Naastau

Naastau was a Mandalorian Human male who lived during the late Rise of the Empire era into the New Republic era and saw combat during the Great Clan Wars, the Clone Wars, and the Galactic Civil War.

Naastau first saw combat during the Great Clan Wars that ravaged Mandalorian space; he began his warrior career in his teenaged years as a foot soldier in a band of Mandalorian supercommandos that raided the holdings of other Old Mandalorian cells. Around 35 BBY, Naastau was forced into exile from the warband after selling datapads containing critical intelligence to an enemy clan. Using his connections with some Mandalorian chieftains and black market dealers, Naastau raised his own band of Mandalorian warriors supported by landspeeders and hovertanks as well as a small fleet of hyperdrive-equipped gunships and patrol crafts. Upon consolidating his forces as a warlord, Naastau led raids on trade posts, settlements, weapons facilities, merchant ships and shipyards held by rival Mandalorian groups, and sold the loot to his allies in Mandalore's criminal underworld. In the final months of the Great Clan Wars, Naastau was betrayed by his lieutenant, who convinced his peers that their warlord had become nothing but a criminal and did not lead their warband in a responsible manner. After narrowly escaping execution by what were his own followers, Naastau spent the next few months in hiding before he was captured by his old followers and sold to the Hutt Cartel, who sent Naastau to fight in a gladiator pit on Nal Hutta. Naastau faced several other prisoners and different species of nonsentient predators, all of whom he defeated with a vibrosword. As a reward for his triumph, Naastau was offered a contract to serve the Hutt Cartel as a bodyguard of the Grand Hutt Council, which he declined. The Mandalorian then snuck to a nearby starport, hijacked a freighter, and fled Hutt Space.

Naastau made his way to Ord Mantell, where he took up a contract with the Black Sun crime syndicate as a smuggler. The Mandalorian outcast spent the following years smuggling military equipment to Black Sun warehouses across the galaxy, often engaging in firefights and pursuits with police units, enemy gangsters, and Republic Judicial Forces. By the time of the Separatist Crisis, the Black Sun's upper echelons took notice into Naastau's prowess and began sending him to eliminate important rivals of the syndicate. As a Black Sun assassin, Naastau piloted a modified AEG-77 transport throughout the galaxy as he hunted down his employer's enemies using covert tactics.

In 22 BBY, a few weeks into the Clone Wars, Naastau was captured by Republic agents while meeting Black Sun contacts in the Coruscant underworld and was imprisoned in Corucant's military prison. It was only days into his imprisonment when Jedi Master Rahm Kota came to him and offered him immunity from his crimes if he served in Kota's penal unit under the Grand Army of the Republic; the Mandalorian eagerly accepted the offer. Naastau served throughout the entire Clone Wars as one of General Kota's lieutenants as their unit - one of the few Republic military formations that did not feature any clone troopers - was sent into battle against Separatist forces across the Outer Rim.

When Order 66 was executed in 19 BBY, Kota escaped the genocide and Naastau went off to form a mercenary unit contracted by the Black Sun. As a mercenary captain, Naasta Around 10 BBY, Naastau returned to Mandalore, which was under Imperial occupation, and eventually joined a local resistance force led by Fenn Shysa, under whom Naastau participated in convoy ambushes as well as raids on Imperial slave camps across the planet for some years. As the Galactic Civil War soon engulfed the galactic community, Naastau once more left his homeworld and joined the Rebel Alliance, where he reunited with General Kota and first served in his unit of Rebel commandos, though when his physical health soon began to degrade, he decided to leave Kota's unit and took to smuggling munitions and medical supplies between remote Rebel bases that large Rebel supply fleets had difficulty getting to; these long supply runs to the known galaxy's furthest fringe worlds often gave Naastau the solitude he so desired over his years of war and crime, which had taken a minor toll on his mental health. In 3 ABY, Naastau learned that Mandalore was at last liberated from Imperial occupation and returned to his homeworld to leave his life of freebooting behind and formed a network of spies that provided intelligence on remaining Imperial holdouts in Mandalorian space to a task force of Mandalorian supercommandos and New Republic SpecForce troopers led by Mand'alor Fenn Shysa. Naastau later disbanded his smuggling fleet and fully retired in his home city. Naastau lived, albeit retired and very old, to see the end of the Galactic Civil War in 19 ABY, having watched the signing of the Pellaon-Gavrisom Treaty between the New Republic and the Imperial Remnant on his television and was the one to notify Shysa of this event via holophone.

Throughout his extensive combat career, Naastau wore a black-colored set of durasteel Mandalorian supercommando armor that was enhanced with a heads-up display as well as various weapons and gadgets integrated into his wrist vambraces, much like many Mandalorian 'traditionalists' of his time period. His set of armor was also fitted with an energy shield generator that was taken from Katarn-class armor used by Republic commandos and the Imperial commandos.