Jax Erinos, born Irian’Jaxerias, is a Mandalorian Warrior selected from Arcona’s Mandalorian Clan for the Fade Initiative. He is a martial arts and demolitions expert, a former commander, and a long time freedom-fighter sworn to the service of Atyiru Entar.
Mandalorian Soldier -- Fade Initiative - Operative #006
Physical Description
Jax is a dark brown-skinned, lightly furred Zygerrian-Shistavanen hybrid male, with more Zygerrian-like features, including the species' iconic furry, angular features, elongated fangs, bony spurs around his chin, and upright, longer, pointed canine ears. Most of his hair and fur is a muddy brown, with some a slightly lighter, tanner tone, and all of it is startlingly well-kempt, treated, and styled for a long-tenured mercenary soldier and ex-convict, largely due to the influence of his adoptive Twi'lek mothers. His piercing azure eyes with their slitted predator's pupils reveal a certain fire of emotion, usually ranging from playful excitement to vicious contempt. Jax has several scars, including a large slash stretching from jaw to brow across his nose and cheek, as well as burn scars on his limbs, plus several tattoos acquired throughout his life, all of which make quite the storied tapestry out of his skin.
He is very well-muscled - bulky, even - and athletic thanks to a lifetime of grueling work and dedicated training. However, he's had his share of mishaps, and has lost his right leg and the lower half of his left arm. Both were eventually replaced with top-of-the-line cybernetics, but further heroics on the battlefield led to Jax having the remainder of his left arm blown off, nerves too badly damaged to replace with cybers, and so the man only has one upper limb remaining.
Being partially Shistavanen despite looking outwardly largely Zygerrian, Jax is taller and bulkier than almost any of his dam's species, and has more bestial traits. His fanged teeth cram into a humanoid mouth unsized for them instead of a canine one, while his large hand and feet have more exaggerated claws, his legs something of a digitigrade arch. Any accent he might have had is mauled around his too many teeth.
Jax typically wears standard issue military pants and shirts when not in his full Mandalorian armor. He keeps not only his own ident tags, but those of fallen comrades, on his chain around his neck.
History
The Unbound (7 BBY - 11 ABY)
Born on Bespin of a simple fling to a Zygerrian slaver and eventual Shroud pirate, Mirall Dol, Jax was discarded and left for dead as an infant. However, he was saved from the cold by his mother’s own Twi’lekki slaves. The women named him Irian’Jaxerias, after their home colony, and cared for him as they could. When the group was traded to another slaver on Korbin, they smuggled Jax along with them.
Jax grew up in a harsh environment of grueling, menial work done largely in shadow. He was a sort of “duct rat”, always having to squeeze into whatever space he could to hide from his family’s masters. When one of him many mothers fell sick or was too exhausted to work, Jax would do their duties quietly for them, giving all the relief he could manage. Eventually, he expanded him outreach, sneaking around the compound to help other slaves, particularly those that fared much worse compared to the entertainment-oriented Twi’leks.
Jax smiling, before his losses
It was life as normal, but where others did not know any better, Jax knew a meager taste of freedom in anonymity. As he grew and watched the Zygerrians through a pseudo-slave’s eyes, he also grew resentful and ruthless - but most of all, he grew to have a vision for better. He exploited his quasi masters at every turn, subtly sabotaging guard rotations and stealing everything from needles to bandages to soap to knives. He would escape the compound and explore the shadowport, hiding on the rooftops or in corners, observing soldiers as they trained or merchants as they bargained. Then each morning he returned to his mothers and put his stolen bits of knowledge to use. All the while, he hoped one day to free his family and, in his young rage, crush the men and women they served.
Eventually, an opportunity presented itself. Their then-master was killed in a sour deal, and the entire compound’s “product” was sent back to Zygerria to be redistributed. At his mothers’ urging, Jax left their care to go among him own species. However, Jax did not assimilate. A plan in mind, he worked as a mercenary and guard-for-hire, building his fortune. When he had the money, he joined the Zygerrian Slavers Guild, and spent a year legally tracking down and purchasing all the scattered members of his Twi’lek family. Together again, he and his mothers set themselves up on the space Jax was allocated for his business on Elerion, building a base there.
Jax continued his miscellaneous work, along with some profitable, albeit cheated gambling in Elerion’s casinos, in order to meet his expenses. Every slave he added to his operation was freed and given pay enough to seek opportunity elsewhere. Although his efforts in liberating handfuls of people were considered progress, Jax was dissatisfied. He still ached to lash out at his fellow Zygerrians and any other slavers. With that in mind, he began plotting an undertaking: to undermine the Zygerrian slave trade from within, either through reform, or if it came to as much, rebellion.
However, his naive ambitions were ended shortly after they began. His infringement was discovered by the Slavers Guild and Jax was arrested. During the initial "sentencing", which was to say, the start of his punishment, Jax was publicly collared, shaved, whipped, and finally, like most male slaves not selected for breeding stock, castrated. Once he had been made a spectacle of, there was spectacle for him to watch: all of his "freed" slaves, including his Twi’lek family, were executed in front of him. He was left with the corpses for three days before finally being taken away for imprisonment.
Jax would spend the next eight years incarcerated on Zygerria.
The Reforged (11 ABY - 19 ABY)
Jax changed during his imprisonment. Armed with desperate fury, some fledgling experience in leadership, charisma, and a special kinship with the oppressed, he quickly formed a following among the other convicts. His two most trusted supporters were Ko-Ehni-Ta, a Cerean former demolitions expert who had displeased his buyers in the black market, and Llirak, an ex-military Zabrak. Both men taught Jax some of their respective skill sets, honing him into an effective thinker and weapon. In return, Jax saw to it that their triad became the most respected “family” in the prison. He was careful to suppress his hatred enough to be respectful to the guards and wardens and liaison between them and the prisoners, earning a margin of grace by making everyone's lives a little easier.
Approaching his ninth year as the unofficial ringleader of “his” institution, Jax received notice from his informants in the guard of the rumored outbreak of civil unrest. Desperate to get him and his people out of the region, Jax staged a prison riot that resulted in the deaths of many of the facility’s guards and convicts, and the escape of the majority of the prison’s population. In the chaos, Jax lost his right leg, and saw his second pseudo-family’s massacre.
Following his escape from prison, Jax fled Zygerria with the aid of his Zabrak friend and stowed away on a slaver’s ship. Once out of orbit, they incapacitated a guard and stole his uniform so that Jax could disguise himself as one of the slavers. He seized the pilot while his friend proceeded to cut down the rest of the crew and commandeered the vessel, freeing the slaves on board. They traveled to the Mid Rim before hopping to the Expansion Region and then to the Inner Rim, where Jax released the slaves in Coruscant. Finally free, he and his friend parted ways, but not before Llirak gave one last confession: he was not merely ex-military, but an ostracized member of a Mandalorian Clan that served powerful people, the Erinos. He recommended that Jax seek them out if all else failed, and then left.
- "You’re a tough sort, kid, and you fight for your freedom. You can’t get much more Mandalorian than that."
- ―Llirak, former member of Clan Erinos
Bitter but briefly purposeless, Jax stayed in the Inner Rim and got cybernetics to replace his lost leg. During his time in recovery, he met many wounded former soldiers from both Imperial and Rebel sides in the conflict that had ended ten years earlier, unfortunate, poor, and rich alike. He came to realize something that his mothers had begun to teach him and that experience had reinforced: disorder and selfishness were not the way to achieve anything worthwhile. Chaos hurt people. Greed hurt people. It required order and unity and prudence to survive, not for desires of revenge or profit to run wild. Societies were meant to protect their people, as their first and most important duty, and citizens had to respect that in order for it to work...but the laws also had to make sense, and serve the people and the state.
As his rehabilitation progressed and he resolved himself in these things, Jax volunteered his service to the New Republic in the hopes of maintaining a government he saw potential in, working more in "relief and aid" and "military police" capacities as a "peacekeeper" under the limitations of the starwars:Military Disarment Act than as an active enlisted.
The Infamous (19 ABY - 23 ABY)
Jax’s time in the military was a many-faceted thing he speaks little of. In his travels around the Republic member worlds and other worlds, he saw lines of "right" and "wrong" smudged over and over into a mess of blurs, saw help withheld where it was needed under some regulation or another, saw focus put into the wrong place, saw threats ignored out of fear or ignorance or denial. At one brief point, he debating requesting a transfer to a more "active" unit like those under General Organa, but stayed under the various assignments given him for the chance to help destitute populations on various planets who were still displaced or left in poverty by the civil war that had ended so long ago.
Amidst the unspeakable, Jax once again chafed against masters of a different kind. He came to loathe his commanders and the politics behind so much of the New Republic's limited action, seeing the insistence on training local populations and the hesitance to address threats at a federal level as another type of leash. Rather than fight them, however, Jax instead decided to circumvent them. His natural leadership abilities drew his men to him, and he was soon elevated to the rank of Sergeant, heading a small commando unit.
Shortly thereafter, however, Jax was removed from command, demoted, and placed in custody pending review of his criminal record. In the midst of his efforts, his superiors had finally discovered he had lied about his history and was an escaped convict, a fact that would not do for the Alliance's new take as a decentrilized democracy and not a cohort of rebels. The Zygerrian was dishonorably discharged and detained until he was sent to the then-capital of the Repbulic, under guard, for trial.
Unwilling to be imprisoned ever again and irate at his treatment, Jax took his chance and rebelled against his captors in a dangerous attempt that destroyed their transport shuttle at a refueling station on the Byblos spaceport. Jax escaped with his life, but barely, and at the cost of many burns and ruined cybernetics. He recovered in a local clinic, but was plagued by nightmares and paranoia of being hunted down. As soon as he was able, he bought passage out to the Dajorra system, where a thin, unappealing hope for escaping conviction remained: his old friend’s Mandalorian Clan.
The Reborn (23 ABY - 33 ABY)
Jax eventually discovered the Erinos Clan deep within the Dajorra system, finding them to be a powerful network of soldiers, laborers, brothers, sisters…and servants. The revelation of an entire populace of people sworn to a group of Dark Jedi revolted Jax, but he had little better alternative. After many humbling and grueling trials, Jax was welcomed as a member of the Erinos, leaving his old life behind to become one of the Mandalorian.
Working with the Mandalorians, Jax found he was pleasantly surprised. What he had anticipated as a new face to the same visage of indentured servitude turned out to be an honest brotherhood, where it was not bought and paid ownership but earned loyalty that inspired everyone’s fealty. The Mandalorians possessed a spirit unlike any other, independent and indomitable—that they conscripted to their Sith masters willingly showed immense respect and fortitude. Serving Clan Arcona as part of their armed forces came to mean something to Jax, for while he was a solider and a servant, he was also a free man.
For the next ten years, Jax Erinos would be a diligent, elite, and deadly member of the Arcona Armed Forces and a free Mandalorian who carried the starwars:Resol'nare proudly, a way of life he could finally live by that served its people while its people served it. He took his dirty and bloody history with him and put it to use fighting Arcona’s many battles, rising once more to a commander amongst the 'Mando.' He was still wary and cynical, but he was content in supporting his brethren, and he had found something, perhaps, to believe in.
It all ended in blood and fire in 33 ABY on the battlefields of Beregen.
The Indebted (33 ABY)
The Dark Crusade had been as much of a hell for the mundane soldiers as it had been for the incredible powers of their Force-wielding lords. When they were not being thrown against men and women just like them, they were being massacred by the occasional One Sith Force-wielder. Jax saw his share of such horrors, and though different from his previous experiences in battle, the atmosphere rife with death and hopeless numbness was nonetheless the same.
As the year turned from 32 ABY to 33 ABY, so too did the desert world of Beregen. Despite the fact that many of the strikes on the planet were small, concentrated attacks performed by the elite Dark Jedi of the Brotherhood, much of their mundane armies were still deployed to the slaughter. Jax led one such unit of soldiers, following after the Force Adepts that paved a path closer and closer to the heart of the superstorm over Beregen’s Sith ruins. Such it was that he came upon the enormous palace that was the Clan’s target, and to the warzone outside its gates.
The fighting was thick, and they were outnumbered, having advanced beyond their fellow squadrons but fallen behind of their Jedi masters. Jax’s men fought well, but eventually even they were overwhelmed by a stray One Sith apprentice. Jax was cut down, but was saved with the arrival of a lightsaber-wielding woman in white who drove off the apprentice and healed him and his men. The woman introduced herself as Atyiru Caesus Entar, the Aedile of one of the Houses he served, having stayed behind in the courtyard as her elder brother stormed the palace. Shortly thereafter, Jax blacked out.
He awoke in a medbay aboard the BAC Darkest Night, recognizing the doctor that tended him as Atyiru. His injuries had been extensive enough that she had needed to amputate part of his left arm, but he had otherwise been healed. Silently furious, Jax merely waited in terse silence until the medic left, unwilling to admit he owed her his life, and was, once again, indentured without choice.
As Jax recovered, he brooded over his debt to Atyiru, and the two butted head constantly. Jax took offense to her almost childlike, carefree, and positive attitude, feeling toyed with every time she failed to mention compensation for his safety. Atyiru, meanwhile, chafed at Jax’s condescension and suspicion, growing steadily more irritated at his obvious efforts to dislike her.
Finally, during a rehabilitation session as he worked with his new cybernetics, Jax had had enough. He confronted Atyiru about the topic, and the two erupted into a shouting match that echoed down the corridors.
- "You think I’m so horrible, so low that I expect something from you for helping you? What the frak is wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with me? Ni’duraa! You di’kutla takisit! You're the fool here!
- "Hut’uun!"
“How dare you call me a coward?! You're just a little girl! You know nothing!”
- "Don't you dare presume to have any idea what I know or what I’ve seen! You’re broken. I can sense it. But so am I. We have both seen terrible things, so you don’t get to come here and presume upon me! You just want to make yourself indebted to me, find some reason to resent me. You’re trying so hard to put me into the memory of all your pain, but you know what? You don't get to. I won’t do it again. I’ve had all that I can take, and you’ll never understand what I’ve faced, just like I’ll never truly understand what you have. Now get the kark out of my medbay. And take your life-debt with you."
“This isn’t over, shabuir."
- "Yes, yes it is."
- ―Atyiru and Jax fighting
At his next session, Jax asked Atyiru to spar with him, despite his handicap. After he accepted that is was against her medical advice, she agreed. They only fought for a few minutes, but it was enough for Jax: he called a stop, then told Atyiru to tell him the story behind one of her scars, and in turn she could do the same. Bit by bit, they got to know each other a little better, though some of the mutual coolness never quite dissipated. The topic of Jax's debt did not come up again, and eventually, as Clan Arcona moved to leave Beregen behind, he joined the Fade Initiative and swore himself to Atyiru's service, leaving his unit in the Erinos under new command. Atyiru accepted with the stipulation that Jax stay back to back with her instead of in front of her. They had a cordial, if somewhat distant and cynical sort of friendship, and were unfailingly dedicated in the way only war could shape.
The Untethered (34 ABY - Present)
Despite his reassignment in 33 ABY, Atyiru still ordered Jax to regular duties more often than not, and he would later reclaim leadership of his own unit during many of their deployments. He acted in many special operations, during one of which he met Arcia Cortel, a woman who would come to help define him throughout his service. By the time the Crusades had ended in full, following the [Great Jedi War XI|Eleventh Great Jedi War], Jax was as much if not more a reputable commander amongst the Arconan Armed Forces as he was as Atyiru's Fade. He continued in this manner until his charge was suddenly elevated from her position of Aedile - all the way to that of Shadow Lord.
With her rise to Consul, the Miraluka came to the decision to dismiss Jax, not for a need of protection but for an overabundance of it. She needed, she said, someone she trusted still moving freely throughout not just the Clan just also as one with all the people they swore to watch over, their armies and unknowing citizens. Jax, she explained, would be her reminder and lifeline, a secret sort of fallback. If on paper he would be a Mandalorian chief, then in practice he would be what he always had been to her divine eyes: a spirit of justice and freedom, one that would, should the need arise, oppose any tyranny...even her own.
So it was that for the next several years, Jax spent his time involved in Arcona's many skirmishes but away from the very person he had sworn to guard. His charge was now a larger ideal, that of the soul of the Clan, one he was duty-bound to save if it grew corrupt. As the Purge and the rebellion of the New Order went on, Jax found himself a frequent liaison between Odan-Urr and Arcona when not on an active operation or trying to keep peace at home on Selen, having been familiar with many of the leaders amongst the Jedi that had once worn Arconan sigils. Today, he can usually be found running just about any sort of operation, whether behind enemy lines or not, and often bent over his communicator, messaging someone in particular.
Personality
Jax is a simple man, a strong-willed, gruffly charismatic soldier-type that likes a smoke, the time to have it, and a couple good friends to share the former two with. He is a man that prizes a balance of security and freedom nearly above all else, second only to those he may view as comrades or family, and he loves to actively express it. He is an extremely lawful and dedicated commander, often inspiring a following in his peers with his 'we stand free together or not at all' sort of attitude. He has a soft spot for mothers, the unfortunate, and those of the starry-eyed persuasion, yet despises slavers and cartel lords with a terrible hatred, and is sometimes harsh to lawbreakers and criminals, specifically those that don't respect order more than those that are of a sordid background. He takes great care in his personal appearance, an odd trait in his burly repertoire left over from his childhood in a house full of women, and is quite organized in his personal and professional life, though by no means obsessive - he still spends his lazy days with his mud-caked boots up on his table for a nap.
Jax holds great respect for the law and for proper governance, mainly because he has seen so little of it in his life. He learned that it was not just the people that mistreated him and his own that were to blame, but the society that lead them, that enabled and taught them, to do so. He reasoned that sentients took their cues, their morals and behaviors, from their government in the absence of some other guiding force, and that a perverted government would beget perverted people. It was necessary not just to have a governing force - lest people be left to their own selfish and wild devices, like animals - but also to have the correct governance; one that promoted fairness, wisdom, and infringed upon the rights of no citizens while leaving some of those rights conditional and appropriately punishing offenders. While he has found no such ideal institution that walked such a line of having just enough law and just enough enough liberty, he's found the closest yet in the honor-based, collectivist meritocracy of the Mandalroians, and it is in large part why he values their brotherhood so highly.
Over all, Jax could be described as a revolutionary despite just how highly he regards peace and order, unbent, unbowed, and unbroken. He has a sound heart, a righteous soul, and a clever mind, all accented by a bloody but honor-bound history.
Combat Specialization
Leadership
TBA
Explosives
He could destroy a city block with a bar of soap and some string. Another skill aquried and since honed from his inmate days, Jax takes a certain unholy glee in watching things go BOOM. He's something of a pyromaniac, and revels in the total destructive catharsis that is any good explosion. In his opinion, fire is bright and fire is clean, and it can purge even the darkest of stains and melt the thickest of chains.
Relationships
TBA
Atyiru
Arcia
Elequin