Kathirra Andomi
Kathirra Andomi (a.k.a. Kath Hound)
At the age of 15 every Arkanian youth takes a test to determine their aptitudes and general trajectory in Arkanian society. Every year the child with the highest score on the planet is lavished with scholarships to the most prestigious universities, job offers in every field imaginable, and a role, if they want it, in Arkanian politics and leadership. Five years ago Kathirra Andomi placed first on the annual test. The next day she stowed away on a freighter and never looked back.
A former child prodigy, she ran away to escape a preordained life. Self taught in nearly all fields, she has a natural thirst for knowledge and understanding. She searches for a cause worth devoting herself to.
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Age
20
Children
Gender
Female
Eyes
White
Hair
White, usually worn in long ponytail
Skin Tone/Pigmentation
White
Height
5'7
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Notice Me, Senpai
Sometimes it was hard to gauge whether Master Lyn was fast, whether she hit hard. Her hologram was a good teacher, she taught the general movements and stances of Steel Hand impeccably well, but she was just light and air. Zu Pike was flesh and blood however. Kathirra had assumed that this martial art was ancient and quite possibly extinct to all but her, but here was someone quite alive and quite skilled in it.
Zu was poetry in motion. Her strikes were crisp, her movements rhythmic, her footwork practiced and deliberate. She flowed in and out of stances Kathirra had never seen, forms and techniques well beyond her own ability. If Zu wasn't a master of their craft, she was well on her way to becoming one. Phaedrus was a skilled combatant, maybe even Zu's equal in a more natural environment, but this was her domain, her hunting ground, and right now Phaedrus was prey.
As soon as the round ended Kathirra ran to the nearest refresher and locked the door behind her. She threw a few practice kicks into the mirror, emulating Zu's strike that had crippled Phaedrus; she was quite sure the blow had mangled his eyes inside their sockets. Every one of Zu's strikes was deliberate and targeted, each one capable of ending the fight in an instant. It was a testament to Phaedrus' toughness that he was still alive, never mind conscious.
Kathirra raced back and made it to their position above the ring in time for the next round. The rest of the fight went much like the previous rounds, Zu pummeling Phaedrus but being unable to finish him. Finally, mercifully, the bell rang and the last round was over. Medics rushed in to care for Phaedrus' wounds as Zu exited the ring. She seemed barely able to contain her anger, seemingly furious over the one blow that had landed on her. If that was a bad performance to her she'd hate to see the wreckage left over after a good one.
Who had taught her she wondered? Had she also found a black pyramid containing the consciousness of a long dead master? Did she also have dreams that seemed more real than her waking life? Her companions seemed preoccupied with Phaedrus so she backed up slowly and jogged to the railing overlooking a different part of the arena below. She was over it in one clean motion and landed with a huff. Zu had gone somewhere off to her left so Kathirra trotted after.
Kathirra avoided two security guards with nasty looking double barreled plaster pistols, and continued on. Finally she spotted her head retreating into a door with someone who was clearly her twin sister or clone, and shot up her arm. She waved it furiously trying to get either one's attention but the doors slid shut. Everyone around her was staring as if she'd just screamed, so she thought it prudent to get back to the person who was actually supposed to be here. Retracing her steps was easy enough, scrambling up the wall she'd jumped off of without being seen was a little more difficult. She crawled over the railing just in time to follow her group leaving their balcony. She hustled over and rejoined them, throwing out a "had to use the refresher" for anyone and no one in particular.
No one seemed to care. Phew, close one.
What a mysterious creature this Zu Pike was. Truly impressive martial artist, beautiful, worked for a dangerous crime syndicate, accomplished pit fighter. That was a resume worth having, alright. Kathirra had never been in love, but she was pretty sure that wasn't the emotion she was experiencing. Mostly she was just curious. Mostly. Yeah, that was it...
In This Business, Compassion Will Kill You
Well we made it out of the Imperial mining compound. No one seems to have gotten hurt, but we're not exactly flying away from this dirtball in the Sunset yet. They've surely called the attack in to the capital ships in orbit by now. That means Ties and probably a fast response force are on their way to the surface. That means our time on this planet is likely about to get a lot less fun unless we wrap up our business and hightail it. Hopefully they don't connect us with the attack, but I wouldn't bet much on that.
Reminds me of the time that riot spilled into that Imperial controlled starport on Brentaal IV. It was raining Ties and assault shuttles in minutes. The Imps broke up the riot, secured the gates, and restored peace faster than you could say smash and grab. The casualties were pretty high, and those were civilians throwing bricks. We on the other hand just blew up a pump station and killed a squad of Stormtroopers. Don't get me wrong, I like watching the light fade out of an Imp's eyes just as much as the next girl, but I'm afraid this was a mistake. We should have just taken what we needed and gotten out of here.
It would have been beautiful. One team secures the lift on the cliffs and calls in the Sunset. Mevlo makes a few strafing runs and scares the crap out of everyone. The Kon'me either surrender and give us everything we want, or their city starts getting shot at for real. Worst case we wreck some houses, kill some locals. Zero danger, zero exposure. Hell we probably could have called it in to the Imps along with the info it was them that had been attacking the mining camp, might have gotten a reward. Unfortunately I'm on a team full of bleeding hearts. I've seen too many "good" people get gunned down, shot in the back by friends or allies or partners. Trusting the Kon'me to do the right thing is not something that comes very easy for me.
Oh well, there's probably still hope of getting something besides the navcomputer. Maybe I can swipe something off that wall, just got to be fast, make a distraction of some sort. That droid head hanging around the mayor's neck might be a little harder. Need to think of something, we might need it to find the lab. It's the whole reason we're here, it's got to happen.
Gotta Get Me One of Those
Kathirra’s eyes glided over Zang and Venamis and landed on their swords. Their energy swords. The gentle intoxicating hum coming from the blades was nearly enough to lull Kathirra to sleep. At the same time her mind raced and screamed with the promise of power those blades held. Only the fear of immediate death kept her from asking how she could get one for herself.
Someone at her side seemed to be negotiating on their behalf. That's good, maybe they wouldn’t be slaughtered in the next few seconds. Not dying meant being able to look at the beautiful lights. One was red, the other green. Why were the colors different, she wondered? The metallic hilts were also different, in fact nothing about the two objects were similar except their general size and assumed purpose. Could these instruments of might and authority be bespoke perhaps?
Seconds passed, or was it days? Kathirra almost let out a cry of disappointment when the blades disappeared into their hilts. The removal of the implied threat of violent death relieved everyone else, she could see postures and stances relaxing out of the corner of her eye. To her though, the room and the universe with it suddenly became far less interesting, far less worth living in. How did they resist the urge to turn their weapons on and simply stare into the hard glow?
Kathirra was trying to solve how such a small package could maintain and regulate such a power when someone annoyingly asked her what she thought they should do. What were they talking about? Had they been talking about a virus or something? She had barely been listening. She quickly suggested doing whatever the hell would keep them in the orbit of the two people in the room with sun swords, and went back to the engineering problem in her head. She wasn’t entirely happy with the name, but it would do for now.
Kathirra was quite satisfied when she later learned everyone had agreed to do what Zang had wanted. They would definitely see them again, and she couldn't wait.
A Routine Refurbish
The construction of the small pyramid was... let's call it perplexing. The general design and layout was fairly rudimentary and straight forward. The machining and tolerances though, they were a level of magnitude more precise than anything she'd ever seen, never mind successfully repaired. The lines were perfect, the symmetry flawless. She'd be willing to bet quite a bit that it would take a microscope to find the differences between similar looking pieces. Long story short? She could fix it, but MAN was it going to be annoying. Everything had to be measured with incredibly precise calipers. As she took it apart every piece, every angle, every position in relation to every other piece needed to be recorded. She knew without having to guess that this thing would be much easier to irreparably damage than to successfully repair. It reminded her of stories she'd heard about ancient chronometers, keeping time with miraculously precise gears and vibration.
But she had time and working towards unwrapping this little mystery would help kill it. If the pyramid's construction was perplexing, it's presence was inexplicable. She had seen it's likeness in her strange dream, that she was sure of. At first she thought maybe it was just her subconscious inserting it into her vision, but so much of that dream had come from somewhere else. She knew those images and those people weren't a product of her imagination as much as she knew her own name. No, they had come from somewhere else, and the image of this pretty little pyramid had come with them. This bauble, hiding in the bottom of a box, that no one could say where exactly it had come from.
She wasn't sure if all of this should excite or terrify her so she landed on something in the middle, curiosity. She would fix this little puzzle box and it would reveal to her all its secrets of the universe. Or probably more likely shed accidentally lose a piece and it would be broken forever. Either way it would make a gorgeous paperweight.
Kathirra opened her eyes. Someone announcing over the intercom that they were getting close to Mygeeto had woken her. Was that Mevlo? She became immediately concerned that she had dropped or damaged the pyramid in her slumber, but was relived when she saw it at the foot of her bunk. It looked... whole. It looked fixed. Who had done that? Had she done that? She couldn't exactly remember how far she'd gotten on it. Had she zoned out and in some fugue state fixed the damned thing? The little gauge in her head started to ping pong between fear and excitement faster and faster. She carefully wrapped the pyramid in cloth and gingerly placed it in her locker. Guess I get to freak out about this for a few days. Time to freeze my ass off on Mygeeto.
Error and Trial and Error
The ball sped around the track, finally stopping on a number and color combination. Neither the number, nor the color, were the ones Kathirra had bet on; she had lost again. Everything she was trying seemed to be contributing nothing to her odds of winning. She was actually losing slightly more than she should be, though that could probably be chalked up to the casino manipulating the odds here and there. They were cheating, but that was to be expected. She picked up her meager stack and walked over to a different table.
She had tried concentrating on her bet before she placed it, picking the first number and color that popped into her head, even randomly throwing her chips on the board. Nothing had resulted in any measurable change in her chances of winning. Maybe this isn’t something I can use on random chance? Maybe I can only use it to predict and perceive cause and effect? Seemed like a good enough hypothesis for the next round of tests so she trotted over to the card tables.
By the time Kathirra walked out of the casino the sun was rising. Failure after failure had not discouraged her and overall she had decided that the last 14 hours had been a success. She hadn’t established a system or routine to tap into her abilities yet, but there had been several moments of… something. Something that had nudged her hand one way or the other. Something that had whispered in her ear to raise or fold. She was almost certain she could replicate her state of mind in those moments with practice. Complete focus was certainly part of it, but also a calmness that didn’t come easily to her.
She headed back towards the spaceport and her bunk waiting on the Sunset, she needed to get some sleep before the big race. If Mevlo won they’d be handed what they had come here for. If he lost it would probably be up to her to sneak into Rascol’s office to try and steal the coin they were after. Celebration parties and burglaries both required some beauty rest.
She emptied the wallet she had picked yesterday of it’s last few credits and tossed it into the trash. I wonder what they do for breakfast in Canto Bight? An empty stomach was also not something you wanted at a party. Or a burglary.
Revelations and Epiphanies
The elevator lowered, Dagobah slowly being revealed below their feet. She could hear the creature slithering around down there, snorting in triumph and defiance. She could feel the wet heat on it’s skin, the rapidity of the great beast’s heart. The mixture of curiosity and hunger and territorial furor spilling from it’s mind. She knew the Dragonsnake wasn’t especially hungry, it had eaten recently, but nevertheless we were intruders. Wait, that’s not right…
It dawned on Kathirra that these were facts and feelings that she could not possibly know. She shook her head in an effort to clear the incursion into her mind and slapped her face to sharpen her focus. What was happening to her? Was it this place? These people? This creature? More and more these momentary flashes of insight had been coming to her unsolicited.
Moments before she had found the datapad the previous day she had known it was there. Before she had attempted to repair the energy enclosure on the ship, she had known it would need to be modified to fit the Dragonsnake. And now she could sense the creature’s intentions as clearly as if it had spoken them to her.
Earlier in her life she chalked such occurrences up to intuition. She would get a bad feeling before a smuggling run and decide not to go, only to later hear that the crew had been caught and killed while trying to escape. Feigning illness had gotten her out of Imperial sting operations, deserting comrades at the last minute had saved her neck from gang retaliations and syndicate reprisals. Every time Kathirra had thanked the heavens and gotten on with her life. It had never occurred to her until now, staring at this Dragonsnake under the derelict starship, that maybe all of these things were connected.
Maybe it wasn’t just intuition or fate or luck. Maybe it was something that she could call upon, something she could use not just as a warning but as a weapon? Previously it would come months apart, sometimes years, but here on Dagobah the frequency had become separated by days or even hours. Was this what she had been searching for? Was this what had brought her here?
The creature roared. She raised her pistol and took a shot. The blaster bolt was partially absorbed, partially deflected. The monster seemed to barely register the attack. The Dragonsnake stood between her and diagnosing … whatever this was that was happening to her. For a fleeting moment Kathirra contemplated running. But where would she go? How would she ever get off this planet? No, this time, it was fight or die. This time, she’d stand her ground. Win or lose, live or die, this time she’d stay.
One Foot Out the Door
Who knew Dagobah was going to be so popular? It was me and Mevlo and some corpses for a couple weeks, but now we’re tagging along with a group of four others. And we just met somebody else! Probably shouldn’t get too attached to these guys though, they are going to try and capture some giant monster after all. Reminds me of the crew of the TrailBlazer.
I thought they were invincible. They knew all the best smuggling routes through Alsakan to avoid imperial patrols. How to signal customs officials, to tell them there were credits coming their way if they didn’t inspect our cargo. They taught me how to cheat at Sabaac, and how to tell if my opponent was doing the same. They had my back and I had theirs. And then they all died.
Come to think of it, most of my crews and gangs and coteries have come to unfortunate ends. I think I probably know more people inside Imperial prisons than out at this point. The entirety of the Cross Street Secundus, the spice runners I fell in with after the TrailBlazer, were either summarily executed or sent to lockup. The Bowery Expedition was the second most powerful street gang on all of Denon, until the first most powerful ground them into dust. Needed a break after that one, so I joined a perfectly normal, legitimate freighter crew. And then left within two months out of sheer boredom. I guess they’re probably still kicking somewhere out there.
I wish I knew what to do. A life of crime sure seems to have a ticking clock on whatever outfit or syndicate I seem to join. An honest day's work bores me to tears. I wish I could find something with a little danger, not exactly on the right side of the law, but also not so seedy. When all you have to deal with is scumbags and cutthroats things can go sideways too quickly. It’s just too hard to trust anyone.
I wonder if that exists? Excitement, a little danger, work worth doing, and a crew you can trust. Well, maybe I'll find it someday. Maybe once these guys get eaten I'll go looking for something a little more fulfilling. Though who knows, maybe they’ll catch the thing and we’ll all go to Nar Shaddaa and make a fortune. I bet I could figure out some good ways to spend a fortune there. Eh, either way I’ll be fine, like always.
It's Never Sunny on Dagobah
Entry 1
First night on the planet. We crashed about 6 hours ago. It took all my savings to get here and arrange transport off planet, and so far it sure doesn’t seem worth it. I still can’t point at anything that made me want to come here. I say “want” like I had any say in the matter. It's like my hands and feet and mouth acted on their own to get me to Dagobah. Hadn’t even heard of the place until I started looking for it. Well here I am! Maybe I should meditate or something, try and unlock my senses to the will of the universe. I can’t believe I just wrote that. I think I’m losing it.
Entry 2
Second morning. I think it’s morning… It doesn’t get very bright here. It’s hot and wet and everything seems to be alive. I can hear movement all around me. Nothing seems to have gotten too close in the night, which is a relief. I’m going to go and walk around a bit. See if there’s anything out there worth seeing.
Entry 3
Third night. Almost got eaten today, that was fun. I fell into a pond a little ways from our camp. Or maybe I was pulled? It happened pretty fast. I was walking, and then I was being pulled under the water. Lost my knife when I stabbed whatever it was that had a hold of me. Need to be more careful. Not going to find any answers if I'm dead in some monster's belly. Sounds like Mevlo has diarrhea again. I told him not to eat the local flora.
Entry 4
Fifth day. Little green guy came by today. I saw him in the jungle yesterday collecting food maybe? I almost ran right into him but he didn’t even seem surprised to see me. Anyway I woke up and came out of my tent and there he was digging through our crap! I ran over and shooed him away. What a creep. Creepy little backwards talking gremlin. This place is kind of the worst.
Entry 5
Eighth night. Getting a little scared. Been hearing some sounds from the river ever since it got darker. Will probably sleep with my blaster in my hand.
Entry 6
Tenth day. Almost out of the good rations and getting really tired of living out of a Pup Tent. My mattress keeps deflating in the middle of the night and it’s giving my neck hell. I wonder if anyone will ever find my bones?
Entry 7
Twelfth morning. I had a dream last night. I think it was a dream. It was vivid and terrifying and I was lucid. Woke up screaming. Forgot my blaster was in my hands and almost put a couple holes in the tent. I can feel something happening to me, but I can’t explain what. It’s like I can almost see something out of the corner of my eye. Or I can almost remember something, but I just can’t seem to think of it’s name. I think I might be on the brink of something, almost able to look out over the edge at… something. Is this what insanity feels like? Maybe I'll try to find the green guy today. Mevlo definitely has diarrhea again.
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