Ryia Karos

> This world is a dark place. The light in it flashes and glimpses before our eyes, but so long as I have you, my star, I think the dark can be comfortable.
>
> ━Ryia Karos to her partner, Kyria Lais

**Ryia Karos**, also known as **Tala**, is a force-sensitive human female who is the heiress to her family's military armanent comapny known as Karos Industries which specialises in the production of military equipment for the Imperial Army, and an apprentice to Darth Abyss within the Order of the Sith. Born on Corsucant during the middle years of Emperor Palpatine's reign, she grew up surrounded by a family that supported the Old Galactic Empire, Several years before the end of the Galactic Empire, she enlisted into the Imperial Army and joined a training program to become a Special Commando Recon Trooper (SCAR). After graduating, she was stationed on Malachor to observe and report on rebel activity, occassionally sabotaging and crucial rebel shipments of weapons and equipment with great effect, achieving rapid promotions until she was a sargeant of a small unit of SCAR troopers on the planet, known as Task Force 218. After the fall of the Galactic Empire in 15ABY, Ryia and Task Force 218 joined an Imperial Remnant faction known as the Dark Fleet led by Admiral Rynar on his fleet command ship *Nike.*

The Dark Fleet joined with the New Sith Empire but at the cost of Task Force 218 being disbanded under the new military leadership led by Allegiant General Pyre Kinall. Ryia, disillusioned with the military and how wrong the new Sith Empire was, retired from active service in the Sith Army and returned to Coruscant where she lived a life of a smuggler, desperate to distance herself from what she saw as the blatant disgust that wealth and corruption that resulted from it brought to the galaxy. It was at this time she met Kyria Lais, a Senators daughter who was also rebelling against the blatant corruption that her family was a part of. Together, they ran smuggling jobs for the Hutt syndicate and the Black Sun, racking up a history in the criminal underworld and amongst Imperial officials of being the most successful and most prolific smugglers in the Core Regions. However, this one day changed when Kyria Lais mysteriously disappeared and Ryia was imprisoned on smuggling charges. After her escape from the prison, she met Darth Abyss, and on the promise he'd teach her everything she needed to find Kyria, that she would study under him as his apprentice and learn the ways of the Sith.

## Personality

Ryia Karos is known to be a calm individual who never expresses her emotions to anyone, displaying a rock stone facade to those who gaze upon it. However, underneath, she is bubbling with a range of emotions from worry to excitement, but believes showing emotion as a weakness she can't afford to highlight. She is also very intelligent, with an assessed IQ of 135. She is a highly experienced leader of soldiers, having being the leader of Task Force 218, a SCAR unit infamous in its reputation as one of the most efficient units the Galactic Empire held under the SCAR program. She tends to be a quite warm, kind and affectionate individual when amongst those she's comfortable with, but more professional and stone cold around those she isn't. Ryia is also quite sceptical of the idea of the light and dark sides of the force, and doesn't nessecarily see the Jedi as her enemies, but rather proponents of disorder and chaos that must be reined in by the 'order' of the Sith. She is also known for treating prisoners of war and other enemies of the Sith Empire with surprising kindness and in a humane fashion, but there are rumours that she has a dark side. Those who know Ryia Karos have hinted that she can be equally as cruel, vindictive, ruthless and sadistic as other Sith, or perhaps even worse, if those below her treat her with disrespect or cross her wrong.

## Early Life

### Childhood

#### Birth

Ryia Karos was born on Coruscant to Aledius and Pyrrhia Karos in 20BBY. Aledius and Pyrrhia were two influential members of Coruscants upper class. Aledius is the 51st Executive of Karos Industries, a industrial company that supplied weapons and military technology to first the Republic, then the Galactic Empire, and now the Sith Empire. Pyrrhia, however, was one of the daughters of the Empress of Arkanis, Leeya. Her birth went very smoothly despite scares of being a stillborn due to the highest levels of medical care available, which was down to the wealth of her family.

#### Early Childhood

Ryia grew up as a normal child, albeit it with privileges and exceptions that many of her age would not recieve. As a young child, she attended many galas with her father and mother. As the only child of the heir of Arkanis, she was treated with much dignity and respect by those around her. However, despite this, she was still subjected to bullying and racist sentiment for her racial identity and from being from a Outer Rim planet instead of a Core World. Whilst this racism did not affetc her as much as it would a member of a lower class, she often found herself excluded and pushed out by other members of her upper class, giving Ryia a cynical and distrustful view of them.

She was noted as having "few friends whom she truly cared for." One of these was Tyria Lis, a member of the Lis banking clan based on Arkanis and a close family friend. As children, they bonded very well and closely, often being inseperable. However, this all fell apart when Lis was kidnapped by slavers, never to be seen again by her family and Ryia. Her family tried to push her sister, Laykia, onto Ryia as a 'replacement'. This showed the young Ryia how brutal the upper classes could be, and she grew to not only despise the bankers, but those of wealth and power. Her own father even tried suggesting forgetting her friend, and she grew to hate her father, but grew more and more attached to Arkanis and her mothers family, who seemed far more sympathetic to the troubles of young Ryia.

Aged 10, in 10BBY, her and her family travelled to Felucia on hunting trip with a gathering of other wealthy families. On this trip, she was attacked by a hungry and starving Felucian bird as it was defending its children. The attack hideously mauled Ryia's face, leaving her with a set of claw scars going down her left part of her face and rendering her blind in her left eye. Despite calls from her mother for it to be treated, her father beat the mother into submission and so Ryia was left permanently disfigured and was mocked by her peers for her scar, though some, especially some of the lower class girls and boys she met, were intrigued and in awe of such a scar.

#### Arkanis Dispute

When Ryia was aged 14, Empress Leeya, now fairly old, began searching for a heir to the Arkanis throne. As it stood, Pyrrhia had passed over the throne in return for the marriage to Aledius. Pyrrhia's older sister, Lyiana, and her youngest, Zayia, had passed away from a mysterious illness afflicting the planets of Korriban and Yavin 4, where each were stationed on diplomatic missions, without producing any heirs. This reasonably left the young Ryia as the sole legitimate claimant to the throne of Arkanis, but she refused to take up the mantle of heir, insisting it be passed down through her great-uncles line instead as she was a lesbian and therefore would not wish to have children. This resulted in Ryia being pressured and intimidated to ascend to the heirdom of the throne of Arkanis, by her grandmothers family although Leeya and her mother respected her wishes. Aged 16, two years after the intital dispute began, and after a violent confrontation with her father who almost killed her, she ran away from home and travelled to the Imperial Recruitment Facility on Coruscant where she enlisted herself into the Imperial Army of the Galactic Empire.

### Adulthood

#### Military Career

Aged 16, Ryia travelled to the Imperial Recruitment Centre on Coruscant where she enlisted herself despite being too young to enlist. However, despite the recruiting sergeant, Sergeant Ipois Luxis, a member of the 13th Infanry Corps, trying to convince Ryia to talk out her complicated differences with her family, she insisted on enlisting in the Imperial Army. Ipois called her parents and they collected her, but for the next 3 weeks, she came back again and again until he gave up and allowed her to be enlisted into the Armed Forces.

She passed her medical and psychological exams with ease and began her basic training in the Coruscant Training Centre , and then her advanced training as she moved more towards the special forces segment of the Imperial Army, completing all her training aged 18 and a half. She was the top of the class and she chose to enlist in the SCAR program. A year later, she completed her service, she was sent to Mykapo to destroy the rebellion there as the Galactic Civil War loomed. She was assigned to a special SCAR unit known as SCAR Unit 218, under the command of Sergeant Amalis Lazarus, a veteran of serving in the Galactic Republics Grand Army.

##### Service to the Galactic Empire

###### Mykapo

Ryia was stationed with Unit 218 on Mykapo, a small relatively obscure Outer Rim planet, which although of no specific tactical or stragetic importance to the Empire, was being used as a position by rebel groups on the planet to ship arms and aircraft to other rebel factions within the sector. She and her unit were tasked with destroying shipments by Phoenix Cell to other rebel groups.