Arla Rodarch
Marshal, Journeyman Protector
PERSONALITY AND BELIEFS
Before her year of hell, Arla was a measured person, disciplined but also possessing patience and poise. Her change in personality was as marked as her loss of the Force. She retains her discipline and determination, but is now unleashed, prepared to do whatever is necessary to serve her purpose; her vode.
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
Arla pays particular attention to neatness and detail, and unless in the field, her clothing is always of a high standard of presentation. In the field she will wear comfortable and practical attire. Likewise, her equipment is always maintained carefully and arranged neatly on her person for maximum efficiency.
INVENTORY
Mandalorian Beskar'gam
Blaster
Ion Blaster
Beskar Blade
Personal Shield
Stun Darts
Stun Grenades
Ship - The Defender
STRENGTHS
Hardened by surviving
Skilled Warrior
Widely traveled and experienced
WEAKNESSES
Arbitrary
Solitary
Vengeful
HISTORY
Born 867 ABY to fleet captain father and sith lord mother. Raised by father on exile Echani colony on Alula.
Joined House military as a cadet at 12. Present on scout vessel during the Recontact at age 13. Accelerated training, supervised deployments while demonstrating effective tactics.
Kidnapped while on deployment by mother and trained as a Sith apprentice. Learned and practiced combat. Schooled in galactic history, became expert on galactic technologies. Came to know and understand, and hate the Sith.
Rejected Mother and fled back to Alula, resuming military service under father's command. Graduated officer at 18. Commanded defence units during Siege of Alula age 23.
Decorated multiple times. Promoted to flag rank age 30. Served with distinction in several campaigns, with a focus on peacekeeping and humanitarian efforts.
SWRP Chaos Early
Chose exile and the life of a mercenary after the death of father and rise to power of older brother. Took her significant personal Remnant forces away from Alula and into the wider galaxy, in search of a new home far from the politics and intrigue of the old.
Settled the New Star League Remnants in the Qena system and worked to found the United Galactic Federation. Worked with the Draconians, Lilaste Order and Night Sisters. Fought against bad people, including a battle against Sith raiders on Clak'dor VII.
"Year of Hell"
Arla was captured and held for ransom by rogue agents formerly of Qenan Intelligence, people she had fired or demoted. Her memories of these first few weeks of captivity are hazy at best. She knew that she had been drugged, interrogated and tortured. She knew little to nothing of who had taken her, where she had been taken, or whether she would survive.
What she couldn't know was that after her kidnapping, the Federation had replied to the ransom demand that they would never negotiate with terrorists. They had opted for a military solution, but come up completely empty. After all, the operation had been carried out from within the very agency tasked with investigating it.
After over a month of captivity she found herself in a small cell, which was dark, humid and cold. She could not call on the Force, and found herself clinging to life with the barely adequate and often spoiled food and water given to the prisoners. There was almost no outside contact, save for the voices of other prisoners she could not see, save for if she looked out the small barred window in the cell door at other faces pressed against identical cages.
Life did not improve, and she might well have gone mad, given in, given up, and simply stopped, but she was not truly alone. One of her neighbors was an old man, and slowly, over weeks, they made tentative contact. Shouting back and forth over the raucous din of the other, often crazed prisoners was their only sane contact. The guards were used to the noise. As they built a rapport and eventually some trust, they cooperated to bore a small thin hole between their cells.
This would come to change Arla's life in a way even her captivity, torture and shame could not touch. The man called himself Kad, but she suspected that was not his true name. He was very old, eighty at least, though he said he didn't know for sure, and she believed that. He was a Mandalorian, and the deep pain in his voice spoke of a hard life. What spoke to Arla's soul more than his words was the way he spoke of his 'vode'. His whole speech pattern changed to an unbroken, proud, almost happy man, who seemed far from the hell of their cells.
For months, Arla listened to Kad's stories, and occasionally opened up to tell some of her own. She had known Mandalorians before, but never understood their culture and the appeal to a sane and rational being before. A family, an aliit, clan in Mando'a, which Kad tried in vain to teach her. Arla tried, but she learned by reading not by hearing, and she struggled. His stories though, taught her other things, most importantly that family was all that mattered, not blood, but chosen family, clan, vode. A purpose, a belonging, a million million brothers and sisters alive or dead all standing lock step beside you.
It was during one of their late night discussions that Arla first raised the almost impossibly dim prospects of escaping their prison. To her surprise, Kad laughed and asked what she needed him for. Arla was confused until the old man explained that they hadn't opened his cell door since he'd been put in many many years ago. But he then crudely explained why they might open Arla's door. She was repulsed and disgusted by the idea, but came to see the raw practicality of the old Mando's approach.
Her next door neighbor knew far more about their prison, its layout and location. They were on the Onderon moon of Dxun in an old Mandalorian prison thought long abandoned, run by an ex-pirate crew that dabbled in slaving and smuggling. Arla had often wondered about why she'd ended up in such a place, but settled for the explanation that it was probably selected as a place no one would think to look for her.
She chose her target with care, having come to know the few guards fairly well by careful observation over an extended period of time. There weren't many guards in the prison and the few there were, were very serious bastards. Arla finally chose a younger man with horrifying facial scars, playing on what she hoped was his lack of female company. Carefully, she struck up what accord she could with the infrequent food service. Eventually she suggested wanting something more to eat. With the rapport she had built, she was able to drop hints without alarming the jailer and putting his guard up.
The less said about her escape the better, as the unpleasant way she'd tricked the guard into opening her cell was matched by the unpleasant journey she made through the prison's waste disposal system. Two miles of crawling through face-deep detritus and the excretions of dozens of species was a memory she wished to banish. In her broken and weakened state, without the Force to call on, moving was slow and difficult. She passed out several times before getting out into the open, but her ordeal was far from over.
Weeks of barely surviving in the jungles, often dehydrated and hungry, often without any sort of decent shelter took their toll. But Arla's reserve maintained, not only her will to carry on, but her will to fight to find her own vode, her own purpose beyond herself. To her, this was just one more test after another, and she persevered. Things changed for her when she came upon an abandoned Mandalorian outpost that offered not only shelter, but hope of escape in the form of an old but still intact shuttle.
Painstaking repairs often by trial and error took the Echani woman more weeks, and still she required parts to repair the engines, and a replacement navicomputer, the original having been ripped from the cockpit console. With shelter, and access to water, Arla had now only to await an opportunity. She scouted out from her base, ranging further and further, until one day she spotted smoke in the distance. By chance, and fortune, it was a crashed shuttle. When she found it, it had been stripped, but still contained a navicomputer and the parts she required.
Arla successfully escaped Dxun, but felt far from ready to return to her old life. The shuttle was to be her home for the next while, as she came to terms with her ordeal, and the life-changing impact it had made on her, her outlook on life, and her attitude. Perhaps the biggest change was the fact she could no longer feel the Force, presuming that one or other of the druggings and torture sessions had impacted on her system in some permanent way. She felt the loss far less than she would have before her personal year of hell. She had another way now. The way. She'd find it herself. As Kad had taught her, give in to winning, not to the shabla Force. She intended to win.
Her journey to find others of her kind ended at Mandalore itself, a world whose entire northern hemisphere was a ruined, wrecked zone. She found others in the south, near vast deserts, and under them, there yet remained Mandalorians. In the hidden green city of Clan Rodarch, Arla was adopted into their ways, and their ways became her ways. Among their harsh reality on Mandalore she found her purpose, and quickly proved her worth to her brothers and sisters. The Clan's Alor who had adopted her soon came to trust her value as a warrior. Arla took seriously her bond, and contributed much to her vode. In turn she built up bonds of love and family, and gained her own beskar'gam, to stand as one of them.
Ongoing
Joined the Mandalorian Protectors with others of Clan Rodarch following a new Mand'alor.
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