Sic transit gloria mundi
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
Intent: Expand on Firemane. Repurpose a former PC. This submission has been discussed with [member="Valiens Nantaris"], the original writer of the character ([member="Sahal Jai Azal"] is one of Valiens' subaccounts).
Image Credit: Here.
Role: Firemane officer.
Links: Original bio. Passages of this bio have been reused with the author's permission. The Outbreak, Kaeshana Exodus, Casus Belli.
PHYSICAL INFORMATION
Age: 28
Force Sensitivity: Knight
Species: Human.
Appearance: Human female of average height, but strong. Lacy is tough, well-built and no-nonsense about her appearance. She wears her hair pulled back, and whatever armour and clothes she has are comfortable and protective. As a Firemane soldier, she has been issued armour and uniforms by the corporation. When off duty she tends to dress in a manner befitting a spacer. She has a small mole under her left eye, and several scars on her body from various close quarters encounters and fights she has been in. She always carries some form of weapon on her person.
SOCIAL INFORMATION
Name: Lacy Lennox. Lieutenant.
Loyalties: Firemane, Order of Fire.
Wealth: Lacy receives remuneration from Firemane in return for her services. The pay is on a sliding scale based on experience, rank, reward and so on. Given her skill and rank, she should be able to enjoy a comfortable but not luxurious retirement when her service ends.
Notable Possessions:
- Lacy acquired a Tachyon Freighter in the chaos of the Rapture. Now that she works with Firemane she has access to other ships, but holds on to the 'old girl'. She has an R9 astromech to assist with the navigation duties.
- Phrik battle axe. Single bladed, with a spike on the other side.
- Fire Star, First Class. Medal awarded to her by Firemane.
- Boltgun.
- Wrist Bolter.
- ACS-004 Olympian Battle Armor (Permission requested here, obtained here).
- MSD-32.
- BCC BC-11 Comlink (purchase request here, permission here)
- Archon Class Gunship
Lacy's combat related skill in the Force is used primarily for enhancement rather than manipulating the world around her. She is very good at using the Force for the purpose of physical enhancement. In doing so she can significantly enhance her strength, endurance, speed and reaction time. Thus she can punch harder, run faster, react quicker and endure more punishment. She is also skilled in creating flashes of bright light to fuzz holocameras, blind or disorientate enemies. She has enough experience with this ability to blind small groups and is good at Force Stasis. This is quite useful for crowd control.
Furthermore, she can utilise Force Valour, enabling her to boost herself and her allies. Her Force abilities aid her piloting, as she is able to use the Force to provide an advantage in her reaction time, can perceive danger without the use of scanners or sensors, and target accurately without the need for computer assistance. This makes her more dangerous in the cockpit. Her most exotic Force power is mechu-deru, which is an extension of her affinity for tech. This is a boon for manipulating machinery.
She has notable precognitive and empathic abilities as well as basic Force healing skills. Lacy has been educated in the basics of lightsabre combat. This means she knows what to expect when she faces a lightsabre-wielder and is familiar with counters. However, she herself sticks with regular weapons. Her melee weapon of choice is a Phrik axe, but she can also use swords, daggers and so on. She is good at throwing knives.
Lacy spent a notable portion of her life as a smuggler and freelancer, albeit one with a code. She no longer smuggles for crime lords, but is still quite knowledgeable about the underworld. She knows how to research patrols, bypass security, fake papers and ship identifications. She is no navigational prodigy, but has a good knowledge of hyperspace routes, can avoid patrols and pass through inspections without raising any red flags. These traits can be useful for clandestine operations that require subterfuge, such as when she is covertly inserting or evacuating allies, delivering cargo to allied rebel groups and so on.
Personality: Growing up in a tough setting, Lacy has little time or patience for weakness or what she perceives as laziness. She is not an especially tolerant person, and quick to judge others. She gets very impatient with people she perceives as not pulling their weight. She came from nothing and took her life into her own hand. So she does not suffer those who have been raised in more well-off circumstances but squander their opportunities or act as if their life is hard.
She had to work to get where she is and cannot stand people who, from her perspective, have had all the advantages in life and done nothing with them or who believe that being born to privilege makes them better than those without them. She is used to hard living, disciplined and has a good work ethic. It goes without saying that she has no tolerance for slackers and other individuals not willing to pull their own weight.
Lacy has a formidable temper when provoked. Some of her friends liken it to poking a Cylix - and then complaining when it bites your hand off. Despite this she has a strict personal code of ethics. She only targets combatants and dislikes unfair treatment of prisoners. Lacy expects soldiers under her command to adhere to these principles and will punish soldiers who disregard the code of conduct. She refused to run drugs or other illegal substances when she was an independent operator. This made her somewhat less appealing to certain quarters, and limited her earnings. But when things were at their darkest her code was all all she had. So she stubbornly held on to it.
Lacy joined up with Firemane because they offered her a steady pay check and a chance to control and understand her Force skills. For a long time she had known there was something...odd inside her. She got glimpses of the future before it happened and had strange feelings about people. She did not know what it meant and it worried her. Lacy has not swallowed the party brochure, but Firemane had treated her decently and helped her find her way. Moreover, it is led by former leaders of Omega Pyre, which liberated her homeworld from zombie hordes and thus gave her and her family a chance to live a new life.
She is used to the hardships of military life and gets rewarded for the work she does. Her bosses are her employers and she is not awe of them, but feels institutional loyalty. The religious reverence some of Siobhan's Tygaran vassals have for their boss seems plain bizarre to her and she does not encourage it.
She is opposed to sadism and gratuitous cruelty. Overall her alignment could be described as Lawful Neutral. She has a code and she sticks to it. She is not a social butterfly, but prizes the few close connections she has. After all, the Galaxy is a big, bleak place and she knows what it is like to be alone and have nobody to count on except yourself. Lacy dislikes her first name, and usually just goes by the name ‘Lennox’ when on a mission. Lacy is a junior officer in Firemane's military hierarchy and has recently been assigned to work under Tempest, who was promoted after the Tephrike campaign. She serves as one of the Dahomian's platoon commanders.
Lacy gets on well with Sergeant Hikari Saito, a tough Panathan who specialises in suppressing the Force abilities of other adepts. Saito is older than Lacy and has been longer with Firemane, but stayed a Sergeant despite repeated promotion offers. Both have a similar mind set. Lacy also gets on quite well with Jazan Jai Khalal. This is curious since the Qadiri used to be a pirate and a slaver before abandoning these ventures.
However, both have managed to bond over flying. When Jazan joined Firemane, she faced some racism due to being a 'sand baby'. Lacy was one of those who treated her fairly. Freya and Lacy are both from Denon and had a similar upbringing. Both grew up poor and learned to be tough and self-reliant from an early age. This does not make them pals though since Freya is not the bosom buddy type.
COMBAT INFORMATION
Weapon of Choice: Various types of ranged weapons such as blasters, bolters and slugthrowers. Her preferred melee weapon is a Phrik axe, but she also uses blades, knives and so on. She is a good pilot, capable of flying gunships, transports and small starships.
Combat Function: Lacy is a brawler, pilot and trained soldier. She grew up in a rough area, and later joined the Protectorate military. She is strong, robust and good at close combat. As well as melee combat, Lacy has experience in using ranged weapons of varying types. She is equally skilled with rifle, pistol and grenade. Her melee weapon of choice is a single bladed axe, though she can also use a vibroblade, dagger and other conventional melee weapons.
During her training with the Protectorate military, Lacy learned how to pilot gunships and transports. One of the craft she learned to fly is the Inimica Heavy Gunship, a gunship suited for a bomber role. It was designed attack large targets such as capital ships, fortifications and cities. to A contemporary example of a craft she might fly would be the Archon Class Gunship, a heavily armoured ground pounder designed to hammer infantry, vehicles and structures. Thus it can provide heavy aerial support for ground troops. After she left the Protectorate, she picked up basic starship piloting. She is good at delivering close air support, transporting allies into hot zones or evacuating them.
Lacy has experience in small unit leadership, though she is a tactical rather than strategic leader. Moreover, she is a combat based Force-User, with a strong focus on enhancement powers and buffs. She is particularly good at physical augmentation and can use the Force to enhance her piloting. Many of her Force powers are more about boosting the skills she already has rather than giving her esoteric ones.
Her most exotic ability is an aptitude for mechu-deru. She is still developing it, but it boosts her inherent knack for tech, especially mechanics, and can give her an edge against droids or very tech-reliant enemies. Her skill with Force Valour allows her to boost her own physical capabilities and those of her allies. Her telekinetic abilities are unimpressive.
Lacy is a combat pragmatist, but follows a code. She will not murder civilians or kill a helpless opponent. However, should an enemy surrender to her, she will make sure that they are not feigning it and trying to get her to let down her guard. Her form of assurance will definitely involve stun cuffs and possibly a stun bolt. It is better to be safe than sorry, after all.
Strengths:
- Soldier. Lacy is strong, tough and a trained soldier. She excels in close combat, melee, and is skilled in small unit leadership. She is Force-Sensitive, with a particular focus on enhancement abilities, precognition and mechu-deru.
- Capable pilot. She is good at flying gunships, transports and small starships. Very useful for inserting allies into combat zones or evacuating them, delivering close air support against hostile ground targets and attacking large targets such as capital ships, fortified positions etc.
- Her telekinetic abilities are fairly weak. She can do the very basics, but not more. Using her mind to lift heavy objects, crush someone's limbs or affect someone or something far away from her is beyond her skill set.
- Lacks significant skill with a lightsabre. She is used to melee weapons with actual weight behind them.
Denon was never a particularly utopian world, but in the Dark Ages it was positively nightmarish. Zombies from below, gangs, poverty and decay made it a horrible place to grow up. During the Dark Age, a group of scientists tried to create a cure to the Rakghoul virus that was ravaging the planet. Unfortunately for them, their cure did something even worse, for it turned those it was administered to into intelligent zombies. Controlled by a hive mind, these zombies were able to coordinate, learn and had regenerative traits. They grew into a significant menace, driving the few survivors to the brink.
This was the world Lacy Lennox was born into. She was the daughter of two ordinary people trying to survive. By the age of five Lacy had seen friends killed and mutated by zombies, and at age eight it was the turn of her only sister Lucinda. Seeing her sister transform into a monster, and then watching her parents have to kill this creature naturally had a profound impact on her. Dangers lurked around every corner not just from monsters, but from gangs and other residents too. Individual towers and blocks banded together to form mini fortresses to protect themselves from scavengers and other groups. Low level warfare was endemic, supplies scarce and violence common.
All these things formed and made Lacy a very cynical, prepared person. With little time for education she didn’t learn to read until she was eight years old, but she could load and fire a blaster rifle accurately by then. Survival was key, and Lacy learned how to go without food, how to hide, how to fight, and helped her tower scavenge and steal from others efficiently. Things changed for Lacy at age twelve with the liberation of Denon and the arrival of Omega Pyre onto the world.
At the time the fledgling Pyre was young, vigorous and expansionist. Once Denon had been an economic hub and the paramilitary corporation wanted to incorporate it into their sphere of influence. Thus a task force led by Prex Cira, CEO Tegaea Alcori and Siobhan Kerrigan descended upon the planet. The fighting was bloody, for the undead hordes assailed the mercenaries and showed a surprising amount of resilience and tactical ingenuity. Still, in the end the corporation was able to destroy the Alpha Zombie and create a cure.
Lacy was one of those civilians who saw the heroes from space come down, defeat the scourge of the zombies and set about imposing order. Enamoured and awestruck by these newcomers she set about preparing to join them. She was obviously too young, so she impatiently attended school, but more often hung around the Pyre, later Protectorate bases. The soldiers there, amused by her dedication, let her use the firing range and gym.
When her father joined the Protectorate military this only strengthened her desire to follow him. Concerned, her mother tried to divert her attention to education and getting a less dangerous job. The friction between mother and daughter, combined with an absent father, led to an unhappy home life. Finally, at age fifteen Lacy ran away from home, lied about her age and joined the Protectorate military. Surprisingly, the realities of military life was not a disappointment for her. Used to hard living, she put up with the physical strain and discipline remarkably well. Younger than almost anyone else in her unit, she nonetheless showed herself as someone not willing to take any nonsense.
When a fellow recruit four years older than her tried to steal from her, Lacy beat the other woman so badly she was in hospital for a week. The money earned was many times more than what she had ever earned previously, so she completed basic training and took a job of piloting gunships and dropships. Her superiors, seeing through her lies about her age, but still recognising her value, kept her out of the front lines, and encouraged her to pilot Inimica and Raven ships. In this capacity she served in several operations and showed bravery in action. Lacy was too low-ranking to mingle with the top brass. But she saw Exarch Siobhan Kerrigan when the woman visited the base she was stationed at to hold a speech and hand out awards to soldiers who had distinguished themselves.
Lacy’s rather happy life changed though when two blows hit her. The first was the rapture, which took billions of people from the galaxy, leaving chaos and disorder in its wake. Reeling from this, she discovered that her parents were among those lost. Her father had been killed at Corellia where he had been based, her mother vanished in the cataclysm. With the Protectorate crumbling, and her family gone Lacy took a civilian freighter from her base on Duro and left before the Protectorate returned to regain control.
Now a freelancer, Lacy worked as a pilot, mercenary and transporter. Alone in a hostile galaxy, anxious about the strange power inside her, and cynical beyond her years, Lacy’s story took more than a few twists. The big bad Galaxy was a bleak, dangerous place. She was all on her own and had no support network. It was not easy getting by. However, in spite of the pragmatic compromises she needed to make in order to survive, Lacy had a code and she stuck with it.
She would fight and kill, but only kill combatants. She would smuggle goods, but not drugs or partake in the slave trade. This made her somewhat less appealing in the underworld. Many old hands called her naive. However, she was not an idealist who had her head in the clouds. She knew how cutthroat and vicious the Galaxy was. But she had lost her family and her home. When things were at their darkest, her code was all she had. She would not spit on her family by turning her back on it. This limited her earnings, but she was professional and disciplined, which some clients appreciated.
The Netherworld Event had sent the Galaxy spiralling into chaos. Several great galactic powers were unable to weather the storm and went under. One of them was the Omega Protectorate. Lacy found work as a freelance pilot, ferrying goods to planets that had been hit hard by the crisis. For a price, she also transported refugees or people who had run afoul of the law and helped smuggle them to what they hoped would be greener pastures. She heard stories about a mad goddess called Akala and mystical portals to the realm of the dead. It sounded insane to the young woman. But she hoped against hope that her mother might resurface.
For a while, she did some smuggling for a minor crime lord on Nar Shaddaa. She proved to be quite good at evading patrols and bypassing blockades. She was also punctual. However, their relationship soured after her boss demanded that Lacy help her spread a dangerous new variant of spice. Lacy had seen what happened to the people who got hooked on the stuff and turned into addicts. After an intense high, they crashed hard. She took the assignment, but turned over her cargo to the Republic, in whose territory it was supposed to be distributed.
Of course, she did this for a fee in return. Being noble felt good for the conscience, but it also had to pay. She was no one's white knight. However, she had to defend herself against bounty-hunters when the crime boss got wind of it. Her Force powers might have enabled her to survive an ambush. Lacy could not explain it at the time, but somehow she could visualise their next moves before they acted. Blaster bolts flew past her, she could power through blows and hit far harder than should be possible. The blaster rifle of one of the hunters mysteriously jammed and then blew up. It unnerved her deeply, but she tried to bury the incident and move on.
She continued being a freelance pilot and transporter, accepting contracts against the Republic. She helped provide security for convoys and operated as a blockade runner against the One Sith. She had a close encounter during a mission to Corellia, when she was supposed to smuggle in supplies and some resistance fighters who wanted to conduct sabotage and free some prisoners.
However, the mission went sideways due to faulty intelligence and they were pursued. When called in to help them evacuate, Lacy was drawn into the fighting. She ended up facing a Sith Acolyte in melee. A Green Jedi who had accompanied them was cut down by the Sith. His lightsabre seemed to call to Lacy. However, she knew better than to pick up a weapon she had never been trained to use and try to duel someone who knew how to fight with it.
So instead she shot the Sith in the leg with a shotgun. Furious, he blasted her with lightning and invaded her mind, forcing her to relive her trauma of losing her family. She threatened to drown in her loss as the visions tormented her, but then she was thrown into a rage. First she shot him, then she beat him. Under heavy fire, the survivors were able to flee. A Jedi who had been with the group had noticed the incident and took her aside for a chat. However, Lacy was in denial and did not want to hear about 'hookey religions' and 'hocus pocus'.
Talk about how she had a destiny and must embrace it only annoyed her. So Lacy went back to freelance work. This was probably for the best since the Jedi in question turned to the dark side and became a murderous Sith. A year later, she changed her mind, went back to the Light and became a pacifist. Who also provided medical assistance to Sith and insisted that one could not overcome the dark side by fighting it.
Regardless, Lacy eventually got involved with Firemane, albeit on a freelance basis. When the Eldorai learned that their homeworld Kaeshana was doomed to be destroyed by a huge asteroid, they petitioned Firemane for help. The corporation began to build an enormous exodus fleet to evacuate as many of Kaeshana's natives as possible before the calamity. To this end, they also hired freelance pilots to help with the evacuation.
Working as a private contractor, Lacy helped move Eldorai and supplies to their new home. Once her ship was attacked by Kraal raiders. She defended herself, using her piloting skills to evade them. She gained some ideal on the Kraal pirates that she was able to pass on to Firemane, earning her a small bonus. However, Lacy did not tie herself to the company. While most Eldorai had been successfully evacuated before the cataclysm, some had to be left behind.
Though Firemane was able to mitigate the damage by using a new warship to significantly reduce the asteroid in size, the impact was still devastating. It threw the planet into an impact winter. The survivors were forced to eke out an existence in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Warfare and squabbles over resources became endemic. Lacy made deals with some of the warlords that sought to wrest some order from the chaos, smuggling arms, medical and food supplies for them.
Once she was caught up in an Archangel raid while closing a deal. The machine cult desired to use the Eldorai as organic materiel to process into war machines. They deployed HRDs and Harvester Droids, stunning and grabbing inhabitants. Lacy had to fight her way out. Her conscience would not allow her to just run. However, she was only able to save a small group of people. So she helped some Eldorai children escape aboard her ship while their parents took their chances. Her freighter was pursued and damaged by Archangel craft, but she was able to get out. Kaeshana had turned out to be too much of a hot zone, especially after the warlord she had been working with was killed in an internecine Eldorai dispute. For a while she did some smuggling on Tygara, where she made the acquaintance of the natives.
Lacy became a full member of Firemane after the Incursion Event. This was a rather strange episode in which an isolationist sect of Shards called the Contingency returned to the Galaxy to exact revenge for wrongs that had been committed against their species by Emperor Palpatine and his cohorts. The fact that those who had persecuted their people had been dead for almost a millennia did not seem to faze them.
The fact that they had been spent the last couple centuries being influenced by elder horrors and brooding about revenge might have had something to do with this. Unfortunately for them, they were defeated and their mad leader Onyx was slain by an unlikely coalition, which included two Firemane operatives and Siobhan's evil clone. Lacy had already had a run-in with the Contingency on Rishi, though she did not know it at the time. While she was on the planet working on some deals, all the droids suddenly started running amok. Lacy had to fight her way out.
Later she and several other individuals were lured to a space station with the promise of riches and job opportunities. However, the lucrative offer turned out to be a trap, for the Shards were looking for beings to feed to the eldritch creatures that controlled them. To her credit, Lacy did not let the promise of plunder make her lose her wits. Getting suspicious, she tried to leave early and hotwire a security door. When gas flooded the corridors, the power inside her helped her hold her breathe. But then a powerful mental attack struck her. It felt like red-hot needles were being driven into her skull while white noise hammered her. She forced herself to pull through, but her ship was badly damaged in the fighting. She was saved by the intervention of Firemane, which had a bone to pick with the Contingency.
This resulted in Lacy joining the Company. Many years had passed since the fall of the Protectorate, but many of its traditions lived on in Firemane. The old guard of the company was also composed of former Protectorate members. This helped Lacy integrate into the corporation. Her skill as a pilot was noted by her superiors. When Firemane, the Galactic Alliance and the Tygaran Alliance launched a humanitarian mission to aid Kaeshana's survivors and give them the chance to rebuild or depart the devastated planet, she was part of it. At first she was supposed to help provide security. However, what was supposed to be a relief mission quickly turned into something far bloodier when the allied forces clashed with the First Order.
Lacy participated in the battle as a gunship pilot. She saw action when the allied forces battled the First Order at the ruins of the Citadel of Dawn. She provided close air support for the ground forces, bombarding First Order walkers. She distinguished herself with her bravery and skill, putting her life on the line to crack enemy armour. Her gunship was damaged by enemy starfighters and she was forced to conduct an emergency landing.
Her crew were found by some Eldorai soldiers. Among them were some of the elves she had saved long ago. They made their way through enemy territory to friendly lines. Lacy took out an enemy repeater nest with a flanking attack, but was injured in the leg by shrapnel from a grenade. While the battle for the fortress went in the allies' favour, they were ultimately forced to withdraw. Lacy was commended for her valour and received a commission. It solidified her decision to stay with Firemane instead of going back to freelance work. It was steady work; the money was good and regular.
After she had recovered sufficiently, she served as one of the test pilots for the new Archon Class Gunship. While this took place, she was approached by members of the Order of Fire, Firemane's Force-using branch. They had taken notice of her skills, and realised that she was Force-Sensitive. Not so long ago, Lacy would have told them to get lost. However, after all the things she had seen was more amenable. She new there was something odd inside her, had been exposed to the so called Force and needed training.
So she transitioned into the Order of Fire. In many ways, her duties did not change much. The Order regarded itself as a martial organisation instead of a cloistered order of monks. It was integrated into the chain of command and those of its members who served in the military had a dual rank. She already had the military training down pat, now she just needed to learn how to use the Force. Tempest was one of her trainers. Recruits were grouped together and were educated about the Force by their trainers in the manner of a military training camp. The Force was another tool to harness and be trained in, just like piloting, physical education or weapons. Closer master-student relationships happened once the recruits were winnowed down to the best.
Her training focused on enhancement powers, precognition and her budging talent for mechu-deru. She showed little talent for telekinesis, and chose to specialise rather than spread herself thin. It was not an easy life, but she was used to hardship and had a good work ethic. There was little rote learning or trying to lift pebbles. Instead her training proceeded in a military-style manner. A good portion of it happened alongside field missions.
Lacy learned the basics of lightsabre combat, but did not like the glowstick much, preferring to use more conventional melee weapons. She participated in brush fire conflicts on Tygara, such as the fight against the Blood Wraiths, and saw action against the First Order as part of operations Firemane carried out in support of the Galactic Alliance. Her past as a freelance pilot came in handy when it came to smuggling arms to rebels on Kaeshana.
After the First Galactic Alliance-First Order was concluded by treaty, Lacy was involved in the so-called Outbreak Incident on Arkas. Firemane lost contact with an island settlement called Serenade. A joint Eldorai-Firemane-Alderaanian task force was dispatched to investigate. Hazardous weather patterns made communications and reconnaissance difficult. Their transports came under fire from the town's AA guns, forcing the soldiers to leave their dropships.
It soon turned out that the settlement had been taken over by a horde of intelligent zombies controlled by a hive-mind. Far from being mindless hordes, these undead were intelligent, able to use weapons and military tactics. The soldiers were soon in danger of being overrun. Moreover, the hive-mind attacked them mentally, trying to lure them into complacency by showing them utopian dreams.
Lacy and her crew were mobilised when General Devotion gave the order that the settlement had to be destroyed for the greater good. While she approached Serenade aboard her bomber-gunship, the soldiers managed to destroy the AA guns and retreat. It was possible that there were still uninfected civilians in Serenade, but unless the outbreak was contained right away it would surely spread to the rest of the planet.
As she flew towards her target, the hive mind reached out to her. It tried to sway her from her course by pulling her into a dream world where her parents were still alive and she had never suffered any of the hardship she knew. It was an utopia...and wrong. One of her crew members had to be knocked out with a stun bolt. Another bomber crashed when the hive-mind managed to mess with the minds of the pilot. Lacy and the rest followed orders and bombed the town. Serenade went up in smoke.
In the aftermath, Firemane deployed Kar'zun soldiers and droids to secure the area, search for survivors and eliminate any remaining zombies. Neither could be infected with the virus or manipulated mentally, after all. Following the conclusion of the Tephrike campaign, Lacy was assigned to the command of Tempest. She is now one of the Dahomian's platoon commanders.