- "The Jedi and Sith war has never ended. It's been raging for more than six thousand years and will never end - it's a plague that's killed enough people to fill the Galaxy once over. I don't want any part of that. It's wasteful and stupid. It's just two little kids arguing whose chocolate cake is better. One kid's got a bigger slice, the other one has more frosting.
I wish they'd just shut up and eat their damn cake."
- ―Qae Shena, to Mirus Hi'ija
Qae Shena is a Nautolan soldier fighting on behalf of House Odan-Urr and the Kotahitanga-Unity Defense Force as the commanding officer of Olympus Squad. He is an expert in close-quarters combatives with a specialty in the Echani fighting style, as well as being trained by both the Jedi Order and a master of the Je'daii arts, giving him a wide array of combat abilities with considerable battle experience.
History
Early Life
- "Pink. Why is it always pink?"
- ―Qae Shena
Qae, born to parents Alyra and Tas Shena with a slightly younger twin Jae, was raised on his native homeworld of Glee Anselm, an aquatic world on the northern end of the Outer Rim, never knowing that he was born Force-sensitive. On Glee Anselm Qae spent much of his childhood enjoying underwater sports as many of his species did, learning both Galactic Basic and the underwater tongue of Nautila. While his younger twin pursued sports as he grew older, Qae's natural bent towards movement and dexterity had his parents enrol him in a dance troupe at age eleven, where he learned many forms of dance - most particularly dances that forced him to wear the colour pink and parade himself around like a girl. This rather emasculating experience continued for five years until Qae was sixteen, where he quit the dance school citing that it was no longer an interest of his that he would continue pursuing.
Glee Anselm, Qae's home world.
At this point, he fell in with a bad crowd and had more than one run-in with local gangs. Minor scuffles led him to meeting a local vibrosword aficionado, who taught him the basics of holding and using a vibrosword, providing him with his first combat experience; this he coupled with his grace and fluidity as a dancer to make himself a difficult target. His Force-sensitivity made him a quick study and his teacher passed on as much as he could to the fledgling swordsman. Eventually his fights with the gangs turned vicious and Qae took his first life in what was essentially a shoot-out, using a vibrosword to decapitate two gangers before a third held him at gun-point. Impressed with his swordsmanship, the ganger offered him a choice: fight as a sellsword for his gang or be killed. Knowing that his life was worth the skill he was picking up, Qae chose to fight as a sellsword for the gang.
At this point Qae's practical skills with a vibroblade increased tenfold, having considerably more practise against live opponents. Finding a thrill in the adrenaline rush of battle, he fought opponents at the will of the gang and was paid well for it. His kill count skyrocketed past fifty in the first three months and Qae knew that the blood on his hands would never wash away. However, when a rival gang seized their headquarters and took many of them prisoner, Qae too was captured. Like his comrades, Qae was sold off to a slaver, a man named Yajik Tress - by age eighteen, Qae had killed more men than many soldiers and then been taken as a slave.
Slavery and the Jedi
- "What can I serve you?"
"Your head, if you're not careful."
- ―Qae Shena and Yajik Tress
Tress represented a galactic slave gang known as the White Flame. All of their slaves and gang members were marked with a white flame tattoo upon their face - Qae was equally branded by his captors. However, as the White Flame needed more than just manual labour and the fact that Qae was so young, they employed him as a bartender, forcing him to work in the tapcafe aboard a tramp freighter. He served drinks day in and day out for thirsty mercenaries and criminals, listening to the rumours floating around the Galaxy and hearing stories about the Jedi. Qae spent three years in the service of the White Flame. While those three years were not spent as a true slave in terrible conditions and being forced to do unsavoury things, there was a certain air of being an indentured servant. He slept on little more than a hammock with rags for clothes and only received two meals per day.
It was not until the New Jedi Order came across a White Flame holdout that Qae saw the light for the first time; the ship was boarded and a strike-team of Jedi Knights freed the slaves aboard the ship. Upon discovering Qae, they realised his Force sensitivity and explained the situation to him: that he could be a Jedi, a great warrior as the stories of the spacers had told him. Eager to don that mantle, Qae agreed to learn under the Jedi Order.
To that end, Qae was sent off to Coruscant to train with the Jedi. His previous experience with a vibrosword came in handy when it was time for combat drilling; his inexperience and susceptibility to reading the emotions of others as was the Nautolan bent thanks to their head-tresses made him very difficult to control. While he was officially an apprentice of the Order, Qae could not stand the very regimented lifestyle of the Jedi, feeling that he had traded one set of shackles for another. Once he had learned enough about the lightsaber and the basics of the Force, Qae left Coruscant to wander the galaxy, finding himself on an old Action VI transport named the Sky Dancer and making it his home.
Vagrant
- "I'm just a passing-through wanderer. Nothing to see here."
- ―Qae Shena
As a wandering spacer, Qae plied his trade both as a swordsman and a bartender in equal parts, serving as both the ship's master-at-arms and a barkeep. This made him a popular choice for sorting out problems aboard the vessel; once installed as the barkeep, there was a considerable drop in barfights thanks to his ability to stop the fight within seconds.
The Sky Dancer, an Action VI transport.
One of the travellers on the Sky Dancer was a warrior from Eshan, a roaming Master of the Force who was also a student of the ways of the ancient Je'daii Order, the origins of the Jedi Order and a Force group promoting balance both for the Galaxy and for oneself. Her name was Spencer Jacobs and she, along with her lover Asha, travelled the Galaxy and assisted in quashing needless wars. Interested in her modus operandi and the abilities she could teach him, Qae accepted Spencer's offer of becoming her student, unaware that the Sky Dancer was a front for their activities until that moment - and unaware of the slightly inhumane but extremely amusing training that she was to put him through.
One of Qae's more reviled 'punishments' was that, as Spencer's student, he was to be on call for her at all times. For one early part of his training, that included sleeping in her quarters in a small pink puppy bed, earning him the nickname Puppy for a very long time - and, of course having to listen to Spencer and Asha go about their nightly business. Inevitably, Qae grew an even more intense and nightmarish dislike for the colour pink as a result. Surprise attacks became routine, as did being forced into rather compromising positions and needing only his skills without the Force to get himself out of them.
The training was harsh and unrelenting; she continuously assaulted his mind, knowing that across the battlefields of the Galaxy where Dark and Light factions were rising up one by one, he would need to be prepared for anything. Spencer was a mentalist specialist as well as a savant of Echani, teaching him both. As it turned out, Asha was a keen hand with a lightsaber herself, teaching Qae the Shii-Cho lightsaber Form almost in its entirety. He learned to use his natural talents as a Nautolan and as a dancer to provide the backdrop for his skillset, turning his knowledge to his advantage: his ability to flow and change quickly from one movement or position to another was a key element to Shii-Cho, making him an unpredictable combatant and a very keen warrior. His empathic abilities were bolstered by his heritage, which Spencer honed to a great extent - ultimately teaching him to read the waves of thought and link them together to form Battle Meditation, one of her specialities.
As Qae's skills grew, so too did his knowledge of both Light and Dark. Having experienced the Light from the Jedi, Qae was exposed to the Dark - it was revealed to him that Asha was once a student of the One Sith and knew their ways intimately. Spencer cautioned balance and ensured that much of his training took place where he could sense both sides of the Force, primarily Mimban - Asha's home world. He came to understand the Force, envisioning it much like water with tides and ebbs and flows, that he could relate balance amidst the Force to. Once he made that connection, his talent in the Force grew dramatically.
However, his training came to an abrupt halt when Spencer and Asha wished to travel out into the Unknown Regions to chase a threat to the Galaxy potentially greater than the Yuuzhan Vong. Qae was offered the choice to join them, but ultimately declined - he felt that his place was in the known regions more than it was chasing a ghost. A tearful goodbye followed, whereupon Qae followed the call of the Force and found himself upon the world of New Tython thanks to a miscalculated hyper-jump. Encountering the fledgling House Odan-Urr, Qae accepted their offer to join their ranks - this time not as a Jedi, but as a soldier, wanting to go back to a simple life where the complications of the Force were no longer his.
The KUDF's logo.
Odan-Urr
- "I don't lose. Ever."
"What if you do?"
"Then I'm going to turn things around and kick enough ass that I win anyway.""
- ―Qae Shena and Mirus Hi'ija
Qae's immediate choice had him transfer to the Kotahitanga-Unity Defense Force, where he served in the ground force in the fledgling army. Assigned to the highly efficient Olympus Squad, Qae fought in the opening days of Cy Thuron's invasion of New Tython, where he was unfortunately beaten back at every turn. In doing so he turned to the Dark Crusade as a form of release, fighting alongside the House in order to take out what frustration for his lack of victories he felt.
However, he remained persistent and helped in minor operations leading up to the full return of House Odan-Urr to the planet, where he took to the front lines alongside Mirus Hi'ija to reclaim the planet on more than one suicidal mission.
Personal Information
Appearance
Qae is a lean and athletic Nautolan, appearing very standard for his species; muscular but not heavily built due to more swimming training than weight training to build up his strength. In this way it allows him to be light on his feet, just the way he likes it.With deep black eyes with very faint swirls through them, as all Nautolans have, as well as fourteen head-tresses that function as sensory receptors, Qae appears to be a very inhuman blue-skinned Nautolan, but is in no real way dissimilar from many members of his species.
Qae has a small number of scars on his palms thanks to broken glass cutting his hands open without bacta treatment during his time as a slave under the White Flame. His most notable physical marking is the large white tattoo on his face, covering more than half of his face, his chin, and part of his forehead with the tips of the flames.
Overlord robes, Qae's preferred clothing.
When not wearing military uniform or light Echani battle armour, Qae prefers robes borrowed, ironically, from the Dark Brotherhood - the Overlord robes of the Sith Order prove to be very comfortable training clothes for him, which he has appropriated from one of the many battlefields dominated by Odan-Urr's forces during the Dark Crusade. He is rarely, if ever, found without his lightsaber; it is kept attached to any belt he may be wearing and goes everywhere he does.
Personality
First and foremost, Qae is a man of balance; whether it be the flows of battle, the tides of the Force or his mental state of being, Qae believes strongly in the very Je'daii concept of balance, of dark and light in equal measure. He believes in justice for acts of wrongdoing thanks to a wide variety of training and teachings encouraging him to do the right thing as much as possible. That said, he is also very easy-going and laid-back until the fight starts, willing to crack a joke or two or even a good Corellian whisky with his squad. When the fight starts, though, Qae is no-nonsense and merciless, willing to go to all lengths needed to take the fight to the enemy and crush them. His single-minded drive to succeed and win in battle stems from a very life-or-death early life mentality when fights were involved.
Qae greatly enjoys the water, as many of his species do. His major dislikes are dry heat, losing, slavery (mostly from his own experience) and the colour pink, for a variety of reasons. Needless to say, his love of battle in close-quarters is unparalleled. He spends a great deal of his time training - and, in equal measure, he can be found wandering around the halls of Odan Urr, teaching some of its fledgling Jedi the ways of Echani and of lightsaber combat, loaning the House his skills and expertise when need be.
As the commander of Olympus Squad, Qae is often tasked with some of the crazier and more difficult tasks given to the KUDF - typically at the helm of the famed Titan of New Tython, who leads from the front. Together they make a formidable force, with their combined battle experience. As a soldier now with sufficient military tactical training, Qae works together with not just Mirus but a myriad of Jedi in order to achieve the most difficult and dangerous tasks in any given warzone.
Powers and Abilities
Most notable amongst Qae's battle repertoire is the fact that he is a Force-user on par with a Brotherhood Equite of the second tier. His primary proficiencies are the Amplification and Precognition powers that he uses to hone his body for battle, as well as a high proficiency in Battle Meditation - his primary use for Battle Meditation is to link himself to the rest of his squad and make use of improved morale and abilities in order to make Olympus Squad more effective. He also has minor skill in telekinesis, telepathy and the standard mind trick.
In terms of combat, Qae is a proficient wielder of the single lightsaber using Shii-Cho and of the Echani martial arts style in equal measure, making them his preferred means of combat. He is also highly skilled athletically, able to move quickly and gracefully. He also employs a telescoping double-bladed vibroblade as is standard for many Echani users, as well as grenades for ranged combat, preferring to completely eschew blaster weaponry of any kind - melee combat is the true test of a warrior, or so he believes. Whether it is fought with fists or with blades, he cares not - only that he fights, in true Echani style.