Corvus Dravere
Ice and Snow
General Information
Name: Corvus Dravere
Homeworld: Aaray (Pain)
Species: Human
Age: 43
Faction: CIS
Rank: Alor
Gender: Male
Height: 6' 6''
Weight: 237 lbs
Eyes: Brown
Hair: Brown
Skin: Fair
Force Sensitive: No
Strengths:
- Mandalorian: A superlative warrior, he's fought just about every opponent the galaxy could throw at him and, if not won, survived.
- Solid: He's built like an AT-AT and hits like one too.
Weaknesses:
- Total War: He can and will use whatever weapons are available to ensure victory. This often means civilian casualties as a byproduct - napalm, gas, etc. It's all on the table.
- Good heart: All those decisions weigh on him nightly, and while he'll never admit it, he's prone to traumatic episodes that he's (mostly) able to contain to private settings.
Personality/Appearance
Corvus is a tall, broad man, with a narrow waist and short legs. He's spent his adult life as a mercenary, so he keeps himself in the shape of a much younger man. Possessed with shaggy brown hair just starting to line with gray, and dark brown eyes well suited to brooding, his vaguely downturned lips offer a glimpse into the somber individual within.
He'd be a handsome man, perhaps, if he smiled, but he doesn't seem too interested in interaction. Often a loner, he's content to make quips from the sideline until engaged in a one on one, and then he'll light up a bit more. His laugh is full-throated and deep, and his smile is reserved yet genial. There's a charisma evident behind the walls he erects, and were he a bit more extroverted it's easy to see him as a leader on far more public stages.
Background
Born and raised among the tundra of his true homeworld, Aaray, Corvus learned at a young age that death comes in many forms; the frigid, crushing embrace of the depths; the maw of a voracious predator both on land and below the waves; the rumble-crack of a collapsing mine shaft. Their world, aptly name, attempts to kill any and all who live out their lives on it's surface. To put it simply, it's a death world.
Their clan has lived in the Outer Rim ever since the aftermath of the Mandalorian Wars. They're an insular people, and much of their interaction with the galaxy at large comes from their trade. As their world is one of icy plains and shallow seas, they've become masters of close combat gunbattles and underwater warfare. Their needlers are prized by those who ply their trade beneath the waves, and their supercavitating ammunition is machined to perfection.
Much of their equipment is equally prized for it's reliability and ease of use, as simplicity and functionality is the name of the game. That's why Corvus grew up in hallways of exposed pipework and insulated wire, without ceiling or floors more luxurious than grating, at least outside of private domiciles. With their constant battle with nature, they couldn't afford to have to tear down walls just to get to the inner workings of their buildings, and this rugged adherence to a spartan lifestyle has bred a certain dour nature into their blood.
Their mess hall is not the jovial celebration one may find among other clans - they eat in relative quiet, the conversations never rising above a dull murmur. Their drinks are taken as toasts to the fallen, and every one is haunted by sensory-memories of a death delayed to an uncertain future date. They aren't fatalistic, they say, merely realistic.
This leads into how Corvus was trained to fight, and how he still trains the youth. Their armor has evolved from the original diving they wore when they first arrived on Aalay, and they've forgone the typical T-Visor associated with Mandalorians. Instead, they bear the Mythosaur skull within a star of red, trimmed in gold - an homage to the red dwarf star around which their planet rotates.
In combat, they advance as a phalanx of heavy armor modified from the mining suits their ancestors brought with them, as they were designed to withstand immense pressure and heat. Their attack falls as a hammer blow, and instead of melee weapons they prefer to use blasters and slugthrowers at short range - for blasters, they prefer high powered, single shot 'kill' weapons. For slugthrowers, they prefer small caliber and volume. Flamethrowers, gas and phosphorous grenades, as well as disruptor technology are all used liberally.
Nothing is allowed to escape, and it's allowed their area of space to remain relatively pirate free. Their brutality has gotten them into trouble more than once, and they can be a PR nightmare for those they fight alongside. But they will win, and if they don't, well, they'll leave behind plenty of their own corpses beneath the piles of their enemies. Attrition is the name of the game, and no loss is too severe. Victory, at all costs.
History
From somewhere on the level above, the sound of blasterfire could be heard. It was muted by the intervening floor, and muffled by the staccato report of the weapons of the invaders. He wasn't even sure what they were, but their dead littered this hallway along with the mingled bodies of his clanmates. He picked his way through them, the mingling pools of purple and red forming a thick, biological puddle he'd rather not dwell on.
All were dead, torn apart by claws, scorched by flamethrowers or simply dropped by the kinetic impact of blasterfire. The stench was overwhelming, getting past his helmet filters and into his nose as though the smell were a beast digging it's claws into a hide. It was a smell that scrabbled for purchase, not resting until it had carved it's own handholds out of the sinuses and therein made it's nest. Nauseating didn't even begin to cover it.
She was down here, somewhere. He knew it. This was the last level she'd been seen on, and the last one before the flooded decks below. Already, the superstructure of this station was groaning, the pressure of the ocean floor finding it's way in with the waves, straining against the bulkheads designed to keep the whole place from simply disappearing into the deep, dark below. Turning a corner, he thought he heard the slither of scales on metalwork, and he paused, panning his rivet gun across a hallway filled with steam and blood.
Cycling through his vision modes, he took a tentative step forward. None of his filters improved his sight, and so he scowled at the broken piping that was, even now, spewing hot steam into the corridor. His heavy boots echoed on the grating, and he was only moving cautiously so that he would have time to react if he were jumped. Yet, he remained unmolested as he reached the other end of the hall, and he frowned, panning the gun down the junction he found himself in.
He didn't dare call out. They had, mostly, vacated this level but that wasn't a guarantee. Still, his armor had picked something up - a sound, perhaps? Taking the left, he picked his way down another hallway pockmarked by death and flowing with the rivers of wasted vitality. He'd grown up undersea, and as a member of the clan council he was used to descending into the depths. But this was new. For once, they were being attacked.
They still didn't know by what.
If it wasn't for his daughter, he wouldn't even be down here - he'd be reaching the submersibles with the rest of the Council. Their council was, admittedly, unique, but they often explained it as a Lieutenant deferring to his Sergeant's. Those voices of reason were necessary, but none of them had been able to stop their youngest member from going back for his daughter. That bond was unbreakable.
He paused, hearing the thunk of a blade into flesh, and he immediately began to run, turning a corner and nearly tripping over one of the invaders. It was crouched over one of his dead clanmembers, clearly inspecting her armor and weapons, and he pulled the trigger on instinct. With a thump of pneumatic release, a rivet was propelled into the beast's body. Two more trigger pulls, and it was twitching on the ground, it's strange reptilian body writhing in agony.
One more rivet to the head stopped it's struggle.
"Damnit, Bry." He mutters to himself, another groan from the station reminding him time was running out. He picked up the jog again, trying to remember where he'd heard that sound. Was it the beast? Was it Bry? He took another two junctions before he spied her, crouched outside the mess hall. A blade was in her hand, and she was clearly sawing open one of the creature corpses.
She was a frail little thing, barely six, with porcelain skin and her mother's eyes. Many doubted she'd ever truly be a Mandalorian, and in his darker moments, he shared their belief. But he approached her carefully, not wanting to frighten or upset her, and he stopped just behind her, his rifle held at the low ready. The knife was so big in her hands she had to use both just to grip the handle.
"C'mon, honey. It's not safe here." She didn't even look up, her hands shoved into the innards of the reptilian... thing.
"The specimen, Daddy!" She'd never sounded excited about anything before, and here she was, elbow deep in some creature from fathom's deep, and she sounded like she'd been given a new puppy. Word's couldn't even begin to express his concern. Words never would be able to.
"Not now, honey. We don't have the time."
She finally paused, wide eyes panning back to him, and she straightened, her uniform crumpled and darkened with dried blood. "I can't study them without one, Daddy."
The frown he normally sported beneath his helmet only deepened. "They've almost killed everyone on the station, Bry. We need to go. Now."
She huffed, and stamped her foot, and for a moment she was a normal little girl. Yet more concern bubbled up in his mind like bends, and he tightened his grip on his gun on reflex. "I can't study without one!" She repeated, sharper, almost petulant. It was saddening to him that this was the moment she chose to be a normal little girl.
Taking a step forward, he shook his head. "I know, honey. We've already got several specimens on the submersibles. But if we don't leave now, we'll die down here, and then you'll never get to study them." They didn't have time for this argument. They didn't have any time left to waste. He let go of the foregrip of his gun, and held out his gloved hand for her.
For the first time in six years of life, she reached out to take it.
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