Technical data
Name: Khan Sainen
Species: Echani
Age: 14
Gender: Male
Faction: Jedi Order
Rank: Padawan
Master: Denso Halsa
Former master(s): N/A
Time/location of capture: TBDConcerning you
As a prisoner, your wardrobe is limited. When you were captured, how do you look and what clothes do you have on now?
I was wearing my Jedi armor when captured, a well-maintained set despite around a few months of wear-and-tear. It is similar to a Republic trooper’s armor but lighter in design and sized for someone of my youth and smaller stature. I’ve been told I look much the same as most other Echani males of my age, meaning I am porcelain-white skinned, have silver eyes and silver hair with facial features nearly identical to other similarly aged male individuals. My frame is slight and perhaps short but in an athletic way, with muscles well-defined by rigorous daily training. Aside from my height, the main difference between myself and most other Echani adolescents as most other species would perceive them is that my hair is cut short and worn with a Padawan braid.
As Echani tend to think of appearance, my stance is normally considerably light-footed and confident for a male of my age, with movements that are naturally precise without feeling calculated or restrained, though due to my time among Non-Echani I’ve become occasionally prone to fits of embarrassingly energetic exaggeration and overreach in my motions and expressions.
You got captured. Did you make any mistakes that led to this, or were others at fault?
TBD
The Force is your ally. How do you use it?
Like my Master I mainly focus on those aspects of the Force that benefit me physically. Force Speed and Force Jump are especially well-suited to my build and previous experiences, but all of the Force abilities that augment physical ability are a heavy focus of my training as are my lightsaber skills.
Aside from Force powers that affect my physical abilities, I'm technically trained to acceptable levels in all of what would be considered the 'basic' abilities for a Padawan. Mind Trick is my weakest out of the basic Force abilities and I have to really concentrate in order to use it. I don't have a great deal of raw strength with Telekinesis, but I tend to be precise when I do use it. I've developed my precognition to a high degree due to my brief but intense time on battlefields, personal interest and something of a cultural aptitude towards turning subtle cues and feelings into predictions.
As far as any less-than-typical skills, my most notable is Animal Empathy/Control. It is a skill that I’ve practiced since early on in my life as an Initiate and at which some might consider me inordinately skilled at relative to my age and rank. I'm generally equally skilled at using it on all types of animals regardless of type. However I have a very slight edge with predators and larger animals considering I...may have studied them a bit more since they're 'cool'. I also have a decent amount of skill at Tapas, mostly after using it to spend long hours outside studying animals on the Ice planet of Arkania.
In order to help me deal with the rigors of the battlefield My Master has also begun to try and teach me Crucitorn. At least, that was the reason he gave me for my learning such an unusual skill. I suspect that in addition to its use in fighting through pain he may have been concerned about the possibility of our being captured and tortured. Unfortunately I haven’t really learned enough to apply the ability myself.
Having the Force did not keep you safe. What other skills can help you escape?
Martial Arts-Like all Echani, I have been trained in our armed and unarmed martial arts, though unlike most my mother’s high rank in our military meant I received more intense training than the vast majority of Echani from an extremely young age, to the extent that it was often said that I learned to talk several years late out of preference for purer forms of communication. Though I’m hardly a master by the high standards of the Echani I would likely be considered competent given my circumstances, or unusually skilled by the standards the wider galaxy would use to judge a 14-year-old boy.
Body Language Reading-In a related vein I am excellent at reading body-language, as expected of someone from a culture that believes it to be part of the purest forms of communication. My skill at this surpasses even most other Echani, at least where reading other species is concerned.
Memorization- Whether it’s a result of my training or just a natural ability I have excellent visual and physical memory, making me a quick study for physical skills and good at recalling visual or biomechanical details.
Tactical Skills-Last but not least under both my mother and my Master I’ve studied tactics and short term command strategies. These range from personal combat up through full campaigns and though I’m hardly more than a beginner at the latter I share the Echani cultural talent for rapidly analyzing combat situations.
Hobbies-As more of a hobby I have at least basic academic knowledge of numerous animal species throughout the Galaxy and can draw things that I’ve seen or conceptualized fairly well.
What was your life like before you got captured? Which major events shaped your life?
My mother is a prominent general in the Echani military, reporting directly to the Echani Command. I am her only child as far as I know though I haven’t seen her since I left for the Order. I never knew my father and various soldiers under my mother’s command generally filled in for him in my early life. I am sure looking back on life now that having only one child and a son at that must have been greatly disappointing for my mother, there would be no one to carry on our family name or lineage, no hope for our branch of the Clan to sit on one of the six seats of the Command in the future. She was determined that I would gain fame through the one place where even males could prove their worth: the battlefield. She took rather extreme measures to ensure I would be a warrior and soldier whose name would live on generations after me in spite of my gender, because of which I was barely allowed to communicate in any way other than through the use of body language and body reading up until I was three years old.
From the time I was physically capable of beginning the training my days were spent trying to achieve mastery of the Echani martial arts and from the time I rose in the morning to greet my mother and instructors until I went to bed at night I was constantly drilled through forms, rituals, mock battles and sparring sessions. Even what passed for caretakers and playmates in my life engaged in combat of one form or another with me, though most of those were soldiers that had served under my mother and there were few if any people in my life around my own age. Despite the seeming strictness for a such a young child I can remember being quite happy with my life and my education was certainly more extensive than most other young Echani.
All of that changed for me thanks to one chance encounter with a jedi. Well, actually two encounters and the second was on purpose. I didn’t know why the Jedi came to our home, only that I had heard stories of his order’s legendary combat prowess and mysterious abilities. I was extremely curious so naturally I decided to learn more about him in the most common sense, polite and logical way possible: I ambushed him and tried to fight him.
As it turned out it was the Jedi that learned about me, because during my attempts at fighting him I unknowingly revealed latent abilities with the Force. My mother's reaction when she learned of the incident was a mix of surprise, sorrow and pride in me. Though I could tell it pained her terribly she didn't hesitate for an instant when the Jedi in question insisted I accompany him to the Arkanian Praxeum to become an Initiate. I still can't imagine what it must have cost her to give up her only child. To an Echani family and legacy are everything, but she took me aside and told me with certainty in her stance that my duty from then on was to become the best Jedi possible.
I found my early training to be exciting, frustrating and at times lonely. There were other Echani on Arkania and my first instructors were Echani. But I had been raised for battle prowess and tactical acumen in relative isolation. Even among fellow Echani I was lacking in verbal communication skills and social graces. It took time to get me up to speed in that regard, as well as mastering the proper etiquette regarding when it was appropriate to fight those around me. But soon after had I gotten comfortable again I was reassigned to go among alien races.
Looking back on it now, I see that it was wise not to let me spend too much time among my own kind but at the time I felt lost and confused among races whose body languages were alien to me. I first began drawing as a means of dealing with that confusion, replicating body posturing, stances and faces from memory at the end of the day as an aid to memorizing other species’ subtle emotional cues. My first non-Echani teacher was a Zabrak and instrumental in helping me realize I could still read non-Echani body language as well as encouraging my art. As I grew more confident in my understanding, art progressed to be more of a hobby.
However the main thing I found solace in during those early days was lightsaber training. The basics of Shii-Cho came easily enough and I when it was time to study an advanced form Makashi seemed almost the obvious choice for me with its’ ancestral relationship to the types of swordplay I’d begun studying in my old life. The form's emphasis on dueling and its philosophies on predicting enemy movement and responding with grace, precision and economy of movement came naturally to me. In fact I studied the form and lightsaber combat obsessively, losing myself in training and spending as much free time as I was allowed to use practicing and sparring with either instructors or training droids when they weren’t available.
I might’ve stayed like that, interested in nothing but fighting and probably unable to pass my initiate trials. But one of my mentors at the Praxeum pointed out that some of the movements and ideas involved in the lightsaber took inspiration from animals. Although I may never be sure if it was intentional, my resulting attempts to study the local fauna were what first opened me up to my talent for animal empathy and control. It was a beginning, but eventually it was enough to get me interested in less physical aspects of the Force.
When the time for my initiate trials came, I was ready or at least I thought I was. The Trial of Skill was the easiest for me by this point, my obsession with lightsabers extended even to details of their construction. The trial of Wisdom would have been the hardest for me, not because I didn't accept and understand the code in abstract but because even now I struggle to memorize non-physical and non-visual information by heart and typically find such tasks boring. But after I was pried away from my fighting obsession I had focused extra attention on the difficult task and been taught to associate each portion of the code with a slight hand or finger movement to aid my memorization.
My trial of Insight was the most difficult of all, though it may seem simple to others. I was blindfolded and led into a room, where I listened to two miners argue over who had cheated whom out of a bonus from their company after their dangerous work in the mines. Without the ability to read their body language for truth I had only my other senses, my mind and the Force. I agonized over the choice for what seemed like ages feeling more helpless than ever. In the end my choice must have been in some way right, because I passed the third trial and became a Padawan.
Around four months ago I met my Master, a Kiffar named Denso Halsa. Though it was hardly how my mother expected all those years ago, thanks to him I found my way onto the battlefield after all.
How do you keep yourself calm in captivity? How do you keep your will to escape strong?
When I can I meditate, whether it’s the passive meditation I’ve learned as a Jedi or the active meditation of the Echani forms I learned as a small child. I also busy my mind learning as much as I can about the new environment we’re in even if it is a prison, not only out of curiosity but also in order to try and plan an escape. At least somewhat I look to my Master for reassurance, though my pride as an Echani and my faith as a Jedi and in the force keep me strong as well.
How well do you hold up under pressure? Do you have a high pain threshold?
I have a higher pain threshold than most youths my age on average and I've been trained to handle high pressure situations for as long as I can remember, in addition almost all of my admittedly short experience as a fully fledged Padawan have been spent in frontline battlefield situations. However...I will
grudgingly admit that compared to some, I'm relatively untested and although I'm more familiar with pain than some I've never experienced torture.
Lightsabers. Though you lost yours, it would be good to know what style(s) you use.
Recently, I’ve taken up Ataru under my Master’s instruction and become fairly proficient in its use on the battlefield especially against blaster wielding opponents. My main focus is taking advantage of the increased mobility in order to evade blaster fire, maneuver through my environment and perform crowd control against enemy soldiers. The acrobatics and focus on refining the use of the body meshes well with my Echani training. But where I really excel is Makashi.
My own extensive capabilities with body language reading, tactical thinking and analysis along with the dexterity and precise muscle control I was made to develop since early childhood have made me naturally gifted with the form. It was the first I learned after the very basics of lightsaber combat. When facing a lightsaber-wielding opponent I may probe their defenses with Ataru or use its’ movements to reposition myself for advantage but otherwise I tend to switch to Makashi for duels. As part of its philosophy of not relying on predictable forms and patterns I occasionally incorporate unarmed Echani techniques and techniques inspired by animals into my dueling style, though the latter tends to involve Ataru as well.
More recently I’ve even been trying to correct for some of the weaknesses of the form. Mostly this involves practicing against my Master’s dual bladed style to try and simulate fighting multiple opponents at speed. I've also tried as matching myself against his more limited use of Djem So to develop compensation for Form II's weakness against powerful strikes. I've been attempting to create a hybrid style incorporating Ataru’s maneuverability and speed with Makashi’s attitudes and economy of motion and energy, but so far I've had little success. Out of additional personal interest I’ve also started studying my Master’s Jar’kai, mainly the Ataru-based variant so as not to spread myself too thinly, though so far I mainly stick to one blade.
Have you encountered other prisoners or Sith in the past?
The only person among these groups I've met is my Master Denso Halsa.
Out of Character
How powerful is (s)he in the Force?
Khan is still young and has barely begun to realize his potential in the Force but could become fairly powerful given time to grow into his gifts.
Has your character encountered members of the Strike Team / Rescuers before?
TBA
Nobody with any sort of wisdom wants to speak of their flaws. Especially not to their enemies, so what are your character’s flaws?
Though still possessed of an Echani’s outward emotional reserve and therefore seemingly more mature than other teens/children his age at some times, Khan is often rash and impetuous and almost always eager to fight, his natural aptitude for it and occasional lack of restraint being one of his biggest weaknesses. Other than that he still has trouble learning non-physical things and things that fall outside of his pre-existing interests and gets bored easily in general. After an early lifetime of having it stamped into his mind he also still has trouble remembering that most species don't express themselves through body language and combat and if he gets too stressed, upset, too excited or else wants to express himself to people he's close to he sometimes falls back on it.
Given the environment in which he's been raised and his Master's influence, at times he also has trouble distinguishing from his responsibilities and nature as a Jedi vs his role as a soldier as well.
Is your character any good at holding out against torture?
Khan might be considered slightly tougher than would be expected for a Padawan of his age and has a fairly high pain tolerance along with his Echani and Jedi training. That said he’s never been tortured before and is hardly the seemingly unbreakable figure his Master is.
Do you have any limits as to what is “ok” to happen to your character?
As long as it’s run by me first it should be fine.
Do you want your character to escape?
If circumstances and the course of the plot and my own actions allow my character to escape then yes, but I don’t need or expect any certain escape. So a maybe is fine.
how easily do you wish to be captured?
Like with the escape I’d prefer it to depend on my in character actions and circumstances.
What do you think your character is doing in a few IC months?
Provided they both survive the experience and escape, I'd suppose Khan would be serving alongside his master and completing his training almost as normal, though hopefully a little wiser for the experience. If not, he'll either be significantly more scarred and short one Master, or on track to becoming a Sith scary enough to deserve the name Khan XD
Does your character have any secrets useful for the GMs’ plots?
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