Karru

Karruchabacca — Karru, in Basic — was born in the upper canopy of Kashyyyk's Rwookrrorro region during a quiet decade when his clan's wroshyr-tree settlement still believed the old neutrality with the Republic could hold. He was identified as Force-sensitive at four standard years, when he stilled a falling katarn calf with what his elders described as a will too steady to be a child's. By Wookiee tradition he should have stayed and joined his father's branch as a hunter and woodworker; instead, his clan's elder council made the rare and difficult decision to honor a Jedi recruiter's quiet inquiry, and Karru was sent offworld at twelve.

The Jedi Temple was an awkward fit. He outweighed every Initiate his age by triple, his Basic was limited to a guttural rasp the lecture hall droids could rarely transcribe, and his rage-instinct — the inheritance of every Wookiee — made meditation feel like a wall he could not climb. He spent two years frustrated and silent before a Cathar Master named Tehne Vrall took him aside and showed him that his rage was not the obstacle. The obstacle was the assumption that calm had to look like stillness. Tehne taught Karru that calm could move, could breathe, could roar — could be the held breath at the bottom of a long meditation, not the absence of feeling.

Karru took to lightsaber training the way other Padawans took to running. The Training Lightsaber his master built for him is heavier than a Padawan's normally would be — his grip strength would shear through a standard hilt — and he wields it two-handed in a Form II variant Tehne adapted to fit his frame. He has not yet bonded with a personal kyber crystal; the Order has agreed he will travel to Ilum at the next opportunity. For now, the training blade is enough, and he treats it with the careful reverence he was raised to give to weapons.

He is a Padawan still. He is patient with younger Initiates, deferential to senior Knights, and quietly devastating in sparring matches when his opponents forget that a Wookiee with a lightsaber can move faster than his size suggests he should. He carries a length of syntherope clipped to his robe at all times — an old Kashyyyk hunting habit — and he has never spoken Basic in front of a Council member, but understands every word.