Bento Toro

**Bento Toro** is a drell smuggler captain and former slave of the Hegemony of Khar'shan. Born into slavery, he labored diligently for his first few decades of life until being saved by another smuggler, captain Lazar Fenlix. Taking the reigns of his new life by joining up with the man's guild, he rose to become a captain in his own right and a prominent player within the Morerae Guild.

## Biography

Born to a pair of slaves on the arid, mineral-filled world of Hamokrah in early 2136, Bento learned to swing a pick from the moment he could walk. His mother did not survive the birth, so his father and the few other drell slaves within the compound raised the boy as a collective effort. When he was eight, Sonin, his father, was sold away, leaving the child in the care of a small cluster of friends.

Bento did not make himself known as a hard worker or a particularly skilled miner, walking the line between complete incompetence and simple-mindedness for most of his time as a slave. It didn't take long for his masters to consider him little more than a mouth to feed, sending him to undertake more dangerous jobs that more valuable slaves couldn't be risked doing.

It was the failure of one such job that would lead to the young man's freedom. In the hot summer of 2154, Toro and another two slaves were tasked with unloading a shipment of Uranium-235 from the hold of a smuggler's vessel. A highly controlled power substance within the batarian hegemony, his owners had been seeking to up their local power supply to more easily compete with the other mining facilities on Hamokrah.

During the unloading process, a container of the highly radioactive material snapped the brace holding it onto a pallet, causing the barrel to drop and snap the leg of a slave overseer. After the dust had settled and the substance was verified as stable and still sealed, the group of slaves were brought to their knees and awaited punishment. They knelt on the landing pad for hours under the hot sun as the guards watched from the shade, letting the star do the initial work of torture. As the sun began to set, the overseer captain drew his fak'leh.

Three reinforced leather-like straps studded with the natural barbs of a Marodo Cactus dangled from the baton, each tendril long enough to wrap around a slave's entire body. As the captain and his two companions neared the slaves, a shadow from the cockpit of the freighter vanished from sight. With a crack, the captain lashed the first slave, the tendrils tearing flesh as the barbs dug in, shattering into tiny pieces and beginning their journey through the victim's bloodstream. He kicked the slave into the ground, the man coughing up blood onto the metallic platform. The captain moved on.

The second slave was hit much the same, this time taking two full swings from the weapon before being pushed onto the ground. Both slaves wheezed in pain, wincing and crying to themselves as the guards stepped over them and moved towards Bento. Before the straps could be brought down on the drell, however, a turian stepped down from the gangway and opened fire. The three guards were, ironically, caught off guard, falling to the volleys of fire that erupted from two dual-wielded L-9 Tempests. The man shouted at Bento to join him as the vessel's engines began to ignite. The drell, in a state of shock, struggled to his feet and tried to get the other two slaves to do the same. They continued to write in pain, in no state to get up. The turian shouted once more, gesturing for Bento to come aboard. With one look back at his dying friends, the man dashed up the gangway and into a new life. The turian gave a sad sigh and finished off the dying slaves after their companion had boarded the vessel. Just as reinforcements arrived, the vessel jettisoned off into the atmosphere.