Hi everyone! Since Estelore had such a great idea with character backstory, dreams and visions, I think it'd be fun if we got to see a bit more of our characters' pasts. It'll be a great character development tool, and it'll help us build on our characters' storylines and rationales for doing what they do today in the Galaxy's Edge Space Bar.
To start off, I've provided little insights into events from the lives of three of my characters.
Yeah, most of it is pretty angsty, but hey. It's been a rough road. And I started out with something a bit more lighthearted.
---
It was warm.
Sun beat down on my back, my face. I aimed my Dracon very carefully.
“Clear!” I called, gesturing to the Hork-Bajir on the other side of the gigantic nawin tree.
The Dracon burned hot in my calloused hands, its cells worked to near full capacity.
CRRRRAAACKKK! The ear-splitting noise just barely made it through the waxy substance that protected my host’s hearing. It was louder than the Dracon blast that had melted the tree at the base, evaporating wood and boiling through hundreds of gallons of sap.
I hopped back on big reptilian feet, watching the massive living thing, over one hundred standard feet in circumference, teeter dangerously. It listed to the left for a moment, but I had done this before. The calculations wouldn’t fail me.
I watched as the gigantic tree fell and fell, taking branches of adjacent trees with it.
I could feel the ground rumble, nearly knocking me off my feet, as it hit the ground. I was standing almost eighty meters away, and still I had to settle myself with my tail.
A few hoots and calls of a successful tree-felling echoed through the vast woods, and I waved back to my people on the other end as they took to searing off half of the tree trunk.
A muffled voice from behind me. I peel out the ear protectors and arch my neck toward the sound.
“I said, ‘You’re getting better at it’,” repeats the male Hork-Bajir, standing behind me. His Hork-Bajir mouth is bared in a grin.
“Corliss Three-Eight-Two,” I reply, grinning back. “May the Kandrona ever shine and strengthen you, brother.”
“And you,” Corliss replies, turning to survey the destruction. “You may as well face the inevitable truth, however. You will never be as good a shot as me.”
“Is that so?” I say, stepping closer to him. His male Hork-Bajir host is a bit smaller than my female, just enough that I can glower down at him if I stand on the tips of my toes.
“Yes, it is,” Corliss replies nonchalantly, trying to match my height. “It isn’t all that difficult to shoot a gigantic tree, even at this distance.”
“I’d like to see you try it,” I challenge. This was an old game, one we had played even on the homeworld, barely out of grubhood.
Corliss tilts his head side to side in the manner of his Hork-Bajir’s tribe. An indication of boldness.
“All right, I will,” he says, drawing his Dracon from his shoulder strap and aiming it at a tree.
“Corliss!” I hiss. “You can’t be serious, if my commander finds out who--“
“Be quiet,” my brother snaps. “You’re breaking my concentration.”
My hearts feel like they’re hammering away in my neck as I watch him squint at the tree.
Corliss’ finger tightens on the Dracon trigger.
TSSEEEEEEEEEEEEWWW!
FWUMPH!
Something falls, dead and smoking, sixty meters away. A dead chadoo, only a few feet long, feathers still sizzling.
Corliss looks back at me with a look that can only be triumphant.
“Your turn,” he says with a smile.
---
Someone was screaming.
Tara sighed and plopped down on the couch. Another of her sister’s tantrums. She was nine, Cattie was four. There was medicine for the seizures, but not for the tantrums.
The doctors had told mom and dad that Cattie was lucky to be alive. Tara LaFauci was glad, because it could have been a lot worse.
“Honey, calm down,” said mom, in that voice that seemed to be the only thing that could break through the little girl. “It’s just bedtime. Do you want mommy to sleep with you?”
Screaming again. Wailing and kicking and crying. Tonight the voice wasn’t working.
Tara rubbed at her eyes and picked up the remote control, clicking on the television. Cartoons made everything better, right?
“Stay tuned, we’ll be back to the show after these messages!”
“Commercials,” Tara muttered, rolling her eyes. None of the commercials were good this late at night. They all asked for your credit card, and you had to be ‘18 years or older to order’. The only reason cartoons were on this late was because they were airing a new show. Trying to get a new demographic. Tara had learned that word in social studies. She wondered who at the cartoon studio thought any kid in their right mind would be up this late, without parents to usher them to bed?
Or without a little sister, crying and screaming in the other room, and dad out late at the office.
That was okay. Just get lost in the excitement of a new cartoon show. Maybe it would be as good as Ren and Stimpy. She smiled to herself, tapping her fingers together like an old TV villain. It was fun to pretend like that, to be the villain who really everybody liked, better than the hero.
Screaming.
“Oh, the popcorn!” Tara cries, bolting off the couch toward the kitchen. She coughs on the acrid smell of burnt popcorn, waving her hand in front of the white plastic microwave. She punches the door button and the waving becomes more vigorous, as she plucks the charred bag from the glass plate and tosses it onto the white kitchen counter.
“Ow,” she whispers, shaking her hand back and forth and sticking a finger in her mouth.
Something was still burning. Now there was the smell of burning meat, like on the barbecue over at grandpa’s.
She was going to miss the cartoons…
---
Myitt’s eyes snapped open as the memory flickered away. White walls. The powerful smell of antiseptic.
Her throat hurt. Something wet and warm was plastered on her neck. Her ear…not responding. More pain there, too.
She gasped for breath, her eyes rolling left to right in dry sockets.
Struggling, she tried to pull herself free from the restraints at her arms and legs. Nevermind the humiliation of opaque white tubes digging into her host’s veins. She was vaguely aware of how long she had been here, because of how many tubes were sticking in places she didn’t even want to think about. Had it been a week? Two weeks? Yes, certainly more than a week.
And they had kept her alive. Feeding her with a refined current. Not letting her slip away into blissful death.
What had she told them? What hadn’t she told them?
Pressure, under her chin. At her forehead. At the back of her skull.
The thing that was attached to her head. Yes, it was causing this pain. The starvation, that was its own little deadly spike in her sluglike body. This thing…with its slimy wires in her head…it was what was making her scream in agony.
Why? Why don’t they just kill me? she wondered desperately.
<I want to go home,> Tara sobbed. <Oh, God, I don’t want to die like this!>
The room turned bright orange, the floor rumbled up through the table.
Good, another dreamlike vision. Sink back into her host’s mind.
That was all right.
The last thing she heard through the ear that still functioned was the sound of voices shouting. Something loud, an explosion, nearby.
Warmth, baking down on her emaciated human body. It was so nice to be warm.