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a l l y o u h a v e i s y o u r f i r e
A R I A V A L E
Name: Aria Vale
Alias: Previously Gladiator [Silver Shadow callsign]
Age: 26
Force-sensitive: Yes
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
Force-alignment: Sith
Faction: The Primeval
Rank: Knight
Race: Echani
Homeworld: Corellia
Master: [member="Matsu Xiangu"]
Apprentices: [member="Vaylin"]
Sexual orientation: Bisexual
Appearance:
The dark becomes her. Once a delicate presence, Aria has grown into herself since her turn to the dark side, carrying herself with more confidence than was once typical of her and an almost self-assured air. Corruption matured her features, turning blue eyes to amber and lending a strength to her slender stature, so that the young Darksider might appear her age or slightly older to those who should cast a glance her way.
Her physical presence is less so, however; the brunette is still fairly short, and perfectly easy to pick up and throw across a room, for instance. Though Aria indulges her vanity more frequently nowadays, dressing with perhaps more flair then she would've used to, she's not one to go overboard pandering to her appearance, and will never sacrifice practicality for style.
Personality:
From day-to-day, the brunt of Aria's personality hides behind a layer of introversion that makes her quiet and reserved; when she needs - or wants - to, however, she'll shed her caution to let her personality shine. In such occasions, Aria's sharp-witted and thoughtful with a spirited demeanor - she shines in strategic field operations or missions along those lines.
Beneath the surface that is her way of being, Aria is a creature motivated by her past. Vengeful, often spiteful, and determined to gain strength, her subconscious operates to keep her from reverting to the state of weakness that was her breaking point. Beyond her longing to have a measure of power, independence is an ongoing quest of hers, made ever harder by her readiness to trust and her subtle craving for closeness.
However, Aria's a fighter. When her naivete trips her up, when her trust is betrayed, her strength is in her ability to keep going regardless; that resilience is the core of Aria's being.
Biography:
Abandoned in the woods of Corellia within her first few hours alive, Aria was given her name when a travelling Jedi couple heard her cries and came to her rescue. She was given the name Aria and taken to their home on Eshan, where she was raised as an adoptive Echani. For six years, Aria was as happy as any child of her age had right to be, and having not gone to school yet was unaware that she didn't bear the same features as Echani-born - her guardians chose to withhold the information until she was a little older. She was taught to fight from an early age, as was the cultural norm, and quickly gained a passion for the Echani style of martial arts, though later on she would study other forms in varying depth. Her first few years of school were harder - after being ridiculed for her notably un-Echani appearance for several months in her first year, the story surrounding her parentage was told, changing Aria significantly for a period of time, at which point her foster parents awakened her ability with the Force, giving her a new sense of purpose as Aria began to study the basics of the Force and how to merge it with martial arts, learning about the Jedi Order from her parents, both Masters who had retired to an extent but were still called upon when needed to help protect the galaxy. This combined with her inability to socialize meant that until she was fourteen and went to a proper battle school, she had no friends whatsoever, though her introverted personality prevented her from caring much.
After graduating from battle school at the age of eighteen with a group of three other friends whom she held dear, Aria decided that she wanted to follow in her parents' footsteps and begin to train as a Jedi so she could use her respective skills to protect the galaxy as they did. Having grown very attached to Aria, neither parent was thrilled at the prospect of letting her out into the galaxy, and wanted to train her themselves at least until she was significantly more skilled, but Aria was insistent and so they reached the agreement that if she went away now, she could not abandon her training until she had seen it through to the very end.
Following roughly a year spent travelling the galaxy, Aria came to the Silver Jedi's headquarters on Voss, where she began to train as a Jedi Guardian. The training was difficult to begin with, especially with its largely self-conducted nature, but she had made a promise and was determined to keep it. This was further challenged by her frequent bouts of homesickness, which eventually began to fade. Her first battle with the Order - a skirmish to free an enslaved Jedi Knight - nearly resulted in her death several times over, but its successful ending and the immense excitement and satisfaction it gave her to fight alongside the Jedi was enough to give her motivation a new lease of life. From there, Aria began to train harder, doing her duty as a Jedi the best she could and genuinely enjoying the lifestyle.
All this was interrupted one night when for the first time in months, Aria dreamt of her parents, the dream repeating over the course of four nights until she gave up trying to resist and flew to Eshan, where she discovered that just hours after her first dream, cultists had burned down several villages - including the one where her parents lived - leaving no survivors. Snapping suddenly, Aria had a sudden urge to track down her true parents, and met with indifference, had a burst of rage that lasted very little time, but it was long enough for her to take both their lives. Overcome with guilt and grief, upon her return to Voss Aria exiled herself for a number of months, afraid of hurting anyone else, before finally deciding that living like this would do her no good, remembering her promise. She took a visit to the Sith Temple on Malachor as a way to see the Darkness at its most terrifying and hopefully push her away, where she met a mysterious Sith [member="Darth Abyss"] who attempted to do the opposite. His words stayed with her, but not in the way that he had hoped, for what she saw as an absurd perspective ruled by cruelty was able to push her from the line she was so afraid to cross just enough to return to Voss and resume her training. Still wanting to distance herself, she switched her chosen path to begin training as a Silver Shadow under their leader [member="Connor Harrison"]. With his help and others, she began to conduct herself with an iron discipline, her determination to be a Jedi spurning her on. Gradually she began returning to being a Silver Jedi again, though her few moments spent in Darkness left her changed in more ways than one.
Near her promotion, Aria took a holiday to Balmorra to destress from the intensity of her training, where she happened upon a woman whom she accidentally realised to be a resurrected Sith Lord. When said Sith - Darth Vitium - realised she'd been identified, she pulled her sabers on Aria, leading to a dangerous and very confusing showdown which ended with Aria being struck down by Force-lightning and thrown unconscious into a wall. Upon waking, she called Connor to her rescue and asked him about Vitium's identity, leaving her enlightened in some ways and confused in many more.
Though Aria's promotion to Knight came as a thrill that inspired further, more intense Jedi training, in a small part of her mind it validated her as a Jedi and confirmed her allegiance to the Light, justifying her to be more curious about the ways of the Darkness. Her already frequent explorations started extending to places owned by, affiliated with or containing information on the Sith, confident that in doing so she was enriching her understanding of the Force and thus untroubled by the nature of her studies. However, soon both her research into Darksided history and her more leisurely travels through the galaxy began crossing her path with those of a Darker nature more and more often, many of whom were eager to impress their ways upon the Jedi while she was still young and had the potential for a future that went either way. Left disoriented, Aria held onto her only constant - that she was still yet to fulfill her promise. She kept training at Voss, though her attitude to the Dark Side became much more relaxed and she soon started questioning her morals.
However, early on in her Knighthood, Aria got frustrated in the middle of a lesson with Connor. He lost his temper, revealing what Aria had been blind to for a long time now; he was not a Jedi. The realisation caused a small paroxysm of conflicting emotion as in her state of confusion, Aria couldn't decide whether she was angry or upset or simply uncertain - but in the end, she rejected the offer to leave the Order with him.
Though this decision was easily made in the moment, it took just moments for Aria to start to doubt whether she'd made the right choice; her initial plan was to self-train to Masterhood to avoid being betrayed again, but she couldn't get a handle on her maelstrom of confusion. Instead, she relented and sought out Rogue Master Joza Perl, whom she had met a few times before and trusted to be able to help her. It blew up in her face, and Aria ended up still without a Master and further than ever from being a Jedi - and for the first time, not certain she still wanted to be one.
With nothing else to devote her attention to, Aria began to search for Darth Vitium, now known to her as Silara, only subconsciously aware of what she was looking for. She found the Sith Lord on Khar Shian, where she began at last to realise what had been occurring over the last few months. With some coaxing, she fully renounced the Order of the Silver Jedi. Silara offered her the guidance she needed to start actively working away from the Light, and topped it off by crafting her an amulet in the form of a bracelet, designed to intensify her more Darksided emotions and - not fully made aware to Aria herself - lessen her emotional control.
Not long after, Aria decided she needed emotional closure - a chance to reminisce over her Jedi days, rather than repress any nagging worries and have them come back to haunt her later. She took to a meadow to do just that, but it was cut short when she picked up on a familiar Force-signature: Connor Harrison. Determined to at least understand what had become of him, she returned the signal. What followed was a heated confrontation, wherein Connor nearly convinced Aria back to his side, but she quickly realised that she would be giving up more than she'd get and finally turned her back, walking away.
The next few months were a respite. Eager that her future be decided entirely by herself, Aria ceased to make the Force or her progression through it her priority, instead hoping to rebuild her person and begin again with a blank slate. Right away, however, her subconscious inclination was for the dark, though the fact all but slipped by her. The first sign of this that one watching from the outside might've taken note of was how easily she befriended [member="Darth Imperia"], whom she'd met once before as a Jedi, when the now-Knighted Sith came to visit; following a somewhat unsuccessful attempt to help Imperia teach her apprentice, the two became close and began to stay in touch. Second came her move to Maena; as much for the politics as for the views, when Aria decided that moving somewhere new, and especially somewhere that housed influence, the innately darksided planet was somehow the one that seemed the best choice. Then there were the slow, subtle changes in how she was - the occasional apathy towards pain, the occasional spite where kindness would've once been present - nothing she noticed, but nothing somebody watching closely would miss.
The next time that she saw Darth Vitium, Aria was returning to her stronghold for a visit, a chance to seek out further guidance as she started working towards becoming a Darksider. What she found instead was that the Sith Lord [member="Darth Prazutis"] had challenged Silara to a fight - to the death. Just as Aria had begun aiming for the targets that Silara had lined up, she watched as Darth Vitium died, graceless and honorless in her failure to defeat her opponent. This was the final straw - Aria left the duel determined that she would do as Vitium had encouraged, and embrace the Dark side.
Her return to Maena saw another, briefer, period of rest, where she started making changes, some conscious and some not, towards her being, her way of living, how she used the Force, so that she was calling herself a darksider with surprising ease. However, certainly the most notable thing that happened before she began to train in the Force once again was another meeting with Darth Imperia, now a close friend of Aria's whom the Echani privately held a spark for. Imperia, as it proved, had discovered herself to have feelings for the Dark Jedi; after Aria's momentary panic over what such a thing could mean in regards to the future, she admitted she felt the same and lo, #AveMaria came to be.
Finally, Aria reached the decision that she wished to be Sith. The decision had taken far too long to reach, one would think, but to Aria it was as long as it had had to be for her to be sure she was the one deciding her future. The matter of how arose, and her thoughts went to the need for a Master; after some consideration, she sought out [member="Matsu Xiangu"], Sith Lord and ruler of Maena, whom she'd first encountered when she fought as a Jedi, again during an explosion on Maena, and most recently when a mutual friend ([member="Irajah Ven"]) had invited them both to a slumber party. The pair having managed to part last on somewhat friendly terms, Matsu agreed to help teach Aria to become Sith.
She began to train, both by herself and with Matsu's help, studying the Sith, their history, their ways. Her explorations took on an educational bent, her day-to-day life grew more structured; Aria herself started shifting as her teachings began to sink in.
Enough exploration was what brought her to the Primeval; when the cult was rebirthed, Aria fell in line to join their numbers eagerly. An atheist from birth, Aria's faith in the gods they served was questionable, but she kept quiet on the matter of her beliefs. Their goals were the same, she reasoned; she would help them and they would help her.
Equally, her training was what took her to Dxun on a self-imposed survival mission and thus how she met [member="Vaylin"]. A Zabraki ex-Jedi who'd turned to darkness in her years stranded on Dxun, Vaylin took it upon herself personally to investigate when Aria landed. They fought and Aria won, but she couldn't help but take an interest in the other woman; seeing something of herself in her, Aria offered to teach Vaylin.
To be continued...
