And where are all the gods?
[PLAYER INFO]
NAME: Cris
AGE: 22
JOURNAL: nerditude
IM: ffffudgesicles
E-MAIL: crizzotto@gmail.com
OTHER CHARACTERS: Xavin (Marvel 616/Runaways) runawayskrull
Billy Batson/Captain Marvel (DCU/Shazam!) mightymortal
[CHARACTER INFO]
CHARACTER NAME: Galen Marek AKA Starkiller
FANDOM: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (video game)
CHRONOLOGY: After his battle with Darths Vader and Sidious (post-first game, pre-second game.)
CLASS: Anti-Hero. He'll follow the Porter's orders to be a hero because following orders is what he does, but he'll have few compunctions about killing people and incurring massive collateral damage to get the job done.
SUPERHERO NAME: Starkiller
ALTER EGO: Galen Marek
BACKGROUND:
Star Wars takes place a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. Inter-stellar travel is commonplace, and most civilizations appear to have around the same level of technological advancement - which is to say, far beyond our own. Androids, engines capable of FTL speeds, energy weapons and hovercars, just to name a few things. There are seemingly an infinitely diverse array of alien species, including humans, but there has never been mention made of any kind of version of Earth.
The Force Unleashed takes place a decade or two after the Clone Wars, one of the largest inter-stellar conflicts to date which ultimately ended in the formation of the Empire, which would shed the Republic and become the ruling body of most of the known galaxy in its place. The Jedi and Sith orders are not so well known, viewed by most as a strange and outdated religion. Force Sensitives are usually taken in at a young age to be trained at Jedi temples, where they learn to use the Force.
Starkiller was the code name for Darth Vader's secret apprentice. A powerful, almost primal Force-wielder, he was forged by Vader into a lethal living weapon that the Dark Lord groomed in secret -- continuing the Sith tradition of treachery -- in a bid to defeat the Emperor and rule the galaxy. Vader discovered his secret apprentice on the Wookiee world of Kashyyyk, when he was just a boy named Galen Marek.
Marek's parents were both Jedi who took part in the Clone Wars; during the conflict, they fell in love and secretly married. When Galen's mother learned she was pregnant, she and her husband quietly left the Order, hoping to raise their child in peace somewhere in the Outer Rim. A short time later, Emperor Palpatine issued Order 66, which resulted in the near annihilation of the Jedi. Now living in complete exile, Galen's parents relocated to Kashyyyk, where they were befriended by the native Wookiees.
Galen's mother was killed a few years later while trying to protect a group of Wookiees from slavers; Galen's father, Kento, died soon after, trying to protect the boy from Darth Vader, who had tracked the Jedi to Kashyyyk. When Vader discovered the Jedi Knight's son, he sensed great power within the boy and, after only a moment's hesitation, took the child with him.
Vader spent years personally training Galen in the ways of the Sith, but no other Imperials -- including the Emperor himself -- knew of his existence. The apprentice's training was harsh and unforgiving: Vader subjected the boy to rigorous physical tests bordering on torture. He first controlled the boy through fear, then taught him to embrace his hatred and other base emotions. As the boy grew older, Vader promised him greater power -- through the dark side. Under Vader's relentless tutelage, the apprentice all but perfected the fine art of lightsaber combat and learned to wield many fearsome dark side powers. Galen lived in constant fear of his master, who kept the boy locked up within the bowels of his starship, the still under construction Executor. Vader allowed him no friends or companions, save a holo-droid named PROXY.
During combat sessions, Vader would attack the boy relentlessly. When Galen was injured, Vader ignored the boy's pain and attacked even more viciously. Even when Vader was away, Galen was tested, quickly learning that his only trusted companion -- PROXY -- was actually programmed to attempt to kill him, over and over again. Under these torturous conditions, Galen began to forget his past life. He embraced his anger and hatred, eventually succumbing to the dark side as Vader intended. With the boy corrupted, Vader revealed his master plan: He was grooming his secret apprentice to one day help him destroy the Emperor.
By the time he was 15, Galen began undertaking dangerous missions for his master. As the Apprentice grew stronger in the ways of the Force, Vader began testing him by sending him on secret missions to dispatch the Dark Lord's rivals and enemies. Vader had assigned his apprentice the code name Starkiller and provided him with an advanced prototype starship, the Rogue Shadow, to aid in his missions. With these early trials complete, Starkiller embarked on a hunt for rogue Jedi. Each assignment was a new test designed to ensure that the boy would have the skill, power, and will to eventually battle the Emperor. Initially, these missions involved hunting down and assassinating Vader's rivals within the Empire. Eventually, however, Vader sent Starkiller after several rogue Jedi. The first was the battle-hardened Jedi General Rahm Kota -- and Vader was clear that no witnesses were to be left alive, including Imperial forces. He also got a new pilot for Rogue Shadow, Juno Eclipse, who had been captain of Vader's Black Eight Squadron.
After Starkiller killed Jedi Council member Shaak Ti on Felucia, Darth Vader recalled him to the Executor, promising that they would at last confront the Emperor. When Starkiller arrived, he discovered the Emperor's fleet already close by. But, after revealing that the Emperor's spies had discovered Starkiller's existence, Vader attacked the boy. Goaded on by the Emperor, Vader seemingly killed his Apprentice, proving his complete loyalty to the Emperor.
But Vader's attack was a ruse. He secretly retrieved Starkiller's body and had him rebuilt. When the Apprentice recovered, Vader revealed the next part of his plan: Starkiller was to locate all of the Emperor's major enemies, assembling them into an alliance of rebels and dissidents. In this way, Starkiller became, in effect, an original architect of the Rebel Alliance by facilitating the meeting on Corellia of the Alliance's founders: Garm Bel Iblis, Mon Mothma, and Bail Organa. Vader then attacked during this initial meeting, betraying Starkiller once more and imprisoning the dissidents. Eager to prove himself to Juno and to stop the Dark Lord, Starkiller and his now anti-Imperial pilot sped to the first Death Star, under construction and nearing completion.
As Juno rescued the Senators, Starkiller confronted the Sith Lords who had been manipulating him for years. Lightsabers clashed inside the Emperor's observation dome, but Starkiller was ultimately no match for their power. Bombarded by Darth Sidious' Force lightning, Starkiller did not fight back but instead unleashed all the power of the Force within him, causing a tremendous blast that shattered the Emperor's tower and caused enough of a distraction to allow Eclipse and the Rebel Senators to escape, though he died in the process. The early founders of the Rebellion honored the real Starkiller -- Galen Marek -- by using his family crest as the symbol of the Rebel Alliance.
PERSONALITY:
While not inherently unintelligent, Starkiller was essentially trained to not think. He tends to flounder and second guess himself when he has no specific instructions to follow or end goal to strive for, though he will (eventually) pull through. His usual battle strategy for any given situation, no matter how overwhelming the odds, is to charge in from the front with his lightsaber blazing. He has likely only survived with this mindset for so long due to the sheer raw power he possesses, but it is nearly only physical strength that he wields. He has very little by way of social skills - having only a droid for companionship while growing up - and is used to his only real friend constantly attempting to kill him.
Understandably, this has messed up his understanding of human behavior a little bit. His acting abilities are therefore quite poor, as he even failed to convince even the blind, drunken Rahm Kota of his identity as a Jedi rather than a Sith. To be fair, however, his understanding of the Jedi way comes mostly from Vader's derisive descriptions of it, so his attempts at being good are clumsy and often ill-conceived, but in the end they are at least earnest.
Starkiller always acts on instincts first and carefully considers the situation later, relying heavily on the Force for making his way through life. He is a soft sell for anyone that treats him even slightly less horrifically than his Master, and thinks almost nothing of the value of human life. It takes more than half of the game for Starkiller to come to terms with the fact that he has never really been more than a slave to Vader's will, and his over-confidence often gets in the way of his seeing and truly understanding most of the things that happen around him.
He is brooding and quiet most of the time, but when he is cornered into conversation he has a tendency towards rudeness and generally being a brat, patience in particular not being his forte. When faced with human(oid) interaction, he's a shade shier than one might expect - for example, he falls in love with Juno Eclipse, but it's her that has to make the first move for them to finally kiss. When he does get to know someone, he can be cajoled into showing concern, like for PROXY whom he constantly repairs after their fights even though having the droid break would put him in a lot less danger. His affection can be gruff and seemingly insensitive, as shown by the way he banters with Kota, but it's still genuine.
In the end, his defection from the dark side came about not because he was noble or unable to cope with doing evil, but because his inherent tendency towards personal loyalty put him at irreconcilable odds with the Sith way of doing things. Instead of hating the man he had every right to, Starkiller empathized Vader and tried to talk him out of siding with the Emperor, and while he probably didn't particularly care about the Rebellion and its success, he gave his life for it because of his attachment to Juno Eclipse and General Kota.
POWER:
(Canon) Force Powers: It should be noted that while Starkiller is incredibly powerful when it comes to the physical side of using the Force - able to tear Star Destroyers from orbit with his mind, and jump-start engines with force lightning - he is pretty much SOL when it comes to any of the more cerebral aspects. He has essentially no skill in mind-reading or mind-tricks, and couldn't for the life of him empathically sense suspicion or betrayal when it was right under his nose. Multiple times. Leading to his death...s. Uh.
[CHARACTER SAMPLES]
COMMUNITY POST (FIRST PERSON) SAMPLE:
[Audio input, there's a long quiet before he finally speaks up.]
"Earth," right?
I don't really know where this place is, but people here need to get out more. How is there not a way to get off world?
[Frustrated pause, followed by a sigh.]
We're all off worlders, right? [World, Dimension, whatever.] Can anyone here build a starship? I'm not staying on this backwater rock forever. I know my credits aren't worth anything here, but I'll work for it, whatever you need.
LOGS POST (THIRD PERSON) SAMPLE:
A spanner and two comm links floated gently off the small room's floor, bumping quietly into the walls and then spinning lopsidedly along their sloppy orbit around a single figure, cross-legged on the floor.
Starkiller sat, eyes firmly closed, deep in meditation.
It was said Jedi could sometimes sense visions of the future, but Starkiller had no idea how. Usually the Force would guide him, give him some idea - some sense of intuition - for how to accomplish a task, but not this one.
He had known, instinctively, how to make his fingers crackle alive with force lightning, how touch things that his arm could not reach, how to push and pull and explode with energy like it was a tangible thing, but he had never seen a glimpse of the future.
It was a frustrating shortcoming. Surely, Vader saw it as a failure, on his part. Surely Vader could do it, and he could not.
He couldn't accept that.
Spare droid parts and an uneaten loaf of bread off his plate joined the objects in motion, and Starkiller's brow furrowed as he attempted to clear his mind. Maybe that was his problem. A lack of self-control. Vader called it almost primal, once - his grasp of his power - but Jedi weren't supposed to be primal. They were supposed to be calm and collected. They were supposed to see the future.
The spanner and droid circuitry tangled in the air, scraping along a wall with a jarring suddenness that made the Sith apprentice's eyes squint open with a distinct air of annoyance. He sighed impatiently and squeezed them shut again, waiting.
After a time it happened - or seemed to, anyway. Out of the darkness, vaguely - and then in a grating, mechanical voice that brought with it blinding light, only one phrase, only five words: "Welcome to the City, Hero."
Starkiller sat up in shock, and every item floating around the room dropped to the floor with a series of clattering cracks. His heart hammered hard in his chest, and though for the life of him he could not understand why, he could only think of dirty city streets, tall square buildings, faces and people like he'd never seen them before.
Failed again, he surmised, frowning and rising swiftly to exit his suddenly stifling room so he may check up on Juno and Kota in the cockpit. They could not be far from the meeting place, now - from realizing everything he'd worked for both while under Vader's thumb and while someplace new, someplace free of it.
He would have to figure out what that vision meant, later.
FINAL NOTES ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER:
He won't actually be able to use Farsight (like in the 3rd person sample) in the City, in-canon it was a crapshoot and he only ended up managing it once despite trying repeatedly throughout his life.
NAME: Cris
AGE: 22
JOURNAL: nerditude
IM: ffffudgesicles
E-MAIL: crizzotto@gmail.com
OTHER CHARACTERS: Xavin (Marvel 616/Runaways) runawayskrull
Billy Batson/Captain Marvel (DCU/Shazam!) mightymortal
[CHARACTER INFO]
CHARACTER NAME: Galen Marek AKA Starkiller
FANDOM: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (video game)
CHRONOLOGY: After his battle with Darths Vader and Sidious (post-first game, pre-second game.)
CLASS: Anti-Hero. He'll follow the Porter's orders to be a hero because following orders is what he does, but he'll have few compunctions about killing people and incurring massive collateral damage to get the job done.
SUPERHERO NAME: Starkiller
ALTER EGO: Galen Marek
BACKGROUND:
Star Wars takes place a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. Inter-stellar travel is commonplace, and most civilizations appear to have around the same level of technological advancement - which is to say, far beyond our own. Androids, engines capable of FTL speeds, energy weapons and hovercars, just to name a few things. There are seemingly an infinitely diverse array of alien species, including humans, but there has never been mention made of any kind of version of Earth.
The Force Unleashed takes place a decade or two after the Clone Wars, one of the largest inter-stellar conflicts to date which ultimately ended in the formation of the Empire, which would shed the Republic and become the ruling body of most of the known galaxy in its place. The Jedi and Sith orders are not so well known, viewed by most as a strange and outdated religion. Force Sensitives are usually taken in at a young age to be trained at Jedi temples, where they learn to use the Force.
Starkiller was the code name for Darth Vader's secret apprentice. A powerful, almost primal Force-wielder, he was forged by Vader into a lethal living weapon that the Dark Lord groomed in secret -- continuing the Sith tradition of treachery -- in a bid to defeat the Emperor and rule the galaxy. Vader discovered his secret apprentice on the Wookiee world of Kashyyyk, when he was just a boy named Galen Marek.
Marek's parents were both Jedi who took part in the Clone Wars; during the conflict, they fell in love and secretly married. When Galen's mother learned she was pregnant, she and her husband quietly left the Order, hoping to raise their child in peace somewhere in the Outer Rim. A short time later, Emperor Palpatine issued Order 66, which resulted in the near annihilation of the Jedi. Now living in complete exile, Galen's parents relocated to Kashyyyk, where they were befriended by the native Wookiees.
Galen's mother was killed a few years later while trying to protect a group of Wookiees from slavers; Galen's father, Kento, died soon after, trying to protect the boy from Darth Vader, who had tracked the Jedi to Kashyyyk. When Vader discovered the Jedi Knight's son, he sensed great power within the boy and, after only a moment's hesitation, took the child with him.
Vader spent years personally training Galen in the ways of the Sith, but no other Imperials -- including the Emperor himself -- knew of his existence. The apprentice's training was harsh and unforgiving: Vader subjected the boy to rigorous physical tests bordering on torture. He first controlled the boy through fear, then taught him to embrace his hatred and other base emotions. As the boy grew older, Vader promised him greater power -- through the dark side. Under Vader's relentless tutelage, the apprentice all but perfected the fine art of lightsaber combat and learned to wield many fearsome dark side powers. Galen lived in constant fear of his master, who kept the boy locked up within the bowels of his starship, the still under construction Executor. Vader allowed him no friends or companions, save a holo-droid named PROXY.
During combat sessions, Vader would attack the boy relentlessly. When Galen was injured, Vader ignored the boy's pain and attacked even more viciously. Even when Vader was away, Galen was tested, quickly learning that his only trusted companion -- PROXY -- was actually programmed to attempt to kill him, over and over again. Under these torturous conditions, Galen began to forget his past life. He embraced his anger and hatred, eventually succumbing to the dark side as Vader intended. With the boy corrupted, Vader revealed his master plan: He was grooming his secret apprentice to one day help him destroy the Emperor.
By the time he was 15, Galen began undertaking dangerous missions for his master. As the Apprentice grew stronger in the ways of the Force, Vader began testing him by sending him on secret missions to dispatch the Dark Lord's rivals and enemies. Vader had assigned his apprentice the code name Starkiller and provided him with an advanced prototype starship, the Rogue Shadow, to aid in his missions. With these early trials complete, Starkiller embarked on a hunt for rogue Jedi. Each assignment was a new test designed to ensure that the boy would have the skill, power, and will to eventually battle the Emperor. Initially, these missions involved hunting down and assassinating Vader's rivals within the Empire. Eventually, however, Vader sent Starkiller after several rogue Jedi. The first was the battle-hardened Jedi General Rahm Kota -- and Vader was clear that no witnesses were to be left alive, including Imperial forces. He also got a new pilot for Rogue Shadow, Juno Eclipse, who had been captain of Vader's Black Eight Squadron.
After Starkiller killed Jedi Council member Shaak Ti on Felucia, Darth Vader recalled him to the Executor, promising that they would at last confront the Emperor. When Starkiller arrived, he discovered the Emperor's fleet already close by. But, after revealing that the Emperor's spies had discovered Starkiller's existence, Vader attacked the boy. Goaded on by the Emperor, Vader seemingly killed his Apprentice, proving his complete loyalty to the Emperor.
But Vader's attack was a ruse. He secretly retrieved Starkiller's body and had him rebuilt. When the Apprentice recovered, Vader revealed the next part of his plan: Starkiller was to locate all of the Emperor's major enemies, assembling them into an alliance of rebels and dissidents. In this way, Starkiller became, in effect, an original architect of the Rebel Alliance by facilitating the meeting on Corellia of the Alliance's founders: Garm Bel Iblis, Mon Mothma, and Bail Organa. Vader then attacked during this initial meeting, betraying Starkiller once more and imprisoning the dissidents. Eager to prove himself to Juno and to stop the Dark Lord, Starkiller and his now anti-Imperial pilot sped to the first Death Star, under construction and nearing completion.
As Juno rescued the Senators, Starkiller confronted the Sith Lords who had been manipulating him for years. Lightsabers clashed inside the Emperor's observation dome, but Starkiller was ultimately no match for their power. Bombarded by Darth Sidious' Force lightning, Starkiller did not fight back but instead unleashed all the power of the Force within him, causing a tremendous blast that shattered the Emperor's tower and caused enough of a distraction to allow Eclipse and the Rebel Senators to escape, though he died in the process. The early founders of the Rebellion honored the real Starkiller -- Galen Marek -- by using his family crest as the symbol of the Rebel Alliance.
PERSONALITY:
While not inherently unintelligent, Starkiller was essentially trained to not think. He tends to flounder and second guess himself when he has no specific instructions to follow or end goal to strive for, though he will (eventually) pull through. His usual battle strategy for any given situation, no matter how overwhelming the odds, is to charge in from the front with his lightsaber blazing. He has likely only survived with this mindset for so long due to the sheer raw power he possesses, but it is nearly only physical strength that he wields. He has very little by way of social skills - having only a droid for companionship while growing up - and is used to his only real friend constantly attempting to kill him.
Understandably, this has messed up his understanding of human behavior a little bit. His acting abilities are therefore quite poor, as he even failed to convince even the blind, drunken Rahm Kota of his identity as a Jedi rather than a Sith. To be fair, however, his understanding of the Jedi way comes mostly from Vader's derisive descriptions of it, so his attempts at being good are clumsy and often ill-conceived, but in the end they are at least earnest.
Starkiller always acts on instincts first and carefully considers the situation later, relying heavily on the Force for making his way through life. He is a soft sell for anyone that treats him even slightly less horrifically than his Master, and thinks almost nothing of the value of human life. It takes more than half of the game for Starkiller to come to terms with the fact that he has never really been more than a slave to Vader's will, and his over-confidence often gets in the way of his seeing and truly understanding most of the things that happen around him.
He is brooding and quiet most of the time, but when he is cornered into conversation he has a tendency towards rudeness and generally being a brat, patience in particular not being his forte. When faced with human(oid) interaction, he's a shade shier than one might expect - for example, he falls in love with Juno Eclipse, but it's her that has to make the first move for them to finally kiss. When he does get to know someone, he can be cajoled into showing concern, like for PROXY whom he constantly repairs after their fights even though having the droid break would put him in a lot less danger. His affection can be gruff and seemingly insensitive, as shown by the way he banters with Kota, but it's still genuine.
In the end, his defection from the dark side came about not because he was noble or unable to cope with doing evil, but because his inherent tendency towards personal loyalty put him at irreconcilable odds with the Sith way of doing things. Instead of hating the man he had every right to, Starkiller empathized Vader and tried to talk him out of siding with the Emperor, and while he probably didn't particularly care about the Rebellion and its success, he gave his life for it because of his attachment to Juno Eclipse and General Kota.
POWER:
(Canon) Force Powers: It should be noted that while Starkiller is incredibly powerful when it comes to the physical side of using the Force - able to tear Star Destroyers from orbit with his mind, and jump-start engines with force lightning - he is pretty much SOL when it comes to any of the more cerebral aspects. He has essentially no skill in mind-reading or mind-tricks, and couldn't for the life of him empathically sense suspicion or betrayal when it was right under his nose. Multiple times. Leading to his death...s. Uh.
[CHARACTER SAMPLES]
COMMUNITY POST (FIRST PERSON) SAMPLE:
[Audio input, there's a long quiet before he finally speaks up.]
"Earth," right?
I don't really know where this place is, but people here need to get out more. How is there not a way to get off world?
[Frustrated pause, followed by a sigh.]
We're all off worlders, right? [World, Dimension, whatever.] Can anyone here build a starship? I'm not staying on this backwater rock forever. I know my credits aren't worth anything here, but I'll work for it, whatever you need.
LOGS POST (THIRD PERSON) SAMPLE:
A spanner and two comm links floated gently off the small room's floor, bumping quietly into the walls and then spinning lopsidedly along their sloppy orbit around a single figure, cross-legged on the floor.
Starkiller sat, eyes firmly closed, deep in meditation.
It was said Jedi could sometimes sense visions of the future, but Starkiller had no idea how. Usually the Force would guide him, give him some idea - some sense of intuition - for how to accomplish a task, but not this one.
He had known, instinctively, how to make his fingers crackle alive with force lightning, how touch things that his arm could not reach, how to push and pull and explode with energy like it was a tangible thing, but he had never seen a glimpse of the future.
It was a frustrating shortcoming. Surely, Vader saw it as a failure, on his part. Surely Vader could do it, and he could not.
He couldn't accept that.
Spare droid parts and an uneaten loaf of bread off his plate joined the objects in motion, and Starkiller's brow furrowed as he attempted to clear his mind. Maybe that was his problem. A lack of self-control. Vader called it almost primal, once - his grasp of his power - but Jedi weren't supposed to be primal. They were supposed to be calm and collected. They were supposed to see the future.
The spanner and droid circuitry tangled in the air, scraping along a wall with a jarring suddenness that made the Sith apprentice's eyes squint open with a distinct air of annoyance. He sighed impatiently and squeezed them shut again, waiting.
After a time it happened - or seemed to, anyway. Out of the darkness, vaguely - and then in a grating, mechanical voice that brought with it blinding light, only one phrase, only five words: "Welcome to the City, Hero."
Starkiller sat up in shock, and every item floating around the room dropped to the floor with a series of clattering cracks. His heart hammered hard in his chest, and though for the life of him he could not understand why, he could only think of dirty city streets, tall square buildings, faces and people like he'd never seen them before.
Failed again, he surmised, frowning and rising swiftly to exit his suddenly stifling room so he may check up on Juno and Kota in the cockpit. They could not be far from the meeting place, now - from realizing everything he'd worked for both while under Vader's thumb and while someplace new, someplace free of it.
He would have to figure out what that vision meant, later.
FINAL NOTES ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER:
He won't actually be able to use Farsight (like in the 3rd person sample) in the City, in-canon it was a crapshoot and he only ended up managing it once despite trying repeatedly throughout his life.