Elara Drenn
Character
ELARA DRENN
| Age | 23 |
| Species | Petrusian |
| Gender | Female |
| Height | 1.86 meters (5’11”) |
| Weight | 67 kilograms (147 lbs) |
| Force Sensitive | Yes — informally trained |
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
Tall and long-limbed, Elara Drenn possesses the lean physique of someone accustomed to climbing through maintenance shafts, crossing rooftops and disappearing through places where respectable people generally use doors. She lacks the imposing build of a conventional soldier, but there is an athletic economy to her movements that can make her seem considerably more dangerous once she starts moving.
Elara's skin is a distinctive purplish-pink typical of her Petrusian heritage, contrasted sharply by bright orange hair. She usually wears it in a long, high ponytail with short bangs across her forehead. Her features are angular and expressive, though she has become remarkably good at making them reveal precisely as much—or as little—as she wants.
Her normal field attire consists of dark, close-fitting clothing beneath lightweight protective layers. Rather than looking overtly military, her equipment has been selected to pass for the practical gear of a spacer, courier, mechanic, mercenary or traveler depending upon what the situation demands. Pouches, concealed pockets and small pieces of technology are scattered throughout the ensemble. Elara strongly prefers equipment she can abandon without immediately identifying her as a Protectorate operative.
When an assignment requires something less conspicuous, she is comfortable adopting local fashions, uniforms and civilian clothing. Changing how people perceive her is part of the job.
INVENTORY
- Compact hold-out blaster
- Vibroknife
- Lightweight armorweave field clothing
- Slicing kit
- Encrypted UPSS comlink
- Portable identity and credential spoofer
- Microbinoculars
- Concealed audio/visual recording devices
- Smoke and flash capsules
- Lock bypass tools
- Compact medical kit
- Several civilian identities and corresponding documentation
- Whatever clothing, equipment and questionable paperwork her current cover requires
Elara deliberately carries no lightsaber. Aside from having never received the training necessary to properly construct or employ one, carrying the traditional weapon of a Jedi or Sith would rather spectacularly undermine the point of being an infiltrator.
PERSONALITY AND BELIEFS
Elara is observant before she is talkative. She likes to understand the rhythm of a room before inserting herself into it, watching who speaks, who listens, who everyone unconsciously looks toward and who appears uncomfortable when particular subjects arise. What can initially seem like aloofness is usually concentration. Once she has decided how she fits into a situation, however, Elara can become considerably more personable.
Infiltration has encouraged a mischievous streak. She enjoys getting somewhere she was explicitly told she could not go, and there is a particular satisfaction in walking through a guarded door because someone confidently held it open for her. Elara is not above flirting, playing confused, appearing harmless or exploiting someone's assumptions if doing so makes an assignment easier. She considers pride a particularly useful vulnerability.
Despite being a capable liar professionally, Elara dislikes deception in her personal relationships. Maintaining false identities for days or weeks at a time has made her value the handful of people around whom she can simply be Elara.
Her relationship with the Force is similarly uncomplicated. She knows it exists. She knows she can touch it. Beyond that, she has little interest in debating whether it belongs to the Light, the Dark or anyone else. Jedi philosophy and Sith doctrine both strike her as attempts to place rules around something she first experienced as instinct.
Elara's loyalty to the United Protectorate of Sovereign Systems is consequently practical rather than religious or ideological. She believes independent worlds should be allowed to remain independent and that protecting sovereignty sometimes requires someone to operate quietly before fleets and armies ever need to become involved.
STRENGTHS
Ghost in the Crowd — Elara is an accomplished infiltrator. She is skilled at constructing cover identities, social engineering, surveillance, covert entry and recognizing the little behavioral expectations that allow someone to appear as though they belong somewhere.
]Read the Room — Even before understanding that she was Force-sensitive, Elara possessed an uncanny ability to recognize danger, tension and changes in people's intentions. The Force has sharpened this into a mixture of intuition, heightened awareness and occasional flashes of precognition.
Improviser — Plans rarely survive infiltration intact. Elara is particularly good at adapting when identities are questioned, doors unexpectedly lock, contacts disappear or someone inconveniently decides to become suspicious.
Unconventional Force User — Elara was never taught to think of the Force through the rigid structures of a Jedi academy or Sith training regime. She approaches it instinctively and sometimes finds solutions a formally trained practitioner might overlook.
WEAKNESSES
Unconventional Means Untrained — Elara's informal education has enormous gaps. She lacks sophisticated telekinetic control, formal lightsaber training and knowledge of many techniques that would be elementary to a properly trained Jedi or Sith. Against an experienced Force practitioner, enthusiasm and intuition are poor substitutes for decades of discipline.
Instinct Is Not Certainty — Elara has learned to trust her feelings perhaps a little too much. Force-assisted intuition can warn her that something is wrong without conveniently explaining what is wrong. She can misinterpret those impressions or become overly confident in them.
Built to Slip Away — Elara is fast and agile rather than physically powerful. Her equipment emphasizes concealment and mobility over heavy protection. A prolonged stand-up fight against heavily armored opponents puts her at a significant disadvantage.
Just One More Door — Curiosity is both a professional asset and a personal flaw. Elara has difficulty walking away from an unanswered question, particularly when someone has gone to considerable trouble to hide the answer.
HISTORY
Elara Drenn was born into a galaxy that had already accumulated more fallen governments, resurrected empires and wandering armies than most beings could reasonably keep track of. Her childhood among Petrusians was considerably less dramatic. Her family belonged to a community that had learned generations earlier that survival often depended less upon who claimed authority over a sector and more upon knowing when to keep one's head down while those authorities fought one another.
Elara was never especially good at the keeping-her-head-down part.
Her first experiences with the Force were sufficiently mundane that nobody initially recognized them for what they were. She knew when someone was approaching before hearing their footsteps. She moved seconds before machinery failed. She occasionally answered questions people had not quite finished asking. During childhood games she proved infuriatingly difficult to surprise. Adults called her perceptive. Friends accused her of cheating.
Neither explanation was entirely wrong.
Her education in the Force began accidentally. During her adolescence, Elara crossed paths with a wandering Force-sensitive spacer who possessed enough experience to recognize what she was but very little formal education of their own. They were neither Jedi nor Sith and had no desire to become either. What followed could generously be called an apprenticeship, although "occasional lessons whenever both happened to be on the same planet" would have been considerably more accurate.
There were no temples, training remotes or carefully preserved manuscripts. Elara learned aboard freighters, in cargo bays, around campfires and while waiting for repairs in questionable spaceports. Her teacher explained the Force through practical exercises: feel someone approaching without looking; find a dropped hydrospanner with your eyes closed; know when someone intends to throw a punch; quiet your thoughts enough to notice what your instincts are actually telling you.
Telekinesis came eventually, although Elara was far better at pulling a keycard from a table than throwing someone across a room. Meditation bored her until she discovered it could be done while sitting atop a moving cargo container. Philosophy usually ended with an argument.
Then her teacher moved on.
Elara never regarded the separation as abandonment. There had never been promises of knighthood or some grand destiny waiting at the end of her education. She had been given enough knowledge to understand what she possessed and enough caution not to recklessly experiment with everything she could imagine.
The skills that eventually defined her career came from considerably more ordinary sources. Elara worked passage aboard independent vessels and took jobs ranging from courier work to cargo handling. She discovered that she had a gift for noticing systems—not merely computers, but people. Which uniform received unquestioned access. Which employee habitually left a secured door open while smoking. Which official enjoyed being recognized. Which guard wanted conversation and which desperately wanted everyone to leave him alone.
She learned slicing because sometimes charm failed.
She learned stealth because sometimes slicing failed.
She learned how to fight because sometimes everything failed.
Her introduction to the United Protectorate of Sovereign Systems came during the early intelligence efforts that followed its formation, when the organization was still defining the scope and limits of its reach. While operating in territory of interest to the emerging Protectorate, Elara became entangled in an operation aimed at uncovering actors attempting to destabilize one of the region’s independent governments. Exactly how she became involved depended on who told the story. The official version emphasized civic responsibility and timely intervention. Elara’s version usually involved being in the wrong cantina, asking the wrong question, and discovering—too late—that curiosity has a way of becoming operationally significant.
Whatever the truth, she proved useful.
More importantly, she demonstrated the sort of initiative the Protectorate was actively seeking as it tried to defend a collection of sovereign systems without becoming the centralized authority it was meant to stand apart from. Conventional intelligence assets could gather information. Military forces could secure territory. Elara could go places neither could officially be seen.
She was eventually brought into UPSS service as an infiltration and intelligence asset, receiving formal training for the first time in her life. Tradecraft, surveillance, counter-surveillance, slicing, covert communications, and operational security were layered onto abilities she had previously developed through trial, error, and more than a few narrowly avoided disasters.
Her Force sensitivity remains deliberately secondary to her role. Elara does not present herself as a Jedi, does not pretend to possess their expertise and has no intention of becoming the Protectorate's answer to one. To her, the Force is another sense—an extraordinary one, certainly, but still something that should support good judgment rather than replace it.
Today Elara serves where the UPSS needs eyes before it needs warships. She enters unstable systems ahead of official involvement, evaluates resistance movements, identifies local power structures, maps hostile infrastructure, establishes contacts and determines which whispered rumors might actually be worth someone's attention.
Sometimes that means spending weeks constructing an identity.
Sometimes it means crawling through an air duct.
And occasionally it means standing on the wrong side of a locked door, smiling at the security officer approaching her and trusting that somewhere between preparation, audacity and the Force, she will think of something before he asks to see her identification.