Amethyst

A Pairing Beloved

The pair of women who walked beside the lord could not have been more different if they tried.

The first, hovering uncertainly near the lord’s side as though unsure where she should position herself, was remarkably short, making even her diminutive husband look comparatively a giant. That, at least, was how it should be, or so his - father? Grandfather? Had sneered at her the previous night.

Then again, the old man had said all kinds of things. Not once before had anyone ever likened her demeanor to that of a puddle of slime ooze... she shivered slightly under the memory of his icy glare, carefully adjusting the hood of her cloak to not muss the pair of braids that were pinned tightly around her head.

He was right, she supposed, and that was the worst part.

Miry Loravyr, Warden of Time, professional puddle of backbone-less ooze. It had quite the ring to it, she thought idly, tapping her fingers on the edge of the stretched silk screen she carried under her arm. She peered up curiously at the short lord - her husband, Naia’s mercy - as he started speaking, and belatedly realized the enormous creatures that occupied the courtyard were nothing at all like she’d expected.

Lord Zakroti had mentioned a ride that evening, and she had thought, of course, of horses. Even when he’d alluded to their unfamiliar nature, she had thought- the hardy draft horses from the south, maybe, or even the winged ice spirits of northeastern legend... or perhaps even a wyvern, from the far north of Drakka. She’d read about those in several narratives, though now she wasn’t too sure of the pragmatics of trying to ride such a beast.

Miry hummed anxiously, and despite her fear of overstepping her lord’s boundaries, found herself quickly huddling under his arm, shielding her face against the chest plate of his armor, fingertips rapidly flailing between the signs for ‘big’ and for ‘dragon’.

Dragons. That was the first thought that crossed her mind; bloated, wingless dragons, perhaps the offspring of the sort that had razed so many gemmenian cities in the third era...

But the beast made no move to raze them. After a moment, Miry’s eyes popped open again, curiously, to regard the creature’s - now much closer - face. It flicked its tongue out; Miry chose to believe it was in greeting. She chirped nervously, a high-pitched squeaking in the back of her throat, and gave the large creature a slight, incredibly shaky bow.

She did not particularly wish to call the creature ‘a creature’ forever, but she wasn’t about to ask the lord to repeat something he’d surely just said! She half turned, meeting her sister-bride’s eye for a moment before glancing back at the creature. Nenra! Name? she signed, drawing the point of the question out from her chin towards the beast for extra emphasis.

The taller bride, hovering a few paces behind them, raised her eyebrows incredulously. “I’m not sure I can say that, Miry. Gun-OUT? That’s what they’re called?” She mumbled the words, turning to face their lord and forcing herself to slouch down in her boots, bending her knees slightly and sinking her shoulders. It did little to match their stature; as she had noticed the previous night, her chin was on a level with his nose even if she was barefoot!

Nenra stopped into a vague approximation of a bow, ears and neck reddening as she remembered the words thrown about her ears for the last two weeks of ‘training’, said by guards as though she couldn’t hear them. They joked about all manner of things, most often that she been a Drakkan recruit run away from the southern border in disgrace. After all, for those who defect, there’s nowhere to go. It made sense that she must’ve sawn off her horns and gone to live as a gem. Especially with a nobodies’ name - no record outside of her own tiny village of her surname.

Despite her best efforts, her lips curled into a vague snarl, but she was quick to school her features into blankness as the soldiers looked to her.

Some of them saw her as dangerous, she was sure of it, and maybe she could even see why. She was tall, of a height with most Gemmenite men, her hair short and fluffy around her ears, and she wore a simple linen tunic and trousers that showed off her broad shoulders and muscular arms.

She shook her hair out of her eyes and approached one of the creatures, tentatively extending a hand to be sniffed. She half expected fangs to sink into her palm, but the creature was serene, extending a scaled muzzle into the curve of her hand and pressing forward, as though expecting to be scratched under the chin. She obliged it, careful not to catch herself on the sharp edges of its chest scales.

An image pressed into her mind, sleepy and warm, of sun-baked mudflats on the banks of a river, several of these creatures laid out on heated rocks. Curiously, Miry popped into existence in the picture, running with a herd of smaller - or just young, perhaps - creatures, all of them squeaking and chirping.

“They think you’re a baby, Miry,” she mumbled, the sleepy inflection of the picture spilling over into her voice. “Because you squeak so much. They’re not gonna hurt you; this one just wants to go home and soak in the sun.”

At length, she pulled her hand away from the creature’s chin, ignoring its pointed, plaintive chirp. “If I may be remarkably dense, my lord,” she stumbled over the honorific, but stubbornly kept speaking, turning to regard the top of the lord’s head rather than meet his eyes, “how are these creatures... to be ridden?”

A Pairing Beloved

Ari's Character Catalogue - WIP

_{cast colors
|| Zel - 7356ba || Miry - d0a5fd || Kazia - f3c9ff || Nenra - ad90a8 || Gaelin - a15290 || Sia - d13bc0 || Kalai - a948b8 ||}

<sub>Aymiria Loravyr - bride of Zakroti Unalim. A sixteen-year-old water Gem. Her mother stood up to a Drakkan prince during the reaping and demanded they take the younger sister, not the older one who was set to marry the Gemmenian crown prince. Whether for cruelty or perhaps some twisted sense of mercy, the prince agreed. Miry's most notable physical feature is her incredibly diminutive stature; she scarcely comes up to the collarbones of any of her sister-brides. Most notably about her demeanor, she cannot communicate verbally; she uses sign language or writes with lines of water on a pale grey silk screen that is always on her person.

Gaelin Unalim - bride of Nastaki Unalim. An eighty-six year old earth Gem. Gaelin has been steadfastly loyal to Nastaki since she was reaped, sixty-seven years ago. It's nearly unheard of for a bride to live this long, much less to maintain favor of her husband for the duration of her life. She has assumed all the roles of the lady of the household since both of Nastaki's drakken wives passed on to age, and is effectively properly wed to him in all but legal status. Her household standing is nearly unheard of for a Gemmenite bride. She bears herself quite proudly and properly, standing tall despite the years and the toll motherhood took on her body.

Kalai Vunalathi - TBA. tba

Kasimaera Niyeseri - bride of Qeynate Unalim. An eighteen-year-old air gem. She's the middle child of a pair of Gemmenian court musicians, and was a dancer in her childhood. Kazia's most notable physical feature is her majestic cascade of pearl-white hair, falling in ringlets to the backs of her knees. As far as her demeanor, it's noted that she can never, ever sit still - even when she must, she fidgets with currents of air in her skirts and her hair. Kazia adores jewelry and all things sparkly, often wearing several rings and incredibly intricate necklaces, bracelets, and ear cuffs or hair ornaments.

Nenra Corislen - bride of Zakroti Unalim. A twenty-year-old earth gem. Born in a tiny farming community in the middle of nowhere - a community often stricken by the blistering plague, at that - Nenra never expected to be reaped. A wayward Drakkan reaping party, struggling to meet their quota of potential brides, took her and several of her cousins. Most notable about Nenra's appearance is her tall, muscular frame, seconded by her piercing, gold-green stare, peculiarly reflective and haunting. She always bites her nails and invariably, no matter how clean her environment is, ends up with a smudge of dirt across her face or skirts before midday.

Siadamkiru Beneni - TBA. tba

Zelphyra Chazumin - TBA. tba</sub>

A Pairing Beloved

The Story So Far...

A Pairing Beloved

This is a closed RP between myself and @darkwolf687. Please PM me if you have any comments, questions, or concerns, thank you!

Royal Chaos Expanded Universe (TM): Character & Kingdom Sheets

Lyra Magia, Lady Verona, Princess of Mantua

Lyra-Celeste Mari Magia of Mantua

"Mantua bore me, Calabria snatched me away; now Naples holds me." -Virgil

💎𝓝𝓪𝓶𝓮
――――――――――

Lyra (lee-ruh, not lie-ruh) is how she introduces herself, and Chell (like the first syllable of Celeste) was given by her primary school classmates and stuck quite firmly.

💎𝓣𝓲𝓽𝓵𝓮
――――――――――

The heiress to the duchy of Mantua, her title is technically Marchioness, or Lady Verona. (In real-world terms, yes, she’s the crown pri ncess.)

💎𝓐𝓰𝓮
――――――――――

Nineteen

💎𝓖𝓮𝓷𝓭𝓮𝓻
――――――――――

Female

💎𝓢𝓮𝔁𝓾𝓪𝓵𝓲𝓽𝔂
――――――――――

Some form of sapphic, but she hasn’t found a label she likes yet – she doesn’t feel that she fits with bi or pan but she’s not exclusively attracted to girls, either, so...

💎𝓐𝓹𝓹𝓮𝓪𝓻𝓪𝓷𝓬𝓮
――――――――――

Lyra is proud of the fact that she looks incredibly, perfectly ordinary, able to blend in among Mantuan crowds with ease. She stands just shy of five feet and two inches, slightly below the Mantuan average – and she towers over her Lusitanian cousins, though is still dwarfed by most other kingdom’s royals. Her frame is thin and rather girlish, without much by way of curves, though she always dresses to accentuate what she has. Her light olive skin is smooth, naturally radiant with the barest scattering of freckles across her high cheekbones. Her eyes are a shade of “generic hazel-brown”, as she has said in the past, often accentuated with thin eyeliner and mascara, but little by way of colorful makeup. She’s been known to experiment with it, but her go-to looks for the face are incredibly natural.

Lyra is a master of all things whimsical, her shoulder-length waves (her natural brown at the moment, though she’s rocked other colors before!) pinned back simply and paired, often questionably well, with some combination of fantasy-medieval gowns (in formal settings) or flowy tunics, or – for casual occasions – a trendy turtleneck or oversized sweater. Day-to-day, when she’s trying to blend in while attending university, she’ll be found in a belted tunic, leggings, and often sandals or boots depending on the weather. She doesn’t wear much by way of necklaces or bracelets, though she does usually have a thin septum piercing and signature oversized hoop earrings. Lyra’s favorite accessory is a set of oversized glasses, enormous round copper-wire frames with delicate vine-patterned earwires. She only really needs them to see the board in lectures or for reading, but she will wear them to complement any sort of outfit.

Notably, numerous enamel tourist-shop pins of various patriotic sorts (the kingdom flag, coat of arms, house coat of arms, and the colors of each of her holdings/titles) adorn the front pocket of her messenger-bag backpack, which is near-always on her person.

💎𝓟𝓮𝓻𝓼𝓸𝓷𝓪𝓵𝓲𝓽𝔂
――――――――――

Above all else, Lyra is a gentle soul. She’s enamored by fantasy and fine art, as one would expect of someone born and raised in the epicenter of a modern-day cultural renaissance, and she has a special fondness for all things creative and pretty. She has far more ideas than she has time or motivation for, bouncing around from writing to drawing to sculpting to music to sewing to anything else one can do with their hands or their mind. She’s far from indecisive; it’s more that she makes her decisions on the faintest whim.

Soft-spoken and empathetic, she’s fond of animals and small children, though sometimes finds their loud unpredictability off-putting. She’s always eager to make friends, putting herself out into social situations whenever she has the chance, and with her gentle smile and unassuming posture, people often gravitate to her for just that. She does her best to be down-to-earth, and has been even rather secretive about her royal status. She decided to attend the university of Naples precisely to have anonymity among the masses.

Lyra loves to travel, and hopes to someday visit every kingdom and country on Earth.

Online, Lyra is considerably more of a presence than she is in person. She frequently makes and shares content that supports LGBT+ rights, and she has been (at least remotely) involved in protests in other kingdoms. It hasn’t been an issue in Mantua in the last century, but she appreciates the privilege of having a global platform. She’s unique from other royals in that she doesn’t separate her professional and personal accounts; scroll back far enough on her Instagram and you’ll find cheesy photos of her and her high school girlfriend. To that effect, she’s been an out-of-the-closet sapphic since she was 13 ((and has frequently gone off at length on her Tumblr, Insta, and TikTok about how pretty girls are)) and is very vocal about how supportive her family and friends are both at home and at university. Most people in Mantua are supportive (those who have issues with her choice in partners have issues more based on class than on gender) and though she’s been met with considerable clapback from various other kingdoms, she refuses to let it compromise her authenticity. It’s the one thing she’s notably stubborn about.

💎𝓛𝓲𝓴𝓮𝓼 + 𝓓𝓲𝓼𝓵𝓲𝓴𝓮𝓼
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Lyra loves traveling, bullet journaling, and fancy stationery. She’s very fond of various fine art (especially impressionist and other early abstract art) and fashion design across all eras – she’s torn between studying creative writing and fashion design at university, for when she finally starts up classes. Cello is her favorite instrument and she’s dabbled in playing it, but she’s decidedly not good at it. She’s a half-decent pianist, but doesn’t particularly enjoy playing – especially when paired with a cello, though, she’s all ears for concerts. To that effect, she’s quite a patron of the arts; the house accountant once did a breakdown of her yearly expenses and realized a notable portion of her allowance went towards memberships at dozens of museums, art galleries, and concert halls. As many Mantuans are, Lyra is very fond of tarot and similar magical/arcane rituals.

She professes to not dislike anything, but she has a deep-seated hatred for prejudiced and oblivious people. She doesn’t care for espresso; even mixed into a drink with Starbucks amounts of sugar and cream, it’s still too bitter for her. Bright fluorescent lights, especially strobing ones like one would find at a concert or club, tend to give her migraines, and some electronic music becomes especially grating on her ears after even a short time. Still, she tries to be open-minded to all things except hatred.

💎𝓑𝓲𝓸𝓰𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓱𝔂
――――――――――

Lyra’s had the privilege of a very quiet and well-supported childhood. She grew up in a happy home with a loving mother and father and two affectionate younger siblings, attending a state school – it was a point of pride for her parents that they so trusted the public education system that they would educate all their children in it. Their public schooling is full of art and music and literature, with most higher-level math and science as an optional addition. Lyra has always been quick to make friends, and for the most part those friendships were not even strained by her royal status. She had some lessons at home to supplement her public education, but those were mostly on international relations and things that she was required to know even more of as a royal – her parents tried to give her opportunities to have as long of a “normal” childhood as they could.

As teenagers do, she had a girlfriend in secondary school – Eva Caladri, whom she’s still friends with and speaks fondly of – for nearly two years. Eva's family moved and so she transferred to a different school, and as could be expected the distance pulled them apart. She still misses her, sometimes, but they’ve both pretty neatly moved on with no hard feelings. Lyra’s been very fortunate in that regard; a smear campaign could have been disastrous.

Over the summer, Lyra took some university courses from the University of Naples; she’s certain that she’s going to attend school there, loving the bustling of the campus and just how diverse and lovely it all is. With that being said, she has no idea what she wants to study. She’s been friends with Lea Lynton over social media since they were much younger – when she found out about the wedding, she begged her parents to be able to attend, and it happened to work out perfectly with her gap year plans. After the festivities, she’s going on a tour of the world, stopping in Britannia and Liang and Castilya and Lusitania and a dozen other places over the span of a few months. It’s not a diplomatic visit and half the countries don’t even know she’s planning to be there – she’s just going to explore. Her family is remarkably not worried about her safety. After all, Mantua barely even shows up on a map; it’s unlikely that anyone outside of maybe the Lusitanians or Brizians would even recognize her.

💎𝓕𝓒 + 𝓒𝓸𝓵𝓸𝓻 𝓒𝓸𝓭𝓮
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FC: Amanda Arcuri, color-code 5e8eb8

💎𝓑𝓮𝓽𝓻𝓸𝓽𝓱𝓮𝓭 𝓣𝓸
――――――――――

N/A

💎𝓞𝓽𝓱𝓮𝓻
――――――――――

Instagram: @chellybelly

Mantua

The Duchy of Mantua

💎𝓚𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓭𝓸𝓶 𝓝𝓪𝓶𝓮
――――――――――

Mantua, occasionally spelled out as ‘The Duchy of”.

💎𝓚𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓠𝓾𝓮𝓮𝓷
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The king and queen (Technically, the duke and lady) are Dorian Magia and Marina Monteverdi – the lady elected not to take her husband’s name due to her own proud family heritage. The duke is 52 and the lady 49. They have three children – Lyra, who’s eighteen, Iris, who’s sixteen, and Luca, who’s twelve.

💎𝓚𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓭𝓸𝓶 𝓒𝓸𝓵𝓸𝓻𝓼
――――――――――

Forest green, imperial violet, and white.

💎𝓦𝓱𝓪𝓽 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓚𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓭𝓸𝓶 𝓲𝓼 𝓚𝓷𝓸𝔀𝓷 𝓕𝓸𝓻
――――――――――

- Tinysmol bastion of progressivism, even more radical when compared to its neighboring Lusitania
- Lots of high-value commodity exports, some industrial and tech and a fair amount of agriculture – it’s all very fertile land
- Tourist hotspot! “the living renaissance”, as certain tour companies say, Mantua is still a thriving artistic community, with fine art, literature, theater and film still booming several hundred years after the start of the Renaissance.
- Notably secular – they have little interest or commonality with either the old-god pagan Lusitanians or the surrounding remnants of the catholic Holy Roman Empire and they prefer to keep it that way. Some amount of Lusitanian paganism spills over into the point below this one but for the most part they’re exceptionally good at the separation of church and state.
- An obsession with magic and the arcane – the tradition of tarot started in the vicinity of Mantua in the 1400s and the medieval obsession with such forbidden arts has only grown even stronger.

💎𝓡𝓮𝓬𝓮𝓷𝓽/𝓡𝓮𝓵𝓮𝓿𝓪𝓷𝓽 𝓚𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓭𝓸𝓶 𝓗𝓲𝓼𝓽𝓸𝓻𝔂
――――――――――

- Got off the crazy train of Lusitania in about 760 AD as their tribalish proto-empire began to crumble once more. Mantua existed as a “free imperial city” for a long while, fending off the HRE; became a duchy under the Holy Roman Empire in the mid 1500s. As the HRE lost control of various lands Mantua was quick to take back its sovereignty, and has (mostly) quietly existed since the mid-1700s as its own entity. That said, it kept its titles related to being a duchy because of the historical significance. It regularly confuses outsiders. In 1815 Lusitania tried to reconquer them and it ended spectacularly badly for the Lusitanians. They now share a border in “amicable” peace – Mantua has no desire to conquer anyone, though the Lusitanians know that they absolutely could.

💎𝓞𝓽𝓱𝓮𝓻
――――――――――

N/A yet!

Royal Chaos Expanded Universe (TM): Character & Kingdom Sheets

Lusitania

The Empire of Lusitania

💎𝓚𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓭𝓸𝓶 𝓝𝓪𝓶𝓮
――――――――――
Commonly called simply ‘Lusitania’

💎𝓚𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓠𝓾𝓮𝓮𝓷
――――――――――

Julius Titus Viriatus is the reigning Viriathus, currently in the forty-seventh year of his reign at the age of seventy-two; Livia Aelia-Viriatus was his wife of thirty-one years and died in 2002 at the age of forty-five.

💎𝓚𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓭𝓸𝓶 𝓒𝓸𝓵𝓸𝓻𝓼
――――――――――

Tyrian purple and gold

💎𝓦𝓱𝓪𝓽 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓚𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓭𝓸𝓶 𝓲𝓼 𝓚𝓷𝓸𝔀𝓷 𝓕𝓸𝓻
――――――――――

Lusitania, and famous? In the same sentence? Ha. At any rate, the only reason Lusitania is relevant is because it’s so old. They do some agricultural export, handled by Athenian shipping lines, but for the most part they’re a sleepy (and stagnant) kingdom primarily fueled by a tourist industry – again, they seem to be very much stuck in a prior time that foreigners love to experience (and can’t wait to leave.)

Lusitanian soldiers still fight with swords and shields and armor out of the classical era. In the 1800s there was a brief surge of gothic-plate style knight’s armor, but it was soon abandoned as being too expensive and intricate. (That said, many centurions and those of higher ranks own a suit worn for ceremony, and some prime decani can be seen wearing greaves and gauntlets in that style, in addition to their traditional uniforms.) It should be noted that their military serves in place of a police force; otherwise their role is solely ceremonial.

Overall, they’ve got a mishmash of basically 2000 years of aesthetics happening. Don’t even look at their coin system, where they’ve got several differently-named coins that have the same values.

They’ve become a biiiit of a meme on the Internet, with their quite frankly backwards policies and their blatant lack of such notions as ‘equality’ – they have become ‘the wet-dream of incels’ to quote one scandalous Britannian tabloid, a statement which might have some truth when one considers the proposed changes to Lusitanian immigration law.

A radical feminist symbol has increasingly cropped up in social media even in other kingdoms – a rust- or bronze-colored brazier, shaped as a horseshoe or perhaps a crescent moon, with twisting flames erupting from the top. It’s the icon of Foeda Flammae, the League of the Flare (though with the dual meaning of ‘foeda’ there’s often less-favorable translations. Regardless, it plays well into the Aciran Nasty Women and other such rough-and-tumble feminist cries.)

💎𝓡𝓮𝓬𝓮𝓷𝓽/𝓡𝓮𝓵𝓮𝓿𝓪𝓷𝓽 𝓚𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓭𝓸𝓶 𝓗𝓲𝓼𝓽𝓸𝓻𝔂
――――――――――

Teenysmol ""empire"" with milennia of history, spanning a mere 800 square miles
Most recently in the world news about them have been the Ludiia Riots of 2016 – after the murder of Domitius Titus Viriatus and revelation of his twin sister’s deception, students at the school she had been attending rioted for her right to stay there rather than face discipline at home.
The empress died in 2003 while giving birth to Liviana Decima. The kingdom had the customary two years of mourning at that time.
Formally became an empire in 1466.
Last external military conflict was finished in 1815, a decisive loss.

Excessively Rambly History

The Romans would have had you believe that the Lusitanian War ended decisively with the assassination of Viriathus.

But such was merely misleading propaganda, spread by a cowardly, sniveling empire, in terror of the divine retribution they had wrought upon their own heads.

Viriathus. Viriathus! The rallying cry that united the tribes of the Lusitanii. A god-king amongst mortals; a hero of eras long gone past. The gods would not allow such a cowardly, conniving act to bring to heel their chosen people. No; Viriathus rose with the dawn, with blood still seeping from his wounds, and sent the Roman traitors fleeing back to their masters.

The year was 133 BC. The Romans reported that Viriathus was dead, that the uprising of the Lusitani had been quelled- meanwhile, they marched through Iberia, casting off the shackles of Roman oppression and leaving those perfumed senators, leagues away, quaking in their sandals at the news. The cry of Viriathus became their rally.

The gods recalled their hero in his old age, as they eventually do with even those divine; upon the dawn his graced grandson, in bearing and temperament a likeness to the hero in his prime, came before the assembled army. ‘I am Titus Viriathus; and with your blessing I shall lead you in our quest against the tyrant.’

By 280 CE, the Lusitanii had found themselves against the Rhine, against Rome itself. Within four seasons, what had been left of Roman ideology and influence crumbled away; those who shared in its sentiments in some form were allowed to flee eastward, to Byzantium and the ‘Eastern Roman Empire’.

The Lusitanians did not want to conquer; they simply wanted to empower others to cast off their shackles. They remained as a loosely federated republic, and took up proper residence in Rome. However, as time went on, and the Roman threat faded into distant memory, they soon forgot their values.

The title of Viriathus had been an elected one, though especially dynastic; it seemed to be passed from father to son or grandson or nephew. Their dynasty has ruled, with the gods’ blessing, undisturbed for millennia. As time went on, the vote became increasingly a formality; the title handed down from father to son irrespective of the peoples’ wishes.

Taxes and tariffs were levied on the member states, to fuel the growth of eternal Rome. The conscription of soldiers from the member states, to fight inroads into the territory by the Goths, was the last straw for many. The Iberians, where Castilya now stands, seceded not long after these reforms were formalized. How could Lusitani have so horrifically turned their back on – the values that made them Lusitanian in the first place?

So began the end of Lusitania’s stretch across Europe. Other people and places followed Iberia’s lead, despite Lusitania frantically tightening their grip, dispatching legions right and left to try to force their hand. In 1466, the first Julius Titus Viriathus declared himself emperor, to better circumvent the increasingly-bloated bureaucratic nonsense that was making it hard to dispatch their troops, convinced that it would fix everything.

They had lost almost all of their territory by the dawn of the seventeenth century.

Today, Lusitania is a shadow of its former self, no longer containing any part of its ancestral origin. It occupies the smallest fraction of its former glory, a mere eight hundred-odd square miles north and east of Rome proper.

💎𝓞𝓽𝓱𝓮𝓻
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To be added as more comes up. Can present a family tree upon request; it is very big and confusing and inbreeding is kinda a thing. Oops.

Dom Viriatus

Domitia Viriatus of Lusitania

"I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to take charge of me." -Simone de Beauvoir

💎𝓝𝓪𝓶𝓮
――――――――――

Domitia ‘Dom’ Annia Viriatus

💎𝓣𝓲𝓽𝓵𝓮
――――――――――

N/A – Lusitania does not use inherited titles at all, it is rather a cultural – implication, of sorts, that one’s family name be the indicator of their power. That said, in another kingdom they would be called a princess – they (were) second in line to inherit after their father.

💎𝓐𝓰𝓮
――――――――――

19 (Birthday: October 15)

💎𝓖𝓮𝓷𝓭𝓮𝓻
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Nonbinary (prefers ‘they’ pronouns)

💎𝓢𝓮𝔁𝓾𝓪𝓵𝓲𝓽𝔂
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Aaaaa?!

💎𝓐𝓹𝓹𝓮𝓪𝓻𝓪𝓷𝓬𝓮
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Dom is a very stern looking young person, somehow intimidating despite their tiny stature. Though they are notably tall for an afab person born into the Viriatus bloodline, and even stand just above the Lusitanian average, they are dwarfed by most from the rest of the world – they stand at five feet and zero point seven five inches, to be precise.

Their body was once that of an athlete or soldier, toned and wiry with muscle and padded with a healthy layer of fat, but in the last three years it has withered away and become emaciated and frail. Collarbones are starkly sharp against their sallow skin, joints comparatively knobby and bulbous. Once-broad shoulders now are loose and pointed and often bruised – the running ‘joke’ in their family is that a sparrow’s landing on their shoulder would leave a mark for weeks.

Despite their form, or perhaps because of it, everything else about them has a razor-like intensity. Dark green eyes peer out from under wisps of precisely jaw-length mousy-brown hair, over painfully-prominent cheekbones further emphasized by a long, thin scar that traces lengthwise across the right one. Dom refuses to conceal it with makeup, even considering the scar a point of pride – the only injury they ever sustained during their years of military school.

Regarding attire, Dom clothes themself as a Lusitanian lady would – only out of the insistence of their father and grandfather. Their attire is always closely fit to their body - at least, as closely as any Lusitanian fashions ever are – and in the dullest colors they can get away with. They wear no jewelry or hair accessories, and minimal makeup, though their fingernails are immaculate and always have clear, glossy gel polish on them.

💎𝓟𝓮𝓻𝓼𝓸𝓷𝓪𝓵𝓲𝓽𝔂
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Dom is a master of self-control. Everything about them must be entirely, exactly in its place. They are obsessive - hands eternally fidgeting, picking at buttons or brooches or loose threads or, without anything else, their own skin; eyes flickering to every face and object in the room and back over them a hundred times. When something manages to capture their focus, however, it is absolutely laser-like. Dom has been taught to be utterly attentive to every last detail of a situation. At one point, their memory was impeccable as well; the ability to recall any face or name would come in immense use should they ever wind up as the kingdom's ruler - but in recent years that ability has faded. Nonetheless, Dom is a very unnerving person to be around- their eyes seem to linger on all of one's secrets.

In all other regards, however, they are the perfect royal of bygone times. Elegant, graceful, and (perhaps overly) formal, they're not the sort to embarrass or cause offense at a dinner party. That said, there's always something off about them - they do not do well at idle small talk, and have a bearing and posture that never fully settle to relaxed.

Internally, Dom is very introspective and honestly quite pessimistic. Their existence has, for the last several years, been a matter of keeping their head down and just surviving - and now these two months here in Aciras are to be their only chance at escaping Lusitania and finding somewhere to except them for who they are. Pressure mounts - but then, they've always been good under pressure. With that being said, they've never tried to make a personal connection with anyone, certainly not on the level required to get them to agree to a wedding. They just pray they can make it happen.

💎𝓛𝓲𝓴𝓮𝓼 + 𝓓𝓲𝓼𝓵𝓲𝓴𝓮𝓼
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Likes: Pretty, strong girls (!!!!!), gardening, rainstorms, swimming and running, vegetarian cuisine, ’wonder food’ smoothies, indie music and edm, cartography.

Dislikes: Meat, especially fatty Aciran cuisine; fuckboys from their year, idle time, milkshakes (they're lactose intolerant), penmanship lessons.

💎𝓑𝓲𝓸𝓰𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓱𝔂
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The kingdom rejoiced when Servius Titus Viriatus’s wife bore him twins. The heir to the throne had his own heirs, and the fate of Lusitania was secure!

To honor the twins’ mother, they were both named for her father – and the female twin was given her name, in place of the ancestral ‘Titus’ that had been traditionally bestowed to the eldest children for generations. Thus Domitia Annia and Domitius Titus Viriatus were welcomed into the world.

Growing up, the twins were utterly inseparable. They were fiercely doted upon, and guarded, and kept from playing with any of the lesser-born children, and so they became figuratively joined at the hip. They also bore an uncanny resemblance to each other, to the point where if their hair was obscured even their regular nurses couldn’t tell them apart.

As they grew older, they were separated – the girl twin shut inside to learn to weave and spin and embroider and do pretty lady things, and the boy set out to explore and scuffle and run with the hounds and do stern soldier things.

Annia wouldn’t have minded such a docile life. But Titus- he aggressively, painfully, did not want to be a solider. And Annia had always looked out for her brother.

In their infinite wisdom, the twins hatched a foolproof plan to switch places. At the tender age of eight years old, Annia cut off her long hair, chopped it up all raggedy with scissors until the nurses had to shave it just like her brother’s.

With that came the sad realization that even their parents could not tell them apart (at least when they were clothed) whatsoever, which made it almost painfully easy for them to trade places. On the fateful day when Titus was to be sent off to Lusitania’s most prestigious military academy, Annia took his place in the car.

So was born the identity with which Annia continues to use today – ‘Dom’ was hungry for knowledge and viciously eager to prove himself better than his classmates, which he did with much perseverance and effort. He soon became a favorite of many of the teachers, who admired his work ethic and discipline despite his lack of physical stature, and found his mental aptitude to be second to none.

As years passed, Dom and Titus were rarely given a chance to interact. But Titus was at least as clever as Dom; he continued his part of the ruse without revealing it, and under much more careful scrutiny than Dom ever was at the Academy.

The twins were approaching their thirteenth birthday. By this time, Dom had become the top of their class. Titus had done so well at convincing everyone that he was Annia that a proposal had been extended. Dom’s heart nearly fell out of their chest.

There was no way they could make the change. The day of the ceremony, Dom tried to get Titus alone, to switch with him once more, but he… either didn’t see, or refused to acknowledge them. Their terror grew as the ceremony progressed, as they were sent back to the school that very same night – feasting was all well and good, but they had to get an education.

In the morning they were awoken to the most horrifying news they could have imagined.

Titus had been found dead in the marriage bed, his throat slit and body mutilated, and the noble he’d been wed to nowhere to be found.

All eyes turned to Dom. Forcibly revealed to be the fairer twin, their father ordered them brought home. It was a riot. Not even figuratively speaking- there were students taking up arms and rocks and standing against the legion with their shields and swords, and the fury was infectious, spilling over into the common people. The riots spread all through Rome, through the surrounding cities, and lasted in force for over two weeks. Dom themself was ordered to lay down their arms and surrender to their father’s guard; they very politely told the guards to fuck off and continued fighting.

The riots eventually settled. Many were wounded, including Dom – they had been glanced across the cheek by the edge of a throwing spear, but refused medical treatment, for fear that they would be returned home – but their father no longer required it. They were allowed to return to school.

Oh, and how things changed.

Teachers who used to dote on and fawn over them were cold, callous, and unfairly harsh in marking their papers. They would consistently ‘lose’ submitted work – Dom began submitting it in hard copy, digitally, and in any other way they could think of, until eventually the teachers got so tired of the eternal spam that they dropped the pretense. The other students, who had previously been in varying shades of awe and envy, suddenly saw them as lesser. Hazing and bullying started at every turn, constantly calling them by their too-feminine name. More than their fair share of scuffles broke out- scuffles which they could not defend within at all, for fear of being expelled.

trigger warnings within

(TW for implication of sexual violence)
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It was perhaps good that the secret’s revelation had been so sudden, rather than a gradual one of budding curves and bloody thighs. But they too soon grew into their femininity, and tenuous though it was it attracted the look of many – and they soon realized what a vile part of the world they really lived in.

Classmates soon found excuses to be near their bed, in the year’s communal bunkroom; found excuses to sneak beside them in the dead of night. Professors, during midterms, in the daylight and dubious seclusion of office hours – ‘there’s a price for passing marks, little girl.’

They grit their teeth and bore it, silently, and graduated with the highest possible honors. To spite them; to spite all of them. To be a stronger person than they would ever dream to be.

What had they learned at school?

Sure, sure. Tactics, history, the legends of the man who dared stand against a tide. How ironic that he who broke the tyrannical Roman’s back is idolized, yet the one who now tries to take more than their due be vilified.

Trying to re-integrate to palace life, having returned home with their medals and uniforms, was… decidedly not easy. There was no rigor, at least not compared to the planned-to-the-minute days they had grown so used to at the academy, and everyone else was altogether too relaxed.

It didn’t help that upon their return they were immediately forced back into the pretty, flowy dresses that they had escaped at the age of eight. Constantly followed by that name – that nameand forced to be someone they were not – until they burst from the halls in a fit of rage and ran, and ran, and did not stop until they twisted their ankle in a pothole and went skidding across ancient concrete.

Seven miles from the palace. How long had they been out there? The agonizing walk back gave them time to think, gave them time to let the pain of the situation ease along with the ache in their lungs.

Not Annia. Annia had died that day she had taken Titus’s place. Annia would have become the quiet wife of that nameless noble four years before. Annia would have worn dresses and curlers and braids and laurels and been content to know that someday she would have children.

Not Titus. Titus was dead. Murdered. Titus would have been an emperor, blessed by gods and revered by men. He would have been noble and just and kind and powerful.

No, Dom was neither the girl they had been born nor the man they tried to become. Rather… stuck in limbo. Incomplete.

The only person they dared reveal this revelation to was their younger aunt – Livi. The sheltered and frail youngest sister of their father. If they expected her to be shocked or confused, they were instead met with a soft laugh and a quiet Internet search on Livi’s ever-present smartphone. Such words as ‘nonbinary’ and neutral pronouns – only ever used in conversation with Livi and a few other trusted friends, of course, the emperor was ill-prepared to deal with a nonconforming child, never mind a nonbinary one! - but gradually Dom became more confident in their personal identity. It was easier for them to don the sparkly gowns knowing that the way they dressed didn’t invalidate who they felt they were.

But with that comfort and confidence came in turn issues with their physical appearance. They were too small and lacking in form and muscle to ever be a masculine enough man, and too few people took them seriously with their increasingly feminine shape. Rome had always prized women with wide hips and generous busts.

tw again sorry

Tw for eating disorder below
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When they had pinpointed that – that the shape of their body was what was causing them so much discomfort – they soon found remedies for it. What started as a healthy diet and conditioning exercise, to get back into the physical condition they had once been, became increasingly obsessive as they started to see results.

Livi grew concerned, as she ever did, and begged them to eat something, to stop the exercise. Dom said they would once there was no trace of their old body. Liv made them swear it. On Titus’s grave.

They barely ate, and when they were forced to, quickly purged it following the meal. Hours and hours in the training fields, on the courts, until their legs were shaking so they could hardly stand. So much self-hatred and anxiety and fear of it- never being enough. Of them never ridding themself of the last airs of femininity; of Annia always being there in the corner of their mind, whispering about what a woman they could have been.

Their figure melted away over the next year. Eventually, the monthly pains and bleeding spaced out, and stopped entirely. Still the relentless regimen. Liv begged them, again, pleaded with them, screamed at them and tackled them down onto the bed – even the child-sized Liviana was stronger than them, by this point – and reminded them what they’d sworn. Would they dishonor their brother, or would they get better?

After this outburst, their relationship with their aunt much improved. Livi was patient, gentle and quiet; she would distract Dom with drawing or music or internet ‘memes’ when the urges to run got so strong, would entice the kitchen staff to make low calorie vegetarian dishes, knowing that vegetarian food was Dom’s weakness and reasoning that few calories were still better than no calories – and they got better.

They still fear gaining weight; they still exercise too much and eat too little. But gone, at least for now, is the numbness and apathy that once surrounded them.

Several months have passed. This trip to Aciras is going to be… interesting, for certain. Betrothed to a man they’ve only met on official business, from a kingdom that might be progressive compared to Lusitania, but is still remarkably old-world fussy compared to the rest of the world... they can only hope that Stefanos won’t immediately call it off upon getting to know them, or worse, force them into an identity they can’t fill.

Still, he's well-liked by his people and by his siblings. Everything will work out fine for them.

…right?

💎𝓕𝓒 + 𝓒𝓸𝓵𝓸𝓻 𝓒𝓸𝓭𝓮
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Color Code: c2e2a7 | Faceclaim: Alba Galocha

💎𝓣𝓱𝓮𝓶𝓮 𝓢𝓸𝓷𝓰
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Warriors - Imagine Dragons
_{As a child you would wait
And watch from far away
But you always knew that you'd be the one
That work while they all play
In youth you'd lay
Awake at night and scheme
Of all the things that you would change
But it was just a dream!}

💎𝓑𝓮𝓽𝓻𝓸𝓽𝓱𝓮𝓭 𝓣𝓸
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Stefanos Kokinos of Polemos

💎𝓞𝓽𝓱𝓮𝓻
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Dia has at times spoken at FF ('Foeda Flammae', or 'the league of the flame' - a radfem organization that advocates for women to take up arms and forcibly take back their rights) rallies, and has accidentally become a bit of a radical feminist icon across the world. They don't agree with all of FF's platforms, and even speak out against how dangerous their 'rekindling the flame of war' would be, and how many women would be subject to horrible violence because of it- but it falls on deaf ears; the organization only ever uses their quotes that appear to support their platforms, and claim to be endorsed by Dom when they're very much not.
They have 10k followers on Tumblr, and about 12k on instagram, but try to keep a low profile and keep those identities un-associated with their name.

NPC: Livi Viriatus

_{Color code || #F2AED3 || Faceclaim || Jodelle Ferland
14 || Female || Non-invitee (Dom's "handmaid") || Unbetrothed}

Liviana Decima Viriatus is Dom’s aunt, by technicality – their father’s youngest sister - though she’s nearly six years younger, which confuses lots of people. Livi, as she prefers to be called, is a mere fourteen and a half, but looks even younger, her growth stunted by a genetic condition (though the public doesn’t know that). She has EDS (also an unknown diagnosis) and as a result wears ankle and wrist splints at all times, though they’re usually hidden under flowy gowns a size too big for her. At most formal events she can be seen leaning on a pair of wrist crutches.

Liv is known most for being a quiet shadow to her niece, but her silence hides a lot more. Especially given her age, she’s a nearly prodigious musician, a skilled performer of both violin and piano. As her symptoms have gotten worse, she’s had to stop practicing as much – which breaks her heart – but she’s still able to maintain proficiency at least. She struggles to communicate with the people around her; she was raised to only speak Latin and never taught more than a bare minimum of English, though Dom has done their best to remedy that. She writes stories in Latin, and has tried her hand at poetry in both Latin and English with some interesting results.

She’s attending the festivities at Aciras as her niece and brother’s aide and attendant, though mutterings at home suggest that she’s supposed to be seeking a husband, too. That’ll never happen, of course, not with Dom and Felix around. Truthfully, Felix caught wind of his father planning to marry her off to an Athenian while he and Dom were away in Aciras (and thus unable to intervene), and instead suggested – sweetly as he ever does – that they take her along to find her an even more influential foreign husband. Somehow, somehow, the Viriathus agreed to the deal, and so Liv got dragged along as an “attendant” to an event she feels incredibly out of her depth in.

She spends much of the festivities away from the other royals, feeling left out and isolated for her age as much as anything. She attends some of the more informal meetings and outings, if only often from a distance, and is planning on giving a chamber concert in Lynston – something informal, at the city library or something - at some point during their stay.

Livi has a pet sparrow named Qvi (pronounced qwee) that goes anywhere she does, often riding on her shoulder.

NPC: Felix Viriatus

_{Color Code || #b56d24 || Faceclaim || TBD
20 || Male || Invited Attendant || Unbetrothed}

Much like the other Lusitanians in the delegation, Felix carries himself with an air of archaic, out-of-place formality. His dark brown eyes are attentive and observant. Like his siblings, he’s not of particularly great stature (A mere five feet seven inches), but he carries himself like someone half a foot taller. He’s fiercely protective of his sister Liv, and both incredibly competitive with and supportive of Dom. The two of them are especially close after Titus’s death.

He’s in Ameria now as a gesture of goodwill (After all, how better to illustrate how important Amerian-Lusitanian relations are than by sending an entire delegation of royals for the wedding) and – at least as it is known privately and socially in Lusitania – to search for a suitable future spouse. That thought couldn’t be further from his mind, of course – he’s here to protect Dom (and suss out the Polemesians – for a neighboring kingdom, he knows far, far too little about them, and now his niece is supposed to marry one of them?) and make sure Liv doesn’t get in trouble.

He’s battling his own feelings about certain matters, namely those of attraction and such, but the last thing he needs to do right now is make himself vulnerable, too. Still, though – so many of the princes here are… remarkably attractive. Not that he’s of any interest to them, either, the ninth prince of a teeny tiny Mediterranean microstate…

When Royalty Collides

If this ever opens back up, I’d love to come back with Dom and Anton! Sorry that I missed applications lol I’m a silly person who doesn’t check the guild enough when I’m not actively in a roleplay. Anyway, hi, I’m here lurking! Love y’all.

Star Wars: The Harbor's Due

Loril Kaalun

The Geneti--Secretary.

_{Image to follow when Aria either swallows her pride and finds art or else draws.}

| {Full Name} |

Loril Kaalun (Formerly Lomi Prolu)

| {Age} |

Twenty-Four (born in 27BBY)

| {Species} |

Kaminoan

| {Gender} |

Female

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| {Force Sensitive/Alignment} |

Decidedly Not. (True Neutral leaning Lawful)

| Role on Ship |

A… Secretary. Yes. Loril is an exceptional secretary. She prides herself on her meticulous note-keeping and record organization, attending to the matters of her… business partner Clu’s work. She knows more than she ought to about the intricacies of cloning and genetic sequencing, and will not hesitate to blow everyone else out of the water with her knowledge if given the slightest opportunity. It’s a poorly kept secret that she’s a geneticist by trade, still on the run from the Empire nine years after the Kamino Uprising. It’s a slightly-better-kept one that she’s only alive for having been taken under Clu’s protection for her service in the future.

| {Appearance} |

Loril is a proud and elegant creature, standing at the above-average height of 2.35 meters and bearing a graceful, slender form. Her pale skin is mostly unblemished – her pride allows nothing less – and her pale gray irises bright in her black sclera. She dresses impeccably and simply, her clothing close-fit and tailored, in shades of gray and cyan and white. She has a bit of her clothing left from Kamino – the one bit of sentiment she still carries – and a wide range of styles of other worlds that she’s journeyed to in the last few years. Her vanity seems to be anything that could be considered a head or neck adornment – she has many (simple, but elegant) necklaces and headpieces that she can be seen sporting.

| {Equipment and Personal Belongings} |

Six: An AZI biomedical unit fresh from Kamino’s labs. It has a numerical-soup designator, the last digit of which is ostensibly six (or it’s just Loril’s sixth droid. Hard to tell.) A little bit scrambled, roughed up around the edges, with a cracked visor screen and several dents on its hull. Often speaks in a technobabble, and often says things that don’t make sense. Its movements are jerky, suggesting sensors might be out of alignment. Loril has neither the money nor expertise to have it repaired, though it’s a high priority – she cannot bear to have a piece of technology not functioning to its fullest. She has no attachment to the droid, or so she insists, putting its utility first - she will need a competent lab assistant wherever she sets up, and this particular unit has had a processor built in for her personal encryption codes. There is often argument between them; the droid’s very presence, and eternal lack of order, absolutely vexes her. But, its future utility outweighs the current inconveniences.
A large suitcase, battered and especially heavy. Always locked. If opened, revealed to be packed full of journals and notebooks that are written in a mix of Kaminoan and what appears to be a Kaminoan-derived cipher of some form or another. Chemical diagrams and data tables are scattered throughout them.
A second briefcase that’s smaller, and though the cover of it is apparently battered and worn canvas, beneath lies solid metal that’s intricately locked. The inside of the case is thoroughly insulated, with a small cryo box set into the center of it, which contains many small vials in a holding box – all labeled in the Kaminoan cipher. Outside of the cryo box are some of the various tools and harder to come by reagents a geneticist would need, carefully fit into high-density foam cutouts especially designed to carry them, and one singular data sphere.
A duffel bag of clothing.
Holopad, wrist computer, and beaten up data sphere, usually on her person.

Other than the cases, Loril maintains an insanely sterile living quarters. Her bed is made with precision the moment she wakes up, laundry stored out of sight. There are no sentimental objects to be found whatsoever.

| {Physical Abilities} |

Eugeneticist – For all of her (rather short, to this point) life, Loril has been trained and educated for the highly specialized cloning laboratories that dot Kamino’s surface. She was among the top innovators of Tipoca City’s laboratories, and her scientific knowledge is second to none.

Meticulous – Loril’s dedication and attention to detail becomes apparent in more than just academic work. Everything about her is done with a purpose, her mind highly analytical and pragmatic, and it carries over into all aspects of daily life. There is nothing frivolous or unnecessary about her- this includes in her speech patterns, which are direct and to the point.

Vengeful – Traditionally, Kaminoan services were open to the highest bidder. …Then the empire invaded, massacred countless scientists, and destroyed millennia of research. Loril would like nothing more than to see them brought to their knees and made to answer for the wanton destruction of so much knowledge, and will do anything in her power to make it happen.

There's a Droid for That - Loril's expertise is highly specialized and not directly applicable, but her droid Six has a somewhat wider field of programming. If only it were in full repair, it would be Loril's surgical orderly and all-around laboratory assistant, with some knowledge of chemistry and basic lab techniques. It has protocols of anatomy with enough detail for surgeries to be performed on a fair range of humanoid species. ...of course, it's out of calibration now, so you might well get a scalpel stuck into your liver if you let it operate on you.
Beyond her own droid, Loril is passingly familiar with a number of other systems, from a variety of other planets - she can't program them herself, but working with a team of mostly-droids for three years has left her more than able to efficiently delegate tasks to droids of all sorts.

| {Limitations} |

Traumatized – The uprising on Kamino was the day that her entire world inverted itself. She watched her loved ones die, watched her life’s work – save for what she managed to rescue – go up in smoke. It was a freak accident that she made it offworld, even. A lesser individual would be grief-stricken, rendered nonfunctional by such a horrific experience. Loril is not traumatized. Of course she couldn’t be; that is a silly emotional response for lesser individuals. She just avoids any such stimulus that might remind her of that day, isolating herself whenever the training decks are in use- when the decks of the ship are rife with the echoes of blaster fire. When she’s confronted by such, or if – heaven forbid – a combat situation forms in her vicinity - her gaze turns vacant and empty, her muscles locking and brain ceasing to function.

Not Designed to Fight – Kaminoans are especially not known for their mobility, flexibility, or strength. Loril in particular is exemplary in her stiffness and slowness. Every movement she makes is graceful and assured, but that is only because it has to be – her long limbs seem as though they would give out if she had to run, and her shoulders and hips are so stiff that fighting or evasion would be out of the question.

Unarmed, Untrained – She’s never had to fight. Of course she’s never had to fight, the galaxy forgot that Kamino existed until they needed the services offered there. She doesn’t know how to hold a blaster, nor does she much care to know. Such work is outside of her expertise and thus a waste of time, effort, and energetic resources.

Stubborn as A Mule – Loril is exceptionally blunt. Many other Kaminoans are known in the galaxy as being placid, levelheaded and analytical – Loril bearn one, and only one, of those three traits. Painfully proud, and brutishly stubborn even when she’s proven wrong, it’s a wonder she hasn’t had anyone try to knock some sense into her. She has no common sense whatsoever.

---

| {Personality} |

“A personality, you say? A dreadfully primitive waste of energy and thought.”

Loril is the master of her own emotions and thoughts. A control freak to the highest; everything must be in its place and functioning to its absolute best. Not one thing can be out of place, in her environment or in her mind. While many Kaminoans profess an understanding of the human psyche and nature, Loril scorns such work, insisting that one’s merit is determined solely by their genetic makeup, and any shortcomings in their character are the fault of their biology. (She will not admit to herself that anything is wrong. She will not admit that she is a flawed and hurt individual.)

She is a cruel and analytical young woman, nearly expressionless – at least, outwardly appearing as such – and holds a xenophobic and downright condescending view of many. It is hard to earn her respect, short of being an outstanding member of ones species- and even then her respect is mostly a scientific one. Her haughtiness is especially realized with species that still reproduce biologically and leave to random chance what science could guarantee. Thirsting for results above everything else, she has grown dismissive of even other Kanimoans in their haughtiness and refusal to enhance themselves with science.

Loril’s proud and arrogant demeanor hides an inferiority complex, a constant, burning thirst for power and the realization that nothing she does is ever enough. Her greatest failings weigh heavily on her mind. She is obsessive, worrying over projects for hours and hours and ultimately reducing their efficacy for her incessant meddling. Her mind is often distracted in thoughts of impractical and even infeasible future projects, especially now that circumstance has rendered her unable to carry on her work for nearly a decade. She’s fidgety and irritable, especially when work is mentioned.

Outwardly, she is exceptionally secretive and endeavors to be clinical in demeanor, preferring to hide everything she thinks and feels behind her “professional” expressionless mask.

| {Place of Origin} |

Kamino, in one of the satellites of Tipoca City.

| {Background} |

Loril- or as she was named upon her spawning, Lomi Prolu – was born of the egg and sperm of a pair of Kaminoan geneticists (and birthed from an incubation chamber in Tipoca.) In her early years, it became clear that she had a special knack for the biological sciences, and was fast-tracked through Tipoca’s medical and scientific schools, and earned her place among the rank and file of Kamino’s genetic sequencing units a whole year earlier than most of her peers, by the age of 10.

Lomi was fiercely driven to innovate, to question the traditional work of the Kaminoans – It was a belief of many of the elder scientists that their process had become so efficient, perfect and wasteless, that it was unable to be improved upon. Lomi challenged that notion and sought to do better. Though many of her early attempts at such innovation turned out to be drastic failure, she earned the grudging respect (and ill-veiled enmity) of many other scientists. As she grew in expertise and confidence, her projects turned into successes, and after that the promotions soon followed.

Within three years of her employment, she became the head scientist of a regional laboratory under the republic clone project, overseeing the work of others more than twice her experience. By this point, the process was flowing as a well-oiled machine would, every lab a piece fitting into the greater production machine.

She was under strict instructions not to tamper with the genome being used.

Lomi was never good at following orders. Her laboratory started turning out batches of clones that were rather more specialized – some skills better than the average, some far worse. When she settled on the force as her next target of modifications – if one could simply instill midichlorians into a body and force the microbes to form a titer within the being, there would be no logical reason why one couldn’t have an army of force-wielding clones – she was promptly removed from the project, told she would only be reinstated when she learned the discipline of scientific process.

Really, the demotion was serendipitous. Her lab was one of the few no longer monopolized by the republic project – one of the few permitted to take outside commissions. Though she would have liked to work on her personal projects, visions of force-using warriors and the perfect, genetically altered Kaminoan, she had neither the resources nor bearing to direct her laboratory onto such tasks.

She had a few deals here and there over the next couple of years, simple, easy projects that were fast cash enough for her to amass a modest fortune. But the imperial presence was growing on Kamino – deals that she had formally been able to conduct in the open and with the assistance of many soon became hushed affairs conducted with only the knowledge of her few most trusted laboratory assistants. She grew to rely very heavily on droids – they could be trusted not to be whispering to the soldiers that now openly patrolled the research district.

She was approached at the end of the year 13 BBY with a particularly unique business proposition.

The man who brought it was a Duros, a humble “traveler”, he insisted, bearing a contract to be signed. A wealthy Muun businessman by the name of Clu Zanith was in the market for a new heart to be grown for him, and was willing to pay exceptionally handsomely for it to be done. The caveat? He wanted it to be an individual project, kept highly secret. Only the single scientist involved could be trusted with the information of his identity, and of what he needed. Secrecy and delicacy was key.

With the help of Halan Sil – as she had learned the Duros’s name to be – she set about organizing her laboratory for such a project, urging her handful of underlings to take on their own projects and do their own innovating, to be a bit secretive and inspire competition among themselves. They set themselves up with another imperial-sanctioned project, to draw suspicion away, and finally she decided they had as many measures in place as they could to begin the businessman’s work.

She never got to see how that panned out. It was a night shift, not the first time she had been working round-the-clock – she would work on her imperial project by day, and at night would “stay to finish some work” and begin the sequencing and splicing of the Muun businessman’s genome – that was disrupted by screaming and blaster fire.

Her lab assistants fled into the corridor, and she watched them gunned down. Medic droids, programming overridden at the detection of silver-blue blood splattered on the walls, rushed out into the corridor- to be gunned down as well, and with them countless amounts of data and work.

The blast doors slammed shut, and despite herself Lomi panicked, fearing herself trapped. But her terror was short-lived as Halan Sil himself stepped out of the utility door set into the side of the wall, throwing a large suitcase down onto the floor. “Hurry, pack what you can. I don’t know how long the doors will hold them.”

“What are you doing?” She couldn’t help but gawp at him.

“Getting you out, clone master. You’re no use to our benefactor if you’re dead, and he’d rather his genetic information not be in a third party’s hands.” The Duros reached for her bookshelf, an obsolete feature with Kamino’s technology level, but one that Lomi had insisted on – the better to keep hard copy records of the work she’d done. A skilled hacker could tamper with databases, but it was considerably harder to tamper with paper books in an age where they were obsolete.

The Duros started chucking the notebooks into the suitcase, with little regard for how gently he threw them – Lomi resisted the urge to chastise him, leaping for her sample briefcase. She gathered as many samples as she could fit into it. Most important were the working genomes of the Muun, as she was determined not to lose the month’s progress she’d made, a few that she’d had left over from the republic project (she hoped they were still viable, but wasn’t certain), and several from the various imperial projects she’d been commissioned on. Her meager handful of data spheres, and several vials of reagents that she wasn’t certain could be acquired elsewhere.

She got the case closed just as the blast doors were shoved open, tumbling into the maintenance door seconds before the room was bathed in laser light. Halan Sil was panting, body hunched over underneath the enormous suitcase. “Clone master,” he panted, “Why can’t you have a box of data spheres like literally every other cloner on this planet?”

“Would you have hired me if I was?”

He didn’t respond, grumbling and pushing onwards through the tunnel. It was a dreadfully uncomfortable journey, Lomi needing to hunch nearly in half to fit through the tunnel.

It would spit them out on the underside of one of the stilt towers. A speeder would take them back to the residential city.

Halfway to their destination, give or take, a beeping began to emanate from the tunnels behind them. Fearing the worst, Halan Sil dropped the case, drawing his blaster. As the sound grew closer and louder, it began to sound remarkably unlike anything that might have been hostile. The beeping almost sounded like a repeating of Lomi’s name, over and over.

A mighty shadow grew on the wall.

A small, jerky robot rounded the corner, beeping excitedly upon the sight of Lomi.

Six.

Damn that little droid.

It seemed a lot worse for wear, pearly colors on its hull as though it had a few near misses with the laser weapons, eye screen shattered, body scratched and dented, and missing an arm. But here it was, mostly functional. With a sigh, she gestured for it to come along.

….
They made it back to the residential block, to find that the ship was all but swarmed with imperial officers. Lomi still doesn’t know how Halan Sil managed to get them out of his way- the only explanation he offered was that he “has connections” and that was left to be that.

However it happened, it worked. They got offworld.

The vast majority of scientists and clones did not.
….
She was taken to a nondescript business center on some mid rim world, without any real explanation of what was going on. Halan Sil told her only who she was to become.

“Records will show that Lomi Prolu was shot down on Kamino. You are Loril Kaalun, a young administrative assistant utterly unconnected to anything to do with the cloning operation. You are a refugee hired off the streets as a secretary and office assistant. Your records will check out, I assure you. Unfortunately, you don’t have as many credits at your disposal as you once did, though my people will be seeing if they can’t recover your assets.”

Several years passed in a blur, the newly-renamed Loril being shuffled around from planet to planet every few months, doing menial organizational and paperwork tasks (intergalactic businessmen have an obscene amount of paperwork to be processed) wherever she could. It seemed nowhere was safe enough for her to continue her research – occasional meetings with Zanith, when he happened to be in the area, confirmed that point, though he repeatedly referenced their contract for her services, implying that he was doing all he could to find a laboratory for her to continue her practice.

Three-odd years ago, Zanith paid a visit once more- he seemed different then, muscles tense and eyes too bright, though it was not her place to comment on it - and told her that she was to bring all of her supplies (which had been kept safe in a temperature-controlled vault for the duration of her time working for him) and accompany him on one of the most lucrative business offers he’s been afforded.

The Kaminoan does not much care for the ragtag crew of the ‘Noreaster, taking much of her time alone save for when she absolutely must interact with the crew, and despite instructions lording her intellectual superiority over them. Clu’s had to unstick them from several situations over these last three years, when Loril’s arrogant complex has had her reveal more than she should. He’s promised her that Anchorage will be what it takes to get her equipment, staff, and a place to continue her work.

She doesn’t know if any of her samples are viable - she hopes they are, but they were not packaged to be stored for a decade. She might have to start over. Her work might be lost forever.

That thought is more terrifying than any other.

Star Wars: The Harbor's Due

Vifii

The …Pet.

_{image to follow, as always, once I get off my tail feathers and draw.}

| {Full Name} |

Vifii ((Kushiban don't seem to take family names, and Vifii's never had a family, anyway))

| {Age} |

15 ((developmentally comparable to a ~20 year old human))

| {Species} |

Kushiban

| {Gender} |

Female

---

| {Force Sensitive/Alignment} |

Umm…no?

| Role on Ship |

Like it or not, Vifii has styled herself as an ‘infiltrator’ – no one is going to suspect a pet bunny to be making off with your commander’s dataspheres. The core of her skillset is petty pickpocketing, that and being able to sneak around in plain sight, but she’s donned a number of different identities and professed sets of abilities to carry out a number of jobs.

| {Appearance} |

Vifii is of a smaller size than would be expected of many kushiban, a byproduct of being raised in a crate, always hungry and with minimal space to move around. Standing upright on her hind legs, she’s a mere sixty-six centimeters tall (about half that when on all fours) and bears a thin and knobbly frame that resists every attempt at fattening. Her soft ears and tail dominate her small form – they grew normally, even if the rest of her didn’t - and the result is that she’s often tripping over the ears when walking on all fours, and they nearly skim the ground even when she’s standing upright. For that reason, and matters of pride, she prefers to stand on her hind legs and has taught herself to be able to walk and move with some amount of grace – though in danger she drops back to all fours.

Vifii’s eyes are usually some shade of bright blue, though they change colors slightly as her fur does – her fur, usually a shade of white or beige or grey, is always meticulously brushed and combed. Vifii can’t stand to have even the slightest dust or dinge in her fur. Most of her hair is grown out long, but for a bald, scarred band around her neck and a discolored patch over the slaver’s crest tattooed on the point of her left shoulder.

The only notable accessory she wears is a silver-colored hairpin which holds a particularly long tuft of hair in place behind her ears. It’s set with sparkly blue stones that on closer inspection are paste rhinestones – utterly valueless.

| {Equipment and Personal Belongings} |

When Vifii joined the crew, she had nothing but a small rucksack with a few changes of clothes. She dresses in altered human clothes, whatever she can easily get her paws on, though they’re often child-sized, or else adult human’s shirts worn as dresses.

Since joining the crew, however, she’s collected an alarming assortment of nick-nacks and trinkets, favoring brightly colored and sparkly objects. So far she hasn’t taken anything from the crew, but whenever they stop in a town it seems she gets her paws on something. She has recently started wearing ribbon bands around her neck in an effort to hide the collar scar.

| {Physical Abilities} |

Fast ‘lil bugger. – Bunnies are fast. Bunnies are really fast. Vifii, small and nimble as she is, is remarkably hard to catch or land a hit on if she’s able to get all four feet to the ground.

Hidden in plain sight - Vi prides herself on being able to blend in, being passed off as a docile servant or pet. Either class is given a remarkable amount of freedom, especially in wealthy houses.

Quick-Thinking Pickpocket – Vifii is very good at quickly weaving lies and half-truths – and then remembering the stories that she’s spun. Anything to get herself out of a situation alive.

Seamstress – During Vi’s early childhood, she was instructed in traditional Kushiban weaving and spinning techniques – and has since taught herself other intricacies of the skill. Kushiban silk is prized for its iridescence and softness, and though it is a niche market, selling the thread spun from her fur earns a nice chunk of pocket change for her.

| {Limitations} |

Hydrophobic – Given the hell that was her adolescence on Aquilaris, Vifii is horrified at the mere thought of visiting water worlds, and hates any exposure to the liquid beyond what is necessary. A mere ocean breeze can set her to trembling and refusing to leave her quarters.

Just a Dumb Bunny – The boon of her unconventional appearance is also a major flaw - the fact that no one will take her seriously. When she tries to engage directly in conversation, she is often as not laughed off. Even the crew of the Noreaster might treat her as little more than a pet.

Heart of Gold - Vifii is very young and naïve, and follows her heart over her head. Her strong moral compass has accomplished some major good in the world, but has also landed her in trouble and earned her more than her fair share of close calls.

Fragile – Vi has little way of protecting herself or fighting- sure, teeth and claws, but they do nothing against proper weapons - and her body is too fragile to withstand much force at all. Everything she does banks on her not getting caught.

---

| {Personality} |

Vifii is a delightful mess of contradictions. Her upbringing as a slave gave her a worldview that few possess, but also sheltered her from the more subtle cruelties of the galaxy. She is naïve, ill-informed of the way things work in the middle echelons of society, and still has a notion that she’ll be able to set the galaxy to being a better place – while being dreadfully fatalistic about the whole endeavor and her worth in the world. She tries to be optimistic, seeing some amount of good in everything and everyone – except slavers – and does her best to help people. With that being said, she is massively distrustful of any organization or group who claims to have a benevolent motive. Perhaps she is too cynical, or perhaps not enough.

Outwardly, Vi is a shy, reserved creature that is immensely distrustful of others. She could be mistaken for mute at first meeting her, mute save for squeaks and purrs and growls as one would expect from an animal. She has a very, very select few on the crew that she trusts, and to their perception she is a bubbly and inexperienced young woman, downright childish at times, who has an awful lot to say in an awfully soft voice that seems incapable of speaking emphatically. It’s hard to win her trust, but once you do you have a lifelong friend.

| {Place of Origin} |

“Some backwater hellhole, wherever it was.” There aren’t any records detailing Vifii’s birth or upbringing, but she was born of an escaped Kushiban fur slave in hiding in the slums of the city-world Nar Shaddaa.

| {Background} |

There was softness, and warmth. Gentle voices around her. Soft paws guiding her own, a lilting melody in her ears, the twisting of downy fur in her paws. Soft ears draped over her; the wriggling of other small downy bundles against her side, twitching noses and blinking eyelashes. Harsh lantern lights eased by sheets of sheer cloth.

A crack that shattered every moment of peace. Screaming. Blood splattered on the mildewed green tiles.

Her earliest distinct memory is that of a market. A feeling of emptiness. Something lost. An overwhelming cloud of the stink of fear and pain and sickness and waste and ruin.

Loneliness.

Laughter. A flash of blinding white-hot pain.

Darkness.

When she awoke, she was overcome with the sweetest scent she’d ever smelled – the salty, bitter tang of ocean air and sunshine. There was a dull stinging in her shoulder, the only sign that whatever horrible thing had happened before wasn’t just a dream.

She was on the water world of Aquilaris, in residence on an island resort of some sort. The owner of the place, a seedy-looking grey-skinned fellow, was quick to put her in her place. She was not a slave, not at all, but rather an employee, and her job was simple. There was a buzzer in her collar-

At the mention of a collar she panicked, pawing at it and tugging, but the light pressure that had been on her throat only seemed to grow more intense as she did. A bolt of pain seared through her head and chest, and she collapsed to the floor again.

The collar would tighten if she tried to remove it, and could be remotely activated to electrocute her. It would explode, and her head with it, if she wandered past the bounds of the man’s resort. The man smiled lightly, politely, as he explained it, speaking quickly as though she understood perfectly. When the buzzer sounded, her crate would open, and there would be a magnetic tugging on the collar. She was to follow the tugging, and it would lead her to a resort guest who required some service or another.

Any requested service was to be delivered promptly, professionally, and without question.

She had no idea what all could be asked of her, but she soon learned. She was spared much that was inflicted on others, the other “employees” that she only saw in passing – it seemed that even as heartless as these cruel businessmen were, they were under instruction to not kill or cause serious injury to the - employees.

The routine was simple. After whatever …service had been completed, and to the customer’s satisfaction, she was to return to her cage, and wait until she was called again. Failure to do so fast enough, as she found, resulted in her collar tightening until she couldn’t breathe, electric shocks dancing down her spine. Sometimes it seemed even daring to think improperly would leave her fallen to her knees, fire dancing behind her eyes.

It was hard to keep track of time, beyond the blur of hunger and mistreatment - it was almost easier not to think, not to worry about the infeasible. She got older and with her age grew; her accommodations did not. She could not bring herself to care. An animal, only there to wait hand and foot on the seedy business lords, fetch and carry, “provide comfort”, a thing, an object for them – it was hard to keep herself above such basal lines of thought. It was hard to remember that she was a person in her own right. Everything faded into a sick kind of rhythm. As she matured, the market brand pressed into her shoulder faded and stretched. Fearing that it might eventually disappear, the master had his own insignia tattooed on over it. Her duties redoubled, now more personal and …intimate to the master himself, and any of his favored guests.

Every summer, the sea creatures encroached on the edges of the resort’s white beaches, but one year they were more brazen than they ever had been before. Vi desperately yearned to wade out into the water and let them take her – but her resolve quickly weakened, memories of the time she had tried to let the oceans take her- memories of the punishment she had endured from it. Whenever she could spare a moment, though, the diminutive creature found herself on the edge of the beach, hoping that a freak accident might let one of the creatures pick her off.

The resort found itself a peculiar guest soon after – a man who never removed his helm, a peculiar construction that hid his eyes and all his features, a man who carried more than his weight in weapons, in such a way that it looked like he might know how to use them. Vi had the privilege of waiting on him the first day he was there, feeling his gaze sharply on her collar and the tattoo. He didn’t seek out her other services, either, though not for lack of her offering. And he spoke to her as an equal would, and was not content with the animal grunts that she had been reduced to for years – he would wait until she spoke, haltingly and scarcely whispering, terror rising with every word. There were some things he asked that she could not bring herself to speak of. But it seemed he understood.

The sea monsters were soon dealt with, and the mysterious guest vanished once more. Vi was devastated to see him go, devastated to be left again tending the whims of the sadistic men and women who frequented their establishment.

Such return to the mundane was short-lived. Within weeks, a group of others – wearing the same peculiar helms and armor – descended on the resort.

Blood splattered on tiles. Cages were sprung, collars torn from necks, slaves – now freed – herded into the relative safety of a starship’s underbelly.

Freedom.

Vifii had no idea what that word meant.

These strange folk called each other mando’ade, showing a kind of affection that was outright alien to Vi, and invited them all to join their clan. Their family. At the mention of family, there was a tug in her heart.

She might be able to be happy there. In a large group. Of large, intimidating people who showed no mercy. But she was weak and frail, and oh, God- what if they decided she wasn’t worth it? What if they were just to trap her here again?

She could not bear the thought. So she took their other offer – that of a respectable new identity, and a ride to a safe part of the galaxy. Having no idea just how big the galaxy was, she dumbly agreed to follow one of the older slaves, a Twi’lek woman who said she had friends in Coruscant.

Wherever that was.

They arrived in Coruscant without much ado, the Twi’lek woman scooped up by her family as soon as they landed, paying no heed to the quiet Kushiban shadow that she’d had the last few weeks of travel. Vifii was left alone, again.

She was hired on as a maid in a mid-level tavern – safe, if rather seedy – but was let go as soon as her slave marks became obvious. She bounced back and forth between several establishments, being hired on and fired for various reasons, most involving her appearance and the mark on her shoulder.

It was an adjustment to be wearing human clothing – they had all been kept nude on the island, and it was apparently sufficiently socially acceptable for her species – but things tended to go better when her tattoo was concealed. Still, work was hard to come by, and she was often fired for her stature and bearing, and her inability to confront rowdier customers.

Without money or options, she grew to be desperate. Though she had tried selling her fur – Kushiban fur thread, as light and soft and warm as their fur was, had grown to be a luxury good – her prices were consistently undercut by people she knew were sourcing it from slaves. There had been talk on the island, as she’d grown, that she might earn the boss more money if he sold her to a fur trader. But whatever the case, she wasn’t able to earn enough money for the exorbitant accommodation rentals even in the mid-levels of the city, and she refused to move any lower.

She took to petty thievery, hitchhiking to the higher levels of the city-world and sneaking things from the transports and purses of insanely wealthy people as they went about their day. When she was caught, and it was often at first, she would play dumb and cute and soft – and they fell for it nearly every time. A woman took her in for a time, and treated her kindly, giving her food and a soft place to sleep- Vi felt horrible about taking some of the woman’s jewelry before she left, but when someone has an entire room devoted to rows and rows of sparkly objects, there’s no way she needs all of that. The three valuable necklaces that she took gave her enough credits, when re-sold, to pay her rent for almost a year. And the paste-rhinestone hairpin continues to be Vi’s favorite accessory, with pretty blue crystals that match her eyes.

Karma got her back for that, though, and left her with no successful heists and several near-misses, including nearly being gutted by an exceptionally un-amused battle droid and its equally un-amused owner, who stared at her impassively with his eyebrows halfway up his bulbous, enormous head. She barely managed to talk her way out of that, and is rather convinced the man only let her go out of amusement. (It’s certainly terrified her of all the people she now knows are called Muun – including the one in the Noreaster’s crew. But it can’t be the same guy, right? That would be too much of a coincidence.)

She slowly fell back into debt, and as she did, a swoop gang took pity on her. By which it’s meant that she was cornered on her midnight commute home from the tavern (she’d found work at one, for pennies, but it was work) and offered a deal – she drop everything and work for them, or else she be forcibly overpowered and sold into slavery. Their leader had noticed the inked-over brand on her shoulder while she worked, and put together that a former slave of a presumed-dead master would be in for a mighty rough life if ever returned to the markets.

They wanted her to infiltrate the estate of a wealthy fur merchant, one who consistently undercut their prices on all exotic fabrics, and they wanted to know how and why. Vifii thought she knew the answer – Slaves. Low prices are always a sign of free labor. But when she said as much, their comment was simple. Sabotage it, any way she could, and bring the profits back to them. They’d be watching and waiting, and they’d help the extraction effort.

She played her part, turning up on the lady’s doorstep beaten (that had been the gang’s idea) and shaking, and a great show was made of taking her in with kindness. Kindness which evaporated as soon as they were through the door.

When she explained the situation to the other Kushiban captives, their fur shorn short and eyes dull, they laughed in her face. Said she was naïve and a fool and had doomed herself and all of them – the swoop she was working for kills slaves, and calls itself merciful. She’d practically signed their death warrant.

That was just an unacceptable betrayal. If you asked Vi now what had come over her, she wouldn’t be able to tell you. The others, scattered now in all corners of the galaxy, would likely have similar answers. Rage blinded her, and her fury was infectious. The slaves revolted.

The merchant - who was foolish enough to not expect such violence from such soft, pacifistic creatures, and so no longer retained any guard or other brute force - was summarily murdered next feeding-time, her eyes clawed out and body left to bleed out on the floor. Her estate was left on fire, and her fifty-five now-free Kushiban fur slaves were smuggled onto various ships heading off-world. The commotion of it caused all eyes to turn to the fur trade running rampant just below Coruscant’s surface, seeing market restrictions cracked down everywhere, and a tiny Kushiban with enormous ears became the primary target of several of the city’s exotic good smugglers.

She had made it back to her tiny apartment and gathered up her few belongings, barely getting free of the complex before flames shot out of every window, shouts and screams echoing down the street. Suddenly confronted with the very real possibility of dying and blinded by terror, she booked it to one of the smaller nearby spaceports. That was when she’d found the Noreaster. Though she hadn’t known the ship, nor the crew, she had seen that it was a small craft – big enough to not be an obvious choice of escape, small enough that it wasn’t too un-obvious. She’d scampered aboard, blending her fur in with the various crates of provisions in the hold and praying she wouldn’t be found until they’d lifted off from the surface.

A droid found her, of course, when checking the cargo for biological trace, and had dragged her abovedecks to face a motley crew. Having scanned the crowd, her gaze settled on a fragile-looking young woman she would eventually grow to know as Requiem. Maybe it was the small creature on her shoulder, or the softness in her face, but she seemed the most reasonable to speak to in this situation.

Letting oily tears well up in her eyes for the first time in a very, very long time, she fell to her knees and begged the woman for protection. She left out the part of the smuggling rings having it out for her head, naturally, but explained some of the cruelty she’d endured and begged for refuge, promising she’d do whatever menial work was thrown at her and that she’d earn her keep.

Some part of her ached fiercely at the admission, at her sudden willingness to give herself over to another party’s mercy, but she bowed her head and vowed that she would take whatever was dealt. She was out of options, and out of time.

Loril Kaalun

The Geneti--Secretary.

_{Image to follow when Aria either swallows her pride and finds art or else draws.}

| {Full Name} |

Loril Kaalun (Formerly Lomi Prolu)

| {Age} |

Twenty-Four (born in 27BBY)

| {Species} |

Kaminoan

| {Gender} |

Female

---

| {Force Sensitive/Alignment} |

Decidedly Not. (True Neutral leaning Lawful)

| Role on Ship |

A… Secretary. Yes. Loril is an exceptional secretary. She prides herself on her meticulous note-keeping and record organization, attending to the matters of her… business partner Clu’s work. She knows more than she ought to about the intricacies of cloning and genetic sequencing, and will not hesitate to blow everyone else out of the water with her knowledge if given the slightest opportunity. It’s a poorly kept secret that she’s a geneticist by trade, still on the run from the Empire nine years after the Kamino Uprising. It’s a slightly-better-kept one that she’s only alive for having been taken under Clu’s protection for her service in the future.

| {Appearance} |

Loril is a proud and elegant creature, standing at the above-average height of 2.35 meters and bearing a graceful, slender form. Her pale skin is mostly unblemished – her pride allows nothing less – and her pale gray irises bright in her black sclera. She dresses impeccably and simply, her clothing close-fit and tailored, in shades of gray and cyan and white. She has a bit of her clothing left from Kamino – the one bit of sentiment she still carries – and a wide range of styles of other worlds that she’s journeyed to in the last few years. Her vanity seems to be anything that could be considered a head or neck adornment – she has many (simple, but elegant) necklaces and headpieces that she can be seen sporting.

| {Equipment and Personal Belongings} |

Six: An AZI biomedical unit fresh from Kamino’s labs. It has a numerical-soup designator, the last digit of which is ostensibly six (or it’s just Loril’s sixth droid. Hard to tell.) A little bit scrambled, roughed up around the edges, with a cracked visor screen and several dents on its hull. Often speaks in a technobabble, and often says things that don’t make sense. Its movements are jerky, suggesting sensors might be out of alignment. Loril has neither the money nor expertise to have it repaired, though it’s a high priority – she cannot bear to have a piece of technology not functioning to its fullest. She has no attachment to the droid, or so she insists, putting its utility first - she will need a competent lab assistant wherever she sets up, and this particular unit has had a processor built in for her personal encryption codes. There is often argument between them; the droid’s very presence, and eternal lack of order, absolutely vexes her. But, its future utility outweighs the current inconveniences.
A large suitcase, battered and especially heavy. Always locked. If opened, revealed to be packed full of journals and notebooks that are written in a mix of Kaminoan and what appears to be a Kaminoan-derived cipher of some form or another. Chemical diagrams and data tables are scattered throughout them.
A second briefcase that’s smaller, and though the cover of it is apparently battered and worn canvas, beneath lies solid metal that’s intricately locked. The inside of the case is thoroughly insulated, with a small cryo box set into the center of it, which contains many small vials in a holding box – all labeled in the Kaminoan cipher. Outside of the cryo box are some of the various tools and harder to come by reagents a geneticist would need, carefully fit into high-density foam cutouts especially designed to carry them, and one singular data sphere.
A duffel bag of clothing.
Holopad, wrist computer, and beaten up data sphere, usually on her person.

Other than the cases, Loril maintains an insanely sterile living quarters. Her bed is made with precision the moment she wakes up, laundry stored out of sight. There are no sentimental objects to be found whatsoever.

| {Physical Abilities} |

Eugeneticist – For all of her (rather short, to this point) life, Loril has been trained and educated for the highly specialized cloning laboratories that dot Kamino’s surface. She was among the top innovators of Tipoca City’s laboratories, and her scientific knowledge is second to none.

Meticulous – Loril’s dedication and attention to detail becomes apparent in more than just academic work. Everything about her is done with a purpose, her mind highly analytical and pragmatic, and it carries over into all aspects of daily life. There is nothing frivolous or unnecessary about her- this includes in her speech patterns, which are direct and to the point.

Vengeful – Traditionally, Kaminoan services were open to the highest bidder. …Then the empire invaded, massacred countless scientists, and destroyed millennia of research. Loril would like nothing more than to see them brought to their knees and made to answer for the wanton destruction of so much knowledge, and will do anything in her power to make it happen.

There's a Droid for That - Loril's expertise is highly specialized and not directly applicable, but her droid Six has a somewhat wider field of programming. If only it were in full repair, it would be Loril's surgical orderly and all-around laboratory assistant, with some knowledge of chemistry and basic lab techniques. It has protocols of anatomy with enough detail for surgeries to be performed on a fair range of humanoid species. ...of course, it's out of calibration now, so you might well get a scalpel stuck into your liver if you let it operate on you.
Beyond her own droid, Loril is passingly familiar with a number of other systems, from a variety of other planets - she can't program them herself, but working with a team of mostly-droids for three years has left her more than able to efficiently delegate tasks to droids of all sorts.

| {Limitations} |

Traumatized – The uprising on Kamino was the day that her entire world inverted itself. She watched her loved ones die, watched her life’s work – save for what she managed to rescue – go up in smoke. It was a freak accident that she made it offworld, even. A lesser individual would be grief-stricken, rendered nonfunctional by such a horrific experience. Loril is not traumatized. Of course she couldn’t be; that is a silly emotional response for lesser individuals. She just avoids any such stimulus that might remind her of that day, isolating herself whenever the training decks are in use- when the decks of the ship are rife with the echoes of blaster fire. When she’s confronted by such, or if – heaven forbid – a combat situation forms in her vicinity - her gaze turns vacant and empty, her muscles locking and brain ceasing to function.

Not Designed to Fight – Kaminoans are especially not known for their mobility, flexibility, or strength. Loril in particular is exemplary in her stiffness and slowness. Every movement she makes is graceful and assured, but that is only because it has to be – her long limbs seem as though they would give out if she had to run, and her shoulders and hips are so stiff that fighting or evasion would be out of the question.

Unarmed, Untrained – She’s never had to fight. Of course she’s never had to fight, the galaxy forgot that Kamino existed until they needed the services offered there. She doesn’t know how to hold a blaster, nor does she much care to know. Such work is outside of her expertise and thus a waste of time, effort, and energetic resources.

Stubborn as A Mule – Loril is exceptionally blunt. Many other Kaminoans are known in the galaxy as being placid, levelheaded and analytical – Loril bearn one, and only one, of those three traits. Painfully proud, and brutishly stubborn even when she’s proven wrong, it’s a wonder she hasn’t had anyone try to knock some sense into her. She has no common sense whatsoever.

---

| {Personality} |

“A personality, you say? A dreadfully primitive waste of energy and thought.”

Loril is the master of her own emotions and thoughts. A control freak to the highest; everything must be in its place and functioning to its absolute best. Not one thing can be out of place, in her environment or in her mind. While many Kaminoans profess an understanding of the human psyche and nature, Loril scorns such work, insisting that one’s merit is determined solely by their genetic makeup, and any shortcomings in their character are the fault of their biology. (She will not admit to herself that anything is wrong. She will not admit that she is a flawed and hurt individual.)

She is a cruel and analytical young woman, nearly expressionless – at least, outwardly appearing as such – and holds a xenophobic and downright condescending view of many. It is hard to earn her respect, short of being an outstanding member of ones species- and even then her respect is mostly a scientific one. Her haughtiness is especially realized with species that still reproduce biologically and leave to random chance what science could guarantee. Thirsting for results above everything else, she has grown dismissive of even other Kanimoans in their haughtiness and refusal to enhance themselves with science.

Loril’s proud and arrogant demeanor hides an inferiority complex, a constant, burning thirst for power and the realization that nothing she does is ever enough. Her greatest failings weigh heavily on her mind. She is obsessive, worrying over projects for hours and hours and ultimately reducing their efficacy for her incessant meddling. Her mind is often distracted in thoughts of impractical and even infeasible future projects, especially now that circumstance has rendered her unable to carry on her work for nearly a decade. She’s fidgety and irritable, especially when work is mentioned.

Outwardly, she is exceptionally secretive and endeavors to be clinical in demeanor, preferring to hide everything she thinks and feels behind her “professional” expressionless mask.

| {Place of Origin} |

Kamino, in one of the satellites of Tipoca City.

| {Background} |

Loril- or as she was named upon her spawning, Lomi Prolu – was born of the egg and sperm of a pair of Kaminoan geneticists (and birthed from an incubation chamber in Tipoca.) In her early years, it became clear that she had a special knack for the biological sciences, and was fast-tracked through Tipoca’s medical and scientific schools, and earned her place among the rank and file of Kamino’s genetic sequencing units a whole year earlier than most of her peers, by the age of 10.

Lomi was fiercely driven to innovate, to question the traditional work of the Kaminoans – It was a belief of many of the elder scientists that their process had become so efficient, perfect and wasteless, that it was unable to be improved upon. Lomi challenged that notion and sought to do better. Though many of her early attempts at such innovation turned out to be drastic failure, she earned the grudging respect (and ill-veiled enmity) of many other scientists. As she grew in expertise and confidence, her projects turned into successes, and after that the promotions soon followed.

Within three years of her employment, she became the head scientist of a regional laboratory under the republic clone project, overseeing the work of others more than twice her experience. By this point, the process was flowing as a well-oiled machine would, every lab a piece fitting into the greater production machine.

She was under strict instructions not to tamper with the genome being used.

Lomi was never good at following orders. Her laboratory started turning out batches of clones that were rather more specialized – some skills better than the average, some far worse. When she settled on the force as her next target of modifications – if one could simply instill midichlorians into a body and force the microbes to form a titer within the being, there would be no logical reason why one couldn’t have an army of force-wielding clones – she was promptly removed from the project, told she would only be reinstated when she learned the discipline of scientific process.

Really, the demotion was serendipitous. Her lab was one of the few no longer monopolized by the republic project – one of the few permitted to take outside commissions. Though she would have liked to work on her personal projects, visions of force-using warriors and the perfect, genetically altered Kaminoan, she had neither the resources nor bearing to direct her laboratory onto such tasks.

She had a few deals here and there over the next couple of years, simple, easy projects that were fast cash enough for her to amass a modest fortune. But the imperial presence was growing on Kamino – deals that she had formally been able to conduct in the open and with the assistance of many soon became hushed affairs conducted with only the knowledge of her few most trusted laboratory assistants. She grew to rely very heavily on droids – they could be trusted not to be whispering to the soldiers that now openly patrolled the research district.

She was approached at the end of the year 13 BBY with a particularly unique business proposition.

The man who brought it was a Duros, a humble “traveler”, he insisted, bearing a contract to be signed. A wealthy Muun businessman by the name of Clu Zanith was in the market for a new heart to be grown for him, and was willing to pay exceptionally handsomely for it to be done. The caveat? He wanted it to be an individual project, kept highly secret. Only the single scientist involved could be trusted with the information of his identity, and of what he needed. Secrecy and delicacy was key.

With the help of Halan Sil – as she had learned the Duros’s name to be – she set about organizing her laboratory for such a project, urging her handful of underlings to take on their own projects and do their own innovating, to be a bit secretive and inspire competition among themselves. They set themselves up with another imperial-sanctioned project, to draw suspicion away, and finally she decided they had as many measures in place as they could to begin the businessman’s work.

She never got to see how that panned out. It was a night shift, not the first time she had been working round-the-clock – she would work on her imperial project by day, and at night would “stay to finish some work” and begin the sequencing and splicing of the Muun businessman’s genome – that was disrupted by screaming and blaster fire.

Her lab assistants fled into the corridor, and she watched them gunned down. Medic droids, programming overridden at the detection of silver-blue blood splattered on the walls, rushed out into the corridor- to be gunned down as well, and with them countless amounts of data and work.

The blast doors slammed shut, and despite herself Lomi panicked, fearing herself trapped. But her terror was short-lived as Halan Sil himself stepped out of the utility door set into the side of the wall, throwing a large suitcase down onto the floor. “Hurry, pack what you can. I don’t know how long the doors will hold them.”

“What are you doing?” She couldn’t help but gawp at him.

“Getting you out, clone master. You’re no use to our benefactor if you’re dead, and he’d rather his genetic information not be in a third party’s hands.” The Duros reached for her bookshelf, an obsolete feature with Kamino’s technology level, but one that Lomi had insisted on – the better to keep hard copy records of the work she’d done. A skilled hacker could tamper with databases, but it was considerably harder to tamper with paper books in an age where they were obsolete.

The Duros started chucking the notebooks into the suitcase, with little regard for how gently he threw them – Lomi resisted the urge to chastise him, leaping for her sample briefcase. She gathered as many samples as she could fit into it. Most important were the working genomes of the Muun, as she was determined not to lose the month’s progress she’d made, a few that she’d had left over from the republic project (she hoped they were still viable, but wasn’t certain), and several from the various imperial projects she’d been commissioned on. Her meager handful of data spheres, and several vials of reagents that she wasn’t certain could be acquired elsewhere.

She got the case closed just as the blast doors were shoved open, tumbling into the maintenance door seconds before the room was bathed in laser light. Halan Sil was panting, body hunched over underneath the enormous suitcase. “Clone master,” he panted, “Why can’t you have a box of data spheres like literally every other cloner on this planet?”

“Would you have hired me if I was?”

He didn’t respond, grumbling and pushing onwards through the tunnel. It was a dreadfully uncomfortable journey, Lomi needing to hunch nearly in half to fit through the tunnel.

It would spit them out on the underside of one of the stilt towers. A speeder would take them back to the residential city.

Halfway to their destination, give or take, a beeping began to emanate from the tunnels behind them. Fearing the worst, Halan Sil dropped the case, drawing his blaster. As the sound grew closer and louder, it began to sound remarkably unlike anything that might have been hostile. The beeping almost sounded like a repeating of Lomi’s name, over and over.

A mighty shadow grew on the wall.

A small, jerky robot rounded the corner, beeping excitedly upon the sight of Lomi.

Six.

Damn that little droid.

It seemed a lot worse for wear, pearly colors on its hull as though it had a few near misses with the laser weapons, eye screen shattered, body scratched and dented, and missing an arm. But here it was, mostly functional. With a sigh, she gestured for it to come along.

….
They made it back to the residential block, to find that the ship was all but swarmed with imperial officers. Lomi still doesn’t know how Halan Sil managed to get them out of his way- the only explanation he offered was that he “has connections” and that was left to be that.

However it happened, it worked. They got offworld.

The vast majority of scientists and clones did not.
….
She was taken to a nondescript business center on some mid rim world, without any real explanation of what was going on. Halan Sil told her only who she was to become.

“Records will show that Lomi Prolu was shot down on Kamino. You are Loril Kaalun, a young administrative assistant utterly unconnected to anything to do with the cloning operation. You are a refugee hired off the streets as a secretary and office assistant. Your records will check out, I assure you. Unfortunately, you don’t have as many credits at your disposal as you once did, though my people will be seeing if they can’t recover your assets.”

Several years passed in a blur, the newly-renamed Loril being shuffled around from planet to planet every few months, doing menial organizational and paperwork tasks (intergalactic businessmen have an obscene amount of paperwork to be processed) wherever she could. It seemed nowhere was safe enough for her to continue her research – occasional meetings with Zanith, when he happened to be in the area, confirmed that point, though he repeatedly referenced their contract for her services, implying that he was doing all he could to find a laboratory for her to continue her practice.

Three-odd years ago, Zanith paid a visit once more- he seemed different then, muscles tense and eyes too bright, though it was not her place to comment on it - and told her that she was to bring all of her supplies (which had been kept safe in a temperature-controlled vault for the duration of her time working for him) and accompany him on one of the most lucrative business offers he’s been afforded.

The Kaminoan does not much care for the ragtag crew of the ‘Noreaster, taking much of her time alone save for when she absolutely must interact with the crew, and despite instructions lording her intellectual superiority over them. Clu’s had to unstick them from several situations over these last three years, when Loril’s arrogant complex has had her reveal more than she should. He’s promised her that Anchorage will be what it takes to get her equipment, staff, and a place to continue her work.

She doesn’t know if any of her samples are viable - she hopes they are, but they were not packaged to be stored for a decade. She might have to start over. Her work might be lost forever.

That thought is more terrifying than any other.