(Edited on April 28th for formatting errors)
Name: Keshani
Species/Sex: Human female
Height: 5'4" (average height)
Weight: 140 lbs.
Birthplace: ?? Appeared on front steps of orphanage at the age of 1. No more information ever given.
Birthworld: Bakura
Family Status: Orphaned at the age of 1. Has very faint memories of at some point being loved by someone, but has no real knowledge of what it is like to be part of a "nuclear family". Doesn't know surname. Doesn't know where she was born.
Current Age: 16
Personality / Appearance:
Appearance:
Keshani has dirty blond hair which at this point lays ragged and loose around her shoulders - hard labor prison camps don't leave much time for vanity. Her eyes are a piercing blue, and some have described them as looking as cold as ice.
Having grown up on the streets, Keshani is muscular and strong but thin - always thin, as food has always been hard to come by. Random scars are visible throughout her wiry frame from various run-ins throughout her life so far.
Dexterity 4D
Pickpocket +2
Blaster +1
Dodge +1
Knowledge 2D
Streetwise 4D
Willpower 3D
Death Star Layout 5D
Mechanical 3D
Ground Vehicle Operations 4D
Repulsorlift Operation +2
Perception 3D
Sneak 4D +1
Forgery +1
Hide +1
Strength 2D
Brawling 3D
Stamina +2
Technical 4D
Repulsorlift Repair 5D
Blaster Repair 5D
Armor Repair +1
Computer Programming/Repair +1
Security 5D
Demolitions +1
Move: 10
FP: 1
DSP: 0
CP: 2 + 22 (mission) + 9 (bg) + 2 (Collan) + 1 (Maris) = 36 – 33 (skill upgrades) = 1 +1 (Maris) = 2 cp +6 (Droid factory) = 8 --> adjusted to 10 as per Craig on 9/4 - 2 (Assembling droid army 9/13) = 8 - 2 from.....droid repair? -2 from first aid to Hassle = 4 cps
Background:
The New Sunrise Orphanage
A frazzled, middle-aged, human women opened the front door - presumably to check for the morning news. She was wearing middle class clothing - not new by any means but not threadbare or falling to pieces around her.
She seemed lost in thought and distracted, as if there were not enough hours in the day or money in her pocket to take care of all of the things that she needed to take care of. But she got by. And so did the children she was charged to care for.
To the women's surprise, instead of the morning news on the front doorstep she found a blanket. And in that blanket was nestled an infant - barely a year old by the look of her. The baby was quiet - not crying or fussing, merely lying there. No note or anything was left with the child.
It wasn't the first time such a thing had happened. It certainly wouldn't be the last. But times were getting leaner and the women secretly feared for the children she cared for; that the Orphanage would not be able to remain open for long. But she would do what she could until then...
4 Years Later
What the caretaker at the Orphanage had feared would happen had finally come to be. The orphanage that was the only home Keshani had ever known had closed its doors.
The very young children were transferred elsewhere. But they couldn't find placements for all of them.
Those who were deemed old enough to fend for themselves were left to do so - Keshani, at the ripe old age of 5, included.
A group of them had stuck together for a while, lead by a tough and sullen teenager called Chen. Chen was the sort of kid that others learned to stay away from, and he taught these skills to the kids who stuck with him. But not without a price.
Beings need food for energy, water to stay alive and clothing to protect them from the elements. These things did not come free.
The group of kids who stayed with Chen learned to panhandle and beg - the young ones started out with begging, learning to keep the most pathetic and desperate expressions on their faces (it wasn't hard since they WERE).
As Keshani got older she graduated from begging to stealing. She learned the skill of pick-pocketing and later flat out robbery to get the things they needed.
The learning curve wasn't exactly kind to her. With knowledge came associated costs, and the skills Keshani gained often came at the price of being arrested, beaten, and threatened more times than she could count.
But who wants to keep a kid in prison? So she was always released eventually..
And as she grew she picked up some other skills, as well. She learned how to fix things. She would pick things out of the garbage shoots - things that others saw as broken and no longer useful. First, things that were easy like switchblades that didn't spring open as quickly as their previous owners would have liked due to age or a tool that the circuits had frayed on.
Over time the things she could fix became more complex. One day she laid hands on a blaster. The owner obviously thought it had been damaged beyond repair. But Keshani had hoped...
She had worked at that blaster for a while; stealing tools and other necessary items like fresh powerpacks. Determination drove her work. I'd have a way to fight back, she thought to herself.
After the blaster she started working on things like armor and the like - anything that she could do to help herself to survive and to defend/protect herself against those who would either try to take from her those things that she worked so hard to get for herself or from those who tried to retaliate when she wasn't as successful at stealing things as she liked to have been.
9 Years Later
Going on 14 years, Keshani was becoming comfortable with her life on the streets. Chen had long since moved on, as had a lot of the other kids she had grown up with. But she was now old enough to protect herself and provide for herself. She was turning into a loner and refused to rely on anyone else for help. Too many people had left in her life. That's all people ever do, she often thought to herself. You make yourself vulnerable, let someone in, trust them, and then they go away, leaving you right back where you were with one more hole through whatever passed for your soul.
She did manage to do one successful thing in her life that caused some things to change for the positive - she manage to convince a shop keeper to let her work there repairing things. He didn't exactly pay her, but she learned a lot of things from him. She started working with repulsorlift technology and learned a bit about programming as well.
But after so many years on the street Keshani now was addicted to the lifestyle. She was addicted to being free and not having to abide by the same laws as everyone else. Also, if she was honest, she enjoyed the CHALLENGE of being where she didn't belong and taking that which was not hers.
She worked in the Shop during the day. She learned valuable things. But at night...the nights were hers to feed her addiction.
Breaking into regular homes was easy for her by now. So she looked for harder targets. She wasn't even stealing out of need anymore; more often she would find that she was now stealing out of WANT instead of NEED...
1 Year Later
and one day everything comes back to bite you in the ass..
It was a normal night. Kesh was watching her next mark from afar, waiting for her chance to strike. This time it was what looked like a mansion. But she had been watching it for days. She had everything worked out.
or so she thought.
What she had not counted on was the karking Imperial Officer who was apparently just released on leave.
He had caught her in the act. She had grossly underestimated the job. He was a lieutenant on a big ship somewhere. She hadn't really cared - what was one more person angry at her? What was one more beating or night in lock up? Boy had she been wrong this time.
Apparently 1st Lieutenant Gary had more connections than Kesh had thought possible. Apparently she had pissed him off a bit more than she had counted on.
Next thing she knew she was being restrained and shoved roughly into a Transport. Next thing she knew after that she was alone in a cell somewhere that was very clearly NOT Bakura anymore.
Age 15 - Current Location: Rattatak Prison, Outer Rim
She had no idea where she was. She knew that she was in a prison but other than that had no idea. In some ways things were okay here - they fed her, she was given clean clothes and allowed to shower..
They also had work details. Due to her background of being from Bakura she was put on a detail of making parts for repulsor coils. It wasn't glamorous. It was downright boring. But it wasn't horrible.
After a while, however, she couldn't stand the boredom anymore. She started sneaking around at night when the halls were quiet and the guards were secretly meeting for sabaac games instead of watching their wards.
Sneaking always ended up getting her into trouble, eventually...
She had been sneaking down the hallway scouting out a way to get out of the place, or at LEAST figure out where the place was, when she ran into a Guard coming back from the 'Fresher. Literally. The guard was apparently rushing to get back to his post and wasn't exactly properly dressed when she ran into him. This didn't go over very well. The next day she was shipped out. Again.
Present Day - Age 16. Current Location: Horuz slave camp
Her life had sure changed after that. She had thought her life on the streets had been hard. She had been kidding herself. The streets of Bakura were nothing compared to this new nightmare.
Every day was a new exercise in pain, torture and despair.
Every night was a new exercise in preventing herself from finding some way to just end everything right there; to force herself to tolerate one more day.
There was no privacy, there were no comforts. Food was just enough to make sure the slaves didn't die. But slaves were also replaceable. The very first day she was there she watched as another human slave - a very old human slave - was brutally murdered right before her. He had stumbled in line as he was taking his daily meal and his hand had glanced off of one of the armed guards. The guard chose to interpret this as an assault on him. Moments later there was a blaster hole where the man's chest had just been. She had been forced to help carry his still smoking body away. She hadn't been very hungry after that.
But it wasn't just humans. There were mostly Wookies surrounding her. She had heard rumors about all of the non-wookies being killed right before she had been brought there. She had never met a wookie before. They were strong, and humans were held to the same impossible standards and expectations as the hairy beings. They were encouraged to meet these same expectations by the knowledge of what would happen if they did not.
Kesh curled up in a little ball every night, trying not to let anyone hear her cry. Crying was not acceptable among slaves.
Once she had been there for about a week she got rounded up with a group of slaves and taken off planet. She hadn't known where at first. She had heard rumors of some sort of space platform that some slaves were taken to, but no one really talked much in camp. All she knew was she was pulled aside and told to line up by a ship. You did what you were told on Horuz.
When the transport arrived the slaves onboard were shuffled off and given jobs. Each group of slaves had an overseer and the second you didn't follow orders exactly you were "reminded" to do so. In that first week alone Kesh could count on one hand the number of parts of her body that didn't carry new signs of trauma from the abuse and torture that took place. They enjoyed it, the guards. And sometimes they would even hold competitions to see who could cause the most damage while still keeping the slaves alive. But it didn't matter if they killed the slaves. It was just a lost bet. They were just bodies. Bodies were replaceable.
Kesh settled into a routine with the rest of the slaves on Horuz - 1 week on the station, then 1 week back on the planet. She hated the planet.
The work on the station was at least a little better. Some things that they wanted done actually used some skills she had learned on Bakura. This caused her to be spared some punishment and beatings. Sometimes. Sometimes not. Sometimes it seemed that the fact that she could fix things and program things caused the Overseers to punish her even more. Maybe they could read her mind. Maybe they just had seen it before. Sometimes they seemed to make an example of her, beating her relentlessly for one tiny step out of line - as if warning her that she would never escape, so not to try.
But at least the food was better on the station. And it wasn't just mindless labor. And sometimes, despite the constant supervision by the Guards, she had managed to slip away. Just for a few minutes at a time (any longer and she would be noticed) - enough to at least breathe, and remind herself that EVENTUALLY this nightmare would end. One way or another.
She had managed to escape 3 times so far. The third time she had gotten caught. She had spent a week in Sick Bay after that. Not by choice - because she had too many broken bones to stand or move. They didn't believe in using bacta on slaves. Bacta was too valuable.
She was at her wits end. She would not be broken. She would find a way to be valuable enough to the Overseers that they would spare the beatings. Somehow she would find a way..
