Garik Vordarian

 

 

Garik Vordarian was born near Darian Manor, Kuat as the only son of Leutenant Garion Vordarian and his wife Inga. The family was respected as one of the old Hundred Families of the Kuati military aristocracy, but no longer prosperous. Garik's mother perished in a speeder accident when he was only 6, and he grew up with his father on a succession of space stations, where Commander Vordarian was overseer of wookie indentured technicians. While his father could not provide him with luxury, he gave him something far more valuable. An ideal to strive for, a tradition of duty and service unbroken for ten millennia, first to the Kuat Hegemony, then to the Old Republic, and now to its legitimate successor, the Empire. It was always clear to Garik that he, like his father before, would in time join the Armed Forces.

Commander Garion Vordarian

Then disaster struck. While on the way to an instruction, he was attacked by an escaped wookie. The slavering beast mauled him terribly. Since Garik was one of the minority who did not regenerate easily, he spent almost a year in sick bay. He still bears the scars of this encounter. But some scars are not visible and some wounds never heal. The icy breath of fear and desperation did not make him brittle, nor did the raging fires of anger consume him. Deep within he found a cold flame, one who could sustain him for a lifetime: hatred. He realized that to protect the innocent, sometimes you'd have to sacrifice honor on the altar of necessity, to do deeds that would make you into a monster in their eyes. That to root out all the evils, the chaos and the suffering the Rebels had inflicted upon the galaxy, they and their subhuman henchmen had to be exterminated with cold ruthlessness.

Barely out of hospital, he was notified that his father had been on board the 'Vigilant', an Imperial scout cruiser that had vanished without trace in the Outer Rim. Garik grimly went through the legal matters. The time for mourning would come later. During the next weeks he tracked down the wookie that had wounded him. He was well prepared. He had read every cube about wookie anatomy he got his hands on. The subhuman took a long time to die. His business there finished, he returned to Kuat to live with his grandfather in the large, empty house that had been his family's seat for centuries. The house from which his father had been banished for marrying an offworlder instead of a telbun, as tradition demanded.

Corran Vordarian

His grandfather Corran, a former Captain retired from Old republic Intelligence, was a bitter and cynical man, but he tried to give his grandson the best education possible. Garik, in addition to being in the top ten percent of his class, always attended the rallies and parades of COMPNOR Youth. He was recommended by his tutor for reporting two classmates for spreading rebellious propaganda. As soon as his education was finished, he went to the next Imperial Recruiting Office and joined the Navy as a fighter jock.

His grandfather, proud of his achievements, saw him off to the shuttle that would bring the young man to the academy. For the first time he hugged his grandson. "You'll make your way, boy. Vordarians always do."

Joining up during the last chaotic days of Emperor Connel's rule, amidst the Core crisis formed the opinions and convictions that would someday force him to desert the Empire he still loved and the Emperor he still admired.

He served first in the Corellian Sector Fleet under men like Spoz, Stratus and Ying Lee, then, after a long home leave, where he had to tend family matters after his grandfather's death, in the 1st Assault Fleet under Lodge and McLairson, where he took part in the police action at Tatooine and at last gained a commission as Ensign. Soon afterwards, he had to take another leave.

By the time he was ready to reenter the service, the Reunification issue had come up. He decided to keep quiet and wait for what would come out of it. When the issue was decided at last, the course he had to take was clear to him. The Sith, whom he had come to hate and despise, would not be content with their role in the Empire. They would rise against his Emperor and, regardless of whether they succeeded or failed, bring the Empire down. And he was powerless to prevent it.

He turned to one of the few people outside the Empire whose integrity he trusted. Ironically, that person was an enemy- Avalon Larkin, formerly of the Rebel Alliance and at that time working for the merc outfit Renegade Inc. With her, he negotiated his defection.

To make a difference in the struggle to come, he had to gain acceptance and influence beyond his rank of Lieutenant. While that would best be achieved by planning and conducting a bold stroke against the Empire, he was reluctant to kill any of his former comrades. He found a solution- a bloodless victory, a strike at the mothball yards at Eriadu, taking as many ships as possible and destroying the rest. The system was scouted, plans were made, ships slowly transferred to rendezvous poins in the systems vicinity, then brought to the outer reaches of Eriadu itself.

All was ready when the bad news came in. His Imperial Majesty murdered, a pretender planting his worthless backside on the throne, all Fleet units recalled to Coruscant. The mission's targets had all vanished.

But at the same time the Empire had fallen apart. Garik tried to persuade his superiors to aid loyal Imperials who left the Imperial Remnant in droves, but hadn't much success. He began to rethink his position. While still very fond of his friends and comrades at Renegade, he foresaw that it would play only a peripheral role in the conflicts to come, and he wanted... needed to do more than that, to strike at the men who brought a great and glorious Empire, the one bright beacon of hope in a darkening galaxy, down out of spite and personal ambition.

He joined the Jedi Praxium where he found many of those who had won his respect and admiration during his days in the Empire. The rest, he felt, those remaining in the dark and twisted parody of itself the Empire had become, were worth but one thing: a wire noose or a blaster bolt to the neck. The fate of traitors.

And he found the love of his life: Katya Redman, Rebel Aliiance Marine. She, more than anything else, tore him from the net of conflicting loyalties that had him teetering at the edge of self-destruction for a time.

He was content in the Praxium Defense force, though weary of the death and destruction the civil war brought to the galaxy. He knew his duty: to protect the civilians of the galaxy. Even from the Empire.

But matters beyond his control intervened. The Jedi Praxium was dissolved in a nightmare of treachery- the being responsible, a Nautolan subhuman called Kal Fisto, returning to his earlier allegiance to the hated Sith. What was left of the Jedi Praxium was integrated into their recent allies, the Antarian Rangers.

With his beloved wife joining him in the Rangers, Garik's wounds slowly began to heal, although duty conspired to keep the couple apart for long stretches. A respected member of Ranger High Command, he even had the honour of leading them a short time as Ranger One.

It all came to an end when the message came in: Katya Redman-Vordarian, his young wife, had suffered a terrible hyperspace accident that claimed her life. Shattered and aged years in a single, terrible day, Garik raced to the system of Taris that had claimed his wife's life. Teetering on the brink of self-destruction, his hand on the acceleration lever that would hurl his ship into the flaming pyre of Taris' sun, he remained there for hours. He left Taris then, never to come back, the only trace of his passing a small box slowly drawn by gravity towards the fiery embrace of the only grave marker Katya Redman would ever have- one that would mark the site of her death for millions of years- Taris' sun. It held his wedding ring, a few treasured mementoes, and much, much more. It held all that had been good in Garik Lord Vordarian. Pity, compassion, that iron sense of duty, duty to the people of the galaxy, that had sent him to abandon all he held dear once, love...

 

In a galaxy grown dark, he had embraced the darkness within him, and found a new resolve. For Katya, for the woman he loved more than life itself, one star was not enough. As her funeral pyre, worlds would burn.