"I'm not just some defenseless nobleman. The Force is with me."
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: To codify a recurring NPC for reference purposes.
- Image Credit:
- Role: Aramis is the former consort of the Ducha of Arabanth and father of their daughter Lalu Vaelor, a political activist and fugitive of the Hapan crown, and the husband of Jaina Grayson.
- Permissions: N/A
- Links: N/A
PHYSICAL INFORMATION
- Age: Adult
- Force Sensitivity: Apprentice/Padawan
- Species: Hapan/Echani
- Appearance: Gifted with an almost otherworldly beauty, Aramis' snow white hair and stormy gray eyes reveal his mixed lineage. He has a delicate look, from the fine features of his face to the elegance of his long tapered fingers, which doesn't match the strength of his will or the power in his body. His clothing is simple, though it carries subtle indicators of his heritage in design and silhouette. He wears his hair in the Hapan style, long and half tied back.
SOCIAL INFORMATION
- Name: Aramis Vaelor; Lord of House Vaelor; Dukat Vaelor
- Loyalties: Hapes Consortium (formerly) | Jaina Grayson, Lalu Vaelor
- Wealth: Though he lost his dynastic wealth with the dissolution of his first marriage, he has full access to his current wife's considerable wealth and property.
- Notable Possessions:
- Echani sword
- Well-made clothing
- Utility belt with grappling hook, flashlight, fire starter, and other tools
- Skills: Aramis was trained from childhood in a wide variety of skills considered desirable in a Hapan noble consort. His Echani upbringing made him a capable martial artist and swordsman, although his greatest talents lay in less violent pursuits. Educated in diplomacy, court etiquette, rhetoric, political theory, and the intricacies of Hapan law, he is a skilled negotiator with an instinct for reading people and navigating tense social situations. Though Force Sensitive, Aramis never received formal training and possesses little conscious command of the Force; instead, his latent sensitivity manifests primarily as unusually sharp intuition and an ability to sense the emotions and intentions of others. His experiences after his exile have further developed his talents for leadership, organization, and improvisation.
- Languages: Basic, Hapan, Huttese, binary droidspeak
- Personality: Aramis is charismatic, perceptive, and compassionate, though beneath his polished manners lies a stubborn and deeply rebellious streak. Years of being treated as a political asset taught him to conceal his feelings behind restraint and courtesy, making him slow to trust and fiercely protective of what independence he possessed. Despite the arrogance and class prejudice instilled by his noble upbringing, exile and hardship have broadened his sympathies, transforming him into an outspoken believer in equality and personal freedom. He is especially devoted to his daughter Lalu and possesses a strong paternal instinct, with threats to her safety capable of overcoming his otherwise cautious nature. Aramis prefers persuasion, diplomacy, and clever manipulation of social conventions to violence, but he is neither naïve nor squeamish about taking harsher measures when he believes them necessary. He values honesty and mutual respect above all else.
COMBAT INFORMATION
- Weapon of Choice: Sword
- Combat Function: A capable but relatively modest combatant, his primary function is in support, defense, and battlefield coordination. His Echani training gives him considerable skill in close-quarters combat, particularly with swords and other melee weapons, while his agility and perceptiveness favors a mobile, reactive fighting style built around reading opponents, evading attacks, and exploiting openings. He fights most effectively alongside others, using his natural charisma and tactical awareness to coordinate allies while protecting more vulnerable companions; when possible, he prefers disabling or outmaneuvering an enemy to killing them outright. His latent Force sensitivity occasionally manifests as heightened intuition and seemingly preternatural reactions, but his lack of formal training prevents him from consciously relying upon it. Against exceptionally powerful opponents Aramis is decidedly outclassed, making discretion an important part of his combat repertoire—a sophisticated Hapan martial discipline sometimes known as not standing directly in front of whatever Jaina is currently fighting.
- Force Abilities (Force Users Only):
- Force empathy
- Precognition
- Force perception
Strengths:
- Charismatic: Aramis is naturally personable and persuasive, capable of winning people's trust, rallying groups around a common purpose, and navigating difficult negotiations.
- Emotionally Perceptive: His Hapan court education, Echani background, and latent Force sensitivity combine to make him exceptionally good at reading moods, intentions, and interpersonal dynamics.
- Adaptable: Despite being raised in extreme privilege for a narrowly predetermined role, Aramis successfully adjusted to poverty, political persecution, imprisonment, and life outside the Hapes Cluster.
- Compassionate: His experiences among the lower classes and refugees fundamentally broadened his worldview. He readily empathizes with outsiders and people deprived of freedom or dignity.
- Strong-Willed: Once Aramis decides something violates his fundamental principles, social pressure has difficulty moving him. This stubbornness is what ultimately allowed him to break with his family and Hapan expectations.
- Diplomatic & Politically Astute: Aramis understands aristocratic etiquette, rhetoric, negotiation, and Hapan law.
- Protective Father: His devotion to Lalu is one of his greatest sources of courage. He will endure considerable hardship or danger to protect her autonomy and future.
- Skilled Combatant: Echani martial training makes him proficient in close combat, particularly with swords, although fighting is not his greatest talent.
Weaknesses:
- Deeply Guarded: Childhood taught Aramis that openly expressing disagreement invited punishment. He therefore tends to conceal distress, resentment, and vulnerability until circumstances force them into the open.
- Stubborn: The same independence that allows him to resist coercion can make compromise difficult. Once he believes someone is trying to control him, he may become oppositional even when their intentions are benign.
- Sensitive to Control: Because so much of his life was dictated by powerful women, Aramis reacts particularly strongly to people making important decisions on his behalf. Betrayals of trust can therefore hit him disproportionately hard.
- Lingering Aristocratic Habits: Although he rejects Hapan class hierarchy intellectually, years of noble upbringing have not been totally erased. He can occasionally display entitlement, expensive tastes, assumptions about etiquette, or unconscious class prejudice.
- Overprotective: His devotion to Lalu can compromise his judgment. Threats involving his daughter are one of the easiest ways to manipulate or provoke him.
- Idealistic: Aramis genuinely believes in equality and personal freedom, but his experience with the Crimson Veil demonstrates that he can initially be attracted to movements by their principles before fully appreciating how ruthlessly those principles might be implemented.
- Limited Force Abilities: Despite being Force Sensitive, Aramis was never formally trained and has little conscious control over his connection to the Force.
- Not a Powerhouse: Aramis is competent in combat but cannot compete directly with more extraordinary fighters. His real weapons are social intelligence and diplomacy.
HISTORICAL INFORMATION
Aramis was born in the Hapes Cluster to Nadia Librenti and Ambrosia Fal'shivvy, two ambitious noblewomen with a very particular vision for their family. The couple produced seven children together through artificial means, using genetic engineering to tailor their DNA. They designed their daughters to excel in the qualities they admired most, raising them to be warriors and leaders, scientists and lawmakers. But the child with the grandest destiny of all, the one whose life was most carefully planned, was their only son. Aramis was conceived for the sole purpose of marrying the future Ducha of Arabanth. Their union would fuse the formidable bloodlines of his parents with the ancient and powerful House Vaelor, in hopes of producing a scion who would one day become Queen Mother of Hapes.
Aramis was raised in a mix of his parents' cultures, learning the martial ways of the Echani alongside the courtly politics of the Hapans. Though he was found to be Force Sensitive, his mothers chose not to train him to use his power, concerned that it might give him more agency than was desirable. He was already a defiant child, which earned him no favor in their eyes. The same strength of will they hoped would one day make his daughter a great Queen were considered a nuisance in her father. His sister Olanna was his closest friend, but she was sent away to train under the Sibsi when Aramis was ten years old. After her departure, he became quieter and kept to himself. Nadia and Ambrosia, mistaking his social withdrawal for conformity, were pleased with the change in him.
Although he had been bred for the express purpose of marrying her, Aramis was permitted only a handful of supervised visits with his betrothed, Entora Vaelor, before their marriage. No male child had been born into House Vaelor for four hundred years, and its customs were even more rigidly traditionalist than the norm. Among them were strict limits on the contact an unmarried heir could have with men outside her immediate family. When the two came of age, they were wedded. It was only then that Aramis discovered what House Vaelor expected of its male consorts. After Aramis fathered a daughter named Lalu, Entora treated his dynastic purpose as fulfilled. Rather than merely setting him aside, however, she forbade him from having any contact with their child. Aramis was not even permitted to remain in the same household. His belongings and servants were sent to a remote palace on Vestra, one of Arabanth's moons, where he was expected to live apart from his wife and daughter. This had been done to all of House Vaelor's dukats, Entora claimed, and the arrangement suited them well. Those who resisted fared poorly. The implication was clear: if he defied her, he would suffer.
For the first time since he was a boy, Aramis refused to obey the orders of a woman. Determined to see his daughter, he secretly visited Lalu whenever Entora was away. A servant eventually witnessed one of these secret meetings. Aramis attempted to bribe her into silence, but she reported it to her mistress anyway. With his life now in danger, Aramis desperately appealed to his family for help. Only his sister Olanna answered the call. Arriving just in time, she persuaded Entora not to kill her wayward consort, but to divorce Aramis instead. Under Hapan custom, a woman had every right to divorce her husband without suffering any loss of reputation. But the husband suffered grave social consequences for incurring his wife's wrath. Entora stripped him of his property, servants, and residence, leaving him homeless. He was shunned by other members of the nobility. Even his own mothers all but disowned him to save face.
Forced to take shelter among the lower classes, Aramis was exposed for the first time to life outside the sheltered Hapan nobility. The very people he had been raised to consider beneath him were the only ones with any sympathy for his plight. Though he never officially joined the Crimson Veil, Aramis was drawn to the ideals of freedom and equality they espoused. He attended clandestine meetings and befriended radicals and dissidents. The more his political views developed under their influence, the more he became convinced that the Hapan monarchy needed to be overthrown. His association with the Crimson Veil eventually proved disastrous. After members of the group assassinated Prince Astor Daaray and Lady Shaya Khal, the Consortium accused Aramis of involvement and condemned him alongside the other suspected conspirators. Facing execution during the purge, Aramis sought the help of his political comrades, hoping to flee the Cluster.
There was just one loose end: Lalu. The daughter he had been forbidden from seeing, but couldn't bear to leave behind. With the help of a rogue Jedi, Aramis traveled to Arabanth, abducted Lalu from the palace, and smuggled her to Hapes.
But because she was the heir of a Ducha, his little daughter was considered the enemy by the anti-monarchy, anti-nobility Crimsons. With nowhere else to turn, he and his little girl donned the disguises of ordinary refugees and boarded a transport bound for the Onderon system, where the Mandalorians had promised them shelter and safety.
Upon their arrival, father and daughter were separated. Lalu was taken to the well-managed Camp Resh, where refugees deemed innocent of any involvement with the Crimson Veil were sent. But Aramis, whose identity was exposed by another refugee, was shipped to Camp Thesh on Dxun, Onderon's jungle moon. Conditions at the camp were horrific. Dwindling food supplies and a lack of medical care led to widespread starvation and disease, and hostile predators lurking just beyond its walls prevented escape. The prisoners were denied all contact with the outside world, allowing Commander Rita Wren, the Mandalorian overseeing the refugees, to conceal Camp Thesh's existence. A Consortium sympathizer, Wren publicly denied that the camp existed at all. While she paraded through the pristine streets of Camp Resh, handing out ice cream to Hapan "orphans", her soldiers were under orders to shoot anyone who tried to flee Camp Thesh.
During his imprisonment, Aramis emerged as one of the camp's informal leaders. He used his charisma to rally the other refugees and organized the distribution of what little food and medicine was available. This ensured that some of them, at least, would survive. But it wasn't until the arrival of a mysterious stranger that hope was rekindled. Jaina Grayson, a pilot under the banner of the humanitarian group known as the Foundation, became aware of Camp Thesh's existence due to a clerical error in a supply shipment order. She tracked down the camp's location and snuck past the gate, witnessing the dire conditions within. Sensing an opportunity for rescue, Aramis told Jaina everything. He expected her to report the matter back to the Foundation and wait for reinforcements to arrive. Instead, she deliberately allowed herself to be captured and brought to the Commander so that she could kill her.
With Rita Wren dead, Aramis found himself at the center of an all-out war against her vengeful clan. He marshaled the refugees in a final stand against their captors, and with the help of Foundation aerial support they succeeded in driving the Mandos off, allowing for Camp Thesh to be evacuated. Furious at the Commander's death, her second in command Alys Wren put Camp Resh on lockdown, holding its denizens hostage. Heart pounding with fear for Lalu's safety, Aramis entered negotiations with Alys. Ultimately, he persuaded her to release the refugees by appealing to Mandalorian honor; he and his ilk may have been deserving of condemnation, but threatening the lives of children was a step too far. Alys later died after challenging Jaina to a duel.
Reunited with Lalu and eager to leave Mandalorian space, Aramis accepted Jaina's offer of sanctuary on her homeworld. They traveled aboard her starship to the planet Necropolis. Along the way, Aramis discovered the secret behind Jaina's incredible abilities: she was a biotic droid created by a Sith Lord to be a killing machine. Despite learning her true nature, Aramis could not deny his growing feelings for Jaina. All his life he had been surrounded by powerful women who imposed their will upon him, but she was the first to ask him what he wanted. Their unexpected romance culminated with Aramis revealing his past to Jaina and confessing his fears that Entora would try to get Lalu back. She immediately took steps to track down his ex-wife, sending a copy of herself to the Hapes Cluster to gather information.
It took a year, but the spy was able to locate Entora. The Ducha of Arabanth had survived the civil war but was a shell of her former self, subsisting on the generous hospitality of a distant relative, the Ducha of Harterra. Posing as a noblewoman, the spy befriended the Harterran Ducha and was invited to stay at her palatial estate. Donning a mask to hide her identity, the spy attempted to kill Entora, but Entora managed to escape. Aramis only learned of the failed assassination after the fact, and considered it a breach of trust. He correctly guessed that Entora was seeking the Harterrans' support to reclaim her title and holdings, and although he was angry with Jaina for betraying his trust, he could not deny that he was touched by her fierce desire to protect him and Lalu. Jaina apologized for acting without his knowledge or consent, and the couple made amends.
Taking advantage of an ancient law which granted the sovereign female ruler of a recognized world the right to challenge a Hapan Ducha for her title and holdings, Aramis devised an appropriately audacious solution. He convinced Jaina to enter a high-stakes pazaak tournament, where she won the deed to an uninhabited world. Crowning herself the Queen of ExGal Omega, Jaina showed up at the wedding reception of the new Queen Mother and publicly challenged Entora. Outraged, Entora appealed to the Queen Mother to deny Jaina's absurd claim. The Queen Mother replied that if she was truly ready to resume her rule over Arabanth, she should be able to defend it. The wedding guests watched with disdain - and undeniable intrigue - as Jaina fought Entora in a duel to the death in the courtyard of the Fountain Palace. In the end, Jaina was victorious. By ancient custom, she could have eliminated Entora's heir to secure her own succession. Instead, she publicly recognized Lalu's claim to the duchy. Reciting lines she and Aramis had practiced together, she declared that she would be a mere steward of Arabanth until Lalu came of age. The decision to spare the life of her predecessor's heir cemented her claim in the eyes of the Queen and nobility, assuring them that the future Ducha of Arabanth would be Hapan.
As for Aramis, he had lost everything and gained so much more. Knowing better than to ever show his face in the Hapes Cluster again, he and Jaina were wedded in a small, private ceremony on Necropolis. His sister Olanna was the only relative of his among the guests, her face veiled to protect both his and her anonymity; he let the rest of his family go on believing he had died during the purge. Together with Jaina, he raised Lalu to defend herself and taught her the value of equality, freedom, and self-determination.
