Post by Regnier on Oct 28, 2008 21:35:35 GMT -5
Name: Al’verde Raynes aliit Kohul (Commander Raynes of Clan Kohul), “Te Naast” (The Destroyer)
Race: Human
Age: 95
Height: 6’10” (7’1” armored)
Weight: 316lbs (324lbs including personal modifications) (587lbs armored) (673lbs in full standard load-out)
Appearance:
-Hair Color: Gray
-Eye Color: Green
-Build: Simply put, Raynes is a behemoth among humans. He has a naturally large frame, prodigious height, and enough muscle to pull the arms off a wookiee.
-Identifying Features: Other than a nearly obscene amount of scars lining his body, with countless more faded through the sands of time, his nose has been broken twice and badly set, a black mythosaur skull rests on his right shoulder, a black neo-crusader symbol sits on his left shoulder, a tattoo of a falling drop of blood resting on a black star (the mark of the Verda; all members carry it somewhere on their skin) resides on his right pectoralis major, and the words Verd Ori’shya Beskar’gam written across his back. A large portion of the scars on his face have healed to the point of barely being visible.
-Clothing: He wears armor, and that’s about it. He rarely even takes off his helmet, even to rest.
Birth place: Enceri, Manda’yaim (Mandalore)
Family:
Arga [Father, deceased]
Milana [Mother, deceased]
Yula Vickent [Step-mother, deceased]
Kex [Brother, deceased]
Taryn [Twin sister, deceased]
Namara [Sister, deceased]
Marcil Vickent [Half-brother, deceased]
Akleesa [Wife, deceased]
Lepold [Son, deceased]
Selna [Second wife, deceased]
Anda [Daughter, alive, 62]
Profession: Mandalorian Neo-Crusader (He is not a member of the current Mandalorian Military running amok, not at this time), Heavy Weapons Expert/Group Leader of Te Verda be Tal bal Prudii (The warriors of blood and shadow)
Most would consider him and those under his command to be mercenaries.
Bio:
Raynes was born in the remote town of Enceri, on the planet Mandalore, though his people would call it Manda’yaim, into the small clan Kohul. Both his mother and his father, Milana and Arga, were respected soldiers, each having served in numerous conflicts both before and after his birth. Among his four siblings, Raynes was the second; the eldest being his brother, Kex, the next after Raynes being his twin sister, Taryn, then the youngest sister, Namara, and finally the youngest, his half-brother, Marcil, who was born nearly ten years later than Raynes, two years after his mother was killed in battle and his father married a second time.
As with many Mandalorian children, Raynes, as well as every other of his siblings, was raised by his mother until his third birthday, at which point, Arga began raising him. From that day on, Raynes’ life, as Kex’s before him, and the others’ after, became nothing short of brutal. Believing the relatively few years he had to teach his children to be among the most important, Arga showed little mercy to his children, instead drilling them day in and day out with everything he knew, rarely giving them any respite whatsoever from grueling training sessions and labor, teachings, and studies. He did not wish for his children to love him for the way he raised them, and neither did he expect them to until they were old enough to understand that everything he had done was only to give them what they needed to survive and prosper as Mando’ade after they left him. How to fight, how to survive, how to war, and how to make peace, even if only for a short time.
It was shortly after he turned eight that those of Clan Kohul learned of Milana’s death. While the youngest, Namara, was allowed to mourn for a, short, time, Arga did not allow his eldest three children to do so for even a day, instead teaching them a remembrance for their mother and the meaning behind it- Ni su'cuyi, gar kyr'adyc, ni partayli, gar darasuum. The words, which translate into Basic as “I’m still alive, but you are dead. I remember you, so you are eternal.”, he used to teach his children, even the youngest, that their mother was not truly dead, but that she would always be with them, as long as they remembered her. By the time Raynes had turned ten, Arga married again, to Yula Vickent, a human woman that he met while briefly off-world. Though not Mandalorian by birth, Yula openly accepted their culture, and so was openly accepted by the rest of the clan. Soon, they even came to respect and love her, and her and Arga’s child was treated no differently than any other member of the family. She was now the children’s mother, something they themselves quickly proved to have accepted. As of that year, as a testament to the conditions of his youth and training, Raynes had already broken seven bones, his crooked nose standing as a testament to one of the events, though he had also become far more dangerous and mature than his age would belie. By eleven, he had broken two of his father’s bones.
It was the day of his thirteenth birthday that he underwent his trial into adulthood, the verd’goten. There was a planet, not terribly far from his home-world, that his people had discovered. The inhabitants, a warrior-race, were deemed a sufficient challenge for the Mandalorians after most of those who first discovered the planet were killed. In retaliation, and in what they deemed as an honor to the race, the Mandalorians sent an assault force, a handful of which, including Raynes and Taryn, were to use this experience as their verd’goten. All of those coming of age were in the first wave, dropping from orbit within Basilisks, raining fire and destruction on vital points, before setting down and entering what was left of the fighting on foot. As their enemy refused to surrender, the Mandalorians did not stop fighting. Many died, including Taryn, and countless more were killed. In the end, the Mandalorians left victorious, leaving the world lifeless and empty, filled only with the scars of battle and those lost within it.
That was the day Raynes became a man, both within his culture and within his own mind. Choosing not to mourn the loss of his twin, he left the dead planet with a shard of her armor, which he keeps to this day, and moved on with his life. It was also there that he saw the full extent of the wisdom in his father’s methods of parenting. His sister had panicked, just for an instant, and in that instant had forgotten the training drilled into her for so long. Raynes had not. He had remembered his harsh training, used it to great effect, and had survived because of it. Kex had survived because of it. It was a simple conclusion; to survive, you had to know how to fight, and the better at it you were, the greater the odds of your survival, as well as the survival of you family and Clan because of it. He set himself to training, bettering himself in every way as much as possible, to becoming everything he could be as a Mandalorian, soon earning himself the nickname Te Naast for his propensity for using very large weapons to cause very large amounts of destruction. He watched on with pride as Kex and Arga died glorious deaths side by side, surrounded by the corpses of their enemies, and as Namara underwent her verd’goten. He even took it upon himself to finish Marcil’s training in the absence of their father, and soon, the three siblings became nigh-inseparable, spending nearly all of their time training each-other, enough so that it was frequently remarked that they did more harm to each-other than anyone else. But they rapidly became more than just good. It was soon apparent that Marcil wasn’t quite on the same plane of skill as his elder half-siblings, but even he was noted as being above average even before his verd’goten.
Raynes was nineteen when he first met Akleesa, who was a year younger than he, while on a distant battlefield. Their mutual interest in over-sized weaponry, rapidly became far more, and it was little less than a year later, a year filled with what most would call a little strange and highly destructive courtship, that the two married. Happy had never been a word to accurately describe Raynes before; content, yes, and he did laugh on occasion, but few, not even himself, had ever considered him to be a happy man until he had started spending time around Akleesa, but even his sister admitted that something had seemed to change in him. It wasn’t even a year after that that the union bore a son, Lepold, the first addition to the clan since Marcil. It was a short-lived happiness, however, for it was on the day that his son was to turn three, the day he was to begin raising him to the ways of the Mando’ade, that everything came crashing down, literally. Currently on the opposite side of the planet training under several well-respected warriors, Raynes, Namara, and Marcil all waited on the landing-pad of their small outpost for the transport carrying Akleesa, Lepold, and Yula. The ship never arrived. They later learned that the transport had suffered a catastrophic drive failure upon take-off, and that there had been no survivors. Upon hearing of the ship’s fate, everything changed for the three. Raynes almost instantaneously reverted back to his former stoic, unyielding, and indifferent ways, while Namara’s normally cheerful and light heart started slowly gaining tinges of anger, eventually leading to outbursts that gained in frequency, and Marcil became bitter and more and more rebellious.
The day after Marcil came back victorious from his passage into adulthood, he left Mandalore, not to be seen by his clan for some time. In the end, however, both Raynes and Namara dedicated themselves even further to their training, spending nearly whatever down-time they had on a weapons range, physical conditioning course, sparring mat, or learning as much as they could from more veteran warriors. Both also began using implants extensively, some out of necessity to remain in peak condition due to various injuries, and many just to further enhance their performances. Just under two and a half years later, the duo came under the notice of an older Rodian named Edorni Hesh, a veteran of countless conflicts and a well-respected warrior. Hesh, you see, had begun collecting warriors a few years earlier, the best he could find, to form a group of elites, so to speak, that would be capable of functioning fully on their own, no matter the circumstances, and capable of completing any task, no matter the odds. In his opinion, Raynes and his sister would be valuable additions to the ranks of his little band, now known as Te Verda be Tal bal Prudii, or The Warriors of Blood and Shadow, due to their ability to operate in the background, to remain unnoticed, but still being fully capable of unleashing death and destruction at a moment’s notice. Within a little under a year, there were twenty-eight members total, including Hesh himself; many knew each-other and had served alongside one another at one time or another, while many were relatively unknown and unproven in battle. Hesh treated them all equally, giving rank only to those that proved their worth directly to him after joining, driving into each man and woman that they were no better than each-other, that they were more than just other Mandalorians. Through time, and blood, the Verda began to see each-other as a kind of second family, each fully willing to die for the next. They may not have been the best, but they were damn close, and each and every one of them knew it. Individually, they were lethal. Together, they were the point of the Mandalorian spear, armed to the teeth, capable of assembling faster than any invasion force, loyal to a fault. As their culture dictated, family came first, then your Clan, but nothing else came before the other Verda in the eyes of its members, nothing but Mandalore’s own will.
Family. It wasn’t until he was nearly thirty, and the fourth highest ranking member of the Verda, that the word had meant anything more than Namara to Raynes, as it was with her. But, as with the Mandalorian god Kad Ha'rangir’s way, change came. It was not always anticipated, it often came in an unforeseeable manner to the least likely candidate, and, especially in the cases of the Mandalorian people, it came on the heels of destruction, but it did come none the less, without warning. For Raynes, it came during a journey to a small town on Concord Dawn with Hesh and a handful of the other Verda for recruitment. By the end of a week, four warriors had been allowed into their ranks, but Raynes himself found far more there, something most of those close to him had believed the hardened, perpetually detached and cold-hearted Mandalorian had cut himself off from. While on the planet, Hesh sent Raynes to a farm near the small town to track down a man, the eldest of the Clan Voors, he’d heard promising things about. Upon arriving, however, he found only death and destruction; the main buildings and fields had just begun to burn, and several men and women lay dead around the property, most seemingly having been shot without warning. Most were unarmed. Even fewer were wearing armor. This had been no battle; it had been a raid, a massacre of farmers and unprepared warriors by fully equipped soldiers, and it was readily apparent that some of the Mandalorians who lay dead in the fields, those that were fully armed and armored, were the attackers. Enraged, the colossal Mandalorian started for the buildings, fully intent on seeking vengeance for this slaughter of his brothers and sisters. Upon hearing blaster fire from the largest building, the main house, he broke into a run, and came skidding to a halt from the sight that greeted him as he came around the corner of an adjacent building. More bodies, and two armored Mandalorians standing watch outside the main entrance along with two unarmored Devaronians. It only took the men a few seconds to realize that he wasn’t one of theirs and begin to raise their rifles. Unfortunately for them, Raynes was faster, had heavier armor, and a more powerful armament; in the course of a few seconds, the four lay dead, and Raynes started again towards the main house, smoke trailing from the few carbon scores recently added to his armor. He didn’t even caste a second glance at the Mandalorian blood he had just spilt as he stepped over the corpses and through the door. After clearing the building of anyone foolish enough to fire at him, and finding a lone survivor of the inhabitants of the farm, he subsequently began clearing the rest of the farm for any more survivors or hostiles. Then he called Hesh, asking his commander for a transport and the services of a Verda medic, returned to the house, carried the last survivor, the moderately injured daughter of the man he had been sent to find, outside, set her on the dirt of the road leading through the farm, and began tending to her wounds the best he could. She asked him who else had survived; removing his helmet and setting it beside his boot, he shook his head solemnly, giving her the only response she needed.
Upon reporting the events of the day to Hesh and informing the Journeymen Protectors for further investigation, Raynes spoke more with the last of the Voors Clan on the planet, Selna, quickly discovering that, though she was hesitant to admit it, she no longer wished to remain on her clan’s homestead. The last of her family was dead, save for a few brothers that had long-since left, and vengeance had already been exacted on those responsible. There was nothing left for her there, in her eyes, and, suddenly, Raynes noticed something familiar within those eyes as he caught them. It was the same thing he’d seen staring back at him from a mirror six years earlier. He felt an intense sadness within himself stir as he realized that there was another Mandalorian destined to become as empty as he. It was not a fate he would have wished on anyone of his people. For reasons difficult to explain to those not having felt what he had felt, a desire to protect this woman from his own fate soon embedded itself within Raynes, and he quickly set his mind. He offered to take her back to Mandalore with the Verda and a place to stay in his own home on Mandalore for as long as she needed, until she found a home of her own, whether it be through marriage or her own perseverance. It was a way off Concord Dawn, a way to put distance between her and her past. A new beginning. In return, all that he asked was that she look after his humble home while he was away for as long as she stayed. It isn’t hard to guess what Selna chose.
Soon, a bond had developed between the two, Raynes taking up a role similar to an older brother, or protector to Selna, though she was only a few years younger than he, though it only remained that way for about a month. Over time, Namara and a few others began to see the bond grow into something more. Having a greater understanding of what the other felt than those around them, the two began taking comfort in each-other’s presence, their words, and began spending more and more time together. It didn’t take a genius to make an accurate guess at where it would eventually lead, Namara being the first to state that she didn’t think it would be very long before she’d have someone else in the family, but even she didn’t anticipate just how soon. Eight months after the massacre on Concord Dawn, Raynes and Selna married, and though he did not exactly feel happy, he did feel as though he’d finally found a measure of peace in his bleak existence. This time, however, it would be a bit longer-lived than his first marriage. It was just over a year later that their first, and only, child, a daughter they named Anda, was born, and by the time she was old enough to be trained by her father, Raynes had at last come to understand fully his own father’s reasons, and like Arga before him, Raynes pushed his own child harder than anyone else he had trained, as hard as he pushed himself. He did not give passes on anything, nor ease up at any point, because he wanted his daughter to be the most dangerous person he had ever met, to be more skilled than he when she was his age, because he wanted her to live that long, to last longer than he did. It only took a few years for him to realize that there was a distinct possibility that she would be more skilled than he.
But, as always, change, unavoidable, unforeseeable change came in time. The Crusade. Though the man proclaiming himself Mandalore had only managed to gather a few clans under his banner of war, he brought more change than anyone could have ever anticipated, bringing the wrath of the entire Republic down upon the Mandalorians, and though Hesh strictly forbid any of the Verda from following him to a war so ill-conceived, every one of the stood up to defend their home when the Republic came to take it. None of them gave a damn about the treaty made between the idiot that had attempted to lead them and the Republic, and none of them stopped fighting until it was clear they had no chance of victory, being so heavily outnumbered. Still, none of them surrendered, but four were killed fighting, many were wounded, and more than a handful were captured, including Raynes as he returned to his home to get his family away from the fighting. Upon arriving, however, he found he was too late; a Mandalorian warship had been shot down over the city and had crashed inside, its munitions causing a great deal of destruction. He found his Selna laying over top their child, shielding Anda with her armored body, dying of the wounds she’d sustained in protecting their child. Carrying them both into the street, he soon found himself surrounded by a platoon of Republic soldiers moving through the city, and unwilling to endanger his family further, he willingly gave himself up to them, asking only that they save his wife, even as he himself bled from several wounds. Refusing to be separated from his daughter, however, they were both taken to several large Republic freighters being used to transport Mandalorian armor and weaponry taken from those who had surrendered or been captured. There, like all those before him, he was stripped of his armor and weaponry, and moved into a detention area nearby with Anda, where he saw numerous familiar faces, including a few Verda. It was only a few minutes, however, before explosions rocked the ground and the air was filled with the whines of blasters, more than a few of which he knew all too well. The brief fight was over in scarcely five minutes, the twenty-one members of the Verda that had survived and evaded capture killing and disabling every non-Mandalorian around and inside the freighters, opening the detention area, and collecting their remaining numbers. As the nearby Republic forces moved in to contain the escaping Mandalorians, the Verda boarded the freighter farthest back, launched, and burned lines straight up, and though the ship sustained heavy damage in its escape of the planet’s gravity well, escape it did, and as soon as they were clear, they activated the ship’s hyperdrive. While inside the hyperlane, the Verda assessed their numbers, and Raynes was informed that he was now the highest ranking member; none of those above him had survived, but, in total, they’d only lost six. Not even pausing to think on the news, Raynes ordered his most technologically geared men to disable any device that would allow the Republic to track the ship, and as soon as that was done, to drop out of hyperspace and change direction. Everyone else was to do anything they could to make sure the ship held together as long as possible. It was here that one of the sergeants, the Barabel scout Mkohar, informed Raynes that he had been in the medical camp the Republic had brought Selna to before being rescued, having been injured himself not long beforehand; though they had tried, they had not been able to save her.
It was long before the frigate reached Saleucami that everyone onboard came to comprehend that their new commander had changed, though whether it was for the better or worse was anyone’s guess; opinions varied from person to person, though the handful that knew him best were closest. Raynes hadn’t changed, exactly, his mental state had simply become a more extreme state of what it had most commonly been; indifferent, cold-hearted, and completely unwilling to let any of his fellow warriors die without a damn good reason. His one and only interest became to keep everyone he had left alive for as long as possible, to make sure that if anyone else had to die, it was going to be for something they believed in, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to allow any of them to give up everything they were for some bunch of over-inflated, hypocritical politicians calling themselves a Republic that had failed on numerous occasions, and, in his opinion, wouldn’t survive as long as his people would. In his mind, the Mandalorians had been around far longer than the Republic already, so who were they to dictate that they could no longer be everything they had always been? No, no one would be taking anything more from them that they would not freely give. They were Mando’ade, and that’s exactly what they would always be, even after their deaths, no matter what any government tried to do about it.
When the surviving Verda landed on Saleucami, they set the badly damaged ship down in the desert near an inhabited caldera, where they set about stripping it down to what was still usable. Within a day, a small group led by Raynes entered the nearby caldera and the colony within; there, the picked up a few small jobs to pay for a cargo hauler to come out to the freighter and carry everything that couldn’t be used, as well as a large portion of the Republic equipment onboard, back to the colony to be traded for the parts they needed to get the freighter flying again. What they couldn’t afford with these funds, they bought by trading their services; they had well-trained healers, technicians, craftsmen, and, most importantly, veteran Mandalorian soldiers with no political interests, while those few trained in the crafting of weapons and armor remained nearly always with the ship, repairing old equipment and creating new weapons and armor from the cache of Mandalorian equipment stored onboard. By the time the ship was fully operation again, every member that had lost their own arms and armor on Mandalore had had them replaced, and most of the injuries received had been healed. The Verda were once again fully operational, lacking only a few of their full numbers, and so they left Saleucami and began their well-paying, often dangerous, frequently illegal, and morally unrestrained career as mercenaries, selling their services, for a high price, to any planet, government, military, company, or private interest with sufficient funds and no ties to the Republic that would present them with any more danger than they already faced.
That was half a century ago. Since then, the Verda have wandered the outer reaches of the galaxy, staying out of Republic space, and making an exceptional living doing…just about anything you can imagine. They have acted as bodyguards, a private military, assassins, smugglers, traders, bounty hunters, and even law enforcement on occasion. They have fought wars for species most between the Mid Rim and the Core have never heard of, and likely never will, quashed rebellions, toppled dictators, destroyed shipyards, clashed with Jedi and Dark Jedi alike, and both lost and gained members. Though Raynes has done his best to lead the men and women under him, the Verda now only number eleven, including himself, with only six of those having been with the group since the Crusade. Three more were adopted into the Mandalorian culture afterwards, two of them through marriage to one of the original Verda, and one after simply showing an interest in their culture and an impressive skill level with a repeater. The last two, the most recent additions to the Verda, are both the children of other members, one of which being Raynes’ own daughter, Anda; though she had technically been with them since the Crusade, she was not made an actual member until she was nearly twenty.
Of the more notable events for Raynes individually, though, happened on Nar Shaddaa, a planet upon which the Verda had received a great deal of business from the Hutts, various criminal syndicates, and numerous private interests across the years. He was just seventy-three when he received a message from one of his various contacts on the Smuggler’s Moon asking for the Mandalorian to meet him at a club in the Red Sector, that he had a friend he wanted to introduce him to. Knowing that specific man didn’t like to be too heavily outnumbered in a meeting, and that he had proven reliable for many years thus far, Raynes left the Verda under the temporary command of his second, Vera Hollis, and took two of his veterans to the moon. Once there, his contact simply made the introduction, and returned his attention to the entertainment in the club, which was just fine by Raynes once he met the man; he wore the armor of a Mandalorian, moved, acted, and spoke like one as well. What was more, his voice reminded someone he had once known, yet different, like a distortion of the man. What he wanted was simple; he’d heard of the Verda, as many on the moon had, and he had wanted to see if they were real, a myth, or simply masquerading a Mandalorians. If it was the first, he also wished to try and prove himself skilled enough to join them. Raynes agreed, and told the man to meet them on the nearby Nyrvona in a few days, before leaving. Upon leaving the moon, however, the transport he had come in on barely made it out of orbit before it was attacked by several fighters of various make. Once it had been heavily damaged and the engines had failed, a large freighter tractored it into its hold, where heavy cranes began pulling it apart. Knowing full well the only cover they had was about to become useless, Raynes walked out into the hold, his weapon at his side. Waiting for him was a fairly impressive amount of firepower, ranging from Humans with blaster rifles to Trandoshans with anti tank missile launchers; most notably, however, was the Mandalorian from the club, who immediately presented him with a choice. The man had little interest in Raynes’ companions, only Raynes himself, so if he were to lay down his arms and surrender willingly, those with him would be allowed to walk across the hold and take the small transport sitting on the other side of the hold back to the rest of their comrades without hassle. To prove his sincerity, he removed his helmet, and Raynes suddenly realized why he had recognized his voice. It had been his brother’s voice, twisted by decades of bitterness and substance abuse.
Marcil Vickent. Badly aged and showing the since of at least one addiction, but it was him none the less. Raynes simply nodded and set his repeater on the deck below him, calling to the two Verda accompanying him. They came, weapons raised, but instead of receiving an order to fire as they had anticipated, he simply motioned towards the transport and told them to go, no arguments. Reluctantly, they went, and true to Marcil’s word, they were not stopped from leaving the freighter or the system, so true to his, Raynes removed the last of his weaponry and stripped himself of his armor, only to nearly instantaneously feel the impact of a stun-bolt against the side of his skull. When he regained consciousness, he found himself hanging from the ceiling of a damp, unlit cell by his wrists, his feet being similarly chained to the floor, and having been stripped down to his undergarments. Eventually, an hour, by his estimation, the door opened, partially blinding him with the sudden brightness that poured through. But he could still make out the shape of someone entering, hear the sounds of armored boots on durasteel flooring, and hear the words the man spoke. Marcil had changed for the worse, much for the worse, since he’d left Mandalore all those years ago. For a long time, he had tried to find someone to blame for his mother’s death, and had become a drunken addict at the same time, but recently, after having left his addiction behind, his mind had become clear and he had found someone to blame. Raynes. Whether it was logic, or whether the years of drug usage had distorted his mind to the point of insanity, not even he knew, but that wasn’t going to stop him. For the past five years, he had spent his time amassing enough wealth, influence, and knowledge to pull this off, and finally the time had come. Now, he was finally going to make someone pay for his mother, and for all the suffering he had endured because of it, and no matter how much persuasion Raynes tried, Marcil was not going to be swayed into changing his mind.
Six years of torture, vicious beatings, starvation, and mental abuse. Never-ending pain. Six years of trying to persuade Marcil into seeing what he had become, to see the dishonor he had brought to his family, to no avail. But Marcil would not kill him, no, rather he frequently brought him to within inches of his life, only to leave for a few days and let Raynes’ own regenerative implants heal him, only to begin again. Six years, and Raynes slowly began to feel his own sanity begin to crack. Six years, and Raynes finally gave up on Marcil’s redemption, at last coming to know in his heart and mind that his brother was too far gone to be saved from his madness. The night of that sixth anniversary of his imprisonment, Raynes freed himself of his bonds, simply ignoring the pain as he tore a considerable amount of skin, and even muscle, off of his hands and feet in the process. Once he had collected his equipment, he simply waited for Marcil’s return, where he barely even gave the man enough time to realize what was about to happen before blasting a hole through his faceplate, never once saying a word. He merely collected his half-brother’s helm, made his way to the surface of the planet, which turned out to be the Hutt-controlled Ylesia, made his way to the nearest colony, and sent out a heavily encoded call for pickup. Once the Verda arrived, Raynes simply resumed command, and continued leading his warriors as he had done before. It was remarked that, other than the damage done to his body and his need for more implants in order to remain fully functional, he hadn’t seemed to have changed at all throughout the ordeal.
Hearing rumors in their travels and contracts of the more recent events of importance in the galaxy, however, was inevitable. War was coming to the Republic, and though the majority of the Verda disdained the Republic and not a one of them held any respect for this new Empire that had risen up, the Mandalorians knew the opportunity in war, especially someone else’s. Knowing full well how his brothers and sisters in arms felt, Raynes decided it was finally time to bring the Verda back out of the dark, not for politics, not for vengeance, but for battle, for glory and honor. Of course, the possibility that they might be able to inflict pain upon the Republic that had tried to strip them of everything they were was a bonus each and every one of them eagerly hoped they would have the chance to collect, so long as it didn’t get in the way of making good business.
Attributes: First and foremost, Raynes is, in every essence of the phrase, a heavy weapons expert. He has trained extensively for several decades with countless types of weapons, ranging from blades to pistols to heavy repeaters to anti-tank launchers. His preference, and his specialty, however, are heavy repeaters, flechette weaponry, and explosive launchers, all of which he has extreme proficiency with. Due to the extensive damage done to his body over the years, as well as his age, he has received numerous implants and enhancements, including powerful healing implants, adrenal implants, strength amplifiers, reflex amplifiers, ocular implants, olfactory implants, mental resistance implants, and a few others, as well as having had several tendons replaced with stronger synthetic equivalents, several portions of bone, including vertebrae, replaced with metal. Due to his extreme modification, he is actually no less agile, strong or fast; in fact, quite the opposite. He has gained more strength, beyond what is considered human peak, become physically faster, gained reflexes far beyond normal human limits, and the ability to do considerably more to himself without injury; even the effects of aging have been remarkably slowed. He has proven to be physically equal to many Jedi while unarmored, even with the aid of the Force, from his implants; though, for instance, he cannot use Force-aided jumps, he can jump farther than a human, and he has reflexes fast enough to compete with many Jedi and Dark Jedi, as he has proven. From his implants, he is also resistant to many forms of toxins, can see much sharper than the human norm, can push himself for extended periods, can stay conscious through extreme trauma, and is resistant to most forms of persuasion, ranging from mental “breaking”, narcotic interrogation, and even many of the famed Jedi and Sith mental abilities (Mind tricks, mind reading, stunning, fear, etc.) to an extreme degree.
Raynes is also a highly educated and decorated troop commander who has been trained both through copious amounts of actual experience and by several respected veteran Mandalorian commanders and generals throughout his career.
Lastly, he has been trained primarily to function as a fully autonomous and independent branch of regular military, to survive and keep a small unit alive and fully functional with little to no military or governmental aid and full reliance on only themselves.
Items:
1x Powered Mandalorian assault armor – Custom-modified after his original suit was taken from his possession by the Republic; made completely of beskar, the suit is very thick, bulky, and heavy, though actual gaps between plates are few and far between and typically very small, as many plates overlap slightly, such as on the knees and shoulders, and the suit can effectively lift just over 600lbs in addition to the combined weight of itself, Raynes, and his typical load-out (Helmet includes 20x zoom, infrared vision, low-light vision, ECM vision [electronic output], multi-frequency radio, advanced targeting systems, and advanced data collection and storage systems). The suit is its natural dark gray, and sports no markings past those acquired from battles, save for two blood red jaig eyes on the helmet. Weighs 263lbs.
1x Black survival mesh bodysuit – designed specifically to stop high-velocity shrapnel, absorb concussive force, and absorb electrical shocks
1x Equipment belt – Includes the 71o’s holster, an electronic slicing tool, a multitool, various grenades and explosive devices, and a pouch of various stimpacks
1x Portable Power-Generator – Mounted on the back, designed specifically to keep the ZTX continuously fed, and mounts mag locks on both sides
1x Fibercord grapple device – Equipped with twenty meters of fibercord, and can effectively pull up to 700lbs of dead weight, though the hook can simply hold closer to 1000lbs (Left bracer, beside the wrist launcher)
Weapons:
1x Mandalorian ZTX-42 Heavy Rotating Repeater – In the words of Felix Carthen, “Six barrels of ‘you’re dead’.” Custom-crafted from various other weapons by Sasha Crowe and Raynes, the ZTX, when coupled to a power generator, becomes a self-charging plasma-thrower capable of spitting 1500 superheated rounds per minute of bolts equal in power to most high-quality battle-rifles with surprisingly horrific accuracy when stable. Its downfalls are that it weighs nearly fifty pounds, is horrendously uncontrollable unless held by a being of more than prodigious strength, and is prone to overheating after roughly two minutes of sustained fire, depending on conditions, with prolonged firing risking barrel integrity (Right mag-lock on generator)
1x ACP Array Gun – Your basic pump-fed charged-particle close quarters weapon. Relatively small in size, extremely short-ranged, and incredibly lethal when used in close proximity (Left mag-lock on generator)
1x Long vibroknife – (Right-front shoulder)
2x Class A Thermal Detonators - (Belt)
2x OCD Detonators - (Belt)
4x Fragmentation Grenades - (Armored tubes, left hip)
2x Retractable beskar gauntlet vibroblades – (Left and right gauntlets)
1x Wrist-mounted mini-rocket launcher – (Left bracer, underarm, left barrel)
1x Aratech MP-71o Repeating Blaster pistol – One of the better crafted models of medium repeater pistols made by Aratech, the 71 line sports high accuracy, moderate stopping power, reliability, a high rate of fire, and low power drain. The 71o, however, is a version designed for Republic officers, though it never saw mass production, and is simply the same gun, only better in every aspect, plus with a chromium finish along the barrel (right hip)
Alternate armaments (Carried on ship):
1x HL-012 Mandalorian Assault Launcher
1x H-TKT Mandalorian Anti-Material Rifle – The TKT, a massive, forty pound weapon of considerable length, was designed with one purpose in mind: to blow very large holes in just about anything at very long distances. Though its energy drain is enormous, the rifle fires a large metal slug wreathed in a very potent energy charge at very high speeds, making the weapon capable of punching clean through nearly anything below armor plating graded for medium tanks
1x K-10 Mandalorian Light Repeater Rifle
1x K-156b Mandalorian Heavy Blaster Pistol
1x Mandalorian Portable Artillery Unit – The PAU, Sasha Crowe’s personal “toy”, is a simple, albeit massive, tool capable of ridiculous amounts of destruction for an infantry-operable weapon. Though far too large for nearly any sentient being to lift with their own strength, the PAU features several repulsor-lifts that allow it to be carried by someone of relatively low physical power; using it, however, is another story. The weapon, which is basically a light mortar-tank’s primary weapon placed on a repulsor harness.
((How’s that for a personal armory?))
Ship Name: Kuat Drive Yards Vanguard-Class Assault Transport, She'eta Tuure (Fifty Days), named for the fifty-day war of a species that will that probably won’t be remembered. The ship was a custom-requisition by the Verda, built as a unique ship by KDY for an extremely hefty price. The ship is armed to the teeth, with its armament operated primarily by several onboard dedicated AI, as well as other systems, and heavily armored. The only real marking of note is a falling drop of blood resting on a black star resting on the starboard side of the cockpit.
Length: 104 Meters
Max Atmosphere Speed: 500 KM/H
Engine Unit: Three Kuat Drive Yards Ion Engines
Hyperdrive Rating: Primary- Level 4, Secondary- Level 12
Sheilding: 3 KDY Heavy Cruiser Shielding Systems [1 forward, 2 Aft], 1 Starlight Heavy Capitalship Shielding System [1 Forward]
Hull: Titanium ribcage w/ Heavy Ferro-Magnesium Ceramic Cruiser Armor Plating
Armament: 5 Tri Medium Turbolaser Turrets, 14 Anti Fighter Turbolasers, 2 Tri Ion Cannons, 2 Proton Torpedo Tubes [Low nose mounts], 1 Launch Bay [Rear Ventral, holds one atomic compression missile]
Crew: Min-1 + 1 Astromech, Opt-20
Passengers: 80
Cargo Cap: 500 Metric Tons
Consumables: 6 months
Other: 1 Tractor beam projector
Description:
Physical Strength: 9 [Excluding armor]
Intelligence: 7
Speed: 6 [Excluding armor]
Leadership: 9
Unarmed: 7
Melee Weapons: 5
Ranged Weapons: 9
Alignment: -6
Sample RP:
”You know, you haven’t given me your op- DOWN!”
With what seemed to be a gentle nudge, the armored behemoth knocked his second in command off her feet, throwing her to the ground behind a damaged section of wall and hunching over as a blaster cannon’s shot slammed into the front of the building a few feet away from the two. He straightened himself and returned fire for a few seconds. ”Sasha? Could you take that armor out? We’re running out of cover down here.”
”Wait five…hang on…gotcha.”
Raynes brushed a few pieces of smoldering duracrete off his armor as the tank disappeared in a brilliant flash. ”Many thanks. Carry on.” He turned his attention back to Hollis, kneeling behind a section of wall. ”Well?”
”You really think this is the best time to discuss- phwoar!” The captain recoiled from her cover as pieces of it were sheared off by a high-powered repeater. Both Mandalorians snapped out from cover in sync, Raynes blanketing the area of the shooter and Hollis taking a few seconds to pick off individuals. After a few seconds of sustained fire, both were quite satisfied that nothing in the vicinity would be shooting back any time soon. ”You know what? Forget I asked; of course you do! Alright, fine, you want my opinion? Here it is: I couldn’t care less who we work for! How d’ya like that? Long as I get paid and get to watch you lunatics blow stuff up, I’m more than happy!”
Suddenly, she stopped and stared out into the distance. Raynes turned his head slightly, quickly spotting what she’d seen. ”TANK! BIG TANK! Crowe, north-west, hit it!”
”Reloading!”
”Osik…” She looked down as the primary cannon swiveled towards them in time to see a plate gauntlet latch on to her breastplate. ”Oh, for the love of…”
Next she knew, she was flying backwards, through the window across the room, a split second before it exploded. After she’d rolled to a stop, she slowly pushed herself to her feet and rolled her shoulder a few times.
”Tank’s dead. Boss? You alive? Hollis?”
”I’m alive.” She said flatly over her comm’ as she started back towards the remains of the building. A few pieces of rubble shifted, and she barely had time to duck a rather large section of wall as it went hurtling past. She looked back towards the building to see the smoking, armored behemoth rise from the rubble, shards of durasteel cascading off his shoulders.
”Still breathing. Nam, how’s it look from up there?”
”Our mercenary friends are starting to pull back for the most part. A few of ‘em are still…wait…nevermind, Vrrisk got up there…survivors are running…oh, ow…oh, that- that really had to hurt. Was that really necessary?”
”Yesss…he ssshot me in the visssor…hard to sssee, now.”
”Well, it’s not like you really aim anyways.”
”Di’kut.”
”Love you to, lizard.”
”Children…”
”He started it.”
”And I’m finishing it. Carthen, inform our employer that they’ve retreated, and that the primary objective is still intact and secure. Anda, check the bodies; no quarter. Nam, Mkohar, go after the survivors and tell me where they stop, then set up for an assault and wait. Hollis, Xarges, and Anda, stay here and fortify. Rest of you check your gear and get ready to move.”
”All due respect, Naast, but the guy only told us to hold this place.”
”Best defense is a good offense. They can’t mount another strike if they’re all dead.”
”Fair enough.” Namara shrugged as she strode past her brother as he was leaned over his repeater. She cocked her head off to the side as she continued walking, setting her rifle gently on her shoulder. ”Oh, and ori’vod? You’re smoking.”
”Huh. So he is. You know, you might want to have that looked at.”
Straightening to his full height, Raynes turned his head a few inches. Though you couldn’t see his eyes, it was pretty easy to tell exactly what the T-visor was fixed on. Hollis held her hands up, shrugging. ”Just sayin’.”
”Right…” Hefting the ZTX in one hand, Raynes reattached the power supply and revved the barrels. ”Vode, oya! Shaadlar dayn!”
Surviving Te Verda be Tal bal Prudii Members (Referred to as Verda):
Alor’ad (Captain) Vera Hollis – [Rifleman/Ship Pilot, Second in Command of the Verda {Sand-colored Mandalorian medium armor, KR-40 Mandalorian Battle Rifle, Verpine Shatter Pistol} (Human Female, original member, 84) Speaks in Blue
Sol’yc Ver’alor (First Lieutenant) Felix Carthen – [Carabineer/Vehicle Expert/Mechanic] {Dark green Mandalorian light armor, KR-34c/W-302 Mandalorian Carbine w/under-slung grenade launcher, Wrist-mounted blowtorch/flamethrower, various tools} (Human Male, original member, deceased) Speaks in Beige
Ver’alor (Lieutenant) Namara Kohul – [Sniper] {Urban camouflage Mandalorian light armor, Verpine Sniper Rifle, K-7b Mandalorian Light Blaster Pistol} (Human Female, original member, deceased) Speaks in Lime
Sol’yc Ruus’alor (First Sergeant) Mkohar - [Scout] {Forest camouflage Mandalorian scout armor, TKZ Mandalorian Scout Rifle, K-7b, numerous small blades} (Barabel Male, original member, 82) Speaks in Red
Sol’yc Ruus’alor Mesh’la Deggeram – [Rifleman/Technological Expert] {Tan Mandalorian medium armor, V-10 Mandalorian Light Repeater Rifle, K-156b Mandalorian Heavy Blaster Pistol, various technological devices} (Twi’lek Female, original member’s wife, adopted into culture soon after crusade, 69) Speaks in Pink
Ruus’alor (Sergeant) Bralin Xarges – [Heavy Weapons Expert/Armor Smith] {Dark blue Mandalorian heavy armor, VH-86 Mandalorian Heavy Repeater Rifle, Czerka Arms RR-41 Repeating hand blaster} (Human Male, original member, deceased) Speaks in Brown
Ruus’alor Anda Kohul – [Close-Quarters-Combat Expert/Security Expert] {Red Mandalorian light armor, K-32 Mandalorian Medium Blaster Pistol, copious quantities of blades, from throwing knives to swords} (Human female, Raynes’ daughter, 62) Speaks in White
Ruus’alor Sasha Crowe - [Anti-Tankman/Demolition and Munitions Expert/Weapon-Smith] {Grey Mandalorian heavy armor, HL-012 Mandalorian Assault Launcher, KR-34c Mandalorian Blaster Carbine, various explosive items} (Human Female, original member’s wife, adopted into culture, 38) Speaks in Yellow
Ruus’alor Vrrisk - [Heavy Weapons Expert] {Blood red powered Mandalorian assault armor, ML-131 ACP repeater, K-156b, Trandoshan Chalon Sword} (Trandoshan Male, adopted in culture after crusade, deceased) Speaks in Green
Ruus’alor Ipsich Crowe – [Rifleman/Combat Medic] {Blue Mandalorian light armor, KR-40, ACP Array Gun, various medical supplies} (Human Male, Sasha’s son, deceased) Speaks in Purple
Race: Human
Age: 95
Height: 6’10” (7’1” armored)
Weight: 316lbs (324lbs including personal modifications) (587lbs armored) (673lbs in full standard load-out)
Appearance:
-Hair Color: Gray
-Eye Color: Green
-Build: Simply put, Raynes is a behemoth among humans. He has a naturally large frame, prodigious height, and enough muscle to pull the arms off a wookiee.
-Identifying Features: Other than a nearly obscene amount of scars lining his body, with countless more faded through the sands of time, his nose has been broken twice and badly set, a black mythosaur skull rests on his right shoulder, a black neo-crusader symbol sits on his left shoulder, a tattoo of a falling drop of blood resting on a black star (the mark of the Verda; all members carry it somewhere on their skin) resides on his right pectoralis major, and the words Verd Ori’shya Beskar’gam written across his back. A large portion of the scars on his face have healed to the point of barely being visible.
-Clothing: He wears armor, and that’s about it. He rarely even takes off his helmet, even to rest.
Birth place: Enceri, Manda’yaim (Mandalore)
Family:
Arga [Father, deceased]
Milana [Mother, deceased]
Yula Vickent [Step-mother, deceased]
Kex [Brother, deceased]
Taryn [Twin sister, deceased]
Namara [Sister, deceased]
Marcil Vickent [Half-brother, deceased]
Akleesa [Wife, deceased]
Lepold [Son, deceased]
Selna [Second wife, deceased]
Anda [Daughter, alive, 62]
Profession: Mandalorian Neo-Crusader (He is not a member of the current Mandalorian Military running amok, not at this time), Heavy Weapons Expert/Group Leader of Te Verda be Tal bal Prudii (The warriors of blood and shadow)
Most would consider him and those under his command to be mercenaries.
Bio:
Raynes was born in the remote town of Enceri, on the planet Mandalore, though his people would call it Manda’yaim, into the small clan Kohul. Both his mother and his father, Milana and Arga, were respected soldiers, each having served in numerous conflicts both before and after his birth. Among his four siblings, Raynes was the second; the eldest being his brother, Kex, the next after Raynes being his twin sister, Taryn, then the youngest sister, Namara, and finally the youngest, his half-brother, Marcil, who was born nearly ten years later than Raynes, two years after his mother was killed in battle and his father married a second time.
As with many Mandalorian children, Raynes, as well as every other of his siblings, was raised by his mother until his third birthday, at which point, Arga began raising him. From that day on, Raynes’ life, as Kex’s before him, and the others’ after, became nothing short of brutal. Believing the relatively few years he had to teach his children to be among the most important, Arga showed little mercy to his children, instead drilling them day in and day out with everything he knew, rarely giving them any respite whatsoever from grueling training sessions and labor, teachings, and studies. He did not wish for his children to love him for the way he raised them, and neither did he expect them to until they were old enough to understand that everything he had done was only to give them what they needed to survive and prosper as Mando’ade after they left him. How to fight, how to survive, how to war, and how to make peace, even if only for a short time.
It was shortly after he turned eight that those of Clan Kohul learned of Milana’s death. While the youngest, Namara, was allowed to mourn for a, short, time, Arga did not allow his eldest three children to do so for even a day, instead teaching them a remembrance for their mother and the meaning behind it- Ni su'cuyi, gar kyr'adyc, ni partayli, gar darasuum. The words, which translate into Basic as “I’m still alive, but you are dead. I remember you, so you are eternal.”, he used to teach his children, even the youngest, that their mother was not truly dead, but that she would always be with them, as long as they remembered her. By the time Raynes had turned ten, Arga married again, to Yula Vickent, a human woman that he met while briefly off-world. Though not Mandalorian by birth, Yula openly accepted their culture, and so was openly accepted by the rest of the clan. Soon, they even came to respect and love her, and her and Arga’s child was treated no differently than any other member of the family. She was now the children’s mother, something they themselves quickly proved to have accepted. As of that year, as a testament to the conditions of his youth and training, Raynes had already broken seven bones, his crooked nose standing as a testament to one of the events, though he had also become far more dangerous and mature than his age would belie. By eleven, he had broken two of his father’s bones.
It was the day of his thirteenth birthday that he underwent his trial into adulthood, the verd’goten. There was a planet, not terribly far from his home-world, that his people had discovered. The inhabitants, a warrior-race, were deemed a sufficient challenge for the Mandalorians after most of those who first discovered the planet were killed. In retaliation, and in what they deemed as an honor to the race, the Mandalorians sent an assault force, a handful of which, including Raynes and Taryn, were to use this experience as their verd’goten. All of those coming of age were in the first wave, dropping from orbit within Basilisks, raining fire and destruction on vital points, before setting down and entering what was left of the fighting on foot. As their enemy refused to surrender, the Mandalorians did not stop fighting. Many died, including Taryn, and countless more were killed. In the end, the Mandalorians left victorious, leaving the world lifeless and empty, filled only with the scars of battle and those lost within it.
That was the day Raynes became a man, both within his culture and within his own mind. Choosing not to mourn the loss of his twin, he left the dead planet with a shard of her armor, which he keeps to this day, and moved on with his life. It was also there that he saw the full extent of the wisdom in his father’s methods of parenting. His sister had panicked, just for an instant, and in that instant had forgotten the training drilled into her for so long. Raynes had not. He had remembered his harsh training, used it to great effect, and had survived because of it. Kex had survived because of it. It was a simple conclusion; to survive, you had to know how to fight, and the better at it you were, the greater the odds of your survival, as well as the survival of you family and Clan because of it. He set himself to training, bettering himself in every way as much as possible, to becoming everything he could be as a Mandalorian, soon earning himself the nickname Te Naast for his propensity for using very large weapons to cause very large amounts of destruction. He watched on with pride as Kex and Arga died glorious deaths side by side, surrounded by the corpses of their enemies, and as Namara underwent her verd’goten. He even took it upon himself to finish Marcil’s training in the absence of their father, and soon, the three siblings became nigh-inseparable, spending nearly all of their time training each-other, enough so that it was frequently remarked that they did more harm to each-other than anyone else. But they rapidly became more than just good. It was soon apparent that Marcil wasn’t quite on the same plane of skill as his elder half-siblings, but even he was noted as being above average even before his verd’goten.
Raynes was nineteen when he first met Akleesa, who was a year younger than he, while on a distant battlefield. Their mutual interest in over-sized weaponry, rapidly became far more, and it was little less than a year later, a year filled with what most would call a little strange and highly destructive courtship, that the two married. Happy had never been a word to accurately describe Raynes before; content, yes, and he did laugh on occasion, but few, not even himself, had ever considered him to be a happy man until he had started spending time around Akleesa, but even his sister admitted that something had seemed to change in him. It wasn’t even a year after that that the union bore a son, Lepold, the first addition to the clan since Marcil. It was a short-lived happiness, however, for it was on the day that his son was to turn three, the day he was to begin raising him to the ways of the Mando’ade, that everything came crashing down, literally. Currently on the opposite side of the planet training under several well-respected warriors, Raynes, Namara, and Marcil all waited on the landing-pad of their small outpost for the transport carrying Akleesa, Lepold, and Yula. The ship never arrived. They later learned that the transport had suffered a catastrophic drive failure upon take-off, and that there had been no survivors. Upon hearing of the ship’s fate, everything changed for the three. Raynes almost instantaneously reverted back to his former stoic, unyielding, and indifferent ways, while Namara’s normally cheerful and light heart started slowly gaining tinges of anger, eventually leading to outbursts that gained in frequency, and Marcil became bitter and more and more rebellious.
The day after Marcil came back victorious from his passage into adulthood, he left Mandalore, not to be seen by his clan for some time. In the end, however, both Raynes and Namara dedicated themselves even further to their training, spending nearly whatever down-time they had on a weapons range, physical conditioning course, sparring mat, or learning as much as they could from more veteran warriors. Both also began using implants extensively, some out of necessity to remain in peak condition due to various injuries, and many just to further enhance their performances. Just under two and a half years later, the duo came under the notice of an older Rodian named Edorni Hesh, a veteran of countless conflicts and a well-respected warrior. Hesh, you see, had begun collecting warriors a few years earlier, the best he could find, to form a group of elites, so to speak, that would be capable of functioning fully on their own, no matter the circumstances, and capable of completing any task, no matter the odds. In his opinion, Raynes and his sister would be valuable additions to the ranks of his little band, now known as Te Verda be Tal bal Prudii, or The Warriors of Blood and Shadow, due to their ability to operate in the background, to remain unnoticed, but still being fully capable of unleashing death and destruction at a moment’s notice. Within a little under a year, there were twenty-eight members total, including Hesh himself; many knew each-other and had served alongside one another at one time or another, while many were relatively unknown and unproven in battle. Hesh treated them all equally, giving rank only to those that proved their worth directly to him after joining, driving into each man and woman that they were no better than each-other, that they were more than just other Mandalorians. Through time, and blood, the Verda began to see each-other as a kind of second family, each fully willing to die for the next. They may not have been the best, but they were damn close, and each and every one of them knew it. Individually, they were lethal. Together, they were the point of the Mandalorian spear, armed to the teeth, capable of assembling faster than any invasion force, loyal to a fault. As their culture dictated, family came first, then your Clan, but nothing else came before the other Verda in the eyes of its members, nothing but Mandalore’s own will.
Family. It wasn’t until he was nearly thirty, and the fourth highest ranking member of the Verda, that the word had meant anything more than Namara to Raynes, as it was with her. But, as with the Mandalorian god Kad Ha'rangir’s way, change came. It was not always anticipated, it often came in an unforeseeable manner to the least likely candidate, and, especially in the cases of the Mandalorian people, it came on the heels of destruction, but it did come none the less, without warning. For Raynes, it came during a journey to a small town on Concord Dawn with Hesh and a handful of the other Verda for recruitment. By the end of a week, four warriors had been allowed into their ranks, but Raynes himself found far more there, something most of those close to him had believed the hardened, perpetually detached and cold-hearted Mandalorian had cut himself off from. While on the planet, Hesh sent Raynes to a farm near the small town to track down a man, the eldest of the Clan Voors, he’d heard promising things about. Upon arriving, however, he found only death and destruction; the main buildings and fields had just begun to burn, and several men and women lay dead around the property, most seemingly having been shot without warning. Most were unarmed. Even fewer were wearing armor. This had been no battle; it had been a raid, a massacre of farmers and unprepared warriors by fully equipped soldiers, and it was readily apparent that some of the Mandalorians who lay dead in the fields, those that were fully armed and armored, were the attackers. Enraged, the colossal Mandalorian started for the buildings, fully intent on seeking vengeance for this slaughter of his brothers and sisters. Upon hearing blaster fire from the largest building, the main house, he broke into a run, and came skidding to a halt from the sight that greeted him as he came around the corner of an adjacent building. More bodies, and two armored Mandalorians standing watch outside the main entrance along with two unarmored Devaronians. It only took the men a few seconds to realize that he wasn’t one of theirs and begin to raise their rifles. Unfortunately for them, Raynes was faster, had heavier armor, and a more powerful armament; in the course of a few seconds, the four lay dead, and Raynes started again towards the main house, smoke trailing from the few carbon scores recently added to his armor. He didn’t even caste a second glance at the Mandalorian blood he had just spilt as he stepped over the corpses and through the door. After clearing the building of anyone foolish enough to fire at him, and finding a lone survivor of the inhabitants of the farm, he subsequently began clearing the rest of the farm for any more survivors or hostiles. Then he called Hesh, asking his commander for a transport and the services of a Verda medic, returned to the house, carried the last survivor, the moderately injured daughter of the man he had been sent to find, outside, set her on the dirt of the road leading through the farm, and began tending to her wounds the best he could. She asked him who else had survived; removing his helmet and setting it beside his boot, he shook his head solemnly, giving her the only response she needed.
Upon reporting the events of the day to Hesh and informing the Journeymen Protectors for further investigation, Raynes spoke more with the last of the Voors Clan on the planet, Selna, quickly discovering that, though she was hesitant to admit it, she no longer wished to remain on her clan’s homestead. The last of her family was dead, save for a few brothers that had long-since left, and vengeance had already been exacted on those responsible. There was nothing left for her there, in her eyes, and, suddenly, Raynes noticed something familiar within those eyes as he caught them. It was the same thing he’d seen staring back at him from a mirror six years earlier. He felt an intense sadness within himself stir as he realized that there was another Mandalorian destined to become as empty as he. It was not a fate he would have wished on anyone of his people. For reasons difficult to explain to those not having felt what he had felt, a desire to protect this woman from his own fate soon embedded itself within Raynes, and he quickly set his mind. He offered to take her back to Mandalore with the Verda and a place to stay in his own home on Mandalore for as long as she needed, until she found a home of her own, whether it be through marriage or her own perseverance. It was a way off Concord Dawn, a way to put distance between her and her past. A new beginning. In return, all that he asked was that she look after his humble home while he was away for as long as she stayed. It isn’t hard to guess what Selna chose.
Soon, a bond had developed between the two, Raynes taking up a role similar to an older brother, or protector to Selna, though she was only a few years younger than he, though it only remained that way for about a month. Over time, Namara and a few others began to see the bond grow into something more. Having a greater understanding of what the other felt than those around them, the two began taking comfort in each-other’s presence, their words, and began spending more and more time together. It didn’t take a genius to make an accurate guess at where it would eventually lead, Namara being the first to state that she didn’t think it would be very long before she’d have someone else in the family, but even she didn’t anticipate just how soon. Eight months after the massacre on Concord Dawn, Raynes and Selna married, and though he did not exactly feel happy, he did feel as though he’d finally found a measure of peace in his bleak existence. This time, however, it would be a bit longer-lived than his first marriage. It was just over a year later that their first, and only, child, a daughter they named Anda, was born, and by the time she was old enough to be trained by her father, Raynes had at last come to understand fully his own father’s reasons, and like Arga before him, Raynes pushed his own child harder than anyone else he had trained, as hard as he pushed himself. He did not give passes on anything, nor ease up at any point, because he wanted his daughter to be the most dangerous person he had ever met, to be more skilled than he when she was his age, because he wanted her to live that long, to last longer than he did. It only took a few years for him to realize that there was a distinct possibility that she would be more skilled than he.
But, as always, change, unavoidable, unforeseeable change came in time. The Crusade. Though the man proclaiming himself Mandalore had only managed to gather a few clans under his banner of war, he brought more change than anyone could have ever anticipated, bringing the wrath of the entire Republic down upon the Mandalorians, and though Hesh strictly forbid any of the Verda from following him to a war so ill-conceived, every one of the stood up to defend their home when the Republic came to take it. None of them gave a damn about the treaty made between the idiot that had attempted to lead them and the Republic, and none of them stopped fighting until it was clear they had no chance of victory, being so heavily outnumbered. Still, none of them surrendered, but four were killed fighting, many were wounded, and more than a handful were captured, including Raynes as he returned to his home to get his family away from the fighting. Upon arriving, however, he found he was too late; a Mandalorian warship had been shot down over the city and had crashed inside, its munitions causing a great deal of destruction. He found his Selna laying over top their child, shielding Anda with her armored body, dying of the wounds she’d sustained in protecting their child. Carrying them both into the street, he soon found himself surrounded by a platoon of Republic soldiers moving through the city, and unwilling to endanger his family further, he willingly gave himself up to them, asking only that they save his wife, even as he himself bled from several wounds. Refusing to be separated from his daughter, however, they were both taken to several large Republic freighters being used to transport Mandalorian armor and weaponry taken from those who had surrendered or been captured. There, like all those before him, he was stripped of his armor and weaponry, and moved into a detention area nearby with Anda, where he saw numerous familiar faces, including a few Verda. It was only a few minutes, however, before explosions rocked the ground and the air was filled with the whines of blasters, more than a few of which he knew all too well. The brief fight was over in scarcely five minutes, the twenty-one members of the Verda that had survived and evaded capture killing and disabling every non-Mandalorian around and inside the freighters, opening the detention area, and collecting their remaining numbers. As the nearby Republic forces moved in to contain the escaping Mandalorians, the Verda boarded the freighter farthest back, launched, and burned lines straight up, and though the ship sustained heavy damage in its escape of the planet’s gravity well, escape it did, and as soon as they were clear, they activated the ship’s hyperdrive. While inside the hyperlane, the Verda assessed their numbers, and Raynes was informed that he was now the highest ranking member; none of those above him had survived, but, in total, they’d only lost six. Not even pausing to think on the news, Raynes ordered his most technologically geared men to disable any device that would allow the Republic to track the ship, and as soon as that was done, to drop out of hyperspace and change direction. Everyone else was to do anything they could to make sure the ship held together as long as possible. It was here that one of the sergeants, the Barabel scout Mkohar, informed Raynes that he had been in the medical camp the Republic had brought Selna to before being rescued, having been injured himself not long beforehand; though they had tried, they had not been able to save her.
It was long before the frigate reached Saleucami that everyone onboard came to comprehend that their new commander had changed, though whether it was for the better or worse was anyone’s guess; opinions varied from person to person, though the handful that knew him best were closest. Raynes hadn’t changed, exactly, his mental state had simply become a more extreme state of what it had most commonly been; indifferent, cold-hearted, and completely unwilling to let any of his fellow warriors die without a damn good reason. His one and only interest became to keep everyone he had left alive for as long as possible, to make sure that if anyone else had to die, it was going to be for something they believed in, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to allow any of them to give up everything they were for some bunch of over-inflated, hypocritical politicians calling themselves a Republic that had failed on numerous occasions, and, in his opinion, wouldn’t survive as long as his people would. In his mind, the Mandalorians had been around far longer than the Republic already, so who were they to dictate that they could no longer be everything they had always been? No, no one would be taking anything more from them that they would not freely give. They were Mando’ade, and that’s exactly what they would always be, even after their deaths, no matter what any government tried to do about it.
When the surviving Verda landed on Saleucami, they set the badly damaged ship down in the desert near an inhabited caldera, where they set about stripping it down to what was still usable. Within a day, a small group led by Raynes entered the nearby caldera and the colony within; there, the picked up a few small jobs to pay for a cargo hauler to come out to the freighter and carry everything that couldn’t be used, as well as a large portion of the Republic equipment onboard, back to the colony to be traded for the parts they needed to get the freighter flying again. What they couldn’t afford with these funds, they bought by trading their services; they had well-trained healers, technicians, craftsmen, and, most importantly, veteran Mandalorian soldiers with no political interests, while those few trained in the crafting of weapons and armor remained nearly always with the ship, repairing old equipment and creating new weapons and armor from the cache of Mandalorian equipment stored onboard. By the time the ship was fully operation again, every member that had lost their own arms and armor on Mandalore had had them replaced, and most of the injuries received had been healed. The Verda were once again fully operational, lacking only a few of their full numbers, and so they left Saleucami and began their well-paying, often dangerous, frequently illegal, and morally unrestrained career as mercenaries, selling their services, for a high price, to any planet, government, military, company, or private interest with sufficient funds and no ties to the Republic that would present them with any more danger than they already faced.
That was half a century ago. Since then, the Verda have wandered the outer reaches of the galaxy, staying out of Republic space, and making an exceptional living doing…just about anything you can imagine. They have acted as bodyguards, a private military, assassins, smugglers, traders, bounty hunters, and even law enforcement on occasion. They have fought wars for species most between the Mid Rim and the Core have never heard of, and likely never will, quashed rebellions, toppled dictators, destroyed shipyards, clashed with Jedi and Dark Jedi alike, and both lost and gained members. Though Raynes has done his best to lead the men and women under him, the Verda now only number eleven, including himself, with only six of those having been with the group since the Crusade. Three more were adopted into the Mandalorian culture afterwards, two of them through marriage to one of the original Verda, and one after simply showing an interest in their culture and an impressive skill level with a repeater. The last two, the most recent additions to the Verda, are both the children of other members, one of which being Raynes’ own daughter, Anda; though she had technically been with them since the Crusade, she was not made an actual member until she was nearly twenty.
Of the more notable events for Raynes individually, though, happened on Nar Shaddaa, a planet upon which the Verda had received a great deal of business from the Hutts, various criminal syndicates, and numerous private interests across the years. He was just seventy-three when he received a message from one of his various contacts on the Smuggler’s Moon asking for the Mandalorian to meet him at a club in the Red Sector, that he had a friend he wanted to introduce him to. Knowing that specific man didn’t like to be too heavily outnumbered in a meeting, and that he had proven reliable for many years thus far, Raynes left the Verda under the temporary command of his second, Vera Hollis, and took two of his veterans to the moon. Once there, his contact simply made the introduction, and returned his attention to the entertainment in the club, which was just fine by Raynes once he met the man; he wore the armor of a Mandalorian, moved, acted, and spoke like one as well. What was more, his voice reminded someone he had once known, yet different, like a distortion of the man. What he wanted was simple; he’d heard of the Verda, as many on the moon had, and he had wanted to see if they were real, a myth, or simply masquerading a Mandalorians. If it was the first, he also wished to try and prove himself skilled enough to join them. Raynes agreed, and told the man to meet them on the nearby Nyrvona in a few days, before leaving. Upon leaving the moon, however, the transport he had come in on barely made it out of orbit before it was attacked by several fighters of various make. Once it had been heavily damaged and the engines had failed, a large freighter tractored it into its hold, where heavy cranes began pulling it apart. Knowing full well the only cover they had was about to become useless, Raynes walked out into the hold, his weapon at his side. Waiting for him was a fairly impressive amount of firepower, ranging from Humans with blaster rifles to Trandoshans with anti tank missile launchers; most notably, however, was the Mandalorian from the club, who immediately presented him with a choice. The man had little interest in Raynes’ companions, only Raynes himself, so if he were to lay down his arms and surrender willingly, those with him would be allowed to walk across the hold and take the small transport sitting on the other side of the hold back to the rest of their comrades without hassle. To prove his sincerity, he removed his helmet, and Raynes suddenly realized why he had recognized his voice. It had been his brother’s voice, twisted by decades of bitterness and substance abuse.
Marcil Vickent. Badly aged and showing the since of at least one addiction, but it was him none the less. Raynes simply nodded and set his repeater on the deck below him, calling to the two Verda accompanying him. They came, weapons raised, but instead of receiving an order to fire as they had anticipated, he simply motioned towards the transport and told them to go, no arguments. Reluctantly, they went, and true to Marcil’s word, they were not stopped from leaving the freighter or the system, so true to his, Raynes removed the last of his weaponry and stripped himself of his armor, only to nearly instantaneously feel the impact of a stun-bolt against the side of his skull. When he regained consciousness, he found himself hanging from the ceiling of a damp, unlit cell by his wrists, his feet being similarly chained to the floor, and having been stripped down to his undergarments. Eventually, an hour, by his estimation, the door opened, partially blinding him with the sudden brightness that poured through. But he could still make out the shape of someone entering, hear the sounds of armored boots on durasteel flooring, and hear the words the man spoke. Marcil had changed for the worse, much for the worse, since he’d left Mandalore all those years ago. For a long time, he had tried to find someone to blame for his mother’s death, and had become a drunken addict at the same time, but recently, after having left his addiction behind, his mind had become clear and he had found someone to blame. Raynes. Whether it was logic, or whether the years of drug usage had distorted his mind to the point of insanity, not even he knew, but that wasn’t going to stop him. For the past five years, he had spent his time amassing enough wealth, influence, and knowledge to pull this off, and finally the time had come. Now, he was finally going to make someone pay for his mother, and for all the suffering he had endured because of it, and no matter how much persuasion Raynes tried, Marcil was not going to be swayed into changing his mind.
Six years of torture, vicious beatings, starvation, and mental abuse. Never-ending pain. Six years of trying to persuade Marcil into seeing what he had become, to see the dishonor he had brought to his family, to no avail. But Marcil would not kill him, no, rather he frequently brought him to within inches of his life, only to leave for a few days and let Raynes’ own regenerative implants heal him, only to begin again. Six years, and Raynes slowly began to feel his own sanity begin to crack. Six years, and Raynes finally gave up on Marcil’s redemption, at last coming to know in his heart and mind that his brother was too far gone to be saved from his madness. The night of that sixth anniversary of his imprisonment, Raynes freed himself of his bonds, simply ignoring the pain as he tore a considerable amount of skin, and even muscle, off of his hands and feet in the process. Once he had collected his equipment, he simply waited for Marcil’s return, where he barely even gave the man enough time to realize what was about to happen before blasting a hole through his faceplate, never once saying a word. He merely collected his half-brother’s helm, made his way to the surface of the planet, which turned out to be the Hutt-controlled Ylesia, made his way to the nearest colony, and sent out a heavily encoded call for pickup. Once the Verda arrived, Raynes simply resumed command, and continued leading his warriors as he had done before. It was remarked that, other than the damage done to his body and his need for more implants in order to remain fully functional, he hadn’t seemed to have changed at all throughout the ordeal.
Hearing rumors in their travels and contracts of the more recent events of importance in the galaxy, however, was inevitable. War was coming to the Republic, and though the majority of the Verda disdained the Republic and not a one of them held any respect for this new Empire that had risen up, the Mandalorians knew the opportunity in war, especially someone else’s. Knowing full well how his brothers and sisters in arms felt, Raynes decided it was finally time to bring the Verda back out of the dark, not for politics, not for vengeance, but for battle, for glory and honor. Of course, the possibility that they might be able to inflict pain upon the Republic that had tried to strip them of everything they were was a bonus each and every one of them eagerly hoped they would have the chance to collect, so long as it didn’t get in the way of making good business.
Attributes: First and foremost, Raynes is, in every essence of the phrase, a heavy weapons expert. He has trained extensively for several decades with countless types of weapons, ranging from blades to pistols to heavy repeaters to anti-tank launchers. His preference, and his specialty, however, are heavy repeaters, flechette weaponry, and explosive launchers, all of which he has extreme proficiency with. Due to the extensive damage done to his body over the years, as well as his age, he has received numerous implants and enhancements, including powerful healing implants, adrenal implants, strength amplifiers, reflex amplifiers, ocular implants, olfactory implants, mental resistance implants, and a few others, as well as having had several tendons replaced with stronger synthetic equivalents, several portions of bone, including vertebrae, replaced with metal. Due to his extreme modification, he is actually no less agile, strong or fast; in fact, quite the opposite. He has gained more strength, beyond what is considered human peak, become physically faster, gained reflexes far beyond normal human limits, and the ability to do considerably more to himself without injury; even the effects of aging have been remarkably slowed. He has proven to be physically equal to many Jedi while unarmored, even with the aid of the Force, from his implants; though, for instance, he cannot use Force-aided jumps, he can jump farther than a human, and he has reflexes fast enough to compete with many Jedi and Dark Jedi, as he has proven. From his implants, he is also resistant to many forms of toxins, can see much sharper than the human norm, can push himself for extended periods, can stay conscious through extreme trauma, and is resistant to most forms of persuasion, ranging from mental “breaking”, narcotic interrogation, and even many of the famed Jedi and Sith mental abilities (Mind tricks, mind reading, stunning, fear, etc.) to an extreme degree.
Raynes is also a highly educated and decorated troop commander who has been trained both through copious amounts of actual experience and by several respected veteran Mandalorian commanders and generals throughout his career.
Lastly, he has been trained primarily to function as a fully autonomous and independent branch of regular military, to survive and keep a small unit alive and fully functional with little to no military or governmental aid and full reliance on only themselves.
Items:
1x Powered Mandalorian assault armor – Custom-modified after his original suit was taken from his possession by the Republic; made completely of beskar, the suit is very thick, bulky, and heavy, though actual gaps between plates are few and far between and typically very small, as many plates overlap slightly, such as on the knees and shoulders, and the suit can effectively lift just over 600lbs in addition to the combined weight of itself, Raynes, and his typical load-out (Helmet includes 20x zoom, infrared vision, low-light vision, ECM vision [electronic output], multi-frequency radio, advanced targeting systems, and advanced data collection and storage systems). The suit is its natural dark gray, and sports no markings past those acquired from battles, save for two blood red jaig eyes on the helmet. Weighs 263lbs.
1x Black survival mesh bodysuit – designed specifically to stop high-velocity shrapnel, absorb concussive force, and absorb electrical shocks
1x Equipment belt – Includes the 71o’s holster, an electronic slicing tool, a multitool, various grenades and explosive devices, and a pouch of various stimpacks
1x Portable Power-Generator – Mounted on the back, designed specifically to keep the ZTX continuously fed, and mounts mag locks on both sides
1x Fibercord grapple device – Equipped with twenty meters of fibercord, and can effectively pull up to 700lbs of dead weight, though the hook can simply hold closer to 1000lbs (Left bracer, beside the wrist launcher)
Weapons:
1x Mandalorian ZTX-42 Heavy Rotating Repeater – In the words of Felix Carthen, “Six barrels of ‘you’re dead’.” Custom-crafted from various other weapons by Sasha Crowe and Raynes, the ZTX, when coupled to a power generator, becomes a self-charging plasma-thrower capable of spitting 1500 superheated rounds per minute of bolts equal in power to most high-quality battle-rifles with surprisingly horrific accuracy when stable. Its downfalls are that it weighs nearly fifty pounds, is horrendously uncontrollable unless held by a being of more than prodigious strength, and is prone to overheating after roughly two minutes of sustained fire, depending on conditions, with prolonged firing risking barrel integrity (Right mag-lock on generator)
1x ACP Array Gun – Your basic pump-fed charged-particle close quarters weapon. Relatively small in size, extremely short-ranged, and incredibly lethal when used in close proximity (Left mag-lock on generator)
1x Long vibroknife – (Right-front shoulder)
2x Class A Thermal Detonators - (Belt)
2x OCD Detonators - (Belt)
4x Fragmentation Grenades - (Armored tubes, left hip)
2x Retractable beskar gauntlet vibroblades – (Left and right gauntlets)
1x Wrist-mounted mini-rocket launcher – (Left bracer, underarm, left barrel)
1x Aratech MP-71o Repeating Blaster pistol – One of the better crafted models of medium repeater pistols made by Aratech, the 71 line sports high accuracy, moderate stopping power, reliability, a high rate of fire, and low power drain. The 71o, however, is a version designed for Republic officers, though it never saw mass production, and is simply the same gun, only better in every aspect, plus with a chromium finish along the barrel (right hip)
Alternate armaments (Carried on ship):
1x HL-012 Mandalorian Assault Launcher
1x H-TKT Mandalorian Anti-Material Rifle – The TKT, a massive, forty pound weapon of considerable length, was designed with one purpose in mind: to blow very large holes in just about anything at very long distances. Though its energy drain is enormous, the rifle fires a large metal slug wreathed in a very potent energy charge at very high speeds, making the weapon capable of punching clean through nearly anything below armor plating graded for medium tanks
1x K-10 Mandalorian Light Repeater Rifle
1x K-156b Mandalorian Heavy Blaster Pistol
1x Mandalorian Portable Artillery Unit – The PAU, Sasha Crowe’s personal “toy”, is a simple, albeit massive, tool capable of ridiculous amounts of destruction for an infantry-operable weapon. Though far too large for nearly any sentient being to lift with their own strength, the PAU features several repulsor-lifts that allow it to be carried by someone of relatively low physical power; using it, however, is another story. The weapon, which is basically a light mortar-tank’s primary weapon placed on a repulsor harness.
((How’s that for a personal armory?))
Ship Name: Kuat Drive Yards Vanguard-Class Assault Transport, She'eta Tuure (Fifty Days), named for the fifty-day war of a species that will that probably won’t be remembered. The ship was a custom-requisition by the Verda, built as a unique ship by KDY for an extremely hefty price. The ship is armed to the teeth, with its armament operated primarily by several onboard dedicated AI, as well as other systems, and heavily armored. The only real marking of note is a falling drop of blood resting on a black star resting on the starboard side of the cockpit.
Length: 104 Meters
Max Atmosphere Speed: 500 KM/H
Engine Unit: Three Kuat Drive Yards Ion Engines
Hyperdrive Rating: Primary- Level 4, Secondary- Level 12
Sheilding: 3 KDY Heavy Cruiser Shielding Systems [1 forward, 2 Aft], 1 Starlight Heavy Capitalship Shielding System [1 Forward]
Hull: Titanium ribcage w/ Heavy Ferro-Magnesium Ceramic Cruiser Armor Plating
Armament: 5 Tri Medium Turbolaser Turrets, 14 Anti Fighter Turbolasers, 2 Tri Ion Cannons, 2 Proton Torpedo Tubes [Low nose mounts], 1 Launch Bay [Rear Ventral, holds one atomic compression missile]
Crew: Min-1 + 1 Astromech, Opt-20
Passengers: 80
Cargo Cap: 500 Metric Tons
Consumables: 6 months
Other: 1 Tractor beam projector
Description:
Physical Strength: 9 [Excluding armor]
Intelligence: 7
Speed: 6 [Excluding armor]
Leadership: 9
Unarmed: 7
Melee Weapons: 5
Ranged Weapons: 9
Alignment: -6
Sample RP:
”You know, you haven’t given me your op- DOWN!”
With what seemed to be a gentle nudge, the armored behemoth knocked his second in command off her feet, throwing her to the ground behind a damaged section of wall and hunching over as a blaster cannon’s shot slammed into the front of the building a few feet away from the two. He straightened himself and returned fire for a few seconds. ”Sasha? Could you take that armor out? We’re running out of cover down here.”
”Wait five…hang on…gotcha.”
Raynes brushed a few pieces of smoldering duracrete off his armor as the tank disappeared in a brilliant flash. ”Many thanks. Carry on.” He turned his attention back to Hollis, kneeling behind a section of wall. ”Well?”
”You really think this is the best time to discuss- phwoar!” The captain recoiled from her cover as pieces of it were sheared off by a high-powered repeater. Both Mandalorians snapped out from cover in sync, Raynes blanketing the area of the shooter and Hollis taking a few seconds to pick off individuals. After a few seconds of sustained fire, both were quite satisfied that nothing in the vicinity would be shooting back any time soon. ”You know what? Forget I asked; of course you do! Alright, fine, you want my opinion? Here it is: I couldn’t care less who we work for! How d’ya like that? Long as I get paid and get to watch you lunatics blow stuff up, I’m more than happy!”
Suddenly, she stopped and stared out into the distance. Raynes turned his head slightly, quickly spotting what she’d seen. ”TANK! BIG TANK! Crowe, north-west, hit it!”
”Reloading!”
”Osik…” She looked down as the primary cannon swiveled towards them in time to see a plate gauntlet latch on to her breastplate. ”Oh, for the love of…”
Next she knew, she was flying backwards, through the window across the room, a split second before it exploded. After she’d rolled to a stop, she slowly pushed herself to her feet and rolled her shoulder a few times.
”Tank’s dead. Boss? You alive? Hollis?”
”I’m alive.” She said flatly over her comm’ as she started back towards the remains of the building. A few pieces of rubble shifted, and she barely had time to duck a rather large section of wall as it went hurtling past. She looked back towards the building to see the smoking, armored behemoth rise from the rubble, shards of durasteel cascading off his shoulders.
”Still breathing. Nam, how’s it look from up there?”
”Our mercenary friends are starting to pull back for the most part. A few of ‘em are still…wait…nevermind, Vrrisk got up there…survivors are running…oh, ow…oh, that- that really had to hurt. Was that really necessary?”
”Yesss…he ssshot me in the visssor…hard to sssee, now.”
”Well, it’s not like you really aim anyways.”
”Di’kut.”
”Love you to, lizard.”
”Children…”
”He started it.”
”And I’m finishing it. Carthen, inform our employer that they’ve retreated, and that the primary objective is still intact and secure. Anda, check the bodies; no quarter. Nam, Mkohar, go after the survivors and tell me where they stop, then set up for an assault and wait. Hollis, Xarges, and Anda, stay here and fortify. Rest of you check your gear and get ready to move.”
”All due respect, Naast, but the guy only told us to hold this place.”
”Best defense is a good offense. They can’t mount another strike if they’re all dead.”
”Fair enough.” Namara shrugged as she strode past her brother as he was leaned over his repeater. She cocked her head off to the side as she continued walking, setting her rifle gently on her shoulder. ”Oh, and ori’vod? You’re smoking.”
”Huh. So he is. You know, you might want to have that looked at.”
Straightening to his full height, Raynes turned his head a few inches. Though you couldn’t see his eyes, it was pretty easy to tell exactly what the T-visor was fixed on. Hollis held her hands up, shrugging. ”Just sayin’.”
”Right…” Hefting the ZTX in one hand, Raynes reattached the power supply and revved the barrels. ”Vode, oya! Shaadlar dayn!”
Surviving Te Verda be Tal bal Prudii Members (Referred to as Verda):
Alor’ad (Captain) Vera Hollis – [Rifleman/Ship Pilot, Second in Command of the Verda {Sand-colored Mandalorian medium armor, KR-40 Mandalorian Battle Rifle, Verpine Shatter Pistol} (Human Female, original member, 84) Speaks in Blue
Sol’yc Ver’alor (First Lieutenant) Felix Carthen – [Carabineer/Vehicle Expert/Mechanic] {Dark green Mandalorian light armor, KR-34c/W-302 Mandalorian Carbine w/under-slung grenade launcher, Wrist-mounted blowtorch/flamethrower, various tools} (Human Male, original member, deceased) Speaks in Beige
Ver’alor (Lieutenant) Namara Kohul – [Sniper] {Urban camouflage Mandalorian light armor, Verpine Sniper Rifle, K-7b Mandalorian Light Blaster Pistol} (Human Female, original member, deceased) Speaks in Lime
Sol’yc Ruus’alor (First Sergeant) Mkohar - [Scout] {Forest camouflage Mandalorian scout armor, TKZ Mandalorian Scout Rifle, K-7b, numerous small blades} (Barabel Male, original member, 82) Speaks in Red
Sol’yc Ruus’alor Mesh’la Deggeram – [Rifleman/Technological Expert] {Tan Mandalorian medium armor, V-10 Mandalorian Light Repeater Rifle, K-156b Mandalorian Heavy Blaster Pistol, various technological devices} (Twi’lek Female, original member’s wife, adopted into culture soon after crusade, 69) Speaks in Pink
Ruus’alor (Sergeant) Bralin Xarges – [Heavy Weapons Expert/Armor Smith] {Dark blue Mandalorian heavy armor, VH-86 Mandalorian Heavy Repeater Rifle, Czerka Arms RR-41 Repeating hand blaster} (Human Male, original member, deceased) Speaks in Brown
Ruus’alor Anda Kohul – [Close-Quarters-Combat Expert/Security Expert] {Red Mandalorian light armor, K-32 Mandalorian Medium Blaster Pistol, copious quantities of blades, from throwing knives to swords} (Human female, Raynes’ daughter, 62) Speaks in White
Ruus’alor Sasha Crowe - [Anti-Tankman/Demolition and Munitions Expert/Weapon-Smith] {Grey Mandalorian heavy armor, HL-012 Mandalorian Assault Launcher, KR-34c Mandalorian Blaster Carbine, various explosive items} (Human Female, original member’s wife, adopted into culture, 38) Speaks in Yellow
Ruus’alor Vrrisk - [Heavy Weapons Expert] {Blood red powered Mandalorian assault armor, ML-131 ACP repeater, K-156b, Trandoshan Chalon Sword} (Trandoshan Male, adopted in culture after crusade, deceased) Speaks in Green
Ruus’alor Ipsich Crowe – [Rifleman/Combat Medic] {Blue Mandalorian light armor, KR-40, ACP Array Gun, various medical supplies} (Human Male, Sasha’s son, deceased) Speaks in Purple
