Saede Taggart

"The universe is not indifferent to intelligence, it is actively hostile to it." 
"I’m a sailor on the starship, Revenge. That is, if by sailor you mean pirate and if by Revenge you mean The Crimson Ferret’s Revenge. Where Captain Marcus got that name, I haven’t the foggiest. Pulled it out of the Maw for all I care. The Crimson Ferret’s Revenge….. sheesh, that’s a mouthful, isn’t it? Mind if I shorten that for the time being? I’ll assume you know which ship named Revenge I’m talking about. Anyway, The Revenge is an old Venator class Star Destroyer, yes, pre-Clone wars technology. It’s an ancient hunk of junk if you ask me, but I’m just the First Mate, so what do I know? Or I was, until Marcus up and disappeared on us. Now I'm acting captain of this motely crew. In all seriousness though, the ship is a piece, but for whatever reason, the crew loves the rusted hulking beast that it is, myself included.
So how did I get here? Well, that’s a longer story than I care to tell at the moment. Oh, so you remember that. Yes, you’re right, at one point I had been an interpreter for a fledging Republic on Naboo. No, I was fourteen. Yeah, long way to fall, huh? I can see it on your face.
What sort of horrible things must have happened to this girl to bring her to a place like this?
Listen here, and listen good. First off, I’m not a girl. It’s been ten or twelve years since I’ve been “A girl.” Or a doll, honey, sweety, pumpkin, kitten, luv, chickadee, or any other nickname you can come up with. My name is Saede, and you can call me such, or we’re done talking. Next, becoming a pirate from an idealistic pre-teen with aspirations to politics doesn’t mean that something Force awful happened to me. It just means that life in this galaxy isn’t easy, and that’s enough. Take your pity and your charity someplace else, I’m sure there are little orphan Jawas who need it more than I do." - First Mate Saede Taggart, age 27
==In Days Gone By==
"Please don't disillusion me. I haven't had breakfast yet."
Saede grew up on a small moisture farm outside of Mos Espa on Tatooine. With two brothers on either side of the age gap, she quickly learned to defend herself, both physically and verbally from attack on all sides. Regardless of sibling fights, the three have always been on rather good terms, and she has nothing but fondness for the pair. The moisture farm was from her mother's family, a native of these parts. Her parents never spoke of how they met, and it wasn't until years later as a teen did Saede discover the true identity of her father, so it seemed perfectly natural that the family had remained here.
She had always been a big dreamer, and from a very young age had decided that the life of a moisture farmer was not for her. Though with great difficulty, the bright young girl started to teach herself about the world around her. Information about Tatooine was slim, and on more than one occasion her elder brother Trent had to bring her bodily back from the brink of some "exploratory expedition," as the protesting Saede would put it. Her father frowned heavily on any such actions, and as often as she was brought home from these expeditions or was found up past her bedtime reading off-world holojournals as she progressed in years, so to did she find herself on the wrong end of his belt. Her mother, a meek woman, never stood up to him about it. The beatings Saede took never lived up to the ones her brothers received at his hands.
As she grew into her early teens, Saede had long since started branching out into Galactic affairs and politics, in particular those focusing on human/non-human relations. She consumed the political holojournals, and when she found not all of the ones she wished to read were in basic, she started to teach herself how to read the various languages she thought she would need in the political arena.
Yes, Saede had already decided that she was going into politics. She didn't know how yet, as at the slightest mention of outside affairs her father flew into a rage, but she was going to get off this rock.
When she was fourteen, news that a Galactic Republic, based on Naboo, had been formed, and she decided that come hell or high water, she would go to Naboo. An odd turn of events meant that she never had to break the news to her father, who only a few nights later was killed in a speeder accident (official reports claimed he had been drinking, which wouldn't have surprised his family in the least).
No tears were shed when she left to head into Mos Espa. Her mother was still in shock over the loss of her husband, and though she showed no more emotion than before, had withdrawn even further within her own mind. Clint and Seth saw her off, both promising to visit as soon as they could convince mother to leave Tatooine....
==A Fledgling Republic==
"The avalanche has started, it is too late for the pebbles to vote."
Saede went to Naboo, her first time off of her home planet of Tatooine. She was immediately struck by the huge differences. Not merely in the form of weather, climate and every other obvious visual difference, she was struck particularly by the differences between what were considered the lowest income families here, versus event the richest, non-criminal families, on Tatooine.
She went immediatly to the newly errected Republic center in Theed. Though it took nearly three weeks to get someone to see her, and another two weeks after that before the Senator finally gave in, Saede secured herself a position as a Linguist on the Senator's personal staff. It was not the young girl's obvious intelligence and the sheer number of languages she could speak fluently (at that point over twenty, with a smattering and basic understanding of nearly a dozen more), but her unwillingness to take "no" for an answer that made the bigger impression. Officially the youngest being on the Republic's payroll, Saede settled into this new work with a zest and vigor that at times even surprised the senators.
By the time she was sixteen, she had risen to the position of Liason, her focus on interactions between human and non-human cultures. In particular after an unexpected interaction between Saede and a delegation of Gungans with complaints about mining rights and permission to use their land, her obvious ability to work well with others and to handle unexpected crisis situations put her in higher demand that she had ever expected. She was able to travel extensively, studying a myriad number of cultures and languages. She also, however, saw more than perhaps her superiors would have wanted, the first inklings that perhaps things were not as they should be entering her mind.
It was at this point that she first met Marcus Gray, the man who would eventually become the Captain of the most feared pirates in the Galaxy. While heading into the Republic Center early one morning, the teen was greeted by an odd sight of a strange man rushing out of the main lift with something clutched in his arms. The sound of shouting from an upper floor and the sudden alarm klaxons ringing told Saede all she needed to know. Without thinking about it, she moved into the thief's way and without hesitation reached out and punched him right in the face, downing him in a single blow. This surprised Saede nearly as much as it surprised the future pirate and the Republic security squad. After years of growing up with two brothers, she hadn't lost the ability to brawl with the best of them.
Not long after that, the Republic of Naboo started to fail. Or perhaps it had started on its downward spiral some time before that. Saede had seen some disconcerting things in her two years on Naboo. Senators taking bribes, sexual favors and credits traded in return for votes or information, the democratic process stimied by corruption and inaction. Commity upon commity being formed for special focus groups, no one being able to act without consent from another commity... Each month passing brought new concerns to the teen, each month Saede losing a little more faith in this governments ability to keep things running smoothly. The last straw seemed to come from an unexpected quarter. The Jedi.
Jedi were as common a sight as Senators in the Republic Center. The Jedi temple shared the city of Theed with the Republic, and at first, the balance hung carefully tilted toward neither side, both leaving the other to their own devices. But slowly, each entity looked at the other, seeing something in it that they wanted. The Republic started to attempt to interfer with the actions of the Jedi... and the Jedi with the actions of the Republic. Saede watched the political sparring match with concern at first, and out right alarm as it degenerated into something even she had no name for.
The Republic of Naboo collapsed in on itself nearly two and a half years after its creation. Saede was never completely clear on the role the Jedi had played in that decline, but there were few doubts in her mind that they had played a heavy hand in it.
She returned to Tatooine, a quieter, more thoughtful young woman than the girl who had left it two and a half years before- with very, very different ideas about the state of the Galaxy.
==The Drifting Years==
"I have learned silence from the talkative, tolerance from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers."
Saede left home again not long after she returned. Tatooine held nothing for her, and a deep and irrepresible wanderlust had taken hold of the young woman. For several months she tried to ignore it, to fall back into the patterns of rural life with her mother and brothers. But it was no good. Nothing could bring her back to this desert planet and keep here there.
She drifted for several months, doing odd jobs as she could. She waitressed, worked as an interperter for a small mining company, a receptionist for Wayne Tech very briefly... eventually ending up a lounge singer at a small cantina on Coruscant for a time. It was here that she was "discovered" by Telous, a business and showman, who owned a theatre here on Coruscant. When offered a staring role in his upcoming play, Saede, now eighteen, jumped at the chance to move out of the humdrum of a life she'd settled into.
"If high heels were so wonderful, men would still be wearing them."
Saede was introduced to the threatre, and the darker world that accompanies performers. Though the theatre was an upstanding business, the owner was not a man on the straight and narrow. Many of the performers were involved with some form of shady activity, drug use being chief amoung them. But spice use was a gateway to other parts of Coruscant's underworld; loan sharks, prostitution.... and organized crime.
The redhead watched it all, absorbing the hard lessons being learned by others. She stayed away from spice, but talked to the dealers, to the whores, to the petty thugs, at first out of just some form of curiousity. But slowly, a kernel grew in her mind, setting the stage for events yet to come.
Saede left the theatre two years later, at the age of 20. Though she had talent, she didn't have the true calling of a performer, and by the time she left, the owner was just as glad to see her go. She had not caused trouble per se, but there had been a growing loyalty to the show's leading lady, and his influence had been on the wane. It had bothered him, and it wasn't until she was gone that he realized what had been happening. Saede had been slowly helping a number of the other performers to be independant of spice (often provided to them, at a price of course, by the owner himself), paying of their debts to the loan sharks.... Though she had never made it clear, the woman had been aware of the hold he had on these people, and had bristled at it. Unable to confront him directly, she had helped those willing to be helped.... and when she left, so did nearly half of his cast and crew. In Telous, she had made her first, if powerless, enemy.
==A Pirate's Life For Me==
"In order to live free and happily, you must sacrifce boredom. It is not always an easy sacrifice."
===Marcus and the Revenge===
"Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats."
Over the last few years, Saede and Marcus had run in to eachother occasionally. There was no particular ill will from their initial interaction, and the two eventually became friends. Though he was at the time an officer in the Imperial Navy, Saede never thought much of it. He was a singularly unique individual, unlike any other Imperial officers she'd ever run in to, and she had no strong opinions about the empire in either direction.
He sought her out a few months after she left Coruscant, finally tracking her down on the Outter Rim. On a small, out of the way planet, Saede had been performing again... but this time in a prize fighting racket. Most of the fights were set from the beginning, but none of the spectators seemed to mind, and the punches weren't pulled until the end anyway. Saede was well known, at least in the local circuit, and the money was good.
But Marcus's offer was better.
"Saede, I need you, luv. I need someone to watch my back, someone I can trust as my second in command. This lot I'm assembling... they're thieves and cut throats, without a bit of personal loyalty to myself or me ship. You can keep them in line. Will you join me?"
And as simply as that, Saede found herself First Mate of the Crimson's Ferret's Revenge.
The Revenge was an aging hulk, a pre-clone wars Venator class Star Destroyer. She had been Marcus's commission ship. Why he defected, taking his pride and joy with him, Saede never knew. She never asked him, and he never offered an explaination.
===Lestrange and the Arena===
"Those who do not move do not notice their chains. I move. I notice."
===Reluctant Captain===
"Oops, I thought. Oops is an all-purpose word standing for every bit of profanity, blasphemy, and pornographic and scatological execration I could think of."
===First Mate Again===
"Everyday I beat my own previous record for number of consecutive days I've stayed alive."
=Further Information=
Saede Taggart is first mate aboard the Crimson Ferret's Revenge.
==Distinguishing Marks==
Scar beside right eye, claw scar on right upper arm
==Known Offenses==
"Rules are for people who don't know how to get around them."
Grand Larceny, Piracy, Aggravated Assault, Assault with a Deadly Weapon, Aggravated Burglary, Impersonating a Government Official, Impersonating a Soldier, Negligent Homicide, Conspiracy to Commit Murder, Perjury, Disturbing the peace, Public Indecency, Manslaughter, Jaywalking, Criminal Mischief
Source: http://p071.ezboard.com/bthegalacticunderworld
Category:Active Character
Category:Neutral
Category:Character
Category:Human
Category:Crimson Ferret's Revenge
Category:The Galactic Underworld
Category:Elite
Category:Elites of The Galactic Underworld