Joran Del-Finn
Smuggler by day. Snuggler by night.
37 years ago:
The woods around them were thinning and their target: a massive estate house grew ever closer. The building sat atop a hill, pillared and bright. Two story windows caught the morning sunrise and illuminated the estate making it appear on fire. It was not a hard place to find but it would be an easy place to defend. Merrick knew what amounted to a palace would be well guarded, they all knew it, but they had a job to do and it would get done.
They numbered only five. Five men in T-shaped visors and the greatest armor ever created up against a compound of who knows how many led by a brutal tyrant. It was unfair. They stood no chance at all, who ever it is that waited behind those walls. They were only five. Five Mandalorians. The most skilled warriors in all of history, theirs was a legacy of war and bloodshed. Of glory and fame. Today would be no different, the five of them would make short work of this so called “king” and earn their credits and their honor.
The five Mandalorian warriors looked similar but not identical. They all walked together, their bodies forming a pyramid of sorts all clad in their Beskar’gam-their iron skin- they walked and a blue and orange impenetrable wall. The differences between the armors were subtle but close enough inspection or an eye trained to notice such things could see the one things they all truly had in common was the T-shaped visor adorning their helmets. Like a JedI’s lightsaber a Mandalorian’s armor was usually crafted by hand by the user, in some cases it would be handed down from a father to a son, a mother to a daughter or from any loved one to any other.
“Ib’tuur jatne tuur ash’ad karamu.”
Cuyan’s voice broke through the comm channel as they pressed themselves against the security wall outside the estate. He was the youngest of them. Only fifteen and on his first trip out with Merrick and his uncles. The boy’s name meant survivor in Mando’a. His mother, a strong woman, a warrior died giving birth to the boy and his, one of Merrick’s own was lost only a year ago. Cuyan was as good strong Vod. He took his father’s passing as hard as any young man would though not nearly as hard as Merrick though the old Mando had kept his pain to himself. He had been training fellow Mandalorian’s for twenty years and Cuyan’s father was the first of Merrick’s boys to die and while he died fighting like any true Mando’ade could hope for, it still stung at the elder Mando.