Lorianne Jekurra
Female; Mirialan; Jedi Master (Jedi Shadow); Age 37 Personality: An aggressive Jedi, Lorianne is fierce in battle, using her natural speed to overwhelm opponents with flurries of attacks. She enjoys the thrill of battle, and many times finds herself looking for a challenge. Even so, she is merciful, and refuses to outright kill any of her enemies if it should be avoidable. A few times, she has met members of the Echani race, and admires them to the point of adopting their beliefs system on combat: That a battle is a conversation between the two combatants. As a result, Lorianne is very soft-spoken otherwise, preferring to spar than to negotiate.
As a Jedi Master, she is a difficult teacher to learn from, her teachings being harsh (she learned to act so due to her Echani Jedi Master), yet they have produced two steadfast and capable Knights already in her time. Despite not being lenient during spars, she has also shown herself to be compassionate and protective of her Padawans. She does not demand her students to respect her, believing respect is something she should show them before they can respect her. This belief has proven effective, as only one instance has ever occurred of her needing to take disciplinary action to correct one of her Padawans.
While her agressive tendencies in battle have been frowned upon by the Council, they do not discount the effectiveness of her teaching. However, with her life on Taris and witnessing the assaults of the Mandalorians firsthand, she has earned less praise from them due to her disagreement with the Council's decision on neutrality.
Biography: Taken from her parents and her homeworld by the Jedi Council when she was too young to remember, Lorianne's only memories are of her time with the Jedi. Unlike the majority of the Jedi, who were raised at Coruscant, Lorianne was raised on Taris in the Jedi Tower. She succeeded in passing the Initiate Trials at the age of 12 with the construction of her first lightsaber: A yellow-bladed shoto. From there, she moved on from her study of the first lightsaber form, Shii-Cho, and on to the study of one she considered more effective: the fourth form, Ataru. However, her desire to constantly press the offensive and a belief that one had to land the first strike in battle was soon proven wrong by her Master, a skilled practitioner of Soresu and one of the most influential Echani in her life. Her Master repeatedly fended off her attacks, teaching her that in order to win, she had to practice finding weak points in her opponent's stance rather than striking blindly and rapidly.
Her overconfidence was eventually shattered, but never did she adopt a defeatist attitude. She continually pressed her training until she found the weakness in her Master's pattern. However, finding it was only half the battle. The next step was to take advantage of it. After much practice, she was finally able to break through her Master's defenses and end a spar in a draw rather than her defeat. With being able to do so, her Master insisted she spend time studying how to defend now, rather than simply attack. Thus, she began learning the ways of Soresu from him, despite preferring the Ataru form still.
This training would later be put to the test when she reached the age of 20. In the Upper City, a mechanical mishap caused a virus to be spread to multiple droids, including many working in the Jedi Tower. As a result, the infected droids began to attack anything organic. Though she had planned to undergo the Jedi Trials soon, she did not realize that she would in fact be tackling all five Trials in such a rapid series of events.
As the droid uprising began, Lorianne was immediately put to the test when her Master took the blast of a thermal detonator at point blank range. The blast killed her Master, and while she did not suffer the total effects of the blast, she was heavily burned and injured. Wearily, she rose to her feet, seeing the charred corpse of her Master.
The Trial of Flesh.
At the sight, Lorianne was overcome with emotion and retreated, finding a remote part of the Upper City as her feelings flooded her mind. Feelings of hatred soon followed, and she was forced to come face-to-face with the darkest parts of her being. Realizing the path she was starting on, she meditated in the Force, and in the end, overcame her darkest emotions.
The Trial of Spirit.
Continuing to meditate, she was able to reach out through the Force and find the exact location of the disturbance that was causing the uprising. As her Master had tried so hard to teach her: She had to see her opponents for what they truly were before striking. Only then could she attain victory. In locating the malfunctioning droid, she had overcome yet the third trial of that day:
The Trial of Insight.
Knowing there were few who likely knew of this weakness, Lorianne had to overcome the feelings of fear she felt and face her enemy. Rising to her feet, she marched back to the battlefield of a city to confront the enemy. Following the guidance of the Force, she fought through wave after wave of droids, unfaltering and pressing onward to the source of the disturbance.
The Trial of Courage.
After fighting her way through the malfunctioning droids, she found her target: A sentinel droid commander equipped with a communications projector intended to give orders to other security droids throughout the city. Its protocols had been tampered with to the point it considered all organics to be violations of security, and was broadcasting this protocol to all droids in the Upper City. After figuring this out, Lorianne fought using the Form II skills taught to her by her Master, but being inexperienced in the Form, she was unable to use it to properly close the gap between her and her opponent. Instead, one of the droid's blaster bolts struck her lightsaber's hilt, damaging it and disarming her. Without a weapon, Lorianne was now forced to rely on the Force alone.
Using the power of the Force, she augmented her already great agility, dodging a continuous barrage of blaster bolts unleashed from the droid's blaster carbine. As she weaved around the assault, she slowly closed the gap, waiting for the moment in which she could disarm the droid. When the moment came, she delivered a swift kick, sending the droid reeling and removing the blaster from its grasp. Taking the droids blaster, she fired a blast into the communications relay on its back, ending its malfunctioning transmission, the droid uprising, and also her Jedi Trials through the Trial of Skill.
Lorianne was soon Knighted and granted an apprentice following the construction of her second lightsaber: A double-bladed weapon containing a blue crystal. Even with her ascension in rank, she never ceased striving for improvement. For Force training, she devoted her time to the skills known as Shatterpoint and Force Cloak. In Lightsaber combat, she continued practicing the third form, Soresu, in honor of her Master, as well as learning the seventh form, Juyo.
Over the next years, she would train not just one, but two apprentices, the second achieving Knighthood only days before the first of the Mandalorians' most devastating attacks: The raid of Taris. Lorianne and the other Tarisian Jedi assisted the Republic in the battle, and while they succeeded in repelling the invaders, Taris was devastated. Many Tarisian Jedi were killed, including the majority of the younglings on-planet. However, Lorianne volunteered to take one of the few surviving Jedi Initiates under her wing; a Shistavanen Initiate named Andyr Kravhenn.
* When at last Revan arrived on Taris with his Jedi Templar in tow, she realized there may be hope for the galaxy, and sharing their opinions on their duties to protect the Republic, she readily joined them.
* - This section has not yet occurred IC.Abilities and Equipment: Lorianne is proficient in the lightsaber forms Ataru and Juyo, with some skill in Soresu and Shii-Cho. She is also a practitioner of Shatterpoint, a Force Power in which a Jedi detects the weakest point in something (such as armor), and uses the Force to literally shatter the target. Further, she can use the power of the Force to conceal herself from her enemies, rendering her invisible to the naked eye. This power, while not her most notable strength, is augmented by a Stygium focusing crystal she placed inside her lightsaber.
She, like many Jedi, carries little with her. She has 4000 Credits to take care of both her and Andyr, as well as her double-bladed lightsaber and her black Jedi robes. Otherwise, she keeps only a viridian color crystal that had once belonged to her Master.