EMPEROR'S HAND

Sky Dragontooth: EMPEROR'S HAND...

QUOTES:
I am showing you remorse and pity. I'm sorry you were born and I'm putting you out of your misery.
For those services without an off switch, I'm the off switch.

HISTORY:
Sky was born on Nal Hutta. She never really knew her mother, who may have died or abandonned her when she was barely walking. A girl who pretty much raised herself, scavenging off others to survive, her veracious appetite for wealth and power and the freedoms bought and won with it was and still is hard to sustain. She gets what she wants, one way or another, because she has patience.

For example, as she was growing up in the degenerating urban zones of Nal Hutta, she used to hide, scared most of the time, in sewers & pipes. She discovered this made stealing and pickpocketing a lot easier. She could grab purses and wallets and money bags (usually without anyone noticing) and disappear into oblivion. If she had to knock someone senseless, she could drag them into the pipes, and no one would be the wiser.

By the time she was 12 standard years old, she had integrated herself into a street gang, called The Silver Fangs. They were the closest thing she had to a family. To identify themselves they often dyed their hair flambouyant colours & painted their faces & skin, usually in red, silver, white, and/or black. To become part of this group she had to show them she could kill someone to defend the group, which she did without much regret, ensuring her position in their ranks. Others of her clan had enhanced their faces or limbs with metal, such as replacing fingernails with long metal claws or grafting metal onto bone. This melding of flesh and metal symbolized that they were improved now that they were part of the group. Sky chose to have her eyeteeth removed and surgically replaced them with slightly larger silver canines to signify her allegiance.

Unfortunately, as soon as she started feeling some semblance of rank and security in her group, things went bad.

Her gang of 13 adolescents and youths robbed a shipment of drugs with the mind to sell most of it. Unbeknownst to them, it belonged to a wealthy Hutt named Durga. He employed some relatives of his who owed him some favours - they tracked down every member of her street clan and wiped them out. Except for the 4 females, of course: those he awarded to his family members to do with what they wished.

Separated from her sisters, Sky tried to remain calm. In her holding cell where Skurjj the Hutt kept her for a long time, she tried to keep herself alert and physically fit. She would work out before the guards woke up. She watched their every move.

A week or so of being starved did wear her down, however, and that is when the guards felt it was safe enough to beat her. They shackled her ankles & wrists & threw a metal collar around her neck, and dragged her to the master's dais, where they chained her.

Skurjj ordered his musicians to play & summoned his dancers. They came leaping out draped in wealth and jewels, looking healthy, lithe and happy. He told her she could be well-fed and tended to by his other dancers if she agreed to behave herself.

Sky saw a possible opportunity in this offer... So she agreed. For now.

She was careful to observe everyone's movements and routines in the palace. She knew some of the guards liked her and would let her wander a little more freely than the others if she pleased them a little more. She knew the routine of the cook. She knew the hired bodyguards could be bribed or blackmailed.

She trained with the dancers, three Twi'leks and a human, all females. Under their tutelage she became strong, flexible and deadly. They showed her defensive moves as well as dance moves. After all, she was on Nal Hutta.

The youth grew into a sly and calculating adolescent. Eventually Sky gained trust and influence, and began sneaking out of the dancers' quarters at night. She decided she would be out of Skurjj's grasp by the time she turned 18 (she had picked a date, as she didn't really know when she was born).

Several months before her birthdate, she experimented with some rodent poison she had found and managed to wipe out Skurjj's entire bodyguard ensemble. Naturally, this enraged Skurjj and he began some random executions. She used this tense situation to plant more seeds of distrust among the staff in the palace. There were several more unexplained, unauthorized poisonings, stabbings, and slitting of throats before this activity was traced to the dancers' quarters. Her birthday was looming nearer.

At this point, Skurjj brought out all his dancers before him, under the pretense that he wanted them to perform. Sky noticed several new bodyguards nearby, as well as guards: some looked restless, others were sweating, or had their hands on their holsters. Sky tensed. She observed Skurjj giving a barely perceptible nod to one of the guards who suddenly slashed out with a long-handled axe at one of the dancers, whose head fell from her shoulders with a damp thud and rolled towards the dais.

"Any more deaths would be simply... annoying," he growled, picking up the Twi'lek's head. "Was it her?" He said holding up the head by one of the headtails.

"No," said Sky as she calmly grabbed the axe from the guard. Skurjj didn't have time to respond because as Sky jumped up to the dais, she spun around with the axe & connected it between the Hutt's eyes. "It was me, you stupid targ. Thanks for the birthday present."

She escaped with the rest of the dancers in the ensuing fracas. The surviving dancers went their separate ways, for safety.

Sky searched out her sisters from the street clan, and rescued them all from similar fates. They agreed to keep in contact, but only in great secrecy.

Sky left Nal Hutta, and hired herself out as a scout and mercenary. She gathered fame and notoriety until even the Emperor himself noticed her. And was impressed.

She is now under his watchful eye and has been sent out on several occasions when her talents and cold ambition come in handy.