Post by Crazy O on Aug 17, 2011 2:13:53 GMT -5
Name: Samantha Aran
Species: Human (Mandalorian)
Age: 33
Sex: Female
Height/Weight: 1.9 Meters and 90 Kilograms
Appearance: Samantha Aran. She always has a custom Blaster Pistols strapped to her hip. When Samantha is going into battle she wears a custom suit of Mandalorian Shock Troop armor. The armor is painted primarily white with red accents to honor her father who passed away during the war with the Empire. She often wears a jet back with her shock trooper armor. When she does not want to draw to much attention or working on something were her armor would get in the way, she often wears a simple green armored flight jacket and long pants pants. She normally wears her hair pulled back in a pony tail and can be seen with communication headset. Other weapons she is known to use are a fully automatic blaster rifle and her family Beskan which she wears strapped to her back.
Samantha Aran
Samantha in her Mandalorian Armor
Personality: Samantha Aran has spent the majority of her life in space and has affected her in ways most do not realize. Because of her life on board ships she is extremely uncomfortable on planets; especially outdoors. She does not get claustrophobic, but instead gets tense when in wide open spaces. She often claim when she first lands on a planet and her ship shuts down she get queasy and often claims that a planet does not feel right. When on a ship she normally has the anti-gravity turn off or really low, allowing a freedom of movement which most are not accustomed to. This also leads to what she normally calls planet sickness when she lands.
Samantha Mandalorian beliefs include that all Mandalorians should be treated as if part of one clan or family. Also she is a strong believe that combat is not the only place on can gain honor; accomplishment outside of battle are just as honorable as those earned at the tip of a sword or end of a rifle.
Samantha tends to push people away or keep them at arms distance. Not to say she does not love her adoptive father or family, she just does not like to get close to others. This is a result of the killing of her biological parents when she was seven. She keeps her feelings for her former parents buried deep down, repressing them with keeping her mind focused on other task. When the topic is brought up, she normally just begins her life at the age of seven. Deep down however there is still a part of her personality which is the frighten little girl named Jennifer Valentine. This has lead to the fact that Samantha would much rather spend her time working on inanimate objects.
Samantha is also very intelligent, having an IQ rivaling the greatest Mandalorian minds. Throughout her life she has used her intellect to solve problems other Mandalorians couldn't and develop engineering skill that set her apart from others. One of the greatest skills was her development of integrating technologies together which normally would not work. Wither it be using parts from a salvage ship to keep the Prudii Senaar running or building a blaster out of waste disposal unit, few could get things to work together better then Samantha.
Character Rank: Mandalorian Alor'ad
Special Skills:
Blaster Combat
Engineering
Jury-rigging
Piloting
Starship Command
Zero-G Operations
Physical Attributes
Strength: 20
Speed: 70
Intelligence: 90
Alignment: +50
Bio:
A Young Girl Named Jennifer Valentine (Age 0 - 7)
Samantha Aran was born Jennifer Valentine. Jennifer’s parents, Anthony and Ellen Valentine, where from Corellia but had became prospectors hopping to make it big on the Outer Rim. They owned and operated a Vaya-class scout called 49th Star. After three years on the Outer Rim, Ellen Valentine became pregnant and the Valentine’s debated returning to Corellia. While Ellen wanted to return, they soon realized that the 49th Star was the only home they had left and returning to Corellia would not change that. So they choice to remain prospecting on the rim.
Jennifer was born while the Valentine’s ship traveled through hyperspace from one system to another. With no medical assistance then the small infirmary on the 49th Star, Jennifer’s father performed the delivery. It was symbol of the difficulties that would come to faces everything in her life.
The first years of Jennifer’s life were spent on many different worlds, often in carry-along on her mother or fathers back. She was exposed to large number of different planet environments and different viruses during each time strengthen her immune system. At first she caught all sorts of colds, flues, and viral infections, however every year the times she got sick reduced until by her seventh birthday she just did not get sick anymore.
When Jennifer was five years old and most girls were playing with dolls, she was crawling around the insides of the 49th Star access tunnels helping her father maintain the ship. Her mother did not think this was normal, but Jennifer loved helping her father work on the ship; and she could get places that he could never fit which made it all the better for her. As she did what she considered as playing in the belly of the ship, she started to learn about the inner workings of a starship and how things worked in general. Jennifer continue to tinker with the ship and everything in it as it was more entertaining than playing with the few toys her parents got her when they traded on a civilized world.
When he she was not playing in the ship or sleeping, Jennifer’s mother was her teacher. Ellen started by reading to her daughter every night before bed or any time that she asked. When Jennifer was three years old she started to talk, and by four she started to read. Her mother slowly instructed her daughter in basic math, reading and writing basic, history, science and to play the flute. Jennifer loved her lessons with her mother, but not as much as the time with her father. By the age of seven she was already equivalent to a thirteen year old.
The Man that Adopted Jennifer (Age 7)
Jennifer’s happy life with her biological parents came to an abrupt end just a few months after her seventh birthday. The 49th Star was traveling into a system which was not charted by Republic standards. The system turned out to have only gas planets and a massive asteroid field. While scanning the asteroid field looking to for valuable metals, the small scout ship was ambushed by a pirate ship. The ship quickly disabled and a boarding party cut their way through the docking hatch. The men of metal moved through the ship. Jennifer’s father and mother had locked themselves on the bridge with Jennifer. They placed Jennifer under a console while they took up positions with blaster rifles. The pirates cut through the bridge door. Jennifer’s parents open fire on the pirates, but their armor protected them as they shot and killed the two adults. Screaming Jennifer ran out from under the console and grabbed the blast rifle. She pointed up at the Pirates with tears in her eyes.
One of the pirates pointed his blaster at the kid, but another one quickly gabbed blaster from him and pushed him aside. The Pirate took off his helmet and kneeled before the little girl. “It is all right. I won’t hurt you.” He said as reached out for the girl. Jennifer screamed and ran back under the console. The pirate walked over to the console and reached under it. He shouted and pulled out his hand which had a bite mark. The other pirates laughed and the man looked at them. “I picked this target and ordered the hit. This child’s parent’s death is my responsibility so I hereby adopt this child as my own, as my blood. Now you get to work stripping the ship.” He ordered. The pirate spent the next hour trying to bribe the girl out with candy, but was forced to drag her off the ship kicking and screaming once the Pirates had finished taking everything of value off the ship.
The pirate that had taken Jennifer in was the captain of the Praetorian-class frigate Prudii Senaar which means Shadow Bird in Mando’a. He was what would have been considered an Admiral in the Madalorian Wars. One of the first flew humans to join the Mandalorian’s he was an exceptional ship commander even when he was only in his mid-twenties. He was soon worked his way up the ranks and became a field marshal when he was in his early thirties. Given command of a flotilla of frigates and corvettes, he lead the space forces which assaulted many out rim worlds during the start of the Mandalorians Wars. As the war dragged on however he fell out of favor with Cassus Fett and was assign to running the shipyards over Mandalore. While he hated being transferred off the frontlines, Erik Aran believed that his job was one of the most important parts of the war effort. When the Mandalorians were finally defeated by Revan over Malachor V, he remained on Mandalore until the Republic fleet arrived to disarm them. He and several other Mandalorian would sneaked aboard and capture one of the older Republic Praetorian-class frigates before retreating into unknown space. With nowhere to go or anyone to turn to they became becoming a pirates.
Samantha did not adjust well to living on board the Prudii Senaar. At first she would refuse to eat; that only lasted a week before hunger got the best of her. Whenever the captain came in to talk to her she would hide under the covers. Every night she cried herself asleep and spent hours screaming tell she could not even speak.
Becoming A Mandalorian (Age 8 - 19)
Thing started to turn around after nine months of this acting out. She started to break out of her room, using the silverware to unscrew her ventilation access cover. She would crawl around the vents and explore the ship looking for a way to escape. One day she crawled into engineering. When she got there she fell out of the ventilation access and was unable to get back in. She looked around and noticed the place was empty and the door was locked. Trapped and nothing to do until someone came to check on the engine she started looking around.
While exploring engineering Jennifer noticed several thing that were not right. So doing as her former father had showed her, she open the engine access and started putting the engine together the way she thought it belongs. Alarms sounded and crew rushed to main engineering. Jennifer worked quickly and by the time the crew got there she was out of the engine leaning up against it. She was carried to a holding cell and placed in it.
Jennifer was not in the cell long. The chief engineer; an older man with a kind face came to see her. Asking what she did, she simple replied that she made the engine look right. The old man looked at the girl shocked then order her to be released. Jennifer did not know it, but she improved the thrust of the engines by six percent when everyone else on the engineering team said it was impossible.
The chief engineer took Jennifer back to engineering and asked her what else looked wrong. The little girls smiled and with a chuckle said everything. He then asked if the little girl could please make them look right. The little girl started to crawl into placed the adult Mandalorians could not reach, pulling things of the machines. She would either bypass curtain components or replace them from spare parts she could find.
The Engineering team watched in shock as the little girl did in a day what they could not do in a week even if they knew what was wrong. Afterward the little girl was given candy and a ton of attention by the engineering team, nearly to the point of worshiping her as a goddess. They called her Samus, the old Mandalorian goddess of intelligence, intuition and trickery. Jennifer claimed she did not like the name because it sounded to alien to her and the crew just started calling her Samantha, the name Mandalorians had given their child in honor of Samus.
Samantha Aran had found a new home and family among the engineering team aboard the Prudii Senaar. She would wake up in the mornings, walk to the mess and get a glass of hot chocolate before heading down to engineering. When she got to engineering she would walk around listening to the machines seeing if they did not sound right before sitting down at the Chief Engineers desk and drinking her hot chocolate. The team then would bring her parts which were broken and Samantha would try to fix them. Then when the team went to lunch someone would carry her on their shoulders. They eat and talk about ships before heading back to engineering. Samantha then would check on the machines again before returning to the desk and reading technical journals which the chief engineer had on hand. The day would end with going to dinner and listening to the crew’s stories of battle before returning to her room to sleep.
This pattern continued for three years until she had become an accepted member of the crew. It was at this time that Erik Aran, the captain and her adoptive father started to instruct her in the way of the Mandalorians. Her shifts in engineering were reduced to the dismay of the team and she was taught how to fight. Samantha however was the greatest warrior, only mediocre in Erik's opinion.
Samantha lacked physical strength, partly due to the fact that she was a girl but also due to the fact that she often spent a lot of her off time playing with the gravity plating off. She loved floating around her room, pushing off the wall and bulkheads, floating around upside down and performing ordinary tasks in strange positions. Spending several hours a day in a low gravity or gravity free environment led to her improved reflexes and awareness of everything around her which more Mandalorians did not care to improve. The reason behind this was that if one was not able to react fast and accurately while in a Zero G environment, then they would often end up losing control and slamming into a wall. This allowed her to compensate for her lack of physical strength with her excellent reflexes. She would often avoid attacks rather than make contact which would require her to fight back with her strength. She also carried very little around, meaning that she was more agile and easily avoided the enemy. The disadvantage as Erik would often point out was that she was trading her protection.
Erik trained the girl tell she was sixteen when she went through the verd'goten. Samantha passed and became both a full adult. She was given the position of chief engineer; replacing the old man that had retired that year. Samantha by this time was turning into quite the women, she was already five nine and still growing. The crew had an ongoing bet on just how tall she would get before she stopped growing. From the years of sixteen to nineteen, Samantha severed as the chief engineer on the Prudii Senaar. Like all Mandalorians she trained in combat during this time, but she did not train as much as others. She instead focused on her studies and keeping the ship running. So while she was trained in many of the Mandalorian combat arts, she was only average when putting them into practice.
The engineering team on board had already been cut in halve by the time Samantha took over, seeing that they were not needed. She was able to keep the ship running off parts that were never meant to be on a Republic frigate. She had the ships hyperdrive so jury rigged that no one other then she could figure out how it worked. Nearly every critical system on board the Prudii Senaar was from a different ship class. She had CEC fuel regulator running with Kaut Drive engine, a Mon Calamari shield projector working with a Verpine generator. But in the chaos of mismatch parts, the ship outperformed any Praetorian-class frigates in every way.
However when she had reached her full height of six three at the age of nineteen, Samantha was getting sick of being aboard the Prudii Senaar. She told her father that she would be leaving when they made the next port in order to find her own place in the galaxy. At first Erik was furious knowing that the Prudii Senaar would not last more then a few months without her keep putting it back together. However she stuck to her guns and when the finally made port she left the ship with only her Mandalorian Neo-Crusader armor and a hand full of credits which was her pay.
Leaving Home (Age 19 - 23)
When Samantha left the Prudii Senaar she was unsure what she would do. With her credits she bought a ticket on the first transport heading corewards and placed herself in the hands of fate. Fate was watching out for Samantha as the transport was heading towards Besine IV. Besine IV was the home of the up and coming company Cerberus Corp.
Samantha at the Besine IV Spaceport
Once on Besine IV, Samantha started to look for work. At first she thought she could try her hand at bounty hunting, but realized quickly that without a ship of her own it was pointless. However one day she was in a dinner when she overheard two men talking. They were discussing issues with a starship design. They were trying to adapt a power plant created by separate manufacture. Samantha mind raced as she listened to them. Within a few minutes she had determined the problem, but she did not speak up. The engineers bounced around several different concepts, the entire time driving Samantha crazier.
Eventual Samantha spun around and shouted the solution at them. The two engineers looked at the girl in the blue flight suit and then back at the technical data. To their shock the solution provide by Samantha should work. The stood up and walked over to the table which Samantha was setting at. They question the young girl how she was able to solve the problem and just who she was. Samantha explained how she always was able to get things on starships to work sense she was ten years old and how she just left her families ship in hopes of finding her own path.
The two men looked at each other and quickly realized they found a goldmine. Hiring Samantha on the spot, Zora Octavarium and Goron Nathinra gave her a small team which would soon become known as the Tantalus Division. The Tantalus Division was a problem solving or think tank group which other projects could call when they ran into problems. With Samantha's leadership, the Tantulus Division would work on every one of the projects that Cerberus Corps. worked on.
Samantha stayed with Cerberus Corp. for nearly four years, gaining stock options and becoming a critical part of the company. However what were more valuable to Samantha was the resources she had at her disposal. Using Cerberus Corp. technological database, contacts and materials, Samantha was able to construct a custom suit of power armor. The suit was design to be state of the art, using technologies that were still in their infancy to get the required performance. The suit took nearly two years to completely design and assemble while on her off hours. She made the suit of power armor to compensate for her own lack of physical strength. With the suit she would still be able to move with the same agility as before, however she would now be able to carry a heavy weapon and head to toe armor.
Another one of her projects was the computerized lightwhip. While the lightwhip in its standard form was usable by a non-force user, she still found it difficult to wield effectively. The part of this was due to time restraints while the other was due to the lack of skills with such a weapon. So she designed and built what she calls the computerized lightwhip. This whip has accelerometers built into the hilt which constantly keep track of the position of the hilt. The computer then calculates what the whip is doing and changes in the magnetic containment field. This allows for the whip to be more controlled and it behaves in a manner which the owner can adjust. This includes variable stiffness along the whip, springback, and power disruption. It also has a safety feature which deactivate the whip should the tip potentially make contact with the body.
It is ideas like these that set Samantha apart; she is able to compensate for her lack of skill by using her mind and technical savvy.
Answering the Call of Mandalore (Age 23)
Samantha heard the call Mandalore sent out a call to all Mandalorians. Samantha felt obligated to answer, so she gave Cerberus two weeks’ notice before heading to Mandalore. She arrived at Mandalore to find a mess in orbit. Thousands of ships from large cruisers to small single man fighters had flooded back to answer Mandalore’s call. She eventually got clearance to land near the camp which Mandalore. Once she arrived she was given an assignment almost immediately; get the Aran Orbital Spaceport in order. It was quite the challenge to say the lease. The Spaceport was nearly a year behind schedule due to countless design flaws, changes and on several occations the cancellation of the project. However Mandalore declared Aran Orbital Spaceport a critical strategic stronghold and made it a priority to complete along with the new Taung-class Strike Carriers which would make up the bulk of the new Mandalorian Fleet.
From the moment that Samantha Aran arrived, she started light fires under peoples’ asses and butt heads with team leads. It was her job to get the project done, not to make friends after all. She personally started by working on the life support systems and getting the stations secondary fusion reactors on line. This was hard work for all the teams as it had to be done in EV suits. Samantha herself spent over eighty seven hours in an EV suit getting A.O.S.P. ready for them to be able to work inside.
Once the fusion reactors and life support were working, the real rush to get the spaceport began. Samantha and five hundred work began to install the tens of thousands of systems to bring A.O.S.P. online. Samantha broke the workers into fifteen man teams which would work eight hours shifts on a single project. She herself was not assigned to anyone team, but instead moved from project to project insuring they were on schedule and everything was working. Her natural talent for getting systems that were not supposed to work together to function harmoniously was constantly in demand. However after a month on the station, her father approached her with a Clan obligation which must be fulfilled even before her duty to complete the Station.
It turned out that the Aran Clan were the original guardians of Mandalore the First. They guarded him until his death and then buried him in the Mountain of Bis’Kara in a tomb design by the Taung engineer Akuar of the Aran Clan. The tomb was designed not just to hold the body of the first great leader of the Mandalorian people but to pass along his teachings. The tomb tested one’s knowledge of the past, one’s ability to lead, one’s skills as a warrior, one’s wisdom, one’s willing to sacrifice and one’s dedication. The Aran Clan lore passed down many of the knowledge of the tombs secrets.
The one catch about Samantha leading Mandalore through the tomb was that there was an energy dampening field created by an abnormal crystalline deposit in the mountain. It suppressed all electromagnetic fields which prevented her from using her armor or blaster. This would not stop Sam from doing her Clan duties however and she returned to the surface and gained an audience with Mandalore. It turned out that Mandalore had head of the ritual from his father and was willing to begin immediately.
Samantha along with several other Mandalorians traveled to the tomb and started their way through. Samantha walked them through the first part of the test, showing the clan symbols as they joined Mandalorian the First. Then they traveled through the test of determination which was Mandalorian showing prudence in his exploration of darken path which all must walk. He show skill in defeating the automitons along with wisdom in solving the riddles in the hall of ash. He proved his leadership as he guided them through the maze and sacrifice when he choice one to die. Luckily the sacrifice was not truly deadly as they meet back up in the tomb of the First. Here each of the members of his party were given the honor of viewing the body of Mandalore the First and was given the opportunity to take one of the sacred Beskan as a token of their skill and loyalty to Mandalore.
Once the journey to find the first was completed Samantha returned to space to continue her work on the space station. She returned to find little work had been completed. It turned out that problems with the station’s primary hypermatter annihilation reactor was causing only emergency systems to function during her absence. The reactor was never design to be used in space; instead it was a colony reactor which was repurposed for the station. As such Samantha had to make minor design changes to the reactor to get it functional. After kicking a few butts to get the project back on course and spending many hours getting the reactor online, she was finally relieved of command of the station after the station was only a few months from fully operational. It was nearly record breaking the speed at which the station was completed.
It turned out that Mandalore himself was impressed by Samantha’s skills and who highly others that served with her thought of her. As such he granted her command of one of the new Taung-class Strike Carriers, the Darasuum or Eternal in galactic Basic. She was honored to be given a command of her own and vowed not to let him down. Samantha appointed Mal Ghal as her first officer, a skilled mandalorian commando that many would not have selected for the position of first officer. Samantha however already knew that she had a strong understanding of starship operation and combat, what she needed was a second opinion of someone that looked at situations differently, someone that would be excellent at leading ground base missions.
Samantha herself however would only face the Empire once in combat, in the skies over Coruscant. Samantha Aran was forced to lead her fighter wing of Darkslicers from the Darasuum into battle because the Darasuum was currently docked at Kuat Drive Yards for repairs from damage in a minor engagement. This however would not turn out to be the challenging battle she hoped for were her skill would be put to the test and honor earned. Instead this would turn out to be a mopping up operation with little resistance. Samantha own squadron only engaged a few stray ships and orbital defenses as they escorted Mandalore and his assault force to the planet. They remained overhead for as long as their fuel supply would allow it before disengaging and heading back to a friendly ship to refuel. By the time they returned the battle was over and the planet secured leaving Samantha and her wing disappointed as they returned to the Darasuum.
Hunting Evil (Age 23 - 33)
Once Coruscant was captured by Mandalore, the task of clearing out the remnant of the Sith Empire began. Like many Taung-class Strike Carriers, the Darasuum was sent out to explore previously occupied Imperial worlds, expected locations of military supply cashes and the greatest priority targets of all, suspected hiding places of the darkside Forces users.
The first mission of the Darasuum was a total waste of time. They were assigned to scout the Corellia system for Imperial presence but when they arrived the descovered that Johana Kay and the Federation had already scowered the system. The second mission however turned out be more important. Samantha and the Darasuum was ordered to an abandon military space station orbiting the planet of Corulag. It was rumored that the Sith pulled out of the station after the Sith Conclave was defeated over Byss, but it was Samantha’s job to make sure this was the case and assist the stations value as a strategic stronghold among the Coreworlds.
The Darasuum arrived at Corulag, a scan was preformed of the station. Sam was shocked by it, it showed that while the majority of the station was deactivated, however life support was still functioning however the artificial gravity was not. She spoke with Mal and they agreed that the station would need to be searched deck by deck. At first Mal thought he should be in charge of the search as it was a ground base offensive, however Samantha quickly shot this idea down. She would lead the search sense she was better at Zero G operations.
Mal protested stating that her place was on the ship and his was on the ground, but Samantha did not accept the roles that he had in his mind. Samantha would lead the search with 31 other Mandalorian soldiers station on the ship. They traveled over to the station in the ships four Dragoon and entered through one of the open landing bays. Samantha was in her suit of power armor and the other 31 Mandalorians were in Noe-Crusader armor.
Once inside Samantha and the other Mandalorians broke into four man teams.
Purchases:
1 Taung-class Strike Carrier: Darasuum
-----24 Darkslicer
-----4 AT-130 E Dragoon
Species: Human (Mandalorian)
Age: 33
Sex: Female
Height/Weight: 1.9 Meters and 90 Kilograms
Appearance: Samantha Aran. She always has a custom Blaster Pistols strapped to her hip. When Samantha is going into battle she wears a custom suit of Mandalorian Shock Troop armor. The armor is painted primarily white with red accents to honor her father who passed away during the war with the Empire. She often wears a jet back with her shock trooper armor. When she does not want to draw to much attention or working on something were her armor would get in the way, she often wears a simple green armored flight jacket and long pants pants. She normally wears her hair pulled back in a pony tail and can be seen with communication headset. Other weapons she is known to use are a fully automatic blaster rifle and her family Beskan which she wears strapped to her back.
Samantha Aran
Samantha in her Mandalorian Armor
Personality: Samantha Aran has spent the majority of her life in space and has affected her in ways most do not realize. Because of her life on board ships she is extremely uncomfortable on planets; especially outdoors. She does not get claustrophobic, but instead gets tense when in wide open spaces. She often claim when she first lands on a planet and her ship shuts down she get queasy and often claims that a planet does not feel right. When on a ship she normally has the anti-gravity turn off or really low, allowing a freedom of movement which most are not accustomed to. This also leads to what she normally calls planet sickness when she lands.
Samantha Mandalorian beliefs include that all Mandalorians should be treated as if part of one clan or family. Also she is a strong believe that combat is not the only place on can gain honor; accomplishment outside of battle are just as honorable as those earned at the tip of a sword or end of a rifle.
Samantha tends to push people away or keep them at arms distance. Not to say she does not love her adoptive father or family, she just does not like to get close to others. This is a result of the killing of her biological parents when she was seven. She keeps her feelings for her former parents buried deep down, repressing them with keeping her mind focused on other task. When the topic is brought up, she normally just begins her life at the age of seven. Deep down however there is still a part of her personality which is the frighten little girl named Jennifer Valentine. This has lead to the fact that Samantha would much rather spend her time working on inanimate objects.
Samantha is also very intelligent, having an IQ rivaling the greatest Mandalorian minds. Throughout her life she has used her intellect to solve problems other Mandalorians couldn't and develop engineering skill that set her apart from others. One of the greatest skills was her development of integrating technologies together which normally would not work. Wither it be using parts from a salvage ship to keep the Prudii Senaar running or building a blaster out of waste disposal unit, few could get things to work together better then Samantha.
Character Rank: Mandalorian Alor'ad
Special Skills:
Blaster Combat
Engineering
Jury-rigging
Piloting
Starship Command
Zero-G Operations
Physical Attributes
Strength: 20
Speed: 70
Intelligence: 90
Alignment: +50
Bio:
A Young Girl Named Jennifer Valentine (Age 0 - 7)
Samantha Aran was born Jennifer Valentine. Jennifer’s parents, Anthony and Ellen Valentine, where from Corellia but had became prospectors hopping to make it big on the Outer Rim. They owned and operated a Vaya-class scout called 49th Star. After three years on the Outer Rim, Ellen Valentine became pregnant and the Valentine’s debated returning to Corellia. While Ellen wanted to return, they soon realized that the 49th Star was the only home they had left and returning to Corellia would not change that. So they choice to remain prospecting on the rim.
Jennifer was born while the Valentine’s ship traveled through hyperspace from one system to another. With no medical assistance then the small infirmary on the 49th Star, Jennifer’s father performed the delivery. It was symbol of the difficulties that would come to faces everything in her life.
The first years of Jennifer’s life were spent on many different worlds, often in carry-along on her mother or fathers back. She was exposed to large number of different planet environments and different viruses during each time strengthen her immune system. At first she caught all sorts of colds, flues, and viral infections, however every year the times she got sick reduced until by her seventh birthday she just did not get sick anymore.
When Jennifer was five years old and most girls were playing with dolls, she was crawling around the insides of the 49th Star access tunnels helping her father maintain the ship. Her mother did not think this was normal, but Jennifer loved helping her father work on the ship; and she could get places that he could never fit which made it all the better for her. As she did what she considered as playing in the belly of the ship, she started to learn about the inner workings of a starship and how things worked in general. Jennifer continue to tinker with the ship and everything in it as it was more entertaining than playing with the few toys her parents got her when they traded on a civilized world.
When he she was not playing in the ship or sleeping, Jennifer’s mother was her teacher. Ellen started by reading to her daughter every night before bed or any time that she asked. When Jennifer was three years old she started to talk, and by four she started to read. Her mother slowly instructed her daughter in basic math, reading and writing basic, history, science and to play the flute. Jennifer loved her lessons with her mother, but not as much as the time with her father. By the age of seven she was already equivalent to a thirteen year old.
The Man that Adopted Jennifer (Age 7)
Jennifer’s happy life with her biological parents came to an abrupt end just a few months after her seventh birthday. The 49th Star was traveling into a system which was not charted by Republic standards. The system turned out to have only gas planets and a massive asteroid field. While scanning the asteroid field looking to for valuable metals, the small scout ship was ambushed by a pirate ship. The ship quickly disabled and a boarding party cut their way through the docking hatch. The men of metal moved through the ship. Jennifer’s father and mother had locked themselves on the bridge with Jennifer. They placed Jennifer under a console while they took up positions with blaster rifles. The pirates cut through the bridge door. Jennifer’s parents open fire on the pirates, but their armor protected them as they shot and killed the two adults. Screaming Jennifer ran out from under the console and grabbed the blast rifle. She pointed up at the Pirates with tears in her eyes.
One of the pirates pointed his blaster at the kid, but another one quickly gabbed blaster from him and pushed him aside. The Pirate took off his helmet and kneeled before the little girl. “It is all right. I won’t hurt you.” He said as reached out for the girl. Jennifer screamed and ran back under the console. The pirate walked over to the console and reached under it. He shouted and pulled out his hand which had a bite mark. The other pirates laughed and the man looked at them. “I picked this target and ordered the hit. This child’s parent’s death is my responsibility so I hereby adopt this child as my own, as my blood. Now you get to work stripping the ship.” He ordered. The pirate spent the next hour trying to bribe the girl out with candy, but was forced to drag her off the ship kicking and screaming once the Pirates had finished taking everything of value off the ship.
The pirate that had taken Jennifer in was the captain of the Praetorian-class frigate Prudii Senaar which means Shadow Bird in Mando’a. He was what would have been considered an Admiral in the Madalorian Wars. One of the first flew humans to join the Mandalorian’s he was an exceptional ship commander even when he was only in his mid-twenties. He was soon worked his way up the ranks and became a field marshal when he was in his early thirties. Given command of a flotilla of frigates and corvettes, he lead the space forces which assaulted many out rim worlds during the start of the Mandalorians Wars. As the war dragged on however he fell out of favor with Cassus Fett and was assign to running the shipyards over Mandalore. While he hated being transferred off the frontlines, Erik Aran believed that his job was one of the most important parts of the war effort. When the Mandalorians were finally defeated by Revan over Malachor V, he remained on Mandalore until the Republic fleet arrived to disarm them. He and several other Mandalorian would sneaked aboard and capture one of the older Republic Praetorian-class frigates before retreating into unknown space. With nowhere to go or anyone to turn to they became becoming a pirates.
Samantha did not adjust well to living on board the Prudii Senaar. At first she would refuse to eat; that only lasted a week before hunger got the best of her. Whenever the captain came in to talk to her she would hide under the covers. Every night she cried herself asleep and spent hours screaming tell she could not even speak.
Becoming A Mandalorian (Age 8 - 19)
Thing started to turn around after nine months of this acting out. She started to break out of her room, using the silverware to unscrew her ventilation access cover. She would crawl around the vents and explore the ship looking for a way to escape. One day she crawled into engineering. When she got there she fell out of the ventilation access and was unable to get back in. She looked around and noticed the place was empty and the door was locked. Trapped and nothing to do until someone came to check on the engine she started looking around.
While exploring engineering Jennifer noticed several thing that were not right. So doing as her former father had showed her, she open the engine access and started putting the engine together the way she thought it belongs. Alarms sounded and crew rushed to main engineering. Jennifer worked quickly and by the time the crew got there she was out of the engine leaning up against it. She was carried to a holding cell and placed in it.
Jennifer was not in the cell long. The chief engineer; an older man with a kind face came to see her. Asking what she did, she simple replied that she made the engine look right. The old man looked at the girl shocked then order her to be released. Jennifer did not know it, but she improved the thrust of the engines by six percent when everyone else on the engineering team said it was impossible.
The chief engineer took Jennifer back to engineering and asked her what else looked wrong. The little girls smiled and with a chuckle said everything. He then asked if the little girl could please make them look right. The little girl started to crawl into placed the adult Mandalorians could not reach, pulling things of the machines. She would either bypass curtain components or replace them from spare parts she could find.
The Engineering team watched in shock as the little girl did in a day what they could not do in a week even if they knew what was wrong. Afterward the little girl was given candy and a ton of attention by the engineering team, nearly to the point of worshiping her as a goddess. They called her Samus, the old Mandalorian goddess of intelligence, intuition and trickery. Jennifer claimed she did not like the name because it sounded to alien to her and the crew just started calling her Samantha, the name Mandalorians had given their child in honor of Samus.
Samantha Aran had found a new home and family among the engineering team aboard the Prudii Senaar. She would wake up in the mornings, walk to the mess and get a glass of hot chocolate before heading down to engineering. When she got to engineering she would walk around listening to the machines seeing if they did not sound right before sitting down at the Chief Engineers desk and drinking her hot chocolate. The team then would bring her parts which were broken and Samantha would try to fix them. Then when the team went to lunch someone would carry her on their shoulders. They eat and talk about ships before heading back to engineering. Samantha then would check on the machines again before returning to the desk and reading technical journals which the chief engineer had on hand. The day would end with going to dinner and listening to the crew’s stories of battle before returning to her room to sleep.
This pattern continued for three years until she had become an accepted member of the crew. It was at this time that Erik Aran, the captain and her adoptive father started to instruct her in the way of the Mandalorians. Her shifts in engineering were reduced to the dismay of the team and she was taught how to fight. Samantha however was the greatest warrior, only mediocre in Erik's opinion.
Samantha lacked physical strength, partly due to the fact that she was a girl but also due to the fact that she often spent a lot of her off time playing with the gravity plating off. She loved floating around her room, pushing off the wall and bulkheads, floating around upside down and performing ordinary tasks in strange positions. Spending several hours a day in a low gravity or gravity free environment led to her improved reflexes and awareness of everything around her which more Mandalorians did not care to improve. The reason behind this was that if one was not able to react fast and accurately while in a Zero G environment, then they would often end up losing control and slamming into a wall. This allowed her to compensate for her lack of physical strength with her excellent reflexes. She would often avoid attacks rather than make contact which would require her to fight back with her strength. She also carried very little around, meaning that she was more agile and easily avoided the enemy. The disadvantage as Erik would often point out was that she was trading her protection.
Erik trained the girl tell she was sixteen when she went through the verd'goten. Samantha passed and became both a full adult. She was given the position of chief engineer; replacing the old man that had retired that year. Samantha by this time was turning into quite the women, she was already five nine and still growing. The crew had an ongoing bet on just how tall she would get before she stopped growing. From the years of sixteen to nineteen, Samantha severed as the chief engineer on the Prudii Senaar. Like all Mandalorians she trained in combat during this time, but she did not train as much as others. She instead focused on her studies and keeping the ship running. So while she was trained in many of the Mandalorian combat arts, she was only average when putting them into practice.
The engineering team on board had already been cut in halve by the time Samantha took over, seeing that they were not needed. She was able to keep the ship running off parts that were never meant to be on a Republic frigate. She had the ships hyperdrive so jury rigged that no one other then she could figure out how it worked. Nearly every critical system on board the Prudii Senaar was from a different ship class. She had CEC fuel regulator running with Kaut Drive engine, a Mon Calamari shield projector working with a Verpine generator. But in the chaos of mismatch parts, the ship outperformed any Praetorian-class frigates in every way.
However when she had reached her full height of six three at the age of nineteen, Samantha was getting sick of being aboard the Prudii Senaar. She told her father that she would be leaving when they made the next port in order to find her own place in the galaxy. At first Erik was furious knowing that the Prudii Senaar would not last more then a few months without her keep putting it back together. However she stuck to her guns and when the finally made port she left the ship with only her Mandalorian Neo-Crusader armor and a hand full of credits which was her pay.
Leaving Home (Age 19 - 23)
When Samantha left the Prudii Senaar she was unsure what she would do. With her credits she bought a ticket on the first transport heading corewards and placed herself in the hands of fate. Fate was watching out for Samantha as the transport was heading towards Besine IV. Besine IV was the home of the up and coming company Cerberus Corp.
Samantha at the Besine IV Spaceport
Once on Besine IV, Samantha started to look for work. At first she thought she could try her hand at bounty hunting, but realized quickly that without a ship of her own it was pointless. However one day she was in a dinner when she overheard two men talking. They were discussing issues with a starship design. They were trying to adapt a power plant created by separate manufacture. Samantha mind raced as she listened to them. Within a few minutes she had determined the problem, but she did not speak up. The engineers bounced around several different concepts, the entire time driving Samantha crazier.
Eventual Samantha spun around and shouted the solution at them. The two engineers looked at the girl in the blue flight suit and then back at the technical data. To their shock the solution provide by Samantha should work. The stood up and walked over to the table which Samantha was setting at. They question the young girl how she was able to solve the problem and just who she was. Samantha explained how she always was able to get things on starships to work sense she was ten years old and how she just left her families ship in hopes of finding her own path.
The two men looked at each other and quickly realized they found a goldmine. Hiring Samantha on the spot, Zora Octavarium and Goron Nathinra gave her a small team which would soon become known as the Tantalus Division. The Tantalus Division was a problem solving or think tank group which other projects could call when they ran into problems. With Samantha's leadership, the Tantulus Division would work on every one of the projects that Cerberus Corps. worked on.
Samantha stayed with Cerberus Corp. for nearly four years, gaining stock options and becoming a critical part of the company. However what were more valuable to Samantha was the resources she had at her disposal. Using Cerberus Corp. technological database, contacts and materials, Samantha was able to construct a custom suit of power armor. The suit was design to be state of the art, using technologies that were still in their infancy to get the required performance. The suit took nearly two years to completely design and assemble while on her off hours. She made the suit of power armor to compensate for her own lack of physical strength. With the suit she would still be able to move with the same agility as before, however she would now be able to carry a heavy weapon and head to toe armor.
Another one of her projects was the computerized lightwhip. While the lightwhip in its standard form was usable by a non-force user, she still found it difficult to wield effectively. The part of this was due to time restraints while the other was due to the lack of skills with such a weapon. So she designed and built what she calls the computerized lightwhip. This whip has accelerometers built into the hilt which constantly keep track of the position of the hilt. The computer then calculates what the whip is doing and changes in the magnetic containment field. This allows for the whip to be more controlled and it behaves in a manner which the owner can adjust. This includes variable stiffness along the whip, springback, and power disruption. It also has a safety feature which deactivate the whip should the tip potentially make contact with the body.
It is ideas like these that set Samantha apart; she is able to compensate for her lack of skill by using her mind and technical savvy.
Answering the Call of Mandalore (Age 23)
Samantha heard the call Mandalore sent out a call to all Mandalorians. Samantha felt obligated to answer, so she gave Cerberus two weeks’ notice before heading to Mandalore. She arrived at Mandalore to find a mess in orbit. Thousands of ships from large cruisers to small single man fighters had flooded back to answer Mandalore’s call. She eventually got clearance to land near the camp which Mandalore. Once she arrived she was given an assignment almost immediately; get the Aran Orbital Spaceport in order. It was quite the challenge to say the lease. The Spaceport was nearly a year behind schedule due to countless design flaws, changes and on several occations the cancellation of the project. However Mandalore declared Aran Orbital Spaceport a critical strategic stronghold and made it a priority to complete along with the new Taung-class Strike Carriers which would make up the bulk of the new Mandalorian Fleet.
From the moment that Samantha Aran arrived, she started light fires under peoples’ asses and butt heads with team leads. It was her job to get the project done, not to make friends after all. She personally started by working on the life support systems and getting the stations secondary fusion reactors on line. This was hard work for all the teams as it had to be done in EV suits. Samantha herself spent over eighty seven hours in an EV suit getting A.O.S.P. ready for them to be able to work inside.
Once the fusion reactors and life support were working, the real rush to get the spaceport began. Samantha and five hundred work began to install the tens of thousands of systems to bring A.O.S.P. online. Samantha broke the workers into fifteen man teams which would work eight hours shifts on a single project. She herself was not assigned to anyone team, but instead moved from project to project insuring they were on schedule and everything was working. Her natural talent for getting systems that were not supposed to work together to function harmoniously was constantly in demand. However after a month on the station, her father approached her with a Clan obligation which must be fulfilled even before her duty to complete the Station.
It turned out that the Aran Clan were the original guardians of Mandalore the First. They guarded him until his death and then buried him in the Mountain of Bis’Kara in a tomb design by the Taung engineer Akuar of the Aran Clan. The tomb was designed not just to hold the body of the first great leader of the Mandalorian people but to pass along his teachings. The tomb tested one’s knowledge of the past, one’s ability to lead, one’s skills as a warrior, one’s wisdom, one’s willing to sacrifice and one’s dedication. The Aran Clan lore passed down many of the knowledge of the tombs secrets.
The one catch about Samantha leading Mandalore through the tomb was that there was an energy dampening field created by an abnormal crystalline deposit in the mountain. It suppressed all electromagnetic fields which prevented her from using her armor or blaster. This would not stop Sam from doing her Clan duties however and she returned to the surface and gained an audience with Mandalore. It turned out that Mandalore had head of the ritual from his father and was willing to begin immediately.
Samantha along with several other Mandalorians traveled to the tomb and started their way through. Samantha walked them through the first part of the test, showing the clan symbols as they joined Mandalorian the First. Then they traveled through the test of determination which was Mandalorian showing prudence in his exploration of darken path which all must walk. He show skill in defeating the automitons along with wisdom in solving the riddles in the hall of ash. He proved his leadership as he guided them through the maze and sacrifice when he choice one to die. Luckily the sacrifice was not truly deadly as they meet back up in the tomb of the First. Here each of the members of his party were given the honor of viewing the body of Mandalore the First and was given the opportunity to take one of the sacred Beskan as a token of their skill and loyalty to Mandalore.
Once the journey to find the first was completed Samantha returned to space to continue her work on the space station. She returned to find little work had been completed. It turned out that problems with the station’s primary hypermatter annihilation reactor was causing only emergency systems to function during her absence. The reactor was never design to be used in space; instead it was a colony reactor which was repurposed for the station. As such Samantha had to make minor design changes to the reactor to get it functional. After kicking a few butts to get the project back on course and spending many hours getting the reactor online, she was finally relieved of command of the station after the station was only a few months from fully operational. It was nearly record breaking the speed at which the station was completed.
It turned out that Mandalore himself was impressed by Samantha’s skills and who highly others that served with her thought of her. As such he granted her command of one of the new Taung-class Strike Carriers, the Darasuum or Eternal in galactic Basic. She was honored to be given a command of her own and vowed not to let him down. Samantha appointed Mal Ghal as her first officer, a skilled mandalorian commando that many would not have selected for the position of first officer. Samantha however already knew that she had a strong understanding of starship operation and combat, what she needed was a second opinion of someone that looked at situations differently, someone that would be excellent at leading ground base missions.
Samantha herself however would only face the Empire once in combat, in the skies over Coruscant. Samantha Aran was forced to lead her fighter wing of Darkslicers from the Darasuum into battle because the Darasuum was currently docked at Kuat Drive Yards for repairs from damage in a minor engagement. This however would not turn out to be the challenging battle she hoped for were her skill would be put to the test and honor earned. Instead this would turn out to be a mopping up operation with little resistance. Samantha own squadron only engaged a few stray ships and orbital defenses as they escorted Mandalore and his assault force to the planet. They remained overhead for as long as their fuel supply would allow it before disengaging and heading back to a friendly ship to refuel. By the time they returned the battle was over and the planet secured leaving Samantha and her wing disappointed as they returned to the Darasuum.
Hunting Evil (Age 23 - 33)
Once Coruscant was captured by Mandalore, the task of clearing out the remnant of the Sith Empire began. Like many Taung-class Strike Carriers, the Darasuum was sent out to explore previously occupied Imperial worlds, expected locations of military supply cashes and the greatest priority targets of all, suspected hiding places of the darkside Forces users.
The first mission of the Darasuum was a total waste of time. They were assigned to scout the Corellia system for Imperial presence but when they arrived the descovered that Johana Kay and the Federation had already scowered the system. The second mission however turned out be more important. Samantha and the Darasuum was ordered to an abandon military space station orbiting the planet of Corulag. It was rumored that the Sith pulled out of the station after the Sith Conclave was defeated over Byss, but it was Samantha’s job to make sure this was the case and assist the stations value as a strategic stronghold among the Coreworlds.
The Darasuum arrived at Corulag, a scan was preformed of the station. Sam was shocked by it, it showed that while the majority of the station was deactivated, however life support was still functioning however the artificial gravity was not. She spoke with Mal and they agreed that the station would need to be searched deck by deck. At first Mal thought he should be in charge of the search as it was a ground base offensive, however Samantha quickly shot this idea down. She would lead the search sense she was better at Zero G operations.
Mal protested stating that her place was on the ship and his was on the ground, but Samantha did not accept the roles that he had in his mind. Samantha would lead the search with 31 other Mandalorian soldiers station on the ship. They traveled over to the station in the ships four Dragoon and entered through one of the open landing bays. Samantha was in her suit of power armor and the other 31 Mandalorians were in Noe-Crusader armor.
Once inside Samantha and the other Mandalorians broke into four man teams.
Purchases:
1 Taung-class Strike Carrier: Darasuum
-----24 Darkslicer
-----4 AT-130 E Dragoon