#shevla

This is the final chapter, chapter 5.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

AO3

Chapter 5: Beyond

A final message.

An image of Kaert sprang to life.

Kaert sat in a recliner chair with his feet up and Vaar’ika, stretched out beside him. He smiled as his trembling hands, ran over Vaar’ika’s head and neck. He looked frail and tired, but alive.

“I’ve set up the droid, father,” a voice announced. The speaker was out of view of the camera and Kaert looked up with a small frown. “I have some work to do, so I will go into my office and return in an hour.”

Kaert shook his head and muttered, “I don’t see why I should make this. I’ll be off-world again soon.”

“You promised you’d only leave if your health improved,” the feminine voice continued in a stern tone. “If your health continues to deteriorate, you’ll thank me for having made this for Aran.”

He grimacede and the woman off-frame sighed. Dimly the sound of footsteps and a door opening and closing could be heard and Kaert grumbled under his breath for a moment before rubbing a hand over his face. He focused on the camera and made another face.

“My name is Kaert of House Rovhoss,” he declared in a slightly petulant tone. “I am making this recording in case my health does not improve and my daughter does not want to be the one to explain everything to my grandchild why I did what I did.”

He smirked.

“Aran, by the time you see this you’ll be a fully recognized member of House Rovhoss. Mandalore will have gained a new warrior that the Duchess will need to be wary of,” he drawled and scoffed at the mention of the ruler of Mandalore. “They won’t be pleased when they see you wearing your beskar, but kark them. House Rovhoss is powerful enough thanks to our role in the war that the current government can complain and that will be all they can do. The New Mandalorians are such hypocrites. Only marginally better than Death Watch.”

Kaert glanced down at Vaar’ika and smiled softly. He rubbed her head and murmured, “When my part in the war was over, I was lost for a while. Vaar’ika helped ground me and yet I felt like I had no purpose. Until you hid on my porch, Aran.

After years of just surviving, I felt alive when I took care of you. I helped forge you into the warrior you became to hunt the monsters that dared darken your life. I had direction and the fire to help change something again.”

He looked up at the camera again with a grin.

“Without you, I would have faded away. I would have been nothing more than a forgotten name in the Rovhoss family register. Remembered only by my daughter and perhaps Jango and his son.”

Kaert let out a bark of laughter, loud enough to startled Vaar’ika. He shushed her, rubbing at her ears until she settled down again and he chuckled, “Boba is a little firecracker just like you. I think you’d get along very well.”

He fell silent for a moment, smiling to himself.

“My fondest memories are of Shevla and you, Aran,” he admitted and lowered his gaze. “Shevla gave me the courage to fight for what I believed in to secure her a future. You needed someone to help you become strong enough to fight your demons.”

He cleared his throat and avoided looking at the camera.

“Both of you have grown to become wonderful and strong children of Mandalore. I am proud to call myself a father and grandfather to both of you.”

He swallowed, opening and closing his mouth a few times.

“And that was also why I had to do this quietly,” he continued, voice cracking with emotions. “I know you have… mixed feelings about Mandalore. By having you become a foundling to Shevla, you will have the right to return to Mandalore, if you ever chose to.”

Kaert slowly raised his gaze to meet the camera and his eyes were wet with unshed tears.

“I am old, Aran. Just like Vaar’ika. Shevla has made a name for herself here and secured our house. You have your friends and connections all over the galaxy and I can’t keep up with you anymore. If anything should happen or you ever need aid, I need to know that someone of mine will be there for you. As a full member of House Rovhoss you gain more rights and protections than you had before.”

He snorted, wiping at his eyes with one hand.

“And some responsibilities unfortunately.”

Kaert sat there for a few minutes, staring ahead and thinking. Finally, he shook his head and grinned.

“Hopefully, you’ll never have to see this silly recording Shevla made me do,” he drawled with a roll of his eyes before sobering with a deep breath. “If you do, well, I will know you forever. I will keep both of you in my heart even beyond this life.”

He sat up with a grunt and frowned at the camera.

“I will attach a file to this recording for you, Aran,” he explained as he pulled a datachip from his pocket. He waved and the camera rolled closer before stopping before him. Kaert fiddled with something before there was a chime of something having been uploaded. “Shevla would find this information interesting, but ultimately useless as she never fully trained in the way of the warrior like you did.”

Kaert smirked down at the camera.

“Just consider this a little gift from your grandfather. Something you could use to change this galaxy for the better if you chose to. No one would miss Death Watch anyway.”

He stared into the camera with a smirk.

I answered parts of this and had them eaten about three times. Here’s the whole thing. Under an RM because llllaaonnnnng

6. Can your character use any weapons other than their canonical class weapon? What do they prefer?

It took me a million years to roll a Jedi Shadow because I hate polesabers on general principle. Shevla can use one, but you’re a lot more likely to see her with shorter weapons that are easier to conceal and faster to get into position. Paired shoto/wakizashi-length sabers are one option. She likes conventional vibros even better because they don’t shed light or make a lot of noise. 

7. What would your character do with a ship full of gizkas?Watch with great interest while they went about the business of taking up every available space, multiplying with alacrity and eating everything in sight. Learn to talk to and move like them. Bring close friends to watch them do things that people don’t usually get to see.

12. What kind of food does your character prefer?She’s not incredibly picky, outside of the obligate-carnivore thing that comes with being a zabrak. The feral child background means that the habit of protecting her food and her space to eat it in, with violence if necessary, was a hard habit to break. She still mostly prefers to eat alone.

Apologies to mobile users, this is going to get long.

Udesla1. Where, if anywhere, would your character want to keep a permanent residence?Des is a lot more keyed in to her animate surroundings than inanimate ones, but all other things being equal, places with a lot of interesting features to inspect and explore (read: climb on) are probably going to be her favorite.

2. How much personal space does your character generally need?No personal space. Negative personal space. Other people’s personal space. She’s respectful of peoples’ stated boundaries, but she doesn’t have many of her own. 

3. What does your character believe happens after death? If they’re Force-sensitive, are they likely to leave a ghost?She tends to believe in disolution into oneness with the Force (or alternately, dissolution of the illusion that anyone can ever be anything other than one with the Force). She probably doesn’t choose to train in the spiritual tech for Force-Ghosting. Unless she’s got specific reason to believe that she’ll be needed outside of her probable lifespan, it implies a certain degree of neurotic attachment that she doesn’t natively have.

4. How good is your character at dealing with children?Regardless of her age, Des would probably tell you that she is a children. Her enthusiasm, energy, approachability, and talent for working productively with creative chaos mean that she’s at least as effective at herding younglings as she is as a field commander. As a grownup, she probably heads up clans of initiates when she’s not deployed in the field. 

Nauri’s here. so Shevla:

1. The color of their eyes.Grey-green

2. How old they are.Shevla was born in 11 BTC/3664 BBY.  She’s 22 as of the end of the class story.

3. One strange thing/quirk/defining characteristic of their body or physical appearance.When you see it, that is, which is a lot less often than when she’s present. 5’4”ish (tall, for a Massani!) and willowy. She likes robes with big hoods, lots of pockets, and gloves, mitts, or sleeves that go over her hands.

4. One strange thing/quirk/defining characteristic of their personalityLacking better options, she’ll sometimes convey her sense of the tone of a situation, or how she’s feeling, or what she wants to do with equivalent non-sentient animal noises.

5. How their parents met.Shev’s parents were both Tython-trained Jedi who withdrew to the interior of Iridonia to concentrate on studies of the Force and the local ecology about three years before Shev was born. Some time later, a hunting party from Wortan stumbled on a tumbledown settlement, the absence of parents, and a non-verbal nine-year old zabrak who seemed more like an angry ghost than a person.

6. Who their first love was, and why they loved themShev’s somewhere on the aro-spectrum; romance is not a way that she connects with people. On the other hand, she’s strongly, non-romantically attached to Coronis. That probably started because she instinctively identified with his difficulties around normal social functioning (even though his originate from a very different place than hers) and wanted to help.

7. How/why I came up with the concept for themI…was in the kindest, most ingratiating possible way “bullied” into playing a Shadow (the only Jedi AC I hadn’t rolled to date) despite a big aversion to saberstaves as a concept. ;) ebonhawksirens had already gotten me thinking about the use of Force Stealth to cope with social anxiety/sensory overload via one of her characters, and I had a sense of a character with a nerdy interest in zoology/ecology, who was going to have some struggle with putting her natural talents to use in an ethical way.

8. Who they eventually end up withIn the best of all possible worlds, a motley collection of chosen family.