Syndren Varr

Syndren Varr is a smuggler operating in and around the Outer Rim, captain of the *Siren's Calamity* freighter, and current and future chaotic icon. He was born on Arkania; genetically engineered by the Pure for his lifelong purpose - to work in the mines, decades without sunlight, living in deep and winding caverns like an animal. It seemed like Syndren had bigger desires than his predetermined life, though, and at 17 he escaped the caverns with wealth considerable enough to build his own life.

> *"I was an outcast to my people, and a pawn to their enemies."*
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## **Appearance and Personality**

Syndren Varr is an Arkanian male standing at 6'3 and weighing in at about 195 lbs. He appears to be muscular, though not overly so. His defining characteristics include his pale near-white skin, white hair, and colorless eyes with pale grey pupils adjacent to a cat's, adjustable in any environment. He possesses the 5-finger genetics seen in Arkanian Offshoot species, all of which end in fingers with wickedly curved, retractable claws. He frequently wears fine clothing when on the ship, but more battered clothing when in public to hide his wealth (unless of course he needs to flaunt it). He is known for wearing dark sunglasses almost-always, and highly-advanced technical visors during broad daylight on some bright planets. He carries an array of weaponry, most of it out in the open.

> *"You learn a few things, down there in the dark."*
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Syndren is a flamboyant, arrogant, and chaotic Captain who often seems like he's recklessly out of control. Most of his behavior acts as a coping mechanism for the life he's had, and is also incredibly unhealthy. He is known for his proclivity to drugs, although whether or not they affect him is usually quite hit-or-miss due to his heavily altered genetic structure. He's found that his favorite illicit substances are Sweetblossom (smoked) and death sticks (consumed in small amounts or used as eye drops). Finally, and most rarely, Syndren has been known to court death by playing with unsafe dosages of Millaflower. Despite his experimentation, Syndren seems to be free of debilitating chemical addictions, although he is mentally addicted to their effects. Syndren is quite slick and charismatic, and not many are made privy to the darkness of his past. He is incredibly intelligent, with proclivity to learning new things. He is proficient in engineering, and all the systems of his ship as well as guns and knives - even the stupidest Arkanians can memorize entire libraries full of knowledge.

## **Skills and Traits**

Syndren has many skills both learned and genetically bred into his life. He is incredibly intelligent, able to learn at thrice the normal rate of a human's mind, which means that acquiring new skills comes as easily as breathing. He has been able to personally master around 50% of common languages in the galaxy, as well as basic knowledge of their culture. He is a repository of recent historical knowledge. He is adept in close-quarters combat involving both guns and melee weapons, though he didn't bother to learn how to use long-range rifles for lack of belief in their usefulness. He is proficient in all the systems and repairs necessary for his ship, but seems a bit hopeless to the concept of greater engineering - mostly due to apathy.

Genetically, he was bred with an incredible sensitivity to light. He can see in perfect detail even in pitch-black conditions, with a heightened sense of hearing and smell to detect instability in caves or gas leaks that the normal nose may not be able to find. He is able to see in the infrared scale, as most of his race is able to. Unfortunately, this also means that he needs to wear deeply tinted sunglasses or technologically-advanced visors on bright planets to avoid damage to his eyes. His retractable claws can serve as small knives for utility or combat. Syndren's body is capable of healing wounds roughly twice as fast as a human. Syndren cannot swim, and is incredibly hydrophobic. His body is resistant to drugs, although it is a bit of a dice-roll for how much they end up affecting him.

## **Equipment/Inventory**

* DL-44 Heavy Blaster Pistol
* Defender-5 Sporting Blaster Pistol (split into 3 pieces to pass security scans)
* "Scytha" (SKY-the) - A genuine bantha-leather bullwhip laced thickly with copper veins in order to conduct electricity.
* Electro Baton
* Unknown number of Raw Diamonds
* Chain Communicator - A silver chain necklace made of alternating-length links, of which certain links (marked with small colored symbols) are disguised communication links to individual members of his crew as well as a general comms line.
* Personal Datapad
* Satchel (for carrying things!)

## **(27BBY-20BBY) "Loss"**

Syndren was not born as most species' children are - not to Arkanians, a species who mastered genetic influence down to the minutiae. A species who created their children to serve only one purpose - their life's purpose, serving the Pure who lived in their heated dome-cities with their false suns, while the poor and impure suffered incredibly long hours in the mines of Arkania. Syndren's fate was decided long before he was pulled from the artificial wombs of Arkania's genetic manipulation centers. He was to be the first of a breed sent deeper than any Arkanian had gone into the mines - to excavate the purest of diamonds for scraps of food. To survive days, weeks, or even months on the barest supplies, to see in the impenetrable dark of the natural tunnels, to survive against the cold, to be an animal that survives on instinct alone.

Syndren was oozed from an artificial womb into a life that, at first, seemed good. He was kept in the heated dome-city by the Pure, to test his aptitude for the tasks he was created for. After all, he was the first of an experimental breed of deep-dwelling miners who would be raised without the sun, without heat. The Pure researchers did not think about how cruel it was to show the young Syndren these luxuries, knowing that they would be taken away from him. He underwent extensive research and testing. Most first-generation genetic mutations do not survive past infancy, but several of the researchers took a liking to Syndren in the same way that one would take a liking to a stray dog - the attraction of innocence in tragedy. He was given his name by a particularly soft-hearted Pure researcher, who named him Syndren after a pet of hers who had passed away.

At age 7, Syndren was introduced to the locale in which he would spend the next decade of his life. The cold Outside, free from the painful artificial sunlight and chafing heat of the dome-city, but exposed to the frigid winds of the lifeless tundra. He was introduced to a bustling city built along the walls of the biggest quarry he'd ever seen, just outside the dome, this place was the opposite - a lifeless pit into the ground upon which light from their elder star barely seemed to reach. Syndren liked this place. On the higher levels, life seemed almost normal. But the further that he descended into the Pit, the more he saw, and the more he clung to the researcher's robes in fear. Diamond miners who had gone blind after years in the dark, found families of the original Made, real families of their children's children. Both torn apart from the hunger that exuded from the bottom of the hole. They were made to crave the diamonds after all - when the supply began to dwindle, they became angry and desperate.

By the time they reached the bottom of the Pit, the researchers were using headlamps to navigate, though Syndren could see fine. They introduced him to the hole that he would wander into curiously, before the entrance was closed behind him, leaving him in perfect, lonely darkness. Syndren pounded on the collapsed rocks for hours - until his claws shattered and his hands bled, until his throat was raw from his lost cries. But the researchers never came back, and Syndren turned to the only tools laying at his disposal - technologically advanced equipment meant for mining diamonds. He wandered into the dark.

## **(20BBY-10BBY) "The Dark"**

The Pure weren't so cruel as to send the young Syndren into the deep mines with no way to survive. After all, what was seven years of careful genetic manipulation and psychological training good for? When he was abandoned with only his familiar equipment, he got to work. It was more comfortable here anyway than with the researchers - many of them were cruel, and the ones who weren't treated him like an animal. He dug through miles of rock in the first month, outpacing any other test subject, and returned to the place that he was abandoned after exactly thirty days - starved and weak, but with a fat bag of glittering jewels. He had no idea what they were - no idea that he held enough wealth to carry him through the rest of a comfortable life. He just knew that the glittering would buy him food, and the food would buy him energy, and the energy would buy him more glittering. And eventually, the glittering might add up to being loved again. If one could call his life so far "loved".

And so the cycle continued. Syndren was fed once or twice a month at the same place he was first thrown into the caverns, and over time, his accommodations improved. He was treated to his first taste of other Arkanians when a crew of engineers entered the mines to upgrade his equipment and stabilize the tunnels that he'd been digging through the rocks. The interaction was nothing like what he expected - this small, dirty child who outworked every adult in the Pit twice over. Instead of meeting him on the friendly ground of overworked laborers, the Pit-dwellers were disgusted by him, the most impure of them all. They spoke to him coldly if at all, and when their work was finished, they purposefully left the supports in the Western Tunnels weak, so that when they were disturbed by Syndren's work, the tunnels collapsed on him in a bid to end his life and return the work (and profits) to the hands of the Pit-dwellers. To their dismay, Syndren survived the deep wounds due to his genetically-manipulated body, and was back to work the following month.

This would go on for almost a decade, though the Pit-dwellers made no more attempts on his life. Eventually, Syndren had dug a system of underground tunnels as Arkania had never seen - looping and spiraling through the rock, confusing anyone who was not him. It was like he had a nose for the glittering, like he could smell it through the many layers of rock. But over time, the area around the Pit grew dry of diamonds, and Syndren could no longer find much. Soon he was only filling half the bag, and some months he would return to the Habitable Zone, or Hab, with barely a handful of glittering rocks. It was then that he was introduced to pain. The researchers never came back for him - they were not the ones who fed and clothed him. That was the foremaster, who was not kind to Syndren on account of his particular breeding.

The day he brought only a handful of gemstones was the day he learned what true pain, true exhaustion felt like. He was chained to a post in the center of the Pit, at its very depths, and whipped within an inch of his life to the jeers of a crowd of onlookers. A shiny new toy of the researchers, who had outlived his usefulness, and become an inevitable disappointment. The Pit-dwellers, with their slow but steady progress, would always be superior to the Pure's newbloods. The game had changed. Syndren was no longer a perfect machine - he was flawed, deeply so, and no matter how many miles he dug through his confusing span of tunnels, he could not find enough diamonds. The foremaster stopped bringing him food - instead, each time he reached the surface, he was met with the painful bite of a whip.

But Syndren had been engineered to function without real food. He stopped coming to the surface, stopped bringing his paltry finds of glittering rocks. He'd learned, at least, how they seemed to be valuable. Search parties entered the tunnels to retrieve him, if only for another punishment, but they were lucky if their remains made it back to the surface. **It was free food, after all.** Syndren was more animal than man, a crouched creature deep in the caverns, surviving off the remains of those sent to kill him. Eventually, he'd amassed a collection of glittering rocks that rivaled the first of his retrievals. He dug to the surface, near the Outsider's Spaceport. Hiding his identity, the blood all over him, with a cloak. He bought passage off the barren tundra rock with just one of his diamonds, their true value revealed to him.

## **(10BBY-Present) "Glittering"**

Sendryn lived on that first ship for much of his life after Arkania was left far behind. He learned the trade of smuggling - learned the kind of adventure it could bring. An exploration that surpassed that of the tunnels, full of danger and adrenaline, excitement shooting through his very blood. His treasure-seeking instincts and vast in-bred intelligence served to quickly make him the best member of the crew despite his age. He became notorious among smugglers and legitimate businessmen alike, leading to a series of aliases and name-changes that had just as much to do with Syndren's lack of identity as his need for hiding from the law. His crimes seemed to be reset with the rise of the Empire and their subsequent mass takeover of the universe, as many of the records of his law-breaking crimes were lost.

During this transition, Sendryn withdrew the mass wealth of his interest-accruing bank account and put it towards the purchase of a light freighter that he called *Siren's Calamity*, and the original payroll of the first 10 crewmembers. Much of his crew was lacking in loyalty though, frequently cycling in and out in a temporary fashion. He had trouble building relationships with others, and as always, wealth had no bearing on his happiness. He'd handled more glittering wealth in his youth than he'd ever have the opportunity to see pass through his hands in his adult life, and it held little bearing on his desires.

He's lacking in purpose. Despite his success, he doesn't know what he *wants* from life.

## **Roleplay and Future Developments**

7/29/2023 - Syndren and his crew were present as the Space-IRS demanded taxes from a settlement of villagers on a backwater planet who could not provide them. During this time, Syndren recruited a Magnaguard droid whom he nicknamed IGS after his model number. He also met The Fool, a jester-like force user who caused a bloody massacre in the settlement, though Syndren doesn't know this. He escaped aboard *Siren's Calamity* with IGS following the retreat of all parties.