Balken Oppen

**Character**: Balken Oppen

**Species**: Drall

**Career**: Engineer

**Specializations**: Scientist, Mechanic, Slicer, Analyst

**Player**: Jack Q.

## Early Years

Born on the Drall homeworld, Drall, Balken gradually became aware of the nature of his superior intellect; with time in academia was spent outsmarting not only his classmates, but his professors as well. It wasn't long after he had acquired his doctoral degree at the young age of 20 did the Drall become bored with the tedious debating of Drall's upper echelons of scientific advancement. Unlike his kin, the endless hours of arguing were pointless, since he was always right.

So, escaping the trappings of a genius among geniuses, Balken sought out a niche in the wide galaxy where he could make his mark. Fortunately, the criminal underworld offered plenty of opportunity for that, and Balken soon found himself in the employ of Aruk the Hutt at a time when the Besadii kajidic was at the top of the food chain. The job was fair, the pay good, and all Balken had to do was exercise his mighty intellect toward goals that suited Aruk.

However, these goods times did not last, as Aruk wound up dead and the power struggle that followed, both within Besadii and throughout the Hutt cartel structure as a whole, put Balken in grave danger. Abandoning his relative comfort, Balken fled Hutt space with a bounty on his head. Knowing that he wouldn't last long on the run, Balken decided to join up with another organization that had the resources to protect him: the Alliance to Restore the Republic. Again, Balken set himself up as one who could provide for everything the "Rebel Alliance" would want, compensated by being protected from the bounty hunters eager to grab a few good credits by dragging him back to the Hutts.

## Career as a Broker Agent

Balken "stumbled" upon the Broker and his network an expedition of researching new animals that the Rebels could adapt to serve their purposes. He immediately proved his indispensable value in the Second Coronet Cell's "inaugural" mission. Ever since, he has been a central part of the cell's operations in every mission, save for SotB III: Scrapheap King, where he decided to study Jeppo Eddo's intriguing skill with Droids rather than assist the team after they had left to "save" Jeppo Jr.

After the events of SotB XVI: Saber's Edge, Part II, Balken found out that his work for the Broker and the Rebels had successfully buried his lead to the point where his bounty was practically moot. Freed from this burden, Balken has started to move away from the Rebellion, through he works to make sure that he's not burning bridges. In fact, he attempts to "let them down easy" led him to being contacted by the Institute for the Advancement of Galactic Advancement. While Balken did not feel like officially joining the group, his attempt to study their experiments led to him being trapped and having to be rescued by fellow Broker Agents in SotB XVII: Menagerie of Madness.

After those events, and the recent death of Jasper Sunflare in SotB XX: Without a Trace, Balken has committed himself to becoming a more independent entity. However, the cost of supporting both his own research and that of his burgeoning Research Team has led to him to seek sources of credit. So, for the moment, Balken once again is indebted to a third party.

During the events of Beyond the Rim, Balken found the means to increase not only his Research Team, recruiting the valuable cybernetic researcher Cratala, but he was also able to expand his intelligence to limits he thought were impossible. After equipping himself with a brain implant, and furthering his concepts with the help of long discussions with his new colleague, Balken's capabilities are now unmatched. He needs only now to complete his knowledge in specific fields to complete his ultimate goal: cheating death.

Balken has spent his time since then slowly amassing his resources and coordinating his Research Team to accomplish more complex goals. However, the price of doing so was high, and Balken found himself mired in debt that he could not emerge from.

This came to a head during SotB XXXVIII: Trust Fall, as Balken's benefactor was revealed to be Black Sun, who had kept a record of their transactions on the mainframe the Agents sliced into. The record was quite damning in more ways than one, as one of the transactions matched up with the date of the attack on the Coronet Safehouse and the Broker Network. In the confrontation that followed (that included Gristle putting out a bounty on Balken to entice Hawk into preventing his premature escape), it was revealed that Balken had not traded any of the Broker's secrets to Black Sun, only the research data he had been collecting so he could bankroll his Research Team's activities.

While that soothed tensions, Balken's actions in aiding Black Sun, which had dealt a heavy blow to the Broker, made his employment as an Agent a difficult position to maintain. For that reason, Balken decided to part ways with the Broker and continue his work in pursuing intriguing questions of science.

## Current Activities

Balken is currently committing his full attention to his Research Team, in the hopes that he can better bring the disparate scientists together into a cohesive unit.