Ezgi Deshra

"Look, I like what I do. And I'm good at it. Personal security works for me. The pay is good, I get to see new places, meet new people—half of whom are actually pretty interesting. Plenty of excitement but not a lot of killing, which is a plus in my book. And have I mentioned the pay is good?"

- Ezgi Deshra

Ezgi Deshra was a human female Mandalorian, who lived during the final decades of the Galactic Republic. The daughter of a New Mandalorian father and a warrior clan mother, Ezgi was born in Shoriya, a small coastal town located on the Outer Rim world of Mandalore. As a child, Ezgi was sent to live with her father in the New Mandalorian capital, Sundari, in an effort to shield her from the destructive conflicts with the radical Death Watch that plagued Mandalore in those days. Though she grew up an outcast among the New Mandalorians, Ezgi was eventually reunited with her mother and Clan Deshra after a tragic speeder accident claimed the life of her father when she was just a teenager. Moving to Keldabe, Mandalore's capital, Ezgi immersed herself in the warrior culture of Mandalorian tradition, training alongside her mother until becoming an adult at the completion of her verd'goten trials.

Though she initially entered into a career alongside her mother as a soldier-for-hire, Ezgi soon found that the profession wasn't for her. After subsequently drifting from one job to another, a 21-year-old Ezgi finally found a place for herself with Silver Shield Solutions, a Corulag security firm with whom she contracted out her services as a bodyguard. Over the following years, Ezgi's new career took her across the galaxy, protecting adventurers, explorers, and business moguls on worlds ranging from lush Kashyyyk to barren Jaguada. In the year 22 BBY, only a few months prior to the Clone Wars, Silver Shield Solutions assigned Ezgi a job protecting a tourist bound for Mandalore. Over the course of three days, Ezgi successfully guarded and guided the tourist across her homeworld, escorting the client though Sundari, Keldabe, and smalltown Enceri.

Early life
"When I was little, I used to wish I could live anywhere else. I hated growing up there. When I finally left, I never wanted to go back. My dad was the only good thing in that whole damned city, and in the end it killed him."

- Ezgi Deshra, discussing Sundari

Born in the year 48 BBY in the small town of Shoriya, located along the coast of the planet Mandalore's northern continent, Ezgi Deshra was the daughter of a New Mandalorian father and a warrior clan mother. At the time, Mandalorian society was caught in the midst of a vicious civil war between the brutal forces of the Death Watch, led by the renegade Tor Vizsla, and the honorable supercommandos of the True Mandalorian army, fighting at the side of Mand'alor Jaster Mereel. In order to keep their daughter safe from a conflict that only threatened to escalate, Ezgi was sent to live with her father, Caul Itera, behind the protective black dome of the peaceful New Mandalorian capital, Sundari. For twelve years, Ezgi grew up among a people with whom she found she had little in common, keeping in contact with her mother only via lengthy holo-calls, as so-called "Old Mandalorians"—those who held true to the Mandalorians' warrior culture, rather than the pacifist ideals of the New Mandalorian sect—were barred from entering Sundari.

In those years, Ezgi's mixed heritage made her a target of whispered ridicule, from both her schoolmates and adults alike. Desperate to better fit the New Mandalorian norm, the young Ezgi would dye her naturally dark hair blonde and her brown eyes blue. She avoided any unnecessary exposure to the sun or Sundari's artificial solar lamps, for fear of darkening her skin even by a shade. And whenever she spoke Mando'a outside of her family home, Ezgi was careful to filter out any trace of her mother's Keldabe inflection or dialect she may have picked up from her speech. Despite her father's best efforts to defend, comfort, and support his young daughter, life in Sundari remained difficult for Ezgi.

At the age of thirteen, Ezgi's father passed away in a speeder accident while she was at school. Though the New Mandalorian government moved to have her placed with another family in the city, when word reached Ezgi's mother, Edeema Deshra refused to relinquish custody. By that time, peace had finally settled across Mandalore: the end of the Great Clan Wars saw the Death Watch utterly destroyed, and their sympathizers in exile on the moon of Concordia. If there was a time to bring her daughter home, Edeema knew that it was now, no matter what New Mandalorian bureaucracy would rather see done with the girl. The bureaucrats inevitably pushed back, but after Ezgi's mother made it clear to the Sundari government that any effort to keep her daughter in the city against her wishes would only result in all new hostilities with Clan Deshra and its allies, the recently crowned leader of the New Mandalorians—the self-styled duchess, Satine Kryze—personally oversaw Ezgi's delivery to the docks of Sundari, where she was reunited with Edeema and peace was upheld.

Reclaiming her culture
Returning to Keldabe to live with her mother and the rest of Clan Deshra, for the first time in her life Ezgi found herself among people who not only looked like her, but accepted her as she was, with no need to conform to an image not her own. She quickly became enamored with the traditional Mandalorian lifestyle, a heritage that was her birthright and yet had always been just beyond her reach. Over the next three years, Ezgi trained with her mother according to Mandalorian tradition, immersing herself in the culture, until finally passing the verd'goten trials that marked her rite of passage into legal adulthood. The then sixteen-year-old Ezgi tried her hand at mercenary work alongside her mother for a time, before joining her aunt in pursuit of bounties across the Outer Rim. She worked for several months in her uncle's shop in Keldabe, and even hunted shatual with her cousin. Nothing quite fit, until finally, when she was twenty-one, Ezgi joined Silver Shield Solutions, a private security firm based on Corulag. The company paid well for Mandalorian contractors, and Ezgi's prior training and experience made her a natural for the work; she became a for-hire bodyguard with the company's Outer Rim division, finally finding a career that suited her.

In the years that followed, Ezgi protected adventurers trekking across the jungles of Dxun, explorers delving into the Myyydril Caverns on Kashyyyk, archaeological expeditions into the Stygion Caldera, and young tycoons spending their holidays bouncing from one Nar Shaddaa nightclub to another. Amidst the growing Separatist Crisis, and against the advice of her clan, she also began accepting jobs protecting transport ships ferrying cargo to and from Sundari across Mandalorian space, as well as tourists keen to accept Duchess Kryze's open invitation to see modern Mandalore, but only so long as they had an armed escort. Leveraging her patrilineal citizenship to just to gain access to the city, Ezgi was forced to register with the New Mandalorian branch of the Mandalorian Guard, undergoing an invasively thorough vetting process before she was allowed to so much as openly don her armor inside the city limits, let alone carry her blasters—precautions not even offworld visitors to Sundari were subjected to in those days.

In 22 BBY, just a few short months before the Clone Wars would break out across the galaxy, Silver Shield Solutions was approached by a Coruscanti travel agency looking to hire out protection for a tourist bound for Mandalore. Her experience with such assignments led the firm to give the job to Ezgi, who successfully guarded and guided the tourist over the course of three days on her home planet, escorting the client though Sundari, Keldabe, and the small northern town of Enceri, as well as the scenic countryside in between.

Personality and traits
"How's my girl been treating you?" "Oh, she's great. A real sweetheart, and—if you don't mind my saying—quite the looker, too. Add to that the fact that I saw her take down a Rodisar the size of a Gorax with nothing but her bare hands and a bottle of vosh, and frankly...your daughter scares the kriff out of me. I think I just may be in love."

- Edeema Deshra and one of Ezgi's clients

A human female from the planet Mandalore, as an adult, Ezgi Deshra stood at a height of 1.6 standard meters, and typically weighed around fifty kilograms. She possessed brown eyes, dark hair, and light brown skin. Growing up on Mandalore, Ezgi became fluent in Basic and Mando'a, while her mother taught her the Concordian dialect used on Mandalore's moon and nearby Concord Dawn, as well as the dadita code system. Over time, she also learned to speak Huttese and Bocce to passable degrees on her own. From her mother, Ezgi was taught to be proficient with various blasters and short blades, while her father had her instructed in the New Mandalorian martial art pel'gaan—or "soft hand"—a style that was said to have been adapted from hijkata centuries ago, focusing on deflecting, countering, and turning an opponent's attacks against them.

A music lover from a young age, Ezgi enjoyed smazzo, glimmik, and traditional Mandalorian music, among several other genres. Music of all kinds could frequently be heard playing in her Keldabe apartment, and Ezgi often listened to music within the confines of her helmet while on the go, whether from her personal collection or a number of Holonet stations. She also possessed a fondness for art, with the notable exception of New Mandalorian cubism and Alderaanian abstract pieces.

Equipment
"Sorry for the inconvenience, ma'am, but can you please step through the scanner again? You've got so much equipment, our system seems to think you're...well, that you're a droid. We're in the middle of some calibrations."

- A spaceport security officer to Ezgi

After completing her verd'goten, Ezgi a suit of custom Mandalorian armor as a gift from her mother, Edeema. Comprised of white plates with gold and wine-colored accents, and a black flak vest over a tailored gray flightsuit, Ezgi's armor was forged using a beskar–carbon alloy by the Enceri metalsmith Kala Wren, making the plates lightweight but incredibly resilient. Her gloves and boots were made from black Corellian leather, and her helmet was a beskar-forged model built by the well-known Keldabe craftsman Beviin Verhayc. In addition to the rest of her armor, Ezgi possessed two unique pairs of Mandalorian gauntlets, each set outfitted with a unique loadout of equipment for different needs. One pair featured a miniature shield projector, a mounted stun blaster, and other tools that were ideal for non-lethal defense, while the other pair was armed with more offensive weaponry, including twin-blasters, a rocket launcher, and a miniature flamethrower. Both sets of gauntlets held a single, retractable vibroblade made of undetectable ceramics hidden in the beskar housing over the right wrist, a secret weapon of last resort.

Ezgi also owned a pair of SoroSuub ELG-3A blaster pistols. Both weapons were kept in dual leather holsters at her waist, attached to a custom-made bantha leather utility belt she purchased from a Keldabe vendor on Chortav Meshurkaane. The belt's numerous pouches could typically be found carrying spare ammunition, a palm-sized datapad, a backup comlink, a scrambler key and multitool, a thin Mandalorian knife—devised as a tool, not a weapon—called a borakal, and a travel-sized bottle of pirjanad sauce. For more dangerous assignments, Ezgi kept a GALAAR-15 carbine and a WESTAR-M1 blaster rifle with an under-barrel grenade launcher in a small armory at her Keldabe home, each modified for optimum performance and equipped with an armorweave carrying sling.

Behind the scenes
Ezgi Deshra was conceived and developed by writer Mia Mesharad, who envisioned Deshra as someone who could act as an informative guide for the reader throughout her 2017 online tour piece, " Welcome to Mandalore ." Created to fill a similar role as notable West End Games companions like Platt Okeefe, Ezgi was meant to be an experienced voice that could offer a balance of canonical exposition and unofficial commentary in an in-universe fashion, with her dual heritage providing a unique perspective on the societies of both the New Mandalorian and traditional Mandalorian peoples.

When constructing the character of Ezgi Deshra, actress Shay Mitchell—best known for her role as Emily Fields in the television series Pretty Little Liars—was chosen to portray the Mandalorian woman after Mesharad became aware of Mitchell's struggles with her biracial identity when she was young. Though Deshra's mixed heritage was planned from the outset, quotes from the actress describing her own hardships growing up as a woman of color in an overwhelmingly white community would inform several aspects of Deshra's troubled childhood in Sundari. Deshra's Mandalorian armor, as seen in this article's main image, was created via image editing, using renowned cosplayer RoboEmma's custom Mandalorian character Ivven Oyre as a base and general inspiration.

Appearances

 *  Welcome to Mandalore