[hider=Yerin Kha]
[color=dcb246][center][h3][b]YERIN KHA[/b]
[sup][i]Jedi Knight | Researcher[/i][/sup][/h3][/center][/color]
[center][img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/592462592820379650/847240018211766272/smol_yer_in.jpg[/img]
[i]art by me.[/i][/center]
[color=dcb246][b]Species:[/b][/color] Togruta
[color=dcb246][b]Gender:[/b][/color] Female
[color=dcb246][b]Appearance:[/b][/color]
When most citizens of the Galaxy imagine a Jedi Knight, they imagine a stern pillar of strength with an aura of gravitas. Yet Yerin—with her cheerful demeanor and general lack of cool stoicism—couldn’t break that expectation more if she tried. She is quick to smile and slow to frown; her soft features and her short stature tend to belie her true age. Her cheeks are high and rounded; her lips are full; her brown eyes are large and inquisitive. Yerin walks quickly to compensate for her short strides, carrying herself with quiet poise and a gentle sway in her step.

Though she always carries her lightsaber in the field, Yerin eschews more martial attire in favor of flowing golden robes; she has a penchant for stowing odds and ends in her ample sleeves. The leather vest and belt which she wears over her robes are both tooled with a pattern of interlocking scales. Unusually for a Togruta, she wears shoes: high, soft-soled boots that rise past her knees. As a Jedi, she indulges herself with few luxuries, but her montrals are crowned with a headdress of beads and gilded teeth. The necklace she always wears, a shard of polished akul bone on a simple leather cord, is another gift from home. 

[color=dcb246][b]Personal effects:[/b][/color]
The handle of Yerin’s lightsaber is carved from wood sourced from her homeworld, Shili, and inlaid with akul bone. Its crystal is yellow-green. Like the rest of her few possessions, she cleans it meticulously; to do otherwise would be poor practice for a scientist.

In addition to her lightsaber, she keeps the bare essentials for her research: her datapad, a collection of small tools for extracting samples, and a commlink. Yerin also carries a portfolio where she keeps tiny sterilized samples of flora, bones, shells, and fossils from the worlds she has visited.

[color=dcb246][b]Personality:[/b][/color]
On first acquaintance, Yerin is warm and amiable, even sanguine for a Jedi; she is ever quick to offer a kind word, a listening ear, and a helping hand to those in need. Though she has learned to keep her composure, she is deeply empathetic and has a tendency to take on the woes of the world as if they were her own. She struggles to abide suffering and is particularly sensitive to discord, but internalizes her worry and strife for fear that revealing her emotions would make a poor example for younger and less experienced Jedi. Putting the needs of others—and indeed, the whole Galaxy—before her own is simply her duty; she does not shrink from it.

Her friendly exterior belies a keen and curious intellect. Having long sought to understand the Force through means other than meditation alone, she is quietly proud of her accomplishments as a scholar. However, recent events have caused her confidence to fray; seeds of guilt have begun to grow in her mind. Yerin secretly worries that the Jedi are growing callous and forgetting the importance of compassion; she fears that their obligation to eschew attachments may only exacerbate such a change for the worse.

[color=dcb246][b]View of the Force:[/b][/color]
Yerin sees the Force as a branching river delta whose rushing waters—the lifeblood of the universe—flow through all living beings and all that will live, just how it once flowed through those who lived before.

[color=dcb246][b]Background:[/b][/color]
Born on Shili in the year 205 BBY, Yerin remembers little of her childhood save a constant feeling of warmth and love. Like most Togruta, she was surrounded by family and community since the day she was born. She was taught to revere nature from a young age, for friends and family alike echoed the same teaching: [i]”Through the Force, all living things are interconnected.”[/i] When her Force-sensitivity was discovered, her family sent their beloved daughter off with the Jedi with bittersweet excitement. Yet Yerin was so upset that she hardly spoke for days. Separated from her home and family—the close-knit community that had been her entire world—she felt loneliness for the first time in her life.

Isolation had made her shy and reticent, but Yerin managed to adjust to life at the Jedi Temple. Though she was neither the boldest youngling nor the most naturally athletic, Yerin was curious, clever, and eager to please. Her shyness prompted her to withdraw into her lessons, but all the time spent in silence had taught her to listen well; she quickly came to excel in her studies. Determined to honor the legacy of the Jedi who had come before her, Yerin grew disciplined and strong in the Force, exceeding the expectations of her teachers yet remaining gentle. In time, the quiet, studious girl drew the attention of Ras Sharvil, a Nabooan Jedi Knight who saw that she was keen to learn and took her on as his Padawan. 

Almost immediately after he took her under his wing, Yerin discovered Ras Sharvil was a Jedi Consular and researcher who was willing to let his Padawan be his research assistant. Under his tutelage, she quickly came out of her shell, excitedly rambling about her studies and asking endless questions. Ras often reminded her that knowledge could just as easily be used for evil as for good, telling her that she must take it upon herself to use what she learned to serve justice. He tutored her in combat, but he always insisted that no lightsaber lesson was more important than the study of compassion, honor, and virtue. Yerin, whose hunger for learning bordered on impatience, came to understand him when he took her to his homeworld. 

Though they had visited Naboo to collect Force-sensitive creatures from the swamps, the two Jedi had hardly arrived planetside when they noticed a plume of dark smoke rising from the green earth. “Our mission can wait,” Ras said, “but they cannot.” They approached the wreckage to find that a farmhouse and the terraced field nearby had suffered a crash; the farmers who lived there explained that their home had nearly been destroyed by a Jedi craft whose trajectory went astray, as the pilot had not accounted for the effect of Naboo’s watery core. Yet the two Jedi who had crashed their ship into the farmhouse had insisted that their business was too important to wait; now they were nowhere to be found, leaving the farmers and their family behind to try to pick up the pieces of their livelihood. Instead of proceeding to collect his samples, Ras insisted that he and Yerin stay to clean up the mess that the other Jedi had left behind. Master and Padawan spent a week using the Force to rebuild what they could of the farmers’ home; Yerin visited the nearest Republic outpost for supplies while Ras used the rare Consitor Sato technique to restore the damaged terraces. When he asked her if she was disappointed not to have seen the swamps yet, Yerin could truly say that she had learned something far more important. 

Yerin continued to follow her master as he collected and catalogued Force-sensitive flora and fauna throughout the Galaxy. Ras dreamed of using their findings to create better medicines; Yerin hoped that their discoveries could help see an end to disease and scarcity in the Republic, freeing people throughout the galaxy to chase gentler pursuits instead of having to fight and fear for their survival. Between her journeys and her keen listening, Yerin quickly acquired a penchant for languages; she thought it was only right to try to understand each species in the galaxy on its own terms if she was to study the Force in all living things. As she traveled, she tutored aliens in Basic so they could more easily advocate for themselves in negotiations with the Republic. With a diverse and rigorous education, she grew into a disciplined and diligent scholar, quietly confident in the Force. She passed her Trials and became a Jedi Knight at the relatively young age of twenty-two, only for her former master—fearing that his research would be used for ill—to leave the Jedi Order within a year. 

At first, Ras Sharvil’s departure confused her; she only came to understand his disillusionment after a mission to Kashyyyk years later. Yerin had left the jungle planet with the hope that her research could be returned to the Jedi Archives, where it might inspire young Jedi to treat the world around them with gentleness and compassion. When the Republic seized her findings, she optimistically assumed they would use her work to create antivenoms and other medicines. She was soon invited to a symposium on Coruscant where Republic scientists credited her work in the creation of new bioweapons to be used against the Republic’s enemies in the Outer Rim. Leaving Coruscant in shame, Yerin embarked on a pilgrimage to Ilum—ostensibly to study Force-sensitive cryofauna, but truly out of penitence. Meditating in the barren cold, Yerin realized that she could only redeem herself through action; she has yet to shake off the yoke of shame.
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