Post by higgins on Jun 23, 2009 0:23:12 GMT -5
Name: Nyle Owain
Race: Human
Age: 59
Height: 6' 3
Weight: 235 pounds
Appearance: Nyle is above average in height for most humans, and a body that was once toned and in shape has gone somewhat flabbier as of late. As with most other humans advancing in years, his face has begun to develop a series of wrinkles and lines that define a life of stress. But, in contrast to the rest of his face, Nyle's dark and calculating eyes have not changed an ounce over the years, and remain the only recognizable feature of what is otherwise a rather unrecognizable face. Over the years his hair has retained most of its dark color, though there are specks of gray beginning to appear throughout his hair.
When at work as a Senator, Nyle prefers the finer things in life. Dark suits of clothing are particularly appealing to him, complete with a pair of fine dress shoes. He'll often put on a traveler's cloak when in space travel, and will always carry a blaster holstered in a shoulder carrier underneath the cloak when outside republic space. When alone, he doesn’t feel quite so pressured to dress up. Simple lounging attire is quite enough for Nyle when he’s by himself or with friends.
Birth place: Metellos, Moridebo District
Occupation: Senator
Rank: Senior Senator representing Foerost in the Galactic Senate, and Head of the Security Council.
Bio: Living underneath a floating city can either make someone, or break them. The people who live on the upper level are the prosperous ones, the ones who have achieved. And those people who live on the bottom must learn to either take what they want, or learn to be happy with what they already have.
Nyle was born in the Moridebo District of Metellos, or on the bottom. His father was addicted to spice, and left his mother, named Marissa Owain, before Nyle was ever born. The two had met only months before Marissa became pregnant with Nyle, and being someone who wanted nothing to do with a permanent relationship, Nyle's father fled the scene, leaving his girlfriend to care for their child alone. His mom was a one of the millions of factory workers that littered the stratablocks of the overpopulated planet, a groundpounder. She took a month off of work to give birth to her son, and was back to work as soon as the month was up. After all, to lose her job would have meant eviction from the only place that they had to live, one of the millions of shacks that was rented out to the groundpounders of the Moridebo District.
Nyle was raised by a nanny droid. His mother won the thing at a raffle at the factory she worked at just months before before she gave birth to Nyle. In reality, the droid was a barely working piece of crap that seemed to have spent some of its years as a protocol droid before being reprogrammed to take care of and raise kids. But, it was the only parent that Nyle knew of as a very young child. Due to the heavy levels of pollution on the lower level of the planet, very young children like Nyle weren't taken outdoors to do much more other than shop. As such, Nyle spent most of his time inside, playing with the knick knacks that his mom would bring home from work, and tottling around after the nanny bot as it went around keeping the shack as tidy as possible.
As Nyle reached the age of 3, the bot’s circuits began shorting out quite a bit, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing in Nyle's case, because one of the side effects of the short circuiting was that the droid seemed to spit out rather incomplete narratives of trips it had taken across the galaxy. The stories were somewhat incomplete, and at some points, rather boring, but Nyle took to following the droid around, piecing together various bits of information as best as a young kid could.
As he got older, he began wandering outside of his house whenever he could steal a chance. Of course, it was something that most kids did as they grew bored of their surrounding, and Nyle was no different. With his mom gone till nightime, and just the rundown droid to keep him in check, Nyle was constantly sneaking outdoors in search of fun, and occasionally trouble. Teaming up with a group of local kids, they did everything from play a modified version of Nega-Ball, to shine shoes in some of the more populated districts for credits.
At 6, Nyle was enrolled in one of the many local schools on the planets floor. The place wasn't in the best of condition, with overcrowding and lack of funding as the primary cause for the bad condition. People on the ground weren't expected to be anything more than a groundpounder like their parents, and as such, there was no need to spend any money on improving the school for the children. With the lack of funding necessary to pay for actual flesh and bones teachers, they were left to be taught by older droid models, and outdated holotapes.
In reality, life was tough, but for a boy who knew of nothing else, it was simply the way things were. Having never really seen what life was like for the rich and privileged, Nyle was left rather ignorant to what he was missing out on. He saw things on the holotapes of course, and had the usual dreams of being a space pilot, or world famous athlete, but those things seemed so far out of reach for someone on a stratablock, that whenever he tried to talk about anything like that with his mother, she simply shrugged and told him to enjoy being a young boy.
His first opportunity to see what life was like for those who lived up off of the ground came when he was 8 years old, on a field trip to visit the capital building and other features of the upper cities. It was going to be the first time that Nyle had ever left the surface of the planet, and as the rickety old transport slowly crept up out of the slums and clouds of smog, he couldn't help but stare in awe at the scene above the muck. A clear blue sky surrounded the tall bastions of steel known as stratablocks, and even higher above them floated the cities of the rich.
Designed to be like the cities of Ithor, these floating islands didn't look nearly as pretty as those, but they were the most beautiful things that Nyle had ever seen. It seemed like an entirely different world when compared to the slum down on the ground level, and Nyle couldn't help but feel jealous towards the kids he saw with brand new tri-wheelers and laserballs.
The trip concluded with a visit to the capital. The large old building was set in the center of the city, and Nyle's class was allowed limited access inside. He was told by the droid guide that this was where laws were made, debated, and fought over. This was where the planet's citizen's were represented. Nyle didn't understand the details, nor how everything really worked, but he couldn't help but think how nice it would be to be able to say that he and his mom could move up to one of these mansions by simply passing a law.
The thoughts of that field trip dwelled in the back of Nyle’s mind as he grew into a young teenager. Life in the slums of Moridebo changed very little, though as he grew older, he was naturally given more responsibilities. By the time he had turned 12, his mother was already 41, and after years of hard work in the factory district of Moridebo, her body began to show quite a few signs of the wear and tear that many of the groundpounders felt at that age. She worked at a slower pace at the factory, and her hours began getting reduced bit by bit. As such, Nyle was often out looking for any and every odd job he could handle while juggling school work as well. He peddled subscriptions to Holonews, and even got paid a little bit of money for keeping the droids in clean condition at his school.
But, having his mom's hours reduced wasn't only a negative. It gave him an opportunity to grow closer to his mom than he ever had before. Whenever he got a chance he would talk to his mom about what it would take for them to get out of Moridebo, and maybe move up to one of those floating cities that he had seen a few years earlier. She would always tell him that school would be most important, but that it would eventually come down to what he allowed himself to become. Would he settle to being a groundpounder, or would he strive to be something else?
As they talked more often, Nyle eventually broached the subject of his father, a subject that his mom had never had much to say about before. She told him that his father had been much like her father. Someone scared of responsibility, and she told him that that was why in order to succeed in life, one couldn't depend on others but only on themselves. Because those who you ended up depending on the most, would end up failing you when you needed them. She told Nyle that he had to look out for himself first. She always told him that priority one is you and your family. No one else means anything. Anyone else will eventually try and take advantage of you, and when they do, you have to be in a position to do something about it.
Outside of an increased interest in his mom, Nyle also became more interested in school, in particular, anything that had to do with the history of the republic, life outside of Metellos, and anything that had to do with the structure of the local government on Metellos. He wasn't extraordinarily intelligent, but he was a hard worker, and had a proficiency for grasping new ideas and theories quickly.
After getting out of school, and finishing up with any of the odd jobs he would be working on at the moment, he would often go over anything new he had learned with his mother. This would involve an hour or so that featured Nyle showing his mother an interesting holotape that he snuck out of school (though he made sure to tell her that he had been allowed to borrow the tape for a day), and then telling her about the problems he saw with the featured tape. She didn't always know exactly what he was talking about, but she would always sit and listen, and the questions she would ask would only further help his understanding of the material he was learning.
The move to high school went by without any hiccups for Nyle. He wasn't the smartest kid in his class, but he never had any trouble passing any subject at school. His mom's hours were continually being reduced, and as such, he got to spend more and more time with both her, and with work.
He eventually took a real part time job serving food at a small diner in his neighborhood. The job was boring, since he was stuck preparing and serving nothing more interesting than Meatalos, but it was the talk that kept Nyle coming back to the diner. He had never been one who shied away from active conversation, and the people who frequented the diner seemed to never grow tired of discussing local issues with the teenager. Through the conversations, Nyle soon learned that most of the local workers weren't satisfied with the pay and the hours at the factories, but that most of them couldn't just leave when they had families to take care of.
This wasn't news to Nyle. He had seen what had happened to his mom, and how she was slowly being shoved out of work after giving most of her life towards the factory with very little to show for it. But, in all honesty, he just didn't care enough to do anything about it at the moment, and he didn't really know what to do about it anyway. It was just the way things were in the Moridebo District, and Nyle simply assumed that that would be the way things always would be.
But something happened two years later that changed his perspective, and his motives. His school had been decrepit ever since he first started attending it, and from all accounts, it had been decrepit for quite a while before that. Things were destined for a catastrophe, and it ended up happening towards the end of Nyle's final year of high school. In the midst of applying for universities, and getting virtually no responses due to only above average grades and where he was from, a fellow female classmate was killed in an electrical fire resulting from a malfunctioning droid. The unit had shortened and started a fire that trapped a group of students in one of the classrooms. Most of them got out through a window but the classmate, named Kara, passed out and died of asphyxiation before any rescue droids could arrive.
The event was tragic, though not exactly unexpected. Nyle had friends in high school, but no one who he was really very close to. Kara was no exception. But what surprised him was the fact that no one else seemed to care either, not even her closer friends. He knew that the death was the result of years of deterioration and the subsequent lack of funding that made the problem worse. He knew that it was wrong. But he didn't know what he was going to do about, or if he was going to do anything about it.
Going against the recommendations of his mom, who encouraged him to mind his own business, he started sending holotapes featuring letters he had collected from local people in the community to some of the local authority figures in charge of funding the schools. The letters were written by Nyle, as well as anyone else from the local community he could convince to write about the schools. Naively he though that the holotapes might make an impact, but after waiting weeks with no reply, he soon realized that a couple of holotapes weren't going to do anything.
The process of sending out the holotapes had taken about a month and a half, and during that time period he did graduate from his high school. A feat he and his mother were proud of, but not exactly excited over. Time was ticking on Nyle to find something to do in his life, and political activism seemed like a likely option. With his newly found free time garnered from graduating, he upped his level of activism to trips up to the capital, and eventually he got a small group of followers from both his school and from parents of students to come with him. If Nyle had been accepted to a university somewhere, then maybe he wouldn't have gone this route at all, but the bottom line was that he had not gotten a response from any college at any point in his final year of highschool, and he really didn’t want to settle to be a factory worker for the rest of his life. Politics seemed like the only way out.
Regardless, he knew he wasn't going to simply stop at this point, at least not yet. And as his group of supporters grew bigger, he began to realize that he had a talent for speaking in public and organizing simple rallies like this. What started as a cause for more funding for his school, eventually turned into something that he was able to take advantage of. He was good at speaking in front of large crowds, and influencing people around him. His talents eventually developed to the point where he felt bold enough in ordering a real political rally.
He set up and organized a rally at the transport depot, with the goal of halting its operation until their movement caught some media attention. He was able to organize quite a crowd from fellow citizens of the Moridebo District, and the protest was going splendidly. That was until local law enforcement showed up and shut the whole thing down. It turned out that people didn't like having their only means of local transportation to the stratablocks and upper cities shut down. It amazed Nyle how quickly people distanced themselves from their actions. He was pinned as the organizer of the event, and he was left to suffer the consequences. Sure, some people got a slap on the wrist, but the police didn't care as long as they got the guy in charge.
Nyle still managed to get off with little time in prison, and he didn't have to go anywhere off-world. 30 days in a local detention facility, and three months probation was the punishment, but the repercussions were going to be worse than Nyle would have imagined. He soon realized that any tiny chance he might have had of going to any kind of university was thrown out the window, a police record will often do that to you, especially when you weren't exactly a genius before then.
It had been a little less than a year since the time of the fire, and in that time his entire future seemed to be kaput at this point, and if he had listened to his mom it would have never even happened in the first place. He vowed that that would be the last time he ever stuck his neck out like that again. If he was ever going to pick a side in a conflict, he'd make damn sure that it would be the side that would be beneficial for him. Unfortunately, the chances of him ever being able to make up for the first mistake seemed to be slim or none at this point.
After serving his short sentence, he got the only local full time job available to him, cutting steel at one of the local factories. The steel was shipped off world for use on low budget planetary colonization, and the job sucked. Outside of gaining muscle-mass, Nyle gained little else. He worked like an animal. Long shifts, few breaks, and the atmosphere was like that of one of those lava based worlds he had read about. But, he had no other work available here on Metellos.
He would have seriously considered moving off planet, and out of that system all together if it wasn't for the fact that his mother was sick. She was suffering from acute lung pain that had slowly been developing over the last several years. Years in a factory had paid its toll on Marissa. Shortly after Nyle turned twenty, the respiratory illness began to take a turn for the worse, and Marissa had deteriorated to the point where she could do little but stay in a bed for most of the day.
Nyle had no money for the complicated lung transplant surgery that would be needed to fix his mom. An artificial lung was incredibly expensive, and so he could do little but sit and wait for her to die. Four months after Nyle turned twenty, and a little more than a year after he was arrested, Marissa passed on. He had enough for a funeral, and little else. Sitting with his mother during those months, and watching her funeral after her death, Nyle saw little meaning to life. No family showed up, and they had few friends who paid their respects. If this was all there was to life, then there was no point in living.
Nyle couldn't let his life get to this point, he wouldn't let his life get to this point. If there was little meaning, little purpose to what he was doing, then he'd be damned if he spent it on this planet. Acting rashly, he sold anything of value left in their house including the now nearly worthless Nanny Droid, packed up the few possessions he felt were worth keeping, and left.
With little money on him, Nyle agreed to take a cook's apprentice position on a small freighter that moved supplies from the core planets out to the outer rim. He figured he'd jump off when he found a place he wanted to visit. Working on that ship turned out to be one of the best experiences of Nyle's life. The work wasn't stimulating, but for someone who had never been off of Metellos, he couldn't have asked for a better job. He went from planet to planet, system to system, and yet he never felt compelled to leave the ship.
Life on the freighter for the next three years was slow. Nyle saw many people come and go, most opting to hop off the freighter once it reached a planet of their choosing. The head cook left when he was 22, and he was promoted to that position. Cooking the slop wasn't hard, and he got to think quite often about what he wanted to do with himself. He had no formal education, and no impressive credentials, but he knew he wanted to land somewhere in politics. Politicians had money, politicians had power, and politicians made laws. That was what he wanted to be. He wasn't naive enough to think that he could simply show up somewhere and be given a job as a senator, but he knew that he had the skills necessary to eventually get to that point. All he needed was time, and while he didn't have money, he did have time.
After a run into the deep core, Nyle finally decided to part ways with the freighter at Foerost. Not only was there a huge shipyard in the planet‘s orbit, but there was quite a bit of industry located on the surface as well. It was a place where Nyle could find work. Taking a job with a carbon processing plant, Nyle began the process of establishing himself on a new planet. He found an apartment in the capital city of Hajibar, and began saving up money and gathering his bearings. He knew what he wanted to do. He was sure that performing the role of a local politician would be easy, but actually becoming the politician would be the hard part, especially for someone who hadn't made a name for himself yet.
As such, he worked hard at getting his name out there with his fellow workers at the plant. He covered for anyone who was sick, and never had any qualms in donating some of his pay to fellow workers that were late on rent. Even outside of work, Nyle donated his time and resources in working on cleaning up local schools, and repairing droids like he did in the early days of his high school years. This wasn't due to a sudden change of heart however. He was not going to go back on the promise he had made to himself years earlier. On the contrary, he knew that sacrifices now, would reap rewards later. He would need to manipulate these workers and others in and around Hajibar if was going to ever have any success at running for office.
Throughout his mid and late twenties, this behavior continued on. He had friends of course, mostly men that he worked with from the plant, and he met women that he dated through some of the charities he worked with, but he never got too close with anyone. The bottom line was that he was working towards a goal. He had set his eyes on an objective, and he wasn't going to let anyone slow him down. He knew that close friends, or serious relationships, would do nothing for him at the present time. So, while he enjoyed their company, he never let them get in the way of what he wanted to accomplish, and that was getting into politics.
He first opportunity came in the summer of his 28th year. He lived in the capital city, in one of the poorer districts, and it was the end of the current representative's six years in office. He was running on behalf of the worker's party, which gave him an opportunity to run without the support of a major party, and was holding fast to worker's rights as the keystone issue of his campaign. It wasn't until the campaign really heated up though, that he realized that he might have made a mistake in running this soon. He wasn't ready. He could coordinate rallies easy enough, but he didn't understand how much time and money a campaign really cost. Plus, he didn't prepare nearly early enough to really run an effective campaign.
Bottom line was that his campaign lasted six months, and he was destroyed at the end of it, garnering less than ten percent of the total vote. He was beaten, but not crushed. His next opportunity would come in six years, and he would be ready. He needed help developing an effective campaign, and he needed funding. Proper funding.
A skill that Nyle had possessed throughout highschool, and that he had shown during that eighteenth year, was the skill to persuade and manipulate. He was handsome and articulate, and he had eventually found out that those were basically all you needed to effectively convince people to join your cause. After seeing how ill-prepared his campaign was for a large scale election, he kept his eyes peeled for someone he could work with, and someone he could manipulate into believing in his cause. He found her at a charity event he attended. Her name was Brianna. She was beautiful, bright, and ruthless. Refusing to lose, she had come out of a horrible background, to eventually build up one of the largest charitable organizations in Hajibar. She had contacts throughout the city, and she understood what it would take to win an election.
He knew that she could help him win, and while working at nights, and working on his campaign during the day, he spent what extra time he could working with her charity, and getting to know the woman herself. As a wannabee politician under thirty, Nyle connected with Brianna in a way that few of the older politicians in the area could. They had similar upbringings, and similar goals. After a couple of months of friendship, Nyle finally asked her for her help. He knew that the decision wouldn't be easy for her. It would mean giving up her charity work for the most part, but there was a tremendous opportunity in working with Nyle as well. If they were successful, it would mean that she was the chief organizer behind one of the most unlikely campaigns on the planet. She agreed.
It was a fateful moment in Nyle's life. He connected with Brianna in a way that he hadn't connected with anyone since his mom. She knew that his real goals didn't lay with charity work, but she also knew that getting Nyle elected would give him the opportunity to move funds to wherever he deemed fit, with Brianna‘s charity at the top of the list. The move ended up working out for both of them, and even today she can be found working with Nyle on Coruscant.
The next six years moved very quickly for Nyle. Brianna showed her worth immediately by helping him attain funding through a variety of parties and other social functions he attended throughout that time frame. He bought a suit, for the first time in his life, and quickly learned how to wine and dine with the best of them. It was in this environment that he was able to put his charm to the best use. He had a way of conveying trust and understanding to the person he was addressing, and made sure to make lots of promises that he would be fulfilling upon election. The funds began to flow in from the elite on Foerost. He was able to quit his job at the plant, and began to focus all of his efforts on the election.
Full time campaigning began when he turned 33, and it was quite the effort. Starting a full year before the election had its advantages, and Nyle made sure to use them. The extra time gave him the opportunity to spend more time out in public, making speeches and kissing babies, the whole spiel. But, that stuff really made a difference. He won the election next year, by the skin of his teeth. Of course it helped that his most serious opponent was caught in a scandal involving him cheating on his wife, but he wasn't going to let that damper his spirits. The bottom line was that he was in the game, and he wasn't planning on leaving it any time soon.
The election made him one of four representatives from Hajibar, in the planet's house of representatives. It was a coveted position, mainly due to the fact that the district of Hajibar he represented was the largest district on the planet population wise. It was the perfect stepping stone to Hajibar's senate seat, but that election wouldn't be for a couple of years. For now, he was simply learning the ins and outs of being a representative. Since Hajibar was the capital of Foerost, Nyle did not have to do much traveling, but he did spend a lot of time in the capital building itself. He was a junior representative, and was given little respect or opportunity to write and pass bills for those first few years in office. But, he was given the opportunity to peddle the bills and pieces of legislation written by others.
He loved the job. He ate at the fanciest restaurants, and rubbed shoulders with some of the richest men and women on the planet. And of course, he was good at it. People trusted him, and he always rewarded those who gave him a favor by way of subtle changes in legislation. Someone having trouble getting a new planet wide transportation system approved? Nyle would get it done. If a company needed support on a controversial reform to the shipyards construction schedule, Nyle was counted on in influencing the representatives on the fence. However, he would always remember what his mother told him. He did nothing without getting something in return, whether it was money, support on his next campaign, or donations to the charities that he needed in his pocket come election time. If he wasn't rewarded by the companies that he stuck his neck out for, he made sure that the favor was returned in full. He'd make sure that legislation was passed that worked to cripple the company. In just a couple of years, Nyle was knee deep in the political system, he was trusted, proven, and ready to advance.
His opportunity came four years later. At 38, Nyle wasn't the oldest person in the house of representatives, but he wasn't young, and when the Senator from Hajibar resigned, Nyle knew that he was ready and able to campaign for that job. The planet wide senate was a much more exclusive club. The only thing higher was to be elected as a Senator to represent the entire planet in the Galactic Republic, and that job wasn't even in Nyle's long-term plan at the moment. Brianna once again acted as Nyle's campaign manager, though this time, he also had the support of numerous other businesses and conglomerates on, and even off, the planet. Representing the largest city on Foerost meant that he would have a huge amount of influence on most every issue ranging from the shipyard, to the thousands of processing plants on the planet's surface. Any business that wanted to survive had to have a senator in its pocket, and since Nyle had proven as a representative that he took care of those who took care of him, he was who most of these businesses wanted into office.
The margin of victory wasn't even close this time. Nyle blew the opposition out of the water, due mainly to a debate that took place one month before the election. Nyle never allowed handlers to dictate to him anything regarding debates or speeches. He prided himself in his ability to analyze an issue, and find the winning side. Outside of Brianna, who he discussed these issues with explicitly, he rarely ever allowed anyone else to have any insight into his personal beliefs regarding any issue. The debate lasted for two and a half hours, and Nyle came away the clear favorite, and he eventually rode that wave of momentum to a large victory margin.
With the election behind him, he turned his attention to bigger issues. As a senator, he now had a much larger influence on politics in Foerost as a whole. He passed legislation redefining the parameters by which Korus Trunk Line could be expanded around Foerost. He passed legislation that gave the Foerost Shipyard more leeway in regarding which capital ships it would be allowed to produce, and who those ships could be sold to. He was, of course, compensated for these types of reforms in a typically underhanded way. The media would be all over Nyle if he was given a deposit by the Foerost Shipping Company, but if that same shipping company gave a charity a chunk of commercial land on a resort planet, no one would say anything. And of course, those charities were nothing more than front groups for Nyle. With concessions given to the larger businesses, he made sure to grant similar concessions to the worker’s unions. He balanced both sides out perfectly, and his role as senator seemed to be as permanent as it could possibly be.
Like most politicians, Nyle was not afraid of working with the illegal characters on Foerost as well, though he did make sure to keep a proper buffer zone when any of these transactions began. He'd help smugglers move in shipments of spice, by influencing police chiefs with political support if they turned a blind eye. He took his mother's feelings to heart. He would always look out for his own interests over the interests of anyone else, so as long as he got his share of the pie, he had no problems working with anyone. At times the media would catch wind of Nyle's possible involvement with one of these deals, but Nyle always seemed to find a way to make an example of reporters that threatened to report these findings. Nyle was slick, and he had lots of contacts with the elite of Foerost.
Naturally, these tactics would occasionally make Nyle an enemy. In the summer of his second year, he took a sudden trip to Coruscant, where he was actually meeting with a couple of officials from Foerost in regards to running for Foerost's galactic senate seat once the current aging senator stepped down. While on the trip, a bomb exploded inside his home, killing two dignitaries that he had staying at his house during their visit to the planet. An investigation quickly concluded that the bomb was meant for Nyle, but the sudden and unexpected trip to Coruscant thwarted the effort.
It was the first attempt on the politician's life, though it wouldn't be the last. However, he quickly realized that he needed to upgrade his private security, and he soon hired the same security firm that worked on protecting the Chairman of the Foerost Shipyards. Nyle kept close tabs on all of his security arrangements from that point on, and nearly always has a bodyguard on his side wherever he goes. It is part of politics unfortunately, especially when someone isn't afraid of working with even the most shady of partners.
Outside of politics, Nyle is maintained a very quiet personal life. He wasn't a socialite outside of the necessary parties needed for campaign donations. He didn't travel much, and he really wasn't someone who maintained relationships with the opposite sex, outside of Brianna who his relationship with never evolved into anything other than close friends. No, Nyle kept to himself as much as possible. He calculated how long a life in politics would be needed until he had the kind of financial flexibility that he felt he was comfortable with in order to retire. Though, if he was being honest with himself over this period of time, he would begin to wonder if he'd ever be able to give up the feeling of power he maintained as a politician.
At 44, six years after he was elected as Senator from Hajibar, the current representative of Foerost in the Galactic Senate announced his retirement. The news was not surprising to the local media. Garr Fleshinger was 83, and he was looking to get out of politics and enjoy the waning years of his life. There were a couple of logical choices to replace him, but everyone knew it would be Nyle. He wasn't a senior senator on Foerost yet, but the other senators knew that he was well equipped for the job. He had ambition, financial backing from the local businesses, and natural talent. As the rumors spread, Nyle kept unusually quiet. It was against his character to stay in the shadows over something like this, but he felt it best to let the Senate run its course. He was still young, and quite frankly, he was happy with where he was. But, if the Senate came to him with the opportunity, there would be no way he could turn it down.
A senator did come to him. The word was what there was enough support in the senate regarding Nyle, that an appointment to the galactic senate seat was nearly guaranteed. With the opportunity of a lifetime at his fingertips, Nyle decided to take it. The support was nearly unanimous, with less than five percent of the Senate voting against his nomination. He made the move to Coruscant immediately afterwards, and had soon set himself up in a loft near the Senate Building. The move had happened quickly, but Nyle wanted to get himself acclimated to the political environment in Coruscant as soon as possible. He had taken with him only Brianna, and a couple of other key aides that had worked with both of them on his previous campaigns. With the current Senator from Foerost resigning in less than a week, Nyle and his team had little time to scout out and learn the procedures and nuances of the new political system he was entering.
After the current Senator's resignation was officially approved, Nyle went through the official inauguration process himself. The Senate building itself was huge, much larger than any Nyle had been present in before, and after he took his oath to office in front of the rest of the Senate, he knew that he was where he wanted to be. But after the normal polite introductions he soon found himself knee deep in the familiar political issues that plagued every political body such as this one. Bureaucrats can find a way to argue about anything, and the Senate here seemed to be even worse.
His first appointment as a Junior Senator, was to the rather small Travel and Transport Bureau. It consisted of a small committee of Senators whose job was to discuss and write legislation concerning anything that had to do with transport ships throughout the galaxy. In reality, the committee had very little that it actually did. There weren't too many cases that the committee had to actually look at, and it would seem that most of the Senators who were a part of the committee simply used it as a means to take free vacations to supposed Transport Issues sites. Quite frankly, taking vacation wasn't what Nyle thought he would be doing upon coming to the Senate. It was a waste of time, time he could better spend doing something else. But, if he wanted to advance, he would have to prove himself useful.
After spending a couple of months getting used to the way the senate proceeded with things, and learning the specifics involved with the Travel and Transport Bureau, Nyle began drafting and constructing a bill that would essentially deregulate a couple of restrictions regarding judicial oversight of newly built heavy transports. The construction of these large ships was being slowed down by bureaucrats in the republic, and a number of shipbuilders had been growing impatient, especially those on Foerost who had made sure to convey to Nyle that they would appreciate anything he could do regarding the matter. He brought the bill before the T&T Bureau, and after a couple of weeks spent refining some of the rougher points in the bill, it was brought before the entire senate. Since it was Nyle's bill, he introduced it before the Senate, and his speech was concise and to the point. He had made sure beforehand that he had support from representatives from a couple of other planets that were affected from these restrictions on their shipyards, and with their political support behind the measure, it was soon passed.
Nyle spent around a year and a half on the T&T Bureau. Outside of the deregulation bill, he also got legislation approved that increased the cargo load allowed on the Class VI transports, as well as being involved in a number of new transport designs from quite a few different shipbuilders. The bottom line was the Nyle got the Bureau moving again. He cleared a backlog of cases that had been building up over the last few years, and he got new legislation approved that modernized some of the more archanian rules. He spent another year and a half in this committee, before he was then moved forward to the Budgetary Committee. He spent two years there, working on the Republic's finance issues, before he was moved forward to the Appropriations Committee. This was the first Committee he was given the opportunity to actually head. He worked here for four years, and gave grants out at an unprecedented rate, prompting an investigation by the Oversight Committee. Nyle managed to prove to their satisfaction that he was only giving the money to legitimate charities, but the reality was that he was filtering the money through those organizations to a number of different conglomerates and businesses. Even in the highest level of politics, Nyle was still looking out for himself.
At 54, Nyle was promoted to the very prestigious Security Council. The Security Council was charged with securing the Republic, and as part of the Council Nyle communicated regularly with military personnel, as well as the Jedi Order. The Security Council was more hands on than any of the prior Councils he had been asked to serve upon. He had to travel quite a bit to talk with various planetary leaders and heads of the military. He spent four years as a member, before he was voted in as its head.
As head of this particular council, Nyle was given a unique opportunity unlike any he had ever had before. He was in a position that allowed him to heavily influence the movement of Republic troops and naval forces. Generally speaking, Nyle's job involved filtering through a number of requests from planets and businesses, as well as official requests from the military itself. He analyzed the request, talked to military advisors in the council, and then either approved or denied the request for troops or military resources.
Of course, Nyle managed to manipulate this power to his own purposes. By this time, the "donations" Nyle received from some of the larger businesses and corporations throughout the galaxy had become a part of the job. And as such, when one of these companies came under attack from raiders or others, Nyle made sure that troops and naval forces found their way to the business's side as soon as possible. These actions weren't always looked kindly upon by the media and others, but most people didn't enjoy the raised prices they suffered when there favorite food company's supply line was interrupted, so Nyle never faced repercussion's too severe from the citizenry.
One particular instance was actually cheered upon by folks back home on Foerost. The shipyards there had always been a point of contention among pirates and others, mainly due to their general lack of security. After a series of hit and run attacks by pirate forces outside the shipyard, Nyle decided to approve the sending of a small flotilla of republic ships in order to protect the shipyard and subsequent hyperspace route. The flotilla succeeded in driving the pirates out of the area, and Nyle received a rather large popularity boost both back on Foerost, and on Coruscant as well. So while some of his decision might have caused a bit of a head scratch amongst the populace, there were other decisions that rallied there support as well. It was all about balancing the two out as far as Nyle was concerned.
At 59, Nyle was still working as head of the Security Council. He seemed to have a revolving door of aides working for him, with the only constant being Brianna. His perspective on retirement had changed quite a bit from where it had been as a teenager and young adult. Where he once had planned on quitting as soon as he garnered financial security, he was now not so sure. He enjoyed the power that comes with being a senator, and he doesn't know when or if he'd be able to give it up.
Attributes:
Physical Strength: 5
Intelligence: 5
Speed: 3
Leadership: 7
Unarmed: 1
Melee Weapons: 1
Ranged Weapons: 2
Alignment: 0
RP Sample:
Beep Beep. . .Beep Beep
Nyle let out a sigh, leaned forward, and pushed a small button on the desk in front of him.
"Yes?"
"I'm sorry sir, but I just got word that the Senate is convening earlier than was previously scheduled. You have just over an hour sir."
"Thank you, I'll be out shortly." Nyle pushed a second button next to the intercom, and watched as a hologram of a speech quickly disappeared from above his desk. Standing up, Nyle pulled out the data disk from under the holoprojector, and put on his suit jacket. Today was important, very important. He was presenting three pieces of legislation today, each one correlating to the other, and if they were passed, it meant an increase in funding to a couple of key military personnel groups that Nyle had met with earlier in the month. Yes, much would be dependent on Nyle's speech today.
"You ready Firo?" Nyle said to a Bothan sitting by a door across from Nyle's desk. Firo had been with Nyle just over a year now, longer than most any other aide who signed on to work for Nyle.
Firo nodded in response, and Nyle quickly pocketed the data disk and exited his office where he was met by the secretary who had talked to him on the intercom.
"Um sir, a man is insisting on seeing you sir," the girl said as she motioned toward a smallish looking man who was waiting out in the lobby area, "I told him you were heading to special session with the Senate, but he insists it will only take a minute."
"Yes Maria," Nyle quickly replied, "I'll take care of it. Could you please give the data disks concerning those riots on Telfrey to Firo?" Nyle headed out into the lobby where he was greeted by two other humans in dark suits, who then followed him over to meet the stranger. "Can you walk?" Nyle said to the man. "I'm late for session." Without waiting for a reply, Nyle began walking briskly out of the lobby and into a crowded outer hallway. Like all Senators, Nyle's office was connected to the Grand Concourse, and it was just a short walk to his designated repulsorpod in the Grand Convocation Chamber.
"Yes, I can walk," the man said as he started following Nyle. "My name is Tifus, I come from Tantra, in the....in the outer rim." The short man seemed to be struggling to keep up with the long strides of Nyle and his body guards, Nyle quickened his pace.
"I've talked to everyone I can think of, but you're my last chance. Our planet, is in trouble. Pirates have virtually taken it over. You know the Rimma Trade Route runs right there, and they’re using Tantra as a staging area. We're a peaceful people, and don't have the arms necessary to fight them off. We need the Republic’s help."
The man had managed to spit the sentences out in between a series of deep hurried breaths. Nyle liked to keep people uncomfortable, and it looked like he was succeeding with this man.
"And what," Nyle said, "would you like the Republic to do?"
"Help us. Send troops, do something. You can't just these pirates take our home like that."
Nyle had reached a door with the word Foerost engraved above it. On the other side was the Grand Convocation Chamber. He was in a hurry to get inside and review his notes once more. Firo would have sent the information regarding those riots to his data disk by now, and he needed to make sure he looked it over.
"Look," Nyle said, as he turned and looked down on the smaller man, "I understand your plight, I really do. Unfortunately, I just can't see the Republic sparing the forces right now. We're being pressed in numerous other sectors, and unfortunately, the Rimma Trade Route just isn't important enough for us to devote troops towards it."
Nyle didn't really expect this man to understand, nor did Nyle really care. His job wasn't to look out for every single podunk planet that was attacked by pirates. Of course, once this man went to the media with his story, Nyle would undoubtedly get some bad press, but he'd be getting bad press if he sent troops out there as well. They'd call it a waste of the Republic's resources. No, there was no way he could help them.
"Now, I must go into session," Nyle said as he motioned towards the door behind him, "I trust you can find your way out?" Without waiting for a reply, Nyle and his two bodyguards walked through the door, leaving the man speechless behind them.
(All right, I'm ready for constructive criticism from anyone
Race: Human
Age: 59
Height: 6' 3
Weight: 235 pounds
Appearance: Nyle is above average in height for most humans, and a body that was once toned and in shape has gone somewhat flabbier as of late. As with most other humans advancing in years, his face has begun to develop a series of wrinkles and lines that define a life of stress. But, in contrast to the rest of his face, Nyle's dark and calculating eyes have not changed an ounce over the years, and remain the only recognizable feature of what is otherwise a rather unrecognizable face. Over the years his hair has retained most of its dark color, though there are specks of gray beginning to appear throughout his hair.
When at work as a Senator, Nyle prefers the finer things in life. Dark suits of clothing are particularly appealing to him, complete with a pair of fine dress shoes. He'll often put on a traveler's cloak when in space travel, and will always carry a blaster holstered in a shoulder carrier underneath the cloak when outside republic space. When alone, he doesn’t feel quite so pressured to dress up. Simple lounging attire is quite enough for Nyle when he’s by himself or with friends.
Birth place: Metellos, Moridebo District
Occupation: Senator
Rank: Senior Senator representing Foerost in the Galactic Senate, and Head of the Security Council.
Bio: Living underneath a floating city can either make someone, or break them. The people who live on the upper level are the prosperous ones, the ones who have achieved. And those people who live on the bottom must learn to either take what they want, or learn to be happy with what they already have.
Nyle was born in the Moridebo District of Metellos, or on the bottom. His father was addicted to spice, and left his mother, named Marissa Owain, before Nyle was ever born. The two had met only months before Marissa became pregnant with Nyle, and being someone who wanted nothing to do with a permanent relationship, Nyle's father fled the scene, leaving his girlfriend to care for their child alone. His mom was a one of the millions of factory workers that littered the stratablocks of the overpopulated planet, a groundpounder. She took a month off of work to give birth to her son, and was back to work as soon as the month was up. After all, to lose her job would have meant eviction from the only place that they had to live, one of the millions of shacks that was rented out to the groundpounders of the Moridebo District.
Nyle was raised by a nanny droid. His mother won the thing at a raffle at the factory she worked at just months before before she gave birth to Nyle. In reality, the droid was a barely working piece of crap that seemed to have spent some of its years as a protocol droid before being reprogrammed to take care of and raise kids. But, it was the only parent that Nyle knew of as a very young child. Due to the heavy levels of pollution on the lower level of the planet, very young children like Nyle weren't taken outdoors to do much more other than shop. As such, Nyle spent most of his time inside, playing with the knick knacks that his mom would bring home from work, and tottling around after the nanny bot as it went around keeping the shack as tidy as possible.
As Nyle reached the age of 3, the bot’s circuits began shorting out quite a bit, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing in Nyle's case, because one of the side effects of the short circuiting was that the droid seemed to spit out rather incomplete narratives of trips it had taken across the galaxy. The stories were somewhat incomplete, and at some points, rather boring, but Nyle took to following the droid around, piecing together various bits of information as best as a young kid could.
As he got older, he began wandering outside of his house whenever he could steal a chance. Of course, it was something that most kids did as they grew bored of their surrounding, and Nyle was no different. With his mom gone till nightime, and just the rundown droid to keep him in check, Nyle was constantly sneaking outdoors in search of fun, and occasionally trouble. Teaming up with a group of local kids, they did everything from play a modified version of Nega-Ball, to shine shoes in some of the more populated districts for credits.
At 6, Nyle was enrolled in one of the many local schools on the planets floor. The place wasn't in the best of condition, with overcrowding and lack of funding as the primary cause for the bad condition. People on the ground weren't expected to be anything more than a groundpounder like their parents, and as such, there was no need to spend any money on improving the school for the children. With the lack of funding necessary to pay for actual flesh and bones teachers, they were left to be taught by older droid models, and outdated holotapes.
In reality, life was tough, but for a boy who knew of nothing else, it was simply the way things were. Having never really seen what life was like for the rich and privileged, Nyle was left rather ignorant to what he was missing out on. He saw things on the holotapes of course, and had the usual dreams of being a space pilot, or world famous athlete, but those things seemed so far out of reach for someone on a stratablock, that whenever he tried to talk about anything like that with his mother, she simply shrugged and told him to enjoy being a young boy.
His first opportunity to see what life was like for those who lived up off of the ground came when he was 8 years old, on a field trip to visit the capital building and other features of the upper cities. It was going to be the first time that Nyle had ever left the surface of the planet, and as the rickety old transport slowly crept up out of the slums and clouds of smog, he couldn't help but stare in awe at the scene above the muck. A clear blue sky surrounded the tall bastions of steel known as stratablocks, and even higher above them floated the cities of the rich.
Designed to be like the cities of Ithor, these floating islands didn't look nearly as pretty as those, but they were the most beautiful things that Nyle had ever seen. It seemed like an entirely different world when compared to the slum down on the ground level, and Nyle couldn't help but feel jealous towards the kids he saw with brand new tri-wheelers and laserballs.
The trip concluded with a visit to the capital. The large old building was set in the center of the city, and Nyle's class was allowed limited access inside. He was told by the droid guide that this was where laws were made, debated, and fought over. This was where the planet's citizen's were represented. Nyle didn't understand the details, nor how everything really worked, but he couldn't help but think how nice it would be to be able to say that he and his mom could move up to one of these mansions by simply passing a law.
The thoughts of that field trip dwelled in the back of Nyle’s mind as he grew into a young teenager. Life in the slums of Moridebo changed very little, though as he grew older, he was naturally given more responsibilities. By the time he had turned 12, his mother was already 41, and after years of hard work in the factory district of Moridebo, her body began to show quite a few signs of the wear and tear that many of the groundpounders felt at that age. She worked at a slower pace at the factory, and her hours began getting reduced bit by bit. As such, Nyle was often out looking for any and every odd job he could handle while juggling school work as well. He peddled subscriptions to Holonews, and even got paid a little bit of money for keeping the droids in clean condition at his school.
But, having his mom's hours reduced wasn't only a negative. It gave him an opportunity to grow closer to his mom than he ever had before. Whenever he got a chance he would talk to his mom about what it would take for them to get out of Moridebo, and maybe move up to one of those floating cities that he had seen a few years earlier. She would always tell him that school would be most important, but that it would eventually come down to what he allowed himself to become. Would he settle to being a groundpounder, or would he strive to be something else?
As they talked more often, Nyle eventually broached the subject of his father, a subject that his mom had never had much to say about before. She told him that his father had been much like her father. Someone scared of responsibility, and she told him that that was why in order to succeed in life, one couldn't depend on others but only on themselves. Because those who you ended up depending on the most, would end up failing you when you needed them. She told Nyle that he had to look out for himself first. She always told him that priority one is you and your family. No one else means anything. Anyone else will eventually try and take advantage of you, and when they do, you have to be in a position to do something about it.
Outside of an increased interest in his mom, Nyle also became more interested in school, in particular, anything that had to do with the history of the republic, life outside of Metellos, and anything that had to do with the structure of the local government on Metellos. He wasn't extraordinarily intelligent, but he was a hard worker, and had a proficiency for grasping new ideas and theories quickly.
After getting out of school, and finishing up with any of the odd jobs he would be working on at the moment, he would often go over anything new he had learned with his mother. This would involve an hour or so that featured Nyle showing his mother an interesting holotape that he snuck out of school (though he made sure to tell her that he had been allowed to borrow the tape for a day), and then telling her about the problems he saw with the featured tape. She didn't always know exactly what he was talking about, but she would always sit and listen, and the questions she would ask would only further help his understanding of the material he was learning.
The move to high school went by without any hiccups for Nyle. He wasn't the smartest kid in his class, but he never had any trouble passing any subject at school. His mom's hours were continually being reduced, and as such, he got to spend more and more time with both her, and with work.
He eventually took a real part time job serving food at a small diner in his neighborhood. The job was boring, since he was stuck preparing and serving nothing more interesting than Meatalos, but it was the talk that kept Nyle coming back to the diner. He had never been one who shied away from active conversation, and the people who frequented the diner seemed to never grow tired of discussing local issues with the teenager. Through the conversations, Nyle soon learned that most of the local workers weren't satisfied with the pay and the hours at the factories, but that most of them couldn't just leave when they had families to take care of.
This wasn't news to Nyle. He had seen what had happened to his mom, and how she was slowly being shoved out of work after giving most of her life towards the factory with very little to show for it. But, in all honesty, he just didn't care enough to do anything about it at the moment, and he didn't really know what to do about it anyway. It was just the way things were in the Moridebo District, and Nyle simply assumed that that would be the way things always would be.
But something happened two years later that changed his perspective, and his motives. His school had been decrepit ever since he first started attending it, and from all accounts, it had been decrepit for quite a while before that. Things were destined for a catastrophe, and it ended up happening towards the end of Nyle's final year of high school. In the midst of applying for universities, and getting virtually no responses due to only above average grades and where he was from, a fellow female classmate was killed in an electrical fire resulting from a malfunctioning droid. The unit had shortened and started a fire that trapped a group of students in one of the classrooms. Most of them got out through a window but the classmate, named Kara, passed out and died of asphyxiation before any rescue droids could arrive.
The event was tragic, though not exactly unexpected. Nyle had friends in high school, but no one who he was really very close to. Kara was no exception. But what surprised him was the fact that no one else seemed to care either, not even her closer friends. He knew that the death was the result of years of deterioration and the subsequent lack of funding that made the problem worse. He knew that it was wrong. But he didn't know what he was going to do about, or if he was going to do anything about it.
Going against the recommendations of his mom, who encouraged him to mind his own business, he started sending holotapes featuring letters he had collected from local people in the community to some of the local authority figures in charge of funding the schools. The letters were written by Nyle, as well as anyone else from the local community he could convince to write about the schools. Naively he though that the holotapes might make an impact, but after waiting weeks with no reply, he soon realized that a couple of holotapes weren't going to do anything.
The process of sending out the holotapes had taken about a month and a half, and during that time period he did graduate from his high school. A feat he and his mother were proud of, but not exactly excited over. Time was ticking on Nyle to find something to do in his life, and political activism seemed like a likely option. With his newly found free time garnered from graduating, he upped his level of activism to trips up to the capital, and eventually he got a small group of followers from both his school and from parents of students to come with him. If Nyle had been accepted to a university somewhere, then maybe he wouldn't have gone this route at all, but the bottom line was that he had not gotten a response from any college at any point in his final year of highschool, and he really didn’t want to settle to be a factory worker for the rest of his life. Politics seemed like the only way out.
Regardless, he knew he wasn't going to simply stop at this point, at least not yet. And as his group of supporters grew bigger, he began to realize that he had a talent for speaking in public and organizing simple rallies like this. What started as a cause for more funding for his school, eventually turned into something that he was able to take advantage of. He was good at speaking in front of large crowds, and influencing people around him. His talents eventually developed to the point where he felt bold enough in ordering a real political rally.
He set up and organized a rally at the transport depot, with the goal of halting its operation until their movement caught some media attention. He was able to organize quite a crowd from fellow citizens of the Moridebo District, and the protest was going splendidly. That was until local law enforcement showed up and shut the whole thing down. It turned out that people didn't like having their only means of local transportation to the stratablocks and upper cities shut down. It amazed Nyle how quickly people distanced themselves from their actions. He was pinned as the organizer of the event, and he was left to suffer the consequences. Sure, some people got a slap on the wrist, but the police didn't care as long as they got the guy in charge.
Nyle still managed to get off with little time in prison, and he didn't have to go anywhere off-world. 30 days in a local detention facility, and three months probation was the punishment, but the repercussions were going to be worse than Nyle would have imagined. He soon realized that any tiny chance he might have had of going to any kind of university was thrown out the window, a police record will often do that to you, especially when you weren't exactly a genius before then.
It had been a little less than a year since the time of the fire, and in that time his entire future seemed to be kaput at this point, and if he had listened to his mom it would have never even happened in the first place. He vowed that that would be the last time he ever stuck his neck out like that again. If he was ever going to pick a side in a conflict, he'd make damn sure that it would be the side that would be beneficial for him. Unfortunately, the chances of him ever being able to make up for the first mistake seemed to be slim or none at this point.
After serving his short sentence, he got the only local full time job available to him, cutting steel at one of the local factories. The steel was shipped off world for use on low budget planetary colonization, and the job sucked. Outside of gaining muscle-mass, Nyle gained little else. He worked like an animal. Long shifts, few breaks, and the atmosphere was like that of one of those lava based worlds he had read about. But, he had no other work available here on Metellos.
He would have seriously considered moving off planet, and out of that system all together if it wasn't for the fact that his mother was sick. She was suffering from acute lung pain that had slowly been developing over the last several years. Years in a factory had paid its toll on Marissa. Shortly after Nyle turned twenty, the respiratory illness began to take a turn for the worse, and Marissa had deteriorated to the point where she could do little but stay in a bed for most of the day.
Nyle had no money for the complicated lung transplant surgery that would be needed to fix his mom. An artificial lung was incredibly expensive, and so he could do little but sit and wait for her to die. Four months after Nyle turned twenty, and a little more than a year after he was arrested, Marissa passed on. He had enough for a funeral, and little else. Sitting with his mother during those months, and watching her funeral after her death, Nyle saw little meaning to life. No family showed up, and they had few friends who paid their respects. If this was all there was to life, then there was no point in living.
Nyle couldn't let his life get to this point, he wouldn't let his life get to this point. If there was little meaning, little purpose to what he was doing, then he'd be damned if he spent it on this planet. Acting rashly, he sold anything of value left in their house including the now nearly worthless Nanny Droid, packed up the few possessions he felt were worth keeping, and left.
With little money on him, Nyle agreed to take a cook's apprentice position on a small freighter that moved supplies from the core planets out to the outer rim. He figured he'd jump off when he found a place he wanted to visit. Working on that ship turned out to be one of the best experiences of Nyle's life. The work wasn't stimulating, but for someone who had never been off of Metellos, he couldn't have asked for a better job. He went from planet to planet, system to system, and yet he never felt compelled to leave the ship.
Life on the freighter for the next three years was slow. Nyle saw many people come and go, most opting to hop off the freighter once it reached a planet of their choosing. The head cook left when he was 22, and he was promoted to that position. Cooking the slop wasn't hard, and he got to think quite often about what he wanted to do with himself. He had no formal education, and no impressive credentials, but he knew he wanted to land somewhere in politics. Politicians had money, politicians had power, and politicians made laws. That was what he wanted to be. He wasn't naive enough to think that he could simply show up somewhere and be given a job as a senator, but he knew that he had the skills necessary to eventually get to that point. All he needed was time, and while he didn't have money, he did have time.
After a run into the deep core, Nyle finally decided to part ways with the freighter at Foerost. Not only was there a huge shipyard in the planet‘s orbit, but there was quite a bit of industry located on the surface as well. It was a place where Nyle could find work. Taking a job with a carbon processing plant, Nyle began the process of establishing himself on a new planet. He found an apartment in the capital city of Hajibar, and began saving up money and gathering his bearings. He knew what he wanted to do. He was sure that performing the role of a local politician would be easy, but actually becoming the politician would be the hard part, especially for someone who hadn't made a name for himself yet.
As such, he worked hard at getting his name out there with his fellow workers at the plant. He covered for anyone who was sick, and never had any qualms in donating some of his pay to fellow workers that were late on rent. Even outside of work, Nyle donated his time and resources in working on cleaning up local schools, and repairing droids like he did in the early days of his high school years. This wasn't due to a sudden change of heart however. He was not going to go back on the promise he had made to himself years earlier. On the contrary, he knew that sacrifices now, would reap rewards later. He would need to manipulate these workers and others in and around Hajibar if was going to ever have any success at running for office.
Throughout his mid and late twenties, this behavior continued on. He had friends of course, mostly men that he worked with from the plant, and he met women that he dated through some of the charities he worked with, but he never got too close with anyone. The bottom line was that he was working towards a goal. He had set his eyes on an objective, and he wasn't going to let anyone slow him down. He knew that close friends, or serious relationships, would do nothing for him at the present time. So, while he enjoyed their company, he never let them get in the way of what he wanted to accomplish, and that was getting into politics.
He first opportunity came in the summer of his 28th year. He lived in the capital city, in one of the poorer districts, and it was the end of the current representative's six years in office. He was running on behalf of the worker's party, which gave him an opportunity to run without the support of a major party, and was holding fast to worker's rights as the keystone issue of his campaign. It wasn't until the campaign really heated up though, that he realized that he might have made a mistake in running this soon. He wasn't ready. He could coordinate rallies easy enough, but he didn't understand how much time and money a campaign really cost. Plus, he didn't prepare nearly early enough to really run an effective campaign.
Bottom line was that his campaign lasted six months, and he was destroyed at the end of it, garnering less than ten percent of the total vote. He was beaten, but not crushed. His next opportunity would come in six years, and he would be ready. He needed help developing an effective campaign, and he needed funding. Proper funding.
A skill that Nyle had possessed throughout highschool, and that he had shown during that eighteenth year, was the skill to persuade and manipulate. He was handsome and articulate, and he had eventually found out that those were basically all you needed to effectively convince people to join your cause. After seeing how ill-prepared his campaign was for a large scale election, he kept his eyes peeled for someone he could work with, and someone he could manipulate into believing in his cause. He found her at a charity event he attended. Her name was Brianna. She was beautiful, bright, and ruthless. Refusing to lose, she had come out of a horrible background, to eventually build up one of the largest charitable organizations in Hajibar. She had contacts throughout the city, and she understood what it would take to win an election.
He knew that she could help him win, and while working at nights, and working on his campaign during the day, he spent what extra time he could working with her charity, and getting to know the woman herself. As a wannabee politician under thirty, Nyle connected with Brianna in a way that few of the older politicians in the area could. They had similar upbringings, and similar goals. After a couple of months of friendship, Nyle finally asked her for her help. He knew that the decision wouldn't be easy for her. It would mean giving up her charity work for the most part, but there was a tremendous opportunity in working with Nyle as well. If they were successful, it would mean that she was the chief organizer behind one of the most unlikely campaigns on the planet. She agreed.
It was a fateful moment in Nyle's life. He connected with Brianna in a way that he hadn't connected with anyone since his mom. She knew that his real goals didn't lay with charity work, but she also knew that getting Nyle elected would give him the opportunity to move funds to wherever he deemed fit, with Brianna‘s charity at the top of the list. The move ended up working out for both of them, and even today she can be found working with Nyle on Coruscant.
The next six years moved very quickly for Nyle. Brianna showed her worth immediately by helping him attain funding through a variety of parties and other social functions he attended throughout that time frame. He bought a suit, for the first time in his life, and quickly learned how to wine and dine with the best of them. It was in this environment that he was able to put his charm to the best use. He had a way of conveying trust and understanding to the person he was addressing, and made sure to make lots of promises that he would be fulfilling upon election. The funds began to flow in from the elite on Foerost. He was able to quit his job at the plant, and began to focus all of his efforts on the election.
Full time campaigning began when he turned 33, and it was quite the effort. Starting a full year before the election had its advantages, and Nyle made sure to use them. The extra time gave him the opportunity to spend more time out in public, making speeches and kissing babies, the whole spiel. But, that stuff really made a difference. He won the election next year, by the skin of his teeth. Of course it helped that his most serious opponent was caught in a scandal involving him cheating on his wife, but he wasn't going to let that damper his spirits. The bottom line was that he was in the game, and he wasn't planning on leaving it any time soon.
The election made him one of four representatives from Hajibar, in the planet's house of representatives. It was a coveted position, mainly due to the fact that the district of Hajibar he represented was the largest district on the planet population wise. It was the perfect stepping stone to Hajibar's senate seat, but that election wouldn't be for a couple of years. For now, he was simply learning the ins and outs of being a representative. Since Hajibar was the capital of Foerost, Nyle did not have to do much traveling, but he did spend a lot of time in the capital building itself. He was a junior representative, and was given little respect or opportunity to write and pass bills for those first few years in office. But, he was given the opportunity to peddle the bills and pieces of legislation written by others.
He loved the job. He ate at the fanciest restaurants, and rubbed shoulders with some of the richest men and women on the planet. And of course, he was good at it. People trusted him, and he always rewarded those who gave him a favor by way of subtle changes in legislation. Someone having trouble getting a new planet wide transportation system approved? Nyle would get it done. If a company needed support on a controversial reform to the shipyards construction schedule, Nyle was counted on in influencing the representatives on the fence. However, he would always remember what his mother told him. He did nothing without getting something in return, whether it was money, support on his next campaign, or donations to the charities that he needed in his pocket come election time. If he wasn't rewarded by the companies that he stuck his neck out for, he made sure that the favor was returned in full. He'd make sure that legislation was passed that worked to cripple the company. In just a couple of years, Nyle was knee deep in the political system, he was trusted, proven, and ready to advance.
His opportunity came four years later. At 38, Nyle wasn't the oldest person in the house of representatives, but he wasn't young, and when the Senator from Hajibar resigned, Nyle knew that he was ready and able to campaign for that job. The planet wide senate was a much more exclusive club. The only thing higher was to be elected as a Senator to represent the entire planet in the Galactic Republic, and that job wasn't even in Nyle's long-term plan at the moment. Brianna once again acted as Nyle's campaign manager, though this time, he also had the support of numerous other businesses and conglomerates on, and even off, the planet. Representing the largest city on Foerost meant that he would have a huge amount of influence on most every issue ranging from the shipyard, to the thousands of processing plants on the planet's surface. Any business that wanted to survive had to have a senator in its pocket, and since Nyle had proven as a representative that he took care of those who took care of him, he was who most of these businesses wanted into office.
The margin of victory wasn't even close this time. Nyle blew the opposition out of the water, due mainly to a debate that took place one month before the election. Nyle never allowed handlers to dictate to him anything regarding debates or speeches. He prided himself in his ability to analyze an issue, and find the winning side. Outside of Brianna, who he discussed these issues with explicitly, he rarely ever allowed anyone else to have any insight into his personal beliefs regarding any issue. The debate lasted for two and a half hours, and Nyle came away the clear favorite, and he eventually rode that wave of momentum to a large victory margin.
With the election behind him, he turned his attention to bigger issues. As a senator, he now had a much larger influence on politics in Foerost as a whole. He passed legislation redefining the parameters by which Korus Trunk Line could be expanded around Foerost. He passed legislation that gave the Foerost Shipyard more leeway in regarding which capital ships it would be allowed to produce, and who those ships could be sold to. He was, of course, compensated for these types of reforms in a typically underhanded way. The media would be all over Nyle if he was given a deposit by the Foerost Shipping Company, but if that same shipping company gave a charity a chunk of commercial land on a resort planet, no one would say anything. And of course, those charities were nothing more than front groups for Nyle. With concessions given to the larger businesses, he made sure to grant similar concessions to the worker’s unions. He balanced both sides out perfectly, and his role as senator seemed to be as permanent as it could possibly be.
Like most politicians, Nyle was not afraid of working with the illegal characters on Foerost as well, though he did make sure to keep a proper buffer zone when any of these transactions began. He'd help smugglers move in shipments of spice, by influencing police chiefs with political support if they turned a blind eye. He took his mother's feelings to heart. He would always look out for his own interests over the interests of anyone else, so as long as he got his share of the pie, he had no problems working with anyone. At times the media would catch wind of Nyle's possible involvement with one of these deals, but Nyle always seemed to find a way to make an example of reporters that threatened to report these findings. Nyle was slick, and he had lots of contacts with the elite of Foerost.
Naturally, these tactics would occasionally make Nyle an enemy. In the summer of his second year, he took a sudden trip to Coruscant, where he was actually meeting with a couple of officials from Foerost in regards to running for Foerost's galactic senate seat once the current aging senator stepped down. While on the trip, a bomb exploded inside his home, killing two dignitaries that he had staying at his house during their visit to the planet. An investigation quickly concluded that the bomb was meant for Nyle, but the sudden and unexpected trip to Coruscant thwarted the effort.
It was the first attempt on the politician's life, though it wouldn't be the last. However, he quickly realized that he needed to upgrade his private security, and he soon hired the same security firm that worked on protecting the Chairman of the Foerost Shipyards. Nyle kept close tabs on all of his security arrangements from that point on, and nearly always has a bodyguard on his side wherever he goes. It is part of politics unfortunately, especially when someone isn't afraid of working with even the most shady of partners.
Outside of politics, Nyle is maintained a very quiet personal life. He wasn't a socialite outside of the necessary parties needed for campaign donations. He didn't travel much, and he really wasn't someone who maintained relationships with the opposite sex, outside of Brianna who his relationship with never evolved into anything other than close friends. No, Nyle kept to himself as much as possible. He calculated how long a life in politics would be needed until he had the kind of financial flexibility that he felt he was comfortable with in order to retire. Though, if he was being honest with himself over this period of time, he would begin to wonder if he'd ever be able to give up the feeling of power he maintained as a politician.
At 44, six years after he was elected as Senator from Hajibar, the current representative of Foerost in the Galactic Senate announced his retirement. The news was not surprising to the local media. Garr Fleshinger was 83, and he was looking to get out of politics and enjoy the waning years of his life. There were a couple of logical choices to replace him, but everyone knew it would be Nyle. He wasn't a senior senator on Foerost yet, but the other senators knew that he was well equipped for the job. He had ambition, financial backing from the local businesses, and natural talent. As the rumors spread, Nyle kept unusually quiet. It was against his character to stay in the shadows over something like this, but he felt it best to let the Senate run its course. He was still young, and quite frankly, he was happy with where he was. But, if the Senate came to him with the opportunity, there would be no way he could turn it down.
A senator did come to him. The word was what there was enough support in the senate regarding Nyle, that an appointment to the galactic senate seat was nearly guaranteed. With the opportunity of a lifetime at his fingertips, Nyle decided to take it. The support was nearly unanimous, with less than five percent of the Senate voting against his nomination. He made the move to Coruscant immediately afterwards, and had soon set himself up in a loft near the Senate Building. The move had happened quickly, but Nyle wanted to get himself acclimated to the political environment in Coruscant as soon as possible. He had taken with him only Brianna, and a couple of other key aides that had worked with both of them on his previous campaigns. With the current Senator from Foerost resigning in less than a week, Nyle and his team had little time to scout out and learn the procedures and nuances of the new political system he was entering.
After the current Senator's resignation was officially approved, Nyle went through the official inauguration process himself. The Senate building itself was huge, much larger than any Nyle had been present in before, and after he took his oath to office in front of the rest of the Senate, he knew that he was where he wanted to be. But after the normal polite introductions he soon found himself knee deep in the familiar political issues that plagued every political body such as this one. Bureaucrats can find a way to argue about anything, and the Senate here seemed to be even worse.
His first appointment as a Junior Senator, was to the rather small Travel and Transport Bureau. It consisted of a small committee of Senators whose job was to discuss and write legislation concerning anything that had to do with transport ships throughout the galaxy. In reality, the committee had very little that it actually did. There weren't too many cases that the committee had to actually look at, and it would seem that most of the Senators who were a part of the committee simply used it as a means to take free vacations to supposed Transport Issues sites. Quite frankly, taking vacation wasn't what Nyle thought he would be doing upon coming to the Senate. It was a waste of time, time he could better spend doing something else. But, if he wanted to advance, he would have to prove himself useful.
After spending a couple of months getting used to the way the senate proceeded with things, and learning the specifics involved with the Travel and Transport Bureau, Nyle began drafting and constructing a bill that would essentially deregulate a couple of restrictions regarding judicial oversight of newly built heavy transports. The construction of these large ships was being slowed down by bureaucrats in the republic, and a number of shipbuilders had been growing impatient, especially those on Foerost who had made sure to convey to Nyle that they would appreciate anything he could do regarding the matter. He brought the bill before the T&T Bureau, and after a couple of weeks spent refining some of the rougher points in the bill, it was brought before the entire senate. Since it was Nyle's bill, he introduced it before the Senate, and his speech was concise and to the point. He had made sure beforehand that he had support from representatives from a couple of other planets that were affected from these restrictions on their shipyards, and with their political support behind the measure, it was soon passed.
Nyle spent around a year and a half on the T&T Bureau. Outside of the deregulation bill, he also got legislation approved that increased the cargo load allowed on the Class VI transports, as well as being involved in a number of new transport designs from quite a few different shipbuilders. The bottom line was the Nyle got the Bureau moving again. He cleared a backlog of cases that had been building up over the last few years, and he got new legislation approved that modernized some of the more archanian rules. He spent another year and a half in this committee, before he was then moved forward to the Budgetary Committee. He spent two years there, working on the Republic's finance issues, before he was moved forward to the Appropriations Committee. This was the first Committee he was given the opportunity to actually head. He worked here for four years, and gave grants out at an unprecedented rate, prompting an investigation by the Oversight Committee. Nyle managed to prove to their satisfaction that he was only giving the money to legitimate charities, but the reality was that he was filtering the money through those organizations to a number of different conglomerates and businesses. Even in the highest level of politics, Nyle was still looking out for himself.
At 54, Nyle was promoted to the very prestigious Security Council. The Security Council was charged with securing the Republic, and as part of the Council Nyle communicated regularly with military personnel, as well as the Jedi Order. The Security Council was more hands on than any of the prior Councils he had been asked to serve upon. He had to travel quite a bit to talk with various planetary leaders and heads of the military. He spent four years as a member, before he was voted in as its head.
As head of this particular council, Nyle was given a unique opportunity unlike any he had ever had before. He was in a position that allowed him to heavily influence the movement of Republic troops and naval forces. Generally speaking, Nyle's job involved filtering through a number of requests from planets and businesses, as well as official requests from the military itself. He analyzed the request, talked to military advisors in the council, and then either approved or denied the request for troops or military resources.
Of course, Nyle managed to manipulate this power to his own purposes. By this time, the "donations" Nyle received from some of the larger businesses and corporations throughout the galaxy had become a part of the job. And as such, when one of these companies came under attack from raiders or others, Nyle made sure that troops and naval forces found their way to the business's side as soon as possible. These actions weren't always looked kindly upon by the media and others, but most people didn't enjoy the raised prices they suffered when there favorite food company's supply line was interrupted, so Nyle never faced repercussion's too severe from the citizenry.
One particular instance was actually cheered upon by folks back home on Foerost. The shipyards there had always been a point of contention among pirates and others, mainly due to their general lack of security. After a series of hit and run attacks by pirate forces outside the shipyard, Nyle decided to approve the sending of a small flotilla of republic ships in order to protect the shipyard and subsequent hyperspace route. The flotilla succeeded in driving the pirates out of the area, and Nyle received a rather large popularity boost both back on Foerost, and on Coruscant as well. So while some of his decision might have caused a bit of a head scratch amongst the populace, there were other decisions that rallied there support as well. It was all about balancing the two out as far as Nyle was concerned.
At 59, Nyle was still working as head of the Security Council. He seemed to have a revolving door of aides working for him, with the only constant being Brianna. His perspective on retirement had changed quite a bit from where it had been as a teenager and young adult. Where he once had planned on quitting as soon as he garnered financial security, he was now not so sure. He enjoyed the power that comes with being a senator, and he doesn't know when or if he'd be able to give it up.
Attributes:
Physical Strength: 5
Intelligence: 5
Speed: 3
Leadership: 7
Unarmed: 1
Melee Weapons: 1
Ranged Weapons: 2
Alignment: 0
RP Sample:
Beep Beep. . .Beep Beep
Nyle let out a sigh, leaned forward, and pushed a small button on the desk in front of him.
"Yes?"
"I'm sorry sir, but I just got word that the Senate is convening earlier than was previously scheduled. You have just over an hour sir."
"Thank you, I'll be out shortly." Nyle pushed a second button next to the intercom, and watched as a hologram of a speech quickly disappeared from above his desk. Standing up, Nyle pulled out the data disk from under the holoprojector, and put on his suit jacket. Today was important, very important. He was presenting three pieces of legislation today, each one correlating to the other, and if they were passed, it meant an increase in funding to a couple of key military personnel groups that Nyle had met with earlier in the month. Yes, much would be dependent on Nyle's speech today.
"You ready Firo?" Nyle said to a Bothan sitting by a door across from Nyle's desk. Firo had been with Nyle just over a year now, longer than most any other aide who signed on to work for Nyle.
Firo nodded in response, and Nyle quickly pocketed the data disk and exited his office where he was met by the secretary who had talked to him on the intercom.
"Um sir, a man is insisting on seeing you sir," the girl said as she motioned toward a smallish looking man who was waiting out in the lobby area, "I told him you were heading to special session with the Senate, but he insists it will only take a minute."
"Yes Maria," Nyle quickly replied, "I'll take care of it. Could you please give the data disks concerning those riots on Telfrey to Firo?" Nyle headed out into the lobby where he was greeted by two other humans in dark suits, who then followed him over to meet the stranger. "Can you walk?" Nyle said to the man. "I'm late for session." Without waiting for a reply, Nyle began walking briskly out of the lobby and into a crowded outer hallway. Like all Senators, Nyle's office was connected to the Grand Concourse, and it was just a short walk to his designated repulsorpod in the Grand Convocation Chamber.
"Yes, I can walk," the man said as he started following Nyle. "My name is Tifus, I come from Tantra, in the....in the outer rim." The short man seemed to be struggling to keep up with the long strides of Nyle and his body guards, Nyle quickened his pace.
"I've talked to everyone I can think of, but you're my last chance. Our planet, is in trouble. Pirates have virtually taken it over. You know the Rimma Trade Route runs right there, and they’re using Tantra as a staging area. We're a peaceful people, and don't have the arms necessary to fight them off. We need the Republic’s help."
The man had managed to spit the sentences out in between a series of deep hurried breaths. Nyle liked to keep people uncomfortable, and it looked like he was succeeding with this man.
"And what," Nyle said, "would you like the Republic to do?"
"Help us. Send troops, do something. You can't just these pirates take our home like that."
Nyle had reached a door with the word Foerost engraved above it. On the other side was the Grand Convocation Chamber. He was in a hurry to get inside and review his notes once more. Firo would have sent the information regarding those riots to his data disk by now, and he needed to make sure he looked it over.
"Look," Nyle said, as he turned and looked down on the smaller man, "I understand your plight, I really do. Unfortunately, I just can't see the Republic sparing the forces right now. We're being pressed in numerous other sectors, and unfortunately, the Rimma Trade Route just isn't important enough for us to devote troops towards it."
Nyle didn't really expect this man to understand, nor did Nyle really care. His job wasn't to look out for every single podunk planet that was attacked by pirates. Of course, once this man went to the media with his story, Nyle would undoubtedly get some bad press, but he'd be getting bad press if he sent troops out there as well. They'd call it a waste of the Republic's resources. No, there was no way he could help them.
"Now, I must go into session," Nyle said as he motioned towards the door behind him, "I trust you can find your way out?" Without waiting for a reply, Nyle and his two bodyguards walked through the door, leaving the man speechless behind them.
(All right, I'm ready for constructive criticism from anyone
