Ryluk Shouja was a Human male bounty hunter who lived through several galactic governments. He operated under the Galactic Republic, Galactic Empire, New Republic, and Galactic Federation of Free Alliances. For a price, Ryluk worked around restrictions placed by the governing authorities, but avoided breaking the letter of the law.
His career as an active bounty hunter spanned twenty-four years, truncated by his first eighteen years and his last sixty-seven years. During this time, he learned many different styles of combat through his life as a street child, his brief stint with the Chiss Ascendancy, and various trainers on Corellia. He practiced his skills using training droids purchased after he began building his fortune on investments in the Corellian Stock Market.
Ryluk was hired by the Liberators Pirate Organization shortly before the outbreak of the Clone Wars. During that time, he married Lymie Chamna, who gave birth to a son, Akak Shouja. His son's true identity was kept a close secret for many years in order to protect the young boy from assassination and kidnapping attempts made by those who wished to injure the bounty hunter in any way they could.
Shortly after his son turned seven, Ryluk took his small family to the planet of Subterrel in the Outer Rim territories, where they adopted a false last name and lived the life of a farming family. Via HoloNet communication, Ryluk left his finances in the hands of his most trusted investors for the day that his children would emerge from the Outer Rim to claim what was left by their father.
Ryluk lived to the age of one hundred nine, longer than the average Human lifespan. He died in the Outer Rim, his true identity anonymous to all but his wife and later his children.
Biography[]
Early life[]
Ryluk Shouja was born on J't'p'tan to Karla and Skylkan Shouja in 57 BBY. As both Karla and Skylkan were born Corellian, Ryluk inherited Corellian citizenship. According to his crew, Skylkan, the owner of a smuggling ship, cared little about his family, and was away from home often, leaving his wife and child on J't'p'tan. He was killed in a firefight with a bounty hunter when Ryluk was two years old, and Ryluk was brought up under the impression that his father's death was an unfortunate accident.
Ryluk's mother taught him as much about Corellian culture as she could, including such details as the Corellian Gambit version of sabacc and the Olys Corellisi language. During his early years was harassed for being a Human by his peers and the locals of J't'p'tan. When Ryluk was fourteen, a retired Trandoshan mercenary slit the boy from left hip to right shoulder with his vibroblade, leaving the boy for dead and laughing as it walked away. The wound was not deep enough to kill Ryluk instantly, only to cause a slow death as the young boy bled out.
A few minutes after the attack, a visitor to the planet, Lymie Chamna, the daughter of the Coruscanti trader, Akak Chamna found the dying boy and took him to her father. The trader treated Ryluk's wounds, then adopted the boy and took him offworld to live with him and Lymie. Despite the fact that the wound was treated quickly, Ryluk lived for the rest of his life with a thin white scar that ran from his hip to his shoulder.
Ryluk lived with Akak for four years until the trader died of a rare, untreatable heart disease. Ryluk and Lymie mourned Akak's death, both grieving for a lost father, as Akak had been Ryluk's adopted father for the last four years. Akak left twenty thousand credits to the pair, who had fallen in love in the four years they had been together. Ryluk, now nearly two meters tall, decided to pursue a career in bounty hunting. He bought the wreck of an old Pursuer-class enforcement ship and repaired and refurnished it with Lymie's help, adding his own modifications as he did so. He christened the ship the Lymie, which embarrassed his lover. The credits they had not spent on Ryluk's ship and equipment Ryluk invested in the Corellian Stock Market. Even at the age of eighteen, Ryluk was able to understand the inner workings of the economic world and managed to make a profit within months of his first investments.
The bounty hunter[]
Ryluk checking his stocks inside the Shouja Mansion
Ryluk started his career as a bounty hunter pursuing small bounties. According to their friends on Corellia, Ryluk and Lymie would have found it hard to survive without the young bounty hunter's business investments, as the revenue generated by Ryluk's early bounty hunting would have placed them under the poverty line of Coronet. By the time he turned nineteen, he had purchased a small arms company called Parable Weapons. The bounty hunter often claimed that Parable Weapons was the cornerstone off of which he built his fortune.
As Ryluk grew older, he grew more experienced. Shortly after his nineteenth birthday he left Corellia to explore the galaxy around him, eventually joining a group of smugglers that were captured by a Chiss patrol in the Unknown Regions. As a result, Ryluk served on a Chiss Cruiser for nearly two years. During this time he learned the Outer Rim trade languages of Sy Bisti and Taarja, as well as the Chiss trade language Minnisiat and Cheunh. Ryluk received much of his formal combat training and the equivalent to a military college education while he was with the Chiss.
His Chiss-trained mind and reflexes earned him a title as the one of most notorious bounty hunters in the galaxy at twenty-one, according to a HoloNet article written by Jos Syr'nath. Later that year he was also featured in an economics article on HoloNet, which glorified his decisions in the stock market and compared the profits of Parable Weapons from before and after Ryluk became the owner. Shortly after the release of the article, Ryluk purchased a small mining subsidiary called Hybar Mining, which operated in the Corellian system, mining minerals in-system and selling them to out-of-system buyers. Shortly after purchasing the company, the Corellian Mining Corporation bought it out.
After the failed attempt at Hybar Mining, Ryluk bought a second mining company called Netronica Mining, which focused its operations on asteroid belts in the Outer Rim. After Ryluk took over, Netronica expanded and began building mining facilities on several uninhabited planets.
Under his leadership, Netronica Mining increased its profits. To supplement this asset, Ryluk bought a refinery on Corellia, and sold Netronica's ore at a reduced price to the refinery, which in turn sold the refined minerals to Parable Weapons at cost, lowering the cost of Parable's weapons. After the reduction in price of their weapons, Parable's sales increased, which increased the bounty hunter's total profits.
A sensor image of Ryluk in his fireworm-scale armor
At twenty-five, the bounty hunter bought a custom-made fireworm-scale armor suit, which was proven to be able to stop a direct shot from a heavy blaster bolt. According to his martial arts trainers, Ryluk excelled at hand-to-hand and melee combat. He felt less comfortable with blaster pistols than his hands, but was a trained Chiss Marksman, and was very comfortable with his DXR-6 disruptor rifle. The media embellished his arsenal and his fortune, giving Ryluk a strong reputation among the criminal community.
During the early years of his career, Ryluk collected many major bounties, solidifying his position at the top of the hunting field. His reputation often preceded him, and the hunter often used it to bluff his way out of situations or to get inside the heads of his targets.
With the Liberators[]
Ryluk first met the Liberators Pirate Organization in 36 BBY on Najiba. He had been hired by Delga, a Hutt crimelord, to hunt a Corustanti named Chin Chaldak. After his fiancée, Lymie, was kidnapped, Ryluk realized that he had been manipulated, and that Delga had been secretly working for Chaldak. Shortly after Lymie was kidnapped, the Arkanian pirate Tesh Vohore contracted the hunter for a job involving Chaldak and Delga. Ryluk agreed, seeing the potential to rescue his fiancée. During his mission, Ryluk was arrested by Chaldak and charged with treason. His sentence was to fight, weaponless, a dozen armed Najib guards in a gladiatorial arena. He won the battle and the cheers of the crowd, and was allowed to move freely around the immigration compound before being arrested and charged a second time.
For the second execution, Ryluk was forced to fight an Acklay, again weaponless. Lymie was also scheduled for execution in the same manner at the same time, and was placed at the top of a large pole in the center of the arena. As the fight began, Tesh put Ryluk's armor in a carriage pulled by a small native beast of burden and sent it into the arena.
After collecting his armor from the carriage, Ryluk killed the Acklay with his eight-inch vibroblade and rescued Lymie from the top of the pole. After the escape, Ryluk swore to kill Chaldak for what he had done to his fiancée. Tesh, who had his own vendetta against Chaldak and wanted to kill the Coruscanti himself, lied to Ryluk in order to keep the bounty hunter from killing the man. Tesh told Ryluk that it was not Chaldak who had plotted against himself and his fiancée, but a Republic fleet admiral. This pacified Ryluk enough to remove his death mark on the Coruscanti.
After finishing his job for Tesh on Najiba, Ryluk left to rendezvous with the rest of Tesh's fleet on Druckenwell. Above this planet Ryluk and Lymie were married in a double wedding with a Twi'lek couple by Tesh in a semi-legal ceremony on Melona 28, 36 BBY. Ryluk appeared in full battle armor, Lymie in a white Coruscanti wedding gown. The ceremony took place on the bridge of Tesh's flagship after Ryluk expressed disinterest in having the wedding planetside.
Ryluk's final mission with the Liberators was to track down and retrieve a Korun mercenary named Ethe Ertes. Ryluk found him on Clantaano III and brought him back to Kinyen, where Tesh was waiting. At this point Ryluk was paid for his time with the Liberators, and he returned to Corellia to spend time with his wife.
Notable bounties[]
Ryluk collected several what he called career-making bounties during his years as a hunter. The first was Lythe Kre'fey, a Bothan who had stolen information from the Bothan Spy Network and sold it to other parties. Using his own network of contacts, Ryluk discovered that the Bothan had fled to J't'p'tan, his birthworld. After finding the planet the Bothan had fled to, Ryluk was able to pinpoint the exact location. Using armor-piercing charges and thermal detonators, Ryluk broke into the armored bunker in the middle of the capital city and extracted the Bothan from his location within the garrison.
He was interrupted from his mission when his wife, Lymie, was threatened by the Trandoshan mercenary that had left him for dead when he was fourteen. Lymie alerted Ryluk through the radio, who immediately responded, stunning his bounty before exiting the building to save his wife. He succeeded, leaving the Trandoshan for dead, claiming that he had repaid the debt owed.
While leaving J't'p'tan, after collecting the unconscious Lythe from the closet the hunter had stored him, Ryluk destroyed the Dreadnaught-class heavy cruiser the Chancellor's Will. The Republic ship was attempting to intercept the bounty hunter so that the captain of the ship could take the Bothan and collect the bounty himself. Ryluk used his holoflage generator and sensor-stealth mode to confuse the Dreadnaught, then fired a missile on a line-of-sight track at the cruiser. The missile struck its target directly above one of the fuel lines and pierced the Dreadnaught's unshielded hull, igniting the fuel. The resulting chain reaction and blew the engines apart, ultimately ending in the destruction of the power cells and the entire capital ship. Ryluk used the ensuing disorder among the remaining Republic vessels to escape to hyperspace.
When he reached Coruscant to collect his bounty, landing coordinators were given, but they directed Ryluk to the wrong landing platform. In an effort to save time, Ryluk hacked into the Senate building's security system and entered via a side entrance to collect his bounty. Security did not recognize the intrusion at first, but the bounty hunter had to stun several security force officers on his way out in order to escape detention.
As a direct result of these two crimes, Ryluk was blackmailed into his next bounty: the assassination of Gibranna the Hutt, a notorious crime lord whose base of operation was the Hutt homeworld of Nal Hutta. Ryluk accepted the mission and landed on the planet; his cover was to turn in a bounty the Hutt had asked for. Gibranna was suspicious of Ryluk’s actions, as the bounty was not, in the Hutt's eyes, worth enough for the fame of the hunter to pursue, and kidnapped Lymie as assurance that Ryluk would not attempt anything against him. However, the effect was the complete opposite: Ryluk was angered by this overt action against his wife and overcame all qualms about the job that he had previously held.
Gibranna was assassinated later that day, and Ryluk released five prisoners from the cells of the Hutt crimelord: Hojs Ceray, a wealthy Aar'aa and the bounty Ryluk had collected on, his wife, Lymie Chamna, and the three other prisoners in her cell: two Twi'lek dancers, Astan'alkar and Kyl'ta and a Selonian dancer, Karsimis.
Ryluk and Erudite inside the Shouja Mansion after the attempt on Lymie
His wife was again kidnapped, this time by the remnants of the Cathar Honor Guard in retaliation against the bounty hunter's assassination of Gibranna. During the rescue, Ryluk also freed a Wookiee warrior named Vakanem, who declared a life debt to the bounty hunter. After his successful return to Corellia, Ryluk purchased a Tac-Spec FIII Footman droid, named Erudite to protect Lymie while he was away and prevent another attempt at kidnapping her.
Hiding hunter[]
Ryluk gave up bounty hunting during the Clone Wars after he took a job for the Confederacy of Independent Systems to sabotage the clone production facilities in 22.8 BBY. After infiltrating the facility and planting the detonators, Ryluk removed the blast material and returned to Cato Neimoidia to collect his reward. The CIS paid him after confirming with their source in Tipoca City that Ryluk had actually been in the cloning facility. It was only during the First Battle of Kamino, when the Separatists tried to detonate the bombs, that they found out that their charges had been sabotaged.
Ryluk escaped unharmed, but the Confederacy placed a four million credit death mark on his head, and Ryluk went into hiding. After returning to Corellia, he sold his house to Lord Fenron, an alternate identity that Ryluk had created. The Lymie went into storage in a vault beneath the mansion and Ryluk used the Pilot's Delight, which Ryluk had purchased under a false registry.
Using his web of contacts, Ryluk planted false clues and rumors that hinted at his leaving the Core Worlds for the Outer Rim regions. After he disappeared, rumors started on many different Outer Rim worlds, reporting sightings of the bounty hunter or his ship. During the height of the war, the CIS abandoned their search for the hunter, stating that they had more important matters to deal with than a single rogue bounty hunter.
Ryluk spent the first three months of his hiding to dig an underground tunnel out of the Shouja Mansion to a small Parable Weapons warehouse just outside the grounds of the mansion. He used this entrance to come and go for most of the Clone Wars.
The character of Lord Fenron lived a hermit's life. He was officially the only sentient being who lived in the mansion, and remained indoors most of the time. The only times he left were for business meetings in Coronet or a trip offworld to one of his offworld holdings.
Ryluk in a training room in the Shouja Mansion, keeping up his skills while under the guise of a lord
Lord Fenron attracted much media attention, and many reporters tried to piece together the lord's story. One writer wrote a biography about Fenron after gathering what information he could about the lord's past. It sold only a quarter of a million copies worldwide, but it satisfied the media's curiosity about Fenron, and articles about the lord became less frequent.
Ryluk kept up his business contacts through several holonet relays, managing his portfolio as normal. However, after his disappearance, Netronica Mining went public, the board of directors claiming that it was best for the company not to have a fugitive as its owner.
The Mukhabarat[]
The Mukhabarat was a secret assassin's guild that operated out of the Happy Skies Casino and Yuhanna Arms, both owned by the leader of the guild, Justin Rettik. In 22 BBY, Ryluk tracked them down and applied for membership as Lord Fenron. After Rettik discovered Fenron's true identity, he accepted the petition for membership.
The bounty hunter was promoted to Captain due to his past reputation that Rettik decided was too good to waste as a mere foot soldier. Ryluk's official position was the Chief of Security of the Happy Skies Casino. The employment papers named him Conrad Ineyra, a Human who had arrived onworld two weeks before and was brought in by the casino. The real Ineyra was assassinated and the body hidden by three Mukhabarat assassins when Ryluk assumed the name.
Ryluk's official duties in the Happy Skies Casino required his supervision of security procedures and approval of removal of security threats. As a guild captain, he was in charge of overseeing the Honor Guard, the elite division of the Mukhabarat that handled many of the guild's assassinations as well as provided protection for the Captains, Lieutenants, and Rettik himself. The Honor Guard was composed entirely of Corellian Humans, extensively trained at Rettik's request. Ryluk issued orders to the leaders of the guard directly from Rettik himself.
Assassinations[]
Shouja reporting in. Clean kill.
—Ryluk Shouja
Aside from his administrative duties, Ryluk accepted several assassination missions. His first mission was to assassinate a male Twi’lek who had been an instigator of violent riots on the core planet of Coruscant. The assassination order came from a company executive whose corporation was affected by the riots, and Rettik assigned Ryluk to the mission, wishing to test his new employee's skill.
Ryluk used a Verpine shatter gun, supplied by the Mukhabarat, to do the job. He completed the assassination from a rooftop two kilometers away, shooting the target in the center of the chest while he was turning to face a crowd. The Twi'lek's momentum carried him around to face the crowd before he collapsed, giving the appearance that he had been shot from a different location. Ryluk used the confusion to leave the planet and reported back to Rettik on Corellia.
The hunter's second assassination was more of a bounty kill than an assassination. A Republic governor had received a death threat, and an interested third party decided that the current governor was more profitable for him than the one that would be elected in his place, so he hired the Mukhabarat to eliminate the offender. A planet's name and species description was the only information supplied to help the hunter.
Ryluk backtracked the threat over the HoloNet network, slicing security protocols where he had to, and managed to extract the name of the offender. Once he had the name, all that remained was the location, which had been supplied by the customer. The target was still in-system when Ryluk arrived, and Ryluk completed the assassination with an unpowered throwing blade and escaped the planet before the authorities discovered the dead blackmailer.
Ryluk running through the hall of the Happy Skies Casino hotel after being woken by an attempted assassination.
The mission that most impressed Justin Rettik was Ryluk's third-to-last mission. The target was a former mercenary commando who had angered a former employer and retreated to fortress on an Outer Rim planet with a small group of hired mercenaries. Because of anti-air defenses, Ryluk was unable to approach by air. The land around the area was riddled with minefields, and his jetpack would have been detected by the mercenary's sensors as he approached.
After two weeks of careful observing with electrobinoculars, Ryluk formulated a plan. He approached as close as he could without running the risk of setting off a mine and began a limited-range sensor sweep of the area using a prototype sensor provided by the Mukhabarat. After locating all of the mines within the twelve-meter radius of the sensor, Ryluk continued his approach. He continued this way until he reached the edge of the forest and minefield.
Ryluk moved quickly to the wall of the fortress under the cover of darkness and cut two centimeters of duracrete from a small section of wall. After placing an EMP grenade in the hole to knock out any electronic sensors, he cut the rest of the way through. From there it was a locate-and-annihilate mission, resulting in the messy death of the target at the barrel of a disruptor pistol.
End of the assassin[]
In early 15 BBY, after a line of successful assassinations, Ryluk decided to take some time off in the Happy Skies Casino. Rettik obliged and provided Ryluk with a room in the high-security area of the casino hotel, which was restricted to high-ranking Mukhabarat personnel.
A bounty hunter after the CIS death mark tracked Ryluk to the casino and sliced his way into the high security area of the hotel after causing a local power loss. He entered Ryluk's room with a silenced and flash-dampened slugthrower, hoping to kill the bounty hunter in silence and escape in the confusion caused by the power blackout.
However, before retiring for the night, Ryluk had jury-rigged the security system of the room so it was hooked up to a backup power supply that kept the security system activated even after the local blackout in that section of the casino. The security system silently alerted Ryluk using a vibrator sewn into the lining of his pillow, and a vibroblade was raised from a compartment on the far side of the bed. The CIS bounty hunter stepped next to the bed and was about to pull the trigger when Ryluk sliced his firing hand off.
After losing his left hand to Ryluk's vibroblade, the bounty hunter was chased through the halls of the Happy Skies Casino and finally killed just inside of the doors leading out into the main casino floor. Ryluk, who had been unable to catch up to the mercenary had stopped and thrown his vibroblade at the bounty hunter, striking the Human between the shoulder blades, severing his spinal cord and killing him instantly.
Once Rettik found out about the attack, he apologized several times over and promised to step up security in the casino. Ryluk, however, politely refused the offer of staying the rest of the night, insisting that he preferred the security systems of his own mansion over the openness of the casino hotel rooms, even though they were restricted to Mukhabarat personnel only. Rettik conceded the point and Ryluk returned home.
The next day, Ryluk returned to the casino to announce his intention to leave the Mukhabarat, and to disappear into the Outer Rim with his pregnant wife and young child. Rettik announced his sadness at seeing the hunter leave the guild, but let Ryluk go anyway.
The end of the lordship[]
After leaving the Mukhabarat, the hunter sold the Shouja Mansion to the Corellian local government as a museum and arranged for the disappearance of his alias, Lord Fenron, to his homeworld. The lord left as quickly has he had come, with almost no warning at all.
However, he did not reach his destination. Along the way, the lord's ship was destroyed in a meteor shower. An asteroid was reported to have hit the engines of the drone ship that Ryluk had tasked with the job in exactly the right place to cause a chain explosion that transformed the ship and its contents into shards of metal, rock, and just enough biological matter to affirm the presence of an organic on the ship.
According to the news networks, Fenron had brought his entire fortune with him on the ship, and details of a will were never sorted out, as there was nothing left to give. The fact that no one knew if the lord even had a will or not contributed to that conclusion.
The preparations made, Ryluk simply left with his pregnant wife and seven-year-old child, disappearing to Subterrel.
Ryluk, still using his secondary weapons for an assassination mission.
Death of the hunter[]
Ryluk lived out the remainder of his life on Subterrel, raising his son, Akak, and daughter, Corinne. He adopted the life of a farmer, storing his weapons and his ship out of sight of his family and friends. When Akak turned eighteen, Ryluk gave him a pair of custom-built 34x advanced blaster pistols and taught him how to shoot. After unlocking his son's love for combat, he taught him the martial arts he had learned as a young man, and taught him the art of marksmanship.
After Akak left Subterrel in 3 ABY, Ryluk, Lymie, and Corinne settled down to a peaceful farmers' life, undisturbed by the events of the galaxy around them. The three of them lived peacefully for many years after that, long enough to see Corinne married with children. Ryluk's life finally ended in 52 ABY, 109 years after his birth.
Ryluk's abnormally long life was attributed to a low-level Force-sensitivity, which also explained his success as a bounty hunter and assassin. His intelligence was higher than Human average, and despite the media's accusation of using illegal memory-stimulating implants, Ryluk's mind was unaltered by chemicals or implants.
Postmortem[]
Ryluk was buried on his farm in the Rim. His will was read by the local priest, and the few possessions mentioned were divided among those mentioned in the will. He left his estates on Corellia, his wealth, and his equipment to his children in the form of a box. The box was to remain unopened until the death of his wife, and in it contained an autobiography of Ryluk's life as a bounty hunter and assassin as well as the account numbers of the banks and safety deposit boxes where he had left his money and equipment.
Aside from his immediate family, the only family that was alive to grieve the hunter's death was a cousin of Lymie's, Alema Chamna. The young woman was the daughter of Akak Chamna's brother, and had a close relationship with the Shoujas. She was the only offworlder to attend the funeral.
The ceremony itself was brief, just another death in the small farming community. His closest friends, his children, and his grandchildren grieved the death of a good man, but only Lymie knew him for what he really was. She refused to share the information with anyone, instead retreating inside herself and pretending not to care. She died later on that year at the age of 107 and was buried next to her husband.
Legacy[]
Ryluk remained held in memory as one of the last of a noble line of honorable mercenaries. His life served as an aspiration for many who had learned his name in classes and over HoloNet, and to the children of those, who had told stories about the great hunter. It was even thought that the famed bounty hunter Boba Fett studied Ryluk's tactics and learned from the great hunter.
After consolidating the shares of Parable and becoming the official owner of the company again, Akak set up a competent manager to keep the company afloat as he was not able to manage it around his mercenary schedule. After Akak's abbreviated life, ownership of the company was passed to Corinne, who in turn passed it to her eldest. The company stayed in the Shouja family for the rest of its years.
Akak Shouja went on to become a successful mercenary, although he made his own name and did not trade off his father's. Most of his combat training came from Ryluk, however, and he learned it well, although he favored the use of rifles and carbines over pistols as his father had, and preferred a one-blade fighting style over Ryluk's two-blade fighting style. The FIII Footman droid Erudite that had served Ryluk so well for many years also served Akak, who did not know of his function until a foiled assassination attempt made by the Genoharadan. Erudite served Akak until the mercenary's death, when he was given to Corinne.
Corinne moved back to the Core Worlds after the death of her father and mother in the same year, living in a small house on Corellia with her Rim-bred husband. Although immensely rich, her family kept a low profile, and only briefly officially acknowledged their relationship with the famed bounty hunter. From Corinne's family came a long line of respected doctors, economists, government officials, and lawyers.
The Corellian Historical Society benefited greatly from Ryluk's generous sale price of the Shouja Mansion and the compilation of an instruction manual on the elaborate security system. The mansion was a veritable fortress, which itself was extremely difficult to break into. The 24-hour surveillance in nearly every room and anti-intruder defenses integrated into the building's structure ensured that nothing was ever stolen from the museum.
Personality and traits[]
Ryluk was a personable Human, for the most part. He made friends where he could, and generally stayed away from those who would turn into enemies. His philosophy was that if they were nice to him, he would be nice to them. If he had no quarrel with a sentient, he would have no reason to hurt them, unless, of course, they had a bounty on their heads.
Despite his generally agreeable personality, Ryluk could be deadly when the need called for it. Need only called for it a few times during his life, which was fortunate for the others around him. The lethal personality of the bounty hunter was kicked in most often when a sentient threatened his fiancée, Lymie, which happened several times over the span of his career. None of the offenders survived the encounter, and most of them were killed within the day.
Through the years he actively hunted, Ryluk became accustomed to having things his own way. He became quite adept at bargaining and was very stubborn when discussing his decisions, traits that many found annoying but few pointed out for fear of angering the hunter. He remained solid in his decisions, whether they were the easiest way to complete his objective or not, only changing his mind when he was proven wrong. This often got him into more trouble than the situation warranted, but he always managed to find a way out.
Ryluk worked hard to earn his reputation as the most notorious bounty hunter in the galaxy. Those who really knew him knew that he was kind and caring, but to the galaxy at large he was a solid rock, with no exploitable weaknesses and no patience for those who would try to cross him. Certain actions on his part solidified his reputation, killing certain sentients that purposely defied him, often messily and cruely. However, he kept his cold, hard demeanor to the workplace, and when he was at home or with his friends, he became a different person; many of his close friends described him as a normal person.
After becoming the reclusive Lord Fenron, Ryluk adopted many habits of the fictitious lord. He became somewhat of a hermit in his private life, reflecting the hermit's personality. No one ever saw him, at least as the lord, coming or leaving. Even after he dropped the alias and returned as himself, he shied away from the public eye and faded slowly into the background until his second disappearance into the Outer Rim.
Talents and abilities[]
Ryluk was a man of many talents. He was adept at slicing computer systems, enough that he was able to slice his way into the Senate chambers of the Galactic Republic on Coruscant, which later got him into trouble. The hunter was able to slice many different systems, military, civilian, and alien alike. He possessed the unique skill of being able to hack into Chiss military files, which he picked up during his two years serving under the Chiss Expansionary Defense Fleet.
Ryluk was also proficient in the use of many types of weapons but specialized in melee combat and pistol combat. He had adequate control of all types of heavy weapons, a feat learned courtesy of his time with the Chiss, and could handle most types of exotic weapons with relative ease, or at least learn how to use them quickly. His personalized blaster pistols were by far his most practical weapon, as they had been fine-tuned to fit his needs perfectly, and with the added bonus of having a natural knack for pistol combat, Ryluk managed to get a long fine with those weapons.
As far as melee combat went, Ryluk was an expert. He could handle one or two vibroblades at a time, and was proficient in the use of double-bladed and two-handed weapons, although he by far preferred a two-weapon fighting style. He was a force to be reckoned with unarmed as well, having learned street fighting when he was young, then had his skills honed by Chiss military training and later other martial arts instructors.
Ryluk had an unusual talent for being perceptive of people's thoughts and motives, which was attributed to his low-level Force sensitivity. This allowed him an advantage when dealing with his clients and his targets both, giving him even more of an edge than he already had from his extensive training.
Equipment/Accommodation[]
You're well enough equipped to take on a Republic battle army from the Great Sith War.
—Lymie Chamna
Ryluk's equipment was his pride and joy. His ship, the Lymie, named after his fiancée was equipped with many upgrades not available on the open market, including prototype weapons stolen from design manufacturers. His armor and weapons were expensive and high quality, and invariably modified.
Armor[]
Ryluk had a custom-made suit of fireworm-scale armor. The fireworm scales were made of a silicon crystal, and while worm was alive, the scales were strong enough to block most of the power of a lightsaber. Off the fireworm, the scales were never tested against a lightsaber, as there were only a limited amount found on the dead fireworm that were still intact enough to use for armor.
Because the scales had belonged to a living creature's armor, they needed no reshaping before being attached together to form a suit of armor. His helmet was plated with the same scales, which gave it a squarish look. His jetpack was the only part of his armor that was not plated with the scales, as when he had bought the armor, a jetpack was not included. The jetpack itself was made of a red durasteel with a compressed hydrogen-fuel chamber that occupied the entire rocket, giving the bounty hunter enough fuel to boost himself two hundred feet vertically or one kilometer horizontally at a maximum speed of 120 km/hr. There were small maneuvering jets on the sides of the jetpack, but the only way to slow down was for him to either collide with something or to turn away from the direction he was going and fire the jets until he slowed.
Ryluk also had an alternate set of black battle armor that he used when performing incognito.
Ryluk in his second suit of battle armor with his Krayt dragon pearlhandled vibroblades
Weapons[]
Ryluk had a large selection of weapons, both ranged and melee.
Blaster weapons[]
Ryluk's main weapon of choice was his DXR-6 disruptor rifle, which was illegal on most worlds and got Ryluk into trouble with the local authority more than once. He customized the disruptor to have a single-second recharge period instead of the average ten-second period, and was able to increase the power efficiency to get fifteen shots out of a clip instead of the normal ten.
His pistols were customized BlasTech Industries DP-12 heavy blaster pistols. The pistols had 100 shots per clip by modification and were capable of penetrating durasteel armor plating at high power. The recharge rate between shots was cut down to half of a second by Ryluk's modifications, making them effective semi-automatic weapons.
As a backup, Ryluk carried two 22T4 holdout blasters hidden in his armor, in case his weapons were ever confiscated or if he was ever away from his weapons and needed a blaster. When in his alternate armor, Ryluk carried a Model Q4 holdout pistol.
Vibroweapons[]
Ryluk owned several vibroweapons of various sizes and functions. His main vibroblade that was almost always with him was an eight-inch vibroblade Ryluk had built himself while he was a boy growing up on J't'p'tan. Ryluk later modified it to make it more efficient and powerful.
Ryluk also often used his wrist vibroblade, which was permanently attached to his armor. The blade was only three inches long, but it proved its usefulness when Ryluk was unable to reach his other weapons in hand-to hand combat. The weapon extended when Ryluk closed his fist and sensors on his glove touched sensors on his hand. The blade retracted when the fist opened and the sensors lost contact. The sensors could be manually overridden by a voice command from inside the armor.
One of Ryluk's more subtle vibroweapons was his three-inch vibrostiletto. When retracted, it was little more than a small handle tucked into a belt pocket in Ryluk's armor. However, when activated, the blade would shoot out quickly, becoming a short but lethal weapon. The vibrostiletto was also a well-balanced throwing weapon.
The last two vibroweapons Ryluk used regularly were gifts given to him by Hojs Ceray after Ryluk saved his life. The weapons were Krayt dragon pearlhandled and studded with Durindfire gems. Each blade was ten inches long, and the pair was light enough to use with only one hand. As a result, Ryluk often fought with both at the same time, one in each hand.
A modification to his armor was added in 24 BBY; a pair of vibroclaws that could be activated and used as either close-combat weapons or deactivated and used as climbing aids.
Explosives[]
The bounty hunter also carried either twelve custom-made A-grade thermal detonators or 6 custom-made A-grade thermal detonators, 3 EMP grenades, and 3 EC detonators. Ryluk was also equipped with 3 Baktoid AA-33Q armor-piercing charges.
The Shouja Mansion[]
Ryluk completing the purchase of the Shouja Mansion from its previous owner.
Ryluk's property, the Shouja Mansion, as it was unofficially named on Corellia was an ancient house built in 1,560 BBY. The architecture was so archaic that the manual doors had to be modified to allow for electronic entry and passcode confirmation locks.
The house itself was three stories high and filled with works of art, a testament to Ryluk's success as a businessman. The house had an extensive kitchen/cellar area as well as over fifty bedrooms. There was a full droid staff, but only Ryluk, Lymie, and Vakanem lived there.
The house had a security system with cameras in nearly every room, all wireless. The system had a HoloNet transmitter that Ryluk could access from anywhere in the galaxy, and it also had a radionics transmitter that sent the information to a system in the house. Because radionics could not have a limited broadcast, like the HoloNet, the outside walls of the mansion had a lead core to prevent the transmissions from escaping.
Behind the scenes[]
The name "Ryluk Shouja" came from an anagram of "Kurly Joshua," Ryluk Shouja's nickname, followed by his given name. The character Ryluk arose as the main character in the author's novel series A Hunter's Tale, which is currently being written.
The idea for Ryluk's character came from the author's interest in having a neutral/slightly bad (in some eyes) character as the main character, rather than having the main characters strictly "good" and "evil" characters. The idea also arose from the author's fascination with Boba Fett's character, and the non-Force-user skill that actually exists in the Star Wars universe in the form of mercenaries, soldiers, bounty hunters, healers, and the like.
Ryluk's character had two cameo appearances in Season 1 and one cameo appearance in Season 2 of The Fanon Menace, appearing with Tesh Vohore's character of that name, Tesh Vohore. More cameos are expected in upcoming seasons and miniseries.
Appearances[]
- Star Wars: A Hunter's Tale: The Legend (First appearance)
- Star Wars: A Hunter's Tale: Only Man Standing
- Star Wars: A Hunter's Tale: Clone Bounty
- Star Wars: A Hunter's Tale: Assassins
- Star Wars: Key of Deceptions
- Star Wars: Liberations
- Star Wars: Newfound Heir
- The Fanon Menace Season 1: Part II - Attack of the Franks (Non-fanonical appearance)
- The Fanon Menace Season 1: Part III - Revenge of the Bith (Non-fanonical appearance)