Post by aelei on Jul 14, 2009 15:57:00 GMT -5
Name: Aelei Lerr
Race: Miraluka
Age: 13
Height: 5'3”
Weight: 99 lbs
Appearance: Aelei is lanky and thin, her slight weight hiding what would be obvious symptoms of puberty. Nearly all of Aelei is proportioned this way; her hands, fingers and face are all similarly long and slender. Even her hair is long and straight, kept so that her bangs would cover her empty eye sockets, thin and without curls or curves just like her body. Her nose is long and straight, and so is her jaw. Other than her slenderness and the purposeful unkempt state of her bangs, Aelei is virtually unremarkable to a passing crowd. Her skin is pale, with very few blemishes or defining marks, she wears the standard padawan attire, and her hair is an equally unremarkable shade of brown.
Birth place: Alpheridies
Faction: Jedi
Rank: Padawan
Bio:
Alpheridies
Aelei remembers her mother and father, in fact she remembers her entire family, although she probably shouldn't—she remembers the feeling of her mother's aura and she remembers eavesdropped bits of conversation, and she remembers the day she was taken to the Jedi.
Aelei was born alongside her brother Orrin to a relatively wealthy young woman by the name of Niela Lerr, the heir to a merchant family. Her father went by the name of Robin Culu, but this name could easily have been a forgery as he was not considered to be a trustworthy, savory character by anyone who knew him. He and Aelei's mother were unmarried and largely unattached, an arrangement he was more than happy with as it allowed him certain implied liberties including the freedom to come and go as he pleased. Their children had been unplanned and certainly unexpected, Neila had more than enough money, family, friends, houses, to care for children, and how are we supposed to get married? I don't even know your real name! were among the arguments used by Neila in order to coerce her mate to resume his life as if nothing had changed. The true reason for her unwillingness to marry him were clear—class differences. The fact did not bother him. He was not even on the planet when Neila gave birth. Where was he? Probably with one of his other many families, or selling something illegal, or betting on something, or buying something illegal, or something in that vein.
However, the self-named Robin Culu saw his children soon after. He arrived back on Alpheridies two years later where he requested to see his daughter and his son, each a year old, and after which time he never unceremoniously left the planet again.
Early Life
Aelei loved her twin brother. They studied together, ate together, and walked in tandem. They invented games out of nothing—kick the rock, kick the can, and the ever popular hide-and-seek where one of them would lose themselves in a crowd of younglings and the other would have to sense their aura distinctly from the rest of their peers. At age five, they would consciously meld their minds during self-taught meditation and sleep sessions. Although they had separate rooms, they slept in the same bed in order to synchronize their dreams, and in the morning they would wake up together and set off walking in tandem. One would spend hours staring into the other's mind, and vice versa. They knew each other completely. They were each other. They developed such a close bond that it bordered on telepathy, the way one would cry and the other would cry, one would laugh and the other would laugh. They shared emotions and heard each other's thoughts.
After a few months of this behavior, family and friends began to take notice. Orrin and Aelei became OrrinandAelei to their friends, and soon their parents addressed them as such. Instead of calling for an individual twin, they would call out both names, “OrrinanAelei, clean your room!” “OrrinanAelei, time for dinner!” The two children's connection was deep, and almost tangible. The adults in their lives began to sense a strong energy coming from these twins and their bond. Niela and Robin began to test their children; if they punished one, the other would cry, if they rewarded one, the other would be happy, even if the two were across town from each other. Niela suspected that their bond could mean a strong inclination towards the Force, but Robin refused to risk losing his children. An argument irrupted; Niela believed that their children had a “greater” purpose, but Robin didn't care. After an explosive four hours of ad hominem arguments and screaming conjecture, the two decided to quit for the night. When her partner was asleep, Niela collected her children and brought them to Courscant.
Coruscant
Once they arrived on Corscant, though, things began to change. The Jedi generally allowed their bond to grow, but the two were ultimately separated during training sessions in order to encourage independence. This transition was especially hard for them, as they were used to doing everything together from eating to sleeping, and while they spent every free moment together, Jedi training took up most of their time. When each twin began to discover their individual talents, a larger wedge was driven between them. Aelei began to improve her psychic skills, while her handling of the lightsaber suffered. Orrin's form began to improve, but his psychic powers suffered. Almost as if they had completed each other somehow—that was Aelei's opinion. But she could sense that her brother did not feel the same. She sensed a very mild jealousy at the fact she was succeeding where he was failing, despite that the reverse was true for her. This jealousy concerned her, and she communicated this concern with her thoughts and emotions, but for some reason he ignored her. After she expressed this concern, the tiny mental question, “Are you jealous of me? Why?” her brother had stopped all contact with her, psychic and otherwise. Aelei knew her brother was angry with her, but she couldn't understand why. She continued to send him psychic signals, which he ignored, until the day that she confronted him with words. At the end of the conversation Aelei was no longer worried. Orrin had apologized profusely, they touched foreheads and melted their thoughts together. After all, she had felt anger, irritation, jealousy, she had sensed them on others, but they were weightless and dissolved like salt.
While the two of them resumed their friendship, it was different than before. They spent less time together, with separate lessons and separate friends. Aelei could feel Orrin's anger when he failed and his triumphant joy when he succeeded, and every day of training wore her out due to her brother's new rampant emotions. Their master suggested Orrin meditate with his sister every day, like he used to, but both twins were wary of that. Aelei knew Orrin no longer liked the feeling of his twin's mind pressing into his; Aelei knew because she felt the same, she was beginning to feel as if Orrin's thoughts were dark and heavy, like lead crushing her skull. They were no longer doing anything in tandem.
By age ten Aelei had been chosen to become a padawan and Orrin had not. They both knew why; Orrin's mental state was getting progressively worse. Aelei could see thoughts storming behind his eyes, and she caught whispers of them but he was no longer sharing his thoughts and emotions freely with her. She knew he felt intense pressure and loneliness, that was all. Their relationship had changed quickly. They still spent free time together, but Orrin would do nothing Aelei suggested, insisting instead on very fun and exiting things that were either illegal or dangerous. He wanted to use Aelei's telepathy to steal a police cruiser. He wanted to jump off a building and not die. He wanted to learn to shoot a gun, by himself, just to say he did. Aelei wanted to meditate and read braille. Her brother's tenancies were impolite at worst, no cause for worry. Then why was she worrying? He was simply expressing wants. Passionate wants, and passions could fuel so many good things. But they didn't. Aelei spent more and more time inside the Temple, studying, he spent more and more time outside the Temple, doing unknown and probably “fun” things.
At age eleven, Aelei was progressing well as apprentice to Kei Lusai, a Durisian Jedi Knight. Kei was teaching her to trust her senses and clear her mind completely, to listen to the earth. Aelei began to “see” more clearly than she had, making out objects and people beyond her usual scope of thirty feet. She also began to “see” detail; she could tell if an object in front of her was ridged or smooth, rather than only its shape and density. After nearly two years of remaining at the Temple to train, Kei decided it was time for Aelei to begin traveling with her master.
Disastrous First Mission
Aelei's first mission with Kei was simple enough; escort the Rodian
Senator to the planet Dac (Mon Calamari) from his home planet and protect him the entire time. A simple enough mission, but it was a complete disaster. As soon as they boarded the starship, both Kei and Aelei began to get a feeling of impending danger that they clearly expressed to the captain and crew of the tiny unmarked ship. However, scanners indicated that they were not being followed. There were no solar winds or other like turbulence. They were using cloaking technology, the pilot reassured them. Aelei knew that she and her master would be unprepared for whatever was coming, she just knew. It was that impending doom again.
Before the unmarked vessel, cloaked by technology and the Force, could reach its destination, something terrible happened. Suddenly a large ship was approaching at high speeds. It couldn't possibly be anything dangerous though, the crew commented. Precautions had been taken. The senator's vessel was being tailed by protective detail. They had deflector shields and hyperdrive to get away if need be. Everything would be fine. There were also, of course, other armed guards other than the Jedi and her padawan, should the impossible happen.
But the impossible did happen. The massive ship approaching that had appeared out of nowhere began vomiting starfighters into space. Suddenly a whole fleet was on them. Radars were beeping. Lights were flashing. People ran up and down halls in panic. Somehow these attackers had disabled their deflector shields, which meant corruption within ranks. Following orders from the security detail, the ship went into hyperdrive, leaving the security team to handle the starfighters. The mother ship, however, had hyperdrive too. The ship itself was massive, and easily swallowed up their tiny inconspicuous unmarked vessel.
The crew did keep their promise in one aspect: they were well-armed, and did stave off the enemy for quite a while. Kei and Aelei had the Senator between them, light sabers drawn, barricaded in the Senator's quarters between two thin cots for nearly an hour. Aelei took a calming breaths, but her hands were not as steady as they usually were. She knew her psychic skills probably wouldn't make up for her very rudimentary light saber handling. She could deflect lasers like a pro, but she could both hear and sense agony from the other crew members, could feel their deaths, and knew that there should not have been only one Jedi barricaded in those barracks. “You'll be fine,” Kei promised as footsteps thundered closer and closer to the door, “You'll be fine.” But she didn't want to be fine. She wanted everyone to be fine. Aelei could see the people behind the door. Their heavy footsteps made the metal chamber vibrate softly even in the chaos. Five large bodies and four small bodies, three Rodian, one Wookie, the rest human, all densely muscular. One had a lightsaber but was not Jedi or Sith. They were coming in.
The one carrying the lightsaber carved the door open, and another, a huge muscular Wookie, tossed it aside. There was a moment of almost awkward silence, and then the invaders attacked, with lasers and stun rifles. They held off the five for a considerable amount of time, but more came, and they were overtaken and restrained, their light sabers confiscated. As soon as her captors led Aelei the first few steps towards the door she could see the corpses that littered the hall.
When on board the mother ship, they were immediately sent to separate tiny metal cells. Their captors were obvious professionals, and the fact that the Senator, Aelei and Kei weren't dead meant that there was some plan for ransom. The three captives were valuable, Aelei told herself, her hands spread out on the metal walls that caged her. The fact that they were valuable meant that they might be able to stay alive long enough to escape. Or the Republic would pay the ransom. Or, the most logical thing would happen: they would be auctioned off to the highest bidder.
Which was exactly what was going to happen. Aelei didn't know how long she was in that cell, but when she came out her clothes were filthy and she felt weak from lack of nutrients. She spent the time by focusing on nothing, on clearing her mind, but sometimes she would push futilely at the door, claw at the lock, cry out in distress. But as time went on these episodes became fewer and fewer, and soon she felt like she was simply waiting inside a metal box. She was, in a strange way, gaining peace from this experience, learning to truly let go. And then she began to get headaches. That dark, heavy space where her brother used to be felt like it was crushing her skull again. She tried to breathe through these headaches, but nothing helped, and the longer she was inside that cell the worse it got.
Their captor's ship landed on Sernpidal. On the day of their landing, Aelei got a headache, a deep ache, one that traveled from her head to her chest, and she got the feeling that she had just lost something without being aware of it. A guard came to shackle her and escort her outside with the other prisoners: Aelei, the Senator, a former high-ranking Rodian military official that had been among the members of the Senator's protective detail, and a handful of muscular, competent guards Aelei remembered from the ship. Kei wasn't there.
Jeb, the ex-military official, told Aelei what had happened to Kei. She and Jeb would talk through the air vents between their cells, and he could hear everything that happened in Kei's cell and vise versa. Jeb said that the guards had simply taken her away without explanation, and had never brought her back. It wasn't until later that she learned why Kei was taken; multiple parties had purchased the various people held captive on this particular pirate ship, and Kei's buyer, a man whose history intersected with the Durosian Jedi, had paid a high price for her death. Some body part had been harvested as proof. What Aelei also didn't know was that someone had bought her, the Senator, and a few guards as a package and was planning on selling them separately.
A plan of escape was the furthest thing on her mind as they landed in the middle of nowhere on a barren strip of land and where shuffled out into the sun; in fact, she was thinking of nothing at all. Her headache had spread throughout her entire body.
They were stored in a shed, in the middle of nowhere, among mountainous rocks and hardly any green life. While inside the shed, Aelei talked with her fellow captors in hushed tones. Sometimes the guards would watch them by standing inside the shed, vigilant, constant, but other times they would only guard the exits. The captives speculated about why they were still in custody, or not already dead or sold. They talked about plans of escape. They all agreed that these people who were currently holding them were not the mercenaries who had captured them, the professionals who had kept them in small, separate cells to diminish communication. Meanwhile, all those competent, muscular guards were being taken, one by one, out of the shed never to be seen again. This was when escape plans became more urgent in their discussion.
Ultimately, they did escape. After three days they had a perfect plan of attack. However, the plan of attack was not used. They planned to escape at night, under the cover of darkness, when their captors opened their shed to switch shifts watching over them. Carefully planned distractions and ambushes were discussed. Everything changed when one of their jailers showed Aelei his new weapon. It was meant as a taunt, and it worked.
He didn't really have to show her. It was there, dangling from his belt—her master's lightsaber. She could sense Kei's aura on it like fingerprints. And suddenly that dark weight in her head exploded. The two inside-guards were slammed against the wall with a metallic crash with a force she didn't know she was capable of. She tried to summon her master's lightsaber but her headache hurt much sharper now, so she unattached it manually. She felt one of the Senator's guards reach for the laser discarded by one of their unconscious captors. Aelei removed their shackles and cut their way out of the back of the shed and informed them all that she felt the presence of six armed guards, two on either side of the shed and four scattered within a one-hundred-yard radius. The ex-military officer directed Aelei to one guard and the armed captive to the other, and once incapacitated the group of captives confiscated their weapons. They worked as an efficient team against the rest, with Jeb as their leader.
It took them a long time to be rescued; the Republic had records of their party's movements before they were captured, but it took a considerable amount of time to track down the ship that had captured them, let alone to find where it went. During that time, the ex-captives were wandering withing the confines of a small territory that was 'theirs', surviving on the land. Aelei spent her energy scrounging for food to feed the party, and emptying her mind of thoughts, especially the ones occupying that painful space where her brother had been, the space that ached whenever she thought about Kei. It was all grief, and she had never felt it before. Meanwhile, Jeb kept them all alive. He had been stranded without food or water before, he said. He treated Aelei like his padawan, or at least that was her opinion, gave her advice on loss and on how to survive with nothing, but surviving was still difficult. Weeks went by and they all grew thinner. One man died from starvation and exhaustion.
When they were finally rescued, and Aelei was returned to Coruscant, she found that her brother had ran away after being chosen to become a padawn. A search had been made that came up with nothing. The Jedi suspected that he ran away, and no one knew where he was, except Aelei. She could sense a growing darkness in his direction, sick like the feeling she got when she saw her dead master's lightsaber. Their mental link was still strong enough that she could feel his presence somewhere on the planet, doing something evil or illegal or life-threatening. Knowing this, Aelei has become all the more dedicated to her studies and to clearing her mind of the grief she felt losing the two beings closest to her.
Lightsaber: Single-blade, single-phase
Color: Green
Practiced Lightsaber forms:
Shii-Cho-3
Makashi-N/A
Soresu -N/A
Ataru -N/A
Shien / Djem So-N/A
>>Sub-form Backhanded
Niman -N/A
>>Sub-form Jar-kai, or Dual Wield
Juyo-N/A
Double Bladed Combat-N/A
Force-Sensitive Abilities or practices:
Telekinetic: 4
Telepathic: 3
Body: 2
Sense: 4
Protection: 4
Healing: 2
Destruction: 0
Specialized Skills:
Attributes:
Physical Strength: 3
Intelligence: 6
Speed: 4
Leadership: 2
Unarmed: 1
Melee Weapons: N/A
Ranged Weapons: N/A
Force Attunement: +3
RP Sample:
The Jedi Temple, Coruscant
The Jedi had collected her at the landing bay, and as soon as she stepped foot within the Temple she was ushered to the bath, where after she was clean and her hair was combed she was given clothes and food. But after everything she had to face the Council and confess to Kei's death, making it real and tangible. Aelei took a deep breath, letting that sick feeling drip off her like bathwater, exhaling through her mouth and nose. Whatever happened would happen, and Aelei was powerless to stop it. Entropy ruled, not individual wills-Didn't Kei say that once? She also said “You'll be fine,” and so far she had kept her promise.
She wrapped the new, clean clothes around her freshly scrubbed body. She had been informed that a Jedi would come for her to take her before the Council where she would give every detail she remembered from those weeks in captivity and those months ducking between rocks and scrounging for food. Aelei sat down on the floor, crossed her legs, found her center, and hummed softly to herself in an attempt to clear the cobwebs in her mind. Once she began to relax, she realized her heart had been racing without her knowledge or consent, and that there was a pressure, a knot in her mind, being slowly relieved.
After a few seconds, her heart rate was back to normal. The sound of her own chattering thoughts died out in favor of distant spoken words and far-away traffic and Aelei's own breathing. In, out. Her lungs expanded, contracted, and spread their serenity throughout her body, relaxing muscles she hadn't known were tense, tendons she hadn't known were taunt. Gradually her uncertainty faded to mere not knowing. Kei had always told her that life was simple when lived moment by moment. At the mental mention of Kei, her mind seized up yet again with a weak, throbbing pain.
Breathing deeply, Aelei tried to quell the new surge of grief at Kei's memory, her master's mental image, remembered bits of conversation, talk, advice. All organic things died, Aelei would one day die, but could Kei's death had been prevented? Aelei didn't know, and if the Council asked her that question Aelei would only be able to say “I don't know.” She would have the same answer for “why?” or “how?” because although she had some idea “how?” she really didn't know “how?”, because most of the things that had happened were so evil and adult they were over her head, because when the captives were unloaded Kei was not among them and she had only learned “how?” second-hand. Besides, Aelei had more important questions to ask herself. One of the men in Aelei's group had died when they were lost among the rocks, of perhaps exhaustion or heatstroke, but he lagged behind for days, became progressively weaker and weaker until he collapsed under his own body. Why, Aelei would choose to ask herself if she had a seat on the Council, wasn't she exploding with grief over this fallen stranger? Why was only Kei's death so relevant to her emotions? Was it simply because they had known one another? Weren't both lives worthy of equal mourning? And why hadn't Aelei, a frail creature in comparison to the robust ex-security guard, died in the heat of the desert instead?
But Aelei doubted for some reason that the Council would ask her such philosophical questions. In a way, she was glad; the young girl would not have been able to answer any of them, even if she asked them to herself. She sucked in air through her nose and slowly out her mouth, remembering that she was hearing her own thoughts again, noticing that her pulse had again jumped and was softly humming in her chest and throat. Another deep breath and a pure calm washed over her, cold and simple. She tried to think about nothing.
Aelei felt someone approaching, heard the footsteps outside her door. Pulled out of her trance, Aelei calmly collected herself, stood up, and gathered her master's lightsaber she had left on top of her neatly folded dirty clothes. Taking another deep breath, she let the last wisps of anticipation and fear and grief drain out of her. Her headache had diminished, her heart rate had slowed. She was ready to give her recollection of events. There was a knock on the door that vibrated, making her aware of every detail in the wood, every knot and fiber, only for a second. She opened the door for a young Jedi who put a compassionate, warm palm on her shoulder.
“The Council will see you now.”
Race: Miraluka
Age: 13
Height: 5'3”
Weight: 99 lbs
Appearance: Aelei is lanky and thin, her slight weight hiding what would be obvious symptoms of puberty. Nearly all of Aelei is proportioned this way; her hands, fingers and face are all similarly long and slender. Even her hair is long and straight, kept so that her bangs would cover her empty eye sockets, thin and without curls or curves just like her body. Her nose is long and straight, and so is her jaw. Other than her slenderness and the purposeful unkempt state of her bangs, Aelei is virtually unremarkable to a passing crowd. Her skin is pale, with very few blemishes or defining marks, she wears the standard padawan attire, and her hair is an equally unremarkable shade of brown.
Birth place: Alpheridies
Faction: Jedi
Rank: Padawan
Bio:
Alpheridies
Aelei remembers her mother and father, in fact she remembers her entire family, although she probably shouldn't—she remembers the feeling of her mother's aura and she remembers eavesdropped bits of conversation, and she remembers the day she was taken to the Jedi.
Aelei was born alongside her brother Orrin to a relatively wealthy young woman by the name of Niela Lerr, the heir to a merchant family. Her father went by the name of Robin Culu, but this name could easily have been a forgery as he was not considered to be a trustworthy, savory character by anyone who knew him. He and Aelei's mother were unmarried and largely unattached, an arrangement he was more than happy with as it allowed him certain implied liberties including the freedom to come and go as he pleased. Their children had been unplanned and certainly unexpected, Neila had more than enough money, family, friends, houses, to care for children, and how are we supposed to get married? I don't even know your real name! were among the arguments used by Neila in order to coerce her mate to resume his life as if nothing had changed. The true reason for her unwillingness to marry him were clear—class differences. The fact did not bother him. He was not even on the planet when Neila gave birth. Where was he? Probably with one of his other many families, or selling something illegal, or betting on something, or buying something illegal, or something in that vein.
However, the self-named Robin Culu saw his children soon after. He arrived back on Alpheridies two years later where he requested to see his daughter and his son, each a year old, and after which time he never unceremoniously left the planet again.
Early Life
Aelei loved her twin brother. They studied together, ate together, and walked in tandem. They invented games out of nothing—kick the rock, kick the can, and the ever popular hide-and-seek where one of them would lose themselves in a crowd of younglings and the other would have to sense their aura distinctly from the rest of their peers. At age five, they would consciously meld their minds during self-taught meditation and sleep sessions. Although they had separate rooms, they slept in the same bed in order to synchronize their dreams, and in the morning they would wake up together and set off walking in tandem. One would spend hours staring into the other's mind, and vice versa. They knew each other completely. They were each other. They developed such a close bond that it bordered on telepathy, the way one would cry and the other would cry, one would laugh and the other would laugh. They shared emotions and heard each other's thoughts.
After a few months of this behavior, family and friends began to take notice. Orrin and Aelei became OrrinandAelei to their friends, and soon their parents addressed them as such. Instead of calling for an individual twin, they would call out both names, “OrrinanAelei, clean your room!” “OrrinanAelei, time for dinner!” The two children's connection was deep, and almost tangible. The adults in their lives began to sense a strong energy coming from these twins and their bond. Niela and Robin began to test their children; if they punished one, the other would cry, if they rewarded one, the other would be happy, even if the two were across town from each other. Niela suspected that their bond could mean a strong inclination towards the Force, but Robin refused to risk losing his children. An argument irrupted; Niela believed that their children had a “greater” purpose, but Robin didn't care. After an explosive four hours of ad hominem arguments and screaming conjecture, the two decided to quit for the night. When her partner was asleep, Niela collected her children and brought them to Courscant.
Coruscant
Once they arrived on Corscant, though, things began to change. The Jedi generally allowed their bond to grow, but the two were ultimately separated during training sessions in order to encourage independence. This transition was especially hard for them, as they were used to doing everything together from eating to sleeping, and while they spent every free moment together, Jedi training took up most of their time. When each twin began to discover their individual talents, a larger wedge was driven between them. Aelei began to improve her psychic skills, while her handling of the lightsaber suffered. Orrin's form began to improve, but his psychic powers suffered. Almost as if they had completed each other somehow—that was Aelei's opinion. But she could sense that her brother did not feel the same. She sensed a very mild jealousy at the fact she was succeeding where he was failing, despite that the reverse was true for her. This jealousy concerned her, and she communicated this concern with her thoughts and emotions, but for some reason he ignored her. After she expressed this concern, the tiny mental question, “Are you jealous of me? Why?” her brother had stopped all contact with her, psychic and otherwise. Aelei knew her brother was angry with her, but she couldn't understand why. She continued to send him psychic signals, which he ignored, until the day that she confronted him with words. At the end of the conversation Aelei was no longer worried. Orrin had apologized profusely, they touched foreheads and melted their thoughts together. After all, she had felt anger, irritation, jealousy, she had sensed them on others, but they were weightless and dissolved like salt.
While the two of them resumed their friendship, it was different than before. They spent less time together, with separate lessons and separate friends. Aelei could feel Orrin's anger when he failed and his triumphant joy when he succeeded, and every day of training wore her out due to her brother's new rampant emotions. Their master suggested Orrin meditate with his sister every day, like he used to, but both twins were wary of that. Aelei knew Orrin no longer liked the feeling of his twin's mind pressing into his; Aelei knew because she felt the same, she was beginning to feel as if Orrin's thoughts were dark and heavy, like lead crushing her skull. They were no longer doing anything in tandem.
By age ten Aelei had been chosen to become a padawan and Orrin had not. They both knew why; Orrin's mental state was getting progressively worse. Aelei could see thoughts storming behind his eyes, and she caught whispers of them but he was no longer sharing his thoughts and emotions freely with her. She knew he felt intense pressure and loneliness, that was all. Their relationship had changed quickly. They still spent free time together, but Orrin would do nothing Aelei suggested, insisting instead on very fun and exiting things that were either illegal or dangerous. He wanted to use Aelei's telepathy to steal a police cruiser. He wanted to jump off a building and not die. He wanted to learn to shoot a gun, by himself, just to say he did. Aelei wanted to meditate and read braille. Her brother's tenancies were impolite at worst, no cause for worry. Then why was she worrying? He was simply expressing wants. Passionate wants, and passions could fuel so many good things. But they didn't. Aelei spent more and more time inside the Temple, studying, he spent more and more time outside the Temple, doing unknown and probably “fun” things.
At age eleven, Aelei was progressing well as apprentice to Kei Lusai, a Durisian Jedi Knight. Kei was teaching her to trust her senses and clear her mind completely, to listen to the earth. Aelei began to “see” more clearly than she had, making out objects and people beyond her usual scope of thirty feet. She also began to “see” detail; she could tell if an object in front of her was ridged or smooth, rather than only its shape and density. After nearly two years of remaining at the Temple to train, Kei decided it was time for Aelei to begin traveling with her master.
Disastrous First Mission
Aelei's first mission with Kei was simple enough; escort the Rodian
Senator to the planet Dac (Mon Calamari) from his home planet and protect him the entire time. A simple enough mission, but it was a complete disaster. As soon as they boarded the starship, both Kei and Aelei began to get a feeling of impending danger that they clearly expressed to the captain and crew of the tiny unmarked ship. However, scanners indicated that they were not being followed. There were no solar winds or other like turbulence. They were using cloaking technology, the pilot reassured them. Aelei knew that she and her master would be unprepared for whatever was coming, she just knew. It was that impending doom again.
Before the unmarked vessel, cloaked by technology and the Force, could reach its destination, something terrible happened. Suddenly a large ship was approaching at high speeds. It couldn't possibly be anything dangerous though, the crew commented. Precautions had been taken. The senator's vessel was being tailed by protective detail. They had deflector shields and hyperdrive to get away if need be. Everything would be fine. There were also, of course, other armed guards other than the Jedi and her padawan, should the impossible happen.
But the impossible did happen. The massive ship approaching that had appeared out of nowhere began vomiting starfighters into space. Suddenly a whole fleet was on them. Radars were beeping. Lights were flashing. People ran up and down halls in panic. Somehow these attackers had disabled their deflector shields, which meant corruption within ranks. Following orders from the security detail, the ship went into hyperdrive, leaving the security team to handle the starfighters. The mother ship, however, had hyperdrive too. The ship itself was massive, and easily swallowed up their tiny inconspicuous unmarked vessel.
The crew did keep their promise in one aspect: they were well-armed, and did stave off the enemy for quite a while. Kei and Aelei had the Senator between them, light sabers drawn, barricaded in the Senator's quarters between two thin cots for nearly an hour. Aelei took a calming breaths, but her hands were not as steady as they usually were. She knew her psychic skills probably wouldn't make up for her very rudimentary light saber handling. She could deflect lasers like a pro, but she could both hear and sense agony from the other crew members, could feel their deaths, and knew that there should not have been only one Jedi barricaded in those barracks. “You'll be fine,” Kei promised as footsteps thundered closer and closer to the door, “You'll be fine.” But she didn't want to be fine. She wanted everyone to be fine. Aelei could see the people behind the door. Their heavy footsteps made the metal chamber vibrate softly even in the chaos. Five large bodies and four small bodies, three Rodian, one Wookie, the rest human, all densely muscular. One had a lightsaber but was not Jedi or Sith. They were coming in.
The one carrying the lightsaber carved the door open, and another, a huge muscular Wookie, tossed it aside. There was a moment of almost awkward silence, and then the invaders attacked, with lasers and stun rifles. They held off the five for a considerable amount of time, but more came, and they were overtaken and restrained, their light sabers confiscated. As soon as her captors led Aelei the first few steps towards the door she could see the corpses that littered the hall.
When on board the mother ship, they were immediately sent to separate tiny metal cells. Their captors were obvious professionals, and the fact that the Senator, Aelei and Kei weren't dead meant that there was some plan for ransom. The three captives were valuable, Aelei told herself, her hands spread out on the metal walls that caged her. The fact that they were valuable meant that they might be able to stay alive long enough to escape. Or the Republic would pay the ransom. Or, the most logical thing would happen: they would be auctioned off to the highest bidder.
Which was exactly what was going to happen. Aelei didn't know how long she was in that cell, but when she came out her clothes were filthy and she felt weak from lack of nutrients. She spent the time by focusing on nothing, on clearing her mind, but sometimes she would push futilely at the door, claw at the lock, cry out in distress. But as time went on these episodes became fewer and fewer, and soon she felt like she was simply waiting inside a metal box. She was, in a strange way, gaining peace from this experience, learning to truly let go. And then she began to get headaches. That dark, heavy space where her brother used to be felt like it was crushing her skull again. She tried to breathe through these headaches, but nothing helped, and the longer she was inside that cell the worse it got.
Their captor's ship landed on Sernpidal. On the day of their landing, Aelei got a headache, a deep ache, one that traveled from her head to her chest, and she got the feeling that she had just lost something without being aware of it. A guard came to shackle her and escort her outside with the other prisoners: Aelei, the Senator, a former high-ranking Rodian military official that had been among the members of the Senator's protective detail, and a handful of muscular, competent guards Aelei remembered from the ship. Kei wasn't there.
Jeb, the ex-military official, told Aelei what had happened to Kei. She and Jeb would talk through the air vents between their cells, and he could hear everything that happened in Kei's cell and vise versa. Jeb said that the guards had simply taken her away without explanation, and had never brought her back. It wasn't until later that she learned why Kei was taken; multiple parties had purchased the various people held captive on this particular pirate ship, and Kei's buyer, a man whose history intersected with the Durosian Jedi, had paid a high price for her death. Some body part had been harvested as proof. What Aelei also didn't know was that someone had bought her, the Senator, and a few guards as a package and was planning on selling them separately.
A plan of escape was the furthest thing on her mind as they landed in the middle of nowhere on a barren strip of land and where shuffled out into the sun; in fact, she was thinking of nothing at all. Her headache had spread throughout her entire body.
They were stored in a shed, in the middle of nowhere, among mountainous rocks and hardly any green life. While inside the shed, Aelei talked with her fellow captors in hushed tones. Sometimes the guards would watch them by standing inside the shed, vigilant, constant, but other times they would only guard the exits. The captives speculated about why they were still in custody, or not already dead or sold. They talked about plans of escape. They all agreed that these people who were currently holding them were not the mercenaries who had captured them, the professionals who had kept them in small, separate cells to diminish communication. Meanwhile, all those competent, muscular guards were being taken, one by one, out of the shed never to be seen again. This was when escape plans became more urgent in their discussion.
Ultimately, they did escape. After three days they had a perfect plan of attack. However, the plan of attack was not used. They planned to escape at night, under the cover of darkness, when their captors opened their shed to switch shifts watching over them. Carefully planned distractions and ambushes were discussed. Everything changed when one of their jailers showed Aelei his new weapon. It was meant as a taunt, and it worked.
He didn't really have to show her. It was there, dangling from his belt—her master's lightsaber. She could sense Kei's aura on it like fingerprints. And suddenly that dark weight in her head exploded. The two inside-guards were slammed against the wall with a metallic crash with a force she didn't know she was capable of. She tried to summon her master's lightsaber but her headache hurt much sharper now, so she unattached it manually. She felt one of the Senator's guards reach for the laser discarded by one of their unconscious captors. Aelei removed their shackles and cut their way out of the back of the shed and informed them all that she felt the presence of six armed guards, two on either side of the shed and four scattered within a one-hundred-yard radius. The ex-military officer directed Aelei to one guard and the armed captive to the other, and once incapacitated the group of captives confiscated their weapons. They worked as an efficient team against the rest, with Jeb as their leader.
It took them a long time to be rescued; the Republic had records of their party's movements before they were captured, but it took a considerable amount of time to track down the ship that had captured them, let alone to find where it went. During that time, the ex-captives were wandering withing the confines of a small territory that was 'theirs', surviving on the land. Aelei spent her energy scrounging for food to feed the party, and emptying her mind of thoughts, especially the ones occupying that painful space where her brother had been, the space that ached whenever she thought about Kei. It was all grief, and she had never felt it before. Meanwhile, Jeb kept them all alive. He had been stranded without food or water before, he said. He treated Aelei like his padawan, or at least that was her opinion, gave her advice on loss and on how to survive with nothing, but surviving was still difficult. Weeks went by and they all grew thinner. One man died from starvation and exhaustion.
When they were finally rescued, and Aelei was returned to Coruscant, she found that her brother had ran away after being chosen to become a padawn. A search had been made that came up with nothing. The Jedi suspected that he ran away, and no one knew where he was, except Aelei. She could sense a growing darkness in his direction, sick like the feeling she got when she saw her dead master's lightsaber. Their mental link was still strong enough that she could feel his presence somewhere on the planet, doing something evil or illegal or life-threatening. Knowing this, Aelei has become all the more dedicated to her studies and to clearing her mind of the grief she felt losing the two beings closest to her.
Lightsaber: Single-blade, single-phase
Color: Green
Practiced Lightsaber forms:
Shii-Cho-3
Makashi-N/A
Soresu -N/A
Ataru -N/A
Shien / Djem So-N/A
>>Sub-form Backhanded
Niman -N/A
>>Sub-form Jar-kai, or Dual Wield
Juyo-N/A
Double Bladed Combat-N/A
Force-Sensitive Abilities or practices:
Telekinetic: 4
Telepathic: 3
Body: 2
Sense: 4
Protection: 4
Healing: 2
Destruction: 0
Specialized Skills:
Attributes:
Physical Strength: 3
Intelligence: 6
Speed: 4
Leadership: 2
Unarmed: 1
Melee Weapons: N/A
Ranged Weapons: N/A
Force Attunement: +3
RP Sample:
The Jedi Temple, Coruscant
The Jedi had collected her at the landing bay, and as soon as she stepped foot within the Temple she was ushered to the bath, where after she was clean and her hair was combed she was given clothes and food. But after everything she had to face the Council and confess to Kei's death, making it real and tangible. Aelei took a deep breath, letting that sick feeling drip off her like bathwater, exhaling through her mouth and nose. Whatever happened would happen, and Aelei was powerless to stop it. Entropy ruled, not individual wills-Didn't Kei say that once? She also said “You'll be fine,” and so far she had kept her promise.
She wrapped the new, clean clothes around her freshly scrubbed body. She had been informed that a Jedi would come for her to take her before the Council where she would give every detail she remembered from those weeks in captivity and those months ducking between rocks and scrounging for food. Aelei sat down on the floor, crossed her legs, found her center, and hummed softly to herself in an attempt to clear the cobwebs in her mind. Once she began to relax, she realized her heart had been racing without her knowledge or consent, and that there was a pressure, a knot in her mind, being slowly relieved.
After a few seconds, her heart rate was back to normal. The sound of her own chattering thoughts died out in favor of distant spoken words and far-away traffic and Aelei's own breathing. In, out. Her lungs expanded, contracted, and spread their serenity throughout her body, relaxing muscles she hadn't known were tense, tendons she hadn't known were taunt. Gradually her uncertainty faded to mere not knowing. Kei had always told her that life was simple when lived moment by moment. At the mental mention of Kei, her mind seized up yet again with a weak, throbbing pain.
Breathing deeply, Aelei tried to quell the new surge of grief at Kei's memory, her master's mental image, remembered bits of conversation, talk, advice. All organic things died, Aelei would one day die, but could Kei's death had been prevented? Aelei didn't know, and if the Council asked her that question Aelei would only be able to say “I don't know.” She would have the same answer for “why?” or “how?” because although she had some idea “how?” she really didn't know “how?”, because most of the things that had happened were so evil and adult they were over her head, because when the captives were unloaded Kei was not among them and she had only learned “how?” second-hand. Besides, Aelei had more important questions to ask herself. One of the men in Aelei's group had died when they were lost among the rocks, of perhaps exhaustion or heatstroke, but he lagged behind for days, became progressively weaker and weaker until he collapsed under his own body. Why, Aelei would choose to ask herself if she had a seat on the Council, wasn't she exploding with grief over this fallen stranger? Why was only Kei's death so relevant to her emotions? Was it simply because they had known one another? Weren't both lives worthy of equal mourning? And why hadn't Aelei, a frail creature in comparison to the robust ex-security guard, died in the heat of the desert instead?
But Aelei doubted for some reason that the Council would ask her such philosophical questions. In a way, she was glad; the young girl would not have been able to answer any of them, even if she asked them to herself. She sucked in air through her nose and slowly out her mouth, remembering that she was hearing her own thoughts again, noticing that her pulse had again jumped and was softly humming in her chest and throat. Another deep breath and a pure calm washed over her, cold and simple. She tried to think about nothing.
Aelei felt someone approaching, heard the footsteps outside her door. Pulled out of her trance, Aelei calmly collected herself, stood up, and gathered her master's lightsaber she had left on top of her neatly folded dirty clothes. Taking another deep breath, she let the last wisps of anticipation and fear and grief drain out of her. Her headache had diminished, her heart rate had slowed. She was ready to give her recollection of events. There was a knock on the door that vibrated, making her aware of every detail in the wood, every knot and fiber, only for a second. She opened the door for a young Jedi who put a compassionate, warm palm on her shoulder.
“The Council will see you now.”
I made the change about her parents and gave her a better reason for being taken to the Temple, I hope...aaand I couldn't change her status because I think she'd have died during that kidnapping if she wasn't reasonably skilled with a light-saber...I don't know, I'll see what the all-powerful bio-approval-person-Meira says.