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A Family's Legacy
Around 3000 BBY, twin brothers were born. Joran and Johir Sharl, Knights of the Jedi Order.
Joran was the older twin, the instigator, the darkness to Johir's light. Johir had the gift of prophecy, and confided in his brother troubling visions of the future of the Jedi Order. Set upon by fear and doubt, the Sharl twins went rogue and fled the Order, searching for enlightenment.
Together, they fell to the Dark Side, becoming Sangnir on their quest for immortality. Joran rose a powerful sorcerer, leading the brothers' campaign to conquer and control. On the planet Xo, they started a vampire cult, enslaving masses under an empire that worshipped them as gods.
Centuries passed, and the Sharl Empire became a contending force in the galaxy, attracting rivals from the Sith Order. In a battle for dominance, the Sith were defeated, though Johir was slain.
Joran kept his brother's lightsaber crystal, taking it with him to Peridea, where he believed an ancient coven of witches would help him resurrect Johir. But the witches betrayed him, their ritual trapping Joran's soul inside Johir's lightsaber crystal. Tossed into a volcano on Peridea, the crystal was entombed by magma and rock, tormenting Joran in fire and darkness.
Without their god emperor, the Sharl Empire receded into isolation on Xo. Governed by Joran's closest followers, they prophesied Joran would return.
… … …
In 727 BBY, Nyla Zavo was born. Her father was an engine tech specialist for the Galactic Alliance Navy that allowed him to travel with family. Nyla grew up a military brat with other children born and raised on military bases.
Her parents converted to the Jedite Church when Nyla was four years old. Seven years later, her father accepted a teaching position in Cadera and retired early from the Navy. Nyla and her family then moved to an apartment in Cadera City. Her father became a tech instructor at Cadera City Academy, while her mother juggled part-time hobby jobs as a librarian, seamstress, and cook. For young Nyla and her siblings, life in Cadera was quaint and adventurous.
She kept most of her dreams and sleep struggles to herself, throughout childhood. Never realizing how tired she was, even after a whole night's rest.
When she was fifteen, during the election season of the new mayor of Cadera, a coup massacre broke out in Cadera City over leadership. Several rioters barged into the Zavos' apartment, attacking Nyla and her family. Fortunately her parents had a few military smarts from the GA Navy to be able to spring into action, and that their children were no cowards. During the scuffle, Nyla jump-tackled one rioter from behind, and took a ferocious bite into his neck…
Her family survived, order in Cadera was restored. But after that first bite, one that felt so natural to Nyla in the moment, was when things rapidly started to change within her. For a time, she thought her morbid attraction to veins and blood was the Force's calling for her to become a surgeon, so she took up a few science classes at Cadera City Academy, intending to pursue medical school.
Her dreams, if not nightmares, became much more vivid. Every night a journey through space, places and people familiar to Nyla, in another life. Sleepwalking emerged, requiring door locks to keep her from wandering the streets at night. Dreams became visions, pulling her in bouts of hypnotic walks during the day, in peculiar direction of the spaceport. Security quickly blacklisted her name from boarding a public spacecraft without a chaperone, as a mentally impaired hazard.
Nyla bought into a doctor's prescription, which worked, reducing the dreams and sleepwalking, and regaining her sense of control. Necessary to help focus on her studies, of course; but secretly, Nyla schemed, to help clear her head and rationally plot an escape, when she could finally secure a transport off of Jedha without too much grief, scrutiny, or breaking the law.
At age 21, Nyla embarked a ship with a group of students bound for medical school on Tepasi. After two months at Tepasi Medical University, she left, bent on uncovering some truth behind the dreams that haunted her - if all of it was the Force she was meant to listen to, all along. She contacted her parents one last time, saying she had quit medical school and was finding her own way in the galaxy, before tossing out her prescription.
The dreams, the visions, the sleepwalking… All came back, stronger than ever. It was as if her body was not her own, half the time she was awake, and certainly not when she was asleep, if ever she did. Dreams and reality blurred, as her body carried on robotically. Always moving, always in a different place with different people (or lack thereof), slipping in and out of consciousness.
Since when did she know how to pilot this ship? Since when did she get this blaster? These new clothes? These credits? This "Wanted" poster? Since when did she meet this guy? Since when did she kill this guy? Accepting the madness, she learned to roll with it.
The journey to Peridea was one big fever dream. Once Nyla stepped foot on the planet, however, it was as if two halves of her suddenly became whole. Or was soon to be, as the Force drew her nearer to the beacon that had been summoning her for years. Dim and scattered across the vast galaxy afar, yet utterly clear before her now.
Standing above the site where Sharl's Tomb lied buried beneath layers of fossilized earth, Nyla stretched out her palm, and with a power not of her own, a massive Force pull (or push), the crystal ripped out of the ground, like a bullet, into her hand.
The spirit of Joran manifested before her. Two souls connected on a spiritual plane. Nyla looked down to realize her body had changed. Her reflection in the starry, mirrored surface below her feet, revealing that she was Johir reincarnated.
For Joran was Johir's Sangnir sire. So long as the sire lived, the soul of their spawn would be kept in limbo, trapped in the netherworld of the Force. In death, Johir yearned for his brother, persuading a keeper of souls to let him return to the physical plane. Johir's spirit was given a new vessel: Nyla, essentially the personality Johir would have become, had the circumstances of his birth been different. Eventually, the old self and Sangnir tendencies would emerge. What Nyla had shrugged off as dreams and visions were in fact Johir's memories, the brothers' Force bond guiding her back for Johir's spirit to reunite with Joran's.
A vessel, was all Nyla was. A means to an end. An obstacle to overcome, for her character was constantly at odds with Johir's. Her unimposing traits and lack of Force sensitivity, a nuisance for Joran to have to deal with and train Nyla into honing. Under Joran's direction, Nyla constructed a lightsaber hilt to house his prison crystal, for her to wield. So long as she kept the crystal close by, it would give her power, channeling Joran's spirit through her, and preserve her youth.
Bound to Joran to serve as his hands and feet, to find a way to free his and Johir's spirits and resurrect their bodies, Nyla headed to Xo to reclaim the Sharl brothers' lost Empire.
… … …
In 715 ABY, Yasha was born in Xanovea, the realm of the Sharl Empire on Xo. His father was a popular gladiator and had given up Yasha as a firstborn offering to the temple, whose order of priests ruled over Xanovea. Yasha grew up as a lowly temple servant, meek and obedient, though his Rattataki ancestry fueled some violent and rebellious tendencies, being a fan of the gladiator games and the celebrity father he had never officially met yet secretly looked up to becoming, in his dreams.
When Yasha was 11 years old, he befriended a young girl at the temple. Odemyrii (affectionately called "Odee" by Yasha), one of the child goddesses, said to be a mortal reincarnation of one of Xanovea's pantheon of deities. Odee appointed Yasha as her Chosen one to sacrifice her for the ritual that would ascend her into godhood, when she turned 18 years old. As the Goddess' Chosen, Yasha was treated to a status higher above all the other temple servants, and upon Odee's death, would be given a life akin to royalty as Odemyrii's ambassador on earth. For five years, Yasha tended to Odee as her guardian and protector, undergoing Force exercises to hone his telepathic bond with Odee in preparation of becoming her "voice" in the afterlife, and the two became very close.
One night, Odee came to him distraught, claiming the high priest had attacked her. Yasha confronted the high priest about it and, during their argument, was attacked, revealing the high priest's true nature as a vampire. Yasha, having come prepared with a hidden blade, used his sacrificial training to kill the high priest. For his crime, Yasha was then sentenced to death in the arena.
On the eve of his execution, Odee and her loyal entourage rescued Yasha, slipping him an herb that put him into a death-like slumber and smuggling Yasha's body out of the arena dungeon. Taking Yasha away to a remote shrine and altar, Odee implored Yasha to sacrifice her then and there, that she might ascend, and he be atoned, in front of Odee's entourage as witnesses to the sacrifice, to convince the priests to reinstate Yasha to his former position as the Chosen.
Johir (left) and Joran (right) were half Cathar, half Zygerrian
Joran was a renowned pyromancer, despite the Sangnir anathema to fire
Johir's lightsaber crystal (Sharl's Tomb) turned a fiery orange after being possessed by Joran's spirit
Nyla Zavo was half Zeltron, half Kage
The Zavo family, including Nyla's adopted Togruta sister
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