Gharssk
Appearance: Gharssk is of average height for a Trandoshan, with a lean, muscular frame, covered in smooth, green scales. His eyes are a dull orange hue, with nictitating membranes that flicker expressively when he is curious or perplexed. His mouth is shaped in such a way, that he seems to be perpetually smiling, his scaly lips curled faintly upwards into a jovial grin. Warmbloods, who often react with an innate phobia to reptilian life forms, find his demeanor comparatively unthreatening- perhaps even reassuring.
Like most Trandoshans, Gharssk has hard, scaly feet with sharp talons, and does not require any sort of footwear. His chosen garb ranges from a simple bandolier with an armored pauldron, paired with a utility belt and cargo shorts (in warm weather climes), to an armor-weave tunic, breeches, and cloak for cool, rainy climates, insulated Bantha fur with a thermal skin for colder climates, and a formal frock-coat and tunic when hosting high-stakes Pazaak games aboard his travelling excursion vessel, the Lounge Lizard.
Personality: Gharssk is polite and friendly. A warm, approachable person, he is eager to help others and make friends wherever he goes. Gharssk has a strong sense of loyalty, honesty, and justice and is every bit as principled as most Jedi, even if he may not completely agree with their philosophy or believe in The Force as an entity that controls people’s destiny. He thinks nothing of sharing his personal wealth and belongings with others in need, never asking anything in return, save their friendship, and there is little he will not sacrifice on behalf of such friendships.
Despite his kindly, principled nature, Gharssk is a deep thinker and a good reader of other people’s personalities and motivations, and not at all naive or easily gulled. He is quick to recognize when someone is trying to take advantage of his better nature and will swiftly divest himself of the company of such individuals, regarding them as a waste of his time. He is calm and patient, favoring careful planning and cautious moves over impulsive actions. While he is brave enough to resist the actions of evil men and organizations, he is wise enough to recognize that he is not a match for powerful Force wielders and crime syndicates and will seek to develop a long-term strategy and form strong alliances, before moving to deal with them.
Despite his strong moral convictions, Gharssk is not without his fun side. He loves a good joke, a strong drink (Trandoshan ale is his favorite, of course!), and fine music, and is a keen Pazaak enthusiast. The game holds a peculiar fascination for him, and he enjoys watching it more than he does playing it, himself, observing the tenseness and exchange of banter and bluffing between the players as a match involves, trying to predict who will be the winner. Pazaak offers Gharssk a melding of two of his favorite things- the game, itself- and meeting new and interesting people.
Second only to his friendships, the thing that Gharssk cherishes most, in all the universe, is his custom build light freighter, the Lounge Lizard. Gharssk spared no expense to purchase the vessel from the Twi’lek master shipwright, Phylaverian, so that he could sate his hunger to travel the galaxy and meet new people. The ship is both his mode of transportation and his home, and he is very happy to make his living by taking passengers on pleasure excursions, hauling luxury goods, or hosting card games in the ship’s Pazaak parlour, which he installed for this specific purpose.
Talents and Skills: Like most Trandoshans, Gharssk was trained in the skills of hunting and tracking from a very young age and is a fine shot with a blaster rifle. While Gharssk typically favors his blaster rifle in combat, he is also a novice rank practitioner of Teras Kasi, and was trained in Form VIII (Goshan, the way of the Gimpassa) lightsaber combat by Cam Ramos, before the Jedi Master’s untimely death, though he is keenly aware that he would be no match for a highly trained Sith or Jedi in this method of combat.
Gharssk is a skilled engineer, able to build, maintain and repair his own weapons. He is also well-trained in the maintenance and repair of starships and the installation and modification of their systems and, while he is no starfighter ace, he is an adequately trained pilot and navigator.
Gharssk is intelligent and likeable and has a genuine knack for wise debate, thoughtful advice, and for winning the trust and friendship of others. While he is quite capable of defending himself in combat, it is probably this set of skills that comprise his strongest assets.
History: Like most Trandoshans, Gharssk was raised among a family of hunters who spent their lives stalking prey to earn Jagganath points, combing religion and their favorite pastime into a career, by working as bounty hunters and slavers.
While Gharssk’s younger sister, Hisska, and his two older brothers, Vlessh and Klaarr, all took to the family trade readily, Gharssk himself was troubled by his culture’s tradition of killing and enslaving other sentient species. While Gharssk was an accomplished marksman, hunter, and tracker, he refused to take part in hunts for intelligent prey and would not be party to selling captured targets in the slave markets of the Hutts or Exchange.
Such attitudes quickly estranged him from his family, who viewed his behavior as perverse and shameful, an insult to their culture and way of life. So, on Gharssk’s 15th life day (at which point, Trandoshans are viewed as full adults), he booked passage with a Czerka transport that was headed to Veles Colony on the newly-settled Mid Rim world of Viscara, leaving his family and his old way of life behind forever more.
Life on the colony world was hard, but Gharssk’s hunting and survival training, as well as his talent for making and selling things in the city markets, allowed him to eke out a fairly decent living, as he slowly built up his savings in anticipation of purchasing his own starship. During his first two years on the colony, he kept mostly to himself, focused as he was on supporting himself and saving for his ship.
Sometime during his 2nd year on Viscara, Gharssk’s family attempted to hunt and capture a grizzled old silverback wookie warrior named Grullacca. Targeting this particular prey proved to be a tragic mistake, as the Wookie was a cunning and mighty foe. Gharssk’s mother and father were both killed in the hunt, and his siblings were all gravely injured and forced to flee in their starship, the Rancor’s Claw.
His brothers and sisters blamed Gharssk for the debacle, believing that if he had not abandoned them, and had been there to assist in the hunt, that they would have been victorious or, at the very least, their parents would not have been slain. The three of them determined to track down Gharssk and kill him, as an offering to the Scorekeeper as atonement for their previous failure.
After much investigation and leg-work, the three siblings tracked Gharssk down at his new home on Viscara. While Gharssk was hunting Raivor in the Deep Mountains, they creeped up on him and ambushed him. Fortunately for Gharssk, a human Jedi Master by the name of Cam Ramos had a small dwelling in the foothills of the nearby mountains and was out for a walk when he came upon the Trandoshan’s attempting to kill their brother in revenge. The Jedi, his curiosity aroused by what would cause three Trandoshans to kill one of their own, came to Gharssk’s defense, killing Klaar in single combat and helping Gharssk drive off Hisska and Vlessh, who returned to their ship and fled the planet.
Jedi Master Cam Ramos
After the encounter, Ramos helped Gharssk bury his dead brother and then invited the trandoshan back to his dwelling to talk and recover from his wounds, and the two soon became fast friends, with Gharssk pledging a life debt to the Jedi, out of gratitude for saving his life. Ramos revealed to Gharssk that he was dying from a rare and deadly disease, one which even the greatest Jedi Healers could not cure, and that he’d had a vision that he must soon pass on and become one with the force.
Ramos further revealed that he had never taken on a Padawan learner. He told Gharssk that, although he lacked any connection to the force, his integrity and principles were very much in tune with the Jedi way. He said he sensed that there would soon be a great struggle in the galaxy, and that the Jedi and the Republic would need all the allies they could muster. He claimed that it was the will of the force that he should train Gharssk to aid the Jedi in this future struggle and asked the Trandoshan, as payment for his life debt, to learn everything that Ramos could teach him before he died.
Though he was skeptical what use a non-force sensitive could be to the Jedi, Gharssk felt honor bound to agree and so, for the next nine months, Ramos taught Gharssk much of the lore of the Jedi and the Sith, teaching Gharssk how best to defend himself against the force, and how to assist his Jedi allies. Much of his training involved long hours of grueling instruction in Form VIII lightsaber combat, also known as Goshan: The Way of the Gimpassa, a little used form which was developed to train Jedi that had a very weak connection to the force, to compensate for their deficiencies.
At the end of the nine months, on a cool, spring morning, Master Ramos finally succumbed to his disease, dying quietly in his bed as he charged Gharssk to be vigilant and help the Jedi and people of Viscara whenever he was able. After cremating his old friend and mentor on a pyre, as was the Jedi tradition, Gharssk returned to veles colony and began to seek out and form friendships with many Jedi that had been left adrift after the Mandalorian Wars, such as Althea, Seela Kuub, Tara Renathi, and Sandra Mana.
In the days since, Gharssk has continued to improve his skills, build his fortune, and has even achieved his dream of buying and owning his own starship. He is preparing himself for the great conflict that Master Ramos predicted, and looking towards the future.
Lightsaber combat Form VIII, Goshan, the Way of the Gimpassa, also known as the Compensation Form (A non-canon lightsaber form)
Goshan was a rarely used lightsaber form developed in the early days of the Old Republic. Utilizing a combination of lightsaber in the primary hand and a type 2 energy shield in the off-hand, it was invented to compensate for Jedi that were so weak in the force that they could not learn the Soresu art of deflecting blaster bolts or easily defend against force push and telekinetically hurled objects. As personal shield technology was either lost, or became obsolete, the form was eventually abandoned and died out, being completely forgotten by the end of the old republic era. Even in the heyday of its use, it was not typically looked upon or respected as a useful form and evolved more as a means to attempt to compensate for the practitioner’s weaknesses, than as an end, in and of itself. Despite this, some Jedi did employ it to good effect in the Mandalorian wars and the conflicts to follow. Sith typically viewed it with contempt and as the last resort of weaklings. As a result, they almost never employed it.
As with all of the saber forms, Shii-Cho is the foundation of Goshan, with most of the basic methods of strike and parry based upon it. A very pragmatic and direct form, it takes nothing from Form II, Makashi, and the blaster deflection skills learned from Soresu are replace with training in the use of a Type 2 Energy shield (though some practitioners prefer the smaller, more maneuverable Type I shields, or the more massive Type 3), which the combatant is taught to place in the most likely angles of attack when confronted by volleys of blaster fire. Like Soresu, the Goshan combatant plays the long game, wearing down his opponent with stolid defense, then striking when his exhaustion or frustration create an opening.
However, unlike Soresu, Goshan takes some cues from form V’s Djem Sho discipline, using a strong stance with powerful, linear strikes, combined with robust parries from the energy shield to create openings for counterattack. While it relied more on defense than Form V, many practitioners were quick to note the similarities of the two forms. This balance between offense and defense made Goshan more practical and useful against multiple opponents (whether ranged or melee) than was Form IV, Ataru, with its acrobatic leaps and wild maneuvers, from which Goshan borrowed essentially nothing. Because practitioners of Goshan were often quite weak in the force, they made little to no use of Form VI, Niman, as it drew heavily upon the various force powers in its execution. Juyo techniques were also not used, being considered too complex and erratic to mesh well with Goshan.
The ultimate purpose and expression of the form, once mastered, was a simple two-fold philosophy, described as follows:
Firstly: To allow Jedi that are weak in the force to contribute to combat by shielding civilians under fire and covering the advance of Republic troops under enemy fire (via the energy shield).
Secondly: To allow Jedi to survive combat with a Sith long enough to give civilians time to escape, or long enough for a more skilled Jedi to come to their aid.
