Nico Vyzeem, Wroonian Pilot, by Will Nunes
ere is the original brief description I wrote: "Born and bred to fly the stars, Nico is a former Imperial civilian pilot now seeking his fame and fortune as an independent astro-aviator."
I loved Rogue One, and took some inspiration from the character of Bohdi Rook. To me, he did not seem like he was in the Imperial Navy, but I know the movie wasn't very clear. To me he seemed like how in the real world there are people who work for the government and with the military, but are not IN the military themselves. So, I took that idea and had that he went to a galactic equivalent of the Merchant Marine Academy and then worked as a civilian pilot for the Empire for a term.
I added some elements to the Wroonian culture (since it is pretty bare bones anyway), a being called "The Kestral of Life". The Kestral is something that perhaps used to be an aspect of a religion or a belief system for Wroonians in ages past, but now is just something that has barely any meaning. I was coming from the angle how in the real world many people have crosses or crucifixes in their house or on a necklace, but they really just do it because its always been done in their family. So, for modern Wroonians, it is simply a traditional or cultural symbol, something worn or hung on a wall that is just done without too much meaning.
Nicuzzal "Nico" Vyzeem grew up with this symbol, and sure he wore it as a pendant on a necklace most of his life, but like most Wroonians he didn't believe it was real. That is until he was persuaded that the myth and symbol was inspired by something real, that there really is a being called The Kestral of Life. The intentional misspelling of Kestrel was supposed to indicate it was not a little bird from our real world, it was really a being of great power, more like the Phoenix or one of the large SW space beings or perhaps even an aspect of the Force, and if you found it The Kestral would grant you your heart's desire. Within the game (as I am sure most of you who play know) there is part of the character creation process called "Obligation" and "Motivation", so I tied both of these into The Kestral myth for Nico. However, I told my GM this is simply what Nico believes, it doesn't mean its true. At various times in the game, my character lied to everyone in order to find more clues as to how to find The Kestral of Life.
I played this character in a campaign that lasted nearly 2 years. We started off with 3 players then moved to 5, and we had a lot of fun, despite feeling frustrated much of the time due to the story. We started with the original 3 being crew on a tramp freighter, and while the Captain was a smuggler, he was also part of a larger syndicate of criminals/pirates whose main bread and butter was slavery. Our PCs didnt know that to start, but we soon learned as we became patsies in a scheme the Captain had with an ISB agent, and we were left in jail while the Captain got let go and split the earnings with the ISB dude. This had us behind bars while the larger slavery-pirate syndicate moved in and started snatching people in the little town where the local Marshall had us imprisoned. Since it was just him and one deputy, we convinced him to let us go and we would help defend the town. While we made a difference, we didn't save everyone. Our little group then promised we would do what we could to find and rescue those kidnapped. The town gave us a busted up Barloz, and we fixed it up and off we went with no credits other than what they collected when they "passed the hat"; we named our ship Dressen's Triumph.
The whole campaign for nearly 2 years was trying to track and rescue the townsfolk. The GM gave us no agency, and kept kicking the football down the road.