Salem Rios

Salem Rios was a Feeorin officer in the NRIS and the later GA Intelligence, who saw a lot ofaction during Yuuzhan Vong invasion as he worked together with various groups of Mandalorians.

Biography
Rios was born on Coruscant during the New Order, and being a non-human, he had to spend most of his youth in the non-human districts of Imperial Center. At the age of 15, he joined a resistance group on the planet, with connections to the Rebel Alliance, and did his part to help the Rebel seizure of Coruscant in 7 ABY. With his talents mainly in spying and informations broking, he got the attention of Alliance Intelligence (and later New Republic Intelligence Service), which he joined and received the proper training of an agent. But since he also had first-hand experience with fighting groups and had seen some action, he later often worked together as an Intelligence advisor on SpecOps and SpecForce operations.

He stayed with NRIS, even into the early Yuuzhan Vong invasion, where his work got brought him closer and closer to the action. Thus, he also got involved into the sort-of alliance between the NR and the Mandalorians, who were officially allies to the Vong but fed the NR and later GA with decisive intel whenever they could. Rios sometimes worked together with the Jedi Kubariet, and helped some individual Mandalorians into the NR to serve as military advisors and training sergeants, like the Cuy'val Dar for the Republic Commandos of old. In the late war, when the Mandalorians had eventually officially switched sides after the Vong attacked them, Rios even worked together with Mandalorian groups to fight off Yuuzhan Vong. One of these Supercommando groups was led by Ronan Barec on Contruum.

Physical Appearance and personality
Salem Rios was a jet black complected, rather short and slender Feeorin, who, apart from his unusual skintone, was totally generic looking, what served his role as an Intelligence officer a lot. He usually wore the GAI uniform all of the time, only using disguises when it came to covert operations. Holstered to his belt was a small holdout blaster pistol, a comlink and a datapad. He didn't have any stand-out features, since as an Intelligence officer, trademark features like tattoos or birthmarks were only counterproductive, and Rios had all his birthmarks surgically erased.

Salem Rios was known to never get himself into big trouble, because he only spoke up after thorough considerations as to what consequences his words might have. Thus, he was very poised and calm, and never let his emotions cross with his logic and rationale. He even had some diplomatic talents, maybe because of his constant caution and self-monitoring, what made him a perfect man to work with sensible matters like rash special forces soldiers or edgy Mandalorians. He was some sort of out-of-the book intelligence officer, who never allowed himself a faux pas and always seemed to do the right thing at the right time. But because of his focus on his work, his personal life suffered a lot, and he didn't really have any close friends apart from the people he worked with all the time. Some called him a lone wolf, but at least he was known to get the job done.

His overall attitude didn't come from itself, either. Back in the resistance group prior to the Rebel conquest of Coruscant, he had screwed up big time, and that twice, once causing the arrest of a whole squad of his comrades by the Imperials, and the other time blowing a whole important operation because he hadn't watched his mouth. Consequently, he learned from his faults and did his best never to repeat them, which he managed most of the time.

Behind the scenes

 * The artwork of Salem Rios was done by Asok from the SW Artists Guild on request.

Appearances

 * Rage of the Shadow Warriors: When Few Stood Against Many