entropy
Lieutenant
Joined: 13 Jul 2005
Posts: 81
Location: Wisconsin
|
 Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2005 9:37 am Post subject: The Azure Expanse (Long) |
 |
|
Our kindly GM has posted in the adventure thread, asking for us to post our character backstories. He's even bribed us with character points for doing so. I thought they would fit better here. This is the story of Drax, right up to that fateful night in the restaurant when he decided it was time to leave Balius for a while.
Daryl “Drax” Barstak was born to a middle class family on Balius. The Azure Expanse wasn’t in many hyperspace databases back then, so for the first ten years of his life he never saw an alien. Once exposed, however, he quickly developed a fascination with alien cultures, especially the art and entertainment. He did well enough in school, and could have probably gone into any career he wanted. He had heard of the republic, and considered getting into politics with the hope of someday being a senator. (At this time, the Azure Expanse had no representation in the Republic).
His first year of college went great. He suddenly had access to a world of new experiences. The university library had more information than he could ever have hoped to find. He got on the wrestling team, and did fairly well, but as his coach always complained, he put very little effort into it. Later that year, he joined the target shooting team and found he was a natural. Summer came, and he joined a relief mission to ID#CAR048-M-I in the Vorus Cluster. A group of 20 students brought along better technology and fresh ideas, and doubled the agricultural output of several communities.
At the beginning of his second year, things started to go downhill. Spice was becoming popular in the university, and some of his friends got involved. He saw the horrible withdrawal symptoms, and decided it just wasn’t for him. That didn’t keep him safe, however.
While sitting at a cantina with some friends one evening, a Rodian walked up to their table shouting something in an unfamiliar language. Drax caught the words “spice” and “payment,” but nothing else. His friend Jareth suddenly jumped up from the table and ran for the door. The Rodian pulled out a blaster and shot him in the leg. Two local cops happened to be outside the cantina at the time, and when they came in to investigate, the Rodian took off out the other door. Unfortunately for him, a datapad slipped out of his coat as he tried to run around the table.
Because of the confusion, with Jareth screaming on the ground, and the cops chasing the Rodian, no one saw Drax pick up the datapad and shove it into his pocket. He stayed with Jareth until the medics came, answered the questions the cops asked, and never once mentioned the datapad or what the Rodian had said. Jareth spent the night in a hospital, but was fine by morning.
When Drax got home, he took a look at the datapad and found it contained a contact list. Having a streak of vigilante in him (probably a result of all those hours spent watching alien action movies), so his first thought was to get a blaster permit and track down the Rodian and all of his friends. He knew, however, that that would lead to a much shorter life expectancy. Thinking back to his humanitarian mission, he realized that the best way for him to make a difference was to offer his services to an organization that was already trying to deal with the problem. That afternoon he dropped out of school and joined the police academy.
He kept in contact with many of his friends, including Jareth who eventually got his debt paid off and stopped dealing. He tried his best to track down everyone on the datapad and get to know them from a distance. He learned all he could about spice and the spice trade, and he began to develop a “sixth sense” for recognizing spice dealers. When he graduated the academy the next year, he requested, and was assigned to, the couter-spice unit.
It had recently become legal for officers to offer monetary rewards to anonymous informants for their help in catching criminals. Drax took advantage of this, and claimed his knowledge came from his network of informants, pocketing all the money himself. A natural bureaucrat, he played the system like this for about two years, leading the police to dozens of raids and arrests. He was being looked at for a promotion when he found out that Breem, the Rodian who shot Jareth, was back in town.
Drax quickly constructed a story to bring his team to Breem’s doorstep. They arrived, by chance, in the middle of a major deal, resulting in a major firefight. Breem ran out the back and Drax chased him down an alley, where he tripped and shot him in the head. The official report stated that Breem was killed when Drax tripped while chasing him, accidentally discharging his blaster. The public outcry, especially from the alien community, caused a political mess, and Drax was put on a desk job pending a complete investigation.
The investigation never took place, however, as a new chief came in and chopped the Internal Investigation unit in half. Drax got bounced from department to department, his lack of attention to detail and apparent lack of ambition made him unpopular with many of his bosses. In reality, he was just bored with paperwork, and this caused him to get sloppy. Ironically, he eventually wound up in Alien Affairs.
Blaming the local alien population for his desk job (which he always considered a punishment), he took great pleasure in locking up aliens. He spent most of his time taking statements from witnesses, and found that many witnesses to crimes were criminals themselves, and that he could often coerce a confession from them. It was in this way he first met Edj, who witnessed a shooting at an illegal gambling hall. Edj got 30 days for illegal gambling based on the statements Drax took.
Drax was well-known in the department, and there are more than a few people in power who like the kind of guy who would shoot a fleeing Rodian in the back. When he actually started liking his job again, he was making more arrests per month than many street cops. His superiors noticed this, and he was selected for detective training after only four years as an officer. He passed the exam with flying colors, and got an assignment in Alien Interrogations, with a LeVo droid as a partner. Le-Vo-7TN was a specialized high-perception version of the standard law enforcement droid, and complemented Drax’ abilities well. The next six years were great, until the Empire came.
When the Empire decided they needed a presence in the Azure Expanse, Balius seemed the logical place. It had the largest spaceport, and the most people. They stated the need to supplement the police force with their stormtroopers, and took over patrolling the spaceport, citing the rampant bribery and corruption in dealing with smugglers. Slowly they expanded their power, eliminating more and more jobs, mostly people who were critical of the government allowing the Empire to step in like this. Later, they started eliminating the specialists, and Drax was out of a job.
Like many government employees, he was relying on a good pension, and had little in the way of savings. He knew he couldn’t afford the next month’s rent, and was sitting in a quiet restaurant, considering what to do next when slipped into detective mode and started looking around at the patrons. A guy comes in and starts dropping money on everyone, buying drinks and such. He had a green droid tattooed on his arm, but Drax had no idea what it meant. He just knew that someone acting like this was trouble.
Suddenly, two big guys with the same tattoo burst through the door. It didn’t take a cop to notice that one of them was carrying an illegal disruptor cannon. When they started threatening the guy buying the drinks, a Coynite took offense, and things got ugly fast. |
|
I get so tired of seeing "All family dead. Left home to see the galaxy. Became a ..."
