Mrak
Introduction
Full Name: Sre'vkk'lak, "Mrak"
Age: 37
Species: Human
Gender: Male
Force Sensitive: No
Appearance
Description
Mrak stands at a solid 6’1, with lean muscle from strenuous labor and combat on Tatooine. While not overly bulky, his physique shows through his almost total lack of body fat. His right eye is a scarred and ruined mess, permanently shut after a krayt dragon ripped it open with its deadly claws. Mrak keeps this concealed with a simple tan cloth wrapped at an angle around his head. Two more scars from the same incident dig into his left cheek. Mrak’s hands are coarse and callused, his right missing its pinkie finger from the first knuckle up. Most of the Tusken’s body is coated in an ugly layer of scars, burns, and blaster marks.
Mrak wears a combination of durasteel and Stormtrooper armor over his traditional Tusken robes. The metallic durasteel has been salvaged from various suits of armor, rarely matching, and the plastoid composite Stormtrooper plates are painted to blend in with the sand of Tatooine. What the armor doesn’t conceal is wrapped in tan rags, and Mrak’s entire frame is usually obscured by a flowing earth-colored robe.
Characteristics
Personality
Mrak is a reserved man, saving his words for when he is spoken to. His grammar is fine, but the Tusken’s Basic vocabulary is lacking, and he occasionally substitutes Basic words with Tusken. This relative silence is typical of Sand People, a culture where words are generally reserved for important occasions, like stories and rituals, and body language is often substituted for real speech. Since Tusken’s faces are almost always concealed by their masks, Mrak is both very poor at concealing his emotions and reading others, though he does pick up on body language. Mrak is wary of strangers, another characteristic from living among Tusken Raiders. His trust is hard to gain, having lived in a tight knit community for almost his entire life, but once his loyalty is acquired Mrak will die for his allies. Despite his origins as a raider, Mrak is a very honor-bound man. He keeps any promises he makes and stands by his friends. The Tusken is burdened by pride, however, and is unlikely to accept any assistance from others. Any insults directed to him are likely to be met with physical violence, as he is not one for words. Though he lived among other humans for ten years, Mrak is still largely uneasy around his own species. He is uncomfortable being seen or seeing others without being totally covered in clothing, physical contact with someone who isn’t his mate is almost repulsive, and small talk is something he has yet to grasp. Though Mrak knows now that, like many other humans living among the raiders, he is no true Tusken, he still considers himself part of this culture.
After learning of his mate’s likely demise, Mrak’s character took a dark turn. He is driven not by survival, but hate, and though he exhibited restraint when first organizing the Tusken tribes, he is unlikely to be so level-headed now. Mrak’s only wish is to strike against the Empire for killing Jrr'ssk'iis, and he cares little about collateral damage. While previously deeply religious, believing in the traditional customs and gods of Tusken lore, these practices have lost their importance to Mrak in recent years.
Fears & Flaws
Cyclops: Mrak’s right eye has been blinded, so his right side serves as a major weak spot in combat. The missing eye throws off his depth perception, greatly reducing his marksmanship. He is usually restricted to close-range blaster fights where he would use his club anyway.
Aquaphobia: Mrak is totally unable to swim, rarely having seen a pool of water deeper than that in his canteen, and avoids deep water whenever possible.
Luddite: Tuskens are extremely averse to technology, and Mrak is no exception. He is unfamiliar with almost all forms of technology, save for weapons and some old machinery like speeder bikes. Mrak is also unfamiliar with space travel, and will undoubtedly be extremely fearful of it.
Recluse: Cut off from the rest of the universe, Mrak knows almost nothing about other cultures, planets, and politics. He both fears and hates outsiders, and is very resistant to any kind of cultural change. Mrak has only met Tuskens, humans, and to a limited extent Jawas and Hutts, and is wary of any other species. He is almost completely illiterate, as Tuskens don't believe in a written language, preferring to document events with stories told by their shaman.
Talents
Resilient: Living on a planet where everything wants to kill you sometimes has its advantages, namely it makes you hard as nails. Mrak is accustomed to extreme heat and cold thanks to the desert environment and two suns of Tatooine. The Tusken can go for extended periods of time without food or water as well. His pain tolerance is higher than most, and he is more than willing to absorb a few blows in combat to finish an opponent.
Brawler: Mrak has trained with a gaffi stick since he was capable of wielding one, and his expertise with this weapon, among others, gives him a distinct advantage in hand-to-hand combat.
Raider: Despite his heavy-handed approach in combat, Mrak is quite light on his feet, capable of moving without making a sound; he developed this skill when sneaking up on moisture farmers, and later, stormtroopers.
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History
Backstory
Mrak was born on Tatooine to a pair of young moisture farmers, but then, his name was Ilkea Jhoren. When he was barely a year old, the farm was attacked by Tusken Raiders, and his entire family was killed by the Tuskens. Luckily, Ilkea was adopted by a female Tusken on the raid, Ora'jss'ask, who had just lost a young child of her own. Ora substituted her deceased babe with Ilkea, ensuring that none of their tribe knew the true identity of the human amongst their ranks, though many of the Tuskens were unknowingly humans themselves. She named the adopted child Sre’skk’lak and raised him as her own.
As a child, or uli-ah, Mrak proved himself as an exceptional combatant with a gaderfii, even besting a few adults. His skills with a blaster were sub-par, though marksmanship was not a vital part of their culture anyway, save for taking potshots at passing speeders. At 7, Mrak was paired with a bantha cub of the same age and formed the mystical bond that existed between the Raiders and banthas. Life as a Tusken, however, was never easy. He was constantly exposed to pain, violence, and death, not exactly the ideal environment for a child, but it was typical for Tusken Raiders. By the age of 13, Mrak had participated in three raids, killing a colonist on each. They did what they must to survive, although maybe reveling in the violence too much, but Mrak never found it to disturb him much. After eight birthing seasons, or sixteen years, Mrak, like all Tuskens, was required to prove himself in order to become a full member of the tribe. He set out on his bantha into the Jundland Wastes, in search of the krayt dragon. It was here that Mrak earned his place within the tribe by slaying one of these beasts with his gaderfii club, though the dragon badly damaged his right eye. Mrak retrieved the precious dragon pearl from the animal’s gullet and returned to his tribe, hailed as a hero. Mrak was given adult robes, a proper gaderfii staff, his own tent, and a mate. Mrak and the female Tusken, Jrr'ssk'iis, married, slicing their hands open and allowing their blood to mingle, along with the blood of their bantha mounts. The newly married couple then returned to Mrak’s tent, and for the first time since their birth, shed their clothes in the view of another. In Tusken culture, it is strictly forbidden to remove their protective clothing in front of others, except during childbirth and in the privacy of a tent with a mate. Breaking this rule would result in banishment, so no Tusken truly knew what the opposite sex looked like until their marriage night. Although Mrak was a human, and Jrr a true Tusken, neither knew what to expect, so they simply assumed that male and female Tuskens looked radically different. Regardless, the couple still did what most do on the night of their marriage.
The years passed, with Mrak becoming an even more important figure in the Tusken tribe. He was a fierce warrior and smart salvager, ranking him high in his tribe. Jrr never bore any children, since the two were biologically incompatible, though neither were overly heartbroken, for they had each other. When Mrak was in his mid-twenties, the Rebel Alliance was completely decimated by Imperial forces at the battle of Yavin, and soon, even the isolated and xenophobic Tuskens felt the pressure of the expanding empire. Mrak heard stories of entire Tusken tribes being wiped out by white devils, who then stole the surviving children and burned the huts. These tales were even more horrific than those the tribe shaman told of the vengeful desert spirit who struck down a village with his glowing gaderffii for failing to offer him sacrifices. However, because of the animosity between tribes, the Tuskens failed to learn more about these rumors.
Mrak’s nomadic village was struck next. The imperials came at night on their speeders while the tribe slept, moving from hut to hut, slaying the occupants. A sentry raised the alarm, and the Tuskens fought back. The tribe’s leader was slain in battle, but Mrak managed to rally the raiders and push back the Stormtroopers, though not without suffering heavy losses. As the soldiers fled in their speeders, Mrak noticed Jrr'ssk'iis, who fought beside him the entire night, was absent from his side. She wasn’t among the dead either, and Mrak realized she had been captured by the strange soldiers. If the remaining Tuskens had not been looking to him for leadership, Mrak would have ridden after the soldiers on a desperate mission to recover his wife. Unfortunately, Mrak knew that it was a hopeless endeavor, and the people here needed him. With a heavy heart, Mrak told the tribe to pack up on their banthas, and they set off into the desert. As they travelled deeper into the Jundland Wastes, the motley group found more and more Tusken villages wiped out by this new threat. Even moisture farmers were not spared. Mrak, sensing that the farmers were worth more alive than dead, offered the farmers a place in their caravan, much to the disappointment of his fellow Tuskens. Finally, the group found a tribe that was untouched by the Empire, and in light of this new threat, the village elder allowed Mrak and his followers to stay.
More survivors trickled into the village, and even entire tribes who had yet to be attacked. Once again, they looked to Mrak for guidance, and he reluctantly gave it. Almost immediately, Mrak ordered the group to go on the offence against the Imperials, striking in a very similar manner they would colonists and moisture farmers. Hit-and-run tactics worked well against the structured army, though Mrak never how much damage the resistance movement caused. Over the next ten years, the Tusken tribes slowly united against the Empire, working together alongside colonists, though resentment still ran deep. Mrak was constantly searching for his mate, but never found any trace of her. After the Hutts were put in their place by the Empire, they finally turned their attention to the Tusken uprising in the Jundland Wastes. All the years of fighting apparently didn’t even affect the Empire, as they wiped out the Tuskens in one fell swoop, only this time, Mrak was among those captured.
Mrak came to learn that the Empire was carrying out systematic genocide against the Tuskens, killing the adults and true Tusken babies, and raising the human children to be soldiers of their own, meaning his mate was dead. He swore to avenge her, but it was difficult to carry out revenge on your way to an Imperial prison.
I never expressed interest in the IC, but I hope you'll still take me! This bio is a little rough and subject to change, so just let me know if there's anything I can do it improve it.
