Kaden

Identity

Ability scores

Saving throws

Skills

Weapons

Languages

Inventory

• Blaster Pistol · 1 kg
• War Sword · 2 kg
• Medpac I · 0.5 kg
• Combat Vest · 3 kg
• Survival Knife · 1.4 kg
• Mandalorian Combat Suit · 8 kg

Backstory

Kaden was eight years old when he watched a shuttle burn. It wasn't an Imperial attack — not that time. It was a fuel line failure on a transport coming in too fast over Sundari's outer rings, and the pilot had panicked, overcorrected, and gone in hard against the shield dome's superstructure. Kaden stood on the observation deck with his father's hand on his shoulder, and neither of them said anything. What his father understood as a lesson in humility, Kaden understood as a problem with a solution. The pilot had panicked. Kaden decided, at eight years old, that he would never panic. Mandalore in the years preceding the Battle of Yavin was not a world at peace. The Empire had its fingers in the planet's governance, pressuring the New Mandalorians' remnant councils and quietly funneling Mandalorian warriors into contracted Imperial service — muscle dressed up as partnership. Kaden's father was not warrior-caste in any traditional sense. His father ran logistics for one of Sundari's inner-ring trading houses, and his mother had died when he was four, leaving behind very little except a name and the shape of a jaw Kaden saw every morning in the mirror. They were not poor. They were not soldiers. They were, by Mandalorian standards, almost invisible. That invisibility chafed. He applied to the Mandalorian Defense Council's flight program at seventeen and placed first in his cohort on the simulation evaluations. Not because he was gifted — his instructors would have called him methodical before they called him talented — but because he treated every sim run like an autopsy. What failed. Why it failed. What the pilot could have done at each decision point. He flew thousands of hours before he ever sat in a real cockpit, and when he finally did, it felt less like discovery and more like confirmation. What Kaden wanted was simple, and he had never said it aloud to anyone: he wanted to fly for his people. Not for the Empire. Not under contract. For Mandalore, under Mandalorian colors, in something that meant something. He was twenty-two when that want collided with reality. The Defense Council, already hollowed out by Imperial oversight, quietly dissolved his cohort's combat flight assignments and redirected their service records toward Imperial Sector Fleet auxiliary rolls. The language was bureaucratic. The meaning was plain. Kaden's record — his scores, his hours, his first-place ranking — had made him useful to the Empire, and usefulness to the Empire meant he no longer belonged to himself. He refused the transfer. That refusal cost him his rank, his posting, and the formal endorsement of the council commander who had once called him the best natural pilot he'd seen in a decade. It also cost him his father's silence. The argument that followed was the last real conversation they had. He spent the next two years doing the only thing his skills translated to outside of official channels — running cargo routes through the Outer Rim, flying second-hand freighters for people who didn't ask questions and didn't pay well. He kept his hands on a throttle. He kept his instincts sharp. He carried a blaster he'd bought off a dockworker in Mos Eisley and a Mandalorian war sword that had belonged to his mother — a gift with a history his father refused to explain, and the last piece of his mother that he could hold onto. The Rebellion was a rumor, then a name, then a frequency he'd picked up twice on long runs past Atollon. He hadn't responded. Not yet. But the shuttle over Sundari still burned in his memory, and Kaden had still not found a cockpit worth dying in.

Roleplaying notes

- Pilot Expertise in the Cockpit: Kaden's Expert: Pilot skill means he should narrate flight maneuvers with quiet, specific confidence — he doesn't guess at headings or panic in a spin; when others freeze, he's already three moves ahead and already executing them. - Stoicism as Armor, Not Wisdom: With CHA 10 and no social proficiencies, Kaden's stillness often reads as coldness or arrogance; play it as a man who genuinely doesn't know how to reassure people, not one who doesn't care — the warmth is there, buried under years of keeping it useful. - The Pre-Flight Ritual: Before any significant flight or combat, Kaden runs a brief, silent mental checklist — eyes closed for three seconds, one slow breath, hands open then closed; this is non-negotiable, and being interrupted during it visibly unsettles him. - Ally Trust Is Earned Through Competence: Kaden respects people who are good at something specific and honest about what they can't do; he has no patience for boasting, but will follow someone quietly and loyally the moment they prove they know what they're doing under pressure. - Clipped, Functional Speech: Kaden speaks in short declarative sentences and rarely elaborates unless asked directly — his High Galactic surfaces only when he's being precise about something technical, and Binary slips in when he's talking to droids he's started to trust more than the people around him.