Ro'ki was born on Selonia in 24 ABY, one of many children born to Duin Tel and Quz Sirru. From birth, however, Ro'ki occupied an uncomfortable place within the rigid expectations of the society into which he was born. Born intersex with a body that was predominantly male-presenting but with female reproductive anatomy, Ro'ki was neither one of the comparatively rare males traditionally afforded protection nor a fertile female expected to contribute children to the continuation of the den. To Duin, an influential and strongly traditional matriarch, he seemed to possess little of the value she understood.
Neglect characterized much of his earliest childhood. As he grew older, that neglect increasingly gave way to emotional and physical abuse. Notably, his eldest sister, Celim, was an exception. Largely ignored or rejected by others, Celim offered Ro'ki something approaching genuine affection. Those memories remain among the few aspects of his childhood that Ro'ki remembers fondly.
By eight, remaining with his family had become untenable. Whether Ro'ki ran away or was driven away depends somewhat upon how the story is told. Ro'ki prefers the former.
Whatever the case, nobody came looking for him.
Life on the streets forced the young Selonion to become resourceful quickly. He scavenged and begged when he could, stole when he could not. He gradually learned the unwritten rules governing life among those society preferred not to notice. He became adept at reading people, recognizing danger, and disappearing before trouble could find him. It eventually found him, at the age of eleven. Ro'ki made the mistake of stealing in a local gang's territory and suffered the consequences. His survival was owed less to mercy than to the gang discovering that the young Selonian could prove useful. Ro'ki refuses to discuss what followed, and he remained under their control for less than a year before finding an opportunity to escape. Whatever occurred during those months left scars that were not all physical.
By twelve, Ro'ki had escaped both the gang and Selonia itself. He would never return.
Freedom proved considerably easier to acquire than food.
Ro'ki found his way to Corellia, where Coronet City's enormous population offered something almost as valuable as credits: anonymity. He spent his adolescence drifting through the city's forgotten places, sleeping wherever he could safely disappear and surviving however circumstances permitted. Some methods were mundane. He could pick a pocket, swipe unattended food, scavenge discarded equipment, and talk his way through situations where someone less charming might have found themselves arrested or beaten.
Other means of survival were considerably less innocent. Ro'ki does not speak of it.
Ask how he survived those years and he will neither fabricate some colourful adventure nor offer a comfortable lie. He simply changes the subject. Asked persistently, the normally cheerful Selonian becomes remarkably firm. That life is over.
During these years, Ro'ki also discovered an unexpected fascination with machines. It began from necessity. Broken equipment was considerably cheaper than working equipment. Something discarded could become useful again if he could determine what was wrong with it. So he put his energy toward learning. Without teachers or formal education, he dismantled battered datapads, power cells, heaters, droids, and whatever other technology he got his hands on. Sometimes he successfully repaired them. Sometimes he produced considerably more pieces than he had started with. He always learned something. Machines were reassuringly straightforward. They did not care who he was. Where he came from. Or what someone believed he ought to have been.
A machine worked, or it did not. When it did not, there was a reason. Find the reason, fix the problem.
By fifteen, Ro'ki had survived nearly half his life without anything resembling a permanent home. He had become independent, resourceful and fiercely protective of his freedom, but possessed little expectation that his circumstances would ever substantially change.
Then he met Eilen Ru'tyari
Eilen Ru'tyari
Eilen Ru'tyari
Ro'ki was sixteen when Eilen encountered him in Coronet City. The circumstances of their meeting remain considerably more amusing to Ro'ki than they do to Eilen.
She had noticed the young Selonian and eventually invited him back to where she was staying. Roki, having already been working when she encountered him, interpreted the invitation according to the realities with which he was familiar. Eilen discovered the misunderstanding when Ro'ki rather casually attempted to establish exactly what she expected for his time.
The half-Selonian was horrified. Ro'ki was confused.
When Eilen finally managed to explain that she wanted nothing from him, that she was offering him somewhere warm to sleep and a proper meal simply because he needed them, Ro'ki remained suspicious considerably longer than he would later admit. Nothing was free. Except, apparently, this was. One meal became another. One night somewhere safe became several. Eventually Eilen offered something considerably larger: the opportunity to leave Coronet City behind.
Ro'ki hesitantly accepted.
A New Life In Arcona
Eilen's intervention did considerably more than get Ro'ki off the streets of Coronet City. Through her, the young Selonian was eventually introduced to Clan Arcona and a world entirely unlike the one in which he had spent more of his formative years. Adjusting was not easy. He spent years learning that survival depended upon himself. Food, shelter, and generosity invariably came with expectations attached, even when those expectations were not immediately stated. Arconae therefore presented him with something unfamiliar: people who continued offering him opportunities without demanding that he surrender his independence in return.
It was during this time that he met Carr Cinteroph.
On the surface, the pair made unlikely friends. Carr was intensely cerebral, technologically obsessed and considerably more comfortable with systems than people. Ro'ki was outgoing, irreverent and seemingly capable of becoming acquainted with anyone willing to tolerate him for longer than several minutes.
Technology provided common ground.
Carr possessed an extraordinary theoretical understanding of the systems around him. Roki's approached those same systems from an almost entirely practical perspective. Having learned through years of dismantling, repairing and repurposing whatever equipment happened to pass through his hands. Their approaches were different enough to occasionally frustrate one another and complementary enough to make that frustration worthwhile.
Before long, Carr had become one of Ro'ki's closest friends.
The Academy
Ro'ki was allowed to attend the Academy on Selene with his friend. For Carr, formal education offered somewhere to refine an already formidable intellect. For the Selonian, it represented something far more fundamental. He had never really been to school.
Years spent surviving on Selonia and Corellia had left enormous holes in Ro'ki's education. He was intelligent, mechanically gifted and possessed years of practical experience. Those qualities did not translate neatly into conventional academics. Concepts he could demonstrate intuitively with a hydrospanner in hand sometimes became baffling when expressed through equations on a screen. Carr became invaluable. Where he struggled with theory, Carr could usually explain it. Where Carr became lost inside abstractions, Ro'ki had a habit of dragging the problem back into the physical world until it made sense.
This by no means meant Ro'ki became a diligent student.
He remained perfectly capable of procrastinating until deadlines became emergencies. Disappearing when studying threatened to consume an otherwise pleasant afternoon. And determining with remarkable precision the minimum amount of effort required to achieve an acceptable result. His friend occasionally found this infuriating. He considered it efficient.
Their time together on Selene nevertheless became formative for both young men. Away from the circumstances that had defined Ro'ki's childhood, he was finally given the chance to discover what he might become rather than merely what he needed to be to survive. Perhaps most importantly, he did not have to discover it alone.
The Voidbreaker II
Voidbreaker II
Ro'ki's growing mechanical aptitude eventually brought him aboard the Voidbreaker II, an environment almost perfectly suited to him. The ship offered complicated machinery, endless maintenance, experienced engineers to learn from, and enough interconnected systems to keep his curiosity occupied indefinitely. Formal education gave names and theories to concepts Ro'ki had previously understood only through instinct and experience. Work aboard the Voidbreaker II gave him somewhere to apply them. He flourished.
Ro'ki developed into an accomplished mechanic with a particular talent for understanding how complicated systems fit together. He was never particularly concerned with whether a repair followed the prescribed procedure so long as the result was safe, functional and preferably accomplished without creating additional paperwork. His interests eventually expanded beyond keeping ships operational to flying them. Piloting came naturally to him. Something was appealing about the immediate relationship between machine and pilot, where every movement produced an understandable response and instinct could matter just as much as theory. What began as another useful skill eventually became something he genuinely loved. The surrounding him mattered even more.
Through Eilen, Carr, Noga and Leda Tenbriss, and the wider community surrounding the Voidbreaker II and Arcona, he gradually acquired something he had not possessed since childhood. A family. Not one connected through blood or obligation, but one assembled from people who simply continued choosing to have him around. For Ro'ki, that distinction mattered.
Present Day
At the age of twenty, Ro'ki Tel is almost unrecognizable from the frightened child who once fled his home. Almost.
Those scars remain, even when hidden beneath brown fur and bright clothes. Certain questions can still silence someone ordinarily capable of talking through an entire meal. There are experiences Ro'ki has decided belong to a life he no longer intends to revisit. He does not lie about them. He simply refuses to let anyone else decide that they are entitled to know. More importantly, Ro'ki does not define himself by what happened to him.
He is a mechanic. A pilot. A student when circumstances cruelly demand it. A friend. An incorrigible slacker. Someone entirely capable of spending an afternoon repairing a complicated engine assembly before disappearing the instant someone produced a checklist containing additional work. The fiercely guarded independence that once kept him alive has matured into something broader. Ro'ki believes people should be allowed to live according to their own choices so long as those choices do not harm others. He has little patience for people who presume authority over someone else's identity, life or happiness simply because tradition or convention says they should.
Perhaps most importantly, Ro'ki is free. That freedom is something he refuses to waste. He spent too much of his childhood surviving to spend adulthood merely existing. There are friends to make, food to eat, machines to tinker with, ships to fly, places to explore, and perfectly good patches of sunlight in which somebody ought to be napping. Tomorrow will bring whatever tomorrow brings.