Post by Gamov on Feb 9, 2013 22:56:23 GMT -5
I do not claim ownership of this image. All credits go to the original artist - link
Name: Lady Nisha
Class: Sentinel
Title: Sith Lady
Age: 38
Sex: Female
Height/Weight: 5'7”/116 lbs
Species: Human
Appearance:
At first glance, Nisha is a striking woman whose alluring appearance belies her grim and morose personality. Nearly middle aged with long raven colored hair, sickly yellow/orange colored eyes indicative of most Sith, a toned, athletic build, and a series of traditional Sith facial tattoos on her cheeks and forehead, Nisha would appear to place a great deal of importance on her appearance.
While this is marginally true, she does not obsess over it and generally doesn't go out of her way to put herself together. Even so, she does recognize the importance first impressions can have and does take exhaustive steps to improve her image when necessary.
Despite her outward beauty though, Nisha is cold and apathetic at heart. Her body language and expressions often come across as rather severe, reflecting her intensely determined persona. In combat, Nisha demonstrates both her aggression and athleticism through her preferred use of the Ataru form. Executing complex acrobatic maneuvers are nearly second nature to her, and when she blends these abilities with the elegance and fluidity of Makashi, she seems to possess an almost ethereal quality as she moves effortlessly from one encounter to the next.
In more casual settings though, Nisha's demeanor tends to soften dramatically as she carries herself with an air of confidence – bordering on near arrogance at times. What she cannot control through force, she is more than willing to win through seduction and guile.
The Force also plays a role in Nisha's appearance towards others as she is not above using her talents with it to influence the minds of her victims, drawing them in with subtle manipulations designed to strip away their defenses, leaving them weak and vulnerable.
Due to the current nature of the galactic climate, however, Nisha takes prodigious steps to hide her true identity. Everything from simple alterations such as wearing civilian clothing and blending in with the masses, to more complex ruses such as using the Force to cloak her true intentions by masking her thoughts or altering her eye color. Nisha uses every tool at her disposal, natural and otherwise, to remain obscure to her adversaries until opportunity presents itself.
History:
Nisha was still but a feint heart beat in her mother's womb when the war between the Sith Empire and the Jedi reached the steps of her family home on Chandrila. Like so many victims of the conflict, the battle destroyed her home and left her father and older brother dead. Displaced in the wake of the carnage, her mother, one of but a handful of survivors who had managed to escape the devastation, fled to seek a new life beyond the ashes of their homeworld.
Several months after the attack that had destroyed the family she would never have the chance to know, Nisha would be born adrift on a colony ship destine for the farthest reaches of space.
Nisha would spend her infancy and the balance of her formative years aboard the ship with other survivors from her homeworld, but it would be an unconventional childhood. Raised mainly by a community of complete strangers who had adopted her out of a sense of pity and moral obligation, Nisha knew very little of the figure called “mother”. No matter how hard she tried to impress her or vie for her affections, “mother” didn't seem to care. In fact, she seemed loathed to the fact that she even had a child to begin with.
It was an understandably difficult notion for little Nisha to wrap her head around, but eventually she too began to distance herself from “mother” in order to seek her affections elsewhere.
When Nisha was 10, the ship which she had called home for most of her life eventually found its way to a new world and, as many had hoped would be the case, a new life. Arriving on Metellos, Nisha would settle with her mother into the slums of the notorious Moridebo District. There, amid the crush of thousands living in the shadows of the towering Stratablocks and posh floating cities, Nisha would find that life was far more difficult. If life on the colony ship was cramped and unpleasant, life in the slums of Metellos was overcrowded, unsanitary and dangerous.
Amid the sprawl of decaying shanty towns and toxic industrial yards, crime was an ever present facet of daily life, as were disease and poverty. The survivors of the attack on Chandrila had escaped one hell only to flee into the waiting arms of another. Within this dark ocean of despair, Nisha clung to the last shred of hope she could find within herself and worked tirelessly to scrape out a meager living on the discarded scraps left behind by a world that couldn't be bothered to care.
Her mother was little consolation as she had slipped into a deep depression, unable to come to terms with the loss of her husband and son. Her mind addled with grief and stricken by guilt, she turned to drugs as a coping mechanism and slowly slipped into a state of near constant inebriation underscored by severe manic depression that often presented itself through violent mood swings – to which young Nisha was usually the unwilling victim.
Rejected by her mother and ignored by society, Nisha fought to carve out her own little niche in the world and struggled to support herself the best way she knew how. At first she started by begging for handouts. Handouts that usually never came. When begging failed, Nisha resorted to stealing. Food, clothes, money, anything she could get her hands on quickly became hers.... provided she could run fast enough to keep it.
When Nisha was 14, her mother committed suicide, unable to bear the burden of her losses any longer. When the news hit Nisha, she felt very little for “mother” and pushed forward on her own as she had done countless times before. Shortly afterwards, she found a new path to life by securing a job working as a laborer in the dockyards of a local spaceport. It was a thankless position which offered very little pay and even less in the way of comfort. The hours were long, the work grueling and usually unsafe, but Nisha used adversity to find strength. Yet the conditions themselves were far from being the worst part of the job.
A barbarous and shrewd man by the name of Kavik oversaw Nisha's position and had taken to the young girl from her first day on the job. Only 16 at the time, Kavik seemed unphased by the moral implications of his lecherous desires and made more than one advance on Nisha. She denied him repeatedly, sometimes forcefully, and was rewarded for her insolence with torture – an act that Kavik gleaned a certain degree of sadistic pleasure from.
This perverted “relationship” eventually reached its boiling point when Kavik attempted to force himself on Nisha. Of course she resisted fiercely, but Kavik was an overpowering foe and took Nisha for all she was worth. In the aftermath, she was dumped in the alley of an abandoned housing complex, disposed of like common trash to be forgotten.
Nisha's story may have well ended there in that dark alley had it not been for the timely arrival of the man who would become her savior and future mentor – Lord Malum.
At first, Malum looked on Nisha with disgust. She was so weak and pathetic. Barely worth the effort it would take to finish her sad existence at this point. Yet there was something still there. A glimmer, a kernel of strength yet untapped in the girl.... the Force. Whether she had known it or not, Nisha's latent Force powers had helped her to survive the encounter with Kavik, even if only just. Sensing a great deal of potential in Nisha, Malum adopted her as his Apprentice and took her away from her life on Metellos to begin her training as a Sith.
In the weeks after her discovery, Nisha would spend most of her time confined to the Dark Lord's stronghold on Vjun where she would undergo rehabilitation and a portion of her training. Unceremoniously thrust into her new surroundings with little time to adjust, Nisha was initially very coy and uncertain in her abilities. She was slow to take to her lessons in the Force, much less the austere leadership of her new master. Displaying a harsh, unforgiving and merciless attitude towards his Apprentice, Malum was no gentile teacher. Mistakes and resistance were not suffered lightly, rewarded only with swift punishment and cruel torture.
All too familiar with such treatment, it was not long before Nisha learned the value of pragmatism and fell in line with her master's demands. Any notions of retaliation were pushed aside as Nisha learned how to work around Malum's abrasive demeanor by pushing herself to succeed at every turn – no matter the cost. Behind her submissive facade and reluctant acceptance of the Dark Lord's leadership though, Nisha learned to foster her anger into a seething hatred which could give her the strength to endure.
One day she dreamed of turning Malum's fortunes against him and slitting his throat.... but it was still a far off dream. One she could only achieve, regrettably, by relying on his skills to teach her the proper path to power.
As Nisha's apprenticeship to Malum drew on and her skills grew, so to did rivalries among the Sith leadership in the Empire. With their war against the Jedi and the Federation straining valuable resources, threads began to unravel within the Sith heirarchy as the Emperor's authority was openly challenged. At first, voices of opposition were silenced quickly and ruthlessly, but a gradual sense of mutiny began to gain traction when the Emperor's former Apprentice, Ryuu Sartori, publicly spoke out against the war, the Sith and the Empire. Slowly he gained support for his cause before launching his eventual coup.
In one single stroke, Sartori murdered the Emperor and razed the Sith Academy on Korriban to the ground, slaughtering former loyalists to the late Emperor as he staked his own claim to the Empire. Amid the ensuing struggle, Nisha found herself thrown into the fray, her allegiance torn between the new regime beneath Sartori and her master, Lord Malum. Those that did not pledge their fealty to Sartori were deemed enemies of the Empire and hunted down. Yet in spite of this, or perhaps in some misguided attempt to garner favor with Malum, Nisha chose to side against the Empire.
Having cultivated a power base of his own within the Empire, Malum was quick to gain support for his own cause and forged the Sith Enclave to challenge Sartori's rule. Formed mostly from stragglers and survivors of Ryuu's coup, the Enclave quickly carved out its own niche in the galaxy and made its presence known to the Empire by disrupting supply routes, raiding shipyards and conducting assassination missions against high ranking Imperial officials.
During his campaign against Sartori, Nisha proved to be one of Malum's most valuable assets, using her exceptional talents and burgeoning skills with the Force to lead Enclave forces to numerous victories against the Empire.
But even as she loyally served the Dark Lord, Nisha was busy entertaining her own thoughts of rebellion and betrayal. Ever since she had first been discovered by Malum and trained in the dark arts, she coveted the power and influence her master commanded. Up until recently though she had never been a position to seize that command for herself. The new war between the Enclave and Empire would do well to serve her own agenda by providing her with the means to eliminate her competition quickly and quietly while still serving under the auspices of her master.
Even as Nisha set her own plot in motion though, grooming her own circle of trusted insurgents within the Empire and Enclave alike, disaster struck when Sartori launched a full scale invasion of the Enclave capital world of Byss. The fighting was fierce as Sartori leveled the full might of the Empire against his enemies. Byss was devastated, millions were killed and both sides military forces severely weakened. Among the dead were many of Nisha's co-conspirators; officers and officials within the Enclave who had pledged to support her against Malum after Sartori had been defeated.
Yet in the end, against seemingly impossible odds, the Enclave would emerge victorious after Malum engaged Sartori in direct combat and defeated him. Claiming the Empire for himself, Malum set about reconstructing its shattered remnants – reforming the borders of the ancient Sith Empire and establishing a new capital on Dromund Kaas. From here, he planned to usher in a second Golden Age for the Sith, beginning with a conquest of the worlds bordering the old Sith territories.
With her own support wiped out and a new wave of Imperial loyalists flooding the ranks, Nisha was grudgingly forced to admit defeat and retreat back into the shadows to bide her time once again.
In the interim after the decisive battle at Byss, Nisha would once again prove instrumental in helping her master to acquire greater power for himself by leading numerous campaigns to reform the Imperial military by reacquiring war assets such as industrial centers and numerous Imperial fighting units that had chosen to defect after Sartori's defeat. In most instances, Nisha's conquest of these traitor divisions was ruthless and bloody. Over the course of the next few months, thousands more would die in countless skirmishes across the new borders of the reforged Empire – many of them by Nisha's own hand.
While the deaths of thousands of irreplaceable soldiers would not benefit her long term goals to rule over the Empire, Nisha had allowed her pettiness to get the best of her. Jealous of Malum's success and still bitter over the failure of her own plans with the Enclave's victory at Byss, Nisha began to willingly sabotage her master's efforts by purposefully destroying the assets she was often sent to recover. Be it a company of men, a shipyard, a factory or a fleet, Nisha cared little for the details. One less gun standing at Malum's side meant one less gun she had to face when she made her move.
Once more, Nisha began the arduous task of rebuilding a support base to help her depose her master. Unlike her first attempt though, she was met with far more opposition than before. Between Sartori's takeover and the resulting conflict between the Enclave and the Empire, many Imperials had grown weary of the Sith's continual infighting and it was not long before Nisha actually uncovered a plot by a number of higher ranking officers to overthrow not only Malum, but all Sith in the Empire. With her own life potentially at risk, Nisha, ever the pragmatist, felt compelled to inform her master of the treachery.
Still, a small part of her wished to leave the conspiracy intact, reasoning that if she were to allow them to play their hand against Malum, and were they actually to succeed, then her own transition to power would be relatively painless. She had already identified a number of the treasonous officers, so eliminating them from her ranks would be easy enough in the aftermath. Patiently, Nisha decided to play the waiting game, biding her time until the conspirators struck their blow.
However, Nisha's own complacency would eventually prove to be her undoing as the newly reformed Republic would decide Malum's fate for her.
Left largely unchecked by Malum's forces as he struggled to pull the fragments of the Empire back together, the Federation had moved to secure the power vacuum left sitting in the heart of the galaxy following the battle of Byss. During Sartori's invasion of Enclave space, a simultaneous Mandalorian assault on the Core Worlds had liberated Coruscant from the Sith – taking advantage of the Sith's preoccupation with their ongoing civil war. As a result, when the Jedi and the Federation reclaimed the planet, they began the process of reconstituting the Republic.
While their forces grew in strength and number, the Empire dwindled as battle after battle bled it of vital resources and man power. It was not long before the Empire was left almost completely defenseless.
Taking advantage of the Empire's diminished state, the Republic pounced and launched an all out blitz against the Sith territories. Planet after planet fell as entire Imperial battle groups were either routed, destroyed or surrendered whole sale. Eventually the invasion came to the doorstep of the Empire's capital, Kaas City. Laying siege to the Sith world, the Republic met little resistance as they shot their way into the very heart of the Empire.... intent on ending the Sith's reign once and for all, no matter the cost.
With invasion forces closing in around them, Nisha chose self preservation over blind loyalty and abandoned Malum as Republic ground forces drew in on the Sith's last line of defense at the Imperial Palace. Using the chaos of the invasion to slip away unnoticed, she barely managed to escape with her own life, but not before robbing her master of his greatest treasure.... his holocron. The confusion of the battlefield created the perfect distraction for Nisha as she fought her way into Malum's private chambers, cutting a path through Imperial and Republic soldiers alike to claim the artifact.
Though it was only a modest token compared to the pleasure it would have given her to kill Malum personally, Nisha still considered this a small victory as she departed the besieged planet, leaving her former master and the remains of his Empire to their fate.
In the months following the siege of Dromund Kaas, Nisha went to ground and cut herself off from the outside world; covering every track and erasing every trace of her existence to hide herself from the Jedi and their relentless agents. Retreating to a derelict Sith temple on Thule, Nisha would remain hidden from her enemies as she regrouped and conceived new plans to reconstruct the Empire under her leadership.
To aid her in this endeavor, she began to broker private deals with security contractors, mercenaries, bounty hunters, warlords and the last remaining pockets of underground Imperial loyalists. On the side, she even retained the loyalty of a handful of Dark Jedi, who would serve as her eyes and ears to the galaxy by blending in with society and relaying constant status reports to her.
Some of these Dark Jedi were even used as scouts to seek out additional Force sensitives that Nisha could adopt and mold into her new Empire. Most of her disciples would be drawn from the dregs of society. Criminals, prisoners, fugitives, orphans.... it mattered little to her where they came from. If they possessed some form of connection to the Force, Nisha was willing to exploit their talents for her own agenda.
Drawing these forces together beneath her leadership, Nisha was able to quickly forge a modest private army that gave her the means to begin taking steps towards her ultimate goals.
Base Stats:
Strength: 4 (+1 Conditioning)
Speed: 9 (+1 Conditioning)
Stamina: 7 (+1 Conditioning)
Force Stats:
Control: 3
Sense: 10
Alter: 2
Combat Stats:
Lightsaber: 10
Unarmed: 0
Melee: 0
Range: 0
Force Powers:
Telekinesis
Force Sense
Shock
Fury
Fear
Skills:
Shii-Cho
Makashi
Ataru
Conditioning
Personal Items:
Lightsaber
Nisha's lightsaber, constructed by her during her training under Lord Malum. The hilt is fashioned from the tooth of a rancor and light weight carbon-fiber alloys infused with titanium for added balance and mobility. Nisha also constructed the saber with a dual phase emitter, allowing her to change the length of the blade from standard to shoto in order to meet almost any combat situation. Her preferred fighting style is a mix of Ataru with elements of Makashi for balance and fluidity.
Lord Malum's Holocron
A Sith relic once possessed by Lady Nisha's former master. Constructed by the Dark Lord years prior to his death, the holocron contains the sum of Lord Malum's teachings and knowledge of the Dark Side. When the Empire was finally toppled, the holocron was one of the few Sith artifacts to survive the destruction of the Imperial Palace on Dromund Kaas.
Using the Republic invasion as a distraction, Nisha was able to break into the Emperor's private chambers and steal away with his holocron before slipping out of the chaos and escaping with it. Taking the artifact back with her to an abandoned Sith fortress on Thule, Nisha conducted painstaking research on the holocron and managed to learn some of the secrets which had been stored away in its databank.
Despite her best efforts though, she was unable to fully unlock the holocron's true potential as a vast majority of its information had been sealed away behind arcane Sith spells put in place by the Dark Lord. Nevertheless, Nisha was able to glean enough insight from the holocron in order to enhance her own affinity with the Dark Side; as well as imprint a portion of her own knowledge into its databank.
Sith Talisman
What some may first mistake for an ornate piece of jewelry is, in fact, a powerful talisman crafted by Nisha herself using knowledge that she gained from Lord Malum's holocron. Imbued with the Dark Side and worn around her neck on an elegant silver chain, the talisman emits an eerie incandescent purple glow and allows her to amplify the effects of her Force powers.
Chief among the powers granted to her by the talisman is the ability to exert control over her pet Tuk'ata hounds, Barron and Marbas. Feral beasts by nature, a combination of Nisha's domineering attitude and her Force powers allow her to command the Tuk'atas to do her bidding.
Starship:
Mirage
Class: Fury-class Interceptor
Length: 20 meters
Crew:
-- Pilots: 2
-- Passengers: 3-4
Weapons: Laser Cannons (x2)
Hyperdrive: Class 2
Mirage
Class: Fury-class Interceptor
Length: 20 meters
Crew:
-- Pilots: 2
-- Passengers: 3-4
Weapons: Laser Cannons (x2)
Hyperdrive: Class 2
Thanks!
