Naamah Aesham

[Darth Libertas]

Name: Naamah Aesham
Faction: Inquisitorial Rogue. Formerly Galactic Empire.
Rank: Rogue Knight.
Species: Shapeshifter, specifically a Clawdite
Age: 27
Gender: Female (sometimes, but it’s her natural one!)
Height: 1.68 m (variable)
Weight: 55 kg
Eyes: Natural colour is yellowish.
Hair: Common human form is blonde. The Eldorai form she has has started wearing is white-haired.
Skin: Natural form is green, scaly and reptilian.


Force Sensitive: Very.


Personality Traits:

• Good actress: This comes with her heritage as a shapeshifter and has been honed by her experiences with the Inquisition and especially the time she has spent in the underworld since her escape from Atrisia. She is able to blend in and use her shapeshifting talents to her advantage. Obviously this enhances her skill as an infiltrator, which was presumably why the Inquisition was interested in her in the first place.
• Combat Pragmatist: Naamah has no qualms about fighting dirty and taking the opportunities as they come. After all, you either fight or muck around. Honour to her is just a fancy word to excuse stupidity, as a certain woman-shaped battering ram is terribly fond of saying. Honor on the battlefield gets you killed and so she fights dirty. She ambushes, uses explosives, hidden weapons, and specialized gear designed expressly for specific enemies (heavy armor, Force users, etc). This also applies to CQC, where she normally goes for kidneys, knees, the solar plexus, and other very painful places to be hit. She is also quite apt at using her shapeshifting talents for deception and to get close to her target.
• Distrustful: Events have hardened Naamah and as such she is slow to trust, expecting betrayal and as a consequence looking out for herself first. What she endured at the hands of the authoritarian government at Atrisia, which rejected her kind as dangerous weapons that needed to be controlled or destroyed, has also made her distrustful of governments and politicians in general. One could say that due to the massive loss of faith in a system she was conditioned to believe in has made her a bit of an anarchist. Considering the fact that she was a zealous Inquisitor conditioned to believe that only a strong empire could bring order, this is a significant change. She remembers a time when she valued loyalty and duty more than anything else, but the past is dead. At least that is how she would like it to be. She feels great hatred for Atrisia and especially for their empress. Such feelings bear the risk of overriding her judgement.
• Though she tries to shrug it off and project a façade to the rest of the world, Naamah is traumatized by the repeated physical and mental breaking she was forced to endure while in an Atrisian concentration camp after the Purge. She was treated as a thing that could be experimented on to provide answers on what makes force-users tick, which has obviously left scars. This is without going into her disgusting work for the Inquisition and the Atrisian Imperial Intelligence Bureau, which demanded that she numb herself and become an unfeeling weapon for the Empire. All the while with a Sword of Damocles over her head since force-sensitives were only tolerated by the general population in Atrisia and the Inquisition’s existence was a well-kept secret.
• Becoming the Mask: Comes with being a shapeshifter and is reinforced by her past identity as an Inquisitor. Only very few, namely her brethren in the secret order, knew her as Naamah Aesham. To the rest she was an agent in the Intelligence Bureau or any identity she neded for a mission. These days she lives in the underworld, changing her identity, face and even her species as is needed. Always wearing a mask makes it difficult to discern who the real her is. Perhaps she herself does not fully know anymore.

Combat Skills and Force Talents:

• Action Girl: Naamah is proficient in the use of a variety of melee and ranged weapons. Basically if it shoots a bolt, a bullet or holds an edge she has some rating with it. In addition to that, she is an exceptional long distance shot, scoring far above average, making her good at shooting from range with a sniper rifle.
• Photographic Memory She has an eidetic memory, able to recall anything she has seen, heard or smelled before. However, this is a double-edged blade as it also includes all the horrid things she has done or experienced. Such as everyone she has ever killed, maimed or tortured. More to the point, it means that she recalls every moment of torment during the Purge while a prisoner of the Atrisian State, which haunts her in her dreams. Obviously this has not been conducive to her mental stability.
• Voluntay Shapeshifting: As a Clawdite Naamah possesses the ability to alter her physical appearance at will. For her species, however, this process is is extremely painful and takes great skill to achieve. Nonetheless, she has developed skills in her shapeshifting and become highly skilled at self-alteration. Typically Clawdites do not possess the ability to mimic an exact replica of an individual, though this by no means unheard of, as the bounty-hunter Zam Wessel has demonstrated. Naamah has displayed the ability to closely replicate the appearance of individuals, though it takes great effort to do so. She cannot properly mimic their vocal sounds though. It has been noted that Clawdites typically could not maintain an altered form for more than a few minutes. However, they conceded that rumors abounded about those who had developed the ability to sustain an appearance indefinitely. In those cases, it was believed that the being's internal structure had been liquefied. Furthermore, most Clawdites only possessed the ability to either alter the skin tone or, at most, appear as a member of another humanoid species Naamah has developed her skill beyond the overwhelming majority of Clawdites. Among these extremely rare traits, for example, Naamah is able to maintain a form even while sleeping, and she possesses the ability to mimic the form of a large variety of species for any demanded period of time in spite of the physical pain it caused her. As Zam demonstrated, this is rare but by no means unheard of. Nonetheless Naamah has tended to adopt the guise of an attractive human female, which she finds useful to make connections with.
• Playing with Illusions: In addition to her shapeshifting talents Naamah has a natural aptitude for the illusionary arts. At present she is capable of masking her Force Signature, thus appearing as a mundane. Presumably in time she would be able to hide her Force alignment or even vanish from plain sight by turning herself invisible. However, that gift is still untrained and as such represents potential rather than something she can cast right now at a moment’s notice. Moreover, at this stage casting illusions would take a great deal of effort and concentration on her part.
• Mind Over Matter: Naamah has shown proficiency in the use of telekinesis, the first Force talent she has developed. She is not a woman-shaped battering ram who can chuck walkers and fly like superwoman through the Force alone, but she has invested quite a bit in developing this power.
• Glass Cannon: Naamah is a good shot, but not a battering ramming force of nature that can take insane amounts of punishment while dishing out equally. Sure she has a high pain tolerance, but still bears the scars of her torture. Moreover, while able to use a lightsabre she is not much of a duellist and is lacking in substantial combat experience when it comes to its use. Presumably she would do very poorly if cornered and forced into a duel against an experienced, stronger opponent.

Force Powers:
Alter Powers:

• Telekinesis
• Force Shield

Control Powers:

• Control Pain
• Breath Control
• Force Concealment

Sense Powers:

• Vision enhancement
• Force-enhanced Aim
• Force Sight

Ship: Naamah has ‘acquired’ a personal ship called the Loki, a small freighter she uses that is fast and can carry the gear she needs.



Gear:

• Junbei Hao JBR-1 Shadow Rifle: blaster sniper rifle, invisible beam – six shots, 1800 m. An Imperial Intelligence Bureau design that she was trained to use during her time with the Inquisition and the IIB. One of the toys she was able to get her hands on in an Inquisition safehouse.
• Verpine shatter gun: A compact, scoped gun firing silenced projectiles with significant kinetic force behind them. Good for assassinating and sniping people.
• Hold-out boltgun: Firemane design. Miniaturised, concealable, one-shot boltgun for personal defence at point-blank range. Also useful for assassination purposes. Fires buckshot, explosive bolts and solid durasteel slugs.
• SAM-20 ‘Nexu’ Maser Rifle: Large rifle scaled version of the Chiss Maser pistol. Uses kinetic energy rather than blaster bolts. Has a higher chance of knocking a lightsabre out of a combatants’ hand if blocked like a bolt. 400 m point target, 500 m area target.
• Gorgon Web Rifle: Releases a mist-like net solution that on contact deploys a stunning electrical charge strong enough to completely immobilise an opponent, while instantly refusing itself when burnt or blasted through. Designed as a way for Sith Empire troops to capture forcers, acquired by the Atrisian Empire in a business deal between Madeline Kahoshi and Valik, then of the Galactic Imperium.
• JBK-14H: Specialised heat blade created by Imperial Intelligence for use in interrogation and specialised field work. Internal mechanism creates a large amount of heat within the blade causing it to glow red hot (approximate temperature 500 degrees Celsius). Can only be used for about ten minutes before a recharge. Comes with a heat dispersing sheath for the safety of the user.

Biography:
Naamah was born on the world of Atrisia during a time of change and transition. After turned inward and isolated itself from the rest of the Galaxy to protect itself against the ravages and chaos of the Four Hundred Year Darkness Atrisia was opening itself up to the rest of the Galaxy. Under Moff Lee the planet had introduced a strict quarantine at the start of the outbreak of the Gulag Virus, a brutal but ultimately efficient measure that probably prevented the world from falling into chaos. The institutions of the old Galactic Empire remained in place, and its people continued to consider themselves citizens of the Empire despite being only a single planet with basically no outside contact and being deprived of an Emperor. Indeed Atrisians began to acquire a complex of representing the ‘true Empire’, something nurtured by the government. This would foster a strong element of hubris particularly among ambitious Imperial officers and politicians once the planet opened up to the rest of the Galaxy, as they were driven to not just rule Atrisia and make it a strong nation, but pursue old Imperial glory. This mind set eventually led to the failed invasion of Fondor and the humiliating absorption into the Fringe Confederacy.
While the majority of the Imperial population was comprised of humans, there was a sizeable population of aliens, many of them immigrants, who now found themselves trapped on the planet after the imposition of the quarantine and the declaration of martial law. This led to riots, civil unrest and violent clashes before order was restored by the muzzle of the blaster and through deals the Imperial government made with certain alien groups so that they would keep the peace amongst their kind. In effect privileged alien families were given responsibility for providing jobs, housing and security, for which they got land. In effect it was a form of apartheid and Clawdites were especially favoured, since they could pass for humans and would thus be more acceptable to the racialist, human Atrisian nobility. One of the most powerful Clawdite clans was the Cai Family, whose head Cai Zhi pretty much ran the Alien Quarter of Jar’kai, the Atrisian capital, and held the title of baroness. Power corrupts and so there was a strong presence of the Reki, the Atrisian Yakuza, with the Cai Family sometimes making under the table deals, at others in conflict with the crime families, especially since the latter tended to be dominated by humans. Throughout Atrisia force-users were regarded with suspicion, as the common population feared their powers and thus mistrusted them. There was an understanding that force-sensitives discovered in the Alien Quarter would be reported by the Cai’s gendarms to the Imperial authorities. It was in this environment, in effect a microcosm of the old Empire, that Naamah was born.


((TBC))