And a here we go. [hr] [Hider=Shakk'arar] [center][img]http://img01.deviantart.net/28d4/i/2014/090/3/f/speedpainting_of_a_twi_lek_by_jack_kaiser-d7cevcn.png[/img][/center] [b]Name[/b]: Shakk'arar/ Shakka Rar [b]Species[/b]: Twi'lek [b]Gender[/b]: Female [b]Age[/b]: 19 [b]Occupation[/b]: Courier [b]Appearance[/b]: Shakka is a relatively small and petite creature to such an extent that the unexpecting may believe that Undercity would swallow her whole. While she is on the smaller side of her species standing at roughly 1.6 meters and just under 45.3 kg. What muscle she does have comes from functionality more than anything else to support a lifestyle revolving around primarily stamina and quick explosive power over pure brute strength and tremendous speed. Her skin is blue in pigmentation with the exact hue varying primarily due to lighting but was most easily described as a light blue in color. Her eyes are dark in color with hints and small motes of a darker orange in the mix. The eyes themselves are hardened to the reality of the world they observed and seem to cast her much older than her nineteen years. She perpetually keeps a mask of boredom upon her face, learning quickly that in the 3030 any signs of emotion can and will be used against you [b]Apparel[/b]: Shakka's clothing was generally considered what some would describe as patchwork in nature. Having little actual credits to spend on import things like food and maybe a warm bed for the night the need for new clothing generally fell to the wayside. So rather than using her credits to buy these articles she would take what she could scavenge from the refuse piles that weren't entirely covered in fecal matter and would break them down and use their fibers to restitch new clothes. The only thing that really stood out was her jacket. Made of sullust leather and lined with wampa fur, in what seemed like forever ago her brother bought after winning his first Swoop Race and wore it on every race afterwards for good luck. Sadly it was the only thing recovered from the crash that killed him. [b]Weapons[/b]: DH-23 "Outback" blaster pistol, A "lovingly used" durasteel truncheon. [b]Equipment[/b]: Credit chip, a half functional personal data pad, some goggles. [b]Skills[/b]: - Shakka like most Twi'lek's especially those of the female gender was more than willing to use the ideas of her species percived sexuaility and beauty to her advantage. - She spent many days of her youth watching her brother work day in and day out on his swoop bike until it reached the point where she just naturally ended up becoming his assistant. Through this she has learned the skills of a mechanic having worked on nothing bigger than a swoop or a speeder, she's unsure if the skills would translate over to bigger vehicles but she would at least know something. - She like most denizens of the Undercity is multilingual being able to speak Basic, Ryl, Lekku and Huttese - She knows her way very well around a Sabacc game. [b]Flaws[/b]: - Shakka has what some people may call a rather large guilt complex. She blames the deaths of all of those close to her on herself even if it was further from the truth. As a result she spends many restless nights looking up at the saturated neon haze above her because staying awake until you passed out was easier than dealing with the nightmares. - She isn't much of a people person not in the does not play well with others sense but more in the very idea of getting close to people again is a terrifying concept for her to even think about. and would rather just have a bunch of acquaintances and contacts rather than full blown friendships. - There was a time when Shakka was young and filled with naïveté about the world. Her head was filled with dreams of heroes, adventures and traveling the galaxy. Turns out you spend long enough down in 3030 and it'll be crushed out of you quicker than a fruit in vacuum. Now she is more of a heavily cynical misanthrope whose general existential despair has turned her life into something of a wreck. - As a double edged sword to her young appearance; people underestimate her but at the same time it also leads to a tendency in others to not take her opinions or views seriously because she's still just a kid. A fact which irritates her to no end. - Being as small as she is while having great speed and acrobatic skill unless she can use pragmatic tactics and get that sucker punch in first, she's not all that useful in a straight up fight being tossed about rather easily. - Shakka also does not have the highest resolve when confronted with violence and well as soon as things start tipping against her favor, she will run away abandoning anybody else to save her own hide. [b]Personality[/b]: As Shakka puts it. "Life's like a big old game of Sabacc, except everybody is a skifting karking ass. Well and instead of playing for money, you're playing for a fleeting sense of a life well spent before you croak as an old person choking on your own spit. So you might as well play the hand you're dealt." This statement more or less defines Shakka's own personal brand of cynicism. You acknowledge that life will take every opportunity to screw you over if it has a chance and that everybody in the entirety of known space is only out for themselves and are probably going to stab you in the back eventually. But despite it all in the end everybody is stuck in the same situation together and so they might as well at least try and have a shred of common decency. She does though carry a deep sense of regret and sadness, her cynical musings and sarcastic remarks hold no bitterness or malice but instead regret and a shadow of despair. There was a time when she was a young girl far away from the constant stench and chaotic blur of the Undercity. A time where she spent her days in the fields helping on her family's farm. These memories which now seem to her to be a million miles away, and a story of a different girl. But life's unrelenting drum beat ever onward and life continued forward. The greens and browns of the farm where replaced with the neon lights pulsing so hard that they hurt your eyes, and dark gray plating stained with a mixture of fluids. Slowly her old world seemed entirely swallowed up and soon she could never go back to how things once were. And this sadness is what slowly eats her apart from the inside, leaving her restless at night and drives her to push others away more often than not permanently out of her life and with it causing more fractures in an already loose foundation. [b]Goals[/b]: Well of course survival is always the thing that pushes her forward. She refuses to just lay down and die like some many others; people like her father and brother died so that she could have a chance at living. But beyond the basics she doesn't' really even attempt to fill her head with goals and dreams knowing that in the end she'll probably just end up disappointing herself. Though having to not worry about having a roof over her head, and being able to wear a new pair of clothes everyday sure does sound nice. [b]Backstory[/b]: The girl known as Shakk'arar was born nineteen years ago (in 28 BBY) on the planet of Agamar in the Mirgoshir system in the Outer Rim along the Braxant Run. Her parents were fringers setting out with what little they had and essentially going bankrupt to get off of Ryloth and try and make a living somewhere safe and peaceful. Much to their joy they found success on Agamar as simple farmers. It was hard work and the economic outcomes weren't all too great but they were happy and that was what mattered to them. Shakka's brother Vyso came soon after their first successful harvest and five years later Shakka came into the world. These years growing up on Agamar was a relatively mundane and peaceful existence compared to what lay in her future. She had her only schooling during this period in the town about a five mile walk down the road from their farm and when she was not there she was either chasing animals on the farm or helping her parents or as much as a small child could. Though during this time Shakka did learn some very fundamental skills which would come into use later in life. Her mother was insistent on teaching her how to use sew the old fashion way without any electronic or mechanical aide, claiming it to be an essential skill and "that your grandfather would be ashamed in me if you couldn't make your own harness by the age of seven." She also learned the basic use of blaster weaponry from her father. Sure Agamar was a quiet little place where not much seemed to happen but their was still the occasional predator that would prey on livestock and children or the wandering bandit. It was the Outer Rim after all. Though eventually the quiet on Agamar was broken as the galaxy wide Clone Wars began. It started as a murmur at first, remembering how her parents would argue about how the government of Agamar had aligned itself with the Confederacy of Independent System and whether or not they should retreat back to Republic space. But they didn't react because even with politics and stories coming in, the shadow of war seemed so far away. But the specter of death soon came upon them. Late in the first year of the Clone Wars, the Confederacy and Republic began a brutal campaign for supremacy over Agamar and the greater Mirgoshir system. Through the fighting Agamar was brutalized by the effects of orbital bombardments, great land battles and falling debris from space. The planet itself even forced the brunt of attack by the Separatists’ Force Harvester draining the very life from whatever it touched. Eventually after several months and after the planet was littered with dead on both sides, the first quiet in what seemed like an eternity fell over the planet. Agamar had come under Republic control. Like many who lived on the small farming world Shakka's family was displaced and without a home to their own. Though now they were fewer in number, the war having claimed its payment from their lives in the form of Shakka's mother. It turned out their small farm was caught in the middle of a Republic artillery zone due to its close proximity to Separatist anti-aircraft installations. One of the shots from the Republic SPHA fell directly on their house and destroyed nearly half of it in an instant. Her mother was killed before she could even scream. So now down a family member and with nowhere to go, Shakka's father decided to take Shakka and Vyso to Coruscant where his brother worked as a successful trader and businessman. As it turns out though Shakka's uncle was no longer the successful businessman that his father once thought he was. Like the fate of many on Coruscant when her uncle's business started to take a turn for the worse in terms of profits, to keep himself from going bankrupt he struck a deal with the Hutts. A deal which practically sold his company out from underneath him, and took practically everything else he had to pay off this new deal. Afterwards he took to drinking in a hard way and a month before their arrival he was found in the Undercity with a half empty bottle in his hand and a blaster hole in his stomach. Shakka's family of course not able to learn of any of this fighting on Agmar and the jamming of all outward communications. So now without any financial support, home, or any real place to cushion their fall the trio was left on Coruscant. A city already filled to the brim with people and filling more by the day as more refugees from the war fled coreward. They like most of the destitute and forgotten found their way to the Undercity where their father found work as a common day laborer at a construction site and Shakka and Vyso basically began taking care of one another as best as they could. The Clone Wars came and they went and the Galactic Republic was replaced with an Empire but not much changed in the undercity it persisted as always. And the small family continued their existence. Finally about five years later in 17 BBY, a tragic construction accident occurred and several hundred pounds of metal plating fell atop of Shakka and Vyso's father and after five days and nights of agonizing pain he succumbed to his injuries. Vyso now 16 became the prime source of income for the pair and through a friend of a friend he became a swoop bike racer in the old Coruscant circuit, one of the oldest in the galaxy and one of the most dangerous if not because of the track itself which had a habit of climbing drivers lives on its sudden drops and sharp turns but do to the cutthroat nature of the undercity and how it bled into Swoop racing. After losing five times in a row with the last of their credits that their father had left them before he died Vyso entered one final race and won. With that victory he earned triple of what it would of taken their father weeks to earn all in the span of maybe an hour. After that Vyso kept on racing and kept on winning and things began to look good for him and Shakka for the first time in awhile. They could afford food, a place to sleep and still had some money left over but following the trend of things this happiness could not last. Three years later in 14 BBY it all came tumbling down once more. Vyso was at the top of his game and was winning race, after race. He had become something of a minor celebrity down in the Undercity. He was cocky, arrogant, attractive and good at what he does everything you wanted in a guy to root for and betting for Vyso to win was always a safe bet. But this fame drew the attention of certain criminal factors within the city and one such group politely bribed Vyso with a large sum of credits to throw a championship race, so that their boss could win a very large sum of money. Vyso always one with pride in his heart and clouding his mind, denied their request and handily won the race. For his disservice before his next race, enemy agents sabotaged his swoop and caused the engine to overload midrace and for the swoop to explode in a sizable explosion. In many ways Vyso's death was the straw that broke the Bantha's back for Shakka. Before then through all the other tragedies that befell them Vyso refuses to let her fall to despair. Through sheer force of personality and persistence he prevented his younger sister from just giving hope. Now he was dead and nothing was there to brace herself when she fell. For the first few months she did nothing really but hide away in their apartment spending what money they had left to pay for the rent. But beside that she just sat alone nearly starving to death and unsure of what she was supposed to do know that she was alone. She was fourteen years of age by this point. Eventually though the money ran out and the landlord took the first chance to kick Shakka out that he could. With the Empire's Human High Culture beliefs being expressed daily even landlords that held non-human tenentes above a certain level in the Undercity were charged heavily with fees until they kicked out the aliens from their establishment. Now forced upon the street, she was no longer able to hide away from the world and had to at least find a way to sustain herself. Eventually she fell deeper and deeper into the Undercity before she finally came to Level 3030. 3030 might have been a scum hole but nobody cared who you were, they only cared about what you could do for them. So Shakka took on a series of odd jobs for the next couple of years doing whatever payed, some of it less morally degrading than others. But you didn't complain about what you had to do, you did it so that you could survive. Eventually though at the beginning of her seventeenth year she found more consistent work. The job was working as a courier or as she put it a "delivery girl, except ten times as dangerous and you're usually handling either sensitive information or enough illicit substances to get all of 3030 high for a solid twenty minutes." She did'nt work for anyone in particular but most of her work came from the Stars and the Sirens though smaller gangs and others needing their goods to arrive securely at a location occasionally sought her out. The very nature of her delivering these usually high value packages ended up getting her in more trouble than it was worth on occasions and she learned pretty quick the best nooks and crannies for her to avoid trouble altogether because she wasn't exactly what you would call the best in a fight. The pay was not great of course especially for the danger involved barely enough to afford a meal on most days because as an independent she had little true purchase in 3030 and she could easily be replaced. But it was enough to scrape by on the day to day and through her work she had found enough ports in the storm to hide away when the time came to sleep. Day to day living was tough and everyday another adventure that she would rather not go on. But you did what you had to do. The year is now 9 BBY, the Empire holds near total control over the galaxy and only faint murmurs of discontent can be heard before they are silenced by Imperial Intelligence. Yet in the Undercity a certain permanence exists beneath the mixture of grime, dirt and heavy neon. Nothing ever changes, the rich will continue to get richer and the poor will be crushed underneath their boots. And among this squabble and degradation, a Twi'lek girl keeps her head down and tries to complete her deliveries on time. She's not afraid of the future and she knows one of these days her luck is going to run out, but before that day came well there was always another round of Sabacc to play. [/hider]