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Name: Gaelae Ubun Tracen (born, “Gaelaeu’buntra’cen”)
Nickname(s): “Getaway” Tracen, “Runaway” Tracen (derogative)
Age: 25
Gender: Female
Species: Tyrian Twi’lek
Appearance: Gaelae stands at 5’5” in height, and possesses the slender, lightweight build associated with her kind, although her muscles have been toned thanks to a life full of labour, exertion and, in more recent years, fighting and fleeing. Her skin is light purple, except around the bases of her lekku and down her forearms, where she has darker speckling. There is a faint, pinkish scar travelling down the left side of her face and going under her jaw towards her neck, left by a severe punishment she received during her years as a slave. Her face has a round shape, giving her a degree of extra charm when smiling, wide, brown eyes under thin, tattooed brows, and smallish ears, which allow attention to be diverted to her generously proportioned lekku. Gaelae has tattoos on her back, each one a trophy to commemorate a time she has outwitted the authorities, at least according to her anyway. Her right palm bears the personal brand of Giradda the Hutt. Her lips and sharp, claw-like nails are much darker in colour than the rest of her, bordering almost on black.
Such is often the case with Twi’leks, Gaelae is inclined to dress herself in tight-fitting or revealing outfits to enhance her form, usually favouring black or dark brown over a white under-layer, and some hidden extra padding to add another level of protection whenever and wherever doable. Her ensemble varies depending on purpose, but her distinguishing articles include elbow-length, fingerless gloves, knee-high boots and a belt, all made from thick materials and fashioned to carry small, concealable objects or lessen physical trauma that might be sustained in her line of work. Finally, Gaelae dons a black collar in a sort of parody of her prior existence, a joke only she may fully appreciate, and a thick, tan-coloured coat or a black scaled jacket with exposed caps over the shoulders and elbows.
Gaelae is not adverse to jewellery, and decorates herself if she believes an occasion warrants it. Amidst her collection are rings, necklaces and navel ornaments.
Creed: Smuggler and information broker
Affiliation: Neutral
Personality: To any outside observer, Gaelae is self-indulgent, quite to the point of hedonism, but to her, she’s just reaping the fun and enjoyment anybody who breaks her chains is owed. She enjoys the finer things each world has to offer, taking in the artistic, entertainment and commercial districts, but prefers to keep these visits short to prevent them becoming stale to her. She is also an avid game-player, particularly card games, and eagerly tracks the best in whatever area she is currently residing in, to see if they’re really as good as said; those that turn out to be sore losers or quick grifters immediately earn her distaste. In fact it is not unknown for Gaelae to distance herself from an entire community of players over one poor round, though this is only ever a temporary reaction. She understands some might see her as hypocritical, for cheating herself, but to Gaelae it comes down to a matter of stakes, and perspective, plus the fact that if someone found out and actually made an issue of it, then she has clearly not done a good enough job of covering it up. A game that’s part of a job and a game for personal enjoyment or fulfilment are completely separate things.
This ability to split work and life to avoid a moral dilemma relieves her of the stresses of trading in information and the harmful repercussions this might have, especially as most of the time both ends are connected to the scum of the underworld. She has no qualms about using her natural powers of seduction to weasel what she wants out of a target, but her sense of self-respect keeps her from lowering herself to carnal acts. Gaelae is guilty, to a degree, of vanity. While aware of her defects, such as the scars and markings she has been marred with, and the multitude of intertwining tattoos that are emblazoned on her back by her own decision, she strives to preserve the beauty she still has. She wants to do what she does better than anyone else, and look great when she does it. She is not immune to self-pity and descents in her self-esteem due to her physical flaws, but she tries not to let these bouts of negativity control her life.
In the heat of battle, Gaelae strikes to incapacitate instead of kill, but if it ever came down to her and the man trying to burn a laser through her head, the latter would never be granted the luxury of her sympathy.
As a smuggler, Gaelae will transport mostly anything, her only hang-up being slaves, because of obvious reasons. She would prefer to avoid situations where there would be plenty of slaves around her, but considering the booming trade, it is an evil she is forced to put up with. Then again, some of them are very easy on the eyes, not that she’d ever admit it out loud. Finally, while paying her treacherous father back is high on her to-do list, she does not actively hunt him or his men, believing that letting them wait for her in anxiety will be infinitely more satisfying. There are days when she quite forgets she hates her father, or that she even has one.
Motivation: On the surface, Gaelae looks out for number one. Number one wants to have a good time. Deep inside, though, there’s a list of names that need checking off.
History: Gaelae’s father was a rather stupid man. Despite their relative neutrality and apathy towards the war, some Twi’leks were not adverse to offering various forms of aid to either side. The elder Tracen, who made his living as a star-ship trader, chose to ally himself with the losers as a supplier, and through a mix of underhanded deals, bullying and sheer military and political incompetence, was left out of pocket and out of friends. In a bid to avoid his impending downward spiral into poverty, Tracen went mad and sold his daughters and wife into slavery, but did so behind the shield of an alias and a gang of hired thugs in order to maintain his integrity. The official story was that the family were taken by pirates in transit to Coruscant. In all his life, the one act the old fraud committed right was a selfish and unforgivable betrayal.
While a child, Gaelae passed from master to master until she ended up on the planet Nar Shaddaa, under the ownership of a loathsome, puss-filled harpy of a Hutt named Giradda, who put her to work with several others her age as the cleaning crew in one of the cantinas the Hutt controlled. This cantina was frequented by a certain group of customers who would play card games for hours in a corner booth, for which Gaelae soon developed a fondness of watching. She learned their rules, their tricks and their ploys, all the while remaining unheard by them, until the night when she unmasked a cheater. The resultant shoot-out left the cantina in great need of repair, and Giradda punished Gaelae harshly, but once the Hutt’s temper finally subsided, she decided to have the girl’s observational skills nurtured. When Gaelae reached the proper age to learn how to dance, as many female slaves are eventually required to, Giradda paid one of her best dealers to take her under his wing. She proved to be a good student, in part because of her already self-taught knowledge and her natural attraction to the gambling world. Spotting the more clever cheats called for her to learn many of their methods, and she grew proficient in stacking the decks.
Her tutelage complete, Gaelae’s duties at the cantina slowly gave way to the casino, until, and almost without warning, she was spending all her waking hours there, both entertaining the gamblers as a dancer, and working the tables as a croupier. It was a common practise for such establishments to be outfitted with fully stocked mini-bars, so drunken patrons were not an overall rare occurrence, and one night Gaelae found an especially inebriated face she recognised. One she would never be rid of, for this was the face of one of the villains responsible for kidnapping and selling her and her family. Fortunately, she had done some growing since those days, and the man was completely unaware of who the vision of loveliness dancing in front of him was. He was so enamoured with her in fact, that he requested the casino supervisor to allow him a night with her. Since Gaelae was not exactly known for being a troublemaker, and the on-duty supervisor was somewhat lethargic, the encounter was permitted.
It would be an expensive, and very disappointing night for the pirate. Initially, Gaelae intended to get revenge and damn the consequences, but then, as people are wont to do when full of drink, the pirate began to talk. Steering their conversation, Gaelae learned what her father had done to her. Fuelled by anger, and with his pilfered stun baton in her hand, Gaelae knocked him out. The adrenaline pushed her to go further, so she stole his weapons and cloak, and ran off. Roaming the streets for days doing odd-jobs or just plain stealing, she made enough to buy her way off-world.
Gaelae’s escape took her to planet Tattooine, and there she found both employment and a place to stay at the Mos Eisley Inn. This kept her in funds, not extravagant, but certainly better than what she earned as an urchin and a cosmic improvement over a literal slave’s wage (hint: nothing). She had tasted independence and sought to make that the core of her new life, so she took to going out whenever she had the time, and put most of her earnings to use. In this commerce-heavy sector, she found people to train her in self-defence, to properly demonstrate how to use weapons, to give her all the names she would need to know to climb the ladder. Through these connections, she skimmed the underworld to increase her treasury, and started to sample delights that were strictly off-limits before. Music, cuisine, clothes, opportunities to have things she could call hers, Gaelae was overwhelmed. It was not long until she realised that the more she wanted, the greater her horizons would need to be. Knowing the wages afforded to star-ship pilots, she trained with a commercial cargo company, honing her skills until she could quit the inn and sign up full-time. Several of the cargo pilots also made a decent profit on the other side of the law, which was the true reason for the financial rewards she’d heard about, and Gaelae befriended them, and wormed her way into their network, a loose circle that exchanged in information as much as they did illicit goods. Not being an organisation per se, she was never bound to them as any kind of agent, but she was not hesitant to repay the kindnesses and lessons she learned from the oddly likeable cadre of vagabonds with whom she associated. After co-piloting the vessel of a more experienced smuggler, during which time she saw conflict with pirates (and showing extreme prejudice due to a burning hatred of them as a creed on principle) and slipped under the radars of both warring factions, she was commended and given a tip as to how to get a ship of her own. In all likelihood, it would be sorely battered and in need of repair, but it would be hers to do with as she pleased. Gaelae of course relished the thought, and followed that path to an auction, where she used her feminine wiles to clear the way to obtaining a YT-2000 vessel at the lowest possible price, not to mention the BD ‘droid she found stowed in one of the secret cargo sections. Christening her new ship, “The Wind-Up Merchant,” in honour of a playful nickname given to her by a member of the circle, she was all set to begin a new career of her own in the open galaxy.
Out of sheer bold cheek, one of the earliest jobs Gaelae accepted as an independent smuggler was the transportation of illegal weapons for one of Giradda’s operations in the ongoing conflict between the crime families. When the Hutt discovered who she’d hired, she was both outraged and uproariously amused. Many of her surviving slaves were less than impressed. After taking the cheque for the work, which Gaelae saw as a small, but deeply satisfying act of retribution (she could never bring herself to harm somebody who in a twisted sort of way, was important to her path to liberation), she returned to the Hutt’s palace under cover of darkness, and indirectly lent a hand in the breakout of her fellows, the elders of whom had become agitated by her reappearance and felt brave enough at last to try their luck. Giradda, who was many things but not an idiot, had a hunch that Gaelae was involved, but without any damning evidence, her advisors recommended she bide her time. The smuggler would slip up, eventually, but harming somebody who, for all intents and purposes, had carried out their business arrangement without failure, would only have a negative impact on future endeavours and make it appear to other, rival Hutts that she was desperately using a scapegoat to cover for a mistake she was more believably at fault for, giving them the impression she was losing control. Vulnerable. In short, her greasy paws were tied. Gaelae left her a fondly insulting message and fled Nar Shaddaa, hopefully once and for all.
She chose not to change her name for one reason; she hopes that one day, she will be known to her father and whether or not she does come to claim his life herself, he will be forced to spend the rest of it looking over his shoulder in fear of revenge such shall be of a kind unlike anything he or any other Twi’lek could ever imagine.
Theme(s): “Killer Queen,” by Queen (1974), “Black Magic Woman,” by Fleetwood Mac (1968), “The Jack,” by AC/DC (1975).
I had a lot of difficulty selecting one out of the many tunes clamouring for attention in my head, and on my play-list, so if nobody minds, I chose my three favourites out of the lot, as I believe each could be applied in accordance with differing circumstances.
Equipment: Gaelae’s weapons-of-choice, which she stole on the night she attained her freedom, are a stun baton and a heavy blaster pistol, both of which she has paid to have extensively, if illegally, customised in the most important fields. Whilst not in use, the baton is hung from a loop on the back of her belt and obscured by her coat, and her blaster is close at hand in the holster strapped to her right thigh. For reasons of extra insurance, she also carries a number of flash-bang grenades and one or two thermal charges inside her coat, and a traditional Twi’lek dagger tucked into a sheath on the underside of her left glove. Like most smugglers, or indeed even most denizens of the galaxy with a busy line of work, she carries a palm-sized datapad either in a pouch hooked to her belt or in the inside pocket of her coat.
Abilities:
Combat: A capable sharpshooter, able to wield larger rifles but preferring her smaller blaster pistol, as it allows her to wield two weapons simultaneously. Gaelae is versed in hand-to-hand self defence as well, using her flexibility and agility to weave around opponents and target their weak points so as to render them harmless as quickly as possible. She favours these methods and, in an ideal fight, keeps her adversaries at a distance because despite her other skills, she lacks raw strength and dexterity.
Piloting: While she does not boast of being the best pilot in the systems, Gaelae has the sufficient skill any smuggler worth her salt requires to stay one step ahead of the authorities. She is able to understand most cockpit layouts with a little observation or experimentation, and focuses more on a vessel’s manoeuvrability than squeezing for speed. “Being fast’s not worth much if you can’t keep from flying up somebody else’s afterburners.” It also helps to be able to discern where to find the nearest best cover, or a way to force your pursuers up somebody else’s afterburners instead.
Slight of hand: Gaelae cheats at games. She is fully capable of playing fair, and nine times out of ten she does, but every so often, there are instances when she will fix a game to thwart somebody else who will do it first. In her own words, she, “cheats the cheaters out of cheating.” If Gaelae’s situation is particularly desperate, however, she will use this skill to tip the scales in her (or, if it applies, her employer’s) favour, subtly enough to keep things flowing without her subterfuge being too brazen or blatant.
Espionage: To attain her freedom in the first place, Gaelae had to be good at getting into the hearts and pockets of others. Being a Twi’lek, a race that was already known throughout the galaxy for the desirability of its females, is an advantage she willingly puts to use as a means of getting ahead. In her early career she used her beauty for thievery, but has since learned that, if somebody’s willing to pay her the right price, a coy smile and a well-timed swish of her hips can bring her closer to some important, and on occasion rather juicy, data.
Physical: Her past as an exotic dancer has given Gaelae increased flexibility, which serves her well when hiding or infiltration are required. If she’s ever had to remain on a planet for an extended period of time, dancing is also not an altogether bad avenue of employment until she can make an escape, either straightforwardly or as a tool for certain aforementioned criminal intel-gathering activities. “Flaunt what you’ve got, no matter how you got it.”
Mechanical: Gaelae has some knowledge of mechanics, enough to determine certain onboard problems, but leaves anything beyond hitting it with a spanner to Chi-H1R0, or to planet-based repair specialists when available.
Linguistic: One does not travel through a galaxy filled with dialects without at least a passing knowledge of exotic tongues. Gaelae commonly speaks Galactic Basic or her own native Twi'leki, and has enough of a grasp on others to get by, but lesser known or harder to grasp languages are accomodated by Chi-H1R0.
Ship: Gaelae pilots, “The Wind-Up Merchant,” a Corellian Engineering Corporation YT-2000 light freighter. The model came, as standard, with shield generators more potent than the average civilian freighter, and two dual laser turrets, and has been augmented with high-grade sensor suites and jammers. Its hyper-drive properties have been tweaked, though not so extraneously as the vessels of those smugglers who prefer a quick, risky escape to a technical one. In her own words, “I want to be caught about as much as the next smuggler, but there exists a point where fixing a ship turns into making a flying death-trap.”
Maintenance and co-piloting of the ship are left to Chi-H1R0 (pronounced, “Chihiro”), a luxury ‘droid built by LeisureMech Enterprises and then seemingly abandoned in a storage compartment under the floor. Chi was not found in the best of shapes, and while her make and model are still recognisable, the repairs to her outer shell have given her substantial differences from her sisters, including a loss of the universally pristine, perky visages they are known for. She still has the malleability of functions and expansion slots for upgrades and customisation that leisure ‘droids are valued for. Gaelae describes Chi thusly, “Why someone dumped a top-shelf piece of tech like her is anyone’s guess, but if they hadn’t, I would never have gotten my slightly malfunctioning, usually annoying, always reliable partner-in-crime. Their loss.”
Last edited by Dee Arris on Wed Feb 08, 2012 6:06 am, edited 5 times in total.
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