Calla Katsuo

**Dr Calla Katsuo**, originally called **Callaka**, was a Client of the Grysk Hegemony. She was assigned the job function of 'biocyberneticist' early in life and studied the commonalities of nervous systems among the various Client and Captive species of her home Hive of Kayaman. Around 20 ABY her job function was changed and the Grysk assigned her to work with Supreme Leader Snoke of the First Order. There she worked with General Brendol Hux on a secret project, creating the Expeditionary Squads. After Brendol's death she was given orders to keep the squads available and continued her work within the First Order until being confronted by Grand Marshal Armitage Hux.

## Biography

#### Early Life

Callaka was born on Kayaman into a family group of eleven, six siblings and five parental figures. Who among them, if any, was her father she considered unimportant. She successfully took her primary implant and was found to possess a drive to understand the inner workings of complex systems. She was educated as a biocyberneticist where she showed an aptitude for causing fear. She came to specialize in secondary implants, though she was often called upon to subdue and implant Captives. It was this skill that brought her to the Grysk's attention when Snoke began separating what he called his Attendants from Grysk control.

Callaka was granted access to human Captives captured from Imperial Star Destroyers and Chiss Captives from Ascendency warships. She extracted their memories and analyzed them through the Kayaman Hive. The Grysk were concerned as to what Snoke planned to do with his usurped Attendants. Several years of observation and analysis watched the First Order rise from the Empire's ashes, which left the Grysk confused as to whether the New Republic or the First Order represented the latest incarnation of their Republic enemy. When the time was right, Callaka was fitted with enough secondary implants to create a robust personal network and ordered to investigate the First Order.

#### Introduction to the First Order

Callaka followed the hive-presence of the missing Attendants and found the First Order convoy collected around the planet Ilum. The Attendants approached her first, unsure what to do with this Grysk spy. They refused her access to their laying queen, instead bringing her to Supreme Leader Snoke.

Callaka drew upon her stolen memories in an attempt to negotiate with Snoke. Her attempts were unsuccessful and she would have been executed as a Grysk spy were it not for Snoke's amusement at her presumptions. Instead he proposed an alliance, an exchange of information and technology. She was introduced to the generals of the First Order using a humanification of her given name, **Calla Katsuo**, as a scientist and researcher familiar with the Unknown Regions.

Callaka, now called Dr. Katsuo by the First Order, grew frustrated as Snoke proceeded to ignore her overtures. In addition, she found herself isolated from the very Attendants who brought her before Snoke. It was when she began to sense their hive-presences fading that she realized what Snoke was doing: killing those Attendants who had been implanted in order to deprive the newborns of hive.

#### The Generals

Snoke's actions induced dread in Dr. Katsuo. She did not fear death, Kayaman would remember her, but she feared what else Snoke might do. She turned to the very generals of the First Order whom she had been introduced to, quietly gauging their willingness to exchange technology for protection. That was how she came across Generals Brendol Hux and Enric Pryde. Here she found an audience for her negotiations. In exchange for protection and the ability to study the First Order and its humans, she would provide the generals with an understanding of Grysk technology.

She began by studying the Conditioning enacted by Armitage Hux, Brendol's son. Brendol feared this Conditioning would be used to rip the Stormtrooper Program away from his control by binding them to Armitage's command. Dr. Katsuo agreed this might be a result but her understanding of humanity's frail psyches prevented a complete conclusion. This was when Pryde suggested a demonstration of Grysk technology in the form of creating a small hive. After an incident on the *Eclipse*, the RX Cadre was volunteered to be her subjects.

As a biocyberneticist, Dr. Katsuo was allowed free reign to implant her subjects but was expected to hand the implanted soldiers over to Brendol after the procedure. The first few did not survive. Dr. Katsuo was furious over the waste of potential and informed Brendol he would allow the rest to form a hive, or he would watch them all die. In a compromise, Captain Cardinal was volunteered to keep a military presence among the RX Cadre while they recovered from their implantation and while Dr. Katsuo helped the hive coalesce.

Once the hive was stable, Dr. Katsuo stepped back from their training as agreed upon, continuing her studies of human anatomy and the medical practices of the rest of the galaxy. She found their presence on the *Eclipse* comforting, a hive presence in the back of her mind that reminded her she was not alone. She was content to maintain distance until Brendol came to her with an addendum to their deal. The soldiers had become difficult to control as the hive grew stronger between them. She suggested implanting more soldiers to allow the fledgling hive to expand, a suggestion that Brendol readily agreed to. When this didn't provide immediate results, Brendol suggested a hive required a queen to control it. Dr. Katsuo disagreed, Grysk hives did not work on human hierarchies and Brendol's idea reeked of an attempt to enforce human ideals onto something decidedly nonhuman. Brendol ignored her protests and recommended his Second, Cardinal, as the one to be implanted as his 'hive queen'. However, Brendol died before the implants could be grown and the idea died with him.

#### The Expeditionary Squads

Upon Brendol's death, Cardinal took over the Expeditionary Squads as project head. Dr. Katsuo found herself transferred off of the *Eclipse* and onto the *Finalizer*. In addition, her right to leave the ship was revoked, making her essentially a prisoner of the First Order. She was stripped of the right to contact Snoke or the Attendants she had been sent to retrieve. But the greatest insult came when the Expeditionary Squads were split apart and she was never able to connect with more than three or four of them at any given time.

Calls to General Pryde went unanswered. With no allies and no direction, she retreated to the labs assigned to her on the *Finalizer*, delving deeply into the study of human anatomy and medicine in order to perfect the disguise she felt she would have to rely upon. She received one final order concerning the Expeditionary Squads: "Keep them available". She suspected the order came from General Pryde but did not confront him on the matter.

It was an order she would both follow and disobey. The small clusters of implanted Expeditionary Squads were rotated through the fleet, groups split apart to prevent them from ever reforming a complete hive. She found the practice repulsive, especially as she found those affected began to fall into insanity due to the stress of being implanted and alone. She began to surreptitiously share memories with each of these soldiers, memories of Kayaman and how to find it. Even if she could not return to her home hive, she could at least send the ones she'd implanted there. If they carried with them knowledge of the First Order and copies of her own memories then all the better. As a Client of Grysk Hegemony, she could not abandon her duty to serve the Grysk, nor did she try.

#### In The Open

The masquerade ended when RX-3081 found Kayaman on a mission, joined the hive, and later was allowed to leave. When he returned and was officially discredited, RX-3081 sought out Dr. Leta Weyland for information on his implant. Dr. Katsuo was confronted by RX-3081, Dr. Weyland, and Grand Marshal Armitage Hux. Dr. Katsuo was surprised that the Grand Marshal was unaware of the nature of her project and chose to reveal what she knew of its inception in exchange for her life. As a result she lost all of her secrecy, instead forced to operate under the supervision of a select few individuals. Dr. Weyland was among them.

Dr. Katsuo chose to view Dr. Weyland as a collaborator rather than a jailer, a distinction that added a veneer of choice to Dr. Katsuo's actions. That distinction made it easier for Dr. Katsuo to ask Dr. Weyland to assist in fitting RX-3081 with secondary implants with the goal of expanding the project to the rest of the Expeditionary Squads. When Dr. Katsuo suggested reversing the enforced splitting of the hive, Dr. Weyland readily agreed. Over time Dr. Katsuo began to view Dr. Weyland as a friend of sorts and began to trust her with deeper secrets.

## Personality and Traits

Dr Katsuo was considered an unnerving physical enigma to the humans of the First Order. She used the casual speciesism of the former Imperial Officers to appear human, simply because 'human' was their default manner of thinking. Nonetheless, rumors began that she wasn't human and was instead hid something monstrous underneath the full body latex that she wore. Her skill for causing fear in those she considered prime candidates for becoming Captives did nothing to quell these rumors and made her difficult to get along with.

A lifetime of experience within the Hive of Kayaman stunted her abilities to sense or express ordinary emotions in ordinary ways. She had learned to rely on the 'hive-presence' of her colleagues to understand their emotions and when faced with unimplanted humans she found she couldn't read them. As such she often dismissed emotional outbursts as unimportant or was unable to make otherwise obvious assumptions.

Her constant drive to learn more enabled her to masquerade as a medical doctor during her collaboration with Brendol. After his death and her exile to the *Finalizer*, she was able to complete the research necessary to take on the role without any of her colleagues suspecting her lack of formal education on human anatomy.

## Equipment

Dr Katsuo operated out of a repurposed operating theatre on board the *Finalizer*. She kept two medical droids that she maintained as part of her personal network, they operated as near automata enslaved to her will. She was infamous for using suboptimal strength bacta and experimenting on her patients, though she would dismiss such concerns with logical explanations.

She wore a skintight bodysuit with shoulder-length dampening gloves, a full latex hood, opaque goggles, and a knee length lab coat to hide her silhouette. The dampening nature of the suit kept her implants from being picked up on routine scans for unauthorized technology. The setup also had the effect of visually hiding both her implants and the ambiguity of her species from casual observation.