Nadiya Pavan

The captain, as drawn by Beka

> *“We can blow them up on the way out.”* - Auyi
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> *“Okay. Okay. [beat] We’re blowing them up though.”* - Nadiya
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> *“Yes. I mean, I built a bomb, I’m not gonna not blow it up.”* - Auyi
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Nadiya Pavan is a pilot, smuggler, and the captain of the Ninox Mu. She has a daughter named Lesya who lives on Arda-2, and most of the profits Nadiya makes during her smuggling runs are sent home to provide for her.

## Appearance

Nadiya is average height and slightly on the skinny side, in a way that suggests she doesn’t ever quite eat enough. Her skin is medium tan, and she has light brown eyes and shoulder-blade length dark blonde hair that’s typically pulled back in a ponytail. She has two tattoos, one on each shoulder blade: on the left is a white O bordered inside and out in orange, with a black 3 in the center. On the right is a black sigma symbol with a blue 6 between the symbol’s upper and lower horizontal lines and a date from about four years ago underneath.

She typically wears neutral colors (brown, grey, black, white), and her usual outfit consists of knee-high brown leather boots, fitted khaki cargo pants with a thigh holster, a white tank top or t-shirt, and a battered brown leather jacket. She wears her Republic-issue dog tags and her wedding ring on a chain around her neck, though she typically keeps them tucked under her shirt.

## Official Biography

Nadiya Hydlind was born and raised on Ghorman. She had a comfortable middle class childhood, though as the designated problem child in the family, she often clashed with her parents and her older brother, Tarash. At age 18, she enlisted in the Republic Starfighter Corps, and quickly fell in love with piloting. She made numerous friends in the Corps, and shortly before graduating from the academy, she began dating one of her fellow pilots, Gabril Pavan. She and Gabe married two years later, and a year after that, their daughter Lesya was born.

Eleven days after Lesya’s first birthday, the Galactic Republic declared war on the Separatists, officially beginning the Clone Wars. Nadiya and Gabe were both deployed across the galaxy to fight the droid armies. Early in the war, Nadiya met and befriended the clones of Rancor Squad, and they fought together in several battles during the first two years of the conflict. In 20 BBY, however, Nadiya’s world began to fall apart. One of her close friends in Rancor Squad was killed during the Battle of Umbara, and a mere four months later, Gabe was killed in action during a minor skirmish at Ixtlar. Not long after that, what remained of Rancor Squad deserted from the military. The Jedi Purge and the departure of her best friend from the Corps were what finally pushed Nadiya into retirement. She and Lesya went back to Ghorman, where she temporarily moved in with her brother while figuring out what to do next.

Tarash had become heavily involved in anti-Imperial protests, and he was among the protesters present during the Ghorman Massacre. He survived his initial injuries; Nadiya and Tarash’s wife, Darina, all but bankrupted themselves paying for his medical care. But after three weeks, he showed no signs of improvement, and Darina decided to take him off life support so she could save what money she had left to support their three children. Nadiya, Darina, and their four kids moved to Arda II, a planet in the Gordian Reach in the Outer Rim, and tried to find work that would pay well enough to support their broken, grieving family.

Fortunately for Nadiya, Rancor Squad’s former commander, Jets, contacted her again, nearly two years after their last meeting. He and the other clones had opened a weapons shop on Taris, and they loaned her the money to buy a ship and set her up with some of their contacts, helping her get started in the world of weapons smuggling. Eventually Nadiya was able to pay back the loan, buy her own ship, and move her family into a small but comfortable rental house. For the last two years, she has traveled the galaxy as an independent smuggler, working solo and sending majority of her profits back to her family. She has returned to Arda II and Taris to visit her family and friends every couple of months, but for the most part, she’s been on her own.

That is, until she took a seemingly simple job delivering a couple crates of blaster pistols to Tatooine...