Name: Dezah

Gender/Species: female/human

Age: 27

Born: Kerredelle 3 (moon)

Build: 6'0", slinky and well padded but flexible and strong enough to fight well

Appearance: ruddy skin, tans well; bright red hair, long and fluffy; darkly green eyes; prefers to wear snug, revealing outfits (backless frequently), wears makeup expertly; deep womanly voice, husky, can sing but hardly ever does, can manipulate voice well enough to disguise it over radio

Skills: fighting-blaster, fighting-brawling, social-spying, social-threats, social-person recognition, physical-hide, physical-evade, physical-climb, drive/pilot-ground vehicle, drive/pilot-atmosphere vehicle (fighter), drive/pilot-hyperdrive starship (pilot/navigation, gunnery), repair-vehicle (starship), astrogation, knowledge-planetary systems, knowledge-politics, knowledge-underworld/crime, knowledge-gunnery/weapons, area-homeworld, area-spaceways, personal-clothing, personal-hair/makeup, personal-vocal styling

History: born in a middle-class family, which intended her to be married off to a local politician. At the age of 15 she realized this and began making plans to leave the world before that marriage could be finalized. However, she was unable to do so, and wound up murdering the Baron, stealing his ship, and exiting the system. It turned out, when she did find a place to bring the ship down and rest up, that he had a reasonable bounty on him for crimes committed while elsewhere. Thus her career in bounty hunting began...

She'd been so good, so patient on the outside, able to learn the processes she'd need as the wife of a Baron. But that life held no interest, and she seethed inside. If Dezah ever possessed a gram of compassion for the man she slew, it would have dried up under her stern gaze today.

She was only sixteen, had only enough skill to set a ship to autopilot and blast herself away from her homeworld forever. While the ship rode in hyperspace she pondered her next step. The Baron had been hiding something, of course. After a year stuck in his castle with Twi'lek slaves aplenty and Jawas who had been smuggled out to the planet as well, Dezah had enough and stuck a knife into the Baron's skinny neck.

It was odd to her that none of the people in the castle stopped her when she bolted to the ship. Perhaps they knew; maybe they just thought she was a girl on a jaunt.

Turned out they knew: someone had actually sent ahead, knowing where the next friendly, non-Empire port was, and suggested that whoever found the girl would be civil to her. She'd just done the galaxy a great favor. It was to a Hutt that she was taken, because most Hutts seemed to congregate where thieves and escapees were found. Though she was truly repulsed by him, Dezah listened to his deal.

She'd gotten the drop on a number of his men, who had been sent out to take the Baron down. She had reward money coming, and no Hutt would pass up the opportunity to deal themselves in on something as young and trainable as Dezah. Dezah knew that he could easily have killed her and taken the reward himself - but in the interest of keeping things 'fair', he gave her a little more than half the bounty, and set aside the rest as her 'training fund'.

Dezah was given a gun - and learned how to shoot it expertly within weeks. Several kinds of them, from old projectiles to the beam weapons she preferred. She chose not to wear armor, but then the Hutt knew that she could easily use her beauty to get close to almost any target and escape just as easily. Who wouldn't want to be watching her swaying hips as she sauntered away? Whether it was with a smoking gun or a lock of hair in her hand as proof - she became quite good at assassination, in a reasonably short time.

When Dezah was nineteen, she quit the service of the Hutt, moving on to greener pastures - the Hutt's influence had waned, allowed the Empire too many steps into their territory and she disrespected that. Several others in his employ came with her, but they split up soon after - there was no reason for them to remain together, none of them liked each other enough.

But she found enough work anywhere she went, to keep herself quite wealthy and off the radar of any given Empire hitlist. Dezah did this for years, almost a decade, before the Empire was shattered and the Alliance started growing again.

It would do that, she knew, in cycles. But neither of them officially tolerated bounty hunting -while both used them, of course.

While Dezah was off looking for a bounty to snap up, there was a weird tremor in space, she'd heard of such things but never been in one. It could land her ship anywhere... Anywhere. The forces which propelled the ship caused her to black out, and she came to later on crumpled and pushed up against one of the boxes in the cabin. Her side hurt, she'd been there a while. On rising and checking the navicomp, no recognizable patterns showed up: she was in completely new territory. Or old, some comps didn't know the oldest parts of the galaxy.

The thing was, she just didn't get the feeling she was in the old galaxy... But either way, once she found somewhere to set down, she knew she'd be able to pick up her career again. Because who didn't need someone killed?

***

It was snowing when she got out of her craft, on a strangely small planetoid that she'd had to navigate visually, and land manually upon. It was hardly a challenge, but the snow was unexpected. It had been so long since Dezah had been on a world where there were seasonal changes, she'd almost forgotten that it could happen. There were trees covered in the stuff, it was chill to the bone, but there were festive lights and the sounds of a party going on somewhere nearby.

She headed there, weapons holstered. It wouldn't do to show up unexpectedly somewhere with a drawn weapon: that might give the wrong impression when a calmer head was more appropriate. A good bunch of people, human and otherwise, were gathered in a wide warm building. And there were creatures there - big and small, but all of them could be called, "dragons?" Dezah blurted out, and got several folks laughing with it.

"Of course dragons, this is the place for em!" One burly man said, and offered her a mug. It wasn't beer, it was cider, hot - she liked it instantly.

"Oh I've been wondering who might catch their eye," another person, slightly less happy looking but still not obviously trying to pull anything, said. "Right to her, then?"

The black and vibrantly red-bellied dragon approached, he was young, small, perhaps even just hatched not too long before. His blood-red eyes sought Dezah's.

You will do nicely. For what I have in mind, yesss.

"Will I now," she replied, but she knew something deep inside her had clicked. This dragon was hers, as much as she was his. Her little ship might be too small for this guy if she estimated his parents correctly. Black and red, green... all the dragons here were green and red and black and white. Odd. Not that she had any experience whatsoever in terms of what colors dragons ought to come in, but she considered there was something particular about this gathering, and when she was informed about its relevance all she could do was nod and smile. Winter holiday seasons were weird things on any world that had seasons.

Maybe she'd learn more about other worlds' worth of 'celebrations' as they went back to their old haunts... If they went back. As she estimated, there could be plenty of bounties found among these people and their worlds filled with dragons. Odd thing was, she was bound to meet up with other dragon riders, and some of those... Were from her own galaxy!