iktotch had arrived. At that point, Ginh had reached the age of 16 and was well on his way to becoming a Jedi Knight. He was growing skilled in Soresu, was well adept at using the Force in applicable and innovative ways (ranging from the standard physical augmentation and telekinesis to a marked talent for mind tricks and a developing skill with illusions). He had learned to use his physical senses and skills along with his Force talents, had gained some experience in working with minds that were resistant to Force manipulation, and had accompanied his master on several local missions around Iktotch. In short, he had developed sufficient skill to hold his own when necessary and was ready to start applying that knowledge to missions through which he could gain the experience needed to develop wisdom. Master Nesis marked this realization with a single statement made during one of their evening meditation sessions: “We will leave for Coruscant tomorrow.”
And so the very next day, the two Jedi packed their sparse possessions, arranged transport, and were off to Coruscant. Once they arrived, they immediately returned to the Temple where Master Nesis went before the Council to inform them that he and his padawan were ready to resume active service to the Order. It wasn’t long before the Council began assigning missions to them. Their first few missions together were generally of the more domestic variety: settling a labor dispute on Fondor that was beginning to flare up into sporadic violence between labor protestors and law enforcement; aiding different local authorities in various criminal investigations; helping to end an outbreak of class-based riots on Metallos, foiling a plot to bring down the planet’s 1000 floating cities in the process. During these missions he demonstrated tact, restraint, decisiveness, a skill for applying telepathy in coordination with standard interrogation methods and distinct skill in deflecting blaster fire as he continued to study Form III.
As his master’s confidence in him grew, they began accepting more challenging missions. Master Nesis had long served the Council as a skilled investigator, often working alone or with small groups for extended times to infiltrate potential sources of problems and act to prevent them from continuing to become major issues. He now resumed taking these sorts of missions, and Ginh accompanied him on them. The first mission of this nature was the infiltration of a pirate group that had begun operating within the Deep Core, preying upon the robust trade between Coruscant and the Empress Teta system and relying on the tricky navigation of that region to allow them to escape. Attempts to pursue them had been in vain, as no one foolish enough to risk trying to guess their vector and follow them to their next jump had managed to survive. Unsurprisingly, after a few well placed inquiries they were able to discover that the group was looking for skilled pilots so that they could expand their strikes. Master Nesis took on the guise of a naïve Iktotchi traveller and took advantage of his people’s spreading reputation as extremely good pilots, and managed to arrange a meeting in which he was ‘duped’ into joining the pirates gang. During this time Ginh served as a liaison for his master to communicate with the Council and relay information on pending strikes, and primarily carried out his studies alone based on the principles taught him by his Master and taking lessons from masters at the Temple during his time on Coruscant. While his master integrated himself within the pirate group, learning the location of their base of operations, the locations of their ships, the pseudonyms and registry codes they used to disguise their presence, Ginh focused on honing his Force talents and began studying the fundamentals of Form V, which he felt would compliment his use of Form III.
After a few months of this, though, Ginh began to lose patience. It was hard for him to receive information about a coming pirate strike and simply relay it to local authorities, whose ability to respond was often limited. This impatience culminated in what Master Nesis took to calling ‘the incident with the Cinnigariat’. While on Empress Teta, Ginh had retrieved a data pad left at a discreet location by his master, as he had done so often before. This contained information of a planned strike of the trade vessel Cinnigariat, a large freighter galleon that was expected to be loaded with valuable exotics. After alerting the authorities, Ginh decided that (as many 18 year olds do) he knew what was needed and that, rather than simply performing his role and trusting in the plans of his master, he was going to organize a defense. He, along with a number of the local police force, managed to board the Cinnigariat prior to its departure and, when the expected pirate strike came, they repulsed the invaders with Ginh at the front of the defense. He was thrilled to have orchestrated a successful defense, saving lives and fortunes and upholding law and order. Much to his surprise, though, when he returned to Coruscant his master was waiting, and was thoroughly displeased. The waiting officers and the presence of a Jedi had alerted the pirates that the game was up, and the word had gone out that they had made their profits, but it was time to jump ship and reform at a later date and location, which Narbo Nesis had yet to learn. Master Nesis had to prematurely initiate the crackdown he had been architecting and, while many of the pirates and their vessels were caught, over a third of the pirate organization had managed to avoid capture.
Ginh had tried to defend his actions to his master, protesting that the piracy was over for now, that the pirates might now fear the law enough to refrain from piracy in the future, that lives had been saved… but in the face of his master’s silence, the words seemed hollow. Master Nesis explained that he understood his padawan’s motives, and that they were noble, but that a Jedi must be more than noble - he must be wise. He explained that patience is not simply the ability to wait until one feels one must act; the patience of a Jedi is to wait until every fiber of his being wants to act, but to wait still if he knows that waiting will serve the greater good in the end. Narbo Nesis admitted this to be a difficult lesson, one with which he still struggled at times, but it was crucial to be able to be as effective as possible. "If there were a hundred million Jedi acting to stop every injustice they saw immediately, wherever they stood,” he stated, “We would not stop one tenth of the villainy of the galaxy. Only by acting with purpose, with planned intent and with wisdom can we have an effect greater than our numbers should allow.” Ginh took this lesson to heart and, while he often struggled with his impatience at times, his master was always there to remind him about ‘the incident with the Cinnigariat’.
After spending some time on Coruscant continuing his training, Master Nesis accepted an infiltration mission which targeted a slaver ring that had sprung up along the sectors bordering Hutt space. This time, however, Master Nesis assigned a more active role to Ginh. Once Master Nesis had sufficiently infiltrated the slaver ring to know where they would strike, Ginh was instructed to pose as a merchant attempting to purchase a load of foodstuffs from the planet Ukio prior to a slave raid so that he would be captured. Difficult as Ginh found it to allow himself to be taken captive, the true test of the patience his master had sought to instill in him was during his time of captivity. While he allowed himself to offer some assistance to his fellow captives, using his meager healing talents to sooth wounds and employing his empathic abilities to soften the despair of the group, he found that playing the role of the cowardly merchant irksome. He did maintain his role though, as the embarrassment of his last failure and his desire to prove himself to his master were fresh in his mind. After a short but difficult journey he found himself and his fellow captives deposited in a slave camp on Gamorr, presumably to await inspection for prospective buyers.
There, he managed to feign illness and slip into a healing trance to get himself removed from the slave pens. The plan was that he would be taken to a med facility and, once out from under the watchful eyes of the slave pen wardens, he would make his way to their comm station to send a prearranged signal to a waiting Republic taskforce. He awoke surrounded by the smell of what distinctly reminded him of his master’s cooking, and found himself in a trash heap on the edge of the slavers’ camp. He worked his way through the camp towards the central bunker, using shadows, Force distractions and one or two judiciously place illusions to avoid detection. As he approached the central bunker, though, a group of Gamorrean sentries stood between him and his goal. Unarmed and outnumbered, Ginh new he could not force his way in, and doubted that he could use Force Persuasion to convince the whole group that he should be allowed to enter. Neither could he conceive of an illusion or distraction that would cause the group to collectively abandon their post. Instead, he reached outwards with the Force and into their minds and, almost on instinct, sought out an image that held simultaneous fear and respect for them. He pushed on this image and attempted to make his own presence in the Force reflect it. Feeling an immediacy in the Force, he stepped forward into the light and approached the bunker, walking as if he expected admittance and trusting the Force to guide his path. Surprisingly, both of the Gamorreans stepped out of his way and granted him entrance without so much as a challenging grunt. To this day he’s not sure what they saw, but at the time he wasn’t about to question a lucky break. Once within the facility, he made his way to the comm center with relative ease and sent the signal. He then made his way out of the bunker, using the same trick he had to gain entrance, and moved off into the shadows of the camp and back to the unpleasantness of the trash heap to hide until the taskforce arrived.
Four long hours later, Republic Special Forces Troopers swarmed the area while several frigates and a handful of cruisers blockaded the skies from any attempt to escape. Master Nesis, accompanying the landing parties, quickly located his apprentice and returned his lightsaber to his student. The two Jedi then hastened over the walls of the camp, entering at a point that was unwatched due to the slavers’ concentration on defending from the Republic’s assault. They swiftly made their way through the camp and to the slave pens, where they made short work of the remaining wardens and stood guard to make sure no vengeful slavers would return to escape with, or eliminate, the captives. The Republic’s troopers were efficient in their work, though, and no slavers returned to confront the Jedi. As Master Nesis oversaw the release of the captives and the arrest of the surviving slavers, Ginh could not help but feel awe at the devastating effectiveness of his master’s plans when allowed to come to full fruition.
Master Nesis was quite proud of his padawan for his role in the breakup of the slaver ring on Gamorr, and quite impressed with the ingenuity he displayed. His padawan was clearly near the level of skill and maturity needed to be knighted, and was swiftly gaining the necessary experience to impart perspective and wisdom. Over the next three years, master and apprentice continued engaging in missions of a wide variety. Everything from tracking down drug smugglers on Rodia to arresting a swoop gang terrorizing the people of Kwenn to thwarting a coup on Ryloth and stopping a death cult from burning the holy jungles of Ithor. Over these years Ginh continued his training when not actively engaged in missions, honing his lightsaber forms, further developing his repertoire of Force talents and deepening his connection with and understanding of the Force. Master Nesis specifically trained him in utilizing several telepathic and sensory skills that he found particularly useful as an investigator, including the perception of echoes in the Force, Force blinding, Force tracking, and further sharpened his student’s ability to probe minds, communicate telepathically and create telepathic defenses. By the time Ginh reached 22, he was well prepared to face his Trials, and Master Narbo Nesis acknowledged this.
Trials of Knighthood:
The first task Master Nesis set before Ginh was the construction of a lightsaber. Ginh labored over the construction for a month, using a translucent yellow Lorrdian crystal to craft a single-phase lightsaber of a brilliant yellow hue. Having completed his weapon, Master Nesis then arranged for a Trial of his Skill, in which he dueled with a master of Form III. The master’s goal was simply to create an impenetrable defense and to strike occasionally to keep the padawan off-balance, Ginh Su-Nyf’s task was to penetrate the defense. After about twelve minutes of intense swordplay Ginh managed to cut the sleeve of the master, and was considered to have passed the Trial of his Skill.
The other task Master Nesis set before his student was to return to the deserts of Iktotch, to the desert caves in which they had dwelt during their first years together, and there to await a vision from the Force to serve as a Trial of his Spirit. He was to fast during this time, and was not to depart until his vision had come. Ginh pointed out to his master that, while his combat and danger senses were sharp and he often had flashes of clairvoyance, he had yet to experience an actual vision in the Force. To this his master replied that the lengthy time he was expected to await his vision, while fasting and exposed to the harsh elements of the desert would serve a Trial of his Strength. Ginh, still hesitant, then asked what would happen if no vision came. To this his master grimly replied that his student must remain until a vision came, and that putting his faith in the Force to grant him a vision before he succumbed to the Trial of his Strength was to be a Trial of his Courage.
Ginh did as his Master ordered, and returned to the cave in the deserts of Iktotch to meditate on his fate. Days slowly stretched to weeks, and weeks agonizingly became a month, then two, while Ginh spent each day meditating on the Force, of the tenets of the Jedi, and on his place within the Order. He grew weak as the dry heat drained him of moisture and the winds whipped cutting sands and the sun baked the earth, and he began to wonder, once again, if his Master was trying to kill him. But eventually, his vision did come. Deep in the night, he saw himself as if through a heat haze. But it was a vision of himself that was not him, and was dark in dress, expression and the Force. His vision's eyes burned with madness and its face was twisted in a mask of disdain. And as he gazed at this doppelganger, it gazed back at him. When their eyes met there was a connection, and suddenly Ginh saw the life that would have led him to become that which stood before him. It would have all started so innocently - a burning desire for knowledge had always been present in him. Without the tutelage of his master, that desire would have been consuming. He would have sought knowledge for knowledge’s sake, not to enable him to help others. In time, it would have been acceptable to him to lie to gain knowledge, and then to steal, and then even to do harm. Given his abilities, he would have learned to invade the minds of others, strip-mining their minds for the secrets he desired. His arrogance would have grown to disdain for ‘lesser beings,’ leading to endless anger and hatred. And his creativity, his ingenuity, would have led him to developing new methods of torturing his victims, haunting them with illusions, triggering pain centers in the mind, inducing madness and shattering their very minds. He saw himself standing over countless individuals as they writhed in agony, and all the while his eyes burned with madness and his face sneered in disdain.
It was dawn when he returned to himself. He shakily stood from his meditative stance, retrieved the few possessions he had brought with him and departed the cave. It was a long walk back to civilization, and the whole way he knew he was going to be haunted by the lesson of his vision - that as far away as he was from following that path, he would always be but a step away from starting down it, and only the tenets of the Jedi Order - everything from it’s rituals and hierarchy to the principles that guided it - prevented him from missteping.
Upon reaching the nearest Iktotchi city, he was met at it’s edge by Master Narbo Nesis along with a member of the High Council who had overseen his final trial. They had a ship waiting, and soon the trio was bound for Coruscant. There, Ginh was knighted in the traditional ceremony by the assembled council members with his master in attendance.
Ginh Su-Nyf - Knight of the Jedi Order
Jedi Knight Ginh Su-Nyf remained at the Temple on Coruscant initially after being knighted. For nearly two weeks his former master remained on Coruscant with him, offering final advice and guidance on the path of the Jedi, but he soon was called upon to leave for another mission, leaving Ginh to travel his own road. Shortly afterwards, Ginh began taking missions from the Council. His first mission took him to Cilpar, where a band of unemployed mercenaries had begun pillaging the rural villages of the agricultural planet. Ginh spent several weeks tracking the group down, often delayed by his attempts to help the victims as he came across them on the trail. He finally caught up to his quarry at night among a rocky crop of foothills. Using the abundant shadows to his advantage, he was able to convince the group of twelve that they were surrounded by Jedi by casting illusions of fleeting glimpses of hooded figures in the shadows, affecting the minds of only a few at a time and letting them convince the others of the reality of what they had seen a moment ago. Staying withing the shadows, he advised the group that they were surrounded, seemingly confirming their fears, and instructed them to stand down peacefully until local law enforcement arrived. Daunted by the idea of having to combat the supposed group of Jedi, the group complied and were taken into custody without violence. His second mission sent him to investigate a fringe technophobic group that the was suspected of plotting terrorist strikes again technological centers, and this infiltration uncovered a plot to sabotage the shipyards at Foerost. He was then assigned by the council to coordinate with local security forces and make sure the plot was not carried out, which he successfully did.
After this he took an assignment to investigate a spice smuggling outfit on Troiken which had recently grown violent. While Ginh’s first reaction was to try to take down the smugglers, he came across information during his investigations that gave him pause. It seemed that the government officials on Troiken had been ignoring the illegal operation and receiving kickbacks as a result. Recently the kickbacks had dried up and the officials had attempted to crack down on the smuggling cartel, which had responded with a string of violence designed to scare the officials into backing down. Applying the lessons of his master, Ginh continued his investigation until he had thoroughly infiltrated the smuggling ring and learned who had been involved in both the criminal organization and bureaucracy, before reporting to the Temple which assigned two other Jedi to rendezvous on Troiken and assist in the arrest of the smugglers and corrupt officials.
Later in his career as a Jedi Knight he was forced to confront a distinct weakness of his. While investigating an illegal deathmatch circuit on Gargon he had slipped onto the premises of a ‘businessman’ who was suspected of hosting several of the deathmatch events of properties of his on- and off-world. While hacking into the man’s files to determine the veracity of these claims, a squadron of nasty looking combat droids burst into the room and began firing stun blasts. While his danger sense had triggered seconds before the attack and he had managed to draw his lightsaber, it was not sufficient and he found himself waking later within an empty arena, unarmed, and surrounded by a motley collection of highly illegal battledroids, assassin droids and floating vidcams. As he came to, the droids attacked, and he instantly took a burn to the shoulder as he reached to draw his lightsaber only to find himself unarmed. He took another burn, this time in the thigh, as he froze for a moment while his mind reeled at his situation and helpless ran through all the talents he would normally use, that were utterly useless in this situation. He then sprang into actual, using his good leg and the Force to propel him into the air and over his assailants, avoiding the rest of the incoming fire. He collapsed in a heap upon landing, though, as his wounded leg crumpled under him, and was struck by a blast in the forearm before he managed to roll away and gain his feet again. He then lunged at one of the droids, using it’s proximity as a shield to limit the fire that was able to hit him. The droid he was using as a shield was quickly lanced by blaster bolts as the other droids tracked Ginh’s movements, and Ginh had to leap towards another droid, who’s arm he grabbed and directed towards a droid on the other end of the small area and blasting it apart before a metal hand smashed his nose. Ginh swept the droid’s feet from under it and simultaneously grabbed it’s head and twisted, using gravity and the Force to help him separate the droid’s head. The move took time he didn’t have, though, and he was quickly struck by two blasts in the chest that flung him to his back. Breathing came hard, and he was certain he could taste blood in the back of his mouth. He made a desperate attempt to enter a healing trance, on the off chance that the droids didn’t kill him where he lay, but he wasn’t sure if the blackness overtaking him was the trance or death.
When he next awoke he found himself strapped to a bed and covered in kolto patches. Too weak to try to escape, he stretched out with his mind to see if there was any Jedi he could reach to alert them to his need, but was unable to locate anyone. The effort sent him into blackness again. He had vague memories of an obese man standing over him gloating about ‘profits made from the last bout,’ and recalled a droid coming periodically to inject him with something, and then eventually found himself coming out a fog as he sat on a chair in the arena, again surrounded by droids. He fared little better than before, succeeding in taking out five of the dozen or so droids that opposed him, but again was reduced to a bleeding, smoking mess.
When he next awoke, though, it was to the sound of his master’s voice. Or rather, to the sound of his thoughts echoing through his head, warning him to awaken and prepare. Ginh stirred but found himself strapped to a table again, and so began performing a Jedi meditation to focus and cleanse the mind. Soon, Master Narbo Nesis and another Jedi that Ginh did not know appeared and began to release Ginh from his restraints. The unknown Jedi put a hand to Ginh’s head and rejuvenation seemed to flow forth from it. Much to his surprise, Ginh found himself able to stand, if shakily, and, drawing on the Force, followed the other two Jedi out into the labyrinthine tunnels of the deathmatch promoter’s facility. Despite his injuries, Ginh tried to urge the other Jedi to locate the ringleader and bring him to justice before they left. Master Nesis refused, stating that their mission was one of retrieval and that anything more than that was not their role at this time. They managed to spirit him from the facility with minimal difficulty, never encountering more than four sentry droids and dispatching those with swift efficiency. Ginh was soon on board a Republic medical frigate and recovering from his injuries and, with the information of Ginh’s experience being more than enough for the Council and Republic forces to act, the deathmatch circuit and its ringleaders were rounded up during his recovery, and his lightsaber was discovered and returned to him from the possession of his former captor. Ginh was troubled by his inability to handle the droids, though, and attempted to learn how to ionize droids with the Force. Unfortunately the skill eluded him, and he was forced to resolve to keep an ion grenade handy when in the field.
Ginh continued to accept missions over a decade as a Jedi Knight, with an eye towards prevention over reaction. As he often put it, his greatest successes were against threats no one ever heard of and never would. He continued to develop his talents as a Jedi Knight, mastering Soresu and growing proficient at integrating the sudden, powerful counterstrikes of Shien into his style. He became a masterful illusionist, and honed his skill at creating Force masquerades to what he called a ‘Force glamour,’ wherein he would trigger images with specific associations in the mind of another and use those images as his masquerade. In such situations he did not control what image he summoned, but it was significantly more difficult to see through than a standard masquerade as the details of the image were supplied by the mind of the individual viewing him. He also developed his telepathy to the point where he could project complete sentences, empathically project feelings such as calm, resolve or malaise, cloud minds and probe minds to actually bring forth information he sought, not simply sense what came to the fore of one’s thoughts (though this latter ability he used with great reluctance, as it reminded him sharply of the vision he had in his Trials). To offset his still sub-par telekinetic skills he began studying the art of malacia, though thus far has only learned it sufficiently to induce some vertigo in his targets to throw off their timing or aim. He learned to adapt his master’s Force blinding technique to lock the visual perceptions of an individual to a single image - thus a guard who has stared at an empty hall for an hour could have his vision ‘looped’ so that he sees an empty hall still, rather than simply being blinded and had also developed a talent for rendering an unprotected mind unconscious with a touch, preventing anything they currently had in their short-term memory from being passed to long-term memory - thus the subject would awaken with no memory of the last few minutes before they were rendered unconscious.
By the time he reached 32, he was a well accomplished Jedi with an arsenal of abilities well suited to his tasks. But, as the galaxy continued to be plagued with increasingly larger and darker threats, he returned to the Temple on Coruscant to seek guidance from the masters there as to how he could best serve the Order and the Republic.
Lightsaber: One single-phase blade lorrdian crystal
Color: Bright Yellow
Practiced Lightsaber Forms:
Shii-Cho: 5
Makashi: N/A
Soresu: 5
Ataru: N/A
Shien/Djem So: 3
Backhanded sub-form: N/A
Niman: N/A
Jar-kai N/A
Juyo: N/A
Double-bladed Combat: N/A
Force-Sensitive Abilities:
Telekinetic: 4
Telepathic: 8
Body: 5
Sense: 7
Protection: 4
Healing: 2
Destruction: 1
Specialized Skills:
None
Attributes:
Physical Strength: 5
Intelligence: 7
Speed: 6
Leadership: 5
Unarmed: 5
Melee Weapons: 3
Ranged Weapons: 3
Force Attunement: +4
RP Sample:
He moved from shadow to shadow, using the darkness to mask his presence. His steps were silent and swift as he darted from one patch of murky darkness to the next. Small insects chirruped in the night, but grew silent as he passed. Ginh sent out a feeling of calm through the Force to the little creatures so as to leave them undisturbed, and the chirruping resumed. Perhaps a small, unnecessary step - but the last thing he needed was a wary guard alerted to his presence by the sudden silence of the night. Within moments he found himself standing before the duracrete wall surrounding the perimeter of the compound into which he sought entry. He drew on the Force, letting it infuse his body, coiling it within him like a spring as stooped at the base of the wall and releasing it as he leapt. He launched himself into the air, clearing the twenty foot wall and landing softly on the other side.
Carefully he looked about seeking some sign that he was being observed, but none came. He resumed his approach to the compound, crossing the carefully cultivated gardens and vaulting over a small, superficial moat with nothing but the wind of his passage to attest to his movements. As he approached the entrance to the main building of the compound, though, he detected two guards posted at the entrance, and a handful more standing watch over the inner courtyard beyond it. He crouched in the shadows, preparing for the next step of his plan. He had seen mists roll in overnight since coming to this planet, and planned to make that appear to just come a little earlier, and a little thicker, than usual. Centering himself within the Force, he slowly sent forth from his mind a creeping blanket of fog. Moving at a snails pace, it slowly coated the ground of the compound, slipping over the gateway walls and filling the courtyard with it’s nondescript murk.
It took nearly two hours for him to cast the illusion without the fog seeming notably unnatural, but it was worth it. Ginh had plenty of time, he did not have multiple chances to do this right. Slowly he moved forward, wrapping the vapors of his illusion like a cloak to obscure his presence from detection. As he approached the guards at the open portcullis he dropped to a crawl so that they wouldn’t witness a man’s height lump of fog seeming walk between them, and triggered the sound of a cracking branch in the distance to assure their eyes stayed focused on somewhere other than the fog at their feet. Upon passing them he stood again, sending waves of calm into their minds to take them off edge, and continued on into the courtyard.
He slipped to the innermost wall of the courtyard in silence, thickening the illusion of the fog as he did so to make certain his presence went undetected. As he approached an entrance to the building he noticed it was locked with a keypad requiring a code. Trusting in the Force and heeding it’s murmuring whispers in the back of his mind, he began hitting keys, avoiding those his senses warned would not be part of the code. After keying in a five digit code the door slid open, granting him entrance to the dimly lit hallways within. Ginh spent the night before playing cards with one of the employees that worked within the building, asking him about his work and picking through the thoughts and images that surfaced to get a decent layout of the compound. It had cost him a good bit of credits to keep the man winning so that he would stay at the table long enough for Ginh to get the information he needed, but he was able to move with confidence down the halls now and knew his destination with certainty.
He moved stealthily through the passages of the building, lurking in darkened doorways and clinging to shadowed corners as he avoided the few sentients still within the building. Within a few minutes he had made his way to his goal - the room in which the owner of the compound, a VP of the notorious Czerka Corporation, kept his financial records. As he approached he sensed a Bith accountant was within and so was prepared as he entered. The Bith, looking up with what Ginh could only assume was a confused look, began to speak until Ginh made a slight passing motion with he hand and, pouring the Force into his words, said, “No need for alarm, my friend. I am supposed to be here.”
The Bith hesitatingly repeated his words and resumed his seat. Ginh then proceeded to attach the small slicer droid he had brought with him to the terminal opposite the Bith, and began downloading the records of all transactions over the last year. While he didn’t have time to analyze the data at the moment, it should be sufficient to reveal whether or not the Czerka VP was involved in the reports of selling ‘indentured servants’ to off-world buyers. After completing the download, he stood up, retrieved the slicer droid, and departed.
Race: Human
Age: 32
Height: 5’11”
Weight: 175 lbs.
Appearance:
Birth place: Alderaan
Faction: Jedi Order
Rank: Knight - Sentinel
Bio:
Youngling at the Temple:
The life of Jedi Ginh Su-Nyf began on the planet of Alderaan, but that is the extent of that planet’s claim on him. Raised within the Order from around the age of 3, Ginh’s youth was very similar to the experience of his brother and sister jedi - a life consumed by the routine of study, meditation and training. Young Ginh was a sharp student and always took a keen interest in his studies. The thirst for knowledge and understanding that in many ways still drive him was first awakened during his days as a youngling, and he eagerly devoured the teachings of his masters.
It was during this time that he drew the attention of the masters charged with his studies - and not only in a positive sense. For, while his bright mind, attentive attitude and diligent focus were commendable, his impatience and, in some instances, disobedience were less so. He was never satisfied with ending a discussion, debate or inquiry without a satisfactory answer, and exhibited frustration when the conclusion of a discussion was ‘such is the mystery of the Force.’ More than once, in his early days before he learned better, he had openly stated that was not a sufficient explanation, and had twice been caught trying to hack passwords to access material in the Archives above what his age group was cleared to read. While these traits were not uncommon in the young, they led to a growing concern amongst his masters that he lacked the discipline to regulate his desire for knowledge and that such a shortcoming was a dangerous flaw. He did not exhibit the traces of darkness that would cause the masters to truly worry, but his unwillingness to curb his will and trust in the wisdom of his masters to reveal knowledge when he was ready was a trait that ultimately needed to be addressed.
These concerns were addressed with a relatively light touch by his masters, who felt that a youth like Ginh would respond best to guidance rather than punishment, and should be shown the value of patience rather than punished for his lack thereof. This met with mixed success. Ginh was not an openly rebellious student and held great respect for his masters, so when the occasions came where he had to be put in his place for challenging a master’s decision to move no farther with lessons, he responded with forced deference but sincere humility. Forced deference gradually developed into forced patience and, while Ginh was never one to be satisfied with limiting the lessons for the day, he grew to accept it that he had to trust in his masters’ decisions.
By age 11 Ginh was a considered a very successful young student and was expected to be accepted as a Padawan in the near future. His studies had shown that his sharp mind was matched with a piercing perception of the Force, and he was considered one of the most adept students in the telepathic arts. The clarity and depth of images, intents, memories and snippets of coherent thoughts were impressive for one so young, as was his nascent skill in creating illusions. He also was notably more sensitive to stirrings in the Force than many of his peers and exhibited some skill in clairvoyance and danger sense. For all his success in these skills, however, he was merely average in the utilization of the Force in his physical actions, and was decidedly sub-par in other areas such as telekinesis and, most notably, healing. While he understood his lessons in healing and in theory could use the force to heal, in practice he had little to no talent in that field. While able to employ the force to mask pain or exhaustion, or to awaken the unconscious or even initiate a healing trance, much more than this was beyond him. These weaknesses did not seem to bother him, though, in part because he grew adept at employing his strengths to help compensate. While he wasn’t able to move as fast or strike as strong as a Jedi more skilled with employing the Force through his body, he was able to anticipate their moves to match their speed and dodge their blows. While unable to lift as much with the Force as some Jedi, he learned that projecting a startling image or thought often disrupted their telekinesis. Over the next year he began to excel beyond many of his peers as he adapted to using his strengths more quickly than many of his fellow students were able to build their repertoire of skills. He grew to trust his senses and instincts, learned how to understand the empathic perceptions, to silence himself to listen for the whispers of the Force that guided his clairvoyance, and to depend on his ability to catch flashes of another’s thoughts or intent to keep himself a step or two ahead in any competition or game.
As he continued to develop though his training, though, he began to focus more and more on the areas in which his strength resided, devoting not just hours of training and meditation but also reading as much as he could about the potential of the telepathy of the Jedi. Slowly, he began to develop thoughts that deviated from his training. In his studies he had stumbled across the idea that, as we know nothing of reality but our perception thereof, our perception is reality. If the mind was the lens through which beings ultimately experienced their perception, he started to ask himself, at what point did one cross from influencing the mind and begin influencing reality? These thoughts led to a budding arrogance and solipsism, and one day attracted the attention of an Iktotchi master by the name of Narbo Nesis.
Master Nesis, who generally spent little time in the Temple due to often engaging in long-term missions of investigation and intervention, had recently returned from one such mission and was providing a guest lecture in one of the sessions devoted to the further nurturing of the students’ telepathic skills. As with all Iktotchi, the telepathic arts came quite naturally to him and he was quite adept at their use. During the class he was duly impressed by young Ginh’s budding talents, but disconcerted by some of what he perceived in the student. Asking the student to remain behind as the class departed, Master Nesis spent several long minutes gazing into the youngling’s eyes in silence. Finally he declared that Ginh’s problem was that he thought too much. He silenced the protests the youngling was forming by hold up a hand, and continued to state that he did not believe this to be Ginh’s fault. It was merely that the youth had too much time to think, and that this he would remedy. After a brief consultation with the Council Master Nesis was granted permission to take Ginh as his padawan. Within the week master and padawan had departed the Temple, leaving Coruscant, the only home Ginh had ever known, far behind.
Padawan to Master Narbo Nesis:
From Coruscant, Master Nesis took his padawan to a place that he felt would benefit them both for their early training: the harsh, wind-whipped moon of Iktotch. There they spent nearly two years in seclusion as Master Nesis focused on the training of Ginh. When the Iktotchi master had first met him as a youngling, Narbo Nesis had been shocked to encounter the budding arrogance and divergent beliefs that had begun to take root in the student. While the Temple masters’ approach to Ginh had helped to keep him from a darker path, it had fallen short from keeping him on the straight and narrow path that Master Nesis saw as the proper path for a Jedi and he had little intention of using a soft touch to guide his padawan.
On Iktotch, Ginh engaged in a rigorous training program, only complicated by the vicious wind and sandstorms of the moon. Master Nesis was a firm believer in balance - in the Force, the Order, the individual or any other matter. He felt that Ginh’s being allowed to focus his studies in the Temple on his strengths led to unbalanced knowledge and thus a skewed perspective. The training was punishing and dogmatic, and forced Ginh to push himself both mentally and physically. This could consist of hours of meditation in strenuous positions while being required to engage in telekinetic activity, day-long runs through the desert during which the young padawan had to repeat the Jedi Code as a mantra the entirety of the journey, week long sojourns into the desert in which the master provided harsh lessons on survival skills side by side with lectures on Jedi doctrine and endless training regimens in which he his physical conditioning and skills were honed while discussing with, or listening the lectures of, his master the ways of the Force and the Order. These were followed by frequent night-long lightsaber katas during which they repeated mantras of the aphorisms of great masters. It was not all hardship, though. Master Nesis often let his student sleep as much as four or five hours in a night, and prepared him two hearty Iktotchi meals a day. Of course, Iktotchi cuisine consisted of mainly bitter stewed grasses and roots, and Master Nesis had no talent for cooking.
While the constant physical training, the discussions and the meditation through mantras was exhausting, it was effective. Master Nesis succeeded in bringing some balance to his young padawan and instilling in him a deep respect for the purpose of the Order and the traditions and institutions through which that purpose was realized. Ginh came to understand that the Force was not the tool of the Jedi and a sign of superiority; the Jedi were in many ways the tools of the Force and their ability to call upon it was a responsibility to serve. As Ginh continued training under Master Nesis, his path became more clear, his thoughts less dark and, though it could hardly be said he was rid of his arrogance, it was mitigated to the insufferable cockiness of a talented teenager.
Satisfied that his apprentice was on the right path and had come to understand the approach that he felt was proper for a Jedi, Master Nesis ended the isolation he had sought out for the intense initial training. As he felt there were other lessons that life on Iktotch could provide to his student, they remained on the moon that had served as their home for the past two years and moved to the outskirts of one of the main plateau cities of the Iktotchi. There the master continued the training of his now-14 year old student. Training was still intensive but not to the extremes of the early years, and only occasionally did Ginh find himself wondering if his master was secretly trying to kill him. The main difference in their training was in a shift in the focus of training. Specifically, in the desert Ginh’s master had one focus: pushing him through moving meditations in which deep thought was balanced by challenging physical activities, and thereby developing both the physical strength and stamina his student would need while pushing his mind to develop a more mature perspective. Having emerged from the desert, he now had a padawan that was well along in his development, had managed to become passably skilled in areas of the Force that had previously been his weaknesses, was thoroughly competent in Shii-Cho, and was ready to begin learning how to apply these talents.
Upon the commencement of this new phase in training, Master Nesis gifted his padawan with the lightsaber he himself had used during his years as a padawan, and begin instructing him in the defensive styles of Soresu. He explained that, while Jedi must strike as the Force wills, the Jedi himself must never be aggresive, and that Form III prepares the Jedi to defend himself until such time as he must strike to protect himself or others. Moreover, given Ginh’s innate strengths and weaknesses, the Soresu style was one that would cater to his ability to sense the attacks of foes, read their intents and intuitively feel when and where they would create the opening he would need to disarm, disable or, if necessary, strike them down. He also began to engage in a more thorough instruction of his padawan on the use of the Force and on the further development of his telepathic abilities, in which he had great experience due to his races’ innate telepathy. The training was not limited to the skills a Jedi uses when in danger, however. He made a point of teaching Ginh that the skills of the lightsaber and the manipulations of the Force, while called upon more often than one would like, are not the heart of what it was to be a Jedi. To that end he continued his student’s general education, highlighting subjects such as history, the sciences, diplomacy and politics, economics and forensics, and began tutoring him in Iktotchese and, after discovering that Ginh had something of a talent for languages, some of the more common galactic languages such as Bocce, Durese, Huttese and Rodese. Ginh also received training as a pilot at which, much like the native Iktotchi, he excelled.
The most important aspect of the new training in Ginh’s development, though, was not in learning something new, but in unlearning something old. He had grown accustomed to depending on his telepathic senses to keep him a step ahead, and Master Nesis felt that could be a fatal flaw in a Jedi. Life amongst the Iktotchi took that edge away, for in addition with their own telepathic talents and ability to hide their thoughts, most Iktotchi experience limited precognition while on their homeworld. As his training progressed, Ginh was often dispatched to complete tasks within the city or accompanied his master in assisting local authorities when needed, and had to come to grips with the fact that his telepathy only served to help him keep up with those around him. While Ginh found this frustrating on one level, he understood the value in his consternation and worked diligently to retrain himself to use his strengths but not be wholly dependent upon them.
Also of note, it was during this time that the relationship between student and master began to grow. Ginh had quickly developed a deep respect for Master Nesis when they began their training, but he often felt his taciturn master was distant and unrelatable and had an almost formal relationship with him. Whether it was a result of the change in training, or of Master Nesis finally being satisfied that Ginh was not moving towards the dark path, the two began to understand each other during this time and, while Ginh still did not like his Master’s cooking, he did begin to actually like his master.
It was another two years before Master Nesis declared that the time to leave Iktotch had arrived. At that point, Ginh had reached the age of 16 and was well on his way to becoming a Jedi Knight. He was growing skilled in Soresu, was well adept at using the Force in applicable and innovative ways (ranging from the standard physical augmentation and telekinesis to a marked talent for mind tricks and a developing skill with illusions). He had learned to use his physical senses and skills along with his Force talents, had gained some experience in working with minds that were resistant to Force manipulation, and had accompanied his master on several local missions around Iktotch. In short, he had developed sufficient skill to hold his own when necessary and was ready to start applying that knowledge to missions through which he could gain the experience needed to develop wisdom. Master Nesis marked this realization with a single statement made during one of their evening meditation sessions: “We will leave for Coruscant tomorrow.”
And so the very next day, the two Jedi packed their sparse possessions, arranged transport, and were off to Coruscant. Once they arrived, they immediately returned to the Temple where Master Nesis went before the Council to inform them that he and his padawan were ready to resume active service to the Order. It wasn’t long before the Council began assigning missions to them. Their first few missions together were generally of the more domestic variety: settling a labor dispute on Fondor that was beginning to flare up into sporadic violence between labor protestors and law enforcement; aiding different local authorities in various criminal investigations; helping to end an outbreak of class-based riots on Metallos, foiling a plot to bring down the planet’s 1000 floating cities in the process. During these missions he demonstrated tact, restraint, decisiveness, a skill for applying telepathy in coordination with standard interrogation methods and distinct skill in deflecting blaster fire as he continued to study Form III.
As his master’s confidence in him grew, they began accepting more challenging missions. Master Nesis had long served the Council as a skilled investigator, often working alone or with small groups for extended times to infiltrate potential sources of problems and act to prevent them from continuing to become major issues. He now resumed taking these sorts of missions, and Ginh accompanied him on them. The first mission of this nature was the infiltration of a pirate group that had begun operating within the Deep Core, preying upon the robust trade between Coruscant and the Empress Teta system and relying on the tricky navigation of that region to allow them to escape. Attempts to pursue them had been in vain, as no one foolish enough to risk trying to guess their vector and follow them to their next jump had managed to survive. Unsurprisingly, after a few well placed inquiries they were able to discover that the group was looking for skilled pilots so that they could expand their strikes. Master Nesis took on the guise of a naïve Iktotchi traveller and took advantage of his people’s spreading reputation as extremely good pilots, and managed to arrange a meeting in which he was ‘duped’ into joining the pirates gang. During this time Ginh served as a liaison for his master to communicate with the Council and relay information on pending strikes, and primarily carried out his studies alone based on the principles taught him by his Master and taking lessons from masters at the Temple during his time on Coruscant. While his master integrated himself within the pirate group, learning the location of their base of operations, the locations of their ships, the pseudonyms and registry codes they used to disguise their presence, Ginh focused on honing his Force talents and began studying the fundamentals of Form V, which he felt would compliment his use of Form III.
After a few months of this, though, Ginh began to lose patience. It was hard for him to receive information about a coming pirate strike and simply relay it to local authorities, whose ability to respond was often limited. This impatience culminated in what Master Nesis took to calling ‘the incident with the Cinnigariat’. While on Empress Teta, Ginh had retrieved a data pad left at a discreet location by his master, as he had done so often before. This contained information of a planned strike of the trade vessel Cinnigariat, a large freighter galleon that was expected to be loaded with valuable exotics. After alerting the authorities, Ginh decided that (as many 18 year olds do) he knew what was needed and that, rather than simply performing his role and trusting in the plans of his master, he was going to organize a defense. He, along with a number of the local police force, managed to board the Cinnigariat prior to its departure and, when the expected pirate strike came, they repulsed the invaders with Ginh at the front of the defense. He was thrilled to have orchestrated a successful defense, saving lives and fortunes and upholding law and order. Much to his surprise, though, when he returned to Coruscant his master was waiting, and was thoroughly displeased. The waiting officers and the presence of a Jedi had alerted the pirates that the game was up, and the word had gone out that they had made their profits, but it was time to jump ship and reform at a later date and location, which Narbo Nesis had yet to learn. Master Nesis had to prematurely initiate the crackdown he had been architecting and, while many of the pirates and their vessels were caught, over a third of the pirate organization had managed to avoid capture.
Ginh had tried to defend his actions to his master, protesting that the piracy was over for now, that the pirates might now fear the law enough to refrain from piracy in the future, that lives had been saved… but in the face of his master’s silence, the words seemed hollow. Master Nesis explained that he understood his padawan’s motives, and that they were noble, but that a Jedi must be more than noble - he must be wise. He explained that patience is not simply the ability to wait until one feels one must act; the patience of a Jedi is to wait until every fiber of his being wants to act, but to wait still if he knows that waiting will serve the greater good in the end. Narbo Nesis admitted this to be a difficult lesson, one with which he still struggled at times, but it was crucial to be able to be as effective as possible. "If there were a hundred million Jedi acting to stop every injustice they saw immediately, wherever they stood,” he stated, “We would not stop one tenth of the villainy of the galaxy. Only by acting with purpose, with planned intent and with wisdom can we have an effect greater than our numbers should allow.” Ginh took this lesson to heart and, while he often struggled with his impatience at times, his master was always there to remind him about ‘the incident with the Cinnigariat’.
After spending some time on Coruscant continuing his training, Master Nesis accepted an infiltration mission which targeted a slaver ring that had sprung up along the sectors bordering Hutt space. This time, however, Master Nesis assigned a more active role to Ginh. Once Master Nesis had sufficiently infiltrated the slaver ring to know where they would strike, Ginh was instructed to pose as a merchant attempting to purchase a load of foodstuffs from the planet Ukio prior to a slave raid so that he would be captured. Difficult as Ginh found it to allow himself to be taken captive, the true test of the patience his master had sought to instill in him was during his time of captivity. While he allowed himself to offer some assistance to his fellow captives, using his meager healing talents to sooth wounds and employing his empathic abilities to soften the despair of the group, he found that playing the role of the cowardly merchant irksome. He did maintain his role though, as the embarrassment of his last failure and his desire to prove himself to his master were fresh in his mind. After a short but difficult journey he found himself and his fellow captives deposited in a slave camp on Gamorr, presumably to await inspection for prospective buyers.
There, he managed to feign illness and slip into a healing trance to get himself removed from the slave pens. The plan was that he would be taken to a med facility and, once out from under the watchful eyes of the slave pen wardens, he would make his way to their comm station to send a prearranged signal to a waiting Republic taskforce. He awoke surrounded by the smell of what distinctly reminded him of his master’s cooking, and found himself in a trash heap on the edge of the slavers’ camp. He worked his way through the camp towards the central bunker, using shadows, Force distractions and one or two judiciously place illusions to avoid detection. As he approached the central bunker, though, a group of Gamorrean sentries stood between him and his goal. Unarmed and outnumbered, Ginh new he could not force his way in, and doubted that he could use Force Persuasion to convince the whole group that he should be allowed to enter. Neither could he conceive of an illusion or distraction that would cause the group to collectively abandon their post. Instead, he reached outwards with the Force and into their minds and, almost on instinct, sought out an image that held simultaneous fear and respect for them. He pushed on this image and attempted to make his own presence in the Force reflect it. Feeling an immediacy in the Force, he stepped forward into the light and approached the bunker, walking as if he expected admittance and trusting the Force to guide his path. Surprisingly, both of the Gamorreans stepped out of his way and granted him entrance without so much as a challenging grunt. To this day he’s not sure what they saw, but at the time he wasn’t about to question a lucky break. Once within the facility, he made his way to the comm center with relative ease and sent the signal. He then made his way out of the bunker, using the same trick he had to gain entrance, and moved off into the shadows of the camp and back to the unpleasantness of the trash heap to hide until the taskforce arrived.
Four long hours later, Republic Special Forces Troopers swarmed the area while several frigates and a handful of cruisers blockaded the skies from any attempt to escape. Master Nesis, accompanying the landing parties, quickly located his apprentice and returned his lightsaber to his student. The two Jedi then hastened over the walls of the camp, entering at a point that was unwatched due to the slavers’ concentration on defending from the Republic’s assault. They swiftly made their way through the camp and to the slave pens, where they made short work of the remaining wardens and stood guard to make sure no vengeful slavers would return to escape with, or eliminate, the captives. The Republic’s troopers were efficient in their work, though, and no slavers returned to confront the Jedi. As Master Nesis oversaw the release of the captives and the arrest of the surviving slavers, Ginh could not help but feel awe at the devastating effectiveness of his master’s plans when allowed to come to full fruition.
Master Nesis was quite proud of his padawan for his role in the breakup of the slaver ring on Gamorr, and quite impressed with the ingenuity he displayed. His padawan was clearly near the level of skill and maturity needed to be knighted, and was swiftly gaining the necessary experience to impart perspective and wisdom. Over the next three years, master and apprentice continued engaging in missions of a wide variety. Everything from tracking down drug smugglers on Rodia to arresting a swoop gang terrorizing the people of Kwenn to thwarting a coup on Ryloth and stopping a death cult from burning the holy jungles of Ithor. Over these years Ginh continued his training when not actively engaged in missions, honing his lightsaber forms, further developing his repertoire of Force talents and deepening his connection with and understanding of the Force. Master Nesis specifically trained him in utilizing several telepathic and sensory skills that he found particularly useful as an investigator, including the perception of echoes in the Force, Force blinding, Force tracking, and further sharpened his student’s ability to probe minds, communicate telepathically and create telepathic defenses. By the time Ginh reached 22, he was well prepared to face his Trials, and Master Narbo Nesis acknowledged this.
Trials of Knighthood:
The first task Master Nesis set before Ginh was the construction of a lightsaber. Ginh labored over the construction for a month, using a translucent yellow Lorrdian crystal to craft a single-phase lightsaber of a brilliant yellow hue. Having completed his weapon, Master Nesis then arranged for a Trial of his Skill, in which he dueled with a master of Form III. The master’s goal was simply to create an impenetrable defense and to strike occasionally to keep the padawan off-balance, Ginh Su-Nyf’s task was to penetrate the defense. After about twelve minutes of intense swordplay Ginh managed to cut the sleeve of the master, and was considered to have passed the Trial of his Skill.
The other task Master Nesis set before his student was to return to the deserts of Iktotch, to the desert caves in which they had dwelt during their first years together, and there to await a vision from the Force to serve as a Trial of his Spirit. He was to fast during this time, and was not to depart until his vision had come. Ginh pointed out to his master that, while his combat and danger senses were sharp and he often had flashes of clairvoyance, he had yet to experience an actual vision in the Force. To this his master replied that the lengthy time he was expected to await his vision, while fasting and exposed to the harsh elements of the desert would serve a Trial of his Strength. Ginh, still hesitant, then asked what would happen if no vision came. To this his master grimly replied that his student must remain until a vision came, and that putting his faith in the Force to grant him a vision before he succumbed to the Trial of his Strength was to be a Trial of his Courage.
Ginh did as his Master ordered, and returned to the cave in the deserts of Iktotch to meditate on his fate. Days slowly stretched to weeks, and weeks agonizingly became a month, then two, while Ginh spent each day meditating on the Force, of the tenets of the Jedi, and on his place within the Order. He grew weak as the dry heat drained him of moisture and the winds whipped cutting sands and the sun baked the earth, and he began to wonder, once again, if his Master was trying to kill him. But eventually, his vision did come. Deep in the night, he saw himself as if through a heat haze. But it was a vision of himself that was not him, and was dark in dress, expression and the Force. His vision's eyes burned with madness and its face was twisted in a mask of disdain. And as he gazed at this doppelganger, it gazed back at him. When their eyes met there was a connection, and suddenly Ginh saw the life that would have led him to become that which stood before him. It would have all started so innocently - a burning desire for knowledge had always been present in him. Without the tutelage of his master, that desire would have been consuming. He would have sought knowledge for knowledge’s sake, not to enable him to help others. In time, it would have been acceptable to him to lie to gain knowledge, and then to steal, and then even to do harm. Given his abilities, he would have learned to invade the minds of others, strip-mining their minds for the secrets he desired. His arrogance would have grown to disdain for ‘lesser beings,’ leading to endless anger and hatred. And his creativity, his ingenuity, would have led him to developing new methods of torturing his victims, haunting them with illusions, triggering pain centers in the mind, inducing madness and shattering their very minds. He saw himself standing over countless individuals as they writhed in agony, and all the while his eyes burned with madness and his face sneered in disdain.
It was dawn when he returned to himself. He shakily stood from his meditative stance, retrieved the few possessions he had brought with him and departed the cave. It was a long walk back to civilization, and the whole way he knew he was going to be haunted by the lesson of his vision - that as far away as he was from following that path, he would always be but a step away from starting down it, and only the tenets of the Jedi Order - everything from it’s rituals and hierarchy to the principles that guided it - prevented him from missteping.
Upon reaching the nearest Iktotchi city, he was met at it’s edge by Master Narbo Nesis along with a member of the High Council who had overseen his final trial. They had a ship waiting, and soon the trio was bound for Coruscant. There, Ginh was knighted in the traditional ceremony by the assembled council members with his master in attendance.
Ginh Su-Nyf - Knight of the Jedi Order
Jedi Knight Ginh Su-Nyf remained at the Temple on Coruscant initially after being knighted. For nearly two weeks his former master remained on Coruscant with him, offering final advice and guidance on the path of the Jedi, but he soon was called upon to leave for another mission, leaving Ginh to travel his own road. Shortly afterwards, Ginh began taking missions from the Council. His first mission took him to Cilpar, where a band of unemployed mercenaries had begun pillaging the rural villages of the agricultural planet. Ginh spent several weeks tracking the group down, often delayed by his attempts to help the victims as he came across them on the trail. He finally caught up to his quarry at night among a rocky crop of foothills. Using the abundant shadows to his advantage, he was able to convince the group of twelve that they were surrounded by Jedi by casting illusions of fleeting glimpses of hooded figures in the shadows, affecting the minds of only a few at a time and letting them convince the others of the reality of what they had seen a moment ago. Staying withing the shadows, he advised the group that they were surrounded, seemingly confirming their fears, and instructed them to stand down peacefully until local law enforcement arrived. Daunted by the idea of having to combat the supposed group of Jedi, the group complied and were taken into custody without violence. His second mission sent him to investigate a fringe technophobic group that the was suspected of plotting terrorist strikes again technological centers, and this infiltration uncovered a plot to sabotage the shipyards at Foerost. He was then assigned by the council to coordinate with local security forces and make sure the plot was not carried out, which he successfully did.
After this he took an assignment to investigate a spice smuggling outfit on Troiken which had recently grown violent. While Ginh’s first reaction was to try to take down the smugglers, he came across information during his investigations that gave him pause. It seemed that the government officials on Troiken had been ignoring the illegal operation and receiving kickbacks as a result. Recently the kickbacks had dried up and the officials had attempted to crack down on the smuggling cartel, which had responded with a string of violence designed to scare the officials into backing down. Applying the lessons of his master, Ginh continued his investigation until he had thoroughly infiltrated the smuggling ring and learned who had been involved in both the criminal organization and bureaucracy, before reporting to the Temple which assigned two other Jedi to rendezvous on Troiken and assist in the arrest of the smugglers and corrupt officials.
Later in his career as a Jedi Knight he was forced to confront a distinct weakness of his. While investigating an illegal deathmatch circuit on Gargon he had slipped onto the premises of a ‘businessman’ who was suspected of hosting several of the deathmatch events of properties of his on- and off-world. While hacking into the man’s files to determine the veracity of these claims, a squadron of nasty looking combat droids burst into the room and began firing stun blasts. While his danger sense had triggered seconds before the attack and he had managed to draw his lightsaber, it was not sufficient and he found himself waking later within an empty arena, unarmed, and surrounded by a motley collection of highly illegal battledroids, assassin droids and floating vidcams. As he came to, the droids attacked, and he instantly took a burn to the shoulder as he reached to draw his lightsaber only to find himself unarmed. He took another burn, this time in the thigh, as he froze for a moment while his mind reeled at his situation and helpless ran through all the talents he would normally use, that were utterly useless in this situation. He then sprang into actual, using his good leg and the Force to propel him into the air and over his assailants, avoiding the rest of the incoming fire. He collapsed in a heap upon landing, though, as his wounded leg crumpled under him, and was struck by a blast in the forearm before he managed to roll away and gain his feet again. He then lunged at one of the droids, using it’s proximity as a shield to limit the fire that was able to hit him. The droid he was using as a shield was quickly lanced by blaster bolts as the other droids tracked Ginh’s movements, and Ginh had to leap towards another droid, who’s arm he grabbed and directed towards a droid on the other end of the small area and blasting it apart before a metal hand smashed his nose. Ginh swept the droid’s feet from under it and simultaneously grabbed it’s head and twisted, using gravity and the Force to help him separate the droid’s head. The move took time he didn’t have, though, and he was quickly struck by two blasts in the chest that flung him to his back. Breathing came hard, and he was certain he could taste blood in the back of his mouth. He made a desperate attempt to enter a healing trance, on the off chance that the droids didn’t kill him where he lay, but he wasn’t sure if the blackness overtaking him was the trance or death.
When he next awoke he found himself strapped to a bed and covered in kolto patches. Too weak to try to escape, he stretched out with his mind to see if there was any Jedi he could reach to alert them to his need, but was unable to locate anyone. The effort sent him into blackness again. He had vague memories of an obese man standing over him gloating about ‘profits made from the last bout,’ and recalled a droid coming periodically to inject him with something, and then eventually found himself coming out a fog as he sat on a chair in the arena, again surrounded by droids. He fared little better than before, succeeding in taking out five of the dozen or so droids that opposed him, but again was reduced to a bleeding, smoking mess.
When he next awoke, though, it was to the sound of his master’s voice. Or rather, to the sound of his thoughts echoing through his head, warning him to awaken and prepare. Ginh stirred but found himself strapped to a table again, and so began performing a Jedi meditation to focus and cleanse the mind. Soon, Master Narbo Nesis and another Jedi that Ginh did not know appeared and began to release Ginh from his restraints. The unknown Jedi put a hand to Ginh’s head and rejuvenation seemed to flow forth from it. Much to his surprise, Ginh found himself able to stand, if shakily, and, drawing on the Force, followed the other two Jedi out into the labyrinthine tunnels of the deathmatch promoter’s facility. Despite his injuries, Ginh tried to urge the other Jedi to locate the ringleader and bring him to justice before they left. Master Nesis refused, stating that their mission was one of retrieval and that anything more than that was not their role at this time. They managed to spirit him from the facility with minimal difficulty, never encountering more than four sentry droids and dispatching those with swift efficiency. Ginh was soon on board a Republic medical frigate and recovering from his injuries and, with the information of Ginh’s experience being more than enough for the Council and Republic forces to act, the deathmatch circuit and its ringleaders were rounded up during his recovery, and his lightsaber was discovered and returned to him from the possession of his former captor. Ginh was troubled by his inability to handle the droids, though, and attempted to learn how to ionize droids with the Force. Unfortunately the skill eluded him, and he was forced to resolve to keep an ion grenade handy when in the field.
Ginh continued to accept missions over a decade as a Jedi Knight, with an eye towards prevention over reaction. As he often put it, his greatest successes were against threats no one ever heard of and never would. He continued to develop his talents as a Jedi Knight, mastering Soresu and growing proficient at integrating the sudden, powerful counterstrikes of Shien into his style. He became a masterful illusionist, and honed his skill at creating Force masquerades to what he called a ‘Force glamour,’ wherein he would trigger images with specific associations in the mind of another and use those images as his masquerade. In such situations he did not control what image he summoned, but it was significantly more difficult to see through than a standard masquerade as the details of the image were supplied by the mind of the individual viewing him. He also developed his telepathy to the point where he could project complete sentences, empathically project feelings such as calm, resolve or malaise, cloud minds and probe minds to actually bring forth information he sought, not simply sense what came to the fore of one’s thoughts (though this latter ability he used with great reluctance, as it reminded him sharply of the vision he had in his Trials). To offset his still sub-par telekinetic skills he began studying the art of malacia, though thus far has only learned it sufficiently to induce some vertigo in his targets to throw off their timing or aim. He learned to adapt his master’s Force blinding technique to lock the visual perceptions of an individual to a single image - thus a guard who has stared at an empty hall for an hour could have his vision ‘looped’ so that he sees an empty hall still, rather than simply being blinded and had also developed a talent for rendering an unprotected mind unconscious with a touch, preventing anything they currently had in their short-term memory from being passed to long-term memory - thus the subject would awaken with no memory of the last few minutes before they were rendered unconscious.
By the time he reached 32, he was a well accomplished Jedi with an arsenal of abilities well suited to his tasks. But, as the galaxy continued to be plagued with increasingly larger and darker threats, he returned to the Temple on Coruscant to seek guidance from the masters there as to how he could best serve the Order and the Republic.
Lightsaber: One single-phase blade lorrdian crystal
Color: Bright Yellow
Practiced Lightsaber Forms:
Shii-Cho: 5
Makashi: N/A
Soresu: 5
Ataru: N/A
Shien/Djem So: 3
Backhanded sub-form: N/A
Niman: N/A
Jar-kai N/A
Juyo: N/A
Double-bladed Combat: N/A
Force-Sensitive Abilities:
Telekinetic: 4
Telepathic: 8
Body: 5
Sense: 7
Protection: 4
Healing: 2
Destruction: 1
Specialized Skills:
None
Attributes:
Physical Strength: 5
Intelligence: 7
Speed: 6
Leadership: 5
Unarmed: 5
Melee Weapons: 3
Ranged Weapons: 3
Force Attunement: +4
RP Sample:
He moved from shadow to shadow, using the darkness to mask his presence. His steps were silent and swift as he darted from one patch of murky darkness to the next. Small insects chirruped in the night, but grew silent as he passed. Ginh sent out a feeling of calm through the Force to the little creatures so as to leave them undisturbed, and the chirruping resumed. Perhaps a small, unnecessary step - but the last thing he needed was a wary guard alerted to his presence by the sudden silence of the night. Within moments he found himself standing before the duracrete wall surrounding the perimeter of the compound into which he sought entry. He drew on the Force, letting it infuse his body, coiling it within him like a spring as stooped at the base of the wall and releasing it as he leapt. He launched himself into the air, clearing the twenty foot wall and landing softly on the other side.
Carefully he looked about seeking some sign that he was being observed, but none came. He resumed his approach to the compound, crossing the carefully cultivated gardens and vaulting over a small, superficial moat with nothing but the wind of his passage to attest to his movements. As he approached the entrance to the main building of the compound, though, he detected two guards posted at the entrance, and a handful more standing watch over the inner courtyard beyond it. He crouched in the shadows, preparing for the next step of his plan. He had seen mists roll in overnight since coming to this planet, and planned to make that appear to just come a little earlier, and a little thicker, than usual. Centering himself within the Force, he slowly sent forth from his mind a creeping blanket of fog. Moving at a snails pace, it slowly coated the ground of the compound, slipping over the gateway walls and filling the courtyard with it’s nondescript murk.
It took nearly two hours for him to cast the illusion without the fog seeming notably unnatural, but it was worth it. Ginh had plenty of time, he did not have multiple chances to do this right. Slowly he moved forward, wrapping the vapors of his illusion like a cloak to obscure his presence from detection. As he approached the guards at the open portcullis he dropped to a crawl so that they wouldn’t witness a man’s height lump of fog seeming walk between them, and triggered the sound of a cracking branch in the distance to assure their eyes stayed focused on somewhere other than the fog at their feet. Upon passing them he stood again, sending waves of calm into their minds to take them off edge, and continued on into the courtyard.
He slipped to the innermost wall of the courtyard in silence, thickening the illusion of the fog as he did so to make certain his presence went undetected. As he approached an entrance to the building he noticed it was locked with a keypad requiring a code. Trusting in the Force and heeding it’s murmuring whispers in the back of his mind, he began hitting keys, avoiding those his senses warned would not be part of the code. After keying in a five digit code the door slid open, granting him entrance to the dimly lit hallways within. Ginh spent the night before playing cards with one of the employees that worked within the building, asking him about his work and picking through the thoughts and images that surfaced to get a decent layout of the compound. It had cost him a good bit of credits to keep the man winning so that he would stay at the table long enough for Ginh to get the information he needed, but he was able to move with confidence down the halls now and knew his destination with certainty.
He moved stealthily through the passages of the building, lurking in darkened doorways and clinging to shadowed corners as he avoided the few sentients still within the building. Within a few minutes he had made his way to his goal - the room in which the owner of the compound, a VP of the notorious Czerka Corporation, kept his financial records. As he approached he sensed a Bith accountant was within and so was prepared as he entered. The Bith, looking up with what Ginh could only assume was a confused look, began to speak until Ginh made a slight passing motion with he hand and, pouring the Force into his words, said, “No need for alarm, my friend. I am supposed to be here.”
The Bith hesitatingly repeated his words and resumed his seat. Ginh then proceeded to attach the small slicer droid he had brought with him to the terminal opposite the Bith, and began downloading the records of all transactions over the last year. While he didn’t have time to analyze the data at the moment, it should be sufficient to reveal whether or not the Czerka VP was involved in the reports of selling ‘indentured servants’ to off-world buyers. After completing the download, he stood up, retrieved the slicer droid, and departed.
