Scout (Tallisibeth Enwandung-Esterhazy) (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
burnsbright) wrote2012-05-06 12:43 pm
burnsbright) wrote2012-05-06 12:43 pm
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scorchedOut of Character Information
player name: Joysweeper
player journal:joysweeper
playing here: n/a
where did you find us? Friends I've RPed with in other games are here
are you 16 years of age or older?: Yes.
player name: Joysweeper
player journal:
joysweeperplaying here: n/a
where did you find us? Friends I've RPed with in other games are here
are you 16 years of age or older?: Yes.
In Character Information
character name: Tallisibeth Enwandung-Esterhazy (Scout)
Fandom: Star Wars Expanded Universe
Timeline: A couple months after arriving on Mandalore
character's age: 16-17
powers, skills, pets and equipment:
Innate powers:
Scout is Force-Sensitive, and as such her reflexes are a bit faster than human-standard. Inherently she tends to be “lucky”, too; if there’s a coin toss, she tends to call out the side that lands face up; when she’s randomly wandering and there are things of note around she’s likely to find them; and the Force may call her to notice important details that might otherwise be overlooked. When hurt in a fight she generally manages to twist around unthinkingly so that her wounds tend to be superficial and heal quickly. It’s not a guarantee and she can get lost, miss things, get severely hurt etc, she just has a better than average chance.
She’s got a particular talent for scoping out a situation and reading it just a little faster than everyone else; whether or not it's Force-based, it’s where her nickname comes from. Scout is definitely gifted in anticipation; her danger sense is good, if she's open to the Force she can have flashes of precognition, knowing what others will do in tense situations a moment before it happens. Since she's a quick thinker, she can often turn this to her advantage.
However, she is weak in the Force. When she's flustered or upset she can't anticipate anyone. Other Jedi abilities, she has even less talent in, and it’s not even always related to her emotional state. She doesn’t navigate in pitch darkness much better than any non-Jedi could. She has little ability to pick up on what emotions people are feeling unless said emotions are strong. If she’s in a room where absolutely horrific things happened and were cleaned up, she’ll feel some unease for no reason she can see, but normally nothing more. Though Scout’s not clumsy, she doesn’t typically have the odd grace and balance of many other Jedi. She can’t reliably use the Force to sense her surroundings or precisely where other people are or what they're feeling, unless they’re very powerful. There are other Jedi skills that she can’t execute at all.
She does seem to have strengthened slightly due to the trials experienced on Vjun. From her performance there and while returning to the Temple I believe her telekinetic abilities have become more stable. She still can't exert much force and sometimes her “grip” weakens, but she doesn't accidentally crush things or fling them in unwanted directions anymore and can use telekinesis readily. This might have been because she became a bit more confident in herself.
In certain dire situations the Force swells up and is strong in her, but she can’t predict or rely on this at all, and she’s been mangled without it happening. It happened during her second confrontation with Ventress, letting her break the hold the Dark Jedi had on her and parry her lightsaber. I believe it also happened the night of Order Sixty-Six, helping her escape during the slaughter. At those times she may be guided by her Master's spirit.
Serious Force-based healing is beyond her, but if injured and made stable she can meditate on herself and encourage her own body to heal more quickly and without serious scars. It’s still not something that’s over in a few hours or a day.
I'd like her to gain a better grasp of her powers. She will never be as immense in the Force as many famous Jedi, but she may be able to call on it reliably.
Abilities:
The most obvious is her skill at the Broken Gate school of unarmed combat. Scout is a master of joint locks, hitting nerve clusters to numb limbs, throws, and several versions of choke and strangle hold, the most dramatic of which is said to invariably induce unconsciousness in ten seconds as she reduces bloodflow to the brain. Notably most chokes aren’t the classic hands-around-throat manual strangling, but use her arms or legs and sometimes the victim’s clothing, so she can do this even when a victim is much larger and stronger.
She can fight well with a lightsaber and generally in hand-to-hand she’s good, but her main focus is on getting in close and disabling someone. Actually, Scout tends to drop her lightsaber when there’s a chance to get in close and the chance will be over soon. It should be noted that she’s absolutely at her best against a single unarmored or lightly armored melee fighter, and Broken Gate is designed to incapacitate more than it is to kill.
Scout also has extensive knowledge of how bodies are put together and training on what to do, both from the Temple and a Mandalorian medic. Mind, she’s best at field-dressing recent wounds, with less focus in other medical skills. She can concentrate well regardless of distractions and has high pain tolerance. She has some mechanical aptitude and can change a starship’s engine starter without relying too heavily on the manual. She can survive in many kinds of wilderness, climb most things, tie and untie a wide variety of knots, and drive a speeder (though not much of anything else). She's also a startlingly good dancer.
Equipment:
Scout is wearing plain, sturdy gray clothes. They include an overcoat with a passing resemblance to an outer robe, but all in all these clothes are much more akin to the sort of things Mandalorians wear when not in armor.
She’s got a set of chopstick-ish eating utensils and some basic survival items - a vibroknife, dry rations for a few days, a small canteen with a filter in the opening, some cord, a fire starter, bandages, and a half-empty container of burn-and-wound ointment. She’s also got two replacement power cells for a blaster, though no blaster. Hooray useless tech!
And she has her lightsaber. The hilt is worn under her clothes against her skin and has been disguised as a personal shaver, it can’t be accidentally activated, but it would take only a few minutes to be made functional again. The blade is blue. It’s got two power settings, with the lower one able to painfully burn skin but not cut through it, and the higher setting... well, you know lightsabers.
canon history: When Scout was a toddler her dirt-poor parents begged passing Jedi to take her so she wouldn’t starve. Whether this is true or not - she inferred the story from something one of the Masters said - she was raised in the Jedi Temple as a Jedi initiate. There, she had a strictly managed schedule and almost never left the bounds of the Temple. She enjoyed a lot of study and meditation and all kinds of lessons taught by many teachers, including Yoda.
As she got older, it became apparent that while her body grew steadily, her strength in the Force didn't. It was increasingly suggested that she focus on skills that would be useful in the Service Corps, like encouraging the growth of plants, but she refused - she adamantly wanted to follow the Jedi path. She got her nickname at some point due to those Force talents she was proficient in.
When she was eleven and called to a private talk with Yoda, Scout thought she was being sent into the Service Corps. She cried the whole way there and snuffled defiantly even inside, but she wasn't sent away - Chankar Kim had picked her to be Padawan. In the three months that followed, Scout built her lightsaber and saw a little of the galaxy.
Then came the start of the Clone Wars. Chankar Kim left her behind - said she had rough edges to polish off - and died on Geonosis. Becoming an orphan nearly broke Scout, but she was a fighter. She knew she could only become a Jedi by being made a Padawan again, which meant making a good impression on prospective masters.
Scout had never shirked, but now she threw herself into her studies, physical and mental, with bloody-minded determination. She got to the top of class after class that didn’t involve using the Force, though in those areas she had to study with eight- and nine-year olds and watch as they surpassed her.
Thirty months into the war she entered into an initiate tournament and studied the other entrants for the six weeks prior, coming up with plans to defeat them. Unbenownst to her, Yoda made a deal: if she placed low she would be sent to the Service Corps, if she placed high she would not, and if she won then a skeptical Jedi Knight, Jai Maruk, would take her as Padawan.
Most of Scout’s opponents were around her level or, thanks to the Force, above it; she was physically one of the strongest but could not rely on the Force as they could. She beat the first by pretending to surrender without actually giving the proper cue, then taking advantage of her opponent’s desire to be a good sport and shake hands. Her second, by interrupting her own sentence with an attack, then taking cover behind watchers and the referee in order to make her opponent too angry to call on the Force properly, taking advantage of a reluctance to cut her when she was pinned, and finally grabbing the other girl’s lightsaber through the blade and choking her with her other hand. The blade was on low power, but Scout still had to go to the infirmary for that and came back limping and bandaged.
The rest of the tournament was a surprise free-for-all in the cafeteria. Scout saw it coming and flung a cup of juice into an opponent’s face, then choked him into surrendering. The last one left, the very powerful Whie, got her in a lock but was too polite and genteel to break her thumb when she resisted, so she was able to escape the lock, beat him, and win.
She was then assigned to Jai Maruk and immediately sent on a mission to Vjun with him, Whie and his Master, and Master Yoda. It was through her ideas that they were able to smuggle the instantly recognizable Yoda out undetected on civilian transport. Scout healed from the tournament on the way there, and struggled with the realization that her master didn’t like her - actually he did, but thought she would die quickly and didn’t want to get attached - but she bore on anyway.
On the mission she met some droids that belonged to Whie’s family and befriended one, then did it a favor that meant both Padawans were away from the Masters when the Dark Jedi Asajj Ventress and an escort of assassin droids attacked. Scout fought some of the droids and was hurt, but Whie saved her. They saw Ventress kill Whie’s master and mortally wound Jai Maruk. Ventress gave Whie a speech, trying to get him to doubt the Jedi, and left. Scout got to weep over her master as he smiled at her for the first time, promised he would never leave her, and died.
The mission continued, though it was delayed as, for the last leg to get to the planet Vjun, Master Yoda purchased a used starship from a junkyard and made the Padawans install an engine starter and load it with supplies by themselves so that the deaths would be less immediate for them. On the way there there was a degree of catharsis and mourning; Yoda was well versed in helping his pupils through grief. By the time they reached Vjun they were able to think and act without it weighing so much on them.
Scout and Whie moved through a system of caverns with one of the droids while Yoda took some other route. The Force was strong enough in unpleasant ways there that Scout picked up on it and found it creepy, but when Whie was almost washed away by a sudden flood she was able to call on it to save him.
The droid turned out to be a traitor and led them to Ventress, who cut Scout, made the droid kill itself, and tried to lure Whie away again. She knew Whie was forming a crush on Scout and used the Force to hold Scout still and make her smile as she encouraged the boy to kiss her, and he wanted to. Her talent or her own faith suddenly, briefly strengthened Scout’s grasp in the Force so that she was able to break free, tell Whie he’d make the right choice, and not get killed by Ventress. The droid she had befriended held the Dark Jedi off long enough for the Padawans to run.
After that they ran into Yoda, along with Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker, who’d been summoned to Vjun. Whie spontaneously hugged Anakin, crying that he was so glad Anakin wasn’t coming to kill him - he had had prophetic dreams that a Jedi would kill him and apparently subconsciously knew which one it would be - and Ventress got away in Kenobi and Skywalker’s ship.
The new party got off Vjun by hijacking two Trade Federation gunships, which was done by having Scout commandeer them - “Quick, Lieutenant - the Jedi assassins are getting away in their Chryya! We’ve got to scramble up some ships and follow them!” - as the others backed her up with mind tricks. The gunships were sold to a shipyard and they got back to Coruscant in another repaired secondhand ship.
Scout felt changed; more humble in some ways, more confident in others. She still had some esteem issues and couldn’t see how great a part she had played, but she was confident now that she would never be sent to the Agricultural Corps. The Jedi were stuck with her now, and she could more than dare to hope, she was certain that she would one day become a Knight.
Still, there was a mourning period, in which it wasn't considered appropriate for her to be chosen as someone else's Padawan. Scout resumed her training, proving to be a little better at the Force, if still weak. She exchanged letters with friends out in the galaxy, including Anakin Skywalker's Padawan Ahsoka Tano.
Six months later came Order Sixty-Six and Anakin's betrayal. He killed Whie and a lot of others. Scout, having one of her rare surges of greater strength in the Force, heard Master Maruk's voice telling her to run. She escaped the Temple and went into hiding on Coruscant. Initially there were many other fugitive Jedi hiding on Coruscant or trying to escape it, but most were caught or turned in by citizens who believed what the new Emperor said.
Scout survived on her own for several months. It was rough, and involved having to be on the move almost constantly and being repeatedly betrayed whenever someone thought she was a Jedi. She did eventually meet with Master Fy-Tor-Ana/Solace, one of her Jedi instructors who was now leading a fugitive resistance movement, but Solace had never wanted a Padawan and didn't have the time or ability now.
After a few weeks Scout was passed on to Jax Pavan and Laranth Tarak, a pair of Jedi masquerading as private investigators and trying to smuggle people off Coruscant. They took her in for a time but as she was younger than them and more personally affected by the situation, they convinced her to take a freighter to Mandalore.
Mandalorians believe mercenary work and bounty hunting to be the most honorable professions, and they have a way of spitting constant anti-Jedi vitriol. She didn't tell them what she was and didn't really settle in or down. Scout wasn't entirely unhappy there, a few of them took to her and taught her some medic things, but she was still an outsider. Mandos will accept anyone, but only if they reject their pasts and become Mandalorian themselves, and even after everything, Scout loved and believed in the Jedi too much.
personality:
Scout is not curious about her birth family, but she is unhappy that they live in grinding poverty while she alone was given this incredible chance to make good. She has to take it. This is a young woman who is tricky, brave, resilient, and refuses to give up.
She's well aware of her lack of ability in the Force and can’t stand being pitied for it; it’s given her a bit of a lingering inferiority complex. While she’s proud of the skills she’s mastered, she constantly believes she doesn't measure up in other areas and doesn’t consider herself important.
Scout loves being a Jedi, considers the Jedi her ‘real’ family, and has a strong drive to become a Knight and work some good in the galaxy, although she doesn’t think of herself as a particularly good person. With the Jedi Order all but gone she’s had to slowly, torturously accept that she’ll never be a Knight, but she still considers herself a Jedi and strives to live up to what parts of the Jedi way she can. She’s just had to become secretive about it and her powers. She doesn’t quickly or easily tell people what she is, now - her low levels of Force-Sensitivity make it harder for Jedi hunters to pick up on her, but she knows she has to stay covert anyway, lest she be reported.
As a Jedi she is, unsurprisingly, deeply spiritual/religious, though it’s a pretty quiet sort of faith. She doesn’t talk about it, but she was taught and believes that the dead are still around, just in a different form, part of the Force. It’s small comfort when grieving, but there are times when she feels like old friends and teachers are still with her. Scout meditates often. To disguise her highly illegal faith she’s taken on the trappings of an obscure ancestor-worshipping religion, and she’ll stop at shrines sometimes out of habit.
Scout works long and hard at everything she does and if it’s possible, she plans meticulously, making detailed preliminary observations and strategies of action, improving her own abilities however she can to prepare. If it’s not possible, she tends to lose her head and just fling herself in rather than freeze up, but she can make quick calculations at times.
When fighting, she often gets injured, sometimes badly, due in part to her drive and willingness to be hurt on the way to a goal. Scout never focuses on this. When recovering, she’s fairly casual about it, neither bemoaning her sorry state nor angering the medics by pretending to be fine. She burns herself with her lightsaber regularly so pain won't distract her.
If competing with or comparing herself to people with greater powers, Scout will often feel intense, bitter jealousy towards them. They don’t need to work as hard as she does yet are, she thinks, more beloved. When that situation is over, this jealousy usually evaporates unless they decide to lord their abilities over her. In general, during stressful situations she’s extremely focused. She can be playful, but tightly controlled about it.
In other settings, she’s much more friendly and willing to chat and share observations, even with people who don’t seem to like her much. Scout's not really deterred by neutrality. While she enjoys minor arguments for the sake of arguing, tends to be bossy, and will correct anyone who she thinks is misinformed, she tends to fold if it gets bitter and she doesn’t have strong feelings about the issue.
These days she doesn’t believe that a place - any place - is really safe. She’s got a justifiable paranoia now, and some of her foreplanning goes into plotting out how she could escape from a given situation if need be. She feels that most people wouldn’t betray her, but she can’t tell who would - after all, the Traitor himself had been a Jedi who showed younglings combat tricks and made jokes. Being convinced of this hasn’t made her unfriendly, she just doesn’t trust people very far without good reason, and if she has to talk about her past she keeps it vague. The Jedi become "my people" or "my family". The Temple and early training becomes "my school". These days she's not bad at bending the truth.
She is kind when someone is distressed, even someone she’s argued with, and has become better at seeing other points of view. Though she doesn’t think of herself as a particularly good person or a good Jedi, she shoots for “good enough” and knows that sometimes ‘pretending’ to be a Jedi is all there is. She’ll take strange unorthodox options and bend or break unspoken rules if she has to, but she is fully committed to being honorable.
Scout feels emotions strongly and shows them, flushing and paling. When she’s sad she cries inelegantly, when she’s angry she snaps and growls and swears, when she’s happy she grins broadly and laughs and makes silly comments, when she’s afraid it shows, and when she’s grouchy she gets sarcastic. Sometimes she’ll shed tears when happy or overwhelmed, too. Despite her seemingly un-Jedi-like open emotion, her moods never get away from her; she doesn’t know it, but she’s like Yoda in that way. In a book with a constant subtext of characters drawing on the Dark Side without meaning to or being worried about falling, no one believes Scout’s personal honor will slip that far unless she felt like the Jedi Order betrayed her.
Even under horrific levels of tragedy and awfulness, Scout can bear up. She cries about it and rages and doesn’t simply ‘get over’ anything, she is marked by having people she relies on either betray her or die or turn her away, but she doesn’t forget to eat and pay attention to her surroundings for long, and she doesn’t shut down emotionally. Rather than buckle or isolate herself, she grits her teeth and applies herself to things. Scout’s a survivor and has learned how to work with grief and trauma.
Finally, she has a tendency towards giving very informal nicknames to groups of people and to individuals who won't tell her their real names; even once she’s been told a name, she sometimes calls them that at least in her head. Her sense of humor, just in general, is irreverent and a little absurd.
why do you feel this character would be appropriate to the setting? Scout's a survivor. She always has been. Less skilled in the Force than her peers in the Temple, she strove to make up for it.
Network Post Sample:
Here.
Third Person Sample:
A large bowl without flaws inside hadn't been too hard to find. It was plastic, which Scout had to accept even if it seemed to lack a certain dignity, but she'd cleaned it out and it was fine. Besides, it was totally unremarkable to have a plastic mixing bowl; even if her place was searched, it wouldn't raise any suspicions.
A heavy perfect sphere small enough to fit in her palm but still large enough to have some mass... that had been harder. Not much call for them in Anatole. Or anywhere, really. Scout hadn't seen anything like that since the Temple fell. Even worry stones tended to be more egg-shaped. She'd had to make do with a wooden toy. Slightly less unremarkable than the bowl, but if she was seen idly tossing and catching it, Scout could pass it as something to keep her dexterity up.
Now she took both out into the mist, ignoring its soft tendrils as she hunted for a place she might reasonably sit in for an hour or so without being watched or disturbed. She'd marked out a few beforehand, so it was easy enough.
Scout sat with her legs crossed, the sphere in the bowl in front of her, breathed slowly, and closed her eyes to call on the Force. She had grown up with it, but the feeling of it was still beyond description. It wasn't some trick or skill, like how she'd trained her body to be quick and strong. It was different. She called on something much larger than herself, or this world. Something vast and aware, strange and familiar. Sacred.
She focused on the makeshift tool in front of her, on moving the sphere. The trick was to move it, and only it, keeping the bowl itself absolutely still. She didn't get it right away.
First the bowl moved, rocking a little on the ground. She found that since the plastic was so light it did that even if only the ball was moved, which meant she had to call on the Force to hold it still at the same time. Scout focused on the task narrowly enough that she would have missed someone passing her by. Sweat glued the closest layer of her clothing to her skin and dewed her temples. In her shoes her toes clenched.
And the ball rolled with incredible slowness from the bottom of the bowl to the rim. It stayed there, not balanced - the rim was too small for it and not level - until she called on it to return to the bottom, gradually, in defiance of gravity. The exercise took almost an hour.
When Scout opened her eyes she was a little dazed, but she knew what she had done in the Force. It seemed for a moment that something in it congratulated her, and she had to smile even as she considered her efforts.
Well, that answered that. Scout had suspected that her connection to the Force had strengthened since she showed up here. Now she knew. On her own - before this - she'd never managed this exercise. Fine manipulation was always much harder than pulling something to her or thrusting it away.
If only they could see her now...
Scout shook her head, letting the kinked strand of hair that sometimes held her Padawan braid waggle. That line of thought would just be distracting. Enough playing. Time she got back to work.
Anything else?
character name: Tallisibeth Enwandung-Esterhazy (Scout)
Fandom: Star Wars Expanded Universe
Timeline: A couple months after arriving on Mandalore
character's age: 16-17
powers, skills, pets and equipment:
Innate powers:
Scout is Force-Sensitive, and as such her reflexes are a bit faster than human-standard. Inherently she tends to be “lucky”, too; if there’s a coin toss, she tends to call out the side that lands face up; when she’s randomly wandering and there are things of note around she’s likely to find them; and the Force may call her to notice important details that might otherwise be overlooked. When hurt in a fight she generally manages to twist around unthinkingly so that her wounds tend to be superficial and heal quickly. It’s not a guarantee and she can get lost, miss things, get severely hurt etc, she just has a better than average chance.
She’s got a particular talent for scoping out a situation and reading it just a little faster than everyone else; whether or not it's Force-based, it’s where her nickname comes from. Scout is definitely gifted in anticipation; her danger sense is good, if she's open to the Force she can have flashes of precognition, knowing what others will do in tense situations a moment before it happens. Since she's a quick thinker, she can often turn this to her advantage.
However, she is weak in the Force. When she's flustered or upset she can't anticipate anyone. Other Jedi abilities, she has even less talent in, and it’s not even always related to her emotional state. She doesn’t navigate in pitch darkness much better than any non-Jedi could. She has little ability to pick up on what emotions people are feeling unless said emotions are strong. If she’s in a room where absolutely horrific things happened and were cleaned up, she’ll feel some unease for no reason she can see, but normally nothing more. Though Scout’s not clumsy, she doesn’t typically have the odd grace and balance of many other Jedi. She can’t reliably use the Force to sense her surroundings or precisely where other people are or what they're feeling, unless they’re very powerful. There are other Jedi skills that she can’t execute at all.
She does seem to have strengthened slightly due to the trials experienced on Vjun. From her performance there and while returning to the Temple I believe her telekinetic abilities have become more stable. She still can't exert much force and sometimes her “grip” weakens, but she doesn't accidentally crush things or fling them in unwanted directions anymore and can use telekinesis readily. This might have been because she became a bit more confident in herself.
In certain dire situations the Force swells up and is strong in her, but she can’t predict or rely on this at all, and she’s been mangled without it happening. It happened during her second confrontation with Ventress, letting her break the hold the Dark Jedi had on her and parry her lightsaber. I believe it also happened the night of Order Sixty-Six, helping her escape during the slaughter. At those times she may be guided by her Master's spirit.
Serious Force-based healing is beyond her, but if injured and made stable she can meditate on herself and encourage her own body to heal more quickly and without serious scars. It’s still not something that’s over in a few hours or a day.
I'd like her to gain a better grasp of her powers. She will never be as immense in the Force as many famous Jedi, but she may be able to call on it reliably.
Abilities:
The most obvious is her skill at the Broken Gate school of unarmed combat. Scout is a master of joint locks, hitting nerve clusters to numb limbs, throws, and several versions of choke and strangle hold, the most dramatic of which is said to invariably induce unconsciousness in ten seconds as she reduces bloodflow to the brain. Notably most chokes aren’t the classic hands-around-throat manual strangling, but use her arms or legs and sometimes the victim’s clothing, so she can do this even when a victim is much larger and stronger.
She can fight well with a lightsaber and generally in hand-to-hand she’s good, but her main focus is on getting in close and disabling someone. Actually, Scout tends to drop her lightsaber when there’s a chance to get in close and the chance will be over soon. It should be noted that she’s absolutely at her best against a single unarmored or lightly armored melee fighter, and Broken Gate is designed to incapacitate more than it is to kill.
Scout also has extensive knowledge of how bodies are put together and training on what to do, both from the Temple and a Mandalorian medic. Mind, she’s best at field-dressing recent wounds, with less focus in other medical skills. She can concentrate well regardless of distractions and has high pain tolerance. She has some mechanical aptitude and can change a starship’s engine starter without relying too heavily on the manual. She can survive in many kinds of wilderness, climb most things, tie and untie a wide variety of knots, and drive a speeder (though not much of anything else). She's also a startlingly good dancer.
Equipment:
Scout is wearing plain, sturdy gray clothes. They include an overcoat with a passing resemblance to an outer robe, but all in all these clothes are much more akin to the sort of things Mandalorians wear when not in armor.
She’s got a set of chopstick-ish eating utensils and some basic survival items - a vibroknife, dry rations for a few days, a small canteen with a filter in the opening, some cord, a fire starter, bandages, and a half-empty container of burn-and-wound ointment. She’s also got two replacement power cells for a blaster, though no blaster. Hooray useless tech!
And she has her lightsaber. The hilt is worn under her clothes against her skin and has been disguised as a personal shaver, it can’t be accidentally activated, but it would take only a few minutes to be made functional again. The blade is blue. It’s got two power settings, with the lower one able to painfully burn skin but not cut through it, and the higher setting... well, you know lightsabers.
canon history: When Scout was a toddler her dirt-poor parents begged passing Jedi to take her so she wouldn’t starve. Whether this is true or not - she inferred the story from something one of the Masters said - she was raised in the Jedi Temple as a Jedi initiate. There, she had a strictly managed schedule and almost never left the bounds of the Temple. She enjoyed a lot of study and meditation and all kinds of lessons taught by many teachers, including Yoda.
As she got older, it became apparent that while her body grew steadily, her strength in the Force didn't. It was increasingly suggested that she focus on skills that would be useful in the Service Corps, like encouraging the growth of plants, but she refused - she adamantly wanted to follow the Jedi path. She got her nickname at some point due to those Force talents she was proficient in.
When she was eleven and called to a private talk with Yoda, Scout thought she was being sent into the Service Corps. She cried the whole way there and snuffled defiantly even inside, but she wasn't sent away - Chankar Kim had picked her to be Padawan. In the three months that followed, Scout built her lightsaber and saw a little of the galaxy.
Then came the start of the Clone Wars. Chankar Kim left her behind - said she had rough edges to polish off - and died on Geonosis. Becoming an orphan nearly broke Scout, but she was a fighter. She knew she could only become a Jedi by being made a Padawan again, which meant making a good impression on prospective masters.
Scout had never shirked, but now she threw herself into her studies, physical and mental, with bloody-minded determination. She got to the top of class after class that didn’t involve using the Force, though in those areas she had to study with eight- and nine-year olds and watch as they surpassed her.
Thirty months into the war she entered into an initiate tournament and studied the other entrants for the six weeks prior, coming up with plans to defeat them. Unbenownst to her, Yoda made a deal: if she placed low she would be sent to the Service Corps, if she placed high she would not, and if she won then a skeptical Jedi Knight, Jai Maruk, would take her as Padawan.
Most of Scout’s opponents were around her level or, thanks to the Force, above it; she was physically one of the strongest but could not rely on the Force as they could. She beat the first by pretending to surrender without actually giving the proper cue, then taking advantage of her opponent’s desire to be a good sport and shake hands. Her second, by interrupting her own sentence with an attack, then taking cover behind watchers and the referee in order to make her opponent too angry to call on the Force properly, taking advantage of a reluctance to cut her when she was pinned, and finally grabbing the other girl’s lightsaber through the blade and choking her with her other hand. The blade was on low power, but Scout still had to go to the infirmary for that and came back limping and bandaged.
The rest of the tournament was a surprise free-for-all in the cafeteria. Scout saw it coming and flung a cup of juice into an opponent’s face, then choked him into surrendering. The last one left, the very powerful Whie, got her in a lock but was too polite and genteel to break her thumb when she resisted, so she was able to escape the lock, beat him, and win.
She was then assigned to Jai Maruk and immediately sent on a mission to Vjun with him, Whie and his Master, and Master Yoda. It was through her ideas that they were able to smuggle the instantly recognizable Yoda out undetected on civilian transport. Scout healed from the tournament on the way there, and struggled with the realization that her master didn’t like her - actually he did, but thought she would die quickly and didn’t want to get attached - but she bore on anyway.
On the mission she met some droids that belonged to Whie’s family and befriended one, then did it a favor that meant both Padawans were away from the Masters when the Dark Jedi Asajj Ventress and an escort of assassin droids attacked. Scout fought some of the droids and was hurt, but Whie saved her. They saw Ventress kill Whie’s master and mortally wound Jai Maruk. Ventress gave Whie a speech, trying to get him to doubt the Jedi, and left. Scout got to weep over her master as he smiled at her for the first time, promised he would never leave her, and died.
The mission continued, though it was delayed as, for the last leg to get to the planet Vjun, Master Yoda purchased a used starship from a junkyard and made the Padawans install an engine starter and load it with supplies by themselves so that the deaths would be less immediate for them. On the way there there was a degree of catharsis and mourning; Yoda was well versed in helping his pupils through grief. By the time they reached Vjun they were able to think and act without it weighing so much on them.
Scout and Whie moved through a system of caverns with one of the droids while Yoda took some other route. The Force was strong enough in unpleasant ways there that Scout picked up on it and found it creepy, but when Whie was almost washed away by a sudden flood she was able to call on it to save him.
The droid turned out to be a traitor and led them to Ventress, who cut Scout, made the droid kill itself, and tried to lure Whie away again. She knew Whie was forming a crush on Scout and used the Force to hold Scout still and make her smile as she encouraged the boy to kiss her, and he wanted to. Her talent or her own faith suddenly, briefly strengthened Scout’s grasp in the Force so that she was able to break free, tell Whie he’d make the right choice, and not get killed by Ventress. The droid she had befriended held the Dark Jedi off long enough for the Padawans to run.
After that they ran into Yoda, along with Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker, who’d been summoned to Vjun. Whie spontaneously hugged Anakin, crying that he was so glad Anakin wasn’t coming to kill him - he had had prophetic dreams that a Jedi would kill him and apparently subconsciously knew which one it would be - and Ventress got away in Kenobi and Skywalker’s ship.
The new party got off Vjun by hijacking two Trade Federation gunships, which was done by having Scout commandeer them - “Quick, Lieutenant - the Jedi assassins are getting away in their Chryya! We’ve got to scramble up some ships and follow them!” - as the others backed her up with mind tricks. The gunships were sold to a shipyard and they got back to Coruscant in another repaired secondhand ship.
Scout felt changed; more humble in some ways, more confident in others. She still had some esteem issues and couldn’t see how great a part she had played, but she was confident now that she would never be sent to the Agricultural Corps. The Jedi were stuck with her now, and she could more than dare to hope, she was certain that she would one day become a Knight.
Still, there was a mourning period, in which it wasn't considered appropriate for her to be chosen as someone else's Padawan. Scout resumed her training, proving to be a little better at the Force, if still weak. She exchanged letters with friends out in the galaxy, including Anakin Skywalker's Padawan Ahsoka Tano.
Six months later came Order Sixty-Six and Anakin's betrayal. He killed Whie and a lot of others. Scout, having one of her rare surges of greater strength in the Force, heard Master Maruk's voice telling her to run. She escaped the Temple and went into hiding on Coruscant. Initially there were many other fugitive Jedi hiding on Coruscant or trying to escape it, but most were caught or turned in by citizens who believed what the new Emperor said.
Scout survived on her own for several months. It was rough, and involved having to be on the move almost constantly and being repeatedly betrayed whenever someone thought she was a Jedi. She did eventually meet with Master Fy-Tor-Ana/Solace, one of her Jedi instructors who was now leading a fugitive resistance movement, but Solace had never wanted a Padawan and didn't have the time or ability now.
After a few weeks Scout was passed on to Jax Pavan and Laranth Tarak, a pair of Jedi masquerading as private investigators and trying to smuggle people off Coruscant. They took her in for a time but as she was younger than them and more personally affected by the situation, they convinced her to take a freighter to Mandalore.
Mandalorians believe mercenary work and bounty hunting to be the most honorable professions, and they have a way of spitting constant anti-Jedi vitriol. She didn't tell them what she was and didn't really settle in or down. Scout wasn't entirely unhappy there, a few of them took to her and taught her some medic things, but she was still an outsider. Mandos will accept anyone, but only if they reject their pasts and become Mandalorian themselves, and even after everything, Scout loved and believed in the Jedi too much.
personality:
Scout is not curious about her birth family, but she is unhappy that they live in grinding poverty while she alone was given this incredible chance to make good. She has to take it. This is a young woman who is tricky, brave, resilient, and refuses to give up.
She's well aware of her lack of ability in the Force and can’t stand being pitied for it; it’s given her a bit of a lingering inferiority complex. While she’s proud of the skills she’s mastered, she constantly believes she doesn't measure up in other areas and doesn’t consider herself important.
Scout loves being a Jedi, considers the Jedi her ‘real’ family, and has a strong drive to become a Knight and work some good in the galaxy, although she doesn’t think of herself as a particularly good person. With the Jedi Order all but gone she’s had to slowly, torturously accept that she’ll never be a Knight, but she still considers herself a Jedi and strives to live up to what parts of the Jedi way she can. She’s just had to become secretive about it and her powers. She doesn’t quickly or easily tell people what she is, now - her low levels of Force-Sensitivity make it harder for Jedi hunters to pick up on her, but she knows she has to stay covert anyway, lest she be reported.
As a Jedi she is, unsurprisingly, deeply spiritual/religious, though it’s a pretty quiet sort of faith. She doesn’t talk about it, but she was taught and believes that the dead are still around, just in a different form, part of the Force. It’s small comfort when grieving, but there are times when she feels like old friends and teachers are still with her. Scout meditates often. To disguise her highly illegal faith she’s taken on the trappings of an obscure ancestor-worshipping religion, and she’ll stop at shrines sometimes out of habit.
Scout works long and hard at everything she does and if it’s possible, she plans meticulously, making detailed preliminary observations and strategies of action, improving her own abilities however she can to prepare. If it’s not possible, she tends to lose her head and just fling herself in rather than freeze up, but she can make quick calculations at times.
When fighting, she often gets injured, sometimes badly, due in part to her drive and willingness to be hurt on the way to a goal. Scout never focuses on this. When recovering, she’s fairly casual about it, neither bemoaning her sorry state nor angering the medics by pretending to be fine. She burns herself with her lightsaber regularly so pain won't distract her.
If competing with or comparing herself to people with greater powers, Scout will often feel intense, bitter jealousy towards them. They don’t need to work as hard as she does yet are, she thinks, more beloved. When that situation is over, this jealousy usually evaporates unless they decide to lord their abilities over her. In general, during stressful situations she’s extremely focused. She can be playful, but tightly controlled about it.
In other settings, she’s much more friendly and willing to chat and share observations, even with people who don’t seem to like her much. Scout's not really deterred by neutrality. While she enjoys minor arguments for the sake of arguing, tends to be bossy, and will correct anyone who she thinks is misinformed, she tends to fold if it gets bitter and she doesn’t have strong feelings about the issue.
These days she doesn’t believe that a place - any place - is really safe. She’s got a justifiable paranoia now, and some of her foreplanning goes into plotting out how she could escape from a given situation if need be. She feels that most people wouldn’t betray her, but she can’t tell who would - after all, the Traitor himself had been a Jedi who showed younglings combat tricks and made jokes. Being convinced of this hasn’t made her unfriendly, she just doesn’t trust people very far without good reason, and if she has to talk about her past she keeps it vague. The Jedi become "my people" or "my family". The Temple and early training becomes "my school". These days she's not bad at bending the truth.
She is kind when someone is distressed, even someone she’s argued with, and has become better at seeing other points of view. Though she doesn’t think of herself as a particularly good person or a good Jedi, she shoots for “good enough” and knows that sometimes ‘pretending’ to be a Jedi is all there is. She’ll take strange unorthodox options and bend or break unspoken rules if she has to, but she is fully committed to being honorable.
Scout feels emotions strongly and shows them, flushing and paling. When she’s sad she cries inelegantly, when she’s angry she snaps and growls and swears, when she’s happy she grins broadly and laughs and makes silly comments, when she’s afraid it shows, and when she’s grouchy she gets sarcastic. Sometimes she’ll shed tears when happy or overwhelmed, too. Despite her seemingly un-Jedi-like open emotion, her moods never get away from her; she doesn’t know it, but she’s like Yoda in that way. In a book with a constant subtext of characters drawing on the Dark Side without meaning to or being worried about falling, no one believes Scout’s personal honor will slip that far unless she felt like the Jedi Order betrayed her.
Even under horrific levels of tragedy and awfulness, Scout can bear up. She cries about it and rages and doesn’t simply ‘get over’ anything, she is marked by having people she relies on either betray her or die or turn her away, but she doesn’t forget to eat and pay attention to her surroundings for long, and she doesn’t shut down emotionally. Rather than buckle or isolate herself, she grits her teeth and applies herself to things. Scout’s a survivor and has learned how to work with grief and trauma.
Finally, she has a tendency towards giving very informal nicknames to groups of people and to individuals who won't tell her their real names; even once she’s been told a name, she sometimes calls them that at least in her head. Her sense of humor, just in general, is irreverent and a little absurd.
why do you feel this character would be appropriate to the setting? Scout's a survivor. She always has been. Less skilled in the Force than her peers in the Temple, she strove to make up for it.
Writing Samples
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Third Person Sample:
A large bowl without flaws inside hadn't been too hard to find. It was plastic, which Scout had to accept even if it seemed to lack a certain dignity, but she'd cleaned it out and it was fine. Besides, it was totally unremarkable to have a plastic mixing bowl; even if her place was searched, it wouldn't raise any suspicions.
A heavy perfect sphere small enough to fit in her palm but still large enough to have some mass... that had been harder. Not much call for them in Anatole. Or anywhere, really. Scout hadn't seen anything like that since the Temple fell. Even worry stones tended to be more egg-shaped. She'd had to make do with a wooden toy. Slightly less unremarkable than the bowl, but if she was seen idly tossing and catching it, Scout could pass it as something to keep her dexterity up.
Now she took both out into the mist, ignoring its soft tendrils as she hunted for a place she might reasonably sit in for an hour or so without being watched or disturbed. She'd marked out a few beforehand, so it was easy enough.
Scout sat with her legs crossed, the sphere in the bowl in front of her, breathed slowly, and closed her eyes to call on the Force. She had grown up with it, but the feeling of it was still beyond description. It wasn't some trick or skill, like how she'd trained her body to be quick and strong. It was different. She called on something much larger than herself, or this world. Something vast and aware, strange and familiar. Sacred.
She focused on the makeshift tool in front of her, on moving the sphere. The trick was to move it, and only it, keeping the bowl itself absolutely still. She didn't get it right away.
First the bowl moved, rocking a little on the ground. She found that since the plastic was so light it did that even if only the ball was moved, which meant she had to call on the Force to hold it still at the same time. Scout focused on the task narrowly enough that she would have missed someone passing her by. Sweat glued the closest layer of her clothing to her skin and dewed her temples. In her shoes her toes clenched.
And the ball rolled with incredible slowness from the bottom of the bowl to the rim. It stayed there, not balanced - the rim was too small for it and not level - until she called on it to return to the bottom, gradually, in defiance of gravity. The exercise took almost an hour.
When Scout opened her eyes she was a little dazed, but she knew what she had done in the Force. It seemed for a moment that something in it congratulated her, and she had to smile even as she considered her efforts.
Well, that answered that. Scout had suspected that her connection to the Force had strengthened since she showed up here. Now she knew. On her own - before this - she'd never managed this exercise. Fine manipulation was always much harder than pulling something to her or thrusting it away.
If only they could see her now...
Scout shook her head, letting the kinked strand of hair that sometimes held her Padawan braid waggle. That line of thought would just be distracting. Enough playing. Time she got back to work.
Anything else?