Shar Sieu
Revenant Four
Shar grew up on Castell in the days before the Alliance, when the Commerce Guild reclaimed its ancestral home and de facto brought back corporate rule. As a child of one of the Guild’s many ‘vassal families’, Shar saw the drudgery and exploitation of the Guild first-hand. Further, he had relatives that lived within the borders of the Sith Empire, and when they fled to Castell, bringing stories of horrific dictatorship and exploitation, Shar grew to hate the Sith and Imperial ideology by extension. It was thus to some relief when the Galactic Alliance was founded, and reforms came to Castell, along with a strong defence against their neighbours.
For almost a decade, Castell experienced some peace and prosperity under the aegis of the Alliance even as raids from the Sith spilled over the border. Shar became a true patriot of the Alliance and a deep believer in the Republican ideals that guided it. However, after the end of that war, a previously unknown politician came to power as Senator and de facto governor of the planet. Over time under her administration, the planet became ever more Imperial in governance and outlook. To Shar’s anger, this change was partially welcomed by many of its citizens as there appeared to be little drawbacks to the new government. As one who remembered the oppression of the Guild days, he knew it was only a matter of time when a benevolent fist would be coopted into iron. Indeed, his industrial neighbourhood was one that saw increased policing and restrictions but few of the promised improvements.
When he had grown into adulthood, Shar eventually found himself entangled with a small underground dissident movement named the Coalition for Liberty, consisting mainly of low-level administrators, street punks and some ex-Guilders that had run afoul of the new administration and its methods. Their actions were largely confined to vandalism, leafletting and low-level civil disobedience, with the occasional sabotage of government facilities (which Shar happily volunteered for), but things took a turn for the worse during and after the Kuat Crisis. The group’s leaders, along with many radical Republican groups, had decided that their planet’s government was becoming dangerously pro-Imperial and planned demonstrations at public events in the coming months.
Nobody knew how it happened, but within weeks of the plan fomenting, enforcers found the radicals’ hideouts and arrested most of them, thwarting their plans. Publicly, the government declared that the groups had been planning assassinations, and though Shar never heard of such plans, he never could put it past them. The public ate up the narrative and approved of increased “security measures”. Shar was lucky to avoid being implicated, as he was surreptitiously busy doing some minor ‘street work’ with one of the group’s lieutenants. Realising that the Castell government might come after them next, the older man suggested Shar join up with the GADF and get off-planet. Shar had already made plans to become a spacer for the (now much more regulated) Guild but realised that this was a safer option: the reach of the local governments did not extend to the Alliance and ultimately it allowed him to fight the Sith and perhaps even the Imperials. What really tipped the balance was his disillusionment with the Castell public and their reaction to the arrests and years of support for the government.
Shar applied to the GADF, much to the worry of his family, and the lieutenant of the Coalition, apparently an ex-GADF agent of some sort, pulled a few strings to make sure background checks were not too thorough. When Shar was unexpectedly assigned a term studying recon and sabotage operations shortly after gaining his wings, he took was quite sure the Alliance had some inkling of his past, but decided to keep his mouth shut. In the years since, Shar has devoted all his effort and energy to being a pilot, even gaining qualifications for the B-Wing. Engaged in a few skirmishes since, he was recently assigned to Revenant Squadron, which suited Shar just fine: at the front, in the thick of it.
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