<img src="http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/4744/biopic3.jpg" align="right">Name: Samantha Koortyn
Also known as: Sam, Thera (alias)
Species: Human
Homeworld: Alderaan (grew up on Coruscant, lives in her ship)
Last known address: Unknown (Nar Shaddaa)
Special training: Pilot, hand-to-hand combat, droid expert, weapons expert, various melee and "improvised" weapons (trained as a gladiator)
Weapon: Westar 34 Blaster pistol
Age: 30
Height: 5'9" (175 cm)
Weight: 125 lbs
Hair: Blonde
Eyes: Blue
Medical: Headaches (migraine), formerly addicted to stimpaks
Family: Thera (mother, landscape architect, deceased); Jared (father, ISD Captain, deceased)
Marital: Single
Children: None

HISTORY:
Samantha Alia Koortyn (Sam) was born on Alderaan 17 years before the Battle of Yavin. An only child, her mother died at her birth, and her father promptly packed up and moved the two of them back to Coruscant, where he re-enlisted as an officer in the Imperial Navy. A distant, cold man, he blamed Sam for the death of her mother, and for the majority of her early childhood she was left to her own devices, under the guardianship of the household droids. Because of this, she developed an affinity and affection for droids of all types, as well as droid building, repairing, and upgrading, and technical knowledge in general.

Sam’s first memory is one of violence, consisting of a heated argument between her father and a strange man when she was around the age of three.  She remembers little of the quarrel except the shouting and fighting, and that the stranger, called “Antilles” by her father, had regarded her kindly but sadly before he was forcibly removed from the residence, as Sam watched from the arms of her nanny droid in an adjoining room.

<img src="http://img398.imageshack.us/img398/9156/youngsam.jpg" align="left">As a child, Sam excelled in school; she never stopped trying to get in her father's good graces, and throwing herself into her studies helped to fill the void of his indifference. She also learned all that she could of Alderaan, her only link with her mother, and hoped to someday go back there and find her mother's family. Sam had always resembled her mother a great deal more than her father, and as she grew older, the resemblance became more pronounced. When she was twelve, her father finally began to take notice of her, and for three years, Sam was the happiest she'd ever been, before or since, until the day he attempted to take their relationship further than what is considered appropriate between a father and daughter. His death was ruled accidental, and Sam was hospitalized for many months, during which time she chopped off all her hair, never to grow it long again.

At age 15, Sam applied for early entrance to the Imperial Academy on Carida.  Accepted due to a data error (she filled in only "Sam" as her first name and was assumed to be male), no one was willing to admit their oversight and rescind her acceptance.  Once enrolled, she immediately experienced personality conflicts with her classmates, the majority of whom were male, as well as butting heads with her superiors (also male), while undergoing the required military and flight training in the NhM (Non-huMan) track. She went through countless roommates before finally being assigned a private room, and only her sheer stubbornness and excellent grades, as well as her piloting skills, kept her from being drummed out of the program. And her involvement, along with her first love, Marcus Arete, in the manual shutdown of a droid programmed to assassinate a visiting General, didn't hurt. However, when Alderaan was destroyed by Imperial forces, the news devastated Sam, as she had never gotten the chance to visit the place of her birth, or find out about her mother's family, and she quit the Academy to join the Rebellion, leaving Arete, who still remained loyal to the Empire, behind.

<http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/9541/cockpit8594575.jpg" align="right">During this time, she continued her training, proving her worth as a pilot in various military campaigns; notably, at Hoth, escorting the first transport out when the Imperial forces discovered the base. She moved up the ranks rather quickly, both due to her skills and the heavy casualties the Rebels suffered, but after one particular mission, going undercover as a captured Imperial officer in order to gather information from another officer, Traven Dunn, which ultimately led to the location, and subsequent destruction, of a hidden Imperial base, Sam resigned, feeling that the actions of the Empire and of the Rebellion were ultimately no different.  She vowed thereafter never to subject herself to any attempt at the formation of a galaxy-wide government, but to make her own path in the galaxy.

Sam soon learned that pilots were in high demand in non-military roles, such as shipping, and she worked the standard trade routes for a few years, before discovering with the help of her best friend Molly Gibson that the big payoffs were in the not-so-standard trade routes, and the not-so-legal cargo. Upon her first landing in the Corellian Sector of Nar Shaddaa, and realizing that no one looked twice at her, asked questions, or even wanted anything to do with her, she realized she was home. She quickly built a reputation as an honest, hard-dealing smuggler who didn't give free rides, but who also didn't play favorites, specializing in the design and transport of advanced and experimental weapons and weapons tech, although she was known to take on other cargo.  As Molly began to show signs of Force ability, Sam – who had always been fearful and paranoid of Force users – slowly withdrew emotionally, and eventually abandoned the relationship altogether, without even a word of explanation.

A few years later, at the insistence of a fellow former Rebellion pilot she met in a bar, Sam grudgingly rejoined the Rebel Alliance (now called the New Republic) as a Commander of the newly formed (though ultimately shortlived) Nightwing Squadron.  However, after a particularly harrowing capture, confinement, and subsequent escape from an Imperial Star Destroyer (with the help of Captain Corran Antilles of Rogue Squadron), she contemplated a return to her former life, and her independence, as a smuggler.  

Her indecision, largely based upon feelings she and Lieutenant Han Antilles, also of Rogue Squadron, developed for each other during their imprisonment and later recovery from injuries received during their capture, was severely tested when the two, while vacationing on the planet Ithor, realized the peaceful world was being scouted in preparation for an attack by an Imperial remnant fleet under the command of the same Admiral who had captured them before.  Attempting to stave off the attack long enough to alert the population, Sam was captured again, shot, beaten, and held prisoner, this time meeting Admiral Dodonna in person and forced under duress to admit to killing her father, who had been one of his former Captains.  Han managed to infiltrate the contingent of Storm Commandos by appropriating one of their black armored suits, and eventually succeeded in freeing Sam, though not before she killed the Commander of the contingent.  With the help of her old boyfriend, Marcus Arete, who had long since given up on the Empire himself and now lived quietly on Ithor, the two managed to escape the planet and inform the New Republic, though both now had large bounties on their heads placed by Dodonna.

During their brief stay on Coruscant as the New Republic gathered forces to fight Dodonna’s invasion of Ithor, Sam was given the surprise of her life, when she learned that the man she had known as her father, was nothing of the sort.  As fate would have it, Corran Antilles’ father was in fact hers as well, a revelation she learned almost by accident, when she and Han happened to join Corran and his family for dinner.  During the course of the evening, Corran’s uncle Janson Antilles, after growing increasingly uncomfortable at the obvious similarities between the half siblings, finally revealed what he’d been keeping a secret to his nephew and niece Sasha all these years, that their father had had an affair with Sam’s mother while on a mission to Alderaan.  It was then that Sam learnt the meaning behind her first memory: her uncle Janson had attempted to take her away from the man who was raising her and bring her home to her 'real' family.  Another surprise was uncovered when Sam saw pictures of her old friend Molly in Corran’s home and realized the two were a couple.  However, the family reunion was shortlived as bounty hunters appeared on the scene in an attempt to collect.  Sam and Han managed to elude their would-be captors with the help of Corran, though his flat was severely damaged in the altercation.

Against her better judgement, Sam again took a Commander's role in the return mission to Ithor, a mission which was ultimately successful due in large part to Marcus Arete’s contributions on the ground to destroy the superweapon Dodonna had built on one of the herd ships during their absence.  But not without great cost.  A chance meeting on the surface of the planet with a rogue Dathomir witch nearly ended Sam’s life, and a Jedi's healing powers only managed to repair her physically.  The buildup of mental and physical trauma over the past several weeks eventually succeeded in breaking her, and she cut ties with both Han and Marcus, running away to her home on Nar Shaddaa with a substantial addiction to the stimshots that had sustained her during her ordeal on Ithor.

It was here among those she felt were her own kind that she began the long road to recovery.   An old friend (Cryil Vald) who was squatting in her flat managed to make the now Force-hating smuggler reconsider her attitude about Force users; her erstwhile best friend Molly Gibson in particular, and now she began to regret her past actions.  Intending to reconnect with Molly by visiting the old flat the two had once shared, Sam discovered evidence of not only her current whereabouts, but was reminded that something horrible had happened: her friend had fallen to the Dark Side and was under the control of the spirit of Exar Kun through his holocron.  She knew from the dinner on Coruscant that Corran had assembled a group of people to help him track her down and bring her back, but it only hit Sam now how serious the situation was, and that deep down, she still cared what happened to her old friend.  She left Nar Shaddaa immediately and traveled to the coordinates that had been left by Molly’s droid, the planet of Korriban.

But she was too late.  Arriving in time to watch Molly collapse into a coma, Sam could only return with the body to Coruscant with Corran, feeling that she had lost her friend all over again.  Her feelings about Force users did not improve when she learned that Molly, who had escaped Kun’s clutches with the help of another member of the fellowship (Jade Seye), had given too much of her life energy in an attempt to save the other woman, who also remained in a comatose state, from which she was likely never to recover.

Corran, also devastated by the events on Korriban, encouraged Sam to renew old family ties by traveling with him to visit their grandparents.  She accepted, and attempted to experience life as a normal human being with a real family, something she has never before known.  She was still addicted to stims, and had no idea that shortly after she ended her relationship with Han, he was captured by Nekessla for his bounty and delivered to Tarsk Mal’Fey, the Vigo of Black Sun, where he was held prisoner.

Sam's visit with her newly found grandparents was cut abysmally short when two bounty hunters, Zem Renneyn and Tram Law, managed to track her down the day after she arrived.  The 250,000 credit bounty had been placed by Tarsk Mal'fey, because she had betrayed him by freeing her human "cargo".  In a battle that Sam ordinarily would have won had there been only two in the contest, Sam was captured.

(to be continued as of 7/3/09, working on it now)


<img src="http://home.earthlink.net/~leighatl/Sam/Images/Aboard.jpg" align="left">PERSONAL:
Sam is tall with an athletic build, and has the appearance and attitude of a tomboy, keeping her blonde hair short. She is intelligent, detail-oriented, technical-minded, and thorough, but also very stubborn, impatient, and serious, usually speaking in short phrases, and then only when spoken to. She has aggressive tendencies (probably stemming from her earliest memories) and is known for her temper; it is only when she is angry that she breaks her ‘personal space’ and lashes out at people. Due to the absence of any emotional and physical contact with her father while growing up, as well as spending every waking moment living with, studying, or tinkering with droids, Sam never developed social skills as a child, and is generally unable to develop or maintain relationships of any kind with people as an adult. After the incident when she was 15, she developed an even deeper distrust of men (although she has tried to overcome this, with disastrous results; notably, Arete, above), and hates any kind of attention she receives regarding her appearance.

Sam is not Force sensitive; in fact, she is glad that she is mindblind and doesn't have to rely on magic tricks to fight or pilot her ship, and she is distrustful of all users of the Force, believing them to be attempting to read or cloud her mind. Sam is fluent in Basic and Huttese, and understands most droid languages, with a working knowledge of several other languages, although she can read them better than speak or understand them. She has, however, picked up a few colorful phrases here and there. Sam has suffered from migraines all her life, stubbornly refusing to allow a Jedi healer near her head. Her favorite color is light blue.

<img border="0" src="http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/6287/frak.gif" align="right">ASTROMECH DROIDS:
Frak
(built by Samantha Koortyn)
Frak has been with Sam since the Academy; she named him after one of the more colorful non-Basic words she'd learned as a child. He has never had his memory wiped; in fact, Sam allows him the freedom to delete and/or reindex his own datafiles as needed. He only communicates with her when absolutely necessary; she hates the sound of astromech droids beeping and whistling incessantly. Although it appears to outsiders that she doesn't like this droid, Sam has pulled him out of the scrap pile countless times and rebuilt him, after the techs had given up. Frak aids in piloting Thera, and in her rooms planetside (previously Nar Shaddaa), he monitored communications and traffic control systems from a special scomplink.  He also pinches her in the leg, if she gets within range.

<img border="0" src="http://img44.imageshack.us/img44/6651/rattler7734211.jpg" align="right"><b>Rattler</b>
Rattler is a recent acquisition, having been brought along by Sam upon her rescue by Han and Marcus from her forced servitude as a gladiator for Tarsk Mal'fey, of Black Sun.  Rattler was a servo-droid in the cafeteria, and was so named because of his distinct rattling sound when in motion, which Sam fixed while she was imprisoned, upon hearing the sound.  From that point, he was loyal to the smugger / gladiator.  This astromech has definitely seen better days, but knowing his new owner, is destined for an upgrade in the near future.  He contains valuable information which he may or may not have obtained by order, on the workings of Black Sun.

SHIP: Thera (named after her mother)
Craft: YT-2400 Transport
Designer/Manufacturer:Corellian Engineering Corporation
Combat Designation: Light Freighter
Scale: Starfighter
Length: 21 m
Width (including the 'outrigger'): 28.5 m
Diameter (saucer): just under 20 m
Crew: 2 (skeleton crew: 1)
Passenger Capacity: 4 passengers

Thera courtesy of, and created by, Ranjin Omaria.  Steal it and die.