Jess Door's Cinder's page

Cinder was distracted from the play by the sound of the nobleman's voice from Laris' "message".

She shuddered as she saw his face again, and was about to look away when something about his face caught her eye. She hadn't been able to see his face clearly in the store, but now the sight of it now triggered a flash of memory in her. She struggled to capture the fleeting thought, but all she could hold onto was an impression that something bad in her past was associated with him. She shied away from pushing her memory back farther, and shuddered.

"He's a bad man," she whispered, clutching the parts she held so tightly that her already pale fingers whitened as the blood drained out of them.

The play was ruined. Cinder just wanted to get back to the ship. She stared at the ground and shuffled her feet.

When asked of the shop's less welcome "visitor", the old Duro says little. "The man who was here has not been a customer before. He did not seem like a man who has spent much time on an engineering deck."

Cinder clutched half of the parts they'd purchased tightly to herself and nodded emphatically with wide eyes at the Duro's words. She wouldn't let someone like that mess with any machine she cared about.

"Can we go?" Cinder asked Ulula hopefully. She yearned to get back to the ship, even if it meant venturing back outside. She managed to shoot a nervous smile at the Duro shopkeeper, who seemed like a decent enough sort, as she began to inch toward the door.

Cinder was terrified, well hidden behind the various wall panels and deckplating parts. There was no way the Duro shopkeeper would protect them at the cost of his own business or life. And it wasn't as if an albino human would be difficult to describe, once the shopkeeper decided to help the man drawing his vibroblade.

Crouching next to Ulula, Cinder shivered and closed her eyes. She was just a fixit person! She just wanted to have a job somewhere dealing with machinery. All she wanted was a bit of safety and a place to rest once in a while - why was that so hard to come by?!?

She reflexively thought about Dr. Elliot - even when she'd been injured, he'd almost made it seem that everything was going to be all right - despite the pain she had been in. She yearned for a return of that elusive peace - the ability to let someone else handle the situation for a while. She sat in the deceptive peace behind her closed eyelids and found, for a split second, the very calm she'd been reaching for. "I wish someone else was here to deal with this!" she thought into the stillness, then took a deep breath and opened her eyes again.

What to do? She continue to hide, but they were trapped and the Duro wouldn't hold back for long. That seemed a dead end choice. She looked down at the processor still tightly clutched in her hand. She could maybe throw it, and try to create a distraction that would allow them to escape. Maybe she could even step out of hiding before the nobleman got really nasty - but he'd already drawn a weapon. That option seemed out. Maybe Ulula would have an idea.

Cinder looked over at Ulula and raised the processor in her hand. With what she hoped was a questioning look on her face, she pantomimed throwing the processor toward the back corner of the parts room.

Use the Force check to attempt to contact Dr. Elliot Pren with a "Help! I'm scared/in trouble!" feeling. (1d20+5=13)

I'm playing that Cinder is unaware of her Force abilities. She just closed her eyes and thought of both Dr. Elliot Pren and "I need help!", and inadvertently attempted to send a message.

Cinder attacked the pile of Citadel class parts with an intensity and abandon that was more a testament to her desperate need for diversion from the open air overhead than excitement at the chance to go through the parts so carefully laid out in front of them. Cinder jumped for the containment field processing units first. While the processing units themselves were not the large, the shielding necessary to protect the delecate electronics from incidental radiation and heat could be quite hefty. All they needed to fix the ship's hyperspace coil containment system was operational replacement processing units, but if the casings' radiation shielding had been compromised around any of the units due to the leak, the bigger, heavier and more expensive units would have to be purchased. Cinder crouched down in front of the loose processing units and did a quick once over before grabbing a likely candidate from the pile.

She was just checking the visible connections when she heard a voice behind her - it sounded like whoever it was would not be very friendly - saying "Parts. Citadel-class. Where." Cinder rose to a half crouch, processor still gripped, forgotten, in her hand as she cocked her head to listen for a response from the Duros out front. She couldn't help jumping to her feet, startled, when someone touched her shoulder. She turned and saw Ulula motioning toward a nearby pile of body and wall parts for interior remodels that would be easy to hide behind, and Cinder nodded eagerly back in agreement.

Stealth (1d20+6=26)

Just wanted to point out a website I found useful for my last few posts, when looking for imprecations, derogatory modifiers and atmospheric exclamations:

A Mouth Like An Intergalactic Princess: Cussing In A Galaxy Far, Far Away

There's always the Condition track... and this is something better suited to other gaming systems, I guess, where you'd get some + for picking a phobia.

I do get an advantage for picking a phobia! It gives a quick and easy hook into making Cinder a character, and gives me something to work with while I get a feel for the more subtle and interesting parts of who she is. The agoraphobia is something she's going to get over, and I'll make sure it doesn't inconvenience the party too much. :)

"...one hundred..." Cinder felt better - she was able to think again. At the same time, the shame she felt over her actions as clarity returned to her was not pleasant. One step forward...a big running leap back. Still crouched down against the booth door, Cinder pressed her face into her knees and wrapped her arms around her head as she took a deep, steadying breath and did the best she could to school her expression into something other than absolute mortification. She stood up and, eyes fixed steadily on the ground except for a quick and embarrassed glance up at Ulula's and Soz's faces, smiled a nervous little smile of apology. "I'm....sorry. Sorry. I'm okay now. Um...can we...uh...hurry?" Twisting her fingers up together in front of her, Cinder scurried after her shipmates. Hopefully the shop they ended up at wasn't one of those skrogging tents.

Maybe Ulula heard her weak query after all, because Cinder suddenly realized that Ulula had grabbed her arm and was pulling her through the increasingly crowded streets. It made it easier to keep her eyes fixed firmly on the dust covered street, and away from the looming openess overhead.

"So, you've seen a blown drive containment like this?" Cinder heard Ulula ask as she stumbled along behind her. "You know the most difficult part to look out for when fixing 'em, right?"

Cinder struggled to pull her gibbering thoughts back into something resembling order. "Well, the Urchin's in better shape than the junkers the pirates used," Cinder began. As she remembered old ship repairs and crawling through dangerous crannies with an analyzer and scared and angry pirates waiting outside the warren of pipes and machinery, her thoughts steadied. "The hardest part was making sure the entire system was acutally sealed before starting the warp ion generators...but I don't think the Urchin's engines are nearly as eroded." As her mind became absorbed in the problem presented to her, the hesitant tone of her voice strengthened as well. "Probably it'll be tuning the force field to the right resonance. I saw how tightly you calibrated things to keep it running as efficiently as possible." Cinder couldn't help a breathless chuckle. "The pirates were just happy enough to have field integrity - the coils didn't even match; they took whatever parts could be scrounged off ships. I've never seen a system where you could get beyond basic operational requirements to actual...efficiency gains."

Ulula's gambit worked too well, and Cinder, distracted, accidently looked up. "By the abyss..." she gasped, and stumbled backward, vertigo setting her mind to whirling as she stared in horror up at the sky. Gravity couldn't hold the air in, they were venting into space, and she could feel a breeze...that could only mean there was a breach in life support systems...Cinder looked around wildly and saw, amid the growing crowd of flimsy tents and useless awnings, an info booth with a large "Out of Order" scrawled across its windows with faded red paint.

She yanked her hand out of Ulula's grip with all her might and stumbled to the booth. She fell against the hinged folding door and kicked and yanked at it for a second before it creaked open. She slipped in and threw herself against the back wall, kicking the door shut with her foot and then falling against it to hold it closed. She crouched there - the floor was disgusting and there were some unpleasant odors wafting into her nose she didn't want to think too hard about - but for the moment she was safe and hidden from the open air. She shuddered and hugged her arms to herself and began a slow and stuttering count to a hundred, gasping between counts. "One...two..."

Cinder tried as best she could to control the fear that had her heart hammering in her chest as Ulula and Soz stepped out into the open unprotected air as if it were nothing. With a gulp she stumbled after them, staring fixedly at Ulula's heels. If she didn't look up, she didn't have to see the awful emptiness above her, the air with nothing holding it where she could breath, the...with a gasp Cinder skipped forward and reached toward Ulula's hand, then hesitated and clechned her fists to her chest instead. "How...how much farther?" she managed to ask weakly, shaking with both a fear of the sky and an urge to look up at it, and maybe prove it wasn't all terribly open to space after all. When Ulula and Soz didn't hear her weak query and began to pull ahead of her in the street, she gulped and, still excercising an iron control to avoid looking up, she jogged forward to keep up with them. Under the open sky was bad enough. Alone was worse.

I looked to see if there was some sort of "shaken" condition I could apply to Cinder while she was outside, but couldn't find it. If there is something of the sort that I"m unaware, of, though, I figure Cinder's agoraphobia would give her the appropriate penalties.

Cinder hurriedly replaced her hidden hold out blaster as the men in the port backed away, cowed for the moment. She stood up as Doctor Elliot breathed a sign of relief. As the adrenaline rush began to wear off and her heartbeat slowed to a normal volume, Cinder walked back out to stand by Ulula...and was overcome by another wave of panic at the prospect that nothing was between her and the dreaded mission of buying parts planetside. Cinder thrust her shaking hands into her pocket and stared at her scuffed and worn boot tips as she counted slowly to one hundred and waited for Ulula to begin preparing for the shopping trip outside.

For a moment Cinder had hoped the whole situation was going to work itself out - then the Captain revealed his ruse and the tension in the port dialed up about ten notches. Cinder gulped as everyone's hand inched toward their holsters and the Captain threw the proffered payment back to the gunmen. She didn't resist when Ulula shoved her back, falling back another couple of feet into the corridor and kneeling as she pulled her small holdout blaster from its hiding spot. She tried to calm her shaking hands as she pressed herself against the reassuring solidity of the ship's bulkhead. She wasn't exactly eager at the prospect of a firefight, unlike Soz evidently was, but this was her ship, and they weren't going to hurt the people on it without her fighting back.

She strained her ears, trying to hear if Maeris would succeed in calming the situation.

Stealth (hiding around a corner and a few feet back, but just in case any of the enemy have a view that far in, she's kneeling and pressed against the outside ship wall: 1d20+6=14

Perception (Listening for how things resolve themselves): 1d20+7=18

Cinder blinked and turned to look to her left as Dr. Elliot's voice broke into her thoughts. "These men weren't always gunmen. You can see it in their stance. They still stand like miners. They probably won't go for their guns first, then. Of course, they're watching the threatening ones among us. Careful now, Cinder. Things might get ugly here. I wouldn't want to have to patch another blaster wound on you." He was walking across the open area of the ship between the left and right sides of the ramp, toward her.

She waited until he stood near her, and relaxed enough to straighten her stance. "Did you see the other two farther out?" she asked in as low a voice as she could manage as he arrived next to her. Standing in close proximity to both Ulula and Dr. Elliot, they should both be able to hear her. She'd like to let Maeris or the Captain know, but she was scared speaking loud enough for them to hear would let the men outside the ship know the other two watchers had been spotted as well.

Cinder watched the Captain step forward and begin speaking to the men. "Everyone's so worried, it makes me nervous. Do you know what the problem is?" Cinder continued at the lowest volume she could manage, hoping one of the two adults she stood next to would have an answer.

Cinder tried to restrain a happy grin at Ulula's promise she could work on the hyperdrive with her - though the extra sparkle in her eyes was hard to miss. At Ulula's further mention of the field trip to find good parts for the repair, Cinder's happiness was suddenly tempered, however.

Go outside? On planet? Cinder thought, clenching her fists to hide the sudden shaking of her hands. I can't say on the ship my whole life. I know this. It's an aired planet. I'm not going to suffocate. I'm not going to freeze. The whole planet has air pressure. I know this. Cinder closed her eyes and gulped as she tried to talk herself out of a panic attack. I know better than this. It's all just in my head. A couple of deep breaths later she opened her eyes again as she heard the rumble and thump of the ramp touching planet. She hesitated a heartbeat, then began her reluctant way toward the ramp. It's just a really big starship. All these people are fine walking around in open air. I will be too.

She took a deep breath and stepped around the corner, too absorbed in the gibbering going on in her head to pay much attention to the sudden palpable tension in her shipmates. She stood just around the corner, wincing at the bright light that stabbed her eyes beyond the soothing shadow cast by the ship. She brought her welding goggles, which she usually wore atop her head as a headband unless working, down over her eyes to protect them from the painful glare. See? The ramp is down, there's no airlock, and we're all still alive. No depressurization alarms. There's no reason to panic. You can do this. Cinder began to breathe normally as she thought encouraging thoughts at herself, but she knew the real test would be actually stepping outside the spaceship.

Ulula was stopped near her, nearly hidden from the sight of anyone outside by the gears and extendable struts that controlled the ramp mechanism. As Cinder looked at her, relieved she wouldn't have to follow her outside the ship this minute, she blinked.

Perception (1d20+7=27)

Ulula looked nervous, and her eyes were locked on the outside of the ship, her datapad forgotten in one hand. Cinder looked back outside with new interest, trying to see what had Ulula worried. She knew Ulula didn't have any of her fears of planetside excursions.

Three beings stood outside the ship, obviously armed and the human who was speaking was smiling. The entire crew was near the ramp, and the tension and suspicion in the air was so thick she could cut with her knife, she was sure. What was happening here? Cinder's knees bent and her hands, still clenched from her near panic attack, suddenly popped open as she looked around, half tempted to retreat farther into the refuge of the ship and half to stay and help - something seemed about to go very wrong.

Cinder stopped waiting for Ulula's answer as a flicker caught her attention out of the corner of her eye. She turned toward the scanner console, then back toward the captain.

"Sir? The energy signature? The one that looked a little like the shuttle - well, slightly weaker than the shuttle...anyway, it looks like it's gone." She fiddled with settings for a second, the tip of her tongue unconciously poking out between her lips as she concentrated. "Yeah, I just checked, it doesn't look like the atmosphere is interfering with the signal, it really did shut off, whatever it was."

Cinder glanced up from the scanner console as Ulula stepped into the cockpit, muttering "...AND, since we didn't manage to take care of that back in Troophon, the incidental warp ionic variance when we dropped out of hyperspace partially overcame the containment field, meaning the control unit interface to the coils is itself quite ionized, so besides replacing any processors that blew out, I'll have to re-calibrate the whole thing."

Cinder perked up as Laris commented that it was a good thing they had a second mechanic to help out. This was her chance to work on the hyperdrive! "Uh, I'll help with the hyperdrive. I was able to help keep the old clunker I lived on working as a kid, I know I can help with this one too!" She smiled shyly. "This one is in a lot better shape than that old thing." Cinder clasped her hands behind her back and rocked back and forth from her toes to her heels in an attempt to hide her eagerness as she waited for Ulula to answer.

Hey, I'm sorry is this is an idiotic question, but Ulula,

what does the italics mean? Is that comm traffic? Internal thoughts? Muttered aloud? I thought we were going with "spoken word = bold"

Mostly I want to know what Cinder has heard you say, and what she hasn't.

thanks! and sorry! Any other conventions I should know about?

At Laris' question Cinder fiddled with the console settings some more and wracked her brains for an idea of what the power source might be.

Knowledge(Technology): 1d20+9=23

Cinder peered at the scanner console, puzzled. She narrowed her eyes and squinted, then readjusted the brightness settings and looked again. After barely a second's scrutiny she shrugged and walked over to the intercom mike. "Captain? Cinder here. I'm picking up some odd power signatures from the Im-Imperial ship." She winced at the nervous stutter going out over the ship's intercom. "Um...it's a pretty big energy signal, looks a little like the shuttle's? Right smack dab in the middle of it."

The whole thing made her nervous again, though she couldn't place exactly why. She massaged the tender spot on her head and frowned thoughtfully for a moment, trying to understand the cause of her unease as she waited for the captain's response.

Cinder unconciously reached up to rub away remembered pain in her shoulder with one hand as Dr. Elliot's voice came to the bridge, inquiring about a firefight. The thought of even the doctor expecting something bad did little to calm the nervousness she felt, but she gritted her teeth and kept the best eye she could on the scanner console. She'd already humiliated herself enough for one day.

Cinder turned the brightness of the console down another couple of notches. She'd always had weak eyesight compared to most beings she'd run into. Dr. Elliot had explained something about how being an "albino" meant the lack of pigmentation in her eyes not only explained their unusual (for a full human, anyway) color but also her discomfort in bright illumination. Dim shipboard lights and the cool darkness of space suited her eyes much better, that was sure.

"Ah! There she is!" Noticing the welt on her head, he continues. "You get in a fight with the bulkhead again? I keep tellin' ya, you can have your own quarters. Eh, never mind for now. You let me know if somethin' strange pops up."

Cinder's hand jumped from the console control board to the knot forming on her head and she felt a blush heat her stupidly pale skin. She may now have a name to attach to her strangely pale coloring, but she didn't like her pale skin or hair, or her strange eyes any more now that she knew she was more than just an especially pale human. She swallowed and choked out another "Yes, Captain." as he said something to Dr. Elliot and "Maeris" and stepped off the bridge.

Watching the scanner was all well and good, but Cinder itched to work away her worries on some thing more interesting. As they prepared to enter the atmosphere she closed her eyes for a moment and listened to the nearly imperceptible sounds of the hyperdrive engines as they finished cooling. There it was! That little hitch in the usually steady hum. Wouldn't it be fun to get a chance to track that down? Machines always made perfect sense, always followed simple rules in the end, once you dug down through enough layers...

The young girl opened her eyes once more with a sad sigh. First she had to convince Ulula to let her work on them. No, first she had to finish her duty at the scanner console. Then she would try to get her hands on the drive and calm her frazzled nerves as well as the drive's strange hiccoughs.

Cinder jumped involuntarily at the Captain's call, banging her head against the nearby bulkhead. She reached up to rub the sore spot on the back of her head and did her best to creep out of the corner she'd stuffed herself in unobtrusively.

Stealth check: Cinder tries to sneak out of her hiding place without others realizing she fled. (1d20+6=9)

She knew it was foolish to try and hide from boarding Imperials on the ship, but when she'd realized they were coming to inspect the ship, the sudden and overwhelming rush of fear she'd felt had elicited her usual reaction to panic - fold herself into the smallest and hardest to reach cubby she could find until she could hear something other than her own pounding heartbeat.

Much of Cinder's life had been full of hardship and she had faced down so many frightening things that she could meet most situations with a stoic front, but the thought of any run in with the Empire set her thoughts awhirl with panic. Pirates, smugglers, traders and criminals were understandable. They were simply looking out for themselves, and as long as you could manage to make yourself either unnoticable or useful to them, you stood a good chance of avoiding trouble. But Imperials did strange things that made no sense to Cinder. Their motivations were unfathomable; their goals made no sense to her - that made them something to be terrified of.

Cinder scurried toward the computer display with a sheepish "Yes, Captain." and settled to her assigned task, hoping no one had noticed her childish fear.

Is that a computer use or perception check? Just in case, I'll try both. Computer Use: 1d20+9=12 ; Perception: 1d20+7=25

Does the crew at large know that a portion of the shipment isn't properly documented? Is Cinder worried about the Imperial dreadnought, or unconcerned due to ignorance of the nature of portions of the ship's cargo?

The forum does tend to eat posts. What I do for posts that require some time is I will actually create a text document, and type up the post. That way, if the post is eaten, I just copy and paste the text document back. I just open the "Post Reply" area, preview it and check for clarity of thought and spelling and grammar, then hit Submit post when I'm ready.

Hopefully that will help you avoid wasted time. :)

I think Cinder shall be the one who has been shot. The idea suggested fits, plus it allows for Elliot to give everybody a big lecture about taking young girls out into the fringe after he has to high-tail it out of there with the crew.

as long as it doesn't kill me outright, anyway. ^_^

I'll volunteer to have been shot for character intro. I don't think Cinder would've spoken up to the local crime boss, but she's not a skilled combatant and I could see her getting hit in the firefight most easily.

I'm considering ways to tweak the story of Cinder's parents in order to tie her backstory to other characters' backstories.

I figure that Cinder's young age at the time of capture and the intervening trauma would make her memory of her parents' names and her own past spotty at best. She did her best to forget her childhood because she had to stay alert and sane in her present circumstances on the pirate ship.

If you want her to know the history you posted already, I'd prefer to have it be from research she completed already, like the name of the ship snatched from the pirate ship logs before she escaped and then subsequent research in a starport's data log rather than from things she remembered clearly.

Oh, other than my desire to make sure the languages she knows are appropriate to have learned from the pirates and to know if the multipurpose tool is a viable item, I wanted to ask about skills. I had to give Cinder two knowledge skills because of the limitations imposed on what skills she could choose given her class and backstory (survival makes no sense in a person who panics if under an open sky, for example). I was wondering if I could switch Knowledge (Physical Sciences) for Acrobatics...I think Acrobatics fits with the character background better (hiding in small spaces or crawling through them to make difficult repairs) than Knowledge (Physial Sciences), but Acrobatics isn't on the scout class skills list. If it would be okay to take Acrobatics, please let me know. Otherwise I'll keep it as is.

Argh! Eaten post!

Short version:

Languages have been updated on the profile - items too. If you see anything that should be changed to better fit, please let me know.

also, do you need further elaboration for Cinder's background or character?

Cinder wrote:

I don't know, I'd always considered Cinder to have a touch of Force, to be able to get out of her situation. Will it be a problem to have two force sensitive characters?

Yeah, I noticed that Cinder is Force Sensitive afterwards, I'm thinking of dropping force sensitivity from Mayvar's concept since it's not so fun to have a bunch of FS characters running around; it makes it less unique.

I didn't know having Force Sensitivity would be an issue - I figured I'm not a Jedi or anything, it wouldn't keep anyone else from filling that role.

EDIT: I have changed Mayvar's stats; Cinder is once again the only FS character. Looking forward to seeing how that plays out! :)

Cinder: I dunno guys, I have have a bad feeling about this...

Everyone: Kid, be quiet, the grown ups are talking!

Cinder: I think your character can definitely work with Ulula... Being especially young sets up a certain type of relationship right there. I think having some Skill over-lap is fine, we can differentiate with our Feats & Talents, like you taking Jury-Rig and me not (if I have another 'job' during ship combat like manning a turret or shields or sensors/etc, you specializing in 'keeping things up' with Jury-Rig would work great I think.) Me having Skill Focus: Mechanics (racial) so you maybe not doing that but perhaps taking Skill Focus: Use Computer (and/or Acrobatics for squeezing thru tight spots) would easily keep us well distinct... I'm not planning on speaking Binary (Droid), so taking that as one of your languages would be another differentiator.

Yes, I'd hoped we could do something like that. Ulula might not let Cinder near the life support systems because of her spotty education, but be okay with her messing with other systems like power transmission until Cinder's proven herself. I haven't chosen languages yet - I imagine the only languages Cinder could pick up would be pirate langauges and Binary...what languages would the pirates in these systems tend to speak?

With your high INT you obviously get alot of Skills, but having so many Knowledge Skills seems slightly off to me for such a young character with a background like yours without access to academic sources - it might be better to have stuff like Climb/Jump/Swim/Acrobatics/Stealth/Initiative (survivally stuff) which would let her deal with all sorts of terrain & wierd interior spaces.

I pretty much took every non-knowledge skill I could with Cinder that made sense with her background. I obviously couldn't take survival with her living on a ship her whole life, etc. :) I figured Knowledge (Galactic Lore) would come from listening to various pirates from many planets discuss their homes and places they've visited, plus her perusing the ships records for planets with artificial atmospheres while she was planning her escape would give her some basic computer knowledge of many planets. Knowledge(Technology) is pretty simple. She wouldn't be aware of the shiniest new technology, but she'd have a good working knowledge of many different kinds of technology living on a ship full of jury-rigged parts and stolen items. Knowledge (Physical Science) would be something she could pick up from a computer again, and useful in her self-taught ability with mechanics. I couldn't choose any social interaction based skills or skills associated with anything planetside, and I'm limited to skills in my class so I ended up pretty limited in my options. :)

Also, between you and Mayvar, I think it might be best for there to only be one Force Sensitive character... ???

I don't know, I'd always considered Cinder to have a touch of Force, to be able to get out of her situation. Will it be a problem to have two force sensitive characters?

@Cinder: I think your character is simplest to integrate into the group really, being a child... You probably wouldn't be 'let in on' much stuff to begin with, but once you're tagging along you'll prove your worth and so forth. Maybe just finding you on our ship as a stow-away would be the best intro?

Stow away could be made to work - Cinder was desperate to get back on a ship and she might be pushed to that, but given her lifetime of captivity, I'd think she'd rather sign on so the crew wants her there.

Her desperation would lead her accept any sort of pay or restrictions most on the fringe wouldn't accept.

Another option is she's been getting work on her small planet any way she can, including hanging out at the starport and offering mechanical services to anyone that's willing to pay - maybe a broken down fighter or shuttle, or the freighter itself if Ulula needed a hand.

Maybe someone's taken her under their wing with a sort of guardian / ward relationship - a nearly skeletally skinny nervous albino sixteen year old might pull on the heartstrings of any scoundrel that uses a gruff exterior to hide a good heart. :)

Random thought: I really, really, really want a "multipurpose tool" - i.e. a swiss army knife. It's sort of a "this sucks compared to a toolkit, but is better than nothing" thing. I see Cinder, with no formal education, as the ultimate spitball mechanic. Lots of mesh tape and random wires the niggling extra part that came out of the machine but you don't know where it's supposed to go now that the machine is "fixed" sort of thing...

I see Cinder as quiet and unassuming - a small young girl that looks incredibly incapable of being dangerous - and she's not a real combatant yet - but she's also hyper paranoid. All her weapons are hidden, and the multipurpose tool would also be hidden in a concealed holster - in case her toolkit was taken.

I have 3 swiss army knives in real life. There's nothing more amusing than being out in the middle of nowhere and having a random person ask "does anyone have a screwdriver?" with that hopeless look of someone who knows nobody has any tools of any sort, and then I pull out the swiss army knife and ask "Phillips or flathead?"

Quandary has a tech character.

yes, and this concerned me. As the latecomer, I'll guide my character to not step on Quandry's toes. As a young whipper snapper of 16, it'd be okay if Cinder is considered an apprentice and/or gopher.

Of course, technology could be at the heart of the game, so contrasting tech styles (the learned engineer versus the gritty fringer) can have a place. Not everything is solved with a fight, and adapting/resolving tech to solve situations is also within the genre. So this can work if you all would like.

I've taken jury rigger, I seem to remember Quandry was a scoundrel, so hopefully I've taken a slightly different techie route. And I can guide her development in any one of a number of directions as things progress.

As for other character issues...

** spoiler omitted **

that's perfectly fine, I don't think the idea fits well within the Star Wars ethos, and would hate to mess with that stuff for no good reason. It was a fun idea, is all.

My stats are on the profile. Maybe I missed it, but what's starting money? Max? Average? Some flat rate?