I am Inarin, of Clan Ara’novor, and the last of the Mando’ade of Clan Dask. My surname before I swore myself to the Resol’nare, the Six Actions, does not matter, and is remembered only by myself and a traitor who shares my blood. I am twenty six years of age, and have followed the ways of the Mando’ade faithfully for seventeen of those years. I fought in what the Aruetiise call ‘The Mandalorian Wars’ as a proud warrior of my clan, and have fought upon the surface of a hundred worlds. But before all of this, I was simply a child born to the Echani people, on the planet of Ord Radama.
I was one of a pair of brothers, twins. My other half was called Feyd, and together we were raised in the traditional manner of the Echani. Throughout our youth we learned the ways of our people’s combat and communication, developing a strong bond with one another. Had things gone to plan, perhaps we would have grown to take our place beside other Echani warriors of legend. But they did not.
I still remember the day the Mandalorians brought war to my homeworld. Feyd and I were outside our home, practicing combat forms, when sirens began to blare and the skies darkened. Clusters of Warships broke through the atmosphere, firing on critical infrastructure and defense installations, while Basilisk War-droids swarmed from their drop bays like falling meteors. Soon, the sirens were drowned out by explosions and screams. My parents, after instructing us to get to shelter, rushed to aid in the defense and drive off the invaders. It was the last time either I or Feyd ever saw them alive.
It did not take long for Ord Radama to fall, and took even less time for the survivors to be rounded up and taken captive. The Mandalorian clans who had taken part in the assault gave an ultimatum: Swear to their ways, or serve in chains. For myself and my brother, the choice was obvious, though it did not quell our hatred for our conquerors. We swore to the Resol’nare, and it was Clan Dask who took us.
We were brought up by Clan Dask and trained by its many warriors at the command of their Aliit’alor, their clan leader, a Taung warrior named Veshok. At first, I hated him, trying and failing to kill him no less than three separate times. For three failed attempts Veshok spared me, until he warned me that I would not survive a fourth attempt. He then followed his warning with praise, saying I showed Mandokar, the Mandalorian spirit. He made the last offer I would have expected from my homeworld’s conqueror: to name me as his son and to train me directly.
Initially, I did not respond. How could I, when faced with one of the many who had ripped my life away from me? But even as my breath turned to ash on my tongue, I could see something, beyond the warrior’s inscrutable visor. Before I could have a chance to bite back my words, I accepted his.
From then on, Veshok was my sole teacher, and it was under him that I learned what it truly meant to swear oneself to the Mando’ade’s Creed. He taught me the lessons of the Canons of Honor, of the ways of the Mandalorians who had come before their latest conquest of the galaxy, that had dated back since the earliest days of Dha Werda Verda and their wars on Coruscanta. In addition to this, he trained me as vigorously and relentlessly as he possibly could, the old Taung intent on making me worthy of being his child.
My twin considered my acceptance of Veshok’s offer a betrayal. Indeed, while Feyd never outwardly acted against the warriors of Clan Dask, my brother never strove to be anything more for them than average. I could always tell from his eyes and his subtle movements in training that he despised those who trained him with every fiber of his being, but he was never violent, never went to the same lengths as I did with Veshok. A fracture formed between us, one whose widening I was blind to. Over time I’d realized that I only stood by and watched as my twin become a stranger to me.
Four years after I was taken from Ord Radama, I faced the Verd’goten. In Galactic Basic it would be called a warrior’s trial, the challenge through which a child becomes an adult in the eyes of the Mando’ade. For four years, Veshok trained me to be stronger, faster, and more clever than most of the common soldiers that filled the galaxy. I was trained in everything from blasters, to blades, to explosives, and everything in between. The process was brutal and unforgiving, my Buir unwilling to accept even one iota of weakness. And in the end, thanks to his teaching, I conquered my trials and took my hard-earned place among the Mando’ade. Even Feyd, to his credit, passed the trial through grit and determination.
A warrior needed a weapon to call their own, and in the aftermath of my Verd’goten I was presented with a gift by Veshok, one uniquely Mandalorian. It is called a Shuur’dra Kaan’ika, but in Basic it’s common moniker is ‘Ripper Pistol.’ It was a finely crafted tool of war, capable of bypassing personal energy shielding through use of disruptor energy that shrouded a standard slug round, it was more powerful and dangerous than conventional blaster weaponry. A masterwork of weaponsmithing that can scarcely be found in the galaxy today. It was Veshok’s personal sidearm during the Great Shadow Crusade and on it’s grip was enscribed the icon of Clan Dask: the roaring skull of a Krayt Dragon.
After becoming an adult in the eyes of the Mando’ade, I had expected to immediately join Clan Dask as they crusaded through the outer rim, but Veshok had other plans. Instead, my Buir returned me to Ord Radama to train under the Neo-crusaders. To Veshok, the Neo-crusaders were a necessary change the Mando’ade needed in order to ensure victory in the Mand’alor’s conquest, and their leadership waged war and managed resources in a way that was much more efficient than doctrine of most Clans.
The training Neo-Crusaders went through, while brutal and efficient, was significantly faster than it took to train up new warriors in the traditional manner. Individual prowess was placed behind group coordination, their leadership and labor decided based on rigid rank structure. This was not without cost however, as many of the fresh recruits who swelled their ranks, while disciplined, were no better than Chakaare, common brigands and thieves, and lacking in honor.
I was returned to Clan Dask, after my time spent with the Neo-crusaders, to bolster their forces as they pushed into Hutt space. Initially confined to a support role due to my young age, I was eventually moved to more frontline positions within my detachment as my experience grew. Within the space of a year or so, I was entirely committed to direct engagements with the rest of the warriors in my clan. Meanwhile, Feyd had proven to be a cunning strategist, and secured himself a position among Veshok’s war council.
It was in the atmosphere above Dennogra that I truly made a name for myself though. Clan Dask’s ships had engaged the enemy fleet in the planet’s orbit, attempting to punch through their defensive blockade to land our warriors on Derinogra’s surface and take it’s plunder as our own. During the battle I’d engaged the enemy strikecraft to a backdrop of glorious destruction, weaving my Basilisk war droid through volleys of turbo-laser fire and flaming debris. I near single-handedly disabled a capital ship’s shield generator and crashed my Bes’uliik into it’s bridge, venting most of bridge crew into vacuum before blast shielding covered my entry point, but my moment of glory came after dismounting and personally taking the head of the Hut’uun captaining the vessel. My Rally Master, impressed with my tenacity and daring, personally recommended me to the ranks of the Mirshir-Verde, the Shock Troopers under direct command of Cassus Fett.
Feyd despised my acceptance of my new role within the Crusade, and it didn’t take long for him to confront me directly about it. We argued, he called me a monster, I called him a coward, and the fraying bonds that held us together finally snapped. It was the last time we ever spoke to one another as brothers.
From then on, I was part of a group that housed the most elite warriors the Mando’ade had to offer. Where the main bulk of our clans were the hammers that broke our enemies upon the anvil of battle, the shock troopers were the daggers stabbed into the gaps of their armour. We destroyed weapons depots, refueling stations, and shipyards, crippled their supply lines, and captured their command ships in vicious boarding actions. We were so effective in our operations that when the crusade finally came to the Republic’s borders, their intelligence had no idea of our existence.
It was as we burned Serroco in a hail of nuclear fire, their fleet watching on helplessly, that the Republic did come to know of the Mirshir-verde. We harried them through the void as they fled. We boarded their flagship, the Courageous, and though we failed to capture it, their inept defenders were left with no choice but to scuttle it.
We cut a bloody swathe through the Republic, world after world falling to our might. My vode and I were always fighting, always moving on to the next conflict, as we ground our enemies to dust. As we reached the galactic core, the Mando’ade’s victory seemed within reach, but all that changed as the Revanchist took command of the Republic’s Forces.
Victories became sparse, casualties increased, and steadily we were pushed back from the Galactic Core. Clan Dask in particular suffered heavy losses to both it’s fleet, and it’s warriors. At the time, we assumed that it was merely the strategic brilliance of the Revanchist and the renewed ferocity of the Republic that was slowly picking our Clan apart, but now that I know better its easy to see the signs of betrayal eating away at us during those days.
In the final days of the Crusade, the situation had reached a breaking point. Clan Dask had withdrawn from the frontlines to resupply and fortify, what remained of our once proud fleet orbiting a small moon at the edge of system that was removed from the path of the Revanchist’s counteroffensive. Our guard was down, thinking ourselves safe from assault. After all, the system we lingered in was a backwater, with no tactical value and no civilian population. And then annihilation came for us.
It began with Feyd calling me to his ship, The Ca’tra, to have a discussion. He spoke of how the Mando’ade were guaranteed to be defeated, how we had underestimated the brilliance of the Revanchist and that he and I were better off deserting from Clan Dask while we still could. His words ignited a burning rage within me, and I denied him, before disowning him as my brother. While I was furious, all Feyd responded with was a single, silent nod of acknowledgement, before his eyes grew cold and distant. In a quick, fluid motion, he drew his blaster and fired a burst of stun rounds into my chest. As my vision faded to darkness I saw my brother’s lips form words I could not hear, then oblivion took me. When I awoke I was aboard an escape pod, the pistol Veshok had given me all those years ago gone, drifting impotently through the void as I witnessed a republic war fleet suddenly exit hyperspace and open fire.
My father tried to rally the fleet as best he could, his dreadnought falling into formation with the rest of the fleet as Republic cannons ripped ship after ship apart. But as they readied to retaliate, the Ca’tra opened fire. A volley of Ion warheads crashed into the friendly ships surrounding it, detonating against their hulls with bursts of electromagnetic energy. The fleet was caught entirely off guard, half of our capital ships knocked offline and sent drifting uselessly through space, steadily picked off one by one by Republic vessels. I watched on helplessly as Veshok’s ship was swarmed by the enemy, detonating in a ball of fire and vaporizing all aboard into nothing but ash. As the Republic destroyed any remaining stragglers, the Ca’tra jumped into hyperspace, unimpeded by any republican ship, leaving me alone to witness Clan Dask’s complete destruction. In that moment, as my world crumbled before my eyes, I swore to have my vengeance on the cowards that followed the Revanchist and his apprentice, and that I would enact bloody justice against my traitorous brother.
I was found days later by Cassus Fett’s fleet, arriving to search for any signs of salvage or survivors, only discovered by virtue of the encrypted distress beacon aboard my escape pod. After being hauled aboard a Mando’ad warship, I gave an account of what happened, then was dismissed and told to await for my new orders. As we moved to Jaga’s Cluster to face the enemy, I took the colors of black and gold for my Beskar’gam, becoming a living embodiment of my oath. After achieving victory against the republic under Fett’s command one final time, most of the fleet fled into Deep Space. I remained behind, returning to my father’s home, collecting what little I could as a memento to his memory, before beginning my hunt for Feyd as the last vengeful ghost of Clan Dask.