Ex-Trooper
Evalina Betrik
| Faction | Darkwire |
| Birthplace | Soullex |
| Age | 24 GSY |
| Occupation | Ex-Soldier |
| Home | Coruscant |
| Species | Human |
| Gender | Female |
| Force Sensitive | No |
| Height | 1.68 Meters |
| Weight | 60 kg |
| Hair Color | Blonde |
| Eye Color | Grey |
| Skin Color | Pale |
BIOGRAPHY:
In the early years of the galaxy's emergence from the 400-year darkness, many new dreams were forged... and many were broken. The dreams of a young soldier named Emmett Hayes just kept breaking. He dreamed of serving the Republic, and the One Sith conquest drove him from the Core. He dreamed of retiring from military life, and found his career as a security consultant banal and unfulfilling by comparison. He dreamed of settling down with his family, a wife who loved him and a new son and daughter, and his vices caught up with him. Hayes was a man of action. He couldn't truly live, couldn't be his authentic self, without the thrills he'd found in Republic special ops or the Anatarian Rangers. Without it, he gambled and drank himself to the brink of death... and finally reenlisted.
It was in this dark period that his daughter Evalina was born.
For Emmett's wife, Marin Betrik Hayes, enough was enough. Her husband had been distant from the moment he'd been discharged; there had been moments of passion, even of real love, but he just couldn't bring himself to play the part of contented family man. So Marin left, and she took the kids with her. She left for Sith Empire space. Maybe it was for stability, like she told herself... or maybe it was, at least in part, an act of petty revenge on Emmett, who'd been fighting the Sith his whole adult life. Whatever the truth, Marin and her kids - Eva and her older brother Quinn - drifted through Imperial space for a few years, trying to get away from the wars enveloping the galaxy. Eventually, Marin brought them out the other side, to the relatively peaceful frontier. They settled on Soullex.
Before the Sith Empire came, Soullex was nothing. The isolated planet was, at best, a footnote in the history books, the site of a minor engagement in a long-ago war. It had no organized trade, no planetary government, nothing but a scattering of isolated farming and mining towns and the homesteads between them. Evalina Betrik grew up on that Soullex, that slow-paced, one horse world devoid of opportunity. She was a smart kid and a hard worker, helping to keep her family's outlying farm afloat practically since she could walk. In a more cosmopolitan sector, she would've been earning scholarships for sports and academics alike. As it was, everyone looked at her and said that kid could go places... but they didn't know what places there were to go, or how to get to them.
Then the Sith Empire came, and life on Soullex changed. It was a largely bloodless annexation; the planet couldn't have put up much of a fight if it'd tried, and almost nobody did. Old-timers grumbled about taxes and bureaucracy and legal restrictions they'd never had to deal with before... but to Eva, the galaxy was opening up before her eyes. She suddenly found herself with state-provided medical coverage and free admission to any of the Empire's universities. Her homeworld, now part of the carefully-planned Imperial economy, began to thrive, protected by tariffs on outside goods that made the backwater world a competitive trading partner for the first time in its history. Her family went from dirt-poor to being able to afford every necessity, and even a few luxuries.
Sure, she heard rumors of Sith atrocities, of genocides and dark rituals and inquisitorial torture facilities... but all of that felt distant and unreal. Her experience of the Empire was as a tightly-controlled state providing security and prosperity in a chaotic, uncertain galaxy. Eva bought into it all - the faith, the propaganda, all of it reinforced her views. She believed in the disciplined Imperial vision, and she was more than willing to defend it against the madness she saw outside its borders. When a local Sith-Imperial Citizens' Militia brigade started forming on Soullex, she was beyond eager to volunteer. If she was going to take advantage of the free education the Sith were willing to provide - and she did plan to, hopefully someday soon - she should be willing to serve the Empire.
Her mother was less enthused, remembering how war had changed Emmett... but at least the SICA was a defensive group, called up when needed to protect the Empire's territories. Eva had to wait a few years before she could join the militia, but her brother Quinn was old enough to enlist right away. Deployed under emergency conditions, he ended up far from home, fighting to preserve the Empire on a distant frontier. Marin and Eva didn't find out that he'd been killed at the Battle of Dantooine until nearly a year later. It broke Marin's heart, the second loved one she'd lost to war... but it only fired Eva's determination. The Sith Empire wasn't just the government that had changed her life for the better anymore, it was also the cause her brother had given his life for. She had to honor that.
Eva had grown up on a farm, and that meant an active childhood. She had learned to work long, hard days with her family's livestock, giving her impressive physical strength and endurance. She had also learned to defend the animals from the predators that roamed the plains and woods of Soullex by night, and was an expert woodsman - and a crack shot with a hunting rifle. She excelled in the militia's training regimen, taking easily to the disciplined structure of military life. She practiced sabotage and guerrilla warfare, drilling over and over again the defensive tactics she would need if Soullex - or any other part of the Imperial home front - ever came under attack. Despite her young age, she quickly made the rank of Corporal, and worked to help train other SICA recruits.
All too soon, the Empire's enemies gathered, and Eva's militia battalion was deployed.
At first, the young Corporal was a fearless patriot. Sent into battle all across the collapsing Sith territories, she served on Muunilist, Vjun, Krayiss II, and Ziost. Her first battle, in which she clashed with Jedi and managed to come out alive, did little to challenge her faith in the Empire... but things went downhill from there. On Vjun she encountered an elite NIO infiltrator, who took her hostage in an effort to infiltrate a Sith surface-to-space battery. Though she didn't know it yet, that operative was her father, Emmett Hayes. When he realized who she was, he quickly abandoned his objective and left her behind, trying to protect them both. A confused Eva was interrogated by the Saaraishash for hours, but could give no answer as to why it had all happened. She lived under a haze of suspicion after that.
On Krayiss II, she made her first major break with what the Sith had taught her when she helped save a Jedi's life. The Jedi, Viers Connory, had unintentionally killed one of her squadmates while trying to disable him. The skirmish that followed, and the words they shared, deeply shook Eva's view of the Jedi... and the vile, dark, oppressive environment of Sith-held Krayiss II challenged her view of the Sith and the Empire. When an unconscious Viers was nearly devoured by the awakened spirits of ancient Sith Lords, Eva carried the Jedi to safety, leaving her where she could be found by Galactic Alliance forces. It was a major disciplinary violation, the kind that could get her court-martialed... but no one ever found out. She carried that secret, her act of compassion toward an enemy, heavy in her heart.
It was on Ziost, as the Empire began to fall into its death throes, that her final decision came. Cornered by a pair of Jedi, who easily disabled her squad, Eva agreed to defect in exchange for letting the others go. Immediately branded a traitor and spat upon by those who had been her friends, she felt her life crumbling around her... but the Jedi were as good as their word. Eva was brought back to Coruscant, where she was provided with the tools to turn her life around. Freed of the dying Empire just in time to watch it recede into the shadows, she began to build herself a new life as a citizen of the Galactic Alliance. It began with confronting her past. Visiting her brother's gravesite on Dantooine, she was visited again by her father, learning the truth that the assassin Abaddon was none other than Emmett Hayes.
Eva had changed by then. She knew why she had believed in the Empire, why she'd believed it would be an honor to serve and protect it... but she had come to understand that, whatever lofty principles and goals she'd been taught the Sith were seeking, their ends did not justify their means. Though her father would have been glad to see her join him as a soldier of the New Imperial Order, hunting down and destroying the remnants of the Empire, Eva was done fighting - or so she told herself. She returned to her little apartment on Coruscant, ready to live out the rest of her days as just another private citizen on the teeming city planet. She got a job. She filed the paperwork for her mom to immigrate from Soullex. She started dating. She put her past as a soldier behind her, and started living a normal life.
But though she was done with war, war wasn't done with her. So she discovered when the Mawites came...
TRAITS:
[+]Outdoorswoman: Eva grew up on an isolated farm on Soullex, where she learned to be hardy and self-reliant. She knows how to move quickly and quietly outdoors, how to avoid natural hazards, how to work with animals, and how to perform basic first aid. She's also a good tracker and a crack shot.
[+]Well-Drilled: Although basic training for SICA operatives tends to be fairly limited, Eva learned a lot from it. Her field discipline keeps her calm under fire. She has learned small-unit tactics and the fundamentals of guerrilla fighting, and is gifted in the arts of sabotage, ambush, and field repair.
[+]Survivor: Eva served on some of the most brutal battlefields of the Sith Empire's last days, facing down multiple Jedi and making it through the Galactic Alliance's Stygian Campaign, the Third Imperial Civil War, and the onslaught of the Ashlan Crusade. She knows how to stay alive in the field.
[-]Shattered Principles: Eva once believed with all her heart in the cause of the Sith Empire, a true patriot more than willing to fight for what she believed in. The gradual eroding of her beliefs as she experienced more and more of the Sith - and of the galaxy beyond their domain - has left her jaded.
[-]Limited Training: SICA operatives are trained in basic weapons, insurgency, and scorched-earth tactics, but little else; they are considered auxiliaries, not fully-formed soldiers. As a result, there is a great deal that falls outside Eva's training, things she will either have to learn by doing or leave to others.
[-]Still Young: For being barely twenty, Eva has been through a lot. She watched her government collapse around her, was branded a traitor by everyone she called a friend, and had to reinvent her entire life. Though more experienced than most people her age, she still has a lot of growing to do.
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