Ber Wend

Ber Wend was a male Gama-Senn of House Wend in the Gama System and diplomat to the Galactic Republic. He arrived on Coruscant during the Chancellorship of Thoris Darus and, after becoming diplomat, quickly became corrupt. An ardent supporter of the Republic, he became a high profile target for the CIS during the Clone Wars. A paranoid sentient, he constantly had a bodyguard with him whenever he was in public.

Politics
Gama System diplomat, Gremeer Senn-Del, in 57 BBY, took on a young Ber Wend as his aide and began to train him as his successor. In two years, Wend became the chief diplomat for his people, using the Gama System embassy on Coruscant to advance several corrupt agendas.

In 35 BBY he helped gain support for the construction of the Tower of Belbus and the Belbus Warehouses for Belbus Co, a shipping and supply conglomerate run by the Black Sun Vigo, Darnada. The warehouses were built first in an area of Coruscant called the Quaternary Blue District and covered an area of roughly twenty square kilometers. Each building was approximately fourteen stories tall. The tower was a large ziggurat one kilometer high and would act as an office building and living quarters. Wend and the other partners were questioned by members of the Jedi Order but too little and scattered evidence ever arose to prove that Belbus Co was a front for the Black Sun.

Capture
When the Clone Wars broke out Wend declared his full support of the Republic. In 21 BBY he fired his Oxoorian bodyguard, Crebbis, and hired an inexperienced Gand named Zershmel. It was under Zershmel’s protection a few months later that he was captured by Separatist agent Tull Strayfiend. Both of them were stunned by the kidnapper while they were in an elevator that led to the lower levels. Zershmel was pushed, unconscious, out of the elevator on the lowest level and Wend awoke later in a bare room with a Caamasi prisoner, Alc Hyn’res, who was involved with the Refugee Relief Movement. An elderly humanoid woman of mixed species visited once to perform a second-rate medical examination of the two prisoners and she declared them both fit for transportation. When Strayfiend left the room the woman gave the two prisoners water and Wend was able to learn that the simple woman’s name was Ya Weet and that she had been widowed when her husband died in the service of the Stark Commercial Combine in 44 BBY.

After she left, an Iodanese escorted by two heavily armed Sanyassan mercenaries arrived and cuffed the prisoners and put bags over their heads and then they were taken out of the room and loaded into a transport that smelled like it had been used to ship nerfs. After a few minutes the vehicle stopped and they were moved into another shuttle. The bag over Wend’s was removed and he was alone with one of the Sanyassans. He could see out a viewport and he realized he was in a ship, leaving Coruscant. His guard spoke poor Basic but he managed to learn the Sanyassan was named Ezorus and was from a desert world with many large factories but that he did not know its name.

Wend was taken to Krizzin in the Algara system. He was held in a secret base with several other prisoners. The Xan warden, Daoq, was friendly to Wend, asking him many questions about the state of things on Coruscant and which politicians were saying what. For several months he remained on Krizzin but suddenly he and one other prisoner, an Esoomian named Takdory, were forced to board a freighter captained by a questionable looking Sy Myrthian. Other prisoners, a Makurth bounty hunter named Bhegardh among them, were loaded aboard the freighter somewhere in the Myto Sector. They were transported to a Separatist base on a world in Wild Space called Pirgan Lydanz which was four parsecs from Huk. For six months, the prisoners endured harsh labor and poor treatment and were severally underfed. A Mon Calamarian prisoner received such abuse from a Quarren guard that he died and a Coruscanti pilot named Deren Cular perished from the intensity of the toil. Several other prisoners were killed by guards and the difficulty of labor but a steady stream of prisoners continued to arrive. A Gran plumber attempted to lead the prisoners in revolt but he found little enthusiasm because the environment of Pirgan Lydanz was cold and dry and held almost nothing for escapees to live on. He tried anyhow, killing a Vulptereen guard before being gunned down by B1 Battle droids. As an example, several prisoners were executed and half of the prisoners’ meager rations were withheld for an entire week.

Of the five remaining original prisoners, only Wend, Takdory, and Bhegardh were still alive at the end of the grueling week. They decided that the three of them needed to make their escape. Takdory suggested hiding in the wild and living off the land but the other two sentients doubted that even the Esoomian would survive for very long in the harsh environment. Since Bhegardh was an experienced pilot, the trio decided to steal a ship and fly to freedom. Twenty prisoners were taken out to begin laying the foundations for a new ant aircraft turret. There were only four guards and among the prisoners were Takdory and Bhegardh, who had figured out a way to disable the slave-collars that were placed on the larger prisoners like the Esoomian. Two of the guards began harassing Takdory, unaware of the fact that his slave-collar was off. In two swift blows, he crushed the skulls of both of them and Bhegardh snatched one of their rifles and shot the other two guards before they could respond. The guards carried enough weapons to arm five prisoners and they decided to conceal themselves and wait for the cover of darkness to attack the base. After a few hours, the Separatist sent out a skiff and two B1 battle droids riding STAP-1s to investigate the unresponsiveness of the guards. The prisoners managed to ambush them, capturing the skiff and destroying the droid escorts but they had to act before the base realized they had lost their scouting party.

Escape
As soon as the invasion of the base occurred, the guards at other fourteen work sites began executing prisoners. The prisoners retaliated. Ber Wend was laying plastibricks on a work site with sixteen other prisoners. The three guards started shooting the prisoners and the prisoners hurled reacted by hurling bricks at the guards. Although eleven of the prisoners died, the remaining seven overpowered and killed the guards whose comlinks were buzzing with word of the attack on the base and orders to execute all prisoners. Wend and his fellow prisoners decided to reinforce the attack on the base. When they arrived, he spotted Takdory hurling massive boulders at a group of droideka. Reaching the Esoomian, he inquired about Bhegardh and Takdory pointed at an AAT battling against two OG-9 homing spider droids. The two raced toward the landing area. They were pinned down for a while but then Bhegardh arrived in the AAT to reinforce them. Finding that two human prisoners, Paul Bremshek and Jenni Solaris, and an Ortolan named Bujak had followed them, they agreed to take on the three passengers. They selected a YT-700 light freighter and escaped, making a blind jump to hyperspace because they were being pursued by Vulture droids.

The ship came out of hyperspace and they were being pulled into a black hole. Bhegardh could not escape the gravitational pull and began to despair but ¬¬¬Bujak announced that he had learned a trick once from an old spacer. Taking the controls he raced into an orbit around the black hole until he had enough speed to maintain an angle away from the black hole long enough to engage the hyperdrive. They managed to escape the gravitational pull but the exertation blew out the hyperdrive. Fortunately, they were close enough to the Perrinn Sector that they determined that they could make Parshoone in a week if they repaired the hyperdrive enough to function minimally. As they limped past an uninhabited system, they were found by a Republic Acclamator I-class assault ship called the Santeroth and taken aboard. Learning who they were and where they had come from, the Santeroth’s captain, Zeth Brashin decided to use the YT-700’s navicomputer to locate Pirgan Lydanz which was not on Republic starcharts.

After sending a Ychthytonian Jedi to scout the system, he decided to risk an attack on the planet and rescue the prisoners. The attack was a success and the ninety remaining prisoners were rescued but Bhegardh and Takdory used the chaos of the battle to steal the newly repaired YT-700 and escape to Hutt Space where they became bounty hunters. After the battle, the rescued prisoners were sent to the Core to be sorted out. Ber Wend and the other high profile prisoners were given priority and Wend managed to arrange for Paul Bremshek and Jenni Solaris to be taken to Anaxes where they could easily get to Jenni’s family on Axum. He also made sure that Bujak made it to the Vannix System where he could continue to do his unspecified “work” on behalf of the Ithorians. Wend ended up on Alderaan because Coruscant was under attack when he arrived in the Core. He spent the remainder of the war there, being debriefed by a Republic envoy. After the war, he returned to the world of his birth and retired.