Darth Rusalka
Valeska Yaroslava Sarnova
| Age | Mid-20s |
| Species | Human |
| Gender | Female |
| Height | 168 cm | 5'6" |
| Weight | 57 kg | 125 lbs |
| Force Sensitive | Oh goodness yes |
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
Valeska is lean and feminine with compact, athletic lines, built more like a dancer than a brawler. She has a strong core, toned and tapering limbs, and she carries herself with poise and control. Her face is heart-shaped, with soft angles that could almost read warm. She has high cheekbones, a straight, aristocratic nose, and a small mouth with plump, promising lips. Her skin looks luminous, pure, clean, soft -- like she doesn't sweat, doesn't blush, doesn't freckle without Valeska's approval. She looks untouched by the world, although she really, really isn't. Her eyes are large and brown, ranging from a dark tawny to a deep brown. Her eyes are expressive: attentive, patient, sometimes too direct. Valeska's hair is dark brown, thick, glossy, immaculate. Usually worn in a low and controlled style -- a sleek bun, a chic braided coil, or a smooth twist -- she does wear it loose when she wants to instill the impression of softness or vulnerability. Stray strands are rare and usually intentional.
She has a low, intimate, precise voice, and she rarely raises it. Her demeanor is as a woman being watched and doesn't care. She is calm and elegant in her movements, and only those with razor-sharp insights into body language see that it is the movement of a quiet predator. She operates with a calm that could be read as confidence but is actually restraint.
INVENTORY
Various jewelry. A lightsaber. Vibroblades.
PERSONALITY AND BELIEFS
At her surface, Valeska is warm, attentive, cultured. She listens like you're the most fascinating person in the room -- maybe even the world -- and is polite in a way that makes rudeness feel vulgar and dirty. Her polish is softly charismatic, and her generosity with attention and focus makes people feel seen -- or understood, or desired, or any other number of things that would be advantageous to her. Beneath that placid, pleasant surface, she is ruthless, pragmatic, and both controlled and controlling. She experiences most other people primarily as levers: status, utility, vulnerability, threat. She is not one to show strong emotion to most people. Her emotional range is narrow, because she has trained herself that way. When she shows emotion, it is usually a tool: tenderness to disarm, disappointment to punish, amusement to bait.
Her core beliefs are simple: that power is safety, a lesson she learned in her childhood that she will never, ever forget; that truth is negotiable, and she can make of it what she wishes; that attachment is leverage, understanding love and loathing, lust and revulsion, devotion and betrayal, all intimately, the way a chemist understands chemical bonds; that mercy is like credit: something she dispenses to earn obligation, loyalty, and obedience in return.
Her motivations are equally simple: never to be owned again -- by allies, by lovers, or by any Sith hierarchy.
She isn't against death or destruction, but Valeska has a generalized distaste for blood. She prefers to draw her quarry in socially, psychologically, and then end them -- socially, psychologically, or literally.
STRENGTHS
- Composure: Valeska is hard to bait and rarely loses face publicly.
- Combat poise: as a duelist, she is defensive and economical who punishes overextension and grand gestures rather than chasing flashy kills.
- Elementalist: Darth Rusalka can exert extraordinary control over water and air and the perceptions of each, particularly in close quarters.
- Beauty: A gift and a curse, it draws attention, but it can also put people off balance and occasionally makes them foolish.
WEAKNESSES
- Overcontrol: in combat, chaotic, unpredictable opponents can disrupt her tempo and push her out of her comfort zone.
- Multiple attackers: Valeska is built for seduction and isolation, not dogpiles. Once beyond 2-on-1 she will be looking for escape, not victory.
- Dry or sealed environments: arid air, breath filters, visors, ear protection can all blunt her Rusalka skillset.
- Unnamed: Her birth name is barely remembered, unknown to any but an infinitesimal few. Hearing it spoken can be massively destabilizing to her.
HISTORY
"Everyone at the Acadmey knew the rules. You're taken young, stripped of your name -- have it beaten out o'you if necessary -- and given a new name. A first name and a last name o'your own. A patronymic, to show who you belong to. If you live long enough you become proof that your master's way is a viable way. The only way. That's what they told us, anyway. But there was this story. When I first got here, the older students swore was true, and the masters punished when they heard it spread. So I'm gonna tell you what I know. Maybe you'll be inspired by it.
Is it true? What kind of idiot question is that? It's as true as anything else we say in this hellhole.
It starts with a transport coming in t Mustafar from the Outer Rim. No ceremony or fanfare -- never was, never will be. Just one small child in tattered, damp clothes, eyes too big, quiet in the way quiet kids are when they've learned through hard lessons that crying doesn't work. Collected in a raid of a fishing village, they said. The only survivor o'thirty-odd. Found standing in a floating basket that the waves carried gently to shore, like she'd been meant for the Blackguard, delivered right to 'em. Old Yaroslav took her -- Valeska Yaroslava Sarnova she was called after she took his name like a cattle takes a brand.
It was a month when the first one tried to test her. But she didn't fight like most of us do. She was like water. Patient. Gentle. Right up until you couldn't catch a breath. The first time they didn't catch on. Some brute threatened her for the last crust and she handed it over -- little slip of a thing couldn't hope t'stand up to the boy, what could she do?. He was dead the next day, but things like that happen every day here. Thing was, there wasn't a mark on him. No water in his lungs, but the two with him when he died swore he'd been gasping like a drowning man. Panic attack, the masters decided. Too weak. A blessing to be taken before he could consume resources that rightly belonged to his betters.
But then it happened again, couple years later. A girl, year or two older than Valeska. The two had been circling each other awhile. Seemed to form some kind of uneasy alliance. And then the warden done Valeska for something -- stealing from the masters' table, something stupid -- and the other girl came to apologize. Said some other students threatened to beat her something fierce if she didn't. Dead the next morning. Nothing wrong with her but her throat torn to ribbons by her own fingernails, clawing just to breathe.
Years passed. Alliances came and went. The students rose and fell, they triumphed and they died. This one, Valeska, kept her head down. Learned the rules. Learned her tools, too. Another of Old Yaroslav's favorites -- Ivan -- the one with the strong hands and the fiery eyes, the one the instructors liked because he hit hard and never hesitated, the one everyone knew in their bones would be Champion because there was a kinda certainty to him, well, he tried to court her. You know the way lads do in places like this. Stolen scraps of food. Attention that felt like protection and looked to others like a claim. I heard he tried to give her a blanket once. She refused each time. Nice about it. Polite. Cold. Kept him on side without letting herself be taken in.
The gauntlets got worse, o'course. We all know how it is. As our skills develop the masters start moving us around like dejarik pieces. We start hunting each other like it's normal. 'Cause it's normal. By the time Valeska turned eighteen, the board was clearing. Gambits and openings were over, defenses were played through, and it was time for endgame. She played her part and well. Specialized against men, naturally, but women too. She knew charm. Knew how to make you think you were the only one she wanted to know. Then -- bam -- another piece off the board. And Valeska, who had never been tops in combat, never had flash like Ivan with his lightning and fire, was still there. Still alive.
Then it happened. This part we know is true, 'cause you can still see the scoring of the lightsabers on the corridor wall and floor, the spots where lightning melted the metal grating. Four of 'em jumped her. Four, in case one or two of them could be brought to her side with whatever hold she could get on people. In case one or two of them drowned on dry land, as so many had by her hand by then. They cornered her somewhere hot and dry and narrow -- the lava corridor, you know the one -- hot metal underfoot, hot so hot it gets in your bones, your teeth. Should have been simple, right? Four toughs. One girl. Weren't no duel, that. That was an assassination.
They almost had her. Depends who you ask -- some say they did have her. In a narrow, dry, hot corridor where you couldn't run without giving your back. That was before Ivan found her. Some people say he heard the fighting and went to capitalize on the chaos. Some say he'd been watching the hunters all damn day. Some people say he knew where she was 'cause he always knew where she was, you know? Like he'd been orbiting her for years, waiting for her to need him. Or maybe waiting for the moment when she couldn't refuse his generosity anymore.
Whatever the case, Ivan stepped in, and the four toughs died. Wasn't theatrical. Wasn't like something in the holos. Hard and fast and brutal. Work done by people who understood that hesitation was death. Ivan paid the price for it -- face cut up bad in the brawl. Never quite the same after. And Valeska? Valeska suffered not one scratch, not even so much as a singed hem of her robes. That's when they started calling her that funny foreign name -- Rusalka. Some kinda water thing, vengeful spirit. Mythological.
After that, she stopped refusing him. Maybe he thought he'd won her. Maybe she thought she'd bought time. That's how the story gets told, anyway. Like some kinda romance, like fate. People liked that version. Made some o'us think there was something to be found in these walls besides hunger and violence. But the older students shook their heads at us. Something they loved to do, the older ones.... disabuse us o'notions that there's anyone out there to depend on besides us. Ain't nothing here for free. Anyroad, now when you saw him, mostly you saw her too. And when you saw her, you saw him. Two pieces moving on the board in ways that made other pieces nervous. 'Cause if he could lure the Rusalka into partnership -- the girl no one could break, no one could bend -- what did that make Ivan?
But with the death of the four -- two of 'em Yaroslav's other students, if you can believe that, sibling violence was so rare in those days -- it was just Valeska and Ivan left. Old Yaroslav, their proud papa, promoted 'em to Knights. Proof o'his varied approach -- to find natural talents and cultivate 'em rather than beating conformity into 'em which was the fashion o'those days -- and now his champions-in-training. Then he did what every one of those bastard masters does when he thinks he's won. He put one against the other. One against one. No more excuses, no more bloody dejarik board. Just the only game that mattered, the one where you won or you died.
By then the drama had captivated the students. Big talk. Every few years you get a big thing like that, something where people pick sides, lay odds. People said Ivan would take her head clean off, one fell swoop. Some said she'd drown him with the promise of a kiss before he could even raise his blade or wrap her in flame. Some said he'd already given up by letting him have her. Not a one of us guessed the real ending. And that's why we don't let the masters hear us tell it. Scares 'em. Scares 'em something awful.
Ivan and Veska? They didn't fight each other. They aimed themselves up.
Nobody knows the whole story. Stories leak out in a place like this in bits and pieces, like lava leaks from cracked pipes: thin and hot and impossible to stop. They say she went to Old Yaroslav alone. Soft voice, lowered lashes, all the right signs of obedience. Months of feeling the old bastard's eyes on her taught her exactly where his vulnerabilities were. He probably thought he'd finally broken her, that he'd won something that could never be taken back. Ready to accept his chain.
Ivan came in like a guillotine. One strike, one clean flash of a blade, and Old Yaroslav entered immortality -- just not in the way he thought he would.
After that? Blurry, even blurrier than the rest. Purges. Lock-downs. Curfews. 'Cause the masters don't want it remembered, see? And when the smoke cleared, Valeska and Ivan were gone. No bodies. No trophies. No champions. There are a hundred versions of what came next. They died in the lava flats trying to get out or the masters hunted 'em down like dogs or they became monsters out there in the galaxy out there. They split up, maybe, and will come back one day and finish the job. Me? The story I heard when I was first here? Just this: beware the Rusalka. If you find yourself in her gaze, in a room that's suddenly too quiet, it's probably too late."
Audiolog No. 8311-Besh
Recovered from [REDACTED]
Mustafar
Recovered from [REDACTED]
Mustafar