Callista Selkin
Jedi Knight
Name: Callista Selkin
Age: 19 (born 3977 BBY)
Species: Human
Height: 1.63 meters (5’4")
Weight: 52.6 kg (116 lbs)
Hair: Light Blonde
Eyes: Grey Hazel with Gold and Blue flecksDistinguishing Marks:
- Scarring around the neck and throat, usually covered with a ribbon or other neckwear.
Collected Roleplay Threads
Selfish
Discarded Mask
Bloody Descendant
Fierce Dreamer
A Flame Passed On
Stifling Grey
Lightbringer’s Nocturne
The Collected Songs and Poems of Callista Selkin
BR’R’RONNGK-L-UNGK-L-UNGK
Piercing, flashing bursts of garish white and putrid yellow-green like gaudy lens flares from a holovid, crashing through the formerly vaguely peaceful lull of flowing blues and greys.
The moment the morning bell sounds its clunking, rattling ring right outside her cell — a daily reminder that, even as a slave, she managed to be unlucky — and shocks the young girl awake, she feels blinded before even opening her eyes. The force field that made up the door to her cell fades out, opening it up to the biting chill of the hallways. She squeezes her body tighter in on itself under her blanket with a shiver as the cold invades her chamber upon the fizzling, staticky fzhmmt sending a dull yellow haze flitting around the edges of the darkness behind her eyelids. A few other cells similarly unlocked and opened, one after the other as if someone was picking through them. Then that awful, hateful voice.
“Alright di’kut’e, get your asses moving! Roll call time!” comes the bleating jeer of Overseer Wrull.
Finally she opens her eyes, tired and resigned orbs of hazel grey, blearily watching the ugly dance of colors that is the Overseer’s voice being spat from the speakers in the hallway. These four duracrete walls had been Callista Selkin’s home for the past three years — if one could call this place a home. She was only twelve when she had first arrived, after having been traded back and forth around the slave markets of the outer rim for at least a year before that. Here, at the “Altapin Academy of Service,” as they preferred to euphemistically call it, she was one of the hundreds of enslaved “students” being taught and conditioned to serve their future masters well, without question, without will. How quickly she got used to these things.
Sluggishly at first, she drags her legs out from within the blanket and down to the floor, guiding her feet into the worn-out shoes she’d been wearing every day for the past three years. Pushing herself to her feet, she trudges to the doorway out of her cell and peers into the hallway.
The static of the loudspeaker quickly cuts back to nothing, and the other slaves begin shuffling out of their cells. Many had their single blanket wrapped around their shoulders due to the temperature, trying to avoid frostbite and lethal exposure to the elements. The courtyard used for roll call was open to the air, a foolish design decision in what had become freezing temperatures almost year-round on Altapin.
The planet itself was very temperate in climate, especially with most of it being covered in ocean. This year had been particularly difficult though, as the planet had supposedly entered a rare phase of further distance from the system’s sun. What were previously comfortable daily temperatures were now replaced with rime-covered stone and intense cold. The academy personnel hadn’t yet even bothered to grant the students anything more than a single blanket for the weather, while they themselves cozied up in their warm spires and towers.
Even as awful as this place had always been, it was at least colorful before. The yellowish brown stone from which much of the compound was hewn…the lush greenery festooning the mountains and the valleys below…the glistening ocean in the far distance, sparkling its aqua blue-grey…even the blinking red and yellow lights on the landing pad outside.
Now, in this frost-coated solar phase resembling a mini-ice age, the “academy” was bleaker than ever, as if the universe itself had had the saturation sucked out of it, along with the hope. An internal ache draws her gaze back over her shoulder at a mural she had drawn in smuggled chalk on her back cell wall. A soaring starscape breaking over a horizon of clouds, bursting with vibrant nebulas.
Callista exhales silently, drawing the blanket down to her shoulders, baring her head to the elements, her hair little more than a blonde stipple across her buzz-shaved skull.
Stand up straight. Eyes forward. No dawdling.
The cold of the hallway eats through her blanket and clothing both, though the former manages to cut it enough so as for it to not be painful. The frozen duracrete of the tiled floor was covered in patches of hoarfrost here and there, spiky little protrusions of ice to add to the discomfort. While they were mostly fragile and brittle as a rule, some were more solid and could puncture small holes in the shoddy shoes of the slaves. Walking anywhere in the outer halls was a painful experience these days, either through direct punctures from the hoarfrost or from the painful cold through the holes they had previously caused.
Those slaves whose cells opened shuffle quickly toward the courtyard, keeping their backs straight and eyes forward as they did. While one would assume that slaves such as these would look shabby and unkempt, most here wore clothing that the middle-class of most worlds would. The only exceptions to this rule were a few newcomers in ragged travel clothes and jumpsuits. This was the Academy’s way of ‘rewarding’ those slaves who learned and adapted best; perks and exceptions were the name of the day for those quick on the uptake and excelled at their duties, while the slower and less intelligent slaves would receive punishments and persecution instead.
The hircine overseer steps down the last of the stairs into the courtyard as Callista arrives, beginning his slow walk to the front of the grouped slaves. Overseer Wrull was a Gotal, a species known for the large conical horns atop their head. These cones were far more than simple horns, acting as highly responsive electromagnetic sensors. This was normally useful in nature, but somehow Wrull had developed the ability to partially sense the emotional state of those around him. The slaves who had been around for more than a week knew to keep their dark thoughts to their cells, as any noticeable change in emotions could bring his wrath down upon them.
Callista maintains an even temperament; as miserable as all this is, she is regrettably used to it. She falls into line with the others, the lot organized into an almost military formation of successive rows and separated into blocks based on training group. Callista stands among the servants, maids, and other various houseworkers, those who would be marketed to wealthy individuals as ‘the help’ for their places of residence — anything from cooking and cleaning to fixing things around the house to gardening, any sort of domestic task that their master didn’t want to do themselves. She is in the second row, sixth from the left. She stares forward blankly, avoiding looking directly at the Overseer unless he instructs it.
With his deep bleating voice, Wrull begins handing out the daily ‘discipline’ by going over the failings of each student, loudly and publicly. Every day he would berate and embarrass the morning group until his voice went hoarse, at which point he simply sent all the students to their duties for the day. Today he seemed unfortunately resilient, going down the lines without so much as a cough or interruption. Sometimes he wouldn’t manage to get to Callista, but today was not one of those days.
The surly Gotal stomps his way down the line, stopping in front of Callista and glaring at her with his odd goat-like eyes. “Myree Tremene!” he spits, reciting the young woman’s student name with particular venom, “You broke three dishes and spilled soup on the proctor yesterday! So clumsy! So foolish! So useless! Not long now before the headmaster lets me sell you as pit fodder!”
He cackles loudly before pulling his whip from his belt. He unfurls it with a snap of his wrist, pressing a button on it which causes it to emit an ominous low hum. The first crack of his whip is like a gunshot to her senses, as it always was, especially so when it strikes her in the chest. The other students try not to wince at each thunderous crack of each snap, but it’s still jarring even after seeing it nearly every day.
The pain from the first blow drives her to her knees and runs through her body from the point of impact like a poison, attacking her body with what felt like a serrated dagger cutting her open along the lines of her nerves. The second strike only retreaded these lines, the pain dulling only slightly. By the fifth crack of the whip, the absolute limit that Wrull was allowed, the pain had largely dulled to numbness. The cruel taskmaster moved on to his next victim at this point, his curses and insults falling softer and more distant on her dull senses.
The cracking flashes of blinding red and white fade from her vision slowly, and ‘Myree’ grits her teeth against the subsiding pain, doing her best to carry on staring forward and resist the pain. It’s far from the first time Wrull has taken out his abusive wrath on her, and not even the worst instance, but that whip was near impossible to get used to. She breathes hard but clenches her jaw tight to keep silent.
As she tightens her lips into a thin line and lets her eyes glaze over to gaze into the middle distance, her mind blanks and defaults to her usual method of escapism. Her muscles relax and her eyes drift around her field of vision, watching a gentle dance of faint and wispy lights that no one else can see. The pain remains, dull and burning one moment and then sharp and stabbing through her body as her muscles move ever so slightly with her breath, but faded just enough in intensity for her to ignore it.
Just hold it together, don’t draw his attention back, do better today…
