Vra

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'I have lived sixteen years as a slave. I have seen friends, family, my own parents, killed before my eyes. Give me your trials and tests and challenges. I could use a laugh.'

Vra 'Steel Tusk'

Description
As a Yuzzem, Vra has shown more than once to be somewhat rash and volatile. Both youth and his life in bondage have further added to his tendency to anger. Fortunately, Vra’s time under Phoo’s care and teaching has taught him some control and patience (considerable patience, given the old woman’s personality). Spending time with other Yuzzem has also taught him more about his own species, and Vra has developed to be a fairly generous, honorable and fair being. Though hot tempered and stronger than most other beings around him, Vra has tried to follow both the codes of honor of his people, the Jedi, and himself. Because of his time as a slave, Vra has never once called anyone ‘master/mistress’ or ‘sir/ma’am’, seeing them as an insult instead of an honorific.

Appearance
Large, heavily muscled, covered in thick black fur, Vra looks the typical Yuzzem. His eyes are odd for a Yuzzem, one brown, the other gray, and were considered a good omen by his parents. During his younger, more rash years, a mine overseer cut off both of the Yuzzem’s tusks, as punishment for trying to stop the Barabel from beating another prisoner. Vra would go several years without tusks, being ridiculed by non-Yuzzem and pitied by his fellow species, until Phoo gave him a gift; two steel tusk prosthetics, which earned him a new nickname from his fellow slaves. In honor of his parents, the tusks are etched with patterns to represent them; one graceful and soft for his mother, one hard and strong for his father. As a Yuzzem, Vra has little need for clothing, and has little in the way of concern when it comes to galactic nudity taboos. Fur is all the clothing a Yuzzem needs, after all. But, for ease of carrying, Vra does wear a harness with a utility belt for his personal equipment and weapons. On a chain around his neck hangs two crystals, one carefully shaped and clear as ice, the other a deep brown, both given to him by Dam Phoo when he left the mines. All of the few possessions he owns are carried around in a backpack, which he rarely lets out of his sight.

Training
During his time in the mines and slave camps, Vra was taught by both Dam Phoo and others several forms of martial arts, a mix of Echani, Stava, K’tara, and Teras Kasi, with some Wrruushi thrown in by some Wookiee friends. Mostly, the martial arts were taught to him as a form of meditation to control his anger and focus his mind, but Vra is fully capable of fighting with them. Phoo also gave him many lessons in swordplay. Though Vra originally thought the training was just more meditation, as Phoo taught him more and more about the Jedi and the Force, he realized she was preparing him to wield a lightsaber, even if there were no Jedi Order for him to join.

Force Sensitive
Yes. Though Vra has had no true training in the ways of the Jedi, his tutor, Dam Phoo, taught him skills and abilities that would draw upon the Force without conscious effort. Through practice of his martial arts skills and meditation, Vra has learned- without even realizing it- to focus his mind and use the Force to improve his speed, strength, awareness, and healing. He has also proven quite lucky, able to avoid problems several times in the past.

Background
Born to enslaved parents aboard a slave transport on it’s way to a mining camp, Vra seemed destined to a life of suffering and hardship. At two years old, he watched as his parents, having led a failed revolt against the mines’ overseers, were executed before his eyes. Immediately afterward, Dam Phoo, an old Arkanian woman- nicknamed ‘Damn Fool’ by fellow slaves- effectively adopted the young Yuzzem. Phoo possessed many abilities that made others believe she was a Jedi or had been trained by one, though her demeanor in public was slightly insane. Phoo raised Vra as both child and student and, thanks to her apparent ability to influence the mines’ overseer, kept the Yuzzem safe from the greater hardships of a slave’s life.

After many years under her guidance, Phoo one day told Vra that it was time for him to leave the mines, but that she could not go with him. She explained that it was his destiny to leave and find his ‘true path’ in the galaxy. Vra resisted vehemently, not wanting to leave the woman that had long been his mother and teacher, but Phoo simply told him that he must go and, not understanding why he did, Vra left the mine camps without incident. The Yuzzem hide in the surrounding countryside, fearful of guards searching for him. When no one came, he returned to the camp’s location, only to find it, and all those within, were gone. The overseers, their slaves, and everyone Vra had ever known, had vanished. And he was alone.

With nothing left, Vra found a way off world, and set about ‘finding his path’, as his teacher had instructed him to do. He would wander for nearly a year, moving from one location to another, following hunches and lucky guesses, hoping that his next destination would bring him answers, or Jedi, or whatever it was that Phoo had sent him away to find.