Jax Lorza

Jax Lorza
Biographical Information
Race	Kel Dor
Homeworld	Dorin (Adopted)
Mother	Imola Gorson
Father	Malk Lorza (Deceased)
Spouse	None
Siblings	None
Children	None
Born	Year -10, Day 106
Imperial Service
Branch	Order of the Sith
Positions	Civil Servant Former Legionnaire
Prior Service	The Krath Dynasty Imperial Army
Awards

Biography

Birth

Ten years before the start of the contemporary galactic calendar, Jax Lorza entered life aboard the battered hulk of a freighter that his family called home. His parents were a pair of woefully unsuccessful traders who, at the time of his birth, were en-route to the galactic core worlds in the hopes of being able to turn over a profit large enough to keep the couple alive.

Amidst the infinite blue tendrils of a hyperspace jump, Jax was delivered via both the raw exuberant effort of his mother and the basic medical skills of his father. A former medic in training during his own upbringing on Dorin, Malk struggled through his sons birthing until eventually the freighter's hallways lay silent, and a new addition to the galaxy lay cradled in his arms.

Despite the haphazard delivery, Jax was born free of any deformities, physical or otherwise. A healthy example of his species by all conceivable accounts, the arrival of the newborn was briefly met with joy and happiness. However, such sentiments were lost amongst a sea of less pleasant emotions no sooner than the freighter had exited hyperspace. Not only was it ill practice to name newly born infants while away from Dorin according to Kel Dor tradition, but the reality that another mouth to feed put an enormous strain on the already exhausted couple's resources quickly sunk in.

Childhood

For a brief time, the Lorza clan was able to sustain itself on the meagre sales that their business generated. A temporary flourish in the viability of several galactic trade routes kept the family from starving, but far from placed them into the lap of luxury. Nevertheless, Malk and Imola both endeavoured to shelter, and even spoil their only child as much as was reasonably possible. Though Jax was only provided with extremely simplistic luxuries that extended to the complexity of hand-fashioned toy models, he was lavished with a private education programme on par with the academies of Coruscant itself.

And so it was that the family settled into a familiar routine; Jax would sit aboard the family homestead engrossed in educational holo-vids and exercises, while his parents would trawl whatever planet they happened to have landed on in search of buyers for their increasingly poor wares. Though Jax was becoming more adept at his studies with each passing day, the will left in his parents dwindled at an identical, if not quicker rate as each cycle came to a shuddering close with the family becoming gradually poorer and poorer. Though the trading boom of the previous seven years had prevented the Lorzas from falling entirely into poverty, it had apparently only helped in forestalling the inevitable.

Jax during his childhood.

By the time Jax reached his ninth birthday the family had barley enough credits left to provide the daily sustenance needed by each member to survive, to say nothing of continuing the funding for Jax's education. The couple argued over the best course of action. Imola proposed that they make a hasty retreat back to Dorin to seek aid from their own people, or perhaps to even seek an audience with the ancient Baran Do sages and try to pass Jax off as a Force-sensitive in order to give him a chance at a more privileged life.

Malk argued against such a course, having become disillusioned with his own species after being forced into an impromptu exile many years prior due to a case of petty theft supposedly attributed to his name. The Kel Dor as a species being inherent advocates of staunch black and white justice, Malk was tried and convicted of his crime despite his claims of innocence. Forever more labelled as a criminal in the eyes of his home, Malk left with his then young fiancée so as to escape the stigma that now cursed him.

After a series of heated discussions it seemed that Malk had emerged victorious. For a time, the family made do with what they could scrounge up from selling spare ship parts from their own freighter, and home, on the last planet they had landed upon. Eventually though, things again became so dire that the group could not afford to maintain themselves, or even run their own ship as they had cannibalized so much of it. A cessation of the family's time as traders soon followed.

The Lorzas found themselves grounded on a small frontier planet suffering from a recession that was the result of a slump in the planet's only industry; mining. The collapse of a large privatized company was the main catalyst for the transformation of the once thriving settlement into an effective ghost-town. Though by this point Jax was still too young to fully appreciate the whys and hows of his family's dire situation, his resentment towards privatised corporations would stick with him throughout his life. It became clear that the family could no better survive there than on their old freighter, and so it was that Imola apparently lost hope for both her son and partner.

By Any Means Necessary

One morning as Malk awoke in the remains of the groups' grounded freighter, he discovered that only his son Jax remained aboard. The revelation of a note hand-written by Imola and a small box full of credit chits revealed the circumstances that the father and son pair now found themselves in.

Examination of the note revealed that Imola had become tired of watching her son slowly slide into a life of certain destitution, and had decided to spare him the fate of a vagrant, and possible early death, by selling herself to a band of quasi-slavers based within the underworld element of the planet. She explained that the slavers had promised a handsome sum of credits for her willing servitude, but also expressed her worries that they wouldn't live up to their end of the bargain once she surrendered herself. The contents of the accompanying box were a testament to the slavers' integrity, though the amount inside was significantly less than promised in the note.

Nevertheless it proved enough to be able to make the freighter operational again, and within days the Lorza family, or at least what was left of them, was space-worthy and trading again. Now with one less mouth to feed and clothe, the minimal earnings that Malk made were just enough to keep both his son and himself in relative comfort.

As Jax matured into adolescence he began to question the absence of his mother and the initial excuses that his father had created with increasingly dogged determination. However, whenever the subject arose his father would simply change the topic or evade Jax's questioning altogether. Jax was intelligent enough to know that there was something terrible that his father was withholding from him, but was equally smart enough not to press the issue.

Though the sudden disappearance of his mother greatly disturbed the young Lorza, he had by then learned that life was full of a great many hardships. Instead of letting his worry consume him, he chalked down the loss of his parent as another such hardship to be carried on his increasingly crowded shoulders.

Status Quo

For the most part, the father and son partnership enjoyed smooth relations. Malk would often relate his experiences on the great homeworld of Dorin and how he trained to become a medic for their people in his youth. On considerably darker occasions, he would also detail how the same people that he had intended to protect had stigmatized him and in his words; 'Doomed your mother and I to a dismal existance'. An embittered old man, he taught his son that the only one a person can ever truly rely on is themselves.

Malks' apprenticeship as a medic didn't just serve to embitter him however. He was often regarded as one of the most promising students of his class, or so he often claimed after a few too many batches of Corellian spiced ale. Whatever his true medical training was though, it was evident he had some skill with basic physiology and first aid as he demonstrated during a number of regular lectures and old case files he studied with his son. Jax quickly absorbed the skills that Malk taught to him, and constantly honed both his theoretical, and when the opportunity arose, practical medical skills.

In addition to learning how to treat injuries himself from his father, he also had the opportunity to pilot the family freighter at various times. Over the years he built up an affinity with piloting, and was soon able to operate the vessel to higher standard than Malk could. In short order he was jokingly referred to as the family pilot by his father.

By the time Jax became 21, it became clear that he had the ability to seek out a much more profitable line of work than that pursued by his father. He was already considering leaving his father to pursue his own personal goals out in the galaxy when Malk began to suffer from the inevitable effects of old age and a life of heavy drinking. Though Jax had access to medical expertise, he could do little to help his father. Malk steadfastly denied any suggestion that he be taken to a professional facility, and instead opted to live his last days aboard his own private vessel.

Passing the Torch

Upon his deathbed Malk at last revealed to Jax the true fate of his mother. With nothing but a faint memory of her, Jax avoided the urge to blame his father for her disappearance and instead did his best to comfort him during his final hours. With his passing, Jax decided it was time to seek out his own path. Trading the old freighter in for a pittance in credits, he set out with thoughts of making his own unique mark on the galaxy and lesser hopes of perhaps one day discovering the definitive fate that befell his mother after her surrender to the slavers.

Jax makes his own way in the galaxy for the first time.

For months he wandered from planet to planet working as a jobber and pilot for hire. Eventually he stumbled across an opening as a logistics pilot with a small mining corporation named D'Este Realty. Though the pay was good and his bosses were fair, Jax found the role to be un-stimulating and began to doubt that he actually had a real purpose in the galaxy. He convinced himself that the Lorza bloodline had been doomed to a menial existence, and made the decision to permanently end it by spectacularly emerging from hyperspace into a celestial body.

Descending down onto a planet for a final time before his intended suicide, he wandered the port-city that he found himself in for several hours considering his planned course of action. While in this state, he had the good, or rather ill fortune of stumbling across a street preacher busy addressing the public. Suddenly enraptured by the charismatic individual, and emotionally exhausted, Jax could do nothing but sit at the figure's feet and listen.

Weeks later, he found himself graduating from the Shadow Academy and entering service as a Trooper with the Krath Marine Corps.

Krath Service

Initially enamoured with the wealth of theological and historical information that the Krath Dynasty offered, Jax found himself deriving a renewed sense of self-worth out of his new duties as a soldier in the Dynasty's Marines. For several months he served without complaint, though the initial wonder that had struck him as being so unique quickly began to fade.

As his term of duty wore on, he gradually began to resent his decision to sign up with the Dynasty. Beyond their apparent affinity with historical archiving, it seemed to Jax that there was little else worth fighting for in the organization. As he began to come into contact more and more with the elements that the Dynasty endorsed such as the bastardized contemporary iteration of the Republic and the 'Galactic Alliance' that it was a part of, his regret began to become even pronounced.

Eventually, he tired so much of the Dynasty's dogmatic faith with which he was originally so enchanted with that he made the decision to defect to an organization that had begun to seem increasingly as the only one out to do right by the galaxy; the Galactic Empire. Arrangements were made, and finally upon the 150th day of the 11th year in galactic standard time, he escaped from Krath space to formally enlist with the Galactic Empire. This auspicious occasion was rather coincidently marked by Jax's promotion to Corporal within the Krath not one week before, and so it was that he exited Krath service as Corporal Lorza of the Marine Corps.

Imperial Service

Having entered the prestigious Imperial Academy under extremely strenuous and unconventional circumstances, Jax was not privy to the social life that most new recruits entertain during their initial enlistment. Nevertheless, he performed just as well as any other student at the Academy was expected to and graduated with an average score of 92%, narrowly missing out on graduating with honours.

Choosing to take some of the limited positive qualities from his time with the Krath; namely his basic ground personnel training, he chose to enlist with the Imperial Army over the Navy. Already no stranger to ground operations, Jax felt he would more easily adapt to service within the Army, and having zero combat experience in space saw it as the most logical of all of his options.

Once assigned a legion, he settled into service with the goal of attaining some limited form of redemption for his actions in joining the Krath during his past, and clung to the ambition that he would be able to suitably make amends via aiding in the pacification and protection of the galaxy at large.

Retirement

After an intermittent amount of time in the Imperial military, and several promotions, the now Sergeant Lorza entered into an early retirement. Despite a sound service record, a pressing and yet undisclosed development in the sergeant's private life caused him to file for transfer into the reserves. Duly accepted by RADE and his superiors, Lorza officially left active Imperial duty on Year 11, Day 301.

Preoccupied with the prior mentioned unknown development, he left Imperial space in his recently acquired personal Y-Wing; the Night at the Opera, not to be seen again by his former comrades for quite some time. Though speculation about his early departure rippled somewhat through his close associates and friends he had made during his service, the abdication of the former Emperor Vodo Bonias quickly overshadowed much of the already lacklustre attention that would usually be afforded to the departure of an enlisted soldier.

Return to Service

Several months after his apparently impromptu departure from both active service and the borders of Imperial space, Lorza returned back to active duty with the Empire. Being moved back out of the army's reserve corps by RADE, it became apparent that the now Master Sergeant Lorza (a 'promotion' that stemmed from radical restructuring of the military in Lorza's absence following the ascension of Emperor Cherokee) had returned to Imperial duty somewhat quieter than when he left.

In addition, as soon as RADE had completed his return to service request, he applied for an immediate transfer into the government. This sudden shift from combatant to civil servant, coupled with his change in demeanour upon his return fuelled some speculation as to just what had occurred during Lorza's absence.

Traits

Demeanour

Constantly on the move through much of his childhood and adolescence, Jax entertains a rather guarded attitude towards others. While he has no qualms over making new friends, he tends to observe others on the back-foot in a somewhat obtuse, and even cold manner. Though others can, and often do, perceive this habit as being indicative of a dislike for other people in general, it is merely a result of Jax's isolated upbringing. For the most part, when he warms to those around him, he lets his guard down and maintains a dry sense of humour that tends to serve as a further reflection of his relatively difficult early life. On the flip-side, he maintains a much more stoic and colder demeanour while on-duty so as to both enable his own professionalism regarding his work, and to also ensure he can meet the expectations set for him.

Though an idealist by nature, Jax has always maintained a high respect for figures of authority stemming from his close relationship with his father, and thus has little patience for those unwilling to follow orders. Another aspect of both his own idealism and a personal experience in his early life have also left him with a passionate hatred for slavers, and to a lesser extent, the criminal underworld that tends to fund their activities.

Though he doesn't necessarily believe all members of the Trandoshan species are, as they are most stereotypically perceived to be, slavers, he does field quite an intense unease regarding members of the species for their negative cultural connotations. Due to spending a majority of his life working with his father as an independent trader, he also fosters a hate for figures of big business whom he perceives as being one of the main reasons his family suffered such financial hardships. A firm believer in nationalized regulation of corporations, he wholly supports nationalized companies, but despises private firms who operate outside of governmental boundaries.

Flaws

Far from perfect, Jax also suffers from several idiosyncricies that are generally considered to be flaws by others. Possessive of an over-active imagination, he has a habit of judging others incredibly quickly with little to no evidence to back his perceptions.

Bordering on clinical paranoia, his cold and stoic demeanour can often combine with this mental weakness to make him seem downright offensive at times, if not outright psychotic at the worst of them. His professionalism and loose definition of who qualifies as a friend often lead to this defect being kept hidden however.

Though his off-duty hours are usually dedicated to pursuits befitting of his professional, to the point attitude towards life, Jax suffers from a particularly acute addiction to gambling. After spending much of his life in relative poverty, upon joining the Galactic Empire and eking out a considerable sum from both his regular pay-cheques and other business ventures focused on private (legal) commodity trading, he found his sudden jump in economic stature to be intoxicating.

With millions of credits suddenly at his disposal, he embarked on an overzealous gambling spree. At the time, the colonial shockball season was in full swing, and so he began making rash, increasingly large bets on almost every match he could. Within months he had been reduced to near financial bankruptcy with his military enlistment being the only factor keeping a metaphorical roof over his head. Through the forfeiture of many of his possessions (including a YT-1300 and a rare Republic-era ETA-2 fighter) to the various 'financial benefactors' he used to facilitate his addiction, he was able to remain largely afloat, but to this day still maintains a vehement interest in gambling whenever the size of his coffers can afford it.

Interests

During his downtime, Jax pursues a number of activities mostly academic in nature. A favourite topic he pursues with vigor is galactic theology, as he maintains a staunch interest in the perception of spirituality and the religious beliefs from the perspectives of numerous species', though he stands on the middle ground of being an agnostic personally.

More conventional pursuits include frequent sparring and training sessions, entertaining the company of those he considers to be his friends, and occasionally indulging in the consumption of distilled spirits from all corners of the galaxy. A keen pilot, he also used to use any time he could spare off-duty to fly in either his personal fighter; the C-Wing 'Vehement Shadow', or his YT-1300 freighter; the 'Distant Foreigner' before having to pawn them off to pay the various gambling debts he incurred.

On a more academic note, Jax also spends part of his spare time independently studying medicine, for both his own interest, and also to be able to attend to any of his comrades in the field should circumstances require it.

Service Record

Imperial Army

• Private [E-2]
• Corporal [E-3]
• Sergeant [E-4]
• Master Sergeant [E-5]

Regional Government

• Superintendent [E-6]
• Provisional Prefect [O-2]