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<img src="http://home.earthlink.net/~leighatl/NewBioPic.jpg" align="right">Name: Samantha Koortyn
Also known as: Sam, Thera (alias)
Species: Human
Homeworld: Chandrila (grew up on Coruscant)
Last known address: Unknown (Nar Shaddaa)
Special training: Pilot, hand-to-hand combat, droid expert, weapons expert
Weapon: Westar 34 Blaster pistol
Age: 30
Height: 5'9" (175 cm)
Weight: 125 lbs
Hair: Blonde
Eyes: Blue
Medical: Headaches (migraine)
Family: Thera Catal (mother, landscape architect, deceased); Jared (father, ISD Captain, deceased)
Marital: Single
Children: None

HISTORY:
An only child, Samantha's 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 Navy of The New Order. 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://home.earthlink.net/~leighatl/Sam/Images/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 Chandrila, 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 16, Sam applied for early entrance to The New Order's 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, despite her age. 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, in the manual shutdown of a droid programmed to assassinate a visiting General, didn't hurt. However, Sam eventually grew jaded, and quit the Academy, leaving her companion behind.

<img src="http://home.earthlink.net/~leighatl/Sam/Images/rebelsam.jpg" align="right">During this time, she continued her training as a pilot-for-hire in various skirmishes, military and otherwise. She became somewhat well known in certain underground circles, but found that she extremely disliked any sort of "chain of command", and dropped off the radar. She vowed thereafter never to subject herself to any attempt at the formation of a galaxy-wide government or any of the rising and falling factions, but to make her own path in the galaxy.

Sam soon learned that pilots were in high demand in the private sector, such as shipping, and she worked the standard trade routes for a few years, before discovering 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. She is known to take just about any type of cargo -- except living creatures, especially sentients. Sam is no slave trader.

Sam's last job involved transporting sensitive medical equipment from Bakura to Utropollus Major in a series of several trips, which she now realizes were broken down into random components in an attempt to keep her from realizing what she was carrying. She barely escaped with her life when nanites overran the planet Utropollus, and is beginning to think that her cargo might have had something to do with it...

<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 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), 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. And currently, she is addicted to super-stims, though she is aware of the damage they can cause and is quite certain that she can stop taking them any time... just not right now.

Her favorite color is light blue.

<img border="0" src="http://home.earthlink.net/~leighatl/Sam/Images/Frak.gif" align="right">ASTROMECH DROID:
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 her 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 (Nar Shaddaa), he monitors communications and traffic control systems from a special scomplink. He also pinches her in the leg, if she gets within range.

<center><img src="http://home.earthlink.net/~leighatl/Sam/Images/TheraRanjin1.jpg"></center>
SHIP: Thera
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

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