Igni Irae
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
Intent: Sub Kyriaki's companion and slave.
Image Credit: Here. Vette from The Old Republic.
Role: Slave, tech support, assistant and, ironically, confidant for Kyriaki.
Permissions: N/A.
Links: Tephrike, Prosperity Quarter, Hope Falls, The Valkyrie's Diary, Adlerberg, Dominion of Light, Republican Guard, Into Darkness, After Darkness.
PHYSICAL INFORMATION
Age: 22
Force Sensitivity: Non-Force User.
Species: Twi'lek.
Appearance: Shakka is a red-skinned Twi'lek in her early twenties. She is of slightly shorter than average height, has a slender build and red eyes. She has many tattoos on her face and lekku. However, contrary to the stereotype, Shakka always wears covering clothing, donning practical attire such as trousers and button-down shirts and sensible footwear that can withstand wear and tear. For obvious reasons, she does not want to expose her body to her oppressors. Moreover, she is not a dancer or similar. Shakka always makes sure her clothes are clean and well-maintained. This is a response to the fact that she grew up in a squalid ghetto.
Vaderite propaganda likes to brand aliens as degenerates. They also claim that Twi'leks start out white, but change colour by drinking the blood and eating the meat of humans who have been ensnared by them. The more they eat, the redder they become. Vaderite beliefs are utterly absurd and only serve to 'legitimise' their irredeemably evil system. Shakka is attractive, but completely refuses to try and use her looks to manipulate or seduce someone.
Once a shock collar around her neck was a permant fixture of Shakka's life. The collar had shock panels that could be triggered via remote control. The law dictated that she must wear it at all times. Kyriaki was not the great emancipator, but it is worth noting that legally she was in fact not allowed to set Shakka free from her collar. Due to a complicated series of events, Shakka no longer has to wear the collar...but is still not free. She has been 'rewarded' by being branded with the Brand of Humility and Rightful Obedience. The brand on her forehead is a mark of her special status as a 'favoured' slave...and allows Sibylla and Kyriaki to track her. Moreover, it always burns. Even if she scours the marked flesh it will still burn. Shakka has lived a life as one of the downtrodden and it shows. There are numerous scars on her legs and back from when she was whipped. Her neck has burn scars. Her right palm has been branded.
SOCIAL INFORMATION
Name: Shakka Tiatkin
Loyalties: Herself, Kyriaki, Disciples of the Vader (slave), Tephrike.
Wealth: Nonexistent. Shakka is a slave, is forbidden from accumulating any form of wealth and legally does not own anything. Legally even the clothes she wears are the property of her master.
Notable Possessions: Her Brand of Humility and Rightful Obedience, in a way, though it is a 'possession' that has been forced on her. The closest thing to true possessions of note are a datapad and various slicing tools. Legally, these are the property of her owner, but she has given them to Shakka to make use of her technical skills. Moreover, she has a special badge that shows she is the personal slave of a Disciple, and thus of a higher rank than a common 'xenos', as the Vaderites call aliens. Under certain circumstances, this can open doors or protect her from harm.
Skills: Shakka is not a Force-User or a fighter. The former may actually be a good thing, because the Vaderites actively persecute and murder Force-Using non-humans. They also believe that educated aliens are dangerous to the regime, so no alien is supposed to receive an education that goes beyond counting to one hundred and doing menial chores. Nonetheless, Shakka is quite educated for someone of her status. She is a bit of an autodidact. The Twi'lek possesses notable technical skills. She is good with machines and computers. Indeed, she is a skilled slicer. Kyriaki has little truck with technology and relies on Shakka to resolve simple as well as complex technical issues. She is also good at salvaging broken pieces of tech and getting them to work again. Shakka used this talent to barter for food while she lived in the ironically named Prosperity Quarter.
Tephrike was isolated from the rest of the Galaxy for close to four hundred years. Its long period of isolation only recently came to an end when Firemane initiated first contact. Its technology regressed during this time. As a result, the computers and technological devices Mara is familiar with are a bit dated by galactic standards. However, she is eager to catch up and learns very fast. Due to her past as a black market trader, she has some understanding of market economics and haggling.
Shakka has basic skills with a pistol, but is no gunslinger. Moreover, a slave like her is not allowed to own or carry a weapon. She can drive vehicles such as groundcars and speeders, allowing her to act as a chauffeur for her owner. However, she has received no training to pilot starships or aircraft and has never been in space. Shakka spent some time living in quasi-illegality, slipping out of the wall that confined her people to a sealed ghetto in order to acquire supplies she needed to avoid starving to death. She is good at sneaking and blending into her environment.
Shakka has a talent for mimicking voices of others. Aside from its practical benefits, it also gives her some comedic talent, as she can imitate and parody pretentious Vaderites and Imperial bureaucrats. Kyriaki finds it amusing. The Vaderites do not allow aliens to speak their native language, though many still do in secret when they are amongst themselves. As a consequence, Shakka's Basic is better than her Ryl. Indeed, she speaks the latter with a Basic accent. She is fluent in Lekku language though.
Languages: Basic, Twi'leki, understands Gamorresse well enough. Ironically, she is better at Basic than at Twi'leki because she grew up in a Vaderite ghetto, and the Vaderites are doing their best to stamp out her people's culture.
Personality: Bitter, angry, sympathetic to the underdog, despises Sith and humans. Shakka is a slave. Her status determines vitually all aspects of her life. Shakka has spent practically her entire life under the thumb of the Disciples of the Vader, a human supremacist, Vader-worshipping Sith cult that controls the so-called Greater Sith Imperium. It is one of the many riven factions of Tephrike, a war-torn planet that never left the Dark Age. In the eyes of the Vaderites, non-humans are lesser beings fit only to be enslaved or eradicated. They have a particular animus towards Twi'leks, whom they cast as depraved temptresses and partly blame for the outbreak of the Gulag Virus, which in their view was an alien Jedi conspiracy.
Shakka has been abused, hurt and chained by an evil system. She has witnessed deportations and mass shootings of aliens. She has tried to escape the tyrannous regime, but now she is chained again. Deep down Shakka still yearns for freedom, but she is also focused on survival. She is also plagued by survivor's guilt, since many of her friends in an alien ghetto died while she survived. Given her background, it is no surprise that Shakka really does not like or trust humans. Shakka manifests a dry wit, but is careful with her words when around Vaderites. Being irreverent and mouthing off would only get her punished, so she has learned to pretend to be obedient when the situation calls for it. Sometimes her true personality shines through when she believes she can get away with a pointed barb. She can get blunt or fierce when pushed.
As the personal slave of a Disciple, she is better-off than an alien labourer who is worked to death in a factory or on a farm. Her technical skills make her useful to her owner. Shakka has learned to use the elevated status of her master to her advantage, such as when she is being bullied by Vaderite thugs. However, her master still has power of life and death over her. Her owner may chastise, beat, sell or even kill her with impunity. Shakka has experienced and witnessed abuse and in the world she lives in, the perpetrators are rewarded. An alien like her cannot even testify in court. Cruelty to an alien is essentially a rite of passage among the Vaderites. This has made her deeply cynical. She has had to bury the anger she feels, lest she be seen as 'uppity', but it is always there.
Presently, Shakka is owned by Kyriaki, the clone of Elpsis Kerrigan-Alcori. The relationship is a complex one. As the clone of a foreign woman who indirectly caused the death of the Vaderites' previous leader, Kyriaki is an outsider among the Vaderites. She has been raised in their ideology and been complicit in their crimes, but also finds many of their practices revolting and has tried to mitigate evil, though her focus is on her own survival.
Kyriaki does not beat her slave. Indeed, Shakka is given freedom of expression most Vaderites would consider inconceivable. Kyriaki recognises the Twi'lek's use and so she does not abuse her for speaking up. In a way, she is fond of Shakka, but this sentiment is tinged with callousness because Kyriaki still treated her as a tool and, in the past, was still casually racist. She is also partly responsible for the death of a good friend of Shakka, for which the Twi'lek resents her. Recent events have only fuelled this. At the same time, Kyriaki sometimes confides in her. Both hate the Vaderites and need each other. But there is no love lost between them.
At the end of the day Shakka is still Kyriaki's property and dynamic between them is not even remotely equal. And it is always in the back of Shakka's mind mind that even if her owner is not personally cruel to her, she could always sell her to someone who will be if she displeases her or that she'll callously sacrifice her for 'the greater good'. Their relationship has suffered from the fact that Kyriaki foiled Shakka's escape attempt, and is thus responsible for her cousin's death. Yet she also pulled strings to save her from being executed...which resulted in Shakka being marked with the brand. Shakka deeply resents her master, and has sworn not to forgive her and to get revenge on her one day. But she also needs Kyriaki for survival and to protect some of the downtrodden, which is something she does care about. Shakka has been given a position of authority in Kyriaki's factory. It is one she can use to protect other alien labourers, but also marks her as a collaborator. She is driven and determined to make the most of it, but angry and uncertain.
There is absolute no chance for an awkward - and frankly ethically problematic - 'romance' to develop between the two. Neither feels any attraction to the other. Moreover, the Vaderites treat relationships or intercourse between humans and aliens as a capital crime, since it violates their belief in 'racial purity'. Beneath her cynicism, Shakka has retained a lot of sympathy for the underdog - namely other aliens who suffer under the Vaderites - and will try to help out if she can, despite her very limited means to do so. This applies in particular to other Twi'leks. But she has also faced stigma from alien slave labourers, as the personal slave of one of the Masters is naturally distrusted. Indeed, the fact that she is 'privileged' compared to the average slave has fostered feelings of guilt in her.
In theory, Shakka could try to run away...but where to? She lives in the midst of the Vaderites. Common human citizens have been indoctrinated to loathe and fear 'xenos', and would not grant her shelter. Instead they would denounce her to the police. Even many of the humans who oppose the Vaderites are still extremely racist. And the penalty for an escape attempt is death. Escaping to the forests to join a partisan bang might sound romantic, but is not the most realistic prospect. If she believes she has the chance to break free from servitude, Shakka will use it, but right now she is trying to make the best out of a bad situation. And with her mystical dark side brand, many enemies of the Vaderites would distrust and turn her away or worse. Her cousin's death has devastated her, but she's not allowed public expressions of grief because he 'was a traitor'.
Tephrike has been isolated for several centuries, and Shakka has never met an offworlder. All she knows are stories, which have generally been distorted by propaganda. Thus she does not look to the stars and hope a saviour will come to set all the slaves free. She lives in the here and now. Her immediate goals are survival and retaining what is left of her personhood, despite the Vaderites' best attempts to crush it. Shakka comes from an impoverished background. She suffered from malnutrition and often had to steal to avoid starvation. She gets better and more filling food now because her owner has an interest in keeping her healthy. She still has a habit of eating food fairly quickly, as if she is afraid someone might snatch it away, and never lets food go to waste.
COMBAT INFORMATION
Weapon of Choice: Shakka is a slave and thus not allowed to own weapons. Indeed, it is a capital offence for her. That said, she can use a pistol and a vibroknife well enough. However, as a slave she's forbidden to bear arms. Her main weapons are her wits, sneaking and slicing talents.
Combat Function: Shakka is no warrior and, to her credit, she knows it. She is no sniper with eagle eyes and an infallible aim, a Force-User or marine. She knows some basic self-defence skills, though she learned them within the context of street fighting rather than formal military or paramilitary training. Shakka is good at sneaking, can drive and hotwire vehicles. Moreover, she is a talented slicer. This skill helped increase her 'market value' and has thus been important for keeping her alive. Her wits and street smarts are more of a benefit to her than direct combat skills. She can fire a pistol and stick people with the pointy end of a dagger, but will be outmatched if she has to fight a professional soldier. Her technical skills mean that she is best kept away from direct combat and utilised in a support capacity.
Force Abilities (Force Users Only): N/A.
Strengths:
- Capable slicer and tech expert.
- Shakka is good at sneaking and has basic self-defence skills with pistol, knife etc. She can also drive ground vehicles like speeders and groundcars.
- Shakka has her wits, street smarts and some self-defence skills, but she is an ordinary mortal. She is no elite soldier, martial arts savants or Force-User. She does not have the reflexes or experience of a warrior and can be overwhelmed or injured like anyone else.
- Her lekku are delicate organs, susceptible to damage and sensitive enough that being forcefully grabbed can incapacitate her. Furthermore damage to them can cause permanent psychological trauma as well as physical.
- No experience or training in starship piloting. Shakka has never left her home planet.
Tephrike has been isolated from the rest of the Galaxy since the outbreak of the Gulag Virus. Originally colonised during the twilight years of the Old Republic, it was subjugated by the Galactic Empire. The human supremacist regime established by the Empire was overthrown with the aid of the Rebel Alliance and the planet emerged as a multi-species federation. Then the Gulag Virus sent the Galaxy spiralling into chaos. Warlords, Jedi, Sith and rebels vied for power. Prolonged warfare and the use of primitive weapons of mass destruction brought great devastation to the planet. Benign intentions turned to evil over time. Jedi who sought to restore order fell to the darkness they claimed to oppose, while still believing that their intentions and actions were good. In so doing, they followed in the footsteps of Atris and Joruus C'boath. Believing that they alone could lead Tephrike out of the darkness, they created a theocratic dictatorship.
Renegade Jedi established a Sith cult called the Disciples of the Vader, for they idolised the long-dead Vader as a god. The Republican Guard, a faction that glorified the Old Republic and staunchly opposed Force-users, was founded by disgruntled clone slave-soldiers and racial minorities that declared war on both Force cults. The planet was locked in stasis, divided by riven groups trying to recall a past they did not remember. Here, the dark age never ended. The Disciples of the Vader were rounded by a fallen Jedi Knight called Cade Seward. Thrust into command at a young age, he fell to the dark side.
A vision convinced him that Darth Vader had chosen him as his champion to eclipse the light. Cade chose the name Darth Malitia and was able to assemble an army that became a serious threat to the Dominion. His dark crusade was halted at Palmyra, Tephrike's old capital. But victory came at a staggering cost for the Dominion. But the Vaderite threat did not vanish. The Sith managed to carve out their own state. It was built upon a foundation of slavery, human supremacism, and tyranny. Humans who professed faith into the Vaderite religion were coopted as a new middle class and given preferential treatment. Meanwhile, aliens were enslaved, confined to ghettos or exterminated. Rule of the strong was enshrined in the Vaderite's Sith ideology, for there could be no place in the New Order for those deemed weak.
Shakka was one of the downtrodden. The Vaderites hated all aliens, but had a particular animus for Twi'leks, whom they considered to one of the conspirator groups that had created the Gulag Virus to wipe out mankind. Her ancestors had lived in the city of Almopia. But when the Vaderites conquered it, they renamed it Adlerberg and deported the alien population to a squalid, impoverished ghetto they gave the darkly ironic name of Prosperity Quarter.
Conditions inside the Quarter were very poor. Rooms were overcrowded, rations were minimal and starvation was common. Smuggling food into the ghetto was a common survival tactic. The inhabitants had to serve the Vaderites as forced labourers, while their dependents in the ghetto served as hostages for good behaviour. Officially, the Quarter had its own administration composed of natives, but in practice it was completely beholden to the Vaderites. Anyone who tried to escape the ghetto and was caught was shot - and the Vaderites often resorted to collective punishment.
This was the world Shakka was born into. The hospital she was born in was understaffed and lacking in proper medical equipment, despite the best efforts of the staff. The Vaderites did not consider the life of an alien to be worth much, and so no resources were allocated for medicine. As a result, Shakka's mother died in childbirth from an easily curable infection. Her father had little time to mourn the easily preventable death of his wife, for he served the Vaderites as a forced labourer in a construction crew outside of the ghetto. To the Vaderites he was just a statistic, so he had to toil or perish. Thus he had little contact with his baby daughter. Little Shakka was practically raised by her older sister, who worked at a sweatshop. However, one day her sister vanished without a trace and all enquiries were stonewalled.
When an accident happened at the construction site her father worked at the Vaderite official responsible for it scapegoated him. As a Twi'lek, Shakka's father was an easy target. He had been a diligent worker for many years, supervising some of the other aliens. Indeed, even some of the human workers had come to like him. However, none of that mattered, and so he was hanged for 'sabotage'. His body was cremated. A worker who had been a friend of her father ensured that Shakka received his ashes. Shakka was still a child and now had no legal guardian. She had to vacate the room she lived in because there was no one to pay for it for her. The girl ended up on the streets, living as a vagrant, pickpocket and beggar. This was, however, a crime under Vaderite law. She was caught in a roundup and ended up in the Hearts of Mercy Orphanage. Many of the children here had been found on the streets after their parents perished or were taken away for forced labour. The orphanage was overcrowded and often had to deal with gang violence.
However, one of the caretakers took Shakka under her wing. Aliens were not supposed to receive much of an education because educated people could be a danger to the Humanist regime. As one Vaderite official said: 'It is enough if they can count up to one hundred. At best an education which produces useful coolies for us is admissible.' Officially, all they were supposed to learn was blind obedience to the regime. Aliens had brought about the Dark Age, now it was their lot to redeem themselves by serving their human masters until such a time when they had overcome their 'bestial instincts'. Of course, such a day was never supposed to come.
However, the caretakers tried to pass on an education to their charges, especially concerning the history and culture of their people. They were supposed to remember that they were not beasts, no matter how much the Vaderites claimed they were. But most of these lessons had to take place in secret, especially after a crackdown. However, after the rations were reduced again, Shakka had to resort to stealing.
When she was caught, she was beaten by the police. She had to leave the orphanage after that. The girl was put to work sweeping the floor and doing menial chores in a sweatshop. She got paid in coupons rather than currency. Indeed, she was essentially a forced labourer. The human supervisors were abusive, but in some ways the alien ones were worse. They knew that if something went wrong, they would be blamed, so they were doubly harsh on those beneath them.
Shakka was branded for her stubbornness. Moreover, a tracking chip was implanted into her. The conditions in the barracks she had to live in were poor. When an epidemic broke out, the owner insisted that his 'indentured assets' - for slaves was such a dirty word - keep working. Shakka grew sick, but still had to show up to work. Indeed, she had to work double time because many other workers had collapsed. Naturally, the human businessowner blamed the aliens for their own misery, for they were clearly just faking it in order to avoid honest labour. However, around this time she was found by her cousin Firith. She had known him as a little child, but then he had disappeared. The authorities had reported that he was dead.
Firith had become involved with a group of smugglers and black market traders, who defied the tyrannical regime. It did not take long for Shakka to join him. He was the only family she had left. At first her cousin did not want her to, fearing for her safety. But she was stubborn and after having spent her entire young life under the thumb of the humans, she wanted to get back at them in some way. Firith was able to remove the tracking chip that had been embedded inside her. He also introduced her to his Trandoshan friend Vrerkh, who led the gang. Shakka mainly knew Trandoshans as thugs, having acquired a rather stereotypical view of them. However, Vrerkhr was different. She had lost family as well and became rather protective of Shakka. She taught her about machines, as Shakka displayed an aptitude for technical work and salvage. In time, the Trandoshan became something of an older sister to her. She saved her life when she was pursued by government thugs.
She also encouraged Shakka to further her education, giving her smuggled books and technical manuals to read. Moreover, she taught the young girl the basics of self-defence and how to drive a stolen bike. In order to get food and goods to trade, the gang had to bypass the wall that sealed the Quarter. There were watchtowers, machine gun nests and armed guns constantly on patrol. They were under orders to shoot anyone who tried to illegally get past the wall. On the other side lay the city where the humans lived. The human elite lived in villas, and great monuments had been built to glorify the Vaderites.
Shakka was quite short and learned how to wriggle through the sewers to enter the city outside of Prosperity Quarter and sneak food back in. The gang had contacts on the other side, including aliens who were slaves or had been able to pass as humans as well as criminal groups. They also used bribes to pay off gate guards. Once she climbed the ten foot wall that sealed off the Quarter. These excursions tended to take place at night. However, there were those outside the Quarter who used her people's suffering to their advantage, importing food and medicine into the ghetto to the highest bidder. Many of them treated her with barely concealed racism.
Shakka got to use her technical skills by manipulating cameras and other security systems. Some times she and her friends had to pull off daring escapes into the sewers to shake off police patrols. The obvious wealth and splendour the human elite lived in had a deep effect on Shakka. It nurtured a strong resentment inside her. The gang also conducted break-ins to get the funds they needed. Shakka educated herself about computers - or cogitators as the Tephriki call them - through stolen manuals and devices.
Ironically, sometimes minor functionaries and businessowners - from the human side - contracted the gang via middlemen. Their assignments usually revolved around stealing resources from a competitor, such as as another factory, or planting incriminating evidence of some sort. Naturally their employers would completely disavow them if they were caught. After all, no one believed the word of xenos, who were not allowed to testify in court. However, one of their employers refused to pay them after a job went awry due to faulty intelligence. He had used a middleman, but through some digging Shakka determined that it was the man who had accused and murdered her father. She was able to get back at him by leaking some records to a superior. It was a hollow victory, for she knew that the coward would not face real justice, but revenge nonetheless.
Her cousin Firith was starting to get involved in dissident groups. This led to some disagreements with Vrerkhr, who agreed with the sentiment of escaping but was slow to trust. Shakka was caught in the middle. Then came the Netherworld Event. The raptures sent Tephrike spiralling into chaos. The Vaderite regime was distabilised, and the disappearances made it easier to slip out of the ghetto. Indeed, there were a series of breakouts. In response, the Vaderites lashed out brutally. Shakka and he friends had to evade police patrols that grabbed suspected 'agitators' at random to enslave or murder them. Then the Vaderites went through a brief civil war after the discovery of a tome that told the true story of Vader's redemption.
This brought a group of Light Sith to power. Their leader Darth Krieg, who renamed himself Darth Salus, proclaimed the equality of all races and had an end to slavery. Former slaves joined his banner. The trio joined a rebel militia that took control of Prosperity Quarter. However, for all of Salus' radical beliefs, many of the Vaderites who reluctantly swore allegiance to the new regime retained their old views, leading to intrigue and armed clashes. Then the new regime got embroiled into a war with the weakened Dominion. Ultimately, this led to its downfall.
The conservatives and hardliners took control. Meanwhile, the rebels seized much of Adlerberg, but a loyalist Vaderite army under Darth Furcht marched onto the city to 'liberate'. Some Republican Guard cells, disobeying orders from their high command, showed solidarity with the rebels and supported the uprising. Shakka, Vrerkhr and Firith were caught up in these events. They worked with the rebels, providing supplies and weapons. Indeed, they fought in the battle when the Vaderites invaded the city, 'cleansing' it house for house, block for block. The rebels knew their uprising was doomed, but they wanted to pick the time and place of their death rather than quietly accept their fate.
Shakka, still young, acted as a scout, courier and comms specialist. However, she was injured when a makeshift fortification she was present at was shelled by artillery fire. The Vaderites burnt entire districts down, using flamethrowers. The death toll was staggering. Many captured aliens were shot out of hand or tortured. Indeed, so many were killed that the Vaderite commander had to step in because otherwise they would run out of slaves. Looting was common place. Shakka and Vrekhr were separated from Firith during the fighting. They believes he was dead.
Later Shakka learned that he had been 'pardoned' and deported to Hope Falls. Officially this was a 'model town' that Darth Eisen had 'graciously' given to the xenos. In truth, it was a Potemkin village and an exploitative hellhole. Firith was able to send some letters to her, but they were obviously censored. However, he used a code to tell her the truth. The loss of her remaining family member had a profound effect on Shakka. Indeed, it goaded her into suicidally brave action, as she tried to assassinate a visiting Vaderite bigwig. Vrerkhr kept her from getting herself killed. At first, Shakka resented her for it, but then she understood. Her cousin would want her to live.
Unable to escape from the Quarter, the two went underground again. Deciding to use her talents productively, Shakka set up an illegal workshop, which recycled, salvaged and sold technical items. Her Trandoshan friend supported her in this and provided protection. For a while the group was able to engage in barter trade for food. They shared what they could with the local community and tried to keep prices fair. However, Furcht had clamped down hard and now it was a lot more difficult to leave the Quarter. As a result, they had to rely more on corrupt officials. For a while things went well. Then inevitably the gang was discovered after one of their contacts broke under torture. The crackdown happened to coincide with a visit of a class of Acolytes from the Disciples' Sith Academy. The visit to the ghetto was a pure propaganda tour, and thus meant to 'prove' that xenos were barbarians who needed the firm hand of humankind. One of the Acolytes, a young woman called Kyriaki, took an interest in the smuggling investigation and decided to join it.
Shakka and her friends led their pursuers on a harrowing chase, but in the end they were captured. One managed to escape. Vrerkhr fought bravely, doing all she could to buy time. She only fell after sustaining multiple injuries. Shakka tried to escape into the sewers, but the Vaderites used gas. In the end, she was captured. The prisoners were dragged to the police precinct and brutally beaten by the Vaderites. Naturally the verdict was clear. They were lined up in front of the police station and the Order Police formed a firing squad. The policemen were not Party zealots or Sith, but ordinary men. But they would murder the prisoners all the same.
However, then Kyriaki intervened, having convinced her superiors to claim Shakka as a slave. Shakka, however, did not want to outlive her comrades and serve her oppressors again. But Vrerkhr urged her to live, declaring that one of them had to survive and live to tell the tale of what their people had suffered. One day the Vaderites would pay for their crimes. Shakka was forced to watch while her comrades were gunned down. Vrerkhr was injured by a slug round, but slow to die due to her natural Trandoshan toughness. A frustrated and probably drunk guard beat her cruelly. Kyriaki stepped in, admonishing him, and killed the Trandoshan with a stroke from her sword.
Then she took Shakka away and interrogated. Shakka was naturally distrustful and hated the human, who also confused her. Using telepathy, Kyriaki subtly goaded her into framing the abusive guard as a contact of the gang. When the two met again at Kyriaki's speeder, Shakka was wearing a slave collar. The Disciple had brought her the head of the guard and the ashes of Vrerkhr. At Shakka's insistence, these were delivered to the Trandoshan's next-of-kin.
Kyriaki did not bother look into whether the latter had been part of the smuggling ring, saying that if she did not know they were part of it, they clearly were not. Thus Shakka followed her owner back to the Sith Academy, a place filled with poisonous vipers. She had to put up with a lot of racism from its inhabitants. Kyriaki was no champion of egalitarianism. Nor did she see slavery as wrong per se. Her views were tinged with human supremacism. However, she also protected her slave from abuse. Indeed, she seemed to be despise most Disciples, though she was also complicit in their evil deeds.
In time, Shakka learned that her owner was a clone of one of the offworlders who had supposedly visited Tephrike. The cloning process had been faulty, so her body was frail and sickly. For this reason, she was seen as inferior by many Vaderites, who treated her dismissively or even cruelly. Shakka did not forgive or forget. Kyriaki was her owner and was partly responsible for the deaths of her friends. They reached an uneasy modus vivendi though. They came up with some codes they could use so Shakka appeared servile and trained in public. The Twi'lek taught Kyriaki some empathy and helped her maintain her sanity. Privately she treated the girl more like an assistant, though it was clear that Shakka would be punished if she tried to run away.
The 'inferior' Twi'lek was, ironically, better with tech than many Sith, including Kyriaki. This came in handy when Kyriaki and some other stuff had to access a relic from the past. In truth, it was an ancient stasis store of information and tech from before the outbreak of the Gulag Virus. It had been sealed by the ancient Jedi. So while Kyriaki was needed to overcome the Force glyphs, Shakka dealt with the technical side of things, overcoming the shielding and accessing the database.
They also had to deal with ancient battle droids. The duo managed to access a hithero sealed part of the structure. The information Kyriaki came across included not only a Palpatine biography, but she also found out that an ancestor of the Sith Master of the academy might have been a Jedi Master and had alien ancestry. Given the Vaderites' obsession with blood purity, this discovering could be quite damning.
However, she faced rivals. When attacked with some of the students who had bullied her, Kyriaki was able to prevail by using her fire abilities and what she had learned about sorcery during her studies. Unable to face them in head-on combat, she used her powers of concealment and her illusions to deceive them, picking them off one by one or warping their perception of reality to make them easier targets. Shakka could not intervene directly due to her shock collar, but helped her mistress by reprogramming one of the security droids. Most of the information was confiscated for 'purification'.
However, Kyriaki held on to the most sensitive stuff. The damning information gave her leverage over the Sith Master of the Academy, a known purist. Shakka encouraged her to use it to bring him down, but Kyriaki decided to use it to blackmail him. Shakka disliked her choice, accusing her of just being like the other Sith. However, Kyriaki stuck to it. It certainly smoothed her graduation. Out of a class of thirty students, only half had survived. She was one of the lucky few. Kyriaki left the Academy with Shakka in tow. The Twi'lek had been forced into servitude, but she was alive. For now, Shakka remains at her master's side. However, she is no mindless follower. Recently, the pair was sent to Hope Falls to investigate supposed cases of theft, as the settlement was behind on meeting the totally unrealistic grain quotas set by the government. Unfortunately, the head of the investigation was a fanatical Sith Lord. A reunion with Firith and some difficult choices were on the horizon for Shakka.
The 'autonomous reservation' turned out to be a glorified slave camp. The natives were worked to death to meet oppressive quotas, corrupt officials stole the grain and pinned the alien groups against each other. It was a place of squalour, poverty and misery. When Shakka caught sight of her cousin again, he was toiling in the oppressive heat among numerous other labourers. He was brutally beaten for helping a fellow worker who'd collapsed under the strain. 'Butcher' Lachesis initiated a brutal purge to crush the smuggling networks and further cow the population, arresting various officials and increasing the already savage quotas. She didn't care that thousands would perish. Indeed, she probably welcomed it.
Encouraged by Shakka, Kyriaki decided she wanted to help some of those natives who were at risk of dying. Her solution was to build a sweatshop where work would be less strenuous. Of course, they would be her serfs. But for this she needed clout, and finding those responsible for the thefts seemed a good way to achieve. Suspecting that several human officials such as the Prefect and Public Force commander Bakios were on the payroll, she assigned Shakka the task of investigating the alien neighbourhoods. Of course this put Shakka in danger, but she dangled the carrot of helping out her cousin in front of her.
Shakka's badge provided her with some protection, but she still faced harassment and police brutality. Moreover, she was often helpless when the Public Force brutalised or murdered native civilians, such as when Firith's wife Lena and several inhabitants of her neighbourhood were arrested by the Public Force...purely to meet an arrest quota. When she reunited with Firith in the 'tent town', the two hatched a plan to not only get Lena out, but flee Hope Falls. Shakka was sceptical at her first, but her experiences soon disillusioned her of trying it Kyriaki's way. All too often, even with her status as a 'favoured slave', she was helpless and at the mercy of Vaderite thugs.
Using her skills of stealth and slicing as well as Firith's criminal contacts, she was able to find a warehouse where the smugglers were keeping stolen grain. The warehouse was assaulted by a KEC unit led by Kyriaki...and a PF force commanded by Bakios, who was trying to cover up his involvement. However, Kyriaki manipulated his abused Togruta slave Tara to steal encoded documents from him. Tara paid for her bravery with her life. Kyriaki had promised her protection, but failed to live up to it. Shakka was left outraged, and could not help draw parallels between her own situation and the poor Togruta's. It strengthened her belief that, at the end of the day, a non-human would always be expendable to her master.
Shakka was able to decode the documents with the help of Cordé Tycho, an idealistic, and casually racist Amidala Corps maiden assigned to Kyriaki as an assistant. By Vaderite standards Cordé was 'nice' to Shakka...which meant deeply patronising. Ironically, she later came to Shakka's aid when the notorious concentration camp doctor Menkales publicly accosted her and voiced a desire to purchase her for his sadistic experiments. Shakka was disgusted when Kyriaki made a devil's bargain with him and got involved in an operation to 'clear the hospital of the undesirables'. Her master assisted in the operation...in return for being able to save some patients for her own purposes. Shakka and Lena were warned by her and able to pass on word to get people to avoid the hospital, but they were powerless to save any patients, and witnessed round-ups of sick and wounded.
Shakka and Firith secretly met a Republican Guard representative, offering them intelligence on secret caches Shakka had acquired. Dodging PF and KEC patrols, they led a rebel to an arms cache to prove their value. Thus a deal was struck. When the time came to escape, at first everything went well. Shakka was able to escape the KEC base when twin bomb explosions distracted most troops. Little did she know that Kyriaki had grown suspicious and was monitoring her calls. She was able to meet the rebels, Lena, Firith and their little boy at the waterfall, despite a dangerous encounter with a patrol. But the group was intercepted by Kyriaki and a KEC unit when they crossed the river. Shakka was captured, and Firith died, sacrificing himself to allow his wife and son to escape with a rebel and most of Shakka's intel.
Shakka expected death, and might have wanted it. However, Kyriaki managed to spin things as if it had been a sting operation to force the rebels out into the open. The intelligence acquired after the fight enabled the KEC to locate a Republican Guard hideout and kill or capture several partisans. However, the cell leader escaped. The Twi'lek slave was 'rewarded for her loyalty' by being given a special brand that marked her as a 'favoured' slave who would be granted a position of authority in Kyriaki's enterprise. At the same it tainted her in the eyes of the rebels. Shakka hated herself for it, but she had to choose to submit and make a devil's bargain to survive...and one day get revenge.
Last edited:
