Burlap spent his youth crawling around the conduits of the various mining platforms orbiting Lisandra. It was as close to a home as his parents could provide while they earned their living repairing and maintaining the massive atmospheric chemical sifters.
(Scrounger & Skill: Engineering) But the gloss of all that grease and exotic particles eventually wore off. Burlap wanted a career with a little less grease, a little more acclaim, and a lot more sex appeal. And nothing said glamorous and sexy like a man - or Ysoki - in a uniform. Even the poorly paid rent-a-cops guarding the facility seemed like holo-stars.
When he was old enough, Burlap shook the dirt from his fur and hiked to the nearest recruiting office to get himself a weapon and a uniform. In retrospect, he hadn't thought the process through. For instance, a recruiting post on a largely human station would be for, well, a largely human military organization. Had the recruiter already met his quota that month, he might have steered the Ysoki elsewhere. As it was, Rova had been a slow month and the number of recruits enlisted was a measured metric. So it was that Burlap found himself on a transport among a lot of young Talls headed for heavy-gee boot camp and a hitch in the Collective military machine...
After four years of valuable training, combat experience, and relentless rodent-related hazing, Burlap mustered out of the Army (Class: Soldier) with the rank of Naik (Corporal) from the VI Battalion, 85th Renjaar Regiment. It had been a lot more ducking in mud to avoid bullets or ducking in a space suit to avoid blaster fire than shore-leave and pretty girls.
Determined to reverse that trend, Burlap embarked on a career as a noble, glorious, and beloved mercenary. (Theme: Mercenary) Of course, the Ysoki quickly discovered that 'noble', 'glorious', and 'beloved' are not words in the mercenary lexicon. His brief sojourn into paid warfare is best described as 'lackluster', 'unprofitable', and 'disappointing'. As he puzzled:
Don't mind shooting bad folks for good reasons, but credits aren't a cause. What princess is gonna fall for me if I rescue her for pay?
Burlap has tried his paws at a dozen different professions since the mercenary debacle… none of which really panned out for him. The universe was built on irony, it seemed, because being a soldier-for-hire was probably the Ysoki’s most the successful of his unsuccessful career choices. That point was made clear to him when the Cyleerin ‘war’ (closer to a rout, really) happened. He was a patriot and he had war-honed skills that could be put to good use… maybe not for great pay, but certainly a good cause.
And poppin' ‘toasters’, well, what’s the harm in that?
