OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
Intent: Codify a companion for Kaida and Eyrecae.
Image Credit: Here.
Role: Rogue Knight, friend of Kaida, Shadow Knight operative.
Permission: N/A
Links: Twin Exiles, Shadow Knights (lore submission),
PHYSICAL INFORMATION
Age: 65. Eldorai age and develop at a slower pace than humans.
Force Sensitivity: Knight
Species: Eldorai
Appearance: Eldorai female of average height. Her skin is pale and she has white hair with some blue streaks in it. One of her pointed ears was cut off by her slave owner and her back was severely flogged for her continual stubbornness. Medical technology has evolved though so her ear was restored and her scars mostly healed. Her back and her ear still appears slightly different though and the scars remain as thin, white lines.
She tends to slouch when sitting, which gives the impression of idleness or inattentiveness. This is deceptive. She may also do it sometimes just to annoy Kaida. She tends to wear different coloured socks. It messes with Kaida's OCD. Ylaea dresses simply and practically. Usually she will wear robes with a hood, cloak, trousers and tunic or some form of spacer outfit. However, she is always armed. She does wear armour when she expects heavy combat, but is not fond of it. Sometimes she’ll use a Shadowsuit to sneak around secure locations.
SOCIAL INFORMATION
Name: Ylaea Althena
Loyalties: Kaida Taldir, Shadow Knights, Naesala Faethyra, Court of the Shadows.
Wealth: Ylaea is not wealthy, though she receives some payment from the Shadow Knights. She is better-off than the typical grunt or deckhand, but her bosses aren't rich and she's in it for the cause, not money.
Notable Possessions:
- Stealth-2VX Palm Shooter
- Terminus Shiv
- Orange coloured, dual-phase lightsabre
- AE-FR1 Outrider-Class Freighter
- Duelling
- Piloting small craft like freighters, shuttles and starfighters. Can carry out basic repairs on her ship, though she'll need a proper mechanic for something complex.
- Force Stun
- Air Shaping
- Force Reflex
- Psychometry
- Force Cloak
- Dampen Force
- Force Flash
- Force Stealth
She also has a higher alcohol tolerance, whereas Kaida is a lightweight who stays away from liquor consumption because she hates not being in control of herself. Ylaea has been shaped by the fact that she was raised in two cultures. For while she was born on Kaeshana and thus grew up in the Matriarchy, she was abducted by slavers at a young age. Later she managed to escape with the help of a Jedi and trained by them. This makes her one of the very few Eldorai who joined the Jedi order. However, she eventually grew disillusioned and decided to become an independent operator, doing good in her own way.
This also means that Ylaea is more than a little removed from the age-old squabbles that her people find so important. This can cause frustration her part because the Eldorai are so...divisive, prone to schisms and intrigue. One of her common jokes is 'three Eldorai is a church, four a schism and five a civil war'. Sadly, there's more than a grain of truth to it. Ylaea tends to deflect with humour when things get to her. Some Eldorai regard this as a lack of commitment and accuse her of not being a 'true Eldorai', whatever that is. She finds the infighting tiresome and stupid. Ylaea doesn't like the Matriarchy's government, but thinks the Eldorai should learn to live and let live.
However, she is still dedicated to helping build a better future for her people. She was drawn to the Shadow Knights because they promised to build a system based on merit rather than classism and aristocracy. Though she admits that the rebel coalition is deeply flawed, divided and has a long way to go, she sees hope in it. However, she prefers being an independent operator to being part of a formal hierarchy. Some see this as lack of commitment or dumb stubbornness, she regards it as self-reliance. She also does her best to stay out of factional squabbles in the movement.
Ylaea harbours a great deal of guilt because she was not there for the Battle of Kaeshana. At the time it occured she was offworld, having been dispatched on a mission by the Shadow Knights. Intellectually she knows that one more fighter would not have affected the outcome, but she feels survivors' guilt due to losing friends in the uprising. This is something she tried to hide though.
Ylaea rejects the dualist view of morality that the Jedi and Sith share. Like other Eldorai she believes her Sciia is her spiritual power and that it is her actions that shape her destiny, not an energy field shared by all other things. Her parents raised her to believe in the Goddess Ashira, though she was never that devout. These days she follows a sort of Deist philosophy. This posits that a supreme deity exists and is ultimately responsible for creation, but does not interfere directly with the created world. Perhaps there was a time when this deity walked the earth and called itself Ashira, but that was aeons ago. She rejects divine revelation or intervention of Ashira in the universe by miracles. She compares the Deist deity to an artist who was satisfied with their work and is now just watching it unfold.
Ylaea is broadly Light Side, but not a rigid dogmatist or a pacifist. Good is not soft is an appropriate description, as while she is an affable person, her niceness doesn't extend to giving free passes to vile and horrific beings. Or trying to talk down an opponent on the battlefield. From her point of view, the lightsabre she carries is a weapon and meant to be used as one. Gratuitous cruelty disgusts her though. She also refuses to play with dark artefacts and is suspicious of those who do. She does not believe in the 'mumbo jumbo' about the dark side being a demon ready to pounce on naughty Jedi. But she does believe there are things people should not dabble in.
COMBAT INFORMATION
Weapon of Choice: Lightsabre, the Force, small arms.
Combat Function: Ylaea is a highly skilled duellist. She is trained in the five classical forms of lightsabre combat, but focuses on Form II. She's also proficient in the use of conventional melee weapons such as vibroblades and staff weapons. She has a strong Force connection, which manifests itself in some more unorthodox abilities. Like all Eldorai Force-users, Talsir is an elementalist. The Force-Sensitives of her race all specialise in one particular element, and hers is that of Air. In that regard she can be compared to an Air Shaper. Her connection to the element of air also encompasses the ability to manipulate and generate lightning.
She can generate winds, increase air pressure or vacate a small area of air, summon or manipulate lightning to smite her opponents with electrical discharges. Moreover, she has strong powers of concealment, namely Force Cloak, Stealth and Flash. Dampen Force allows her to temporarily negate or diminish the ability of her opponents to use the Force against her. This enables her to block Force powers of others or take the edge off Force-based attacks, though this requires intense focus. She can only use ths ability against one opponent at a time. Moreover, strong Force-users can fight their way through it, similar to how Bane was able to eventually overcome Cognus' Force smothering.
She also has the traditional Eldorai strengths: Agility, dexterity and impressive hand-eye coordination. However, like most Eldorai, Ylaea is on average physically weaker and has a lower pain threshold than a human. Her lack of raw strength can put her at a disadvantage against stronger opponents, as she must rely on finesse and agility rather than brute force. She has limited skill with ranged weapons and is not proficient in the use of heavy weapons. Sensitive hearing makes her more vulnerable to high-pitch frequencies, such as sonic attacks.
Strengths:
- Talented lightsabre duellist. Benefits from Eldorai racial strengths: impressive agility, dexterity, hand-eye coordination and senses, especially hearing.
- Skilled in exotic Force abilities like Dampen Force and Air Shaping.
- Eldorai racial weaknesses. She is more agile and dexterous than strong and has a lower pain threshold than a human. Lack of raw strength means she cannot overwhelm a foe through sheer brute force. Sensitive hearing makes her more vulnerable to sonic attacks and similar.
- Not skilled in the use of heavy weapons.
Ylaea was born in a family of lower caste Eldorai Her family lived in the city of Naldasa, a minor town about 100km from the capital city of Santaissa, the city most open to foreigners. This was a period of great changes and upheavals for the people of Kaeshana, who had for millennia lived in splendid isolation, secure in the belief that they were the only intelligent and most developed race in the Galaxy. The Plague and the Four Hundred Year Darkness had been conducive to such notions, but now outsiders were finally finding their way back to Kaeshana. Some came as merchants, eager to trade their goods, with the resultant culture shock that they possessed superior technology, but others came as pirates and raiders, eager to murder, pillage and enslave. However, at this stage the Althenas saw very little of foreigners. For one the monarchy was eager to keep them at arm’s lengths, though it eager to adapt their tech to its own use to strengthen the kingdom. Moreover, most foreigners congregated in Santaissa and the Althenas were more focused on their own survival.
At an early age, Ylaea met and befriended a young Eldorai girl called Kaida Taldir. The Taldirs belonged to a more elevated social strata than the Althenas, but they became friends nonetheless and often played together. Ylaea was more outgoing and adventurous than Kaida, whose bossiness and know-it-all attitude won her few friends at school. Ylaea's parents loved her and she had a rather uneventful childhood. As she had only one sibling, a brother, her parents concealed her Sciiac (Force) abilities from the Angelii agents so she could help them out in their old age. However, before she became an adult, tragedy struck, for Naldasa was hit by a flood.
The two girls were separated by the natural disaster. Kaida, who could not swim, watched her parents get swept away by the tide and was caught in it. Seemingly helpless and in an act of desperation she unconsciously drew on the power inherent to her and froze the water in front of her to create an ice floe and subsequently managed to crawl onto it, effectively floating on the water for several hours before she was picked up by a rescue team that had been searching for survivors on a ship.
Ylaea, believing her friend to be dead, was able to reach a safe area, but was shortly thereafter abducted by foreign slavers who'd caught word of the flood and saw a convenient target to raid. Thus the girl was hauled off into slavery after putting up a futile struggle. Her time as a slave was very traumatic and characterised by her being subjected to cruelty and abuse. To discipline her, she had one of her ear tips cut off as punishment. Finally the abuse became too much and she retaliated, manifesting her Sciia powers for the first time and stabbing her owner in a mad frenzy. Pursued she was able to escape through the sewers.
Now she found herself in a wholly unfamiliar environment, far away from her kin, surrounded by strange aliens who did not speak her language. For a while she lived on the streets, hiding from her former captors. She became a small-time thief, performing petty thefts to stay alive. However, her life was turned upside down when she tried to steal from Jedi Master Kai'sha Kuda. This obviously went poorly for her. However, the Jedi showed her compassion, even defending the girl from gangsters she had antagonised and who wanted to sell her into slavery again. Ylaea, who'd had little contact with Force-users on her homeworld, was awed by the Jedi's power and the seemingly effortless way she disposed of her attackers. She wanted to be strong and bring those who'd wronged her to justice. Kai'sha promised to train her, but she made Ylaea swear that she'd follow her teachings and obey her.
Thus Ylaea left Tatooine behind her and was taken in by the Jedi, who quickly began to train her in the ways of the Force. Ylaea proved a quick learner, but buckled under the rules and organisation of the Jedi order. Some of the trainers at the Jedi enclave believed her anger and stubbornness would lead her to he dark side. They were alarmed when she suddenly manifested a blast of lightning during a training session, for they did not distinguish between elemental and Sith lightning. They were also concerned when she displayed psychometry. Her stubbornness held her back. One night during a boring routine mission, Ylaea snuck away after she'd learned of the location of the slavers who'd tormented her. The corsairs were celebrating after another successful 'haul'. Breaking into their hideout, she butchered them to the last. Pleas for mercy from those who surrendered them fell on deaf ears, for being locked in a prison cell was too good for them. After freeing the captives, she alerted the authorities so that they could help the poor souls.
When she returned to her master she expected to be punished. However, to her surprise Kai'sha praised her for taking justice into her own hands, though she criticised her for being so 'crude'. She was told that her anger was natural but that she would have to be careful and guard her emotions, as the other Jedi would not understand. This strengthened the bond between them. Little did Ylaea know that Kai'sha was actually a closeted Sith who'd infiltrated the Jedi order. In all fairness, no one else seemed to notice. Ylaea fought during the First Battle of Roche, where she put her training as a Jedi Sentinel to good use to help a Verpine researcher reach friendly lines and evade Sith troops who sought to capture him and his research.
After proving her mettle against Sith knights and stormtroopers, she was knighted. She and her master worked together during the Dark Harvest Crisis. Ylaea was on Dagobah, searching for clues on the origins of the zombie virus. However, she and the soldiers accompanying her were overrun by a large horde of undead after having secured a piece of research. The tide seemed overwhelming. It seemed the end was near and Ylaea was close to going out in a blaze of glory with a grenade to avoid being infected. However, she was saved from certain death - or worse - when Kai'sha showed up with a force of soldiers, decimating the horde and allowing Ylaea and the few survivors to escape. Grateful for the rescue, Ylaea was still wracked with guilt over the deaths on her team, feeling that they were her fault as she had acted rashly. Kai'sha comforted her - and persuaded her to pass the research materiel on to her so that she could keep it safe and study it for the good of all, so that these sacrifices would not be in vain.
At the Battle of Metalorn, Ylaea assisted anti-Sith insurgents in performing sabotage operations and rescuing some of their captured comrades. However, the overall battle went poorly and she was disgusted when she heard about war crimes committed on the Republic side. She was also angered when, in the aftermath of the battle, the Republic signed a peace treaty with the Sith Empire. She did not believe that the Republic had secured 'peace for our time'. These were the circumstances that led to her being reunited with her former master. Kai'sha revealed to her that the Jedi order and the Republic had been infiltrated by a cabal of Sith Lords who were plotting to destroy the Light from within. This was not that implausible. However, she was part of a noble Jedi Covenant whose members wanted to tear out the roots of corruption and ensure the Light would rise again. Part of Ylaea found this a bit hard to swallow...but on the other hand. Anyhow, she was dispatched on a covert mission to secure a dark artefact that had popped up in the criminal underworld. Using a combination of trickery, force and guile, Ylaea was able to obtain the device and brought it back to her master, who was quite pleased.
However, then Ylaea began to pester the senior Jedi about what her plans were, after being told not to tell the archivist about her mission and the item. Kai'sha began to hint - rather blatantly - at her 'grand plan', which involved ridding the Jedi order of 'traitors'. She went on to speechify about how it was only possible to enact change and bring peace to the Galaxy by embracing all aspects of the Force. However, Ylaea called her out on these heretical philosophies, and so Kai'sha admitted to being a Sith Lord. She went on to speechify about how her success at infiltrating the Jedi order was proof that it was broken. The same applied to the, as she put it, corrupt Republic. What the Galaxy needed was leadership from an 'enlightened elite' that could make the 'hard choices' the 'mundanes' did not have the stomach or vision for. They could rid the Galaxy of injustice and slavery by working together and so on and so forth.
At this stage Ylaea had enough and attacked her. This led to a rather dramatic duel. However, being a Master of the Force, Kai'sha was a good deal stronger and able to overpower her apprentice. However, after subduing her student with the power of the Dark Side, she stopped to monologue, as 'super villains' and those who would like to be them tend to do. Said monologue largely consisted of the usual cliches about how nothing could compare to the unlimited power of the Dark Side and all that. She gave Ylaea a chance to be her apprentice and transcend the limitations of the Light. Being in a bad shape, Ylaea pretended to accept and knelt. Kai'sha was in the process of picking a suitable Darth name for Ylaea when the Eldorai suddenly summoned her lightsabre from behind her master, cutting her legs at the ankles. Kai'sha was turned over to the Jedi Temple Guards and put in custody.
Disillusioned, Ylaea turned in her lightsabre and quit. Becoming a rogue was the cool and trendy thing to do anyway. She fought as a volunteer during the Republic-Sith War, but walked her own path from now on. She also constructed a new lightsabre to replace the one she'd given up. After buying herself a freighter, she set out to do good and right wrongs. This led to a reunion with Kaida. She encountered the frosty elf and a band of Angelii while both happened to be pursuing the same target, a Bando Gora remnant. The reunion was a tad awkward. Kaida was even bossier than usual and had turned into an extremely dour woman who was even more laconic than most Spartans. They had a good time slaughtering Reavers though. Ylaea turned down an offer to join the Angelii an defend the Motherland because she liked her independence, which made Kaida grumpy. Or rather grumpier than her usual norm. Still both were happy about the fact that the other was still alive.
Ylaea did return to Kaeshana to meet her surviving family again. Her father had died in the flood, but her mother had remarried and now Ylaea had a little sister. Kaeshana being opened up to the outside Galaxy had also improved her family's economic circumstances. Ylaea stayed on the planet for a while, trying to reconnect with her roots. However, she'd been away for so long that she felt like a stranger. While Kaida was supportive, many of her old friends no longer saw her as a 'true Eldorai'. When her home town was hit by an anti-foreigner riot, Ylaea tried to step in to help keep the peace and keep it from turning into a pogrom against 'infidels' and 'false Eldorai'. The riot involved lynchings of 'monkeigh lovers' and attacks on temples where Eldorai did not worship the Goddess 'the right way'. Her intervention caused some trouble with the authorities, for she was an unsanctioned vigilante acting outside the law.
To her disgust, one of the leading participants in the riot was an old schoolfriend, who'd turned into a militant zealot and xenophobe. After being subdued, her former friend declared her to be a blood traitor and 'monkeigh lover'. Kaida arranged for Ylaea to be put into Angelii custody. This was for the best since a number of the local gendarms shared the rioters' radical views and tried to arrange a situation where she was 'shot while trying to escape'. Disgusted by how reactionary matriarchs were exploiting the riot for political gain, Ylaea soon left Kaeshana and returned to being a Rogue Knight, though she maintained sporadic contact with Kaida.
It was around this time that her paths crossed with those of Naesala Faethyra. The former Eldorai army officer had been banished decades ago during the reign of Tirathana VI. Having undergone a process of disillusionment with the Matriarchy, she now led a paramilitary force of Eldorai rebels who protected their fellow exiles by fighting against slavers and similar scum that preyed on them. Ylaea was too independent-minded to become a soldier and fit into a rigid hierarchy, but the two elves struck up a friendship nonetheless. Naesala was a pragmatic woman and appreciated the perspective of someone who was removed from the usual squabbles that made Eldorai society so divisive.
Ylaea stood by her when Naesala founded the Shadow Knights. The group started as a survivalist organisation dedicated to helping the Eldorai that had been left behind during the Exodus to Tygara and retoring order on devastated Kaeshana. Eventually it sought to unite the Eldorai renegades who wanted to build a new future outside of the trinity of crown, altar and nobility. Ylaea, who had sped to Kaeshana with her cargo ship to help the survivors, performed several missions for them. To her shame, she was not there for the Kaeshana Rebellion because she had gone undercover to pursue a group of slavers. The mission was a success and innocent lives were saved, but it also meant she was too late to participate in the great battle for her homeworld.
She felt immense guilt when she learned that the homeworld had been lost and that she should reunite with the Shadow Knight migrant fleet, which had managed to escape with help from Firemane. She stayed with the Shadow Knights from that moment on. Aside from her usual duties, she also worked as a recruiter, though she refused to accept a formal position. Here and there she spoke with Kaida. The frosty Angelii had participated in the Kaeshana Rebellion and went to fight at Asmeru, Skor, Bespin and Thyferra.
She was also disillusioned with the Eldorai Matriarchy. Ylaea figured it was only a matter of time until she went rogue 'like all the cool kids'. The former Jedi turned out to be right when her old friend contacted her after quitting the Angelii and going rogue. Ylaea acted as a contact between the Shadow Knights and Kaida, who had added the adventurous Vashyada Tryana and the primeval Eldorai Eyrecae Alzari to her crew. When the quartet finally met with Shadow Knight representatives, Kaida was as laconic and blunt as humanely possible, but ended up joining.
More recently Ylaea was one of the Shadow Knights dispatched to carry out a recruitment drive on Tygara to recruit natives disenchanted with the new order that had been imposed by Firemane and its allies. Though far from a diplomat, Ylaea had common sense and could keep an eye on the representatives and help the renegades vet recruits - and keep more belligerent Shadows from endangering the nomad fleet by doing something fool-hardy and rash.
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