Nycolai Dann

[Nycolai Dann]

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NAME: Nycolai Dann
FACTION: Unaffiliated
RANK: N/A

SPECIES: Human
AGE: 21 Standard Years
SEX: Male (Heterosexual)
HEIGHT: 5'11" (1.8m)
WEIGHT: 145 lbs (65.8 kg)
EYES: Blue
HAIR: Brown
SKIN: Pale

FORCE-SENSITIVE: No

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STRENGTHS:

+ Nycolai is an excellent pilot, capable with all classes of craft but especially adept with freighters. He understands their inner workings, how to push their limits, how to jury-rig them in a hurry, and what to rip out or tinker with to make them the best they can be. He is more at home in the cockpit than on the ground, and several times as deadly in a fight.

+ Nycolai is a good shot, if not a great one. His real threat in combat is his ability to fight dirty. He has memorized the locations of major nerve clusters, sensitive tendons, fragile bones, and other pressure points in over a dozen species, and he exploits these ruthlessly. Lean and wiry, he is fast and agile enough to dodge and use cover effectively but strong enough to do modestly in a fistfight.

+ Nycolai has been around in the criminal underworld long enough to know how things work. He has a good handle on smuggling techniques, knows how to haggle, can recognize a deal that's a trap by law enforcement or otherwise too good to be true, and has a network of fences, brokers, and other contacts who can keep him employed and one step ahead of cops, hitmen, and competitors.

+ Nycolai lacks the smarmy charm cultivated by so many smugglers and other underworld figures. He is straightforward, diplomatic, and polite, even when he's lying through his teeth. People tend to feel at ease around him, making it easy for him to make friends or close a deal. His calmness while lying can fool just about anyone, provided he has a good excuse.

WEAKNESSES:

- Nycolai is addicted to Lesai spice, consuming a dose every day if possible. When suffering from Lesai withdrawals he is exhausted and plagued with nightmares if he tries to sleep. While under the effects of Lesai he does not have to sleep, but the expensive nature of his habit ensures that he is perpetually in debt and seldom able to obtain a dose every day.

- Nycolai is inexplicably unlucky; if there's an element of chance, things seldom go his way. He stays the hell away from the gambling tables, but that's about the only bit he can control; his weapons jam, his hyperdrive malfunctions, and enemies left way in the dust turn up at all the wrong times. Only quick thinking and hard fighting have enabled him to stay alive as long as he has.

- Nycolai has done some regrettable things in his short years of life, and he's made powerful enemies as a result. Crime bosses, loan sharks, pirates, rival smugglers, legit transport pilots, and his own noble family all have legitimate reasons to hate his guts, and as a result he probably has at least three minor bounties on him at any given time. So add bounty hunters to that list.

- Nycolai finds little left in life that brings him any joy, a sad state of affairs at his age. He keeps going because he's afraid to die, focusing on surviving one day at a time; this, combined with his depression, means that he is seldom able to make (let alone carry out) any long-term plans. When it gets really bad, he drinks a lot, even though he knows that never ends well for him.

APPEARANCE: Nycolai looks a lot older than his twenty-one standard years. It's partly stress and hard living, which have made him lean and brought out his high, sharp cheekbones, and partly his spice habit, which leaves telltale purple blotches under his chin and deep bags under his eyes. He's muscular, in a wiry sort of way, but not heavily-built; when he's bare-chested, you can count his ribs. There's nothing about him that looks healthy, but he has a kind of quiet dignity that separates him from transients.

His mess of chestnut hair sticks out at odd angles, doing nothing to legitimize the shabby state of his well-worn clothes. He mostly chooses bulky jackets and pants that make it easier to conceal things on his person, and tends to wear a blaster openly at his hip in addition to a holdout up his sleeve and a vibroknife in his boot. When unthreatened, or wanting to appear that way, he adopts the typical spacer captain's swagger; in combat, he moves in low, tight bursts.

BIOGRAPHY: Many thousands of years ago, the Tapani sector was riven by civil war. The ambitious nobleman Shey Tapani sought to gain control of all twelve Tapani noble houses, each of which ruled its own kingdom in the newly-colonized Expanse. The would-be emperor ultimately claimed victory, and the two houses that most vehemently opposed him were destroyed, their possessions seized and their bloodline ended. Or so it was thought, for whispered rumors of survivors destined to reclaim lost glory echoed down the ages.

Nearly nine millenia later, almost no one cares. The power of the Tapani noble houses has failed time and again in the face of galactic superpowers, and they have found themselves the ruled rather than the rulers in their own domains. But the Tapani are notoriously stubborn about their noble legacy, and a few among them are more stubborn even than most. Nycolai Dann was born into one such family, the blood of a house whose very name has been lost flowing in his veins. And his parents, perhaps alone in the galaxy, cared very much.

They had inherited their secret struggle from their parents before them, and so on back down the ages, and they were determined that Nycolai would in turn either fulfill their purpose or keep fighting for it. They were leaders of a shadow consortium of merchants and crime lords with its fingers in every business venture, legal and otherwise, in the sector where their ancestors had once held sway. Their wealth and power ensured that they would want for nothing, but it was hardly a life of ease for their son.

Nycolai was expected to learn business, etiquette, history, law, combat, everything his family had ever needed to know in the past eight and a half thousand years. And he tried; by the Force, he tried. But the end goal never felt real to him, and he was not as focused and devoted as his parents had been. All too soon he was burned out, aware that he was an utter disappointment but largely unable to do anything about it. He grew depressed and restless, desperate to escape to a life of his own but unwilling to let his family down further.

It's traditionally the woman who runs away from the arranged marriage, but for Nycolai it was the straw that broke the bantha's back. At the age of sixteen he calmly went through with his wedding to the noblewoman Tharra Cadriaan, a frozen smile on his face. That night, the moment everyone but his wife was looking away, he fled, stealing one of his family's shuttles and making for open space. He drifted for a while, using his knowledge and money to keep himself one step ahead of his pursuing family.

Eventually, though, his funds dwindled. He found himself working for Galaxy Tours, where he learned piloting over the next two years as he ferried tourists in luxury around the galaxy. Here, he was finally happy; free to do what he chose, and able to enjoy what he did. But this, too, was not to last. A horrific hyperdrive accident tore the cruise liner he was piloting in half, killing almost everyone else on board. The incident was blamed on him, and he was fired and blacklisted as a pilot.

Suffering from terrifying nightmares of the accident, Nycolai developed an intense addiction to Lesai spice, which allowed him to go without sleep and avoid the evil dreams. But he could hardly have afforded a daily dose back when he had a salary, and now he found it impossible to get legitimate work because of his blacklisted pilot's license. He found himself sinking deep into debt with really nasty characters, in fear for his life. So he did the only thing he could think of: he applied his underworld knowledge.

He stole a blaster, and with that he stole a freighter; so began his smuggling career. Over the next three years he developed an extensive network of criminal contacts, and simultaneously made quite a number of enemies. He can't go back and face his family, and he can't go legit any more, so this is what he's got left. It's not much of a life, but it's a living, and he's pretty damn good at it. How long he can keep it together and keep flying, well, that's another matter entirely.

SHIP: Nycolai has been through a few ships, but at the moment he's flying a heavily-modified HWK-290 light freighter called the Windblown. He's upgraded the hyperdrive to a 0.8 class, added a laser cannon and concussion missile launcher under the cockpit, strengthened the sublight engines and maneuvering thrusters, and completely redone the power plant to compensate. The ship isn't really designed to take all that, and bits and pieces are perpetually getting fried or falling off.

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CHARACTERS KILLED: None

BOUNTIES COLLECTED: None

COMPLETE THREAD LIST: