Post by Keilara on Jun 5, 2009 19:12:01 GMT -5
Name: Melleriana Quest
Race: Human
Age: 21
Height: 5’7”
Weight: 140lbs
Appearance: Ana is normal human height, with a fair complexion. Her face usually has an expression of intense but happy concentration when she is working or interested confusion when she interacts with people as she doesn't understand people well and is constantly trying to learn them. Her hair is mid-back length and sandy blonde; she has hazel eyes. Her hands are soft and feminine though her fingers are calloused and she has small scars from nicks and cuts made while she works with machinery, wiring and metal. At the end of every month she can be seen with various bruises on her exposed skin and any number of them on the parts hidden by her clothing.
Birth place: Tatooine/ Mos Espa
Occupation: slave/ mechanic
Bio: Melleriana, commonly known as Ana, was born the sole child to a moisture farming couple on the desert planet of Tatooine. Though in fair conditions they were within traveling distance of Mos Espa, a sandstorm the day her mother went into labor prevented them from getting the medical help they needed when she started experiencing complications with the delivery. Devastated by the loss of his wife, her father shunned the baby, purchasing a B4-D4 protocol droid and putting it in charge of her care.
Not lacking love for his daughter, simply unable to look at what he equated with causing his wife’s death, he spent the credits he and his wife had been saving and had built onto his home her own small house like space. Whenever possible he upgraded her nanny/protocol droid so that it could continue to meet her needs and he had the droid report her activities nightly. He never forgot her birthday, always making sure there was a gift at her table though it was rarely anything much.
Ana, in her younger years, never saw anything wrong with this. Her droid, named Geegee, took care of all her physical needs, teaching her first how to speak. Ana had a tendency to babble questions at her care-taker and Geegee, not being programmed in baby-speak, would answer back at the child in full sentences asking her to please repeat what she had said. The little girl learned words from listening to the droid. Any time a need of Ana's was met it was met with statement of what was being done, so the small girl was always told what she was being given and sometimes why.
Geegee had been told to tell her whenever she asked that both her parents were busy traveling to other planets, and as long as she was a good girl they would find time to come see her. This issue didn't arise till one morning when 4 year old Ana asked where Geegee came from. The answer, that Ana's father had purchased her and put her in charge of Ana, naturally spurred a question of where Ana came from and where her father and mother were. When this was mentioned to her father, he instructed the droid to begin giving her appropriate instruction or schooling. Her father nightly received from the droid examples of little Ana's hen-scratched letters and numbers, and child-like drawings.
She was a sweet though spunky child, fond of puzzles and building things with components left over from repairs done on the farming equipment that she found during her daily walk with her droid. When she was 5, she put together some bits of pipe and make a stick figure like replica of Geegee. In keep with it’s orders, the droid showed the replica to her father and for the first time he felt a small swelling of fatherly pride. He spent the next few months gathering supplies for her birthday, whenever he had a tool that was near worn down rather than cast it out he set it aside for her and on her 6th birthday, Ana woke up to a small tool set and the components to make a toy. Her father had programmed her droid with the directions to build it and instructions that Ana wasn’t to spend more than 4 hours a day working on building her gift.
For the first few weeks Ana threw a fit every time Geegee tried to get her out of her rooms or do lessons. The normally sweet tempered child put her poor droid into fits with her refusals to leave. It was only after becoming so frustrated after constantly working on it and throwing the toy and all it’s pieces at a wall, that she agreed to step outside for some fresh air. Feeling refreshed when they returned from their walk, the small girl picked up all the pieces and put them in the corner they sat in at night and never argued again when her nanny said it was time to go for a walk.
Their walks about the moisture farm gave Ana, if not outright interaction with real individuals, at least the site and sounds of them. Her father had a couple of workers, and they would shout and holler to her, waving as she walked by. The small girl, however, never interacted with her father. As her walks were generally at about the same time everyday, he would disappear into his house and wait till after he had heard her front door open and close signaling her return to her half of the house before venturing out again.
The build-able gifts became a yearly tradition. It took almost the entire year for the young girl to finish that first present and a mere 6 weeks before her 7th birthday she completed it and it was with pride that her father left her next gift on her birthday. The gifts grew progressively more difficult, but as their distance from Mos Espa inhibited her ability to make friends she had the time to spend on them.
By the age of ten, her father felt she was safe enough to try a low level rocket. She was so excited that once again she spent as much time as she could stand on it and finished within 6 months. And, she was so excited she didn’t check over what she built, instead she ran out the door to a flat patch of ground and set it off. It exploded, giving her a nice sunburn on her face and singeing off part of her hair. Furious with herself, she kicked the rocket and stormed back into the house.
In typical determined fashion, Ana began recollecting the components to rebuild the rocket and as she built it this time she paid close attention to the details of how she was instructed to build it. She was not a child prone to mindlessly accepting instruction and after the years of putting together machinery by direction she was beginning to feel the urge to put her own spin on things.
For her 13th birthday her father salvaged an ASP-series labor droid and the parts needed to repair it, as well as a schematic for the droid, leaving it in the middle of her floor for her to find when she woke up. She was thrilled and spent the day reading the schematic.
As the sun went down a huge sandstorm blew in. Though they were a common occurrence on Tatooine this time Ana was overcome by a sense of foreboding, and turned on all the lights in her house as the natural light outside dimmed. Her father sat, as was his custom, in his kitchen nursing a glass of Dodbri whiskey as the wind whistled outside.
Ana, as the storm raged had fallen into a troubled sleep in the middle of her floor, curled around the schematic when a loud crash woke her. Running to the door she looked out and saw the blurry figure of a man rush out into the storm. Quickly she sent Geegee out to get him watching in horror as he collapsed and disappeared from her sight in the swirling sands. Moments later the droid returned, clumsily dragging the limp body. Ana laid him out on her floor and ran for a cup of water when her father weakly whispered her name. She ran to his side and knelt next to him.
With his final words, Ana’s father shattered her world. For the rest of her life she would hear him say she looked like her mother, feel his hand brush her cheek and listen to him heave his last breath and know she had never had the opportunity to get to know either. The stunned girl turned to the only parent she had known and asked Geegee what she should do. In typical droid fashion Geegee told her it was custom to bury the dead, as that's what he was and gave her the basic directions of how to achieve that goal. Emotions were completely foreign to Ana, and though she felt a small tugging at her heart as she watched him buried by the workers he had employed, she shed no tears. Geegee had explained that this was the life cycle. It simply was what it was.
For the first few months after her fathers death, Ana’s life didn’t truly change much. He hadn’t been a active part of her life to begin with, so his being gone was more a psychological hit than it affected her physical life. She maintained what had become her status quo; a few hours building her latest gift and then a walk over the moisture farm for exercise. About half way through the year she started noticing on her walks that parts of the machinery were falling off and with a startling realization that they were hers now and she could tinker with them, she set about to take one apart and learn how they worked so she could do maintenance.
That her family was completely gone didn’t really and truly set in till her 14 birthday when she awoke with the joyous expectation of seeing her new gift and instead was met with another bright and hot day.
2 months into her 14th year she received visitors. An older husband and wife, clients of her father, had asked him to take a look at and see if he could come up with an improvement on a schematic for a moisture vaporator and then asked him to design it. He asked for a year. When it passed and they didn’t hear from him they became concerned and traveled out to where he had mentioned his farm was. They came across the relatively abandoned moisture farm and Ana out working on a vaporator in the heat.
The young teen was startled by the sudden appearance of people as she’d had no interaction with living beings most of her life. In the moments as she stood staring silently at the people who had shown up at her figurative doorstep, she realized the genius behind having been cared for by a protocol droid. A blush crept up her cheeks as she stuttered out a welcome wiping the sweat from her face and inadvertently rubbing a streak of oil across her nose.
She invited the two into her home and answered all their questions without hesitation. She told them how her father died, that she really had no idea what she was doing, but she enjoyed repairing the machinery so she did it, no, she had no other family. As she answered each of their questions so factually and without obvious care the woman became more and more horrified. They stayed a few hours with Ana and as they left the wife promised that they would return to check on her in a months time. Ana shrugged but accepted- she didn’t understand the emotion she heard in the woman’s voice.
When they returned about a month later they came with an offer for the young girl. The Lanor’s owned a repair shop and in exchange for her working there as a mechanic they had a spar room she could stay in. The thought of leaving Ana alone on the moisture farm had bothered both and this seemed a reasonable solution. It took Ana only moments to make her decision. While she had never traveled away from the farm, she was open to new adventures and they had offered her the opportunity to look at new machines and learn new things. She had one condition, that she be allowed to bring Geegee and her last present Asp with her. The Lanor’s agreed easily and without another seconds’ hesitation Ana packed her things and ordered the droids to come with her.
Adjusting to life around other lifeforms was challenging for the teen. Ana had spent so long as an individual without any outside influences that she often came off as rude or pregnant dogy to others, especially those of her same age. Reading tone of voice was something she struggled with during the first year she spent with the Lanors. She was not one to keep quiet even around people she didn’t know and would often pipe up in conversations and tell people they were wrong about how such and so component worked and that it was better utilized in this way. If they challenged what she said she happily showed them how it was she was right.
Gus Lanor, after watching her work on various projects for him decided she would do best tinkering with pod racers and set her up with another mechanic friend of his, Steven Dragbolt, to apprentice with. She loved it. Ana woke every morning with a fresh excitement for her day working on podracers. For her first year she was only allowed to watch as the engines were repaired and was quizzed nightly on the basic parts that composed a pod racer engine then on how they were put together, and lastly how they worked.
Her second year, at age 17, she was allowed to physically handle and exam the parts as engines were repaired and Dragbolt would engage her in minor theory discussions such as, if he tweaked one section what would it affect directly and indirectly and what would the end result be.
Outside of her job and the Lanor’s though, Ana stayed mostly to herself. Though she was around people constantly and could easily hold conversations, she kept herself emotionally closed off from people and was easily startled. And when startled it was best whoever did the startling ducked. The first time Dragbolt startled her she was at the Lanor’s in the shop working on a droid she was building and he tapped her on the shoulder. Ana jumped into the air and spun around lashing out with her hydrospanner and nearly catching him in the head. She didn’t understand the weird feeling that came over her as he laughed and caught her hand while asking her what she was working on.
As her education as a pod racer mechanic continued, so her friendship with Dragbolt progressed and by the time she turned 19 they were inseparable and she was considering moving from the Lanor’s to Dragbolt’s since the two would be up till all hours of the morning discussing engine theory and tinkering with his personal pod racer. Ana found him strange, but enjoyed being around him and she appreciated his friendship. She just didn’t understand why he continued to startle her. She always felt badly when she threw something at him or whacked him in the head because he had come up behind her and tapped her or poked her. And she disliked the weird fluttery feeling she would get when he would catch her hand and smile at her but she knew she wanted to be around him so at 20 she packed up her things and ordered Geegee and Asp to follow her to Dragbolts.
Ana and Steven had worked for two years on his podracer by the time she moved in and the test runs he had made with it had impressed them both. Taken the small funds they had each set aside, they paid the entrance fee for a small pod race and Dragbolt began his career as a podracer with Ana as his personal mechanic.
He did surprisingly well, won far more than he lost and soon became cocky. A big race was coming up and he wanted to enter in it but they lacked the funds so, using his shop as collateral, he took out a loan from a representative of Prello the Hutt. And he didn’t tell Ana. It was supposed to be a surprise, he would go to the race, win, and come home with the winnings. It was not supposed to turn into a tragedy.
Ana absolutely believed Dragbolt when he told her he was going to be out to Mos Eisley to barter for some better equipment. It was a fair journey and she knew it would take him about 4 days to go and make it back. The four days passed and he didn’t return home, but Ana wasn’t worried. Depending on how his bartering went she could accept it taking a bit longer. On the 5th night, she was standing outside their shop, taking down the shades and closing up for the night when someone startled her. Reflexively, she grabbed a nearby pole and tried to lash out only to find herself shoved into a wall face first.
Ana struggled fiercely, an overwhelming panic flashing through her. The man who was pinning her to the side of the building let out a grunt of frustration and setting his blaster to stun, shot her. Ana woke to her hands bound behind her back, her eyes blearily focus on a swarthy looking man sitting at her table and the sounds of people rummaging through the shop. The man laughed at her as she struggled to free herself fairly calmly, sounding as confused as she was telling him that she felt uncomfortable and the shop was closed.
The man stood and walked towards her and she instinctually felt warning bells go off in her head, though there was nothing obvious in the actions that she could pinpoint as worrisome till he stretched out a hand and ran a finger down her cheek. Suddenly her heart started beating frantically and when his hand shot up and grabbed her by the hair she fought. She fought with everything she had as he laughed and dragged her out of the room.
The next day, beaten, bruised and sore, she thought back to his words as he walked out of her house telling her that Dragbolt was gone, dead... incinerated on the track. That everything she made now belonged to a Hutt, and that he would be back in a month. She shuddered before bursting into tears. Something was horribly wrong with her, she just wished she knew what. She felt as though when the man left he had taken something with him. Something she knew she could never get back.
It took a day or so, but eventually she felt well enough to drag herself out of bed and reopen the shop. Logically, she was aware her life was now the property of some Hutt who lived in Mos Eisley. She knew all her profits would go to this Hutt. She knew Dragbolt would never come through the front door again, never stop her hand from connecting a hydrospanner with his head, never make that fluttering feeling appear in her stomach again. Whenever these thoughts would flutter through her head her hands would shake and she would look at them curiously. She was learning all sorts of things about emotions and people, none of them good.
The first month the man came again, he never told her his name. She had learned from their first encounter that when he walked towards her bad things would happen and so when he circled around the table she’d placed between them and set her earnings on she picked up the nearest thing and threw it at his head. It missed so she grabbed something else, anything she could get her hands on flew at his head to keep him away. She failed.
She noticed that as that month passed, that for some reason she felt unclean and it made her not want to meet the eyes of her customers as they dropped off their things for repair. She asked Geegee about it and the droid told her it was an emotion known as shame.
The next month when he came she had Asp standing outside the door holding the money. She heard him laugh and jumped, backing far into a dark corner as he smashed the small droid into the door breaking it open. That month she asked Geegee why the other people in their neighborhood wouldn’t look at her for the first few days after the man came... Geegee answered as only a droid can that they were ashamed. Ana found it interesting that everyone seemed to share that feeling when the man came.
Month after month passed as Ana tried different ways to escape him. At one point she scheduled a trip to Mos Eisley to go barter for better parts when he was supposed to come, but doing his rounds there he over-heard that she was coming and simply waited for her there and then paid her a visit in Mos Espa a few weeks later to collect her earnings.
Ana was beginning to despair. Her 22nd birthday was approaching. Though she still continued to fight her energy was waning. The only solace she found was when she could bury herself in her work. She understood droids, she understood machines. But she wondered if she would ever be free.
Attributes:
Physical Strength: 3
Intelligence: 6
Speed: 2
Leadership: 1
Unarmed: 2
Anaee Weapons: 1 (I give her a one for the hydrospanner)
Ranged Weapons: 0
Alignment: 02
RP Sample:
Ana dragged her body out of bed, stiff and sore. With her typically methodical way of dealing with one of his visits, she sat at her table and cleaned out the scrapes he left hissing as the antiseptic stung.
She swiped the cleanser across the last wound and closed the container with a sigh. She knew she was smarter than this. She’d been told by everyone she was smart. Ana crossed her arms on the table and dropped her head on them.
She lifted her head and her eyes fell on the splintered door. Tears welled in her eyes. There was one more way of making that man not come for her that was gone. She could in no way afford to replace it. Her eyes trailed along the floor and fell on Asp. With a gasp she leapt up from the chair and ran to where he lay, parts and pieces scattered and smashed along the floor.
Lifting his tiny 3 foot body into her arms, she carried him to the work shop and returned to pick up all the small pieces, her tears slipping silently down her cheeks. Standing by the work table with all his components laid out she felt an odd urge to curl up into a ball and just wail.
“I’m sorry Asp. I should not have put you outside to deal with the man. He has broken you and it will take me a long while to fix you.”
She smiled softly through her tears as she lightly brushed her fingers down Asp’s casing.
“But maybe I can salvage that processor and get you a new personality.”
A quiet shuffling back in the main house alerted Ana that Geegee had powered on and was beginning meal preparations. Wincing Ana rolled her shoulders, that man had really worn her down last night. She felt like her shoulders had old worn gears in need of a good oiling in them. She turned and walked back into the house. It was a new day and the shop would need to be opened. Routines must be kept to, with any luck she could earn extra money this month and then the man wouldn’t hurt her when he came next.
Race: Human
Age: 21
Height: 5’7”
Weight: 140lbs
Appearance: Ana is normal human height, with a fair complexion. Her face usually has an expression of intense but happy concentration when she is working or interested confusion when she interacts with people as she doesn't understand people well and is constantly trying to learn them. Her hair is mid-back length and sandy blonde; she has hazel eyes. Her hands are soft and feminine though her fingers are calloused and she has small scars from nicks and cuts made while she works with machinery, wiring and metal. At the end of every month she can be seen with various bruises on her exposed skin and any number of them on the parts hidden by her clothing.
Birth place: Tatooine/ Mos Espa
Occupation: slave/ mechanic
Bio: Melleriana, commonly known as Ana, was born the sole child to a moisture farming couple on the desert planet of Tatooine. Though in fair conditions they were within traveling distance of Mos Espa, a sandstorm the day her mother went into labor prevented them from getting the medical help they needed when she started experiencing complications with the delivery. Devastated by the loss of his wife, her father shunned the baby, purchasing a B4-D4 protocol droid and putting it in charge of her care.
Not lacking love for his daughter, simply unable to look at what he equated with causing his wife’s death, he spent the credits he and his wife had been saving and had built onto his home her own small house like space. Whenever possible he upgraded her nanny/protocol droid so that it could continue to meet her needs and he had the droid report her activities nightly. He never forgot her birthday, always making sure there was a gift at her table though it was rarely anything much.
Ana, in her younger years, never saw anything wrong with this. Her droid, named Geegee, took care of all her physical needs, teaching her first how to speak. Ana had a tendency to babble questions at her care-taker and Geegee, not being programmed in baby-speak, would answer back at the child in full sentences asking her to please repeat what she had said. The little girl learned words from listening to the droid. Any time a need of Ana's was met it was met with statement of what was being done, so the small girl was always told what she was being given and sometimes why.
Geegee had been told to tell her whenever she asked that both her parents were busy traveling to other planets, and as long as she was a good girl they would find time to come see her. This issue didn't arise till one morning when 4 year old Ana asked where Geegee came from. The answer, that Ana's father had purchased her and put her in charge of Ana, naturally spurred a question of where Ana came from and where her father and mother were. When this was mentioned to her father, he instructed the droid to begin giving her appropriate instruction or schooling. Her father nightly received from the droid examples of little Ana's hen-scratched letters and numbers, and child-like drawings.
She was a sweet though spunky child, fond of puzzles and building things with components left over from repairs done on the farming equipment that she found during her daily walk with her droid. When she was 5, she put together some bits of pipe and make a stick figure like replica of Geegee. In keep with it’s orders, the droid showed the replica to her father and for the first time he felt a small swelling of fatherly pride. He spent the next few months gathering supplies for her birthday, whenever he had a tool that was near worn down rather than cast it out he set it aside for her and on her 6th birthday, Ana woke up to a small tool set and the components to make a toy. Her father had programmed her droid with the directions to build it and instructions that Ana wasn’t to spend more than 4 hours a day working on building her gift.
For the first few weeks Ana threw a fit every time Geegee tried to get her out of her rooms or do lessons. The normally sweet tempered child put her poor droid into fits with her refusals to leave. It was only after becoming so frustrated after constantly working on it and throwing the toy and all it’s pieces at a wall, that she agreed to step outside for some fresh air. Feeling refreshed when they returned from their walk, the small girl picked up all the pieces and put them in the corner they sat in at night and never argued again when her nanny said it was time to go for a walk.
Their walks about the moisture farm gave Ana, if not outright interaction with real individuals, at least the site and sounds of them. Her father had a couple of workers, and they would shout and holler to her, waving as she walked by. The small girl, however, never interacted with her father. As her walks were generally at about the same time everyday, he would disappear into his house and wait till after he had heard her front door open and close signaling her return to her half of the house before venturing out again.
The build-able gifts became a yearly tradition. It took almost the entire year for the young girl to finish that first present and a mere 6 weeks before her 7th birthday she completed it and it was with pride that her father left her next gift on her birthday. The gifts grew progressively more difficult, but as their distance from Mos Espa inhibited her ability to make friends she had the time to spend on them.
By the age of ten, her father felt she was safe enough to try a low level rocket. She was so excited that once again she spent as much time as she could stand on it and finished within 6 months. And, she was so excited she didn’t check over what she built, instead she ran out the door to a flat patch of ground and set it off. It exploded, giving her a nice sunburn on her face and singeing off part of her hair. Furious with herself, she kicked the rocket and stormed back into the house.
In typical determined fashion, Ana began recollecting the components to rebuild the rocket and as she built it this time she paid close attention to the details of how she was instructed to build it. She was not a child prone to mindlessly accepting instruction and after the years of putting together machinery by direction she was beginning to feel the urge to put her own spin on things.
For her 13th birthday her father salvaged an ASP-series labor droid and the parts needed to repair it, as well as a schematic for the droid, leaving it in the middle of her floor for her to find when she woke up. She was thrilled and spent the day reading the schematic.
As the sun went down a huge sandstorm blew in. Though they were a common occurrence on Tatooine this time Ana was overcome by a sense of foreboding, and turned on all the lights in her house as the natural light outside dimmed. Her father sat, as was his custom, in his kitchen nursing a glass of Dodbri whiskey as the wind whistled outside.
Ana, as the storm raged had fallen into a troubled sleep in the middle of her floor, curled around the schematic when a loud crash woke her. Running to the door she looked out and saw the blurry figure of a man rush out into the storm. Quickly she sent Geegee out to get him watching in horror as he collapsed and disappeared from her sight in the swirling sands. Moments later the droid returned, clumsily dragging the limp body. Ana laid him out on her floor and ran for a cup of water when her father weakly whispered her name. She ran to his side and knelt next to him.
With his final words, Ana’s father shattered her world. For the rest of her life she would hear him say she looked like her mother, feel his hand brush her cheek and listen to him heave his last breath and know she had never had the opportunity to get to know either. The stunned girl turned to the only parent she had known and asked Geegee what she should do. In typical droid fashion Geegee told her it was custom to bury the dead, as that's what he was and gave her the basic directions of how to achieve that goal. Emotions were completely foreign to Ana, and though she felt a small tugging at her heart as she watched him buried by the workers he had employed, she shed no tears. Geegee had explained that this was the life cycle. It simply was what it was.
For the first few months after her fathers death, Ana’s life didn’t truly change much. He hadn’t been a active part of her life to begin with, so his being gone was more a psychological hit than it affected her physical life. She maintained what had become her status quo; a few hours building her latest gift and then a walk over the moisture farm for exercise. About half way through the year she started noticing on her walks that parts of the machinery were falling off and with a startling realization that they were hers now and she could tinker with them, she set about to take one apart and learn how they worked so she could do maintenance.
That her family was completely gone didn’t really and truly set in till her 14 birthday when she awoke with the joyous expectation of seeing her new gift and instead was met with another bright and hot day.
2 months into her 14th year she received visitors. An older husband and wife, clients of her father, had asked him to take a look at and see if he could come up with an improvement on a schematic for a moisture vaporator and then asked him to design it. He asked for a year. When it passed and they didn’t hear from him they became concerned and traveled out to where he had mentioned his farm was. They came across the relatively abandoned moisture farm and Ana out working on a vaporator in the heat.
The young teen was startled by the sudden appearance of people as she’d had no interaction with living beings most of her life. In the moments as she stood staring silently at the people who had shown up at her figurative doorstep, she realized the genius behind having been cared for by a protocol droid. A blush crept up her cheeks as she stuttered out a welcome wiping the sweat from her face and inadvertently rubbing a streak of oil across her nose.
She invited the two into her home and answered all their questions without hesitation. She told them how her father died, that she really had no idea what she was doing, but she enjoyed repairing the machinery so she did it, no, she had no other family. As she answered each of their questions so factually and without obvious care the woman became more and more horrified. They stayed a few hours with Ana and as they left the wife promised that they would return to check on her in a months time. Ana shrugged but accepted- she didn’t understand the emotion she heard in the woman’s voice.
When they returned about a month later they came with an offer for the young girl. The Lanor’s owned a repair shop and in exchange for her working there as a mechanic they had a spar room she could stay in. The thought of leaving Ana alone on the moisture farm had bothered both and this seemed a reasonable solution. It took Ana only moments to make her decision. While she had never traveled away from the farm, she was open to new adventures and they had offered her the opportunity to look at new machines and learn new things. She had one condition, that she be allowed to bring Geegee and her last present Asp with her. The Lanor’s agreed easily and without another seconds’ hesitation Ana packed her things and ordered the droids to come with her.
Adjusting to life around other lifeforms was challenging for the teen. Ana had spent so long as an individual without any outside influences that she often came off as rude or pregnant dogy to others, especially those of her same age. Reading tone of voice was something she struggled with during the first year she spent with the Lanors. She was not one to keep quiet even around people she didn’t know and would often pipe up in conversations and tell people they were wrong about how such and so component worked and that it was better utilized in this way. If they challenged what she said she happily showed them how it was she was right.
Gus Lanor, after watching her work on various projects for him decided she would do best tinkering with pod racers and set her up with another mechanic friend of his, Steven Dragbolt, to apprentice with. She loved it. Ana woke every morning with a fresh excitement for her day working on podracers. For her first year she was only allowed to watch as the engines were repaired and was quizzed nightly on the basic parts that composed a pod racer engine then on how they were put together, and lastly how they worked.
Her second year, at age 17, she was allowed to physically handle and exam the parts as engines were repaired and Dragbolt would engage her in minor theory discussions such as, if he tweaked one section what would it affect directly and indirectly and what would the end result be.
Outside of her job and the Lanor’s though, Ana stayed mostly to herself. Though she was around people constantly and could easily hold conversations, she kept herself emotionally closed off from people and was easily startled. And when startled it was best whoever did the startling ducked. The first time Dragbolt startled her she was at the Lanor’s in the shop working on a droid she was building and he tapped her on the shoulder. Ana jumped into the air and spun around lashing out with her hydrospanner and nearly catching him in the head. She didn’t understand the weird feeling that came over her as he laughed and caught her hand while asking her what she was working on.
As her education as a pod racer mechanic continued, so her friendship with Dragbolt progressed and by the time she turned 19 they were inseparable and she was considering moving from the Lanor’s to Dragbolt’s since the two would be up till all hours of the morning discussing engine theory and tinkering with his personal pod racer. Ana found him strange, but enjoyed being around him and she appreciated his friendship. She just didn’t understand why he continued to startle her. She always felt badly when she threw something at him or whacked him in the head because he had come up behind her and tapped her or poked her. And she disliked the weird fluttery feeling she would get when he would catch her hand and smile at her but she knew she wanted to be around him so at 20 she packed up her things and ordered Geegee and Asp to follow her to Dragbolts.
Ana and Steven had worked for two years on his podracer by the time she moved in and the test runs he had made with it had impressed them both. Taken the small funds they had each set aside, they paid the entrance fee for a small pod race and Dragbolt began his career as a podracer with Ana as his personal mechanic.
He did surprisingly well, won far more than he lost and soon became cocky. A big race was coming up and he wanted to enter in it but they lacked the funds so, using his shop as collateral, he took out a loan from a representative of Prello the Hutt. And he didn’t tell Ana. It was supposed to be a surprise, he would go to the race, win, and come home with the winnings. It was not supposed to turn into a tragedy.
Ana absolutely believed Dragbolt when he told her he was going to be out to Mos Eisley to barter for some better equipment. It was a fair journey and she knew it would take him about 4 days to go and make it back. The four days passed and he didn’t return home, but Ana wasn’t worried. Depending on how his bartering went she could accept it taking a bit longer. On the 5th night, she was standing outside their shop, taking down the shades and closing up for the night when someone startled her. Reflexively, she grabbed a nearby pole and tried to lash out only to find herself shoved into a wall face first.
Ana struggled fiercely, an overwhelming panic flashing through her. The man who was pinning her to the side of the building let out a grunt of frustration and setting his blaster to stun, shot her. Ana woke to her hands bound behind her back, her eyes blearily focus on a swarthy looking man sitting at her table and the sounds of people rummaging through the shop. The man laughed at her as she struggled to free herself fairly calmly, sounding as confused as she was telling him that she felt uncomfortable and the shop was closed.
The man stood and walked towards her and she instinctually felt warning bells go off in her head, though there was nothing obvious in the actions that she could pinpoint as worrisome till he stretched out a hand and ran a finger down her cheek. Suddenly her heart started beating frantically and when his hand shot up and grabbed her by the hair she fought. She fought with everything she had as he laughed and dragged her out of the room.
The next day, beaten, bruised and sore, she thought back to his words as he walked out of her house telling her that Dragbolt was gone, dead... incinerated on the track. That everything she made now belonged to a Hutt, and that he would be back in a month. She shuddered before bursting into tears. Something was horribly wrong with her, she just wished she knew what. She felt as though when the man left he had taken something with him. Something she knew she could never get back.
It took a day or so, but eventually she felt well enough to drag herself out of bed and reopen the shop. Logically, she was aware her life was now the property of some Hutt who lived in Mos Eisley. She knew all her profits would go to this Hutt. She knew Dragbolt would never come through the front door again, never stop her hand from connecting a hydrospanner with his head, never make that fluttering feeling appear in her stomach again. Whenever these thoughts would flutter through her head her hands would shake and she would look at them curiously. She was learning all sorts of things about emotions and people, none of them good.
The first month the man came again, he never told her his name. She had learned from their first encounter that when he walked towards her bad things would happen and so when he circled around the table she’d placed between them and set her earnings on she picked up the nearest thing and threw it at his head. It missed so she grabbed something else, anything she could get her hands on flew at his head to keep him away. She failed.
She noticed that as that month passed, that for some reason she felt unclean and it made her not want to meet the eyes of her customers as they dropped off their things for repair. She asked Geegee about it and the droid told her it was an emotion known as shame.
The next month when he came she had Asp standing outside the door holding the money. She heard him laugh and jumped, backing far into a dark corner as he smashed the small droid into the door breaking it open. That month she asked Geegee why the other people in their neighborhood wouldn’t look at her for the first few days after the man came... Geegee answered as only a droid can that they were ashamed. Ana found it interesting that everyone seemed to share that feeling when the man came.
Month after month passed as Ana tried different ways to escape him. At one point she scheduled a trip to Mos Eisley to go barter for better parts when he was supposed to come, but doing his rounds there he over-heard that she was coming and simply waited for her there and then paid her a visit in Mos Espa a few weeks later to collect her earnings.
Ana was beginning to despair. Her 22nd birthday was approaching. Though she still continued to fight her energy was waning. The only solace she found was when she could bury herself in her work. She understood droids, she understood machines. But she wondered if she would ever be free.
Attributes:
Physical Strength: 3
Intelligence: 6
Speed: 2
Leadership: 1
Unarmed: 2
Anaee Weapons: 1 (I give her a one for the hydrospanner)
Ranged Weapons: 0
Alignment: 02
RP Sample:
Ana dragged her body out of bed, stiff and sore. With her typically methodical way of dealing with one of his visits, she sat at her table and cleaned out the scrapes he left hissing as the antiseptic stung.
She swiped the cleanser across the last wound and closed the container with a sigh. She knew she was smarter than this. She’d been told by everyone she was smart. Ana crossed her arms on the table and dropped her head on them.
She lifted her head and her eyes fell on the splintered door. Tears welled in her eyes. There was one more way of making that man not come for her that was gone. She could in no way afford to replace it. Her eyes trailed along the floor and fell on Asp. With a gasp she leapt up from the chair and ran to where he lay, parts and pieces scattered and smashed along the floor.
Lifting his tiny 3 foot body into her arms, she carried him to the work shop and returned to pick up all the small pieces, her tears slipping silently down her cheeks. Standing by the work table with all his components laid out she felt an odd urge to curl up into a ball and just wail.
“I’m sorry Asp. I should not have put you outside to deal with the man. He has broken you and it will take me a long while to fix you.”
She smiled softly through her tears as she lightly brushed her fingers down Asp’s casing.
“But maybe I can salvage that processor and get you a new personality.”
A quiet shuffling back in the main house alerted Ana that Geegee had powered on and was beginning meal preparations. Wincing Ana rolled her shoulders, that man had really worn her down last night. She felt like her shoulders had old worn gears in need of a good oiling in them. She turned and walked back into the house. It was a new day and the shop would need to be opened. Routines must be kept to, with any luck she could earn extra money this month and then the man wouldn’t hurt her when he came next.
