Name: Daara Danil

Age: 23 in BBY 3

Species: Chiss variant

Family: Mother killed shortly after visit by Jedi, Father unknown, no other family known

Profession: former Pit Fighter, currently planetary president and protector

Origin: Csilla, though it's unclear whether both her parents came from there, or were even both Chiss

Current Whereabouts: Ketvaozh, 'the secrets hidden below the plains', a planet in the outermost areas of the galaxy which seems to be completely missing from most hyperspace lane records (on purpose); though there are mountainous regions and some shallow oceans, the entire world is basically rolling hills at best, with grassland and marsh most common, though it has very thick ice caps and most locations bear evidence of huge glacial erosion which caused those long flat valleys; her claim on this planet rapidly turned into a literal gold* mine, which in turn allowed her to become its president; alternately, since this world can be reached via dragon or other methods thanks to its internal structure 'attracting attention' from species or devices that can be tuned to it, there is a thriving not-this-dimension population growing on it... This world is closer to the world that Karen resides on than virtually anything else of importance, making travel between them both safe and reasonably quick

Height/Build: 5'11", tall and slender, but quite strong for her lean look, and as she's grown more used to planetary exploration and 'desk jobs', she's been able to gain some weight that isn't just purely muscle; don't be fooled, she is fast, agile, and extremely strong from her fingers to toes

Appearance: as a Chiss she's pretty typical, with aqua blue skin, nearly black hair, and brightly red eyes; she has high cheekbones and a short, straight nose, and though she looks delicate on first glance her posture and precise motions betray her guarded nature. Though she is quite pretty, she hardly ever imagines herself as such. She dresses in black and white almost exclusively, more thanks to her needs as a pilot and prior to that as a fighter, to keep her accessories to a minimum and not wear things that can catch on an enemy weapon. She does wear a necklace on which an amber colored crystal can be seen, at all times. Her voice is quiet, she struggles to raise her voice, but has a very large vocabulary sprinkled with a fascinating array of curse words and colorful inserts from different languages encountered as a fighter

Abilities: though very atypical for Chiss, her Force sensitivity never faded over time, and in fact has become remarkably powerful. Strong enough that it saved her as a child in the Pit, and reliable enough that she learned how to focus them rather than let them fade as any other among her race would.

** Timeline **

BBY 26 - born to a low ranking military family, and with the distinct 'Second and Third Sight' that the very rare Chiss Force-users display, she was hidden from discovery for almost a year and a half

BBY 24, early - a visit by two Jedi should have brought her off world and into their fold. However, one of them was already hiding Sith secrets, and decided to cloud the mind of the other. They left this remarkably rare child with her mother, and no mention of her or even the visit was ever recorded among Jedi paperwork

BBY 24, later - likely due to that fallen Jedi's interference, the leaders of a pit-fighting ring surprised Daara's mother and murdered her, taking Daara with them to raise her as a fighter

BBY 22 - at the age of four, Daara was put into a 'proto-pit' fight, against several hungry animals. She demonstrated not only a clever solution but her strength of Force by lifting one of them to smash into the other. With alarming regularity for one so young, she was continually put into fights increasing in difficulty for years

BBY 19 - she is put into a fight with her first truly sentient opponent, who woefully underestimated her abilities. Though she was forced to do so, she still had to kill him to be let out of the pit, and she'd never forgive the ring owner for this. Because at this point Order 66 had been given and Jedi were being hunted, it was clear that attracting any kind of attention to a Force user would doom the pit ring; though still used very regularly as a 'novelty fighter' Daara was more apt to be used as bait to get animal opponents angry and hungry, hidden from view before being released on other fighters

BBY 18-16 - befriends and trains with numerous others, generally those much older than she is, but some other children. None of them show any Force awareness or strengths, so she easily wins many fights, though she's been warned to never use these powers in ways that could show them to audiences. Meaning she could aid a tussle using 'force choke' on an opponent or possibly cause them to trip in the pit, but holding them up with telekinesis or blasting them back with a push move would be forbidden and punished badly. They never even realized how much Force she was using, since all this time she could anticipate opponents' moves using her telepathic power

BBY 16, late - escapes the fighting arena and spends a year on the run, skipping from world to world trying to avoid capture and learning how much of the rest of the galaxy operates in the process. Also realizes her potential as a Force user with markedly strong telepathic power; she can detect peoples minds and attitudes, and can easily filter who she's near if they're apt to turn her in or turn on her

BBY 14, early - is recaptured and now put into 'proper' fights for her life regularly. These are being held in more hidden and underground venues, with audiences that can keep secrets: she is told now that she can and should use her Force powers to their full extent. It's possible that the fallen Jedi who discovered her as a child has taken note of her once more, and is trying to groom her as a Sith apprentice

BBY 14-11 - though she is easily able to defeat all opponents, Daara's disgust and anger at being used in such a way rises as she grows older. She continually plots methods of escape, however she's kept under constant guard and has to contend with starvation, lack of sleep, and other such 'cult' tactics keeping her too week or disoriented to truly rebel

BBY 10 - the underworld and criminal organizations seem to be churning; the popularity of pit fights expands tremendously for several years, and Daara is put against increasingly valuable opponents. While it's not 'easy' to defeat all of them, it's clear to her that a number of them were not just fighters but political prisoners or 'spare enemies' that other figures would send to their deaths; she memorizes all of their names, asking them before she deals a deathblow, and follows up on these names when she finally frees herself

BBY 8 - at the age of 18, she finally has had enough, and between fights during an 'encouragement' talk with the owner of the ring, she held him and his three guards up easily with her Force telekinesis and took their entire stock of credits, old chits, and local currencies 'in exchange for their lives'. Because she has honed her telepathic power, she actively forces the ring leader to agree to her 'terms', which he has never broken because he's effectively unable to commit to finding her

BBY 8, late - hiding out she locates an advertisement for colonists wanted on a distant world, and heads out to Ketvaozh, which doesn't have any form of hyperspace lanes close enough to it to be dangerous. She uses only a small portion of her funds to buy into a very large portion of land. While she's exploring it, she realizes that her Force powers are considerably stronger here, and uses this to locate one of three kyber crystal formations on the planet - this one situated on her own already-bought land; she adds the others after negotiations...

BBY 7 - realizing the potential of the crystal formations, as well as the incredible danger that it puts the world in, Daara begins adopting alternate 'personas' in order to sell small amounts of kyber crystals to underworld fences, and effectively becomes phenominally rich; she keeps herself reasonably safe by always holding a crystal for herself, as it seems to enhance her ability, and if anyone questions or shows they might betray her, she simply wipes their memories

BBY 6 - she learns of the deaths of the original colony developers, an accident that destroyed their council chamber ship on trying to leave a world (kind of hard to fly through an exploding super-volcano) which leaves the local middle managers at a complete loss; while she's not necessarily the best choice, she is absolutely the richest investor they had that actually showed up thanks to their ad campaign, and allow her to dictate their next moves

BBY 4 - those next moves have been to establish a small spaceport, along with several networked defenses surrounding the kyber crystal locations. She continually recruits those Force-sensitive people she drifts past on trips, as most of those are the only ones able to manually navigate to Ketvaozh - she deems it too dangerous to establish any form of hyperspace junction there, and has had to manipulate an Imperial technician aboard a ship that came dangerously close to locating it, to remove the planet from their directory. This process propagated over the next year, so no official Imperial databases know of it, nor of the potential Force-users on it

BBY 3 - even though she's still extremely resentful of the Jedi since they were meant to take her on as a child, she allows those who have Force-sensitive children to live in small villages scattered around the planet, and the world will always be a safe(er) haven for such people in the future. Due to the requirement that the planet be manually navigated to, she has to personally train those rare trustworthy pilots and ship crews that supply the planet; some number of pirates and criminals are also present on the world, serving as a localized defense force, but not allowed to really leave either - this seems fine by most of them, given they have their own whole town being built around gambling, brothels, and resort-style facilities...these may only ever get a few visitors, but at least they're safe and living a life of leisure

***

"This place certainly has some... interesting features," Novoor said, her long fingers fiddling with the flashlight and somewhat tight around it at that.

"It's safe," Daara said, confidently.

"For you, perhaps," her companion said quietly, "but for me, I'm not like you. This place is... intimidating."

The glance that the red-eyed woman gave her smaller friend was accompanied by a little smirk on her dark blue lips. "Good, that's how it should feel to those who aren't supposed to be here. But... they know you, and you're with me."

"I won't be coming here without you," Novoor muttered. "I'll remain in the port, thank you."

Two years ago, they made this discovery. Still, they explored together.

Ever since the Yorzard management perished during their 'important meeting' (everyone knew it was just to hit an exotic locale and spend all the money that their corporation had pulled in that year) the folks that had been in charge of colonizing this world had been a little lost. They were too used to merely pushing paperwork and looking up numbers for their superiors - and the rest of them were barely even aware that they were part of a corporation, busy with their construction and farming on this distant world. Yorzard wouldn't be recovering: their entire monopoly was destroyed, and this world had only been the tiniest of footnotes in their "potential future investments". So far out of the loop, too distant from any major space lanes, and definitely not listed among any worlds which could provide the company with vast, quick profits... it was useless to move on. Anyone that took over the various locations and businesses that Yorzard had held, wouldn't even glance at this dustball in the distance.

And that was a good thing. With Daara's strength of will, she was the next best replacement, some of them even referred to her as their CEO. The middle-managers needed to feel like they were doing the right thing, and she was clearly able to figure out what was best to keep them all alive and reasonably safe in this extremely dangerous time. With the Empire building up forces, recruiting whoever they felt was needed and doing away with those they didn't... It was dangerous on almost any world that might have fugitives or valuables. Appearing as a world with neither of those things meant they could 'retire' and just do what they wanted with their world.

No visible existing civilization meant that the corporation had claimed it outright. They'd been trying to organize colonization just as the Clone Wars were yanked to an abrupt end. Once that happened, they were too busy making sure that their own coffers were kept filled, and this colonization was just a money pit they didn't want to deal with. They hadn't even bothered trying to recall the managers on the world, so a degree of resentment was present among their now-former employees.

Novoor had been the one who Daara made her original contact and arrangements with. And though the slender and small near-human Novoor seemed to be a nervous wreck out here in the wilderness, Daara knew she was actually quite canny and suited to organizational work; confident in her own way, in civilized settings. Here though... this was a place that even Daara didn't know well enough to wander with a sure step. Her mind was continually seeking any possible threats, but it was somewhat harder to do that in this exact spot. It was filled with echoes, remnants, ancient ghosts.

And monsters, there were also monsters. Those, however, had been among the first things tha Daara dealt with. Not killing them - oh no, they were of far too much use down here to kill them. After all, the people who had built this incredibly ancient Force crystal mine had bred them to protect it. And the need to protect it was still very much apparent.

The beasts were varied but obviously of the same stock across the three sites: these brown and mottled green ones were thinner and had bodies higher on narrower, longer legs, their verticality served them better among the sharp trees and rocks. There were low-built wider ones with a different, darker blue and black color scheme down in the swamplands, and compact pale-shaded versions up in the only big mountains on the planet. All three of these sites held more than merely 20 meter long lizard-like defenders.

They had crystals, lots of them, which grew out of the depths of the world's core. They had slowly been pushed out by millennia of erosion or glacial progression, exposed here in this plains land thanks to a water table drop when those glaciers reformed to the north. This one was the first of their discoveries, hidden from normal sight or from the ground or air - until hovering in just the right spot to see an entry point into the rugged hill. The cool dimness within the cavern was welcome, as the hot wind outside would exhaust anyone not prepaired.

The place sang to both Novoor and Daara, but only Daara knew the words. Novoor was very slightly Force sensitive, but had never been trained and hardly even realized her abilities weren't the norm. They'd hit it off when Daara arrived to the planet, possibly for that reason - rather than trying to force her to do anything with her mind, Daara merely pinged the other woman's until she realized she could 'sense', and left it at that. It had turned out that several of the local managers and farmsteaders were similarly equipped, with very low-level Force awareness - all of them benefitting from proximity to these crystal formations.

Daara and Novoor would jaunt around together looking for the right spots to put down a home, a ranch, structures fit for multiple families or refugees from pit fights that Daara would be rescuing. When they'd first located the massive crystal formation, they'd been elated: this was a find that could change everything!

And then both realized, very sadly, that... the only people who could possibly use these in a way that might be of any benefit... were hunted to effective extinction just a year before. There certainly were still Jedi around and about, a few had actually come through this system looking for shelter (leaving behind a trio of force-sensitive young children, now in the capable hands of nearby colonists). But for the most part, only the criminal element would be willing to actually pay for the crystals - doled out in very short supply; outlawed weaponry like lightsabers weren't their only use. Their rarity was compounded by the fact that most locations that had been tapped for Jedi use had been bombed into oblivion by the Empire.

Still, the desire remained for these exotic crystals; a vetting process was created, subtle hints from passing comments could spread news of a seller looking for a buyer of such extremely illegal goods. There were surprisingly more than Daara anticipated, so she had Novoor doing research while the former fighter headed off world for sales and scouting.

Daara's disguises worked very well, when she went offworld to do these illicit trades. She'd assembled a number of personas - a snake-like anonymous trader made from many layers of cloth and supported by her own Force telekinetics, a slumping old woman with rotting smelly skins covering her obviously-diseased skin, that kind of thing. She could be seen as any number of people by those who dealt directly with her on those sales jaunts. She disguised her voice with technology, but who didn't? She'd learned so many things from the opponents that she'd fought - and killed - in those arena fights all her life. How to move like a Thisspaisian, how to stagger like a drunk Locan, the way an Anzati carefully assesed her prey, or how a Xa Fel would repeatedly choke on inhaling good air. She would arrive with her disguises packed away, find a nice secluded location and 'change' into her new persona, do her business, and escape the same way she came in - unnoticed, with a heavy set of credits or local currency for her wage.

It was rare that she didn't come home with a coffer full of coin and credits to spare, even rarer if she didn't come back with another ship in tow. Though Ketvaozh was off the records and no longer openly searching for colonists, it was definitely a planet that had plenty of space to fill with people who needed security. Those pit fights continued, growing much more bold in the darkest era of the galaxy. She paid closest attention to those fights advertised (they advertised again... such audacity) as having 'remarkable' combatants. Funny how those combatants, even if they won, never showed up to another fight later? Through a combination of Force coersion and lots and lots of money, Daara assembled a small town worth of these refugees and younglings.

The corporation's machinery was all still available, so it was still being put to good use: that star port wasn't the last thing being built, it was merely the first. The town hub that grew around it would take years to mature, but it was already filled with people. Many of them didn't really know what to do with themselves outside of fighting, but none of them - not one - wanted to start another fighting ring. Sure, they sparred, and two of them decided to open a training house for those who wanted to continue honing their skills without the looming threat of 'being killed at the end' of every match.

** Around 15 ABY, thus numerous years after the 'settling' of Ketvaozh **

Novoor and Daara traveled with less difficulty over time, though not without care. As the pair of women came back to the port town, they got word that a ship was on its way. In a starport that would hardly be worth noting, except that any arrivals and departures had to be strictly monitored. This one wasn't a scheduled arrival. It wasn't an Imperial ship, in fact it was quite not Imperial. Bigger than most, however, they had to have it put down in the undeveloped graded spot nearby, since the port's landing spaces were just-too-small for it.

This ship turned out to contain not just a couple travelers, but...

"Are those 'dragons'?" Daara breathed, "I've seen vids and shows with fanciful things, but I'd never imagined they were anything but wild creatures."

The dragons in question seemed to like that. Karen Kenobi - that family name had weight, whispered among both Imperial and underworld groups. But as a Jedi he'd been killed or had gone into hiding long ago, and this woman here held herself ... differently. The way she looked around at the place told Daara that she absolutely felt the presence of all that crystal under the surface. The presence of a lightsaber hilt at her hip was notable, but no one actually said anything. Daara and Karen exchanged significant eye contact, nothing more. It wouldn't surprise either of them to learn that more Force-sensitive people would be coming here.

Sometimes, they would be accompanied by dragons. Karen and Daara, and Novoor when she was not busy helping plan the world's development needs, discussed how best to approach this. 'This' being "having people with dragons come here and live". It seemed like quite the prospect, honestly, once Daara learned that the dragons were by and large not only able to fly and even teleport (that was amazing even for their advanced culture) but could speak telepathically across great distances.

They wouldn't need a ship force to defend this world's supply of precious crystals.

They could have dragons doing it.

**

Daara enjoyed the visits that those dragon riding folk gave, and had to keep separate records 'just in case' anyone came around that shouldn't be ignored and couldn't be killed for worry of tracking. Though the Empire was not quite dead and there were other threats coming up - a feeding frenzy of underworld leaders and even-worse-people now left in charge of their planets. It meant that there might be more sneaky arrivals since they could ignore Imperial codes out there in the galaxy's flight zones. Arranging for new small habitation archologies in significant spots around the world meant they would have broad coverage and detection.

And it meant 'dragons'. All over the place. In addition to the creatures which natively roamed the world, it seemed like it would make for a formidable defense.

There was that one time, too... When Karen brought a varied group around, maybe there were sparks between her and one... or two of them. But perhaps there might be more when everyone, maybe even including herself, were accompanied by dragons!