Post by hugo on Feb 9, 2020 16:43:20 GMT -5
Synda Layn  Gray Jedi ~ Mystic Seer ~ Lover of Life Full Name • Syndella Mareen Layn Nickname • Synda Race • Zelosian Birthplace • Rhodohendrium, Zelos II Age • 39 Gender • Female Sexuality • Demisexual Faction • Fringe Concept • Rank 3 Gray Jedi Seer, Nature-loving Mystic, Figure-outer of Things Languages • Basic, Zelosian, Huttese, Togruti, Droidspeak Assets • 1x, single-blade, standard hilt lightsaber (Acid Yellow); 1x, single-blade, lightshoto (Viridian); a fabulous wardrobe of considerable diversity and flambuoyancy, a small but ever-shifting stash of candies Appearance Face Claim • Carrie Preston as Elsbeth Tascioni Height & Weight • 5'7" - 131 lbs Overall Looks • Synda is the flower of the room. The Zelosian's most noticeable trait is not her shoulder-length, bright crimson hair, nor her unwordly emerald irises, but her beaming, ever optimistic expression. Beyond her wide, toothy grin, the slender, but buoyant woman seems to smile with every part of her body, the nastic fibres of her "muscles" guided by a natural, but sporadic grace. Beyond her glowing countenance, Synda expends great effort but little expense on compiling a colorful, clearance only wardrobe. She wears anything from snazily patterned quasi-Jedi robes to exotic patchworks of quilted rags and fine silks, fashioned for comfort as well as vividness. She particularly loves bright, seemingly conflicting hues of primary colors. She is often seen in a dazzling red cloak, hand-sewn with a glow-silk thread motif that glows in dim light or darkness. Personality Profile As without, so within, Synda's personality is as vivid, eccentric, and unrestrained as her appearance suggests. She thinks aloud, and has the habit of blurting out the first and any following observations she has about the present situation. She is exceedingly sympathetic, even to those society often does not see fit to extend mercy. Profoundly odd to most and compelling to some, Synda exhibits some traits, such as mindlessly talking to herself or to the Force itself as if it were a flesh and blood person standing next to her, that more than a few find more akin to that of a mental ward designee than a powerful Gray Jedi. Despite her amiable, never-met-a-stranger disposition, the Zelosian mystic has strong convictions motivated principally by the altruistic ethos of the Ashla. A childhood exposed reprehensible abuse and untold depravity forced Synda to look inward for comfort from her earliest years on. Even though she found kindness and love later in her life, she still maintains a strong, idiosyncratic internal bond with the Force that supersedes any and all other aspects of her life. This strong connection was a strong one for as long as she could remember, and being alone with the Force was her only solace, her only refuge for so many years. This translates to a strongly personal, unorthodox relationship to the normally amorphous mystical energy of the Force. She is fond of saying, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, "the Force is Love, silly." Background Father • Masindor, Cultist, deceased Mother • Nirabella, former Cultist, 63, deceased Siblings • Nus, brother, deceased (stillborn) Other Important Connections • Gael Nizla, 95, Jedi Shadow, friend, rescuer Chano Samad, 60, Gray Jedi Master, mentor, father-figure Maak Ren, 32, former Apprentice Overall History • Not all Flowers Bloom in the Sun ~~ Birth - 13 The fortunate among those born in tune with the Force were detected at a young age by the Jedi, who would bring them up into a life of meaning and servitude. Synda, as bright as her nascent soul shone, was not to find such fortune, Masindor and Nirabella Layn were Zelosian Force adepts, disciples of a strange, exiled Jedi Knight by the name of Lunor Gandt. They were two of roughly a dozen devotees, mostly local Zelosians, which had come under his dark influence. The group resided on a remote farm on Zelos, far from the prying eyes of the self-righteous. They styled themselves as the Order of the Ebony Thorn, and they sought to wield the power of domination and cruelty to unlock the Force's strangest mysteries. It was in this dogmatic house of strife that Synda came into being. She was an insufferably bright, energetic child to the austere and distant devotees of the Ebony Thorn, and Synda's earliest memories are that of pain and reprimand. Still, Gandt and his disciples tolerated the impetuous, disturbingly good-natured child, for she was born with a deep, intrisic impression on the Force that he understood to be greater than any of the assembled cultists. For this reason, Synda was treated particularly harshly, an attempt by her parents and their master to plant the seeds of hatred and vanity in the prodigal young girl. Only such was anathema to her being. Instead, Synda turned inward, eating, sleeping, and speaking very little as she sought refuge within herself, within the infinite weave of the cosmic Force that she knew so innately. It was her only ally as she grew from child to adolescent; she spent hours alone, completely enveloped by its silken veil. It was around 10 that she first manifested an ability to receiev visions from the Force, often events in the near Future, or even rarely, visions of the present in places faraway and near. It was in one of these trances where Synda found the man that would change her life forever. He was well-worn, older, she guessed, than her "father," whose only meaningful paternal contribution to her existence was pollinating her mom with no herbicide wrap. This man was a warrior, a presence in the Force, and one night as she half-meditated and half-dreamt alone atop the rustic farmhouse that was their coven, she saw him. He wielded a sword of fire and cut back at the disciples of evil in a surreal haze, and she foresaw him taking her into his arms after the battle. He was the first Force-sensitive she'd seen that did not permeate with malevolence. He would be her deliverance. The man Synda foresaw would come, many months later. Gael Nizla was a Firrerero Jedi Shadow, sent by the Order's greatest seers to investigate the spiritual disturbance they had seen on Zelos. It was he who, after a month-long inquiry, found the briarpatch of Dark Jedi and the little-red haired sapling called Synda. Synda remembers precisely the sound of her family dying. They were petty cultists, with the exception of their leader Gandt, the only one who could match the Jedi blow for blow as he purified their hovel of the dark pestilence. It was only after the battle, wounded but triumphant, did the saber-wielding Jedi find Synda, lost in the Force and tear-stricken, the only survivor of his terrible purge. He did not sense the same darkness within her as he did within her relatives--more appropriately captors. Instead, Gael saw a brightness within the Force, a battered but uncorrupted soul tied closely to the mystic Force. After some coaxing, he convinced the obviously abused adept to come with him; he offered her refuge among his order of warrior-monks, which he called Jedi. He explained to her that she was too old to be trained, to be taken in fully by the Order, but that he would ensure she went somewhere she could be safe and loved. Gael brought the Zelosian girl to his base of operations on Mustafar, where she was attended to by the Order's best psychological healers. What they found, however, was not an innocent little girl broken by years of neglect, abuse, and exploitation. Once the initial shock of the paradigmatic shift in circumstances had faded, they saw Synda for what she was: an energetic and intuitive conduit of the cosmic Force. She was not corrupted, far from it, her brightness had merely been repressed. Gael's superiors on Mustafar also found the girl to be a talented Seer, her highly idiosyncratic, unequivocal spiritual oneness with the Ashla lent itself naturally to foresight and understanding. Though they sensed great potential within the spindly, but quickly sprouting Zelosian, they declined to waive the age cutoff requirement, especially in light of her trouble past as the spawn of cultists. This did not do for Gael, who secretly arranged to have Synda mentored by his close friend and former Jedi Knight Chano Samad, a Duros telepath that had left the Order after being more or less demoted for his unorthodox light side philosophies. Gael reasoned the Duros, himself a rescuee from a remarkably similar, sadistic cult on his homeworld of Saleucami. Everywhere the Light Touches, Good Grows Strong ~~ 14-28 Synda was at first at a loss with the dry, cynical Duros. She had not parted easily with her rescuer Gael, whom she'd idolized from the very start. To make things worse, she was a teenager, thrust into an acutely unfamiliar world--Shili--with acutely unfamiliar people. Chano, despite his wryness, was a gentle master. He required little from the Zelosian girl in the beginning, preferring instead to learn more about her tendency for visions and this unique, uninterrupted connection she held with the cosmic Force. When their lessons did start, first as long treks through the harsh jungle, outings which the plantoid adolescent grew to cherish as she discovered a close passion for and connection with the natural world, the focus was on fundamentals and basic philosophy. The former came easily to the strongly force-sensitive Synda. He quickly realized that his new apprentice had a potential that far outstripped his own. Yet she possessed a wild, spontaneous temperament, and could not be contained for long soliloquys on the disciplines and dogma of the Jedi. Rather, her quick grasp of the Force's fundamental, and more advanced, aspects was one of intuition. Foresight and telepathy came very easily, but the same could not be said for physical coordination. Synda was, and remains, clumsy, almost spastic. She blames a lack of physical activity in her formative years and a unabating energy, but Chano was not satisfied by excuses. Gruelingly, they went through the basics of Shii-Cho, which was difficult cosnidering the clumsy Zelosian had a propensity for getting distracted by vivid foliage or howling fauna and burning herself when she wasn't paying attention. Still, her training continued in earnest. Chano taught her how to channel the Force to move matter, not just visible objects, but the very atoms that comprised them. Though she took to this complex technique less readily than disciplines of the mind and spirit, Synda was before long on par with her master, who was often baffled by the Zelosian's ease and unbotheredness when channeling the Force's mystic energies. Her lightsaber studies advanced at a slower pace, but she showed some advancement with Form III - Soresu, which focused on defensiveness and economy rather than fierceness or aggression. Synda also grew beyond her Force studies. She and her master did not live in a vacuum, rather, lived near a small tribed of Togruta with which they shared meals, addressed common problems, and generally tried to be helpful. It was among her fellow adolescents within the village that Synda made her first friends, and even a brief, mostly innocent flirtation with a sensitive, skinny boy with sharply curved montrails. Synda often had Force Visions in the form of dreams, and this became known to the local Togruta, among whom she became lovingly known as "the Red Witch." It was from the tribe's shaman, an ageless woman of immeasurable wisdom, that she learned the art of healing. Though their tribal understanding of the Force's restorative energies was primitive at best, Synda, with some guidance from Chano, eventually learned how to heal basic injuries and aid the sick in their recovery overtime. Though Chano's training had been fairly comprehensive, it was not set along the formal lines of the Jedi Order that had branded him a heretic. Instead, he preferred to shape Synda's formation based on her prominent natural strengths, and this was largely successful. Still, she faced a trial of sorts, a test of combat ability and command of the Force. She was to head deep into the jungle, to an old and sacred place of the Togruta people. There, she would meditate, and face a great spiritual terror in the form of a vision. If she emerged and still wished to continue her path, that of a quasi-Jedi and herald of the essential Ashla, she would have passed. She made the journey, uncharacteristically somber. Among the mossy, carved stones of the ancient site, she fell into a deep meditative trance, but nothing arrived to her. Fidgety and irritated by what became a torrential, unending downpour, she waited for what felt like a thousand years (it was more like 18 hours) before the fanciful, flower-embossed meadow she had constructed in her mind was suddenly torn apart by fire and malice. The grass grew to the height of the great tropical trees of Shili, but great leviathans filled the sky and warriors with blades of fire descended on the idyllic world in conquest. Death and destruction was everywhere, and the vibrant rainforest grew quiet, the chirping of avians falling silent,, and the green of the leaves fading to sickly black. It was Shili. It was to die. More than a little disturbed by the prospect of her new, beloved home being ravaged by fire and war, Synda nonetheless returned to her master and reported her results. He took this into judgement, saying nothing but interpreting the vision as a literal invasion. He chose to re-emphasize combat trainings, and increasingly encouraged his apprentice to practice her mediocre lightsaber skills alongside the warrior packs of the local villagers. Gael visited periodically by this time, to Synda's great contentment. Upon hearing of her great progress and elemental devotion to the Light, he gifted her with a green shoto, a gift he himself received from his own mentor some years before. It was dual-wielding and adapting it to Soresu where Synda found her balance in combat, as the shield of bladework was able to protect her from harm's way why she focused on channeling the Force to defend herself or others. Chano, understanding Synda had grown to her full potential under his tutelage, chose to complete her training and leave her to serve the Togruta or forge her own path as an independent and gifted Force practitioner. She was in her early-twenties at this point, and had found great joy in living with and protecting the primitive, but altruistic, people of Shili. The true test of her training would come some years later, in her mid twenties, when a darkness came to Shili. Synda had become the tribe's principle healer, seer, and occasionally, akul tamer (she refused to kill them after she almost did so and broke down in tears). She continued to have vivid Force Dreams, and among these, one came as a great disturbance. She saw a dark, celestial projectile fall from the sky and explode near the crest of what she identified as a nearby mountain. Unsure as to what this meant, her dreams were often too metaphorical or obscure to truly discern, Synda ventured alone to the mountaintop, following the Force's lead to the source of the darkness. As she climbed the steep, densely foliaged mountainside, Synda grew cold even as the humid air and beaming sun were heated the air. She sensed rage and confusion. She found a Togruta, clothed as a Jedi, who had made camp atop the mountain after arriving recently. The Darkness she felt within the man was fresh, like a wound that had yet to clot. After a brief discourse, she discovered he had been a Jedi, who in a fit of rage at being denied Knighthood, had murdered his master in cold blood. He had embraced the path of power, the path Synda remembered too freshly as that of cruelty. Unable to dissuade him and fearful for those under her protection, Synda struck. Her blades of acid yellow and viridian swirled to meet the powerful, Djem So strikes of his violet doublesaber. Their duel was epic, her first against a lightsaber armed opponent. Nascent as the Togruta was on the Dark Path, he was able to employ his passions in a series of unnatural, potent barrages that left Synda at a disadvantage. She lost ground, and hours past as he pushed her down the mountain inch by inch, exhaustion gripping their bodies but the Force refusing to leave either of them. After being disarmed of her mainhand saber, Synda narrowly avoided oblivion by gripping the air molecules around her enemy so tightly that they froze, blunting his assault with a jagged shield of ice. Her momentum regained, Synda pushed on, surrendering her awareness, and her survival, to the ultimate will of the Force. She saw his moves before they were made, and began to break the son of rage. She bisected his saberstaff before arresting his arms and legs in a prison of earth. Rooted in Love ~~ 29-present Maak Ren grew to be a fine student. He learned to let go of his shortcomings and the guilt of his path. Synda was of course, an eclectic and disorganized instructor, but she had an unearthly wisdom about her, an innate understanding that made her different. The young, errant Jedi learned that same "uniqueness" was what fueled his ad hoc master's eccentricities as well as her talents. Maak did not share the same talents as his Zelosian master, he was far more martially inclined than she, but she did her best to show him the bright side of life. The serenity of nature and the wholeness of helping others were not lost on the Togruta, who of course had been born and raised on the planet before being recruited by the Jedi at a young age. She urged him to reject his past, and instead to make himself whole by embracing the one truth that had grounded her through tragedy and triumph: the Force was love. Beyond their efforts to aid the local tribes and further their understanding of the Force, Synda decided to periodically leave Shili, so that both she and Maak could see the wider galaxy and grow from the challenges they met there. Among a myriad of comically misguided missions was a medical mission turned slave revolt on Yanibar, which resulted in Synda having to very politely hijack a freighter to transport dozens of former slaves back to Shili, where they could begin anew in Republic space. The war interrupted this period, and Synda, now in her thirties, opted to return to Shili when hostilities broke out. Though she was as committed to the Light as any of the Jedi Masters, the Zelosian held no regard for war. The Force was Love. It was not war. This drove a wedge between apprentice and master. After some ideological bickering, they agreed to part ways on good terms. She would return to Shili, to defend and prepare for what she now realized was the realization of her vision so many years before. He would return to the Jedi, to seek clemency for his crimes and pledge his saber in service of the Order as it joined the war against the Sith after Taris. It was years before conflict found its way to Shili. She foresaw it again, this time, with greater clarity, the awful emblem of the empire of cruelty emblazoned on the zooming gunships as they strafed the defenseless jungle below. The warriors were Sith, many of them, far too many, Synda and her friends in the neighboring tribes joined the Jedi and Republic in a valiant defense of the innocent world. Alas, their faith could not overcome the might of the Empire as it bore down upon Shili. In the course of the battle, Synda was wounded badly in a duel with a Sith Lord [name pending, open to connections with PCs], but managed to escape aboard one of the last transports to leave the planet before the remaining forces surrendered. Synda was of course heartbroken at the loss of her home and her family, or at least, what had become her real family. But she was not dissuaded by the heart-wrenching loss at Shili. Instead, she pushed forward, not as a warrior against the Sith, but as a bringer of peace and teller of truth. In the months following the battle, she made efforts to aid those affected by the Archeri Crisis and the past war. |
