Post by Clarylla on Jun 16, 2011 21:37:54 GMT -5
Password: nexu
Name: Sforza Ndo (Sss-fort-za n-do)
Race: Omwati
Age: 35 standard years
Height: 5'3"
Weight: 85 lbs.
Birthplace: Coruscant, Collective Commerce District
Appearance: Sforza, as an Omwati, has down-like feathery strands instead of proper hair. 'Tis naturally a washed-out shade of silver-grey, and falls in straggly wisps to her shoulders. (When it's completely dry and clean, which is rare, it floats, halo-like, around her head.) Her long, loose dresses and robes were made for much taller beings: they're generally inexpertly hemmed and still drag on the ground, unless she tucks them up into a narrow black belt. She only has one or two Aeien-silk dresses (in charcoal gray and light peach) left from her time on Coruscant; the rest are cheap bantha-wool of “sale-rack” hue. Her sleeves are usually rolled up at least to the elbow, revealing fragile, bird-like arms. However, beginning at mid-forearm and ending at the wrist, they are always wrapped in blue bandages (which are approximately the same color as her “I-just-got-asphyxiated-blue” skin). Beneath the bandages lie a pair of dull silver cybernetic prosthetic hands. Were the prosthetic hands to be covered by gloves or some other means of disguise, they would overheat to the point of malfunction within about an hour or so. They are slim, but disproportionately large compared to the rest of Sforza's body. Consequently, she often keeps her hands tucked into her pockets or under her arms. The aforementioned body matches her arms: fragile, skinny, and fairly smooth. Her large eyes are glassy indigo, a dark enough shade to be mistaken for black in bad lighting, and stand out starkly against her pale hair and skin. In a sarcastic nod to stereotype (and also to shield painfully-light-sensitive-due-to-alcohol-consumption eyes), she wears dark-lensed glasses on the end of her thin, tilted nose. Plain, dark brown shoes lace over her tiny feet. (Her default mode of walking is the slightly-drunken swaying lurch, but somehow Omwati grace manages to keep her upright. Mostly.) Her speaking voice is surprisingly low for an Omwati, more like a bass flute than the piccolo many others resemble, with a definite Coruscanti accent (similar to a real-world British accent).
Personality: Sforza is in a constant state of inebriation, no matter where she is, and this combined with the inherent naiveté of most Omwati means her behavioral patterns are a bit screwy. Her speech patterns are always, always extremely grammatically correct, though slightly slurred. She does not believe in destiny, diplomacy, or punctuality, and therefore often changes her place of employment. (Of course, stubborn pride might have something to do with it as well.) On occasion, if you can catch her in an ebb in the alcoholic tide, she can carry on a decent(ish) conversation. At any point in time she is liable to ask random questions of a personal nature. She is quite perceptive, but rarely motivated to apply her observations. If she senses that someone is desperate for her to do (or give or say) something, her contrary nature will make her do the complete opposite. Once an idea gets into her head, there’s almost no way to convince her that it’s wrong. The best thing to do, when faced with a recalcitrant Sforza, is to pick her up and put her wherever you need her to be. (The other option is to shove a pennywhistle into her hands, as she’ll happily occupy herself for hours by fooling around with one.) One thing that does not change, whatever her BAC, is that if Sforza comes into contact with a Dug, she will ignore it completely and utterly. She does not rage or scream abuse, isn’t rude or vicious: she simply behaves as if the Dug doesn’t exist.
Occupation: Drifting musician.
Rank: Expert.
Skills: Omwati-extraordinary music, specifically, keyboards of any sort; though she is capable with nearly any instrument that can be played by a humanoid. She sings moderately well in a slightly husky mezzo-soprano. Her talent with a computer and mechanicals is well below par for an Omwati, but fairly above par for most other beings.
Equipment: A dysfunctional (and therefore unloaded) ELG-3A blaster in one pocket (it’s for intimidation purposes in dire straits only); a small canister of lubricant for her hands in another. The aforementioned glasses. A generously-sized silver hip flask of something potent clipped to her belt; the smell alone would curl a Wookiee’s fur. Her traveling bag holds a fizzz, a kloo horn, and the tiny pan flute given to her by her old music teacher (along with the necessary clothes, etc.).
Attributes:
Physical Strength: 3/6 (natural/cybernetic hands only)
Intelligence: 8
Speed: 4
Leadership: 3
Unarmed: 2
Melee Weapons: 3
Ranged Weapons: 3
Alignment: +2
Bio (History): Sforza was born on Coruscant as the last of five children to a fairly average Omwati family. Her parents, Acceleran and Diminue Ndo, ran a comfortably profitable Class Two droid repair shop inherited from Acceleran’s father, Cresce Ndo. Though her four older brothers were content to train in engineering and programming like most Omwati, Sforza never enjoyed the feel of a programmer’s board under her fingers. Since her brothers were all working in the shop anyway, Acceleran and Diminue allowed the headstrong young Sforza to attend music lessons with a prominent local Omwati musician. Under the careful tutelage of old Mezzof Orte, Sforza became a talented musical force by the age of fourteen, fingers flying skillfully over whatever instrument could be placed in them. Local bands of all genres, from jizz-wail to Dusk, were eying this young Omwati hopefully.
In order for Sforza to graduate, so to speak, from Mezzof’s tutelage, she had to enter a planet-wide musical competition and get at least third place. She spent the last three years of her technical childhood working on the pieces she was to perform, particularly the complex “Squib-night Jibble,” which had to be played last because it was such a physically demanding composition. The majority of her time was spent practicing at her nalargon in the shop basement, whose tones could be heard long into the night, and the rest of it reluctantly sleeping or eating. With typical Omwati naiveté, Sforza was determined to be the best, the absolute best musician the galaxy – or at least Coruscant – had ever seen.
She registered for the All-Aspirants competition the day after her seventeenth birthday, confidently filled out the reams of forms, and passed the three-week interval in constant nervous rehearsal. The All-Aspirants competition was structured tourney-style, each musician pairing off with another to play their first pieces. The winner of each round would go on to the next round to play a second song, and so on and so forth, until the field was reduced to two participants and then one final champion.
The first day of competition came and went. Sforza easily won her initial round with her mournful rendition of “Deep-Space Doldrums,” defeating a blustering Dug’s faltering attempt at “Coruscant Nightwalk.” Buoyed by the effortless victory, she floated through the consecutive days, blowing away the competition with her technical perfection and emotion-grabbing artistry.
And then it happened.
It was the fifth day of the All-Aspirants competition, in the later evening. Sforza had just received the news that her “Twi’lek Tango in A-flat Minor” had bested a little Ortolan’s upbeat “Dogfight,” and she was hurrying down a shortcut towards home, eager to tell her parents when there was a dark figure –
- a cut-off shriek as Dug hands clamped onto her arms and pushed her to the ground –
- mechanical noises, a groundcar rolling inexorably forward –
- the crunch of bones, an explosion of pain –
- blessed, blessed unconsciousness…
Sforza awoke in unfamiliarly sterile surroundings: a medcenter. Her family huddled worriedly around her bed, and she went to raise a hand in reassurance when –
- she couldn’t feel her hands.
She couldn’t feel her hands!
Her screams brought a swarm of medical personnel, who quickly fed a tranquilizer into the braid of wires and tubes that sprouted from her hip, and she knew no more for several more days.
What transpired was this: the Dug that Sforza had beaten on the first day of competition had friends. Disgruntled that a raggedy slip of a girl had beaten him – in the first round, no less! – he rounded up a few of said friends and concocted a simple if crude plan for revenge: if he could not have a shot at the championship, she certainly wouldn’t either. Hence, they picked their spot, their time, and their method, and were successful. She wasn’t found for several hours, though the Ndo family was out searching not long after she didn’t return home at the specified time. When she was found, delicate hands and wrists crushed and mangled beyond recognition, she was immediately rushed to the nearest medcenter to undergo emergency procedures to try to save her hands.
They didn’t work.
Reluctantly, Acceleran took the stylus from the doctor, let the tip hover over the forms that would allow the doctors to amputate his daughter’s hands. She had lost too much blood already, and it had been too long since the injuries were inflicted, to try to attempt a regeneration.
“You understand, sir, that we are truly sorry…”
He let the white-coated being’s words wash over him and skimmed through the pages of waivers and contracts until a phrase caught his eye: In certain cases of amputation, the Grand Memorial Medcenter is able to fit the truncated limb(s) with an electronic prosthetic interface…
“Sir – this,” he interrupted, thrusting the datapad beneath the Bith’s nos—well, what passed for a Bith nose, “can you do this for my daughter?”
Long fingers took the datapad and held it at the proper distance for the myopic Bith to read. “Ah…that.” Acceleran got the feeling that Dr. Ahalu would have blinked sympathetically, if he had had eyelids. Ahalu set the datapad down. “Your daughter, she is a musician, yes?”
Acceleran nodded, pushed straggling white wisps from his face. “Yes, that’s why she’s here, it was an attack by – but you know that already, can’t you do something, anything?”
Sighing, Ahalu gestured to a chair. “Sit down, please, sir.” When the frantic Omwati complied, Ahalu sat as well, lacing his long fingers in front of himself. “Sir, have you considered what your daughter would want? That perhaps she would prefer not to undergo the implantation of prosthetics?”
“What? What are you talking about, of course she would want to be able to play again!” Agitated, Acceleran leapt upright and began to pace. “Music is her life, her talent, her soul – if she couldn’t make music she’d go mad!” He snatched the datapad from the table where Dr. Ahalu had laid it and feverishly scribbled his signature across the relevant pages before slapping it into the Bith’s hands. “There, there’s your authorization, Dr. Ahalu. You don’t know what this will mean to her. I’ve got to tell the family – Diminue? Diminue, you’ll never guess what I…”
Accleran’s voice faded away as he hurried away from the doctor’s office, calling for his wife. Ahalu sat for a moment, thoughts of ethics and lawsuits warring with his own musical nature, before shaking himself and reaching for the comm to set up the surgery and other resources necessary for such a meticulous procedure. He was only the doctor, he reminded himself. Only the doctor.
It completely destroyed her.
The barely-adult Omwati woke yet again in a medcenter, surrounded by sterile white…everything. She was flat on her back, clamped down at shoulders and elbows, a plain blue curtain blocking her sight from the bicep down. She could sense that her arms were propped up and restrained somehow, and – wonder of wonders – she could feel her hands. Maybe that awful episode had been a dream, just a dream.
Cautiously, she attempted to flex her right hand. Nothing happened, but she had been expecting that. It was likely that the healers had immobilized her arms to allow the delicate bones to heal; that was to be expected. When Dr. Ahalu came in some time later, he found the frail-looking Omwati humming quietly to herself. He hated to disillusion her, but…
Some time later, the kindly Bith left, having explained everything as gently as he could to Sforza, who stared blankly at the ceiling. Even an intellect as famed as the Omwati could not absorb it all at once.
Her hands were gone…electromechanical caps to her forearms…prosthetics to be fitted…not to the proper scale, but limited selection due to limited demand, so sorry…he was a musician too, he could imagine the trauma…
Her brain caught up with the words.
She was never going to be able to play the way she had.
Ever.
Her dark eyes fluttered shut, the sedative Dr. Ahalu had thoughtfully laced into her intravenous taking effect.
As Dr. Ahalu promised, the silvery cybernetic hands were attached to her stumps of arms by the time Sforza was well enough to be restless. She was released from the medcenter into the warm arms of her family, who had all sacrificed immensely to afford the price of her surgeries. But for days she neither slept nor ate, only sat huddled, motionless, on the nalargon bench in the basement, eating whatever someone thought to put in front of her. (This nearly caused a Reckoning when her fourth brother gave her a roll filled with Dekk flies. Fortunately, her oldest brother saw and intervened in time.) This pattern continued for weeks, until a careless slip of her second brother’s tongue revealed how and why her natural hands had been amputated.
Something sparked within Sforza at her brother’s words, and there were many angry words exchanged between Sforza and her parents that night.
“I am not a child anymore!”
“You will always be my daughter!”
“Not if I can help it!”
The argument ended with Sforza clumsily filling an old duffel bag and storming out, fleeing to the one place she knew she could go. In the wee hours of the morning, Mezzof blearily opened his door to find his prize pupil in tears, wondering if she could stay on his couch. He readily gave assent, tactfully not asking about her hands or tears, and gave her a few sips of cheap brandy to help her sleep. As he looked down upon her delicate frame, contrasting so sharply with the oversized mechanical things on the ends of her arms, he shook his head. It would have been better, he reflected, if Acceleran had left things as they were. He had seen miracles that could not be explained via medicine or science; he had no doubt that, left with her hands, Sforza would have come back stronger. Perhaps she would have turned to her voice, or to composing…to give her prosthetic hands was to continually taunt her with reminders of what she once had, what she once had been, and what she could never completely recapture.
By day, Sforza was allowed to aid her old master in teaching theory – though not technique – to his students, in exchange for a bed on the couch and whatever meals Mezzof remembered to make. At night, however, she would lock herself in the spare room and attempt to play a simple kloo horn. Her hands frustrated her, their mechanical responses slower than her original appendages, but in time she grew used to the delays. Slowly, oh so painfully slowly, she began to regain a fraction of her old skill, progressing from the kloo horn to the jizz to the nalargon over the course of a year or so. Eventually, her nocturnal practices gave way to swathing her hands in bandages and herself in one of her father’s old robes and attempting to play at some of the local open mike nights in various watering holes. Along the way, she acquired a taste for any liquid with an alcoholic burn, discovering that it eased the aching emptiness left by her self-imposed exile from her family. Bizarrely, the more drunk she became, the better her music sounded (and not only to her own ear). Stone-cold sober, her fingers limped like a three-legged Sellonian; drunk as a mynock, they flowed like the Force. She began collecting tips, hoarding her credits until she had the price of a ticket to Corulag, the next closest world but one up the Perlemian Trade route.
Finally, the day came. Sforza, now twenty-three, packed her old duffel bag – this time with significantly more grace – and took her fond leave of Mezzof. He tucked a small, square box – a palm-sized pan flute, carved from japor ivory wood – into her hand, not really trying to hide his teary eyes, and wished her all luck. No, he wouldn’t walk her to the spaceport; his knee was acting up. Wouldn’t she at least tell her family goodbye?
Her face hardened, and she slipped on the dark glasses she’d taken to wearing, obscuring her alcohol-clouded indigo eyes. No. She’d be Kesseled before she spoke to them again.
Mezzof sighed. He hadn’t thought his most stubborn student would have a change of heart, but it’d been worth a shot. They embraced briefly, and the door slammed shut behind her.
Swoop-racers, she quickly discovered, weren’t picky about their music. There were always at least two or three of them in any establishment on Corulag, and one would inevitably shout, “Lapti Nek!”
“Lapti Nek,” it turned out, was the one song known the galaxy over. No matter where Sforza wandered in the next eleven years, from Kooriva to Orvax to Bonadan, there was always one drunk who would interrupt her playing of some culturally relevant and beautiful song to request… “Lapti Nek.” If the little Omwati hadn’t had enough to drink yet, the next thing to happen was usually a nasty reply, and then violence which generally resulted in Sforza getting fired.
Today, Sforza rambles from planet to planet at whim, a will ‘o the wisp carried by the currents of the galaxy to play her songs on nalargons that sound like carnivals, to sing her words into microphones that smell of beer. She might be here, she might be there. Just listen for skilled – but mechanical – music, or hang around a spaceport. Eventually, you’ll find her.
RP Sample:
“Fine!”
The word exploded from the small Omwati woman, spattering the pub owner with Arcarggm-scented spittle. He calmly wiped himself off with a long-furred arm as Sforza went on, shaking a glinting mechanical hand in his face,
“You fink you can keep this plashe goin’ for a week wivvout a deshent ‘boardisht? Huh?” She glared unsteadily up at the stolid Wookiee, who grunted something guttural in reply.
“Oh, sure you could bring in a frakkin’ shliced-up prot’col droid. I bet it’d play Lapti frizzin’ Nek until itsh bloody audsh gave out!”
With that, Sforza abruptly stuck her tongue out at the Wookiee and stormed out of the pub, pausing only to empty her tip jar down the front of her dress for safekeeping. The heavy, humid air of Kashyyyk hit her like a wall of bricks, and the effect was such that she had to abruptly sit down, else risk tumbling over the edge of the platform.
Hmm…the edge. Flopping onto her stomach, Sforza wriggled forward until she could see down through the layers of the Wookiee town. The lights from dozens of windows danced merrily on the platforms and walkways, and she sighed, suddenly homesick for the crowded streets of Coruscant. Maybe, just maybe, if she let herself roll forward and fell fast enough, she could pretend that the enormous hairy Wookiees were the hundreds of different species that made their homes in the glittering city…
Something howled in the jungle below, jolting Sforza back to herself. Homesick? What? She shook her head and fumbled her way to her feet, automatically feeling for her hip flask. The instant her fingers clicked against the battered silver container, she felt a little steadier, a little more at ease. A single mouthful of Arcarggm was enough to send her staggering towards the stairs leading to where she was pretty sure she’d rented a room. Or was it just a hammock? She couldn’t remember. At any rate, her bag was somewhere around here, and she’d just realized that she’d been wearing the same blue-green dress for almost three days now. Yecch. Absently, she wiped a dribble of Arcarggm from the corner of her mouth with the corner of a sleeve.
Besides, she’d made good on the tips this past night – she had to stop walking in order to make a quick count of the credits that had settled inside the bodice of her dress; trying to do both at once could have disastrous consequences – but it wasn’t even enough to buy an in-flight drink. Not unless she was going to cram herself in with the droids and cargo, and there was no way in the Core that was going to happen. No sir. The kind of cash needed to get an off-world ticket resided in a hidden place in…something in her bag. She didn’t quite remember what.
That could be problematic, come to think of it. There were enough things in her bag to make finding the neat bundles of credits difficult. They could be in her jizz case, under a stack of underwear, tucked into the lining of the bag itself…
First things first, though: finding the bag. Sforza was sure it was somewhere around here. She made a habit of never renting accommodations too far from her place of employment. That made it faster whenever she had to skip town, which happened with depressing frequency.
She squinted against the dim walkway lights, first one way then the other, trying to figure out where exactly she’d left the burning bag. Hadn’t the nice youngling outside the shuttleport said to…now, what had he said?
Something came flying out of the pub door behind her and landed with a whumpf on the walkway, accompanied by a derisive shout from the pub’s owner. The drunken Omwati picked up the worn blue bag, panickedly dug through to inspect the multiple instruments within to ensure they weren’t damaged, hugged it gleefully, and began wending her unsteady way towards the shuttleport. There was supposed to be a shuttle leaving sometime tomorrow – today? – for somewhere Corewards. N’zoth, maybe it’d been? That was supposed to be a nice enough place. Unless she was mixing it up with Alderaan. Alderaanians made good brandy, much better than the Arcarggm that currently sloshed on her hip.
Come to think of it, there wasn’t much left to slosh. That could be a problem, if her current state of sloshage started to wear off during what would undoubtedly be an interminable flight. But, if she bought the absolutely cheapest ticket possible, she ought to have enough credits left over to get a half-measure of something to tide her over until she reached wherever it was she was going.
Sforza shrugged to herself, spilling clothes half-out of the unfastened bag in the process. She’d go wherever the shuttles ran, carrying her tunes with her.
Just not Lapti Nek.
Name: Sforza Ndo (Sss-fort-za n-do)
Race: Omwati
Age: 35 standard years
Height: 5'3"
Weight: 85 lbs.
Birthplace: Coruscant, Collective Commerce District
Appearance: Sforza, as an Omwati, has down-like feathery strands instead of proper hair. 'Tis naturally a washed-out shade of silver-grey, and falls in straggly wisps to her shoulders. (When it's completely dry and clean, which is rare, it floats, halo-like, around her head.) Her long, loose dresses and robes were made for much taller beings: they're generally inexpertly hemmed and still drag on the ground, unless she tucks them up into a narrow black belt. She only has one or two Aeien-silk dresses (in charcoal gray and light peach) left from her time on Coruscant; the rest are cheap bantha-wool of “sale-rack” hue. Her sleeves are usually rolled up at least to the elbow, revealing fragile, bird-like arms. However, beginning at mid-forearm and ending at the wrist, they are always wrapped in blue bandages (which are approximately the same color as her “I-just-got-asphyxiated-blue” skin). Beneath the bandages lie a pair of dull silver cybernetic prosthetic hands. Were the prosthetic hands to be covered by gloves or some other means of disguise, they would overheat to the point of malfunction within about an hour or so. They are slim, but disproportionately large compared to the rest of Sforza's body. Consequently, she often keeps her hands tucked into her pockets or under her arms. The aforementioned body matches her arms: fragile, skinny, and fairly smooth. Her large eyes are glassy indigo, a dark enough shade to be mistaken for black in bad lighting, and stand out starkly against her pale hair and skin. In a sarcastic nod to stereotype (and also to shield painfully-light-sensitive-due-to-alcohol-consumption eyes), she wears dark-lensed glasses on the end of her thin, tilted nose. Plain, dark brown shoes lace over her tiny feet. (Her default mode of walking is the slightly-drunken swaying lurch, but somehow Omwati grace manages to keep her upright. Mostly.) Her speaking voice is surprisingly low for an Omwati, more like a bass flute than the piccolo many others resemble, with a definite Coruscanti accent (similar to a real-world British accent).
Personality: Sforza is in a constant state of inebriation, no matter where she is, and this combined with the inherent naiveté of most Omwati means her behavioral patterns are a bit screwy. Her speech patterns are always, always extremely grammatically correct, though slightly slurred. She does not believe in destiny, diplomacy, or punctuality, and therefore often changes her place of employment. (Of course, stubborn pride might have something to do with it as well.) On occasion, if you can catch her in an ebb in the alcoholic tide, she can carry on a decent(ish) conversation. At any point in time she is liable to ask random questions of a personal nature. She is quite perceptive, but rarely motivated to apply her observations. If she senses that someone is desperate for her to do (or give or say) something, her contrary nature will make her do the complete opposite. Once an idea gets into her head, there’s almost no way to convince her that it’s wrong. The best thing to do, when faced with a recalcitrant Sforza, is to pick her up and put her wherever you need her to be. (The other option is to shove a pennywhistle into her hands, as she’ll happily occupy herself for hours by fooling around with one.) One thing that does not change, whatever her BAC, is that if Sforza comes into contact with a Dug, she will ignore it completely and utterly. She does not rage or scream abuse, isn’t rude or vicious: she simply behaves as if the Dug doesn’t exist.
Occupation: Drifting musician.
Rank: Expert.
Skills: Omwati-extraordinary music, specifically, keyboards of any sort; though she is capable with nearly any instrument that can be played by a humanoid. She sings moderately well in a slightly husky mezzo-soprano. Her talent with a computer and mechanicals is well below par for an Omwati, but fairly above par for most other beings.
Equipment: A dysfunctional (and therefore unloaded) ELG-3A blaster in one pocket (it’s for intimidation purposes in dire straits only); a small canister of lubricant for her hands in another. The aforementioned glasses. A generously-sized silver hip flask of something potent clipped to her belt; the smell alone would curl a Wookiee’s fur. Her traveling bag holds a fizzz, a kloo horn, and the tiny pan flute given to her by her old music teacher (along with the necessary clothes, etc.).
Attributes:
Physical Strength: 3/6 (natural/cybernetic hands only)
Intelligence: 8
Speed: 4
Leadership: 3
Unarmed: 2
Melee Weapons: 3
Ranged Weapons: 3
Alignment: +2
Bio (History): Sforza was born on Coruscant as the last of five children to a fairly average Omwati family. Her parents, Acceleran and Diminue Ndo, ran a comfortably profitable Class Two droid repair shop inherited from Acceleran’s father, Cresce Ndo. Though her four older brothers were content to train in engineering and programming like most Omwati, Sforza never enjoyed the feel of a programmer’s board under her fingers. Since her brothers were all working in the shop anyway, Acceleran and Diminue allowed the headstrong young Sforza to attend music lessons with a prominent local Omwati musician. Under the careful tutelage of old Mezzof Orte, Sforza became a talented musical force by the age of fourteen, fingers flying skillfully over whatever instrument could be placed in them. Local bands of all genres, from jizz-wail to Dusk, were eying this young Omwati hopefully.
In order for Sforza to graduate, so to speak, from Mezzof’s tutelage, she had to enter a planet-wide musical competition and get at least third place. She spent the last three years of her technical childhood working on the pieces she was to perform, particularly the complex “Squib-night Jibble,” which had to be played last because it was such a physically demanding composition. The majority of her time was spent practicing at her nalargon in the shop basement, whose tones could be heard long into the night, and the rest of it reluctantly sleeping or eating. With typical Omwati naiveté, Sforza was determined to be the best, the absolute best musician the galaxy – or at least Coruscant – had ever seen.
She registered for the All-Aspirants competition the day after her seventeenth birthday, confidently filled out the reams of forms, and passed the three-week interval in constant nervous rehearsal. The All-Aspirants competition was structured tourney-style, each musician pairing off with another to play their first pieces. The winner of each round would go on to the next round to play a second song, and so on and so forth, until the field was reduced to two participants and then one final champion.
The first day of competition came and went. Sforza easily won her initial round with her mournful rendition of “Deep-Space Doldrums,” defeating a blustering Dug’s faltering attempt at “Coruscant Nightwalk.” Buoyed by the effortless victory, she floated through the consecutive days, blowing away the competition with her technical perfection and emotion-grabbing artistry.
And then it happened.
It was the fifth day of the All-Aspirants competition, in the later evening. Sforza had just received the news that her “Twi’lek Tango in A-flat Minor” had bested a little Ortolan’s upbeat “Dogfight,” and she was hurrying down a shortcut towards home, eager to tell her parents when there was a dark figure –
- a cut-off shriek as Dug hands clamped onto her arms and pushed her to the ground –
- mechanical noises, a groundcar rolling inexorably forward –
- the crunch of bones, an explosion of pain –
- blessed, blessed unconsciousness…
Sforza awoke in unfamiliarly sterile surroundings: a medcenter. Her family huddled worriedly around her bed, and she went to raise a hand in reassurance when –
- she couldn’t feel her hands.
She couldn’t feel her hands!
Her screams brought a swarm of medical personnel, who quickly fed a tranquilizer into the braid of wires and tubes that sprouted from her hip, and she knew no more for several more days.
What transpired was this: the Dug that Sforza had beaten on the first day of competition had friends. Disgruntled that a raggedy slip of a girl had beaten him – in the first round, no less! – he rounded up a few of said friends and concocted a simple if crude plan for revenge: if he could not have a shot at the championship, she certainly wouldn’t either. Hence, they picked their spot, their time, and their method, and were successful. She wasn’t found for several hours, though the Ndo family was out searching not long after she didn’t return home at the specified time. When she was found, delicate hands and wrists crushed and mangled beyond recognition, she was immediately rushed to the nearest medcenter to undergo emergency procedures to try to save her hands.
They didn’t work.
Reluctantly, Acceleran took the stylus from the doctor, let the tip hover over the forms that would allow the doctors to amputate his daughter’s hands. She had lost too much blood already, and it had been too long since the injuries were inflicted, to try to attempt a regeneration.
“You understand, sir, that we are truly sorry…”
He let the white-coated being’s words wash over him and skimmed through the pages of waivers and contracts until a phrase caught his eye: In certain cases of amputation, the Grand Memorial Medcenter is able to fit the truncated limb(s) with an electronic prosthetic interface…
“Sir – this,” he interrupted, thrusting the datapad beneath the Bith’s nos—well, what passed for a Bith nose, “can you do this for my daughter?”
Long fingers took the datapad and held it at the proper distance for the myopic Bith to read. “Ah…that.” Acceleran got the feeling that Dr. Ahalu would have blinked sympathetically, if he had had eyelids. Ahalu set the datapad down. “Your daughter, she is a musician, yes?”
Acceleran nodded, pushed straggling white wisps from his face. “Yes, that’s why she’s here, it was an attack by – but you know that already, can’t you do something, anything?”
Sighing, Ahalu gestured to a chair. “Sit down, please, sir.” When the frantic Omwati complied, Ahalu sat as well, lacing his long fingers in front of himself. “Sir, have you considered what your daughter would want? That perhaps she would prefer not to undergo the implantation of prosthetics?”
“What? What are you talking about, of course she would want to be able to play again!” Agitated, Acceleran leapt upright and began to pace. “Music is her life, her talent, her soul – if she couldn’t make music she’d go mad!” He snatched the datapad from the table where Dr. Ahalu had laid it and feverishly scribbled his signature across the relevant pages before slapping it into the Bith’s hands. “There, there’s your authorization, Dr. Ahalu. You don’t know what this will mean to her. I’ve got to tell the family – Diminue? Diminue, you’ll never guess what I…”
Accleran’s voice faded away as he hurried away from the doctor’s office, calling for his wife. Ahalu sat for a moment, thoughts of ethics and lawsuits warring with his own musical nature, before shaking himself and reaching for the comm to set up the surgery and other resources necessary for such a meticulous procedure. He was only the doctor, he reminded himself. Only the doctor.
It completely destroyed her.
The barely-adult Omwati woke yet again in a medcenter, surrounded by sterile white…everything. She was flat on her back, clamped down at shoulders and elbows, a plain blue curtain blocking her sight from the bicep down. She could sense that her arms were propped up and restrained somehow, and – wonder of wonders – she could feel her hands. Maybe that awful episode had been a dream, just a dream.
Cautiously, she attempted to flex her right hand. Nothing happened, but she had been expecting that. It was likely that the healers had immobilized her arms to allow the delicate bones to heal; that was to be expected. When Dr. Ahalu came in some time later, he found the frail-looking Omwati humming quietly to herself. He hated to disillusion her, but…
Some time later, the kindly Bith left, having explained everything as gently as he could to Sforza, who stared blankly at the ceiling. Even an intellect as famed as the Omwati could not absorb it all at once.
Her hands were gone…electromechanical caps to her forearms…prosthetics to be fitted…not to the proper scale, but limited selection due to limited demand, so sorry…he was a musician too, he could imagine the trauma…
Her brain caught up with the words.
She was never going to be able to play the way she had.
Ever.
Her dark eyes fluttered shut, the sedative Dr. Ahalu had thoughtfully laced into her intravenous taking effect.
As Dr. Ahalu promised, the silvery cybernetic hands were attached to her stumps of arms by the time Sforza was well enough to be restless. She was released from the medcenter into the warm arms of her family, who had all sacrificed immensely to afford the price of her surgeries. But for days she neither slept nor ate, only sat huddled, motionless, on the nalargon bench in the basement, eating whatever someone thought to put in front of her. (This nearly caused a Reckoning when her fourth brother gave her a roll filled with Dekk flies. Fortunately, her oldest brother saw and intervened in time.) This pattern continued for weeks, until a careless slip of her second brother’s tongue revealed how and why her natural hands had been amputated.
Something sparked within Sforza at her brother’s words, and there were many angry words exchanged between Sforza and her parents that night.
“I am not a child anymore!”
“You will always be my daughter!”
“Not if I can help it!”
The argument ended with Sforza clumsily filling an old duffel bag and storming out, fleeing to the one place she knew she could go. In the wee hours of the morning, Mezzof blearily opened his door to find his prize pupil in tears, wondering if she could stay on his couch. He readily gave assent, tactfully not asking about her hands or tears, and gave her a few sips of cheap brandy to help her sleep. As he looked down upon her delicate frame, contrasting so sharply with the oversized mechanical things on the ends of her arms, he shook his head. It would have been better, he reflected, if Acceleran had left things as they were. He had seen miracles that could not be explained via medicine or science; he had no doubt that, left with her hands, Sforza would have come back stronger. Perhaps she would have turned to her voice, or to composing…to give her prosthetic hands was to continually taunt her with reminders of what she once had, what she once had been, and what she could never completely recapture.
By day, Sforza was allowed to aid her old master in teaching theory – though not technique – to his students, in exchange for a bed on the couch and whatever meals Mezzof remembered to make. At night, however, she would lock herself in the spare room and attempt to play a simple kloo horn. Her hands frustrated her, their mechanical responses slower than her original appendages, but in time she grew used to the delays. Slowly, oh so painfully slowly, she began to regain a fraction of her old skill, progressing from the kloo horn to the jizz to the nalargon over the course of a year or so. Eventually, her nocturnal practices gave way to swathing her hands in bandages and herself in one of her father’s old robes and attempting to play at some of the local open mike nights in various watering holes. Along the way, she acquired a taste for any liquid with an alcoholic burn, discovering that it eased the aching emptiness left by her self-imposed exile from her family. Bizarrely, the more drunk she became, the better her music sounded (and not only to her own ear). Stone-cold sober, her fingers limped like a three-legged Sellonian; drunk as a mynock, they flowed like the Force. She began collecting tips, hoarding her credits until she had the price of a ticket to Corulag, the next closest world but one up the Perlemian Trade route.
Finally, the day came. Sforza, now twenty-three, packed her old duffel bag – this time with significantly more grace – and took her fond leave of Mezzof. He tucked a small, square box – a palm-sized pan flute, carved from japor ivory wood – into her hand, not really trying to hide his teary eyes, and wished her all luck. No, he wouldn’t walk her to the spaceport; his knee was acting up. Wouldn’t she at least tell her family goodbye?
Her face hardened, and she slipped on the dark glasses she’d taken to wearing, obscuring her alcohol-clouded indigo eyes. No. She’d be Kesseled before she spoke to them again.
Mezzof sighed. He hadn’t thought his most stubborn student would have a change of heart, but it’d been worth a shot. They embraced briefly, and the door slammed shut behind her.
Swoop-racers, she quickly discovered, weren’t picky about their music. There were always at least two or three of them in any establishment on Corulag, and one would inevitably shout, “Lapti Nek!”
“Lapti Nek,” it turned out, was the one song known the galaxy over. No matter where Sforza wandered in the next eleven years, from Kooriva to Orvax to Bonadan, there was always one drunk who would interrupt her playing of some culturally relevant and beautiful song to request… “Lapti Nek.” If the little Omwati hadn’t had enough to drink yet, the next thing to happen was usually a nasty reply, and then violence which generally resulted in Sforza getting fired.
Today, Sforza rambles from planet to planet at whim, a will ‘o the wisp carried by the currents of the galaxy to play her songs on nalargons that sound like carnivals, to sing her words into microphones that smell of beer. She might be here, she might be there. Just listen for skilled – but mechanical – music, or hang around a spaceport. Eventually, you’ll find her.
RP Sample:
“Fine!”
The word exploded from the small Omwati woman, spattering the pub owner with Arcarggm-scented spittle. He calmly wiped himself off with a long-furred arm as Sforza went on, shaking a glinting mechanical hand in his face,
“You fink you can keep this plashe goin’ for a week wivvout a deshent ‘boardisht? Huh?” She glared unsteadily up at the stolid Wookiee, who grunted something guttural in reply.
“Oh, sure you could bring in a frakkin’ shliced-up prot’col droid. I bet it’d play Lapti frizzin’ Nek until itsh bloody audsh gave out!”
With that, Sforza abruptly stuck her tongue out at the Wookiee and stormed out of the pub, pausing only to empty her tip jar down the front of her dress for safekeeping. The heavy, humid air of Kashyyyk hit her like a wall of bricks, and the effect was such that she had to abruptly sit down, else risk tumbling over the edge of the platform.
Hmm…the edge. Flopping onto her stomach, Sforza wriggled forward until she could see down through the layers of the Wookiee town. The lights from dozens of windows danced merrily on the platforms and walkways, and she sighed, suddenly homesick for the crowded streets of Coruscant. Maybe, just maybe, if she let herself roll forward and fell fast enough, she could pretend that the enormous hairy Wookiees were the hundreds of different species that made their homes in the glittering city…
Something howled in the jungle below, jolting Sforza back to herself. Homesick? What? She shook her head and fumbled her way to her feet, automatically feeling for her hip flask. The instant her fingers clicked against the battered silver container, she felt a little steadier, a little more at ease. A single mouthful of Arcarggm was enough to send her staggering towards the stairs leading to where she was pretty sure she’d rented a room. Or was it just a hammock? She couldn’t remember. At any rate, her bag was somewhere around here, and she’d just realized that she’d been wearing the same blue-green dress for almost three days now. Yecch. Absently, she wiped a dribble of Arcarggm from the corner of her mouth with the corner of a sleeve.
Besides, she’d made good on the tips this past night – she had to stop walking in order to make a quick count of the credits that had settled inside the bodice of her dress; trying to do both at once could have disastrous consequences – but it wasn’t even enough to buy an in-flight drink. Not unless she was going to cram herself in with the droids and cargo, and there was no way in the Core that was going to happen. No sir. The kind of cash needed to get an off-world ticket resided in a hidden place in…something in her bag. She didn’t quite remember what.
That could be problematic, come to think of it. There were enough things in her bag to make finding the neat bundles of credits difficult. They could be in her jizz case, under a stack of underwear, tucked into the lining of the bag itself…
First things first, though: finding the bag. Sforza was sure it was somewhere around here. She made a habit of never renting accommodations too far from her place of employment. That made it faster whenever she had to skip town, which happened with depressing frequency.
She squinted against the dim walkway lights, first one way then the other, trying to figure out where exactly she’d left the burning bag. Hadn’t the nice youngling outside the shuttleport said to…now, what had he said?
Something came flying out of the pub door behind her and landed with a whumpf on the walkway, accompanied by a derisive shout from the pub’s owner. The drunken Omwati picked up the worn blue bag, panickedly dug through to inspect the multiple instruments within to ensure they weren’t damaged, hugged it gleefully, and began wending her unsteady way towards the shuttleport. There was supposed to be a shuttle leaving sometime tomorrow – today? – for somewhere Corewards. N’zoth, maybe it’d been? That was supposed to be a nice enough place. Unless she was mixing it up with Alderaan. Alderaanians made good brandy, much better than the Arcarggm that currently sloshed on her hip.
Come to think of it, there wasn’t much left to slosh. That could be a problem, if her current state of sloshage started to wear off during what would undoubtedly be an interminable flight. But, if she bought the absolutely cheapest ticket possible, she ought to have enough credits left over to get a half-measure of something to tide her over until she reached wherever it was she was going.
Sforza shrugged to herself, spilling clothes half-out of the unfastened bag in the process. She’d go wherever the shuttles ran, carrying her tunes with her.
Just not Lapti Nek.
