Camilla Sookanado

Camilla Sookanado, also known as Cami, was a retired Rodian bounty hunter. Born within the ranks of the persecuted Tetsu Clan, Cami led a secretive life until she departed her homeplanet to become a bounty hunter. She was quite successful in her career until it was cut short by a startling turn of events, and she was held captive on a primitive world. The traumatic memories haunted her, forcing Cami to retire early as she was not of sound mind to continue the trade. As a result of genetic manipulation from her captivity, Cami gave birth to a hybrid son, Trak Nar. Due to her mental illness, she could not care for the child and he was placed for adoption. Nearly twenty years later, Cami was reunited with her son.

Early life
Camilla Sookanado, called "Cami" by most, was a Tetsu Rodian. To save their only daughter from the genocide initiated by Navik the Red of the rival Chattza Clan, Cami's parents secured protection by giving up the infant to a Chekkoo Clan family. Cami grew up never knowing her true parents, living a sheltered life within the custody of her foster family. The Chekkoo clansmen, becoming increasingly aggravated with the stranglehold the Chattza hunters had on their people, trained tirelessly, preparing their warriors for what would become a fight for supremacy. Young Cami trained amongst them, becoming well-versed in various martial arts and blade weapon techniques.

Cami was kept hidden, never receiving a proper education. She was taught only what she needed to know in order to survive. She was aware of her Tetsu heritage, as she carried the distinct pheromonal scent, distinguishing her from the rest of her foster clan. It was this scent that could possibly reveal her to Chattza hunters, thus her protectors felt it was in her best interest that she remain undiscovered. This reclusive lifestyle allowed Cami to focus on her melee training, shaping the young Rodian into a confident warrior.

Life within the deep, isolated jungle regions of the Chekkoo Province was harsh, as Chekkoo Rodians are among the poorest of the clans since Navik's rise to power. Cami grew up without the amenities of modern civilization, relying heavily on the survival skills she was taught. This seclusion and the shortage of supplies due to Navik rerouting commercial trade routes deprived Cami of needed exposure to technology and different cultural practices, effectively curtailing her social development. When she visited for the first time, she viewed it with wide-eyed amazement and  Guild leaders regarded her as naive and backwards. Confident in her skills though she may be, Cami was seen as just another bug-bitten uncultured savage with delusions of granduer. However, her marksmanship and successful completion of the Final Hunt earned Cami a Guild membership, giving her the much-needed boost toward a promising future.

Bounty hunting


Around 0 BBY, Cami was granted legal passage off Rodia by the Goa-Ato, leaving her poverty-stricken seclusion behind for her first assigned hunt. Her training shown through, Cami quickly ascending the ranks from naive rookie to reliable hunter. In 0 ABY, Cami was a member of a small hunting party sent by a kingpin to bring down a group of rival. While the more-seasoned hunters aquired the bounties on the slavers, Cami was trusted with freeing the captured dancing girls. One of the dancers, a named Ric'ah T'rib, pledged a sort of  to Cami and the two became close friends. To avoid detection until she could falsify her records, Ric'ah traveled with Cami on several hunts until they parted ways in 4 ABY.

From that hunt and from relentless aquisitions of small-time crooks, Cami amassed enough credits that she was able to afford her own ship. Named the Silent Assassin, the DeepWater-class light freighter helped Cami further her career, taking on bigger bounties and longer trails. Her tendency to chase down her quarry to the furthest reaches of the galaxy eventually earned her several Atiang awards on her homeworld. Thanks to her success, Cami became financially secure and purchased a modest apartment within the working class CoCo Town district on Coruscant. She was rarely home, however, using the dwelling as merely a storage unit and occasionally a bed. Her career and adopted clan status kept her off the Chattza radar, and Cami was able to enjoy a moderately-successful life. However, the peace was short-lived as her string of success came to an abrupt halt during one unfortunate hunt.

In 5 ABY the hunt started off without a hitch; Cami was tracking a quarry through the Outer Rim, eventually entering an unfamiliar (and wholly uncharted) system and landing on an unknown backwater world. Her scanners detected no and she was too far out of range to even consider transmitting any signals to neighboring systems. Fuel was low, only enough to make the return trip, and with no refueling station within range of her scanners, Cami decided that it was best to leave the Assassin until she returned with her bounty. Continuing the chase on foot, Cami followed her target into an urban area where what was expected to be a simple track-and-grab took a different turn.

Imprisonment
In a flurry of confusing events, Cami was apprehended by local human law enforcement officials, and hustled away to a remote location. There, she was stripped of her weapons and subjected to repeated interrogations and examinations, her captors demanding to know everything about her. The xenophobic attitudes of the humans struck Cami as extremely odd; she had incorrectly assumed that the inhabitants would be accustomed to the presence of alien life. The humans viewed Cami as merely a bizarre creature to be studied.



Cami's imprisonment lasted for several years, her curious and sometimes sadistic captors working tirelessly to see how much information they could uncover from their new lab rat. Cami underwent several live dissections, portions of her organs and tissue removed for further study. Her right antenna was surgically removed, leaving her with impaired sensory perception. To examine and test her cognitive abilities and further the research into how an alien mind thinks, Cami often worked with two behaviorists, Drs. Duane Lovitz and Rachel Chong. These humans recognized that Cami was a sentient being and felt that she should be treated as such. Cami was instructed to record her thoughts in a journal, which was filed away into an ever-growing database of whatever information the humans were able to get from her. The behaviorists gradually became Cami's few allies. Most of the other humans that tested her, however, did not even bother with using her name, instead choosing to refer to her as simply "108198." Exams, experiments, and endless psychological evaluation became all that Cami knew. She spent her nights cold, alone, and frightened, not knowing when they would come for her or what they would do to her.

The constant testing and exams took a new turn when Cami overheard plans that the humans wanted to attempt a cross-breed. Horrified, Cami frantically looked for ways to get away, hoping that she would be able to prevent it. She had no choice. In an unnecessarily-painful and overly-complicated process, Cami was artificially-inseminated with human DNA. The experiment was a shock to her system, pulling her out of her frightened shell and laying the groundwork for her daring escape.

Escape
In the months following the cross-breed procedure, Cami had secured the help of the behaviorists in aiding her escape. She lacked a definitive plan, however, and was forced to lie in wait for just the right moment and right distraction. That moment came one late-summer day in 9 ABY as the compound was a chaotic swarm of activity. From the fragments she overheard, Cami only knew that something had happened that was "threatening national security." She saw the confusion as her only chance, and with the help of Lovitz and Chong, Cami was smuggled out of the facility. Her disappearance had not gone unnoticed as they were chased throughout the isolated rural countryside. Finding her ship, the Silent Assassin still hidden, Cami boarded it, gunned the engines, and took off as a fleet of aircraft appeared on the horizon. The primitive vehicles pursued her, firing, but ultimately could not ground the Assassin. Reaching escape velocity, Cami blasted away from the remote planet, en route to the Core.

The adrenaline wore off as Cami sent out a distress signal, succumbing to a catatonic state due to her years-long ordeal. Her ship was eventually located by a passing freighter and towed back to Coruscant where she was admitted to a psychiatric center. Three months into the hospitalization, the staff realized that Cami was pregnant. The twisted experiment that haunted her memories had proved to be successful. Soon afterwards, Cami gave birth to a premature hybrid son whom she named "Trak Nar." Trak was taken away by the local children's services and put up for adoption as Cami was deemed to be not of sound mind to care for a child.

Cami remained in the psychiatric center for a few years before being released to a group home around 15 ABY.

Retirement
Tormented by vivid and frightening memories, Cami retired immediately from bounty hunting. Extremely paranoid, she sank into a deep depression and spent her days in local, trying to drink away the pain. Locals avoided her for the stigma that mental illness carried and for her sudden and violent outbursts. Her former career and success had faded into the background, leaving her alone with her nightmares and delusions. The people she used to know thought her to have died, including Navik the Red who felt that Cami's descent into madness was enough for him to declare her deceased. The years passed and Cami was forgotten.

Sometime around 26 ABY, Cami was spotted in a small tavern by an old friend of hers, Ric'ah T'rib. It was through Ric'ah that Cami was finally reunited with her son, Trak Nar. Trak's presence helped pull Cami out of her depression and she devoted herself to protecting and training him. Still haunted by her memories, Cami was wary of her tormentors somehow finding her and her son, prompting her to become vigilant. She had even considered coming out of retirement if it meant that she and Trak would be safe.

With Ric'ah's help, Cami was released from the group home and allowed to move nack to her old apartment with Trak. A recovering alcoholic and still under the care of the behavioral health system, this move allowed Cami to regain much of her independence. She attended therapy and counseling sessions on a weekly basis in order to maintain her mental stability and manage her medication. While Cami has had considerations about returning to bounty hunting, her caseworkers and therapists felt that doing so would be detrimental to her fragile psyche, causing her to relapse. With the considerable progress she had made since reuniting with Trak, Cami was hopeful that she would continue to improve and one day reclaim her old life. Until that day, however, she was still a client of the mental health system and continued to receive the treatment she needed.

Dealings with Darth Mortimus
In 28 ABY, two standard years since her reunion with her son, Cami was urged out of her self-imposed retirement. She was told that a disillusioned named "Sparky" had commandeered a custom  and fled Coruscant on what was thought to be an idealistic crusade to reestablish the. Cami was hesitant to accept the mission to find Sparky as she was afraid that the stress may trigger a relapse, undoing the progress she had made since being released from the psychiatric center. Ric'ah tried to reassure her, explaining that it would be a rather simple mission and Cami's experience was needed.

Cami reluctantly agreed and she, Trak, Ric'ah, and Ric'ah's, Dareth Pan'dha, embarked on what was expected to be a short chase. Piloting the Silent Assassin toward the isolated swamp world of within the, Sparky's last known coordinants, Cami and her passengers were unaware of what had transpired. Prior to the chase, Sparky had puportedly undergone a bizarre transformation from a freak accident with a, gaining an undetermined amount of uncontrollable power and calling himself "Darth Mortimus."

Reaching the Yartiv system, the Assassin came under attack from Mortimus's ship, The Turtleneck. Cami sent Trak to man the gun turrets while she skillfully piloted her craft through a swarm of antique. Cami's piloting skill infuriated the impatient Mortimus, prompting him to make use of his newfound power. Reaching out with the, Mortimus probed Cami's mind, looking something he could use to disable her. He found it in the traumatic memories of Cami's imprisonment. , Mortimus decided, would make the perfect weapon.

Cami was mid-sentence when the psychic attack began. Before her eyes, Trinta faded into an image of the primitive world she had hoped to leave behind. One by one, the nightmarish memories flooded her mind, forcing her to relive each and every horrifying moment, every painful experiment, over and over. Trapped within the frightening visions, Cami was unable to recognize Ric'ah when the Twi'lek attempted to calm her. Cami perceived her friend to be one of the scientists who tortured her and immediately attacked. Blinded by the Force Insanity, Cami fought feverishly to protect herself from dangers only she could see. After throwing Dareth into the flight controls, Cami was taken down by a sharp blow to the head from the hilt of Ric'ah's. Due to the intensity of the attack and Cami's already unstable mental health, Ric'ah was forced to use that violent method to subdue her friend and break the hold that Darth Mortimus had on her. Despite the fierce headache she had when she regained consciousness, Cami understood the circumstances and Ric'ah's motives.

Personality and traits
Prior to her capture, Camilla Sookanado was a confident warrior. She was a headstrong risk-taker, ready and willing to jump into danger at a moment's notice, though this may have stemmed from her underdeveloped social skills. A skilled swordsman, Cami could hold her own in combat against a fair number of opponents. Due to her imprisonment, however, Cami became reserved, quiet and extremely distrustful of humans. She had stolen two small knives from the group home's kitchen, keeping them hidden on her, and was prone to violent outbursts, states of psychogenic fugue and catatonia. Since her reunion with her son, Cami began to open up more, taking an active role in Trak's life. Suffering from a severe form of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, her paranoia still remained a part of her, haunting her with vivid nightmares and painful memories.

Cami had red spines, as opposed to green, as was usually the norm. This trait was distinctive among Rodians, possessed by a few other individuals including. Both of Cami's ears had several piercings along the outer edge. From her years of captivity, disfiguring scars covered Cami's body, ranging in size from the ragged Y-shaped incision that covered her chest from neck to navel, to the thin cranial scar that snaked from ear to ear, to the many other smaller marks. To hide most of her scars, Cami commonly wore a skullcap and concealing clothing. More evidence of her imprisonment were her missing right antenna and the number "108198" tattooed across the back of her neck. Cami possessed a small stuffed toy that was given to her by the behaviorist Dr. Chong so she "would have something to hold on to for comfort." Since her escape, Cami kept the toy with her, often hugging it when she would become stressed. She called the toy "Dan-yul," a phonetic pronunciation of the name "Daniel."

Cami spoke with a slight lisp in which "s" syllables were slurred, producing a "ts" sound. This was a common speech impediment among Basic-speaking Rodians, due to the structure of the mouth and palate. Cami used a L337 Model BFG heavy in combat.

Behind the scenes
Camilla's name and backstory originally came from an odd dream that the author had. There were a few changes made to the story, mainly with the addition of the nickname "Cami," her surname "Sookanado," and a revision of the cross-breeding experiment. The author felt that it would have been a waste to not use the character and thus finalized the backstory and character design. Like Trak Nar, Cami's first major appearance was in CJ008: Only a Sith Deals an Absolute. Before that, she was confined to role-plays and the pages of the author's sketchbook.

Appearances

 * CJ008: Only a Sith Deals an Absolute
 * Star Wars Dreams thread on StarWars.Com