Ralkor Khard

* Medical training (currently in the process of receiving professional medical certification)

## Physical Description

### Plate Color

Plates are almost black at the base but lighten to a pale orange closer to the edges

### Identifying Marks

* Slight indentation on right side of cranial plate consistent with bullet impact
* Multiple shrapnel scars on right shoulder

## OOC Info

### Status

Active

**Ralkor Khard** is a mercenary and medic who is part of the Council Recovery Corps.

## Biography

For all the miracle that his successful birth was, Khard’s childhood was no easier than that of the rest of his kind. His training among the other krogan was arduous whenever the females sent him out from the camp of his birth on Tuchanka. No male came to request the right of parentage over him, leaving him exposed to the females’ wisdom somewhat longer than his peers. Years went by, and he would return to them less and less, gravitating towards his peers and his path towards growth. In time he undertook the various krogan rites overseen by Shaman Vranak. He progressed through the Rite of Life, then, a bit over a decade later, his Rite of Passage. It was there that he met another young krogan named Crakar. Sired by the demanding Chief Hrask of Clan Ralkor, expectations were big for the youth. The two were not fond of one another when they first met – Crakar was too reckless, even suicidal in Khard’s opinion. Crakar, in turn, mocked the fatherless Khard for being too soft, and laughed at him for clinging to life. Seeing the two of them bicker, Vranak suggested they undertake the Rite of Passage together as krantt. Though Crakar was furious, Khard recognized the Shaman’s intention to force them into a Rite of Union through the Rite of Passage. If they continued their squabbles while facing down a Thresher Maw, they would surely perish.

From the Rite that ensued remained an old image of the two krogan youths. Khard was the one on the right, and to the left of him was Crakar, leaning on him with a defiant grin despite an injured leg. Crakar could already walk straight by the time they reached camp, mocking Khard for missing an opportunity to get back at him while he was still injured. But Shaman Vranak’s ploy worked, and from their initial animosity that they channeled into rage in combat against the violent wildlife, they became krantt. So prominent was their newfound loyalty towards one another, that Crakar asked Ralkor Hrask to accept them both into the clan. On that day they both became krogan of Clan Ralkor.

The years on Tuchanka, ones that lasted into the onset of his fifties, were rough. At least the skirmishes between clans let him prove he was Ralkor not only because the Chief’s offspring vouched for him. Where Crakar was wild and rash, Khard was, by krogan standards at least, patient, a stalking predator prone to explosive bursts of calculated violence. Armed encounters let him learn to pair his skills with those of Crakar. And like the first time he helped his krantt when he was injured, Ralkor Khard would ensure survival of as many of his clanmates as possible. Stakes were rising in the fights among clans, and in time his skills and his loyalty received the ultimate test. The camp of the females who raised him became contested between clans Ralkor and Suragg. Holding gratitude for the years spent in their care, able to learn from them, Khard was less interested in conquest – he was interested first and foremost in their safety. That put him at odds with some of the elders, let alone his peers. The turning point of the conflict came in 1918 CE, when Khard discovered, by virtue of his former close connection to the female camp, that they were planning to escape while the males of the clans were busy shedding one another’s blood. This knowledge could have become an invaluable tactical advantage, if one that would threaten the individual wellbeing of the females of the camp. Khard chose to keep the knowledge to himself and allow the escape to succeed, this deceit remaining unknown even to Crakar. Though he was not discovered, Hrask was still enraged by the outcome. This fruitless battle against Suragg alone was not enough to warrant banishment, and he did not have the evidence to implicate young Khard, but ordering both Khard and his krantt off Tuchanka to bring more use to the clan off-world was the closest alternative.

To their fortune, krogan were in high demand and, throwing caution to the wind, the two of them came to enter service as the muscle of a certain unscrupulous Volus businessman named Sen Vorto. Pay was abundant, as was blood. For well over a decade they would serve as their employer’s “trouble for hire”, sabotaging his competitors, watching his back and discouraging whistleblowers, sometimes merely by way of existing, lumbering past the windows in their heavy armor, Crakar’s terrifying family heirloom – a fearsome Graal Spike Thrower, only adding to the image. This life of spoils won through the fear they struck into Sen Vorto’s enemies wouldn’t last. Mounting scrutiny into the Volus’ practices resulted in his schemes and repeated violations of the law being exposed in the year 1934. When their patron’s schemes were exposed by the local police, the two were forced to flee. Neither Khard nor Crakar ended up caught, but they were split up while they were on the run.

Forced to lay low for a long time, Khard nonetheless had to explore a few other career opportunities. Early on, he was paranoid, like every saccharine asari smile, every fidgety salarian gesture, every piercing turian gaze could herald the sins of his past coming to catch up to him. Of course, if that happened, he would be forced to fight. In those years he scarcely stayed in one place long, instead choosing to kill two varrens with one shot and hiring himself out as security and “threat deterrence” on ships, particularly those passing through dangerous sectors with abundant pirate activity. A means of life and a means of staying off the radar in a single package. Decades in space honed his skills, made navigating the corridors of a ship come as easy as the salt flats and rubble back home. He even learned how to find secret compartments. One day, during a particularly dangerous run that saw the ship he was stationed on being boarded, Khard fought off the boarding party, even knocking down an assault mech. He hadn’t planned on it, but somebody’s handheld video-feed of the krogan tearing off the arm of a mech and bashing it into scrap caught some attention. It even made for a brief influx of job offers for a time, and let him up the rates to an extent as well.

Time went by. He changed from one ship to another, forming a sort of routine. His initial concerns faded into silence much like, it seemed, the Volus from his past. Soon nobody seemed to care about Sen Vorto, or any of his dissolved and auctioned off or appropriated businesses, any of his associates, let alone some hired muscle from decades ago. But as that tide receded, he would not hear anything of Crakar either. He found himself lost in a sequence of days that were much alike, even if the faces around him and the make of the ships he was on were different from one year to another. It was 1983 when Khard, 92 years old at the time, received a message from Tuchanka of all places. Somehow he expected it to be from his krantt, but instead, to his surprise, discovered it to be from another familiar name. Straska was one of the females, a few years his elder, and from her message he discovered Hrask was no longer Chief. He also gained insights into what was happening on Tuchanka. He learned that female camps were now entirely separate from the Clans. He discovered that many males from all clans had gone off-world. He found out that he had a thread leading back home, if he only had the means to grasp it and follow through.

He was past his first century when he made enough credits to make the winding path back to Tuchanka, finding a ship willing to land there presenting a challenge of its own. His clan was different. A different Chief stepped up to take Hrask’s mantle, this one more prone to listening to the counsel of Shaman Vranak, who of course outlived the change of power. Though Khard wouldn’t say it out loud, he couldn’t be certain it wasn’t the Shaman himself who assisted in Hrask’s fall. This was not why he was here though – he requested permission to undertake the Rite of Honor, to earn his right to sire offspring. This challenge seemed different from the sequence of jobs, filling him, for once in a long time, with something of a rekindled sense of purpose. And though he proved himself worthy, though he even got to see Straska again, he should have known better than to expect fortune to smile on him. His attempts at breeding were made at intervals that spanned years. He would not stray far from home for long this time, circling Tuchanka as though it exerted some newfound gravity on him, even as the desire to go looking for his krantt pulled him in the opposite direction. He would embark on brief tours of duty then return to her, each time just a little more scarred than the last. Aged 103 in 1994 he saw his first stillborn son. Four years later, Straska informed him of the second one. In another seven years his third attempt yielded no fruit. He tried some more, though by 2016 he started hearing the occasional sneer and suggestions for the fatherless to stop trying so hard. It cost the offender a part of his plate which stemmed further insults, but not further unsuccessful conceptions.

He didn’t know if either one of them was cursed. If it was Straska or him, who made their every attempt seem doomed to failure. She even suggested he could approach others, to no avail. They just had to keep trying. And in the meantime he would travel. Perhaps find Crakar somewhere. Live long enough to succeed in at least one of those things. It was sometime during that sequence of back and forth between two seemingly equally unattainable goals, that he happened upon a privately owned turian medical vessel, the Archus, touring the Terminus system, answering distress calls to provide assistance. Not everyone respected the immunity of a medical ship, which warranted a need for qualified security.

His work aboard the Archus was impactful for him. Krogan, smart krogan at least, often outlived the other races, be it due to natural longevity or resilience. But never before did Khard confront the fact outside battle. The irony was not lost on him when a frail woman gave birth to a healthy child with him standing outside the medical room. He was not meant to be of much help as a medical specialist while serving on the Archus, but an isolated pirate attack saw him provide first aid to members of the security outfit and crew. “Bleed blue, bleed orange. Medi-gel works the same.” Over time following the incident, Khard established enough trust with the personnel to be referred to by name, rather than by species. His somewhat uncharacteristic interest in things going on around him earned him small bits of information here and there. Brief history lessons, healthcare recommendations, talk about worlds he’s never been to before. Even talk of a station called The Citadel where few krogan had set foot at the time.

In 2053 after its long and respectful tour, the Archus was decommissioned, the crew, for the most part, going their separate ways. Ralkor Khard was fully prepared to return to going between odd jobs, but to his surprise one doctor in particular, Dr. Almia Vinctis, an aspiring turian xenomedic, wished to personally employ him as a bodyguard. Her intention was to travel for a time, then set up a clinic somewhere she could carry on the Archus’ mission, without the strings that could be attached by working with a government-provided security force. By 2055 Dr. Vinctis opened a small clinic on Chalkhos in the Terminus System, with Khard staying around as something of a very intimidating butler and intern. This particular job gave him not only a chance to continue making a career of being big and scary, but also to expand his knowledge past the slivers gleaned while he served on the Archus. Throughout he would maintain communication with Straska, sharing the occasional message and keeping himself updated on what’s been going on back home.

Around the year 2060 the good doctor rather abruptly started seeing an asari she met on Chalkhos. One Janala T’morni. Khard found the somewhat tired turian woman became much more lively in her day to day life, though also more aloof, often leaving him to take care of the patients. By then he could handle it reasonably well as far as typical issues such as overdoses or injuries went. An asari Justicar showing up to the door of the clinic was anything but typical. Her first attempt at conversation was at gunpoint, which the reasonably level-headed krogan suggested they took outside so as not to damage the clinic. He learned two things that day. That he hated fighting Biotics. And that Dr. Vinctis was dating an Ardat-Yakshi. He and Justicar Taleena joined forces to put a stop to Janala’s actions and save the life of Almia. While they succeeded and the doctor survived, hearing her date’s neck snap was still a jarring experience. Several months later Almia left Chalkhos, with the clinic remaining in Khard’s hands for a time.

Despite his efforts, he ended up selling the clinic to the local asari in 2063. At that point there was nothing more keeping him on Chalkhos and he saw no reason to try and seek out Almia in the wake of what had transpired. Flung into a sequence of disparate jobs once again, Khard took up a more typical krogan occupation of bounty hunting. At first he worked solo with reasonable success. But bigger jobs, bigger fish, also required more firepower and more able hands. At first he teamed up with one or two other mercenaries at a time, such as the salarian poisoner Dopin Larjil or the nar Xeewa siblings. In the early 2100s he and five more independent headhunters came together to hunt down a prominent Batarian slave trader. He and five more mercenaries pursued their target for just about three months at first. Then when one of them fell to an ambush it became more personal, stretching the job for several vindictive years until they finally succeeded. It felt good even past the paycheck. It felt good enough to keep them together for years after, gradually working up a reputation for themselves.

They were eventually commissioned to take out a Blood Pack outfit in 2114. The mercenaries were led by an unknown Warlord operating out of a station somewhere close to Talis Fla in the Urla Rast system, flourishing through piracy, lucrative racketeering and extortion. Tracking them down proved to be no issue. In fact when the Warlord knew he was found, he welcomed the bounty hunters, itching for a fight. They deployed to the Blood Pack controlled space station, managing to circumvent their defenses through hacking. Once there, however, things didn't go as planned. Through a series of violent firefights, the bounty hunter team’s numbers dwindled. Eventually only Khard, the turian Kyrtil “Starmark”, who served as their outfit’s figurehead, and the Warlord were left. At which point the krogan they were fighting finally saw fit to introduce himself. It was Crakar. This wasn’t the first time Khard had to make a tough choice. Nor face a tough outcome. He did not turn on Kyrtil like his former krantt offered, or join the Blood Pack. Nor did he let Crakar leave the station and continue his bloody campaign. But neither did he manage to stabilize Kyrtil and save him from bleeding out. All that he had left to show for the job was the reward, Crakar’s old Spike Thrower and a whole lot of blood on his hands.

In 2117 he would travel to Tuchanka, saying little outside of making himself known to the Chief and Shaman Vranak as a courtesy, then set out to the ruins where he and Crakar underwent their Rite of Passage over 200 years ago. There he would nearly die in a battle against a Thresher Maw, wounded within an itch of his life, but managing to take out the beast with the Spike Thrower he took from his former krantt’s body. He didn’t know whether it was the same Thresher Maw they couldn’t best as mere whelps. He didn’t know if this kind of act mattered at all after he killed Crakar with his own hands. With this unusually reckless task complete, he returned to lick his wounds, recover, and try to make heads of just what to do next. When it was ascertained that he was not too emotionally compromised to warrant an encounter with the females, he went to see Straska again. Their meeting added some small measure of comfort. As well as another unsuccessful attempt at conceiving a child.

By 2130, Khard’s record from his work on the Archus, his “honest mercenary” work and varied combat experience earned him enough trust to try his luck in Citadel Space. The Citadel itself was a marvel he could look at but largely could not touch, not unattended at least. Luckily, it turned out he had a friend. When he first heard that a Dr. Vinctis had a clinic in the Lower Bachjret Wards of the Citadel, he wasn’t sure what to expect. The face that greeted him seemed familiar - same colony markings, but it wasn’t Almia. Instead it was her son, Taelas, who followed in his mother’s footsteps. Upon seeing a krogan in the clinic, Khard being the krogan he heard of from his mother was his second guess, preceded by assuming he was here as a patient. This was by far the most amicable welcome he’d gotten on the Citadel so far, and so he once again found himself in the employ of a Dr. Vinctis.

Hardened by his experiences by then, the krogan seemed different to Taelas compared to the stories he heard from his mother. Khard didn’t open up quickly, instead busying himself with reading up on patient files and whatever reference materials the clinic had in store. But in time the doctor found out more about what the krogan’s been through. At least between the last time he saw Almia and came to the Citadel. A while later, Taelas left for the Presidium, giving his aide a cryptic request to wait while he went to get something. When he returned, he presented Khard with a chakru cub - a reasonably popular pet resembling a cross between an Earth cat and a colorful armadillo with a dextro-amino based physiology. To his confusion, he asked Khard to take care of the pet, as well as to name it. After some deliberation he named it Harka.

Not knowing what to think of Taelas’ gift, Khard at least respected the gesture enough to try. It was a different connection compared to any from before. The creature only had partial autonomy and needed actual care. The closest he’s had to that in the many years prior were patients he was trusted to care for, but it was different. Patients also didn’t take to following him around or taking the occasional ride on his hump. Time passed, and as if on fast forward, Khard saw his pet’s behavior change with the years. Less nimble jumps, less frequent mischief or play, more hours left sleeping. Then one day, over twenty years after he first received the cub, Harka climbed into his lap and stayed there, curled up. The krogan didn’t immediately notice that the animal had stopped breathing. Bringing the dead pet to doctor Vinctis, Khard was visibly distraught. As if suddenly rendered unaware of the inferior longevity of other species, he was desperate and apologetic, swearing he didn’t do anything to break it. Taelas comforted the krogan in his instance of vulnerability and with his assistance, Khard did something he’d never properly done before - he processed a loss.

2155 saw Ralkor Khard once again return to Tuchanka. He had many new stories to tell Straska, to which end he visited the females again. As it turned out, this visit would reward him not only with being able to catch up, but with the eventual news he’s waited over a century to hear. His son lived. The years leading up to the messy introduction of Humanity to the galaxy in 2157 and further past that, all the way to 2165, Khard spent on Tuchanka, claiming right of parentage and seeing young Dyrkar through his induction into Ralkor, his trials, his early years and first kills. It was not his place to decide his son’s path, Khard was reminded by the ever-present Ralkor Vranak. Khard would leave home once again, trusting Dyrkar to make his own choices as he grew up.

Although Khard wasn’t part of the Coffee Shop Massacre of 2185, he was there to salvage the aftermath as part of the personnel of the Vinctis Hospital in the Bachjret Ward under Chief Medical Officer Taelas Vinctis. He saw the wounded. Many of them were not happy to see him be the one to attend them. He felt their disdain firsthand, only escalated by the dangerous incident. Even CMO Vinctis was under pressure to get rid of him. With the rise of the Terminus Confederacy and the eventual declaration of war, strain only increased. But when Khard learned that Ralkor Dyrkar was among the soldiers of the Terminus Confederacy, he spared Taelas the trouble and resigned to join G.U.A.R.D.I.A.N. as a combat medic.

Since the clan wars back on Tuchanka, this was the first major war that Khard took part in. In the massacre that ensued during the Outsider’s original attack, he was one of the few fortunate enough to make it to an escape shuttle from the exploding THS Verity alongside a number of shell shocked crew. Rejoining the G.U.A.R.D.I.A.N. again upon its reformation, Khard has been with them throughout the ensuing conflict. The signing of the Truce even gave him hope to reconnect with Dyrkar, but he didn’t manage to contact him. Luckily, as far as he knew, Dyrkar was never on the list of casualties. What followed was a hard-earned victory, another former employer on his resume, and a new one seemingly ahead of him.

## Personality

As is frequently the case with his species, Khard isn’t outwardly expressive. He doesn’t make a lot of gestures when he talks, and he gave up on trying to smile at anyone somewhere along his first two decades in the company of mostly non-Krogan allies. The one exception to that “don’t look at people like you’re sizing them up to eat them” occurs when they happen to listen to one of his favorite podcasts. Whether he’s reminded to rein it in first, or else the fellow fan realizes that’s meant to be a \*smile\*, those situations find a way to work out.

Those slips of stoic countenance aside, Khard has for the most part instead learned to rely on his voice to convey his sentiments and express himself. Most of the time he exudes a sense of collected confidence. Khard manages to come across as a steady and reliable presence, rarely deliberately cold. In fact he can demonstrate impressive empathy, though never to the point of sounding like he’s coddling a patient or colleague. That said, when he’s focused on work he would rarely engage in small talk. What dry sense of humor he possesses is kept for situations when neither he, nor those around him are in a life-threatening situation.

In conversation Khard is mostly a good (if unnerving) listener. He does express a degree of curiosity, even when it comes to purely incidental trivia rather than something aimed at his interests with pinpoint accuracy. When sufficiently drawn in, he can hold an intelligent conversation, but Khard isn’t much for protracted debates - he doesn’t feel like he has anything to prove, at least through conversation. In contrast, if he recognizes a deliberate attempt to provoke him, he might respond with what starts as a warning that whoever he’s interacting with is going down a dangerous path. Some have said it sounds threatening. Khard has said it is meant as fair and an example of clear communication.

### Hobbies & Interests

* *Anyone hungry? -* At some point in his life, Khard took up cooking. Just as he’s had to study the allergies and peculiarities of various species’ physiology in terms of how they handle various medical drugs and types of treatment, he’s learned how they take their food. Khard tests new recipes every now and again, looking into the cuisine of various planets and nations.
* *Take care of the little ones -* Although a lot of people around him would qualify, in this particular case Khard’s expanded beyond his calling as a doctor. He has a penchant for caring for animals, knows their habits and how to properly care for them as pets. Something this delicate also serves him well as practice for fine motor skills and properly modulating his strength.
* *Tune in for tonight’s episode of... -* Khard prefers audio media to visual, as he would often prefer to keep his eyes and hands free for some tasks he can do more or less on autopilot. To that end he often listens to podcasts or radio plays, including tabletop gaming shows and serialized fictional content.

## Physical Description

Ralkor Khard is a robust, broad-shouldered male Krogan. Like most of his kind who live through conflict, he possesses a variety of scars, the most prominent of which are signs of shrapnel impact on his right shoulder and a scar towards the right side of his cranial plate resembling a circular “crater” with cracks spreading from the middle, located almost above his eye. While his scales are a warm grey, his plates are dark brown, almost black by the base, but the further out to the edges, the more they fade out first to fiery hues, then to a pale orange. He rarely wears anything that doesn’t have armor on it. For the most part he swaps between a bulky suit of vermilion armor with an off white trim and something of a mix between an armored vest and a medical lab coat. Field missions often see his bulk increase even further thanks to the abundance of attached compartments housing various medical supplies to be used in the field.

Whether holding a gun or a medical tool, Khard has steady hands. The way he moves seems to convey patience and contemplation. He is liable to spend some time calculating and strategizing, only to follow up with swift and decisive action. That said, he prides himself on modulating his considerable strength well, a concern that makes him stand out occasionally. When he isn’t charging through the battlefield, sometimes eschewing cover in favor of serving as cover himself, he can walk impressively softly for a Krogan.

### Armament

* Graal Spike Thrower (currently inoperable)
* Executioner Pistol

### Abilities

* Barricade
* Tech Armor
* Tactical Scan
* Sabotage

Having cemented a reputation as an imposing figure thundering across the battlefield to shield and recover wounded allies, Ralkor Khard has joined the Council Recovery Corps.