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[alderaanda]

OOC Information:
Name: Joysweeper
Are you over 15? Yes
Contact: PM, or Joysweeper at Plurk

IC Information:
Name: Preincarnation: Tash Arranda. Reincarnation: Natasha “Nat” Arkadi
Canon: Star Wars, the Expanded Universe, specifically the book series Galaxy of Fear
Age: Preincarnation: thirty one. Reincarnation: fourteen.
Preincarnation Appearance: Tash is described as tall, blue-eyed, and possessed of thick blonde hair. Her scalp bears the scars of a brain removal, hidden by her hair if it’s kept braided. It always is. As a kid she was freckled, as she grew up those faded.

http://images.wikia.com/starwars/images/2/24/Tash_Arranda.jpg
Any differences: She fits that same basic description but looks more like a cousin than the same person. (If she ever echoes back Tash’s age she’ll have a different PB.) Nat is also less fit and lacks any noteworthy scars.
Preincarnated History: Eight years after the Galactic Republic became the First Galactic Empire, Tash was born on Alderaan to Milessa and Kalf Arranda. She had a brother, Zak, who was a year younger, an aunt who married an alien shapeshifter, and a fair-sized extended family all on that planet.

Her parents were pretty well off and had the leisure to spend time with their kids, and Alderaan was a good world to grow up on, so Tash had a pleasant childhood and wanted for very little. Thanks to her powers she was considered strange from an early age, with tendencies to finish other people’s sentences, make accurate predictions, and sense when sad or scary things were happening. She wasn’t shunned by peers, she just had no close friends but her parents.

While browsing the Holonet (Star Wars Internet) she came across a coded story about the Jedi. Tash decoded it and was enthralled, but the Empire had patiently scrubbed all but their own very restricted narratives about Jedi, and people who knew anything were reluctant to talk. Even the story soon vanished. She managed to get in touch with the writer, who went by the handle Forceflow, and as he doled out scraps of information she came to consider him a friend.

Anywhere else, Tash’s rather obvious oddness combined with her unguarded fascination with Jedi might have drawn Imperial attention. But this was Alderaan. She was shielded from the worst aspects of the Empire and there was talk of sending her to an advanced school, and she should have eventually met one of the several Jedi being concealed and protected on that planet.

Instead she and her brother left their homeworld on a two-week trip without their parents. The Death Star showed up soon before they would have returned, and everyone she knew except her little brother was killed. Light years away, Tash sensed it in the Force and knew what had happened even before the news reached them. She and Zak ended up on Delaya, Alderaan’s less idyllic sister world, as part of the great mass of refugees. Life was hard for refugees, and children without guardians were no exception. Tash didn’t notice. She felt like something had been torn out of her, that she was so lost and alone that she was going mad. Her introvert tendencies took over, and she folded in on herself and didn’t want to move or speak or do anything ever again.

But her brother wouldn’t let her. He insisted on talking to her and trying to engage. Eventually she started to see the effects being orphaned had had on the more extroverted Zak. He was just as shaken as she was, but showed it differently, acting more reckless and not heeding potential injuries, and he needed someone to protect him and watch his back.

Instead of closing herself off from the galaxy, Tash decided to face it with him. She and her brother became very close. As the more rational and practical of the two, she saw the need to take care of him, but it was far from a one-way thing. For several months they were far tighter than most siblings - they had to be, to survive. Tash promised herself that she would never lose anyone she was close to again.

At some point they were adopted and taken off Delaya by a surviving uncle, Hoole, brother to the shapeshifting alien who had married their aunt. So of course he was a shapeshifting alien himself. Hoole was also taciturn in the extreme and didn’t seem to like them much. They knew he was an anthropologist and traveled a lot, and since he didn’t seem to have a home, he took them with him in his ship Lightrunner. Most interaction with the kids was left to his droid DV-9, an advanced scientific research unit. Deevee openly felt that his considerable skills were wasted on teaching and babysitting.

Hoole refused to tell them much. Nothing about himself, and he begrudged even telling them where he was going from one day to another or what he was doing. And for a time the siblings were in no state to question that. They settled in to this new normal. Gradually Tash became more able to let her brother out of her sight, and she and Zak both became more interested in the present. Six months after the destruction of Alderaan Tash was up to playing videogames, reading, and sitting in the pilot’s chair daydreaming about being a Jedi pilot.

One day their latest destination, the planet D’vouran, was not quite where the charts had suggested so their landing was rough, which was blamed on Tash. Tash hated the world for no reason she could tell; she didn’t like the friendly native Enzeen and felt watched by hostile eyes. Tash met a local “madman”, Bebo, trying to warn people about disappearances. Her group was menaced by a Hutt who hinted at prior history with Hoole. The Heroes of Yavin - Leia, Luke, Han, and Chewie - stepped in and scared the Hutt off. Tash found herself warming to Luke Skywalker immediately. He was the first person to ever be encouraging about the odd feelings she got, to in fact tell her to trust her instincts, and she felt unusually happy around him. She could sense that they had a connection, and was disappointed when he and the other Heroes of Yavin left.

She was even more unhappy when Hoole left her and Zak with the Enzeen so he could do secret things. One night Tash heard suspicious sounds outside and was accosted by some of the Hutt’s thugs. She bit one and ran through the streets yelling, but they vanished and not even Zak believed they had even been there. Eventually Tash gained Bebo’s trust, and he showed her evidence that people had been disappearing and an underground Imperial lab. He then gave her a pendant which had protected him and was promptly killed without it.

Soon after that the Enzeen tried to kill Tash. This awakened something of the Force inside of her and she started to generate a protective barrier. Unfortunately in doing so she made psychic contact with the planet, which was alive and carnivorous. It caused a quake and ate everyone in town at once. Tash’s pendant made her seem inedible. Finding everyone gone was her worst nightmare, yet it didn’t stop her. Instead Tash trekked to the Hutt’s fortress on the belief that he was still there and had kidnapped Zak. Fortunately she was right. The Hutt’s goons were all sucked into the ground and eaten alive and the Enzeen showed up to reveal D’vouran’s nature and that the Enzeen themselves were its minions.

The Enzeen confiscated the pendant, carried Tash, Zak, and Deevee back to the underground lab and prepared to pitch them into a pit in D’vouran’s surface. At a climactic moment Hoole revealed that he’d been masquerading as an Enzeen and pitched *them* in. Tash and company fled as D’vouran tried to kill them. Lightrunner was mired in living mud but the Millenium Falcon came by, picked them up, and took them away - Luke Skywalker had had a feeling.

They were dropped off on a world called Necropolis, near the largest city there. Zak quickly made friends with local kids, Tash did not and stayed in the hostel. Boba Fett was on the planet looking for a wanted doctor named Evazam. One night Zak was out and came back shaken after Evazam killed his friend and Fett killed Evazam, and with stories of seeing zombies. He attended his friend’s funeral and refused to be consoled or cheered by Tash. Later Tash tried to tail Fett but was cornered and questioned by him. Zak was found in the graveyard, apparently dead.

As per Necropolitan traditions, Zak was quickly given a funeral and buried. Tash was devastated enough that Hoole and Deevee trod more carefully around her. She kept her wits, though, and believed things didn’t make sense. She proposed digging up Evazam’s grave to see if he was still there, and Hoole agreed. They found zombies and escaped the graveyard only to find a mob blaming them for causing the zombies to get up and wreak havoc. The mob took them to a crypt and left them with him inside. Within was the revived Evazam, who sicced zombies on Tash and Hoole as a test. Hoole fought them as a shapeshifter, Tash tried to help slow them down by using a length of chain, but it wasn’t enough. These were non-biting zombies, but fearless and tireless, and they wore Hoole out and got the two caged. Evazam told them he’d put Zak in a coma and *they* had killed him by burying him alive.

Fett came in with Deevee and a disinterred Zak, and distracted the zombies while Deevee produced a serum that turned all the things back into corpses. When this was distributed Fett left, the cure was distributed, and the family left Necropolis in Evazam’s ship, The Shroud.

Examining Evazam’s coded documents, the only thing Tash could decipher was that he’d been working on one element of something called Project Starscream. Zak became ill with a high fever, and no one on the ship really knew what to do, so they made for the closest advanced hospital, an Imperial medcenter on Ghobindi. Ghobindi was blockaded by the Empire, but they let The Shroud land and Zak was put in a bacta tank. A doctor, Hoole’s friend, gave her an injection that was supposed to protect her from that disease - subsequently Tash felt increasingly off and irritable and grew strange rashes. Gradually she became acquainted with slimy blob monsters, suspicious Imperials, and a fugitive Wedge Antilles.

On a whim she tried using “STARSCREAM” as the password to a restricted computer and *it got her in* and let her see more fishiness. Fighting back peculiar rage and exhaustion, trying to ignore the rashes and lumps appearing on her arm, Tash used that same password to get into restricted areas of the facility and found that the blob monsters were ex-people transformed by an engineered virus which they passed on to anyone they touched. She also found that the doctor who had met Hoole was another shapeshifting alien passing as human, and Hoole and the real doctor were both imprisoned.

The shapeshifter - Borborygmus Gog - hinted at sinister plans, complained that Tash and co had been ruining said plans, and revealed that he’d injected her with the blob virus which was now taking over. It encouraged an irritable emotional state in victims, which helped it to thrive. He muahaha’d off as she started to succumb, but she was able to calm her mind and subdue the infection through the Force for long enough to release her uncle, who then was able to wrap up the plot and help the real doctor cure her and make the antidote widely known, so that the virus became basically useless as a weapon. Wedge helped them escape the watching Imperial presence.

Some time after that Hoole sent Tash, Zak, and Deevee to Hologram Fun World, a theme park, so they could be safe while he did more secret stuff. They met Lando Calrissian, enjoyed themselves, and angsted over holos of Alderaan. Then Zak saw Gog in an attraction called the Nightmare Machine which was supposed to bring worst fears to holographic life in a kind of game. Tash went in with him and the “machine” - really a telepathic creature - trapped them in a kind of dream that they were still tooling around the park. Tash had a sense that things weren’t right, couldn’t figure it out, and thanks to the Force kept repeating “One of us must die” for no reason she could tell, more insistently as the “days” passed.

They started being repeatedly attacked and betrayed. Tash handled a lightsaber but was too afraid to use it, shaking her confidence. Eventually they figured out that it was a dream and remembered that the game was to realize and face one’s worst fear, and then it would end. Each sibling’s worst fear was surviving the death of the other, so Zak killed himself in the dream. They both woke up, having been under for only a few hours. Lando saved them from Gog’s creature, they were all captured by Gog’s stormtroopers, and Hoole saved them.

In the days and weeks after this Tash, Zak, Hoole, and Deevee found themselves pursued by Imperial forces. Forceflow wanted to meet them on an ancient Jedi-aligned space station called Nepis 8, but they didn’t go there until after visiting Jabba the Hutt and being given similar advice. Forceflow himself was there, as well as a lot of treasure hunters, and a Jedi ghost. Only Tash could perceive the ghost, but very vaguely at first; as time went on she continued trying to figure out what the vague sense of unease and being watched meant, and started to hear and see him with increasing clarity. She had a brief experience of the Force expanding her mind and making her aware of the greater galaxy it encompassed, but this terrified her and she closed down.

Forceflow wanted her to find a Jedi library and break the supposed curse on it. Those who had found it before had all died mysteriously and then vanished. It happened a few times even as they were present. Tash suspected an extremely sketchy alien vampire, but it turned out he’d been hired to thwart an assassin dispatched by Vader to kill the two kids and Hoole. After draining her he left. Tash and Zak encountered a dianoga, and in a flash of insight Tash knew how to escape it. They found the treasure hunters who had “died” in a morguelike cold storage facility.

Tash’s confidence in her abilities had been shaken by the Nightmare Machine, and doubt has an effect on conscious use of the Force - she sensed less and was afraid of more of what she sensed. Still, she did find it. Most of the others got cursed, including Hoole and Zak by the end. Tash finally became able to clearly see and hear the Jedi ghost, Aidan, who explained that the library was a trap and the “curse” was someone was using the books to steal life energy.

That someone was Forceflow, who had been Gog this whole time. He wanted to steal her energy so he could study the Force. After she convinced him to stop wallowing in self-pity, Aidan helped her escape Gog, evade him, return the life-energy to all the people who’d been ‘cursed’ and stuck in the morgue, and then pursue Gog until he fell into a nearly bottomless shaft. With everything resolved Tash and the others prepared to leave before the Empire could find them. Before he disappeared into the afterlife Aidan told Tash that it was as she had hoped: she was Force-Sensitive and might be a Jedi someday.

Hoole took them all to Kiva, a once-thriving world that had been a lifeless wasteland for twenty years following some calamity. Their ship crashed drastically and they encountered wraiths, the vengeful ghosts of the Kivans, who especially disliked Hoole. Still they managed to reach the lab that Gog had used as headquarters and found a baby in a stasis chamber. Tash decided to call him Eppon because that was the only thing he said, and wanted to adopt him.

The Heroes of Yavin showed up with some Rebel commandos and started the group on a long walk back towards the Falcon. Tash bonded some more with Luke and talked about the Force. Eppon was friendly and snuggly and started to eat the commandos whenever no one was looking, and grew larger and older-looking with each one. The group found out that Darth Vader was on the planet and searching, so the Yavin group split off to try and draw him away, sending some commandos with Tash’s group.

After a close encounter with more wraiths Hoole split off too. Eppon picked off the commandos until just one was left, and that one wanted to leave him behind but was argued down by Tash. When they reached the Falcon the last commando went to see if it was safe, Eppon chased him hungrily and Tash and Zak got snagged by the wraiths. The wraiths decided upon hearing about Alderaan that the kids had something in common with them and wouldn’t be killed, but revealed that they had Hoole with them, and Hoole confessed to having worked with Gog and caused the cataclysm which had devastated Kiva.

Tash and Zak felt betrayed by their uncle, and he wanted to accept whatever the wraiths decided to do with him, so they were parted. When they found Eppon again he looked like a teenager. Soon after that Gog showed up alive and called Eppon to him, and Eppon obeyed - he’d been saying “Weapon” the whole time - only to be interrupted by Darth Vader. Eppon ate some of the stormtroopers in full view of everyone, grew into a monster, and fled with Gog. Vader questioned Tash and Zak about Project Starscream and then left them under guard. Tash mind tricked the guards into fighting, and they snuck into the Falcon.

Tash was able to take off in the Falcon, find the wraiths just as they were about to execute Hoole and stall them, and get him to actually want to live. They then flew back to the lab and found Gog and Eppon, who outfought Hoole. Eppon fought Vader and it was a stalemate, but Vader got locked into another part of the facility. The Heroes of Yavin showed up with more commandos and fought Eppon but did poorly. Tash called on the Force. With Luke’s support she managed to stop Eppon and turn him against Gog, but Gog had implanted a bomb in his skull and blew it. The wraiths flooded in after Hoole. Deevee managed to play a recording that implicated Gog more than Hoole, and so the wraiths turned on him and he and they vanished.

The party left together before Vader could get out and after them. The Rebels towed the wreck of The Shroud to the planet Lorrd and left it and Tash, Zak, Deevee, and Hoole with a good mechanic. Tash and Zak befriended their host’s son Kal, who showed them around. Eventually they tailed a suspicious anthropologist, which led to discovering an Imperial plot to get a buried weapon. Tash took some time to research Kal and found he couldn't be who he claimed to be; she and Zak found the anthropologist again, were cornered and threatened, saw a monster, and got saved by Kal, who turned out to be an ex-Imperial actor.

When The Shroud was repaired the group left the world in it. Deevee expressed the desire to stop traveling with the group and was manumitted and went to a research facility. Tash’s family dodged Imperials, who were now extra after them, and returned to Tatooine and the palace of Jabba the Hutt, where Hoole translated things and the kids kicked around. Tash was becoming more independent from her brother. A monk befriended her, taught her meditation, and made her feel mature and special, but it was a trick; he removed her brain and put it in a spider walker and put a murderer’s brain into her body as part of a scheme - Jabba was turning in criminal bodies for rewards and letting the criminals go around unrecognizable.

It really sucks to be a brain controlling a spider walker. The droid limbs are clumsy, senses are dim, and without a voice module speech is impossible. Tash didn’t find it too bad, though, since she still had the Force to some extent. After the murderer in her body went and killed some people Tash was able to clue Zak in. Eventually he and Hoole forced the monks to put her back in her own body, disrupt the scheme, and they left Tatooine.

At some point they went to a world called S’krrr and meandered through gardens, meeting Captain Thrawn, who Tash hated immediately for his rank in the Empire and spied on. Fortunately Thrawn was deeply pragmatic instead of evil. He didn’t care if civilians hated him and did not know that they were wanted fugitives, and was kept too busy to find out. His men started showing up dead, and it turns out that vast swarms of flesh-eating beetles were the cause. Tash and Zak had to cooperate with him to survive. Eventually they separated from him and waded through a briefly pacified swarm to the Shroud, which Tash piloted until she could find and rescue Hoole.

After that they ended up on Ithor to resupply. Tash was feeling lonely and urged Zak to come with her into the jungle, where they weren’t supposed to go, so they could play; they were attacked by trees and hastily withdrew with the help of Tash’s new Ithorian friend Fandomar. They then went with Hoole and Fandomar into a nearby asteroid belt to stock up on minerals and found a sealed tomb in a tunnel in a big asteroid. Poking around got them sealed into the tunnel, but even in a space suit Tash was narrow-shouldered enough to make it out and go for help.

She found instead that Imperial forces had showed up, led by a Dark Jedi named Jerec. He did get the trapped people, but was furious to find that whatever was in the tomb was gone. Zak lost his grav boots and ended up flung out into the asteroid field by an explosion. Hoole and Tash went after him in the miners’ Starfly craft, and Tash saved him from a space slug. On the way back to Ithor with some miners Fandomar started hurling people out into space and wrecked the controls. They crashed on the planet’s surface.

Ithorians came to try and rescue the survivors. One of the miners proved to be hosting Spore - a hive mind creature that assimilated people by shooting tentacles from the eyes and mouths of its hosts, the thing that had been sealed in the tomb - and took all of them, then Hoole and Zak. Tash evaded them and met back up with Fandomar. They saw Jerec touch down and offer Spore entire planets if it served him; it couldn’t absorb him thanks to his Force skills, so it agreed.

Tash and Fandomar snuck onto the shuttle that took Jerec and Spore back to a Star Destroyer. As Spore infected the entire crew Tash found her hiveminded brother and uncle and managed to use the Force to keep Spore from absorbing her for long enough to let Fandomar stun them. They wrestled the two into space suits, tied them up, and loaded them into Starfly craft before fleeing the Star Destroyer into the asteroid field, which followed them against Jerec’s wishes. Spore talked to Tash and was very creepy and did exactly as she had planned: pursued her recklessly, got the ship attacked by space slugs and hammered by asteroids until it was destroyed, and ended up cut off from all its hosts, who returned to normal.

Hoole wanted them to go to Dantooine next, but first they had to pass through some heavily patrolled Imperial space, so he managed to get them booked on a luxury cruise ship through the area that would avoid suspicion. Tash was delighted and took advantage, even finding an uncensored article on Jedi in the library. She met and befriended Dash Rendar, a cocky ship thief. An alarm sounded and there came an order to reach the escape pods and abandon ship. Tash and Zak lingered to help a small child and ended up left behind. Fortunately the ship didn’t actually explode, and they found Dash still on board too.

They got attacked by droids and saved by the cruise ship’s captain and remaining crew, who’d also stayed. Tash defused tensions between Dash and the captain by focusing on their objectives. The crew and captain were picked off one at a time by droids and ship’s systems going haywire. Tash was sealed into a room whose atmosphere was slowly pumped out and became weak and dazed, but she was saved when Hoole rejoined the group. They managed to escape and Dash crippled the ship.

Next came Dantooine. Hoole managed to befriend a tribe of the primitive native Dantari and they traveled with them for a month or so of relative peace and safety, long enough that Tash started to wear a keepsake she’d kept out of sight for the past year. During that time Tash practiced her Force skills, started to struggle with the Dark Side and acting on petty vengeful impulses, and got on the bad side of the tribe’s shaman but made peace with him. As the month ended she visited some ancient ruins that hosted a secret experimental cloning facility, which scanned the DNA and memories of her, Zak, and Hoole.

From there they met an encampment of curiously blank, simpleminded clone “Rebels” who were friendly enough but extremely difficult to figure out. They urged the group to stay until their leader could return. Poking around alone Tash discovered that there were several identical versions of all the Rebels she’d met, then encountered and fought a Dark Side-aligned clone of herself, who was a more determined fighter. This forced her to flee to escape her, but she did decide that she didn’t enjoy the sense of using the Force when angry.

When she revisited the Dantari camp she found them missing and the shaman convinced it was her doing. Tash had to persuade him otherwise and get the story, also confronting her own prejudices against “primitive” natives, and found that people who looked like her and Zak had helped a dark man to capture and lead away the tribe. The shaman went after them.

Tash returned to the encampment and found that the “Rebels’” leader was a deranged clone of Darth Vader who’d abducted the Dantari. He captured her brother and uncle. Tash had various escapades fleeing from, being tricked by, and tricking the clones of herself and her family, including at one point hitting her head, fogging her recent memory, and arguing with a clone who thought she was the real Tash. Which backfired for her when the horde showed up, but let Tash sneak back in pretending to be a clone herself.

The Dantari shaman fought the clone of Vader and got knocked around as Tash tried to free her family. Hoole fought his clone in a shapeshifter duel. The real Darth Vader showed up to fight his clone, the shaman led away his people during the fight, and Tash had to decide which Hoole was real and which was a clone. She did so, shot the fake, and they escaped before Vader prevailed over his clone.

Vader captured their clones and determined that Tash was an active Jedi-favoring Force-Sensitive. Just having the word out to capture her and the rest of the crew of The Shroud clearly wasn’t working, so he put bounties on their heads. Bounty hunters chased Tash and the others regardless of where they went and there were many confrontations. Boba Fett even stowed away in their ship and damaged it, forcing them into escape pods. Desperate, the group consulted with Deevee and found a truly distant world to hide on: Dagobah. They ended up going there with noted smuggler Platt Okeefe.

Tash could sense Yoda from orbit, and felt his presence more strongly after the rough landing. The group stayed with a band of descendants of castaways, the Children, as Platt worked to fix her ship. The Children were friendly cannibals. Their lack of hostility plus Yoda’s presence kept Tash from sensing the danger. She met Yoda and wandered about with him for a while. He taught her a little, but mostly just kept her with him, and Zak solved the issue himself.

Platt took the pacified Children and Tash and her family to meet people who could get them to the Rebellion. From that point on all that we know happened is that Tash grew up, trained to be an anthropologist at a university, and later attended Luke Skywalker’s Jedi academy, becoming a Jedi Knight like she had dreamed. The details about this that I’m going to go over are completely headcanon - these events all happened within this universe and involved many people, but whether or not Tash was among them isn’t said.

Initially they ended up on New Alderaan, the Rebel-aligned carefully hidden world for refugees. But New Alderaan was... very safe and protected, and had little to do with the war. It didn’t even export anything. They found trouble there because they were good at that, but it was all minor. Hoole wanted Tash and Zak to stay so he could work for the Rebellion. Neither of them wanted this, at least for long, and the siblings were growing older. There were Rebels their age out there making a difference already. In the end he succumbed rather than have them volunteer and be out from under his eye.

Tash’s family was not entirely safe with the Rebels, especially considering their bounties, but things were safer and more stable than during their time on the run alone. They also had allies, starting with the various people they’d met along the way. The Rebellion had use for all kinds of people, and more than tolerated strangeness. Tash’s piloting skills and Force Sensitivity were unquestionably useful to the Alliance and even before her age of majority, sometimes things were desperate enough that she was called on to go into danger.

Initially she was mostly sent with older companions on supply runs and to make pickups, and test-flew modified spacecraft, duties which were not always uneventful themselves. Between outings she lived with her brother and sometimes Hoole in Echo Base on Hoth. During a personnel shortage a few months before the Battle of Hoth the then-sixteen-year-old Tash had to man one of the Echo Station scout posts, a dangerous duty which consisted of long periods of freezing boredom punctuated by wampa encounters.

During the Hoth evacuation she was not at Echo Base but out helping scouts evaluate potential new sites for a main base, a duty her service on Hoth had made her eligible for. Command didn’t pick the tropical island on a mostly-ocean world she favored but instead a magma smelting plant on a planet humans couldn’t go outside on without environment suits, something she kind of resented. Still, she consented to being based in Golrath Station with her family. There Tash saw many Rebels stricken by the Crimson Forever disease, including Luke Skywalker. All of the Rebels died or appeared to die, but Tash sensed that Luke clung to life even if his vital signs were no longer picked up, and persuaded the medics to keep his body until Leia completed an adventure and he recovered.

When Golrath was abandoned they settled in Haven Base on much more pleasant Arba, where Tash made many friends among the psychic native Hoojibs and had run-ins with their predators, and repeatedly had to hide from the Empire. Tash’s increasing piloting experience and gunnery skills led Wedge to ask if she wanted to try a snubfighter. Tash ended up part of the respectable-but-not-famous Vortex Squadron, flying an X-Wing. As the youngest pilot and only Force-Sensitive with it she was sort of seen as the mascot or a bringer of luck - pilots are often superstitious.

A few months after that was the Battle of Endor, which then seventeen-year-old Tash participated in. Vortex Squadron didn’t go into the Death Star, instead trying to keep TIEs away from a medical frigate. For around four hours after the Death Star was destroyed the Imperial fleet fought on, albeit in a more disorganized way. Tash participated in the celebration after. As one of the relatively few pilots with a totally intact ship Tash volunteered to go with a hastily formed strike force to the planet Bakura just two days later, where she participated in the various battles.

Since the bulk of Rebel forces were there anyway, the main Rebel base was shifted to Bright Tree Base on Endor, and Tash and the remains of Vortex Squadron were stationed there. The main issue then was Rebel Alliance delegations to various worlds and the protection of those, since the Empire while demoralized and splintering hadn’t collapsed, but Tash had more time on her hands. Luke Skywalker gave her and many others some lessons in using the Force, but refused to call this a formal apprenticeship or himself a Jedi teacher.

A splinter of the Empire teamed up with aliens from a satellite galaxy and Tash was involved in several skirmishes against them, including the one where they forced the Rebels to abandon Endor. It took a campaign of several months to take care of this. By the end of it Tash realized she was closer to her squadron than to her family, who she’d been seeing less and less of.

It was clear that the Empire still fought on and would continue doing so, but it was unquestionably in decline compared to the Rebel Alliance, which became the New Republic. Now nineteen, Tash reevaluated her life and concluded that she loved the flying but didn’t care to fight all the time and retired as a pilot to reacquaint with her family and pursue more civilian interests. From time to time there was enough of an emergency that she fought again, but by and large her life became much quieter.

Tash was accepted into the Mrlsst Planetary University and studied anthropology like her uncle. Zak also came and entered into different programs at the same uni. Three years in, though, Thrawn came into power and the Empire resurged. The New Republic needed anyone they could get in the fight against him and twenty-two-year-old Tash re-enlisted as a pilot. Vortex Squadron had disbanded, so she was made part of Havoc Squadron. Things got pretty desperate, but after some months Thrawn was killed and the Empire faded back. Tash resumed her studies.

Only a year later came the Emperor Reborn event, a second Imperial resurgence based not around superior tactics and trickery but around reserves of tech and weapons, and the Force skills of the Reborn Emperor and his Dark Jedi. This was a dirtier set of battles with higher casualties on both sides. Rejoining Havoc again Tash fought shadow droids and World Devastators. At some point the call went out that Luke Skywalker had found some Jedi survivors and defecting Dark Jedi and wanted to put together some Force-Sensitive people to teach enough to face the Reborn Emperor’s Dark Jedi. Tash was one. She was given an antique lightsaber and participated, fighting back when assassins descended on them, and was on-planet for the final defeat of the Emperor.

Luke dissolved the remains of this group so he could concentrate on forming a more formal Jedi academy. Tash wasn’t sure if she was disappointed or not. She loved learning about the Jedi way and what she could do with the Force, but hadn’t liked the rushed and desperate feel of the endeavor or many of the people she’d met there. When in a few months Luke wanted her to come train at the new academy Tash declined, though she was happy to hear that the offer would remain open. Once again she returned to Mrlsst and was able this time to graduate.

Xenoanthropology was not an uneventful career, but to her surprise and consternation Tash realized that while she’d enjoyed studying and many aspects of the work, being mostly safe and on one planet immersed in one culture for months or years on end didn’t suit her. She didn’t want to be a career fighter pilot, but there was a point between the extremes. At twenty seven she joined Luke Skywalker’s Jedi Academy.

Tash wasn’t the most powerful student around, but she was quite versatile and developed many skills, in classes and in ventures out into the field. With the Jedi historian Tionne she studied scrounged Jedi data and records, sometimes leaving Yavin to do so. Soon she had designed and built a lightsaber with a red blade. (In those early days of the re-formed Jedi Order, blades came in many colors and red was not taboo.) Three years after joining she was given a test of her training, commitment to Jedi principles, and her knowledge and acceptance of herself. She passed and was formally declared a Jedi Knight.

With her childhood dream fulfilled, Tash took a lifestyle of traveling the galaxy, sometimes alone, sometimes with her brother or others, learning new things and meeting new people and trying to help with relatively small-scale problems before they could become catastrophic. From time to time she was called on to fight or help with drastic things, but she was content with the small scale.

Reincarnated History: Nat lost her parents at a young age, and got an Echo of a limited form of Tash’s undeveloped Force-Sensitivity from the event. The loss and the Echo shaped some things about her life, just as it did Tash. She may or may not have had a sibling she was separated from and only vaguely remembers, or related people she's had little to do with, I’m still working that out OOCly.

Before long she was adopted out, but Nat had a marked reluctance to bond with anyone, a tendency to question the status quo, and soon, a disdain for white lies and easy platitudes. Nat wasn't destructive or particularly sullen, but not rewarding to be around either. She also tended to find evidence of things people preferred to keep hidden, particularly when within the bounds of the game's area.

When she was little and within the bounds it was only a matter of time before Nat showed her affinity for finding things people prefer to keep hidden. Questionable bookmarks, evidence of affairs or gambling, hidden weapons... Nat didn’t usually try and spread it around, but she tended to be caught finding them. This led to some problems early on, but she ended up part of a household that didn't care so much. Things cooled and became stable.

She doesn't really fit with anyone there even outside of the family, but she warmed a bit to pets and patient non-pushy kids her own age. They moved into a new house in the suburbs over the summer. Nat feels cut off from the people she'd grown to be okay with and has become discontent, more inclined to wander and poke around following her odd feelings again.

First Echo: When Nat was a small child she went through a clingy phase where she was sure her parents would disappear if they left her alone. And... well, they left her at home and died before she was out of that phase. There was a period where she was increasingly sure that they were dead and everyone around her tried to tell her they must be fine, but she was right. This mirrored a canon event - through the Force, Tash knew that her parents were dead even before word of what had happened to Alderaan reached her.

What it gave her was midichlorians, tiny microbes that multiplied to thrive in all of her cells, particularly the ones of her nervous system. This means she’s grown up Force-Sensitive, if much more weakly so than Tash. She knows if something terrible is happening to someone she knows (but no details about it), she suspects if someone is outright lying to her, she tends to be drawn to hidden things, and she gets good or bad feelings about other psychic characters. That’s it, though. No psychic ability to affect the world around her, those sensory capacities can't be consciously controlled and don't give her specifics, and she has none of Tash's potential for power growth yet.

Preincarnation Personality: Over the course of twelve books Tash goes through a great deal of character development, maturing from a clingy, doubting kid half-afraid of her own powers to a wiser, more independent young woman confident in her identity and skills. Progressing into adulthood didn’t change her that drastically, but her character wasn’t static either.

There is no doubting that Tash is inclined to learning. She loves to read, study, and contemplate. She has the inclination and patience to sift through databases after something hard to find, to decipher coded text and, by the end of the series, to carefully research anything she’s getting into. Tash is really quite observant and resourceful, and tends to notice things that might be easily missed. Another major interest is faffing around on the Star Wars Internet, so she has figured out various ways to connect in places that don’t have the equivalent of free wifi.

Her most prominent active interest is piloting in general. Tash loves it for a variety of reasons - the freedom and power aspect, the partial or total isolation from people and distractions, the satisfaction of doing something difficult that she is good at.

For thirteen years Tash’s Force-Sensitivity marked her as creepy and possibly insane to her peers. She had casual friends among them but bonded more with and related better to adults, particularly her parents. She was kind of at a loss with other kids and tended to take the adult side of various arguments. But even with adults, and even when she became closer to Zak, it was a long time before her strange feelings started to be taken seriously, so she usually tried to hide these things even from them. As Zak and Hoole grew to trust her and her skills more, and as she refined said skills, she became more open around them.

Around most strangers she’s not unfriendly but tends to be closemouthed, and doesn’t let on what she can do until she grows older and her Force-Sensitive status is not something to hide. The good Force-based feelings she gets around some people can override her caution.

For example when she first met Luke Skywalker she felt such an immediate sense of kinship that she was relieved and happy for no reason she could tell. He was another active psychic, and he was a genuinely good and kind person, and Tash responded by trusting him instantly, rather to her own surprise. She also trusted Yoda. When Tash met non-psychic but benevolent characters like Wedge, Chewbacca, and Fandomar, she was inclined to like and trust them but it was less overwhelming.

That is not to say that she can’t want to trust someone she shouldn’t! Tash only gets bad feelings about people if they are malevolent psychics or actively, currently desiring to kill her. She can’t really tell if she feels good or bad about a non-psychic because of her powers or because of the impression they give her until she’s trained in such things, so the fact that as she gets more confident she’s more willing to trust people she feels positively about sometimes hurts. Tash gets no unusual feelings at all from distant text-based conversation. Since so much of her interaction with other people as a child was text-based and over the Star Wars Internet, she actually tends to have a more positive impression of those people even when they meet in person, assuming they’ve been civil and interesting anyway.

While Tash prefers to be good and follow the rules, she doesn’t stick to this rigidly, and I don’t just mean that she’ll break rules in an emergency or will follow someone she cares about into forbidden areas, though those are her most likely floutings. She does usually respect rules. Just, if she’s restless or lonely enough she’ll assume it will be fine if she’s not caught, and she doesn’t like being kept for something for what seems like no reason. Technically under the Empire it’s illegal to try to study Jedi, but she was never worried about that.

Now and then Tash has had crushes. She claimed as a kid to have outgrown them by the time she lost her home, but her feelings for Luke Skywalker suggest otherwise. Kind empaths who take Tash seriously and are good-looking always give her pause. She also felt something for Gog in his persona as her internet-friend, when they met and he wore a handsome face and seemed to value her insights, and for a pretty former child actor who was also kind. Romance isn’t a high priority for her. She had a few relationships as an older teenager and adult, but nothing that lasted more than three or four years, and she’s not terribly unhappy with this.

Losing her home and nearly everyone she knew almost killed Tash. In grief she wanted to pull away from everything and just disengage. But her brother was there. Just a year older than Zak, Tash felt responsible for him. She found purpose in caring for him and his emotional needs when she was adrift, trying to set a good example, redirecting his thoughts from their parents, their planet. There was no one to do the same for her, so... when that happened, she distracted herself. Later losses barely seemed to affect her, and she was surprised when Zak was still unhappy two days after a new friend died.

At some point Tash comes to believe that her parents and everyone else who has died are waiting in the Force for her, and one day she’ll join them. This thought also defuses her fear of death - she doesn’t want to die and fights to survive, but can face death calmly.

As a kid on Alderaan she was quick to cool off, forgive, et cetera. After the loss she continued to readily forgive most slights, insults, and even attacks... but the death of her homeworld woke a great deal of sorrow and rage in Tash, and she is much better at handling grief than anger. There is hatred in her, and for all that it’s usually hidden it is still strong. Tash isn’t hugely tempted by the Dark Side. It’s upsetting to use, and she’s rejected it before. Still, like all Force-Sensitives she could in theory fall - call on powers and strength fueled by darker emotions, be seduced and corrupted into a selfish and volatile mindset.

Tash isn’t inclined to violence and prefers not to kill, but she has no problem with resorting to it, or killing, if she must. She has bitten captors and stomped on their feet to escape more than once. In one book thousands of possessed Imperials are sent after Tash, who leads them to their deaths and is unconcerned about having done so later, even when a friend is distressed. In her time as a pilot she was never worried about shooting enemy pilots, though going against people who couldn’t fight back or retreat in the same way gave her pause.

Understandably, she resents and is suspicious of the Empire and any association with it, sometimes becoming preoccupied with yearnings for revenge. In her youth she had a black-and-white view of the Empire and anyone associated with it. When she finds out about her uncle’s old ties to Imperial weapons programs she immediately denounces him and leaves him to a terrible fate. She does reconsider and comes back to help him, at least. Similarly while serving the Rebellion she had to learn to accept ex-Imperial Rebels. This is something she worked on further as the Empire crumbled and she trained as a Jedi. Tash never achieved Luke’s level of kindness to his enemies but she did learn to temper and control her dislike, and feel some compassion for them.

Normally, to most people - particularly those she sees as like herself, the ones who are a little odd or tend not to be listened to, or the helpless - she has sympathy, and she will go out of her way to try and help them. She can understand why good people do bad things, even if she doesn’t like it, and gets better at making friends with people who seem interested in befriending her.

Zak describes her as “stubborn as a dewback” when she’s locked on to something. Early in the series she’s uncertain of her own opinions and may talk herself out of them if people disagree. As she becomes more confident in herself she becomes more willing to hang on to her conclusions and defend them, but she can accept being wrong if she’s convinced of it. Which can take some doing, and if she turns out to have been *completely* wrong Tash tends to be somewhat disheartened.

Tash is incredibly resilient. A lot of traumatic things happen to her, but you’d barely know it from how she thinks and acts. It’s not just because these are kids’ books - by the end of the series Zak is twitchy, paranoid, and fearful, while Tash has become confident and willing to enjoy opportunities and trust strangers she has a good feeling about. She may struggle for a while to adjust to a betrayal, or pain, or having struggled with the issue of if she’s a clone or not, but give it time and she’s on an even keel.

Any differences: Nat is more like early Tash than late, but there are differences there, too.

Force-Sensitivity helps to make Nat weird, but unlike Tash she didn’t get to grow up with familial support. When her parents died she was much younger that Tash, and there wasn’t someone left who stayed with her. That’s left a mark. She has not entirely withdrawn from the world, but she's become sort of jaded and doesn’t fully engage either. Nat doesn’t really attach to people and thinks of them in a kind of clinical way, like they’re of some strange species worth study. There's an awareness that she is different in some way.

Tash’s early reluctance to connect with people is exaggerated in Nat, who finds some people interesting but has little sense of fellow-feeling for strangers. She's had a few people she thinks of as friends, but they might be surprised to hear that. These are people she'll be around but doesn't talk to much. Nat doesn’t like to hurt people and may try to help someone in trouble, but she isn’t always good with empathy. Why doesn’t explaining that someone shouldn’t feel that way ever work? Also she can be kind of blunt. She hates platitudes and appreciates honesty and understatements.

Nat believes she’s more logical and sensible than just about anyone. She is pretty smart, but not as clever as she thinks, and although she’s thorough and tries to think of everything she can be blindsided, and this hurts her usually firm confidence.

Her emotional range is considerably flatter than Tash’s. Nat rarely feels much anger or smiles at anyone. In a dry way she's more sarcastic and cynical than Tash ever was, and less amused by puns and such. She is not really formal and may show emotion or warm to someone, she’s just generally kind of reserved. Nat tells herself she can logic her way out of feeling hurt or angry. Really she can't, but it makes her feel better to say that.

Nat spends a lot of time in bookstores and libraries, reading whatever takes her fancy, and will hog public computers to get on the Internet. She has a repertoire of usernames and passwords - some didn’t start off as her own. But she’s less computer savvy than Tash and less computer-inclined in general, since she has none of her own and can only be online for so long at a time.

Abilities: Note: some of these are talents Tash did not display during the books, but are common for Jedi and taught at the Jedi Academy, so it makes sense for her to have them. In addition, Force-Sensitivity is a complicated and individual thing. To an extent the way new powers are discovered is kind of like how Echoes pop up - in emergencies and periods of great stress, a new talent appears.

Tash is quick and limber to a degree that’s normal for a human in good shape. As a kid she had to become very good at running, dodging, and climbing to survive various threats, which she’s kept up. She’s a fine pilot, a fairly decent shot, and trained in the art of the lightsaber.

Less normally: she is very Force-Sensitive. That is, her whole body is heavily colonized with peculiar microbes that, like the fauna in the human gut, basically act as an organ, in this case a mostly sensory one. Tash is psychic, sensitive to life energy and its currents, and able to influence and manipulate them to a degree. If trained and consciously aware of what she senses, she considers life energy to exist as a kind of universal field, feeding and fed by life, tying together all things, even the past and present.

Jedi call this energy field the Force and some consider it as a kind of deity, omniscient and potentially omnipotent, influencing them but never acting directly, having both a Dark and Light side, and deeply inhuman and mysterious, sometimes granting them strengths or insights when they need them. They also tend to talk about using their powers as “calling on” the Force rather than being purely their own effort. “I called on the Force to do this”, rather than “I did this with my power”. Once when Tash was in a bad situation and needed bolstering she perceived a voice telling her that she was not alone.

However, whether Jedi are right and the Force is basically a deity, or if they’re sensing and manipulating life energy on their own and all fluctuations and insights are directly due to their own minds and the lives around them, is never really said. Many other traditions make use of the same energy and not all treat it as something mysterious and sentient. Luke once says that the Force is a river and the Jedi ways of thinking about and making use of it are just one cup.

For these reasons I believe Tash’s powers, or those of any other Jedi who might app in this game, would still work. There is life and energy, whether that energy really has a Dark and Light side or not, whether it’s called magic or *the* Force or life force or whatever.

Regardless of what it is, the Force can supply insights that people sensitive to it aren’t always consciously aware of. Even as a child, Tash was “lucky” and tended to make good guesses, have accurate hunches, call the correct side when a coin was tossed. She also has a distinct tendency to find trouble, hidden things, and the like if she explores an area.

On one occasion Tash had a kind of out of body experience in which her connection to the Force vastly increased and she started to perceive and understand far more than she could have on her own, about the situation and far beyond it, but this scared her and she managed to shut it down. This isn’t something she or any Force-user can evoke at will, it happens arbitrarily - or upon taking a very particular drug - and incredibly rarely. I doubt I’ll ever play this happening, but it’s worth mentioning!

...It’s always kind of vague, what powers Jedi or others have or don’t have and how they work. Listing them like I’ve done below makes it seem much more orderly than it really is.

Tash has empathic skills and is always somewhat aware, mostly subconsciously, of the characters and intentions of the people around her. Even if someone is sketchy or otherwise offputting she can sense if they’re trustworthy and would help without question if she really needed it. She gets much stronger impressions of other psychics. Tash can also sense if a non-psychic person is currently, actively moving to hurt her.

Which isn’t to say it’s that reliable a skill. Untrained she can’t sense non-psychic malice until it comes to a peak and someone’s actually trying to hurt her. She’s susceptible to friendliness and flattery, and can misjudge someone good if they are habitually hostile to her and would require persuasion before helping. Training refines this skill and makes her able to tell the difference between her psychic impression of someone and the normal impression she gets from appearance, speech, etc. It also gives her a better idea of people’s moods and if they’re in pain or hungry. She often has an inkling if someone she cares about has been hurt even if without training she doesn’t know who or where or how. When huge catastrophic events like the destruction of Alderaan happen, she is affected and knows more about what happened than if it’s just a few people.

When talking to people she knows well, or people saying something they’ve said many times before, Tash often knows what they’re about to say and can interrupt and finish their sentences. She’s used the latter version on a politician introducing herself and a used starship salesman making a pitch. This is as close as she can come to mind reading. Tash was able to fly the Millenium Falcon, which has nonstandard controls, because she knew its pilots and could put herself in their mindset while in the cockpit.

It also helps that she has an intuitive grasp of the controls of just about any ship or vehicle, if she ends up at the controls. Not that she could fall into a totally unfamiliar cockpit and be an instant expert, but if she could find similarities between those controls and ones she *is* familiar with, or has met the people who designed or modified the controls and use them easily, or if she’s just given some time to lurch around and find out what does what… she could manage to get where she wants to go, do what needs to be done, and not crash.

Tash is almost never sick and heals from injuries quickly and well, though not unnaturally so. Her body just works well. As a practicing Force-Sensitive not relying on the Dark Side, she will age slowly and gracefully, and in theory she could live to be three hundred. She has been taught to numb pain in herself or others, and while she doesn’t have healing prowess specifically, she can denature drugs and poisons, pinpoint injuries, identify diseases, and encourage the body’s own healing processes. Someone she tends like this recovers, if they recover, as well as she would.

She can detect ghosts. Clearly seeing and hearing them is its own skill developed from that; the first time she encountered one she sensed vague unease and heard whispers for quite some time, but slowly learned to perceive more details and understand the spirit like she would a living person.

In a fight or other sufficiently dangerous, urgent situation her reflexes quicken. Her ability to evaluate people and the common Jedi talent for combat precognition - how Jedi can deflect blaster bolts with lightsabers - combine to guide her. If she’s prepared she can dodge or block most attacks and be very precise in inflicting damage. It’s possible to surprise her in a fight, or snipe her, but it’s just as likely that she will have a split second of warning and can get out of the way in time.

Tash has aptitude for the Jedi Mind Trick, or the ability to manipulate minds to some degree, suggesting thoughts or sensations which may be accepted as genuine. “Weak minded” is not the best way to put those who are vulnerable to it. People who are distracted, halfhearted, drugged etc are more susceptible, and a Force-user who is more determined has better luck. It’s easier to persuade someone to sell you something for a little less than it is to get them to give up all their stock. It’s easier to make someone think the person besides them has just insulted them if the two already resent each other.

When menaced by friends or family who are mind-controlled, possesed, or have been brainwashed, Tash can use the Force to remind them of their time with and relationship to her. This works well on brainwashing, but mind controlled or possessed friends only falter and act like themselves again until their masters reassert control. Tash knows she *could* break those two forms of coercion with the Force but doesn’t know how until she is trained in it. Luke is excellent at breaking coercion, and while Tash never achieves his level of ability she does learn to free strangers at close range in ones or twos.

Like many Jedi Tash has telekinesis, at first of the simple “push something without touching it” variety. Soon after, she started to psychically pick up and hurl objects accurately too. At the start she could only move very light things she knew well, like the necklace her mother gave her, but she became stronger with practice. With training both are developed, along with object levitation, and she becomes able to move things larger than herself.

At the Academy Tash was trained to be able to greatly intensify or dull any of her normal senses, and return them to normal again. Other skills learned there: techniques to boost her physical strength and stamina, to wildly enhance her short-term memory for brief periods, and to synchronize with other psychics.

A particular talent of hers is the ability to create a physically impenetrable barrier or shield around herself, invisibly protecting her and pushing attackers back. The first time she created this she didn’t really believe she’d done it. The second time she did believe, and from there on if she had a moment to concentrate she could call it up. An inexperienced Tash can only maintain it for a few seconds at a time and even those seconds are exhausting. Practice makes it less tiring and she can’t ever shield-spam, but training lets her create a larger shield, maintain it for nearly an hour if she focuses on nothing else, and choose what can and can’t pass through it, right down to air. A stronger or more determined psychic can just pull her shield down.

Finally, I should touch on the Dark Side of the Force. Basically, if Tash calls on any of her active powers - the ones that require effort to use - in anger or passion, they are stronger. This has effects on her mind. It’s kind of addictive, and encourages her to be more short-tempered and self centered. The more she does this the easier it is. She can then develop telekinesis, mind trickery, and shield creation in ways made to hurt people and can pick up entirely new techniques useful for inflicting pain, causing wounds, and reshaping things and people.

Items:

A small red crystal on a chain necklace. Purely sentimental in value. Tash eventually charges it with the Force, making it glow faintly in the dark, and uses it as the primary crystal in her lightsaber.

A speed globe. This is used in a sport of the same name. The ball is red and squishy and equipped with repulsors and sensors hooked up to a tiny computer. When powered on it bounces directly away from anyone moving near it and drops to the ground. A voice command powers it off.

A pendant of a tiny device encased in clear crystal. When worn this puts out a signal which uh... makes any psychic living planet the bearer is on more aware of the pendant’s bearer, and unwilling to kill them or anyone they are touching while they bear it. It also seems to make psychics in general aware of the bearer, or maybe that’s just if the bearer, like Tash, is psychic herself.

An unarmed meter-tall spider droid carrying a glass globe full of liquid. Her brain was carried in that glass and controlled the droid, for a while. Without a brain in it the droid is very simpleminded and not useful at all. ...When Tash was in there, there was a serial killer’s brain in her body, and he was put in the droid when this was resolved, but… idk how I could do anything with that in-game without making it a combo app, so.

A space suit! Its environment is computer controlled and it has a short range comlink built in. It’s equipped with boots that are excruciatingly heavy, because they’re equipped with mini tractor beams. Those are designed to let people walk about in low gravity, or push away from things. In normal gravity they can also be used to walk up trees or walls, with difficulty, or stand and walk slowly several feet above the ground. Useful for circumventing the lack of life support in the Starfly. It has a twenty-five hour supply of air.

Tash’s Jedi lightsaber. It’s red-bladed with a silvery hilt, made partially from Tash’s red crystal necklace. Should I explain lightsabers...? You know those, right? She studied old Jedi lightsabers while making and modifying this one, and it has a lower ‘practice’ setting which burns skin painfully but doesn’t cut it.

Starfly One, a miniscule and very quick and agile yellow ship that can fit one pilot and one passenger uncomfortably wedged behind the seat. Unshielded and suitable for short range only, lacking life support or a hyperdrive, it is possessed of a tractor beam that can push or pull and a small laser weapon. Described as “barely bigger than a landspeeder”, it’s about the size of a large pickup truck.

A T-65 X-wing starfighter. You know those. Twelve and a half meters of awesome. Hers is painted with either cobalt blue stripes for Vortex Squadron or dark orange for Havoc Squadron, and bears painted silhouettes of the kills attributed to her.

The Shroud, a heavily modified Helix-class light interceptor. It’s thirty meters long, well armored, and fast. There’s a lab on board and enough cabins and bathrooms for three people to live comfortably. A very reliable ship that took Tash’s family across the galaxy and bore up under all kinds of attacks and indignities.

An injection of a live virus which has no official name. Infected people gradually become more irritable and preoccupied with things that make them angry. The minor physiological changes that come with sustained rage make it easier for the virus to spread and take effect. In time a fever starts up and the area exposed to the virus - in Tash’s case, the part of her arm where she was injected - aches and grows a scabby swelling rash that raises weird veins. Eventually virus-laden mucus starts to emerge and grow out of the skin, and the virus causes weakness verging on paralysis. Rage at that point causes it to “blossom”, solid tentacles emerging and wrapping around the ill person.

At that point Tash had a bit of insight and started to focus on calm. The mucus stopped production and the tentacles became inert and fell away. She was covered in infectious slime, dehydrated, and weak, but she was able to continue on until the cure was administered. The virus was already slow to work on her because of her Force-Sensitivity and becoming calm wouldn’t have had such a dramatic effect on a sick non-psychic.

Most creatures not cured by that point, regardless of species, are transformed into energetic blob monsters still shaped vaguely like their old selves, with no more intelligence than is needed to either pursue and envelop living animals, or cling to high places and ceilings and drop down on said animals, infecting them. They can only function properly in extraordinarily high heat and humidity, otherwise they soon become sluggish and dry out, and the virus dies. Blob monsters are very difficult to kill and leave virus-laden slime everywhere, though even in hot damp places the virus doesn’t last long without a host.

Skin contact with a blob monster raises welts and means being exposed to a great deal of the virus. Those who escape become feverish and pass out within minutes, and begin to transform sooner than people with minor contact, though it still takes at least a day in optimal (high heat and humidity, no medicine) circumstances. More tropical than Locke gets. In colder and drier climes the whole process is slowed down.

Creature? echo: The R-5 astromech droid who was Tash’s X-wing partner. Very taciturn, it was named Sulk by a previous owner. Tash got on with it well, decided that it was a she, and brought her along when she left Vortex Squadron. Some astromechs are intelligent and adaptable enough to count as people, but Sulk isn’t one of them. Her ‘sulking’ behavior is purely a programming quirk related to finding most conversation to be low-priority. Still, she’s useful for calculations, repair, and cleaning, and is a good listener if Tash doesn’t want sophisticated commentary or solutions that aren’t painfully basic. Sulk is dark gray with cobalt or dark orange paint, and comes with a memory wipe.

Eppon might count as a creature echo too. He initially looks human but isn’t that intelligent. Eppon eats people who aren’t psychic with increasing eagerness, initially only doing so when they are alone and unobserved, by cuddling up to them, touching skin to skin, and turning them into goo to absorb. He starts off looking like a normal year-old human infant, but with each victim he gets larger and older-looking and a purple bruiselike mark swells on his forehead. After he gets to looking like he’s in his late teens, his next development turns Eppon into a hulking monster with the psychic ability to trap whoever he wants in a hallucination of their worst fear, though that doesn’t work as well on psychics. He is very strong, keeps turning people into goo, and regenerates most damage, but if the bomb in his head goes off he’s not getting back up.

Personalitywise he’s affectionate and cuddly with a doglike affection towards people, the better to be presented with exposed flesh. Under the eye of a psychic he’s well behaved and won’t eat anyone, but he only has to be out of sight for a moment. When threatened he goes berserk on all perceived threats. He obeys his creator, but Tash and other psychics can turn him.

Roleplay Sample – Third Person: Test drive thread
Roleplay Sample - Network: [The video shows the inside of a dark, furnished apartment, shaking a little as Nat creeps through it holding her phone. Her voice is hushed.]

Something’s wrong. The curtains shouldn’t be closed even if no one was here, and people are here. I saw their shoes at the door. But they’re quiet, they’re... waiting for me...

[A closed door is ahead. Nat approaches as quietly as she can, sneakers squeaking a little.]

In the kitchen. It’s so quiet...

[Her hand comes into the shot, reaching for the doorknob. She touches it and inhales sharply.]

-oh. False alarm, sorry.

[She stuffs her phone into her jacket while opening the door. The feed cuts off, but not before several people can be heard shouting “HAPPY BIRTHDAY”.]

Any Questions? I know there’s a lot of headcanon history in this app, but I know Tash made it until at least thirty and she is the kind of character who would end up involved in a lot of events. The series ends with the idea that she and her family join the Rebellion, and we know she becomes a Jedi later. I know she would want to be involved.

If there’s too much headcanon there, I can make sure to take most of her Echoes from the books and not give her headcanon memories.

Also, since she’ll want to comb through the network posts, at least the entries but not the comments, I’ll be submitting two or three echo requests before she intros. Despite the sample I gave I think I’d prefer her first network post to be a very terse request for someone to help her remove a space suit.