Barik Rahl
Character
Barik Rahl
Biographical information:Homeworld: Pilgrim, the Rahl family ship.
Age: Twenty-eight
Physical Description:
Species: Human. 3/4 Corellian, 1/4 Calian.
Gender: Male
Height: 1.8 meters
Mass: 104 kg
Hair color: Black
Eye color: Green
Additional Information:
Affiliation: Red Ravens
Profession: Mercenary
Force sensitivity: Negative
Biography
Barik remembered the day perfectly, even though it had been twenty-one years ago, now. He remembered the ringing in his ears, the dull ache that he now reconized as a concussion. The smell of smoke. The sound of his father's voice. The crash. He remembered all of the crash. They had been exploring a planet long lost over the years of darkness that followed the Gulag Plague. A planet surrounded by gravity wells. The ship had gone off course. Just by a mile or two in space. Amazing how just that little bit can make such a difference. How that can change a life.
He remembered the emergency lights and sirens going off in the sip, even though he had just been seven at the time. The shaking as they broke into atmosphere, his parents yelling, trying to get the escape pod ready. Trying to push him in it before it launched. And then the ship crashed. And everything went black.
He had woken up to his father yelling, trying to wake him up, scared that his son was dead. He wasn't. He remembered seeing the flaming wreckage of the ship, watching the fire die away after hours of burning. He remembered finding his mother's remains. He remembered it all clearly.
The emergency signals, communication devices, everything, had been burned in the wreck. By sheer luck he and his father survived, more or less in one piece. But they had no way off the planet. The planet that had been lost. The planet they'd been sent to scout- to see if it was suitable for re-colonization. The planet Barik lived with his father on for the next three years.
His father was an explorer and a survivalist. He knew how to keep them alive. He built them shelter, a lean to out of rocks and wood. He found them food; plants, and the occasional small animal. He kept them safe from the monsters. He remembered the monsters so well, too. He should. He fought them for years after that. Giant ones big enough to swallow their entire shelter whole. And they did. Smaller ones, that came in groups strong enough to kill anything.
All along, his father taught him. Taught him what was safe to eat, what wasn't. Taught him how to make clothes from what was left of the wreckage. Where to sleep, where not to. How to build a shelter, how to build a fire. How to scavenge the metal from the wreck into arrowheads, and shoot a homemade bow. How to use his knife, in case he'd ever have to.How to find food, how to hunt, how to see if water was safe, how to escape predators. How to survive.
Until his father died.
He remembered that all too clearly, too. One of the things he always wished he could forget. One of the scenes that played through his mind thousands of times. The images that haunted him at night. The reason he slaughtered every predator he could. He'd been in the shelter. They had a door of sorts then. Weaved together from branches, to keep things out while they were sleeping. The door that saved him. The door that stopped him from saving his father. The door he watched through while his father tried to fend them off. The smaller creatures, only the size of a human. But there was six of them. He remembered it perfectly. Remembered the one that had killed him. That one that had jumped on his father's back while he was fighting off another one. The one that had ripped out his throat. He remembered his father's last scream. And the sickening stop it came to. He remembered hearing bones crunch, and flesh tear, as they had their meal. And he watched through the door.
He was alone. Completely alone. The Dobarrodons had left. Left the carcass that once was his father. Bloody remains, bone, and his father's knife. He took the knife.
He stopped counting the days after 3000. Why count them? Who would he tell? .
Over the years, he staked out something of aterritory for himself around the volcano. He remembered the maps his parents had shown him before they came to the system, it seemed so long ago, had a huge volcano on one of the continents. Duri, he thought. Not that it mattered. Names didn't matter. He killed anything that got close. Big or small. Not that many things came around the volcano. There were... other things around it. Things he had never seen before coming to the Volcano. But that wasn't enough for him to leave. They were just food. That's all anything that tried to kill him was. First it was an enemy. Then it was food. He survived. For years, he survived.
His father's teaching was with him. He built himself shelters all around his new territory. Lean-tos, made of rock and stone. He built weapons. Spears and clubs carved with his father's knife. Arrows, tipped with the metal he'd scavenged. Weapons made with stone and hide. He wore his father's old clothes, tended to his injuries as his father had taught him. He hunted, and ate. He built shelters, and slept. He found water, and drank. And that was his life. He survived.
And then the ship came.
He remembered waking up thinking that one of the larger creatures that roamed around the volcano had entered his territory. He'd been woken by a low roar, loud enough to shake his shelter. He had grabbed his knife, the spear he made, and stepped out of his shelter. He never used doors. Doors got in the way of things. That's when he saw it. The roar wasn't from a creature. It was from a ship's engines. A ship that had landed by the volcano, for whatever reason. A ship containing a man. Another person. Someone else in the galaxy. He wasn't the only one anymore.
The man was a smuggler, a smuggler that fled to the system to avoid someone or another that was looking to steal his shipment. Barik didn't care. He was a means of escape. Escape. Leaving the planet. What he had dreamed of when he was young. But why? This was his home, wasn't it? He had nothing left out there. His mother was dead, his father was dead. He dimly remembered his only other living relative; an aunt. Other then that, he knew no one and nothing in the galaxy... But he couldn't stay here. Not if he could leave. He had been dreaming of leaving since he was seven.
He took the smuggler's offer: A ride off the planet.
The galaxy was new to him. He'd only seen it when he was young- his memories of it were vague as best. It was noisy. Loud. Smelled strange. You coudl never hear anything coming. It was complicated. You couldn't hunt for your food. You couldn't just find water. You couldn't lay down and sleep where you like. There were rules, rules for everything. He remembered Duniya like you remember a stressful holiday. It was horrible, but wonderful at the same time. He could have died any day, but it was his home. But he left his home. He was never going to go back.
He searched for his aunt. His aunt, he found, that had died while he was on Duniya. Her and her husband, both killed through unknown means. But he found he still had surviving relatives. His aunt had children, several. The Ticons. So he went to search for his relatives that he had never met- no matter how far apart their relations were. They were still the only family he had.
He found his cousins were what the galaxy classed as criminals. But as far as Barik saw it, they followed the same laws he had for years. If you need something, you take it. If something else wants it, you fight for it. You kill them, or they kill you. A fight for survival. The way the world /should/ be. The way his world /was/. So he joined them, so to speak. The majority of them were affiliated with a galaxy-spanning group of like-minded sentients; The Red Ravens. People who kill or be killed. Predators. Predators like himself.