Tash Arranda (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
alderaanda) wrote2015-03-28 09:50 pm
alderaanda) wrote2015-03-28 09:50 pm
Save The Earth App
OOC INFORMATION
Name: Joysweeper
Are you over 15? Indeed
Contact: Try Plurk
Current characters in the game: Julien/Yuuya
IC INFORMATION
Name: Tash Arranda - > Natasha “Nat” Arandale
Canon and Medium: Star Wars, the Expanded Universe, specifically the book series Galaxy of Fear
Age: Galaxy of Fear ends with Tash at fourteen; the last mention of her in side materials should have her at around thirty-one. Nat is fifteen.
Pre-Incarnation Species: Human (Jedi)
Pre-Incarnation 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.
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http://images.wikia.com/starwars/images/2/24/Tash_Arranda.jpg
Any Differences: She fits that same description but looks more like a cousin than the same person. Her hair's a little darker too. (If she ever echoes back an older age and Tash’s appearance at it she’ll have a different PB.) Nat also lacks any noteworthy scars and is not freckled.
Starting Location: London!
Pre-Incarnated History: I’m not going to go as in-depth as in the previous app for her. Tash was born on Alderaan during the rule of the Galactic Empire, and was followed a year later by a brother, Zak. She was strange and psychic and protected from the Empire’s interest in such people by her world, and had few friends and tended to be blamed for things, but she wasn’t unhappy. Fascinated by censored records of the Jedi, she got in contact over the “Internet” with someone who claimed he could tell her all about them.
She and Zak were off-world when the Death Star destroyed Alderaan and killed everyone they knew. Tash felt it in the Force and knew what had happened before hearing the news. They ended up on Delaya, Alderaan’s sister-world which became crowded with refugees. While she wanted to fold in on herself, she saw how hard Zak was taking it and promoted herself to parent to watch his back.
An uncle they’d never met, a shape-shifting alien whose brother married their aunt, came and took them in. He was a travelling scientist named Hoole, and he had a research droid, DV-9. Neither was equipped to handle children or very gracious about having the siblings in their lives, so things were rocky for quite a while. Still, the two slowly began to engage more normally with things as time went on, and started questioning where they were going and what they were doing.
Six months after the destruction of Alderaan their ship landed on a world called D’vouran, which Tash had a bad feeling about. She met Luke Skywalker, the first other Force-Sensitive she’d ever seen, and the first person to think her odd feelings might be real. Although he soon left his encouragement spurred her to investigating the world’s troubled history. She was kind to the local madman, who in return clued her into an evil scheme involving D’vouran being a living entity and its friendly natives being symbiotes, encouraging people to live there and be eaten. An endangered Tash’s Force-Sensitivity bloomed, saving her life and making psychic contact with the planet, which unfortunately spurred it into eating almost everyone there. She found and rescued her brother and was rescued by Hoole, and then the whole party was saved by Luke and friends.
They were dropped off on a planet named Necropolis, where Tash kept to herself as Zak made friends and enemies and saw zombies. Tash failed at covertly tailing a bounty hunter and was questioned, and then Zak apparently died and was quickly buried, in accordance with local traditions. Tash was devastated but kept her wits and found things that didn’t make sense, and convinced Hoole to help her investigate them. They ended up in a crypt caged by zombies at an evil scientist’s direction. This time Zak and Deevee saved the party, and they left in the scientist’s ship, The Shroud.
Tash tried decoding the scientist’s notes, finding that he was part of something bigger. Zak fell ill enough that they stopped at the Imperial medcenter on Empire-blockaded Ghobindi for him. A doctor gave Tash a vaccine that was secretly a non-weakened disease that made her increasingly irritable and rash-y. She had run-ins with blob monsters and guessed a password that let her in on how sketchy the situation was. Soon Tash found that the blob monsters were people transformed by the same virus she’d been infected with, which made her helpless to stop the doctor, actually another shapeshifting alien, Gog. Calling on the Force, Tash managed to hold back the disease and rescue people, who cured her. A Rebel friend she’d made helped them off the planet.
Hoole decided he’d put them in enough danger and sent the kids and Deevee to an amusement park, where they met Lando. They visited an attraction purporting to show them their worst nightmares, at which point a psychic monster created by Gog trapped them in a shared dream that they were still tooling around the park as things went increasingly wrong. Tash’s confidence was shaken, she kept saying “One of us must die” at the Force’s urging without any idea why, and eventually Zak dream-killed himself so they woke up. Lando saved them from the monster and Hoole returned to save them from Gog and his stormtroopers.
After that the Empire wanted them. Tash spoke to her Internet-friend who suggested hiding on an ancient Jedi space station with him. There were also many treasure hunters and a ghost Jedi who only Tash could sense, and only vaguely at first. Her contact wanted to break the ‘curse’ on a Jedi library; after many people, including Zak and Hoole, apparently died she began to understand the ghost, who helped Tash see that her contact was another guise of Gog, trying to steal her life energy. She shook the ghost from his apathy and he helped her escape and restore everyone.
Hoole took them then to Kiva, a world turned to a wasteland full of Hoole-hating wraiths. The party found a baby in Gog’s lab, “Eppon”, and decided to take him. They ran into Luke and other Rebels. Eppon started covertly eating Rebel redshirts, growing larger and older-looking as he did. The party split off from the Rebels when Darth Vader landed, and then the wraiths got them but let the siblings go. Hoole had once worked for Gog and bore some blame for the death of Kiva; furious, the kids abandoned him and found a monstrously larger Eppon, who came meekly when Gog called him. Darth Vader confronted Gog with a horde of stormtroopers. Eppon ate some of them and then he and Gog escaped, and Vader had Tash and Zak put under guard. Tash Jedi Mind Trick-ed the guards and rescued Hoole. With Luke’s help Tash used the Force to turn Eppon against Gog, but Gog just killed the creature. Then the wraiths, determining that it was actually Gog’s fault, killed him.
The Rebels helped the family off the planet and to where The Shroud could be repaired. Deevee left the party for a quieter life, and they went to Tatooine to hide in Jabba’s palace. Tash felt the need to distinguish herself from Zak and was flattered by a monk telling her how special she was. He then removed her brain, put it in a spider droid, and put a serial killer’s brain in her body. Tash was able to clue Zak in and Hoole forced the monks to put her back. On the world of S’krrr Tash was forced to work with an ambitious Imperial captain, despite her hatred of the Empire, to survive, and piloted The Shroud to save everyone.
Next they went to Ithor. A lonely Tash made friends with an Ithorian, Fandomar. When they accompanied Hoole and Fandomar to a nearby asteroid they found a tomb and got trapped. Tash was the only one to escape and get help, but she also found a Dark Jedi looking for the tomb. Zak ended up helpless in space and Tash took a tiny spacecraft, a Starfly, to save him. On their way back to Ithor Fandomar crashed the ship, and Tash found that some of the other passengers who’d been in the tomb had been possessed by a hive-mind creature called Spore. It took Zak and Hoole, who joined the Dark Jedi. Tash and Fandomar snuck onto his Star Destroyer, subdued the two, and fled in Starflies as Spore chased them into a trap. With its primary host dead Spore’s control over Tash’s family lapsed.
Passing through Imperial-heavy space they managed to get cover travelling with a luxury liner. Tash enjoyed herself thoroughly there, encouraging her more shaken brother to have fun too, and made friends with a ship thief. A severe alarm sounded, and while the kids tried to board escape pods they wound up left behind with the thief and a few crew, who Tash had to defuse tensions between. The ship’s berserk computer picked off the crew and shut Tash into a room with less and less air, but Zak and Hoole saved her.
Dantooine was a world of ruins and grasslands. They traveled with a tribe of primitive Dantari for a month or so, during which Tash developed her Force skills and struggled with anger. She and her family stumbled upon an experimental, automated cloning facility and an encampment of curiously simpleminded “Rebels”, clones led by a deranged clone of Darth Vader. Tash fought an evil clone of herself, had to address her racism towards the Dantari shaman, dressed like her clones and hit her head and had to handle the situation with a mild concussion. She tricked the clones and watched the real Vader show up and fight his clone while Hoole fought his in a shapeshifter duel. Then she had to pick which Hoole was real and fled. Examining the clones, the victorious real Vader realized Tash was Force-Sensitive and set bounty hunters on them.
They caused so much trouble, even destroying The Shroud, that the family asked Deevee to give them a place to hide - Dagobah. They bought passage with Platt Okeefe, crashed, and spent time with a gathering of people descended from stranded researchers. They were well-meaning and friendly despite being cannibals, and Tash sensed Yoda nearby, so her famous danger sense did not kick in. She found him and had to leave Zak to fumble through solving things. Platt took them and The Children offworld, to the Rebel Alliance.
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. Details about this are completely headcanon - many events happened within this universe and involved many people, but whether or not Tash was among them isn’t said. I have a longer writeup, but in short: she became a pilot for the Alliance, had minor roles in many prominent conflicts, joined Vortex Squadron and then Havoc Squadron, was part of Luke’s first faltering attempts to train new Jedi but was turned off by his methods, went to university, realized career anthropology wasn’t for her, and finally came and studied at Yavin to become a Jedi.
Reincarnated History: Natasha was given up for adoption soon after she was born. It was an open adoption and she still has contact with her birth mother. Anyway, Nat was adopted happily by a couple who are involved and disciplined, and who adopted an orphaned four-year old when she was five. She'd wanted a dragon, not a little brother, but she grew to like him. They moved to London when Nat was eight.
Compared to Feivel she is a more normal child, less focused, bright rather than extravagantly gifted, interested in more things kids her age like, and better at people skills and day-to-day functioning. She’s quite independent and is happier alone than among strangers. Through continued contact with her birth mother she has a reasonably good relationship with her younger half-sister, but doesn't have many other friends.
In the past few years Nat has started acting up a little. She dabbled in shoplifting, graffiti, and other acts of minor delinquency, and while being caught and finding that these things make other peoples’ lives harder has led her to step off most of them, she still loves to explore forbidden places.
First Echo: The lights over London gave Nat untrained, mostly inactive Force-Sensitivity, like Tash had at the start of the series, which is hard to invoke or control. Desperation can bring it out of dormancy and make its aspects easier to control. For now, its aspects are imprecise hunches and “feelings” about people who are close enough to talk to her - their intentions towards her, sincerity or lack thereof, and emotional states, strongest from other psychics; and in similarly vague premonitions of danger to herself, stronger if immediate.
Pre-Incarnation Personality: Over the course of twelve books Tash goes through a great deal of character development, maturing from an insecure, 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.
Tash loves to read and study and even decode documents, mostly through the Star Wars equivalent of the Internet. She’s methodical, insightful, and introspective. Of her interests the most active is piloting, which she adores. Most of the time a young Tash comes off as mature for her age, with spots of brattiness, and often she’ll disregard rules and laws if she thinks it won’t hurt anything or get her caught.
In childhood Tash’s Force-Sensitivity marked her from her peers. She had casual friends but related better to adults. 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 them. As Zak and Hoole grew to trust her and she refined her skills, she became more open around them, though she remained reserved around strangers except when having good feelings about them. Some of those are Force-based, but flattery does it too, and she becomes better at being receptive to people who want to befriend her.
As a kid on Alderaan she was quick to cool off when angered, and mostly remained so. Still the death of her homeworld woke a great deal of sorrow and rage in Tash. She’s black-and-white about people associated with genocide and it takes effort to work past that. There is hatred in her, and for all that it’s hidden it is still strong. Tash isn’t hugely tempted by the Dark Side. Still, like all Force-Sensitives she could be corrupted into a selfish and volatile mindset.
Tash isn’t inclined to violence and prefers not to kill, but she has no problem with doing either if she must. 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 distraught. In her time as a pilot she was never worried about shooting enemies if they could fight back. Learning to work with ex-Imperials was a struggle. The deaths of people she doesn't feel close to don't have much effect on her, especially as the series progresses and she sees a lot of people killed in gruesome ways.
For people who *haven’t* participated in mundicide or genocide, she generally has sympathy and will readily go out of her way to try and help them when they’re in trouble. She can understand why good people do bad things, even if she doesn’t like it.
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.
After the trauma of Alderaan Tash and her brother were extremely close. She was afraid that anyone she loved could die when out of her sight. While healing from that she became more independent and her relationship with Zak became more playfully combative, though still loving. She seeks to take care of him while seeming okay herself, and likes to be alone to think.
Between the support of her family and the Force, Tash is amazingly resilient and reasonably optimistic. She has gone through a lot of struggle but returns easily to confidence and willingness to engage with people and enjoy herself.
Any differences?: Nat might still be considered ‘weird’ on her own, but much less so than Tash given that she’s not grown up psychic. She’s very bright, just not enough to stand out considering her brother. Since she’s both less unusual and better able to function without supervision, she’s easily overlooked and has become mostly independent, moreso than Tash. While she’s far from neglected and would feel suffocated given the kind of attention he is, she’s keenly aware that they may be compared and often feels a little left out.
Nat deals with this by basically going her own way, doing things without him. She wants to look after him but not be steamrolled, and has since she was nine made the effort to never be impressed by him. To most people she seems reasonably mature for a teenager, but for him she has a deep well of brat.
Adrenaline is fun. She’s more likely to do physical things for fun than Tash, especially climbing and exploring, but she acts out for some of the same reasons Tash did - to relieve boredom or loneliness. Nat reads very quickly and has many favored topics and daydreams. She’s not as into the Internet as Tash though, and is both a little more street smart and more sheltered.
Abilities: Tash’s normal skills can be summed up quickly. She is quick, limber, and reasonably strong and alert. She’s a fine pilot and driver of pretty much anything she can climb into, a decent shot with blasters, proficient with languages, and trained in the art of the lightsaber - combat and construction. The Force aids in all of these.
Tash has a connection to the Force, and through it various forms of energy. Tash is psychic and can sense and manipulate the world around her in sometimes abstract ways. Through it she is “lucky” and has insights on the personalities, emotions, and intentions of people around her to the point where she can often tell if they’re ‘good’ and she should trust them (though it’s harder to tell if someone’s ‘bad’) and can sometimes finish their sentences. She can communicate on some level with most things, given a chance to try, and sense events that happened around places or items. She feels other psychics more strongly and may detect and speak with ghosts. She often knows if someone she cares about is in trouble or has been hurt even if without training she doesn’t know details. When huge catastrophic events like the destruction of Alderaan happen, she is affected and picks up more.
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 any Force-user can evoke at will, it happens arbitrarily and incredibly rarely. Those it happens to often can’t understand or remember very much of the experience.
Tash is able to use the Jedi Mind Trick, which works more easily if the suggestion is easily believed (“That guy I already hate just insulted me under his breath!”) and doesn’t go against someone’s nature. It also works better if the subject is not focusing well, otherwise it may be shrugged off. This isn’t really mind control. She’s able to free people from actual mind control though without training it doesn’t last long.
Like many Jedi she has telekinetic ability, which at first shows as being able to shove something light she knows well, but develops in being able to pick up and hurl or pull bigger objects, or multiple small heavy ones.
Tash is almost never sick and heals from injuries quickly. As a practicing Force-Sensitive not on the Dark Side, in theory she could live to be three hundred. She has been taught to numb pain, 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.
(Some Force talents aren’t ones she displays in the series, but are common to Jedi and taught at the Academy she attended.)
Tash has a special, instinctual talent - when in danger she can create an invisible shield around her which can't be pierced or broken, only torn down by stronger psychics. It's tiring and doesn't last more than a handful of seconds, and she can't do it at will. With training she develops her shield to the point where she *can* make it at will and as large as a small room, get it to be selectively penetrable, put it around a location and not herself, and make one that size up for half an hour twice a day. A personal shield moving with her requires concentration to maintain. Break that and it vanishes.
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 thoughts and actions with other psychics.
When in danger her reflexes sharpen considerably. 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 enough warning to avoid that
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 selfish. 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 and reshaping things and people..
Items:
A small red crystal on a chain necklace. Tash charges it with the Force, making it glow faintly, and uses it as the primary crystal in her lightsaber.
The ball for a particular sport. 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.
An unarmed meter-tall spider droid carrying a glass globe full of nutrient solution. Her brain was carried in the glass and controlled the droid, for a while. Without a brain in it the droid is very simpleminded but can follow basic commands.
A space suit! Its environment is computer controlled and it has a short range comlink built in. It’s equipped excruciatingly heavy boots 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 them, right? She based it off archaic lightsabers plans, so it has a lower ‘practice’ setting which painfully burns and blisters skin without cutting.
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.
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, initially only when they are unobserved, by cuddling up to them 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 more distorted. Eventually Eppon becomes a hulking monster with the 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, continues feeding on people, 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.
What kind of involvement would you like your character to have in Save the Earth? I… don’t know! I don’t have a plan beyond liking Tash and getting her reincarnation cool stuff. I mean, X-wings. Lightsabers. Automatic cool.
ROLEPLAY SAMPLES
- Third Person: Test drive
- Network: [taptap! Nat draws back away from the mirror. She’s in her room, in front of a bed strewn with tools and parts, and while her expression is serious there’s an excitement in her eyes and she’s holding something.]
Just to let people know, there’s kind of a chance turning this on for the first time will make it explode. Very violently! But it won’t, since I can follow a basic circuit diagram. [Nat falters, eyes glazing over as she receives an echo] -wow. Okay.
I’m doing it anyway. It should be red. Here goes.
[She holds the hilt of the lightsaber out before her, horizontally, and thumbs the switch. The blade emerges almost instantly with a hissing and a hum, white-cored with red edging. Nat’s eyes go huge, and then there is the biggest smile.]
Name: Joysweeper
Are you over 15? Indeed
Contact: Try Plurk
Current characters in the game: Julien/Yuuya
IC INFORMATION
Name: Tash Arranda - > Natasha “Nat” Arandale
Canon and Medium: Star Wars, the Expanded Universe, specifically the book series Galaxy of Fear
Age: Galaxy of Fear ends with Tash at fourteen; the last mention of her in side materials should have her at around thirty-one. Nat is fifteen.
Pre-Incarnation Species: Human (Jedi)
Pre-Incarnation 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.
Any Differences: She fits that same description but looks more like a cousin than the same person. Her hair's a little darker too. (If she ever echoes back an older age and Tash’s appearance at it she’ll have a different PB.) Nat also lacks any noteworthy scars and is not freckled.
Starting Location: London!
Pre-Incarnated History: I’m not going to go as in-depth as in the previous app for her. Tash was born on Alderaan during the rule of the Galactic Empire, and was followed a year later by a brother, Zak. She was strange and psychic and protected from the Empire’s interest in such people by her world, and had few friends and tended to be blamed for things, but she wasn’t unhappy. Fascinated by censored records of the Jedi, she got in contact over the “Internet” with someone who claimed he could tell her all about them.
She and Zak were off-world when the Death Star destroyed Alderaan and killed everyone they knew. Tash felt it in the Force and knew what had happened before hearing the news. They ended up on Delaya, Alderaan’s sister-world which became crowded with refugees. While she wanted to fold in on herself, she saw how hard Zak was taking it and promoted herself to parent to watch his back.
An uncle they’d never met, a shape-shifting alien whose brother married their aunt, came and took them in. He was a travelling scientist named Hoole, and he had a research droid, DV-9. Neither was equipped to handle children or very gracious about having the siblings in their lives, so things were rocky for quite a while. Still, the two slowly began to engage more normally with things as time went on, and started questioning where they were going and what they were doing.
Six months after the destruction of Alderaan their ship landed on a world called D’vouran, which Tash had a bad feeling about. She met Luke Skywalker, the first other Force-Sensitive she’d ever seen, and the first person to think her odd feelings might be real. Although he soon left his encouragement spurred her to investigating the world’s troubled history. She was kind to the local madman, who in return clued her into an evil scheme involving D’vouran being a living entity and its friendly natives being symbiotes, encouraging people to live there and be eaten. An endangered Tash’s Force-Sensitivity bloomed, saving her life and making psychic contact with the planet, which unfortunately spurred it into eating almost everyone there. She found and rescued her brother and was rescued by Hoole, and then the whole party was saved by Luke and friends.
They were dropped off on a planet named Necropolis, where Tash kept to herself as Zak made friends and enemies and saw zombies. Tash failed at covertly tailing a bounty hunter and was questioned, and then Zak apparently died and was quickly buried, in accordance with local traditions. Tash was devastated but kept her wits and found things that didn’t make sense, and convinced Hoole to help her investigate them. They ended up in a crypt caged by zombies at an evil scientist’s direction. This time Zak and Deevee saved the party, and they left in the scientist’s ship, The Shroud.
Tash tried decoding the scientist’s notes, finding that he was part of something bigger. Zak fell ill enough that they stopped at the Imperial medcenter on Empire-blockaded Ghobindi for him. A doctor gave Tash a vaccine that was secretly a non-weakened disease that made her increasingly irritable and rash-y. She had run-ins with blob monsters and guessed a password that let her in on how sketchy the situation was. Soon Tash found that the blob monsters were people transformed by the same virus she’d been infected with, which made her helpless to stop the doctor, actually another shapeshifting alien, Gog. Calling on the Force, Tash managed to hold back the disease and rescue people, who cured her. A Rebel friend she’d made helped them off the planet.
Hoole decided he’d put them in enough danger and sent the kids and Deevee to an amusement park, where they met Lando. They visited an attraction purporting to show them their worst nightmares, at which point a psychic monster created by Gog trapped them in a shared dream that they were still tooling around the park as things went increasingly wrong. Tash’s confidence was shaken, she kept saying “One of us must die” at the Force’s urging without any idea why, and eventually Zak dream-killed himself so they woke up. Lando saved them from the monster and Hoole returned to save them from Gog and his stormtroopers.
After that the Empire wanted them. Tash spoke to her Internet-friend who suggested hiding on an ancient Jedi space station with him. There were also many treasure hunters and a ghost Jedi who only Tash could sense, and only vaguely at first. Her contact wanted to break the ‘curse’ on a Jedi library; after many people, including Zak and Hoole, apparently died she began to understand the ghost, who helped Tash see that her contact was another guise of Gog, trying to steal her life energy. She shook the ghost from his apathy and he helped her escape and restore everyone.
Hoole took them then to Kiva, a world turned to a wasteland full of Hoole-hating wraiths. The party found a baby in Gog’s lab, “Eppon”, and decided to take him. They ran into Luke and other Rebels. Eppon started covertly eating Rebel redshirts, growing larger and older-looking as he did. The party split off from the Rebels when Darth Vader landed, and then the wraiths got them but let the siblings go. Hoole had once worked for Gog and bore some blame for the death of Kiva; furious, the kids abandoned him and found a monstrously larger Eppon, who came meekly when Gog called him. Darth Vader confronted Gog with a horde of stormtroopers. Eppon ate some of them and then he and Gog escaped, and Vader had Tash and Zak put under guard. Tash Jedi Mind Trick-ed the guards and rescued Hoole. With Luke’s help Tash used the Force to turn Eppon against Gog, but Gog just killed the creature. Then the wraiths, determining that it was actually Gog’s fault, killed him.
The Rebels helped the family off the planet and to where The Shroud could be repaired. Deevee left the party for a quieter life, and they went to Tatooine to hide in Jabba’s palace. Tash felt the need to distinguish herself from Zak and was flattered by a monk telling her how special she was. He then removed her brain, put it in a spider droid, and put a serial killer’s brain in her body. Tash was able to clue Zak in and Hoole forced the monks to put her back. On the world of S’krrr Tash was forced to work with an ambitious Imperial captain, despite her hatred of the Empire, to survive, and piloted The Shroud to save everyone.
Next they went to Ithor. A lonely Tash made friends with an Ithorian, Fandomar. When they accompanied Hoole and Fandomar to a nearby asteroid they found a tomb and got trapped. Tash was the only one to escape and get help, but she also found a Dark Jedi looking for the tomb. Zak ended up helpless in space and Tash took a tiny spacecraft, a Starfly, to save him. On their way back to Ithor Fandomar crashed the ship, and Tash found that some of the other passengers who’d been in the tomb had been possessed by a hive-mind creature called Spore. It took Zak and Hoole, who joined the Dark Jedi. Tash and Fandomar snuck onto his Star Destroyer, subdued the two, and fled in Starflies as Spore chased them into a trap. With its primary host dead Spore’s control over Tash’s family lapsed.
Passing through Imperial-heavy space they managed to get cover travelling with a luxury liner. Tash enjoyed herself thoroughly there, encouraging her more shaken brother to have fun too, and made friends with a ship thief. A severe alarm sounded, and while the kids tried to board escape pods they wound up left behind with the thief and a few crew, who Tash had to defuse tensions between. The ship’s berserk computer picked off the crew and shut Tash into a room with less and less air, but Zak and Hoole saved her.
Dantooine was a world of ruins and grasslands. They traveled with a tribe of primitive Dantari for a month or so, during which Tash developed her Force skills and struggled with anger. She and her family stumbled upon an experimental, automated cloning facility and an encampment of curiously simpleminded “Rebels”, clones led by a deranged clone of Darth Vader. Tash fought an evil clone of herself, had to address her racism towards the Dantari shaman, dressed like her clones and hit her head and had to handle the situation with a mild concussion. She tricked the clones and watched the real Vader show up and fight his clone while Hoole fought his in a shapeshifter duel. Then she had to pick which Hoole was real and fled. Examining the clones, the victorious real Vader realized Tash was Force-Sensitive and set bounty hunters on them.
They caused so much trouble, even destroying The Shroud, that the family asked Deevee to give them a place to hide - Dagobah. They bought passage with Platt Okeefe, crashed, and spent time with a gathering of people descended from stranded researchers. They were well-meaning and friendly despite being cannibals, and Tash sensed Yoda nearby, so her famous danger sense did not kick in. She found him and had to leave Zak to fumble through solving things. Platt took them and The Children offworld, to the Rebel Alliance.
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. Details about this are completely headcanon - many events happened within this universe and involved many people, but whether or not Tash was among them isn’t said. I have a longer writeup, but in short: she became a pilot for the Alliance, had minor roles in many prominent conflicts, joined Vortex Squadron and then Havoc Squadron, was part of Luke’s first faltering attempts to train new Jedi but was turned off by his methods, went to university, realized career anthropology wasn’t for her, and finally came and studied at Yavin to become a Jedi.
Reincarnated History: Natasha was given up for adoption soon after she was born. It was an open adoption and she still has contact with her birth mother. Anyway, Nat was adopted happily by a couple who are involved and disciplined, and who adopted an orphaned four-year old when she was five. She'd wanted a dragon, not a little brother, but she grew to like him. They moved to London when Nat was eight.
Compared to Feivel she is a more normal child, less focused, bright rather than extravagantly gifted, interested in more things kids her age like, and better at people skills and day-to-day functioning. She’s quite independent and is happier alone than among strangers. Through continued contact with her birth mother she has a reasonably good relationship with her younger half-sister, but doesn't have many other friends.
In the past few years Nat has started acting up a little. She dabbled in shoplifting, graffiti, and other acts of minor delinquency, and while being caught and finding that these things make other peoples’ lives harder has led her to step off most of them, she still loves to explore forbidden places.
First Echo: The lights over London gave Nat untrained, mostly inactive Force-Sensitivity, like Tash had at the start of the series, which is hard to invoke or control. Desperation can bring it out of dormancy and make its aspects easier to control. For now, its aspects are imprecise hunches and “feelings” about people who are close enough to talk to her - their intentions towards her, sincerity or lack thereof, and emotional states, strongest from other psychics; and in similarly vague premonitions of danger to herself, stronger if immediate.
Pre-Incarnation Personality: Over the course of twelve books Tash goes through a great deal of character development, maturing from an insecure, 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.
Tash loves to read and study and even decode documents, mostly through the Star Wars equivalent of the Internet. She’s methodical, insightful, and introspective. Of her interests the most active is piloting, which she adores. Most of the time a young Tash comes off as mature for her age, with spots of brattiness, and often she’ll disregard rules and laws if she thinks it won’t hurt anything or get her caught.
In childhood Tash’s Force-Sensitivity marked her from her peers. She had casual friends but related better to adults. 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 them. As Zak and Hoole grew to trust her and she refined her skills, she became more open around them, though she remained reserved around strangers except when having good feelings about them. Some of those are Force-based, but flattery does it too, and she becomes better at being receptive to people who want to befriend her.
As a kid on Alderaan she was quick to cool off when angered, and mostly remained so. Still the death of her homeworld woke a great deal of sorrow and rage in Tash. She’s black-and-white about people associated with genocide and it takes effort to work past that. There is hatred in her, and for all that it’s hidden it is still strong. Tash isn’t hugely tempted by the Dark Side. Still, like all Force-Sensitives she could be corrupted into a selfish and volatile mindset.
Tash isn’t inclined to violence and prefers not to kill, but she has no problem with doing either if she must. 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 distraught. In her time as a pilot she was never worried about shooting enemies if they could fight back. Learning to work with ex-Imperials was a struggle. The deaths of people she doesn't feel close to don't have much effect on her, especially as the series progresses and she sees a lot of people killed in gruesome ways.
For people who *haven’t* participated in mundicide or genocide, she generally has sympathy and will readily go out of her way to try and help them when they’re in trouble. She can understand why good people do bad things, even if she doesn’t like it.
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.
After the trauma of Alderaan Tash and her brother were extremely close. She was afraid that anyone she loved could die when out of her sight. While healing from that she became more independent and her relationship with Zak became more playfully combative, though still loving. She seeks to take care of him while seeming okay herself, and likes to be alone to think.
Between the support of her family and the Force, Tash is amazingly resilient and reasonably optimistic. She has gone through a lot of struggle but returns easily to confidence and willingness to engage with people and enjoy herself.
Any differences?: Nat might still be considered ‘weird’ on her own, but much less so than Tash given that she’s not grown up psychic. She’s very bright, just not enough to stand out considering her brother. Since she’s both less unusual and better able to function without supervision, she’s easily overlooked and has become mostly independent, moreso than Tash. While she’s far from neglected and would feel suffocated given the kind of attention he is, she’s keenly aware that they may be compared and often feels a little left out.
Nat deals with this by basically going her own way, doing things without him. She wants to look after him but not be steamrolled, and has since she was nine made the effort to never be impressed by him. To most people she seems reasonably mature for a teenager, but for him she has a deep well of brat.
Adrenaline is fun. She’s more likely to do physical things for fun than Tash, especially climbing and exploring, but she acts out for some of the same reasons Tash did - to relieve boredom or loneliness. Nat reads very quickly and has many favored topics and daydreams. She’s not as into the Internet as Tash though, and is both a little more street smart and more sheltered.
Abilities: Tash’s normal skills can be summed up quickly. She is quick, limber, and reasonably strong and alert. She’s a fine pilot and driver of pretty much anything she can climb into, a decent shot with blasters, proficient with languages, and trained in the art of the lightsaber - combat and construction. The Force aids in all of these.
Tash has a connection to the Force, and through it various forms of energy. Tash is psychic and can sense and manipulate the world around her in sometimes abstract ways. Through it she is “lucky” and has insights on the personalities, emotions, and intentions of people around her to the point where she can often tell if they’re ‘good’ and she should trust them (though it’s harder to tell if someone’s ‘bad’) and can sometimes finish their sentences. She can communicate on some level with most things, given a chance to try, and sense events that happened around places or items. She feels other psychics more strongly and may detect and speak with ghosts. She often knows if someone she cares about is in trouble or has been hurt even if without training she doesn’t know details. When huge catastrophic events like the destruction of Alderaan happen, she is affected and picks up more.
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 any Force-user can evoke at will, it happens arbitrarily and incredibly rarely. Those it happens to often can’t understand or remember very much of the experience.
Tash is able to use the Jedi Mind Trick, which works more easily if the suggestion is easily believed (“That guy I already hate just insulted me under his breath!”) and doesn’t go against someone’s nature. It also works better if the subject is not focusing well, otherwise it may be shrugged off. This isn’t really mind control. She’s able to free people from actual mind control though without training it doesn’t last long.
Like many Jedi she has telekinetic ability, which at first shows as being able to shove something light she knows well, but develops in being able to pick up and hurl or pull bigger objects, or multiple small heavy ones.
Tash is almost never sick and heals from injuries quickly. As a practicing Force-Sensitive not on the Dark Side, in theory she could live to be three hundred. She has been taught to numb pain, 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.
(Some Force talents aren’t ones she displays in the series, but are common to Jedi and taught at the Academy she attended.)
Tash has a special, instinctual talent - when in danger she can create an invisible shield around her which can't be pierced or broken, only torn down by stronger psychics. It's tiring and doesn't last more than a handful of seconds, and she can't do it at will. With training she develops her shield to the point where she *can* make it at will and as large as a small room, get it to be selectively penetrable, put it around a location and not herself, and make one that size up for half an hour twice a day. A personal shield moving with her requires concentration to maintain. Break that and it vanishes.
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 thoughts and actions with other psychics.
When in danger her reflexes sharpen considerably. 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 enough warning to avoid that
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 selfish. 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 and reshaping things and people..
Items:
A small red crystal on a chain necklace. Tash charges it with the Force, making it glow faintly, and uses it as the primary crystal in her lightsaber.
The ball for a particular sport. 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.
An unarmed meter-tall spider droid carrying a glass globe full of nutrient solution. Her brain was carried in the glass and controlled the droid, for a while. Without a brain in it the droid is very simpleminded but can follow basic commands.
A space suit! Its environment is computer controlled and it has a short range comlink built in. It’s equipped excruciatingly heavy boots 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 them, right? She based it off archaic lightsabers plans, so it has a lower ‘practice’ setting which painfully burns and blisters skin without cutting.
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.
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, initially only when they are unobserved, by cuddling up to them 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 more distorted. Eventually Eppon becomes a hulking monster with the 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, continues feeding on people, 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.
What kind of involvement would you like your character to have in Save the Earth? I… don’t know! I don’t have a plan beyond liking Tash and getting her reincarnation cool stuff. I mean, X-wings. Lightsabers. Automatic cool.
ROLEPLAY SAMPLES
- Third Person: Test drive
- Network: [taptap! Nat draws back away from the mirror. She’s in her room, in front of a bed strewn with tools and parts, and while her expression is serious there’s an excitement in her eyes and she’s holding something.]
Just to let people know, there’s kind of a chance turning this on for the first time will make it explode. Very violently! But it won’t, since I can follow a basic circuit diagram. [Nat falters, eyes glazing over as she receives an echo] -wow. Okay.
I’m doing it anyway. It should be red. Here goes.
[She holds the hilt of the lightsaber out before her, horizontally, and thumbs the switch. The blade emerges almost instantly with a hissing and a hum, white-cored with red edging. Nat’s eyes go huge, and then there is the biggest smile.]