Usay Toran
From SW:TOR-RP-Wiki
 Jedi Padawan Usay Toran
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| Personal information: | |
| Name: | Usay Toran |
| Age: | 13 |
| Gender: | Male |
| Race: | Near Human (Human father) |
| Weight: | 77 lbs/35 kg |
| Height: | 5'1'"/154 cm |
| Skin tone: | Pale |
| Eye Color: | Green (pupilless) |
| Hair Color: | Silver with purple hair ends |
| Birthplace: | Ampliquen |
| Character Information: | |
| Title: | Jedi Padawan |
| Alignment: | Jedi |
| Guild: | None |
| Religion/Philosophy: | N/A |
| Occupation: | Jedi Padawan |
| Relative(s): | Mother, Kae Toran (deceased), Father, Rashaveros Kazdorm |
| Known Master(s): | Master Zor’en Vendrack |
| Current Student(s): | None |
| Former Student(s): | (None) |
| Residency: | Coruscant |
| Character Specialization: | Mechanical work and technology |
| Weapon of Choice: | Training lightsaber |
| Lightsaber Styles: | None mastered |
| Allies: | None yet |
| Ship: | None |
| Player Information: | |
| Created by: | Belanore |
(Work In Progress)
"That is completely counter-intuitive."
- Usay Toran'
Contents |
Personality and traits
“Your words did me no harm, sir. Most words do not. You see, I am dead inside.”
― Usay, speaking to wayward Sith Sanctus Custodus
Usay’s foremost trait was his almost complete lack of emotion, a fact he himself was fully aware of and indeed, often acknowledged. He was strictly driven by rationale and logic, often turning his words carefully before speaking. Indeed, his standard reaction to an insult was to simply analyze it and either acknowledge or rebuke it due to lack of empirical basis.
A definite personality quirk of Usay’s was that he, being closer with droids than people, tended to simply make people out in technological terms, defining death as simply ‘broken beyond repair’ and on one occasion wondering whether or not a restraining bolt could not be fixed on a woman until someone could fix her vocabulator and referring to being hungry as ‘resource deposit needs recharging’.
This rapport with droids and Usay’s total lack of emotions and immense tendency to obey any given order often lead people to muse that he himself might be one. Aware of this anomaly in his personality, Usay was often divided between frustrated confusion when people acted un whims of emotional or illogical nature and his own inexplicable desire to become more human himself.
Also, despite being very intelligent and analytical, Usay was horrible at expressing himself, often getting into almost nonsense when he attempted to relay what was going through his head. However, his analysis of a situation was usually simple, but correct, despite his social awkwardness and total ignorance in all matters concerning emotions.
Appearance
“Jedi are not ‘fashionable’, sir.”
― Usay about the state of his hair
Small for his age and unusually quiet, all in all Usay is quite unassuming and tends to simply blend in with the background. He does, however, have some prominent features, most notably his eyes, best described by the smuggler Ciala Aryos, who felt that they “…reminded her of a Corusca gem--so radiant and clear, unlike most of the beings whom she had encountered on this filthy planet full of equally as filthy beings.”
Other than this, Usay has an unusual hair colour, silvery with purple hair ends and keeps it quite long, a bit over shoulder length with long bangs. The hair is rather cool and smooth and has a texture more akin to metal than actual hair, especially when one focuses on the two strands protruding from the top of his skull. One is purple and one is silver, and at times they act more like ears or antennas than actual hair.
Since Usay is usually, at best, calm and laconic, his face rarely portrays much emotion – at most he either lifts an eyebrow or frowns, though he has been known to smile slightly when he is tinkering. He wears a normal Jedi robe by choice.
Early life
A Boy in an Alley
"He sensed a strong disturbance in the Force, though, and as any good Jedi would, he probably stated it aloud and then went to investigate."
― Nabai De’nura, Archivist, retelling the circumstances of Usay’s ‘recruitment’'
Usay was located by the Echani Knight Jory Oolien, who had been sent to the Outer Rim to gather data and intel on the Sith Forces three years prior to the Sacking of Coruscant. Whilst recording all he could find out on a particularly remote, primarily urban planet (later revealed to be Ampliquen in the Meridian Sector), Jory sensed a disturbance in the Force, and his investigation lead him to a crying infant lying amidst junk and rubble in a bloodied alley. With no means to locate the mother, the Echani picked up the child to warm it, later noting that it was strangely bald save two very long hair clusters, silver and purple respectively.
Upon carrying the baby off, it got frantic at one point, screaming as if something either pained or scared it to the point of panic, after which it suddenly fell silent. Jory noted later that aside this extreme outburst where he feared the baby’s heart was breaking, the child was unusually well-behaved and quiet as he travelled back with it, crying only when hungry or otherwise in need and stopping the moment the problem was being taken care of.
Oolien interrupted his mission and brought the child to Coruscant where it was named Usay Toran, and Jory recorded the entire incident, stating at the end that it would perhaps be for the best if the boy was not to learn about the dramatic circumstances of his first hours until he was old enough to deal with what could easily have been either callous abandonment or the murder of his parents.
The Child in the Shell
“I cannot fix people. Once you understand the way things are put together, you can fix them, but I do not know how people go together, and then I cannot fix them so good.”
― Usay’s attempt to explain what he ‘makes’ of a situation, as prompted by Master Vendrack
As Usay grew up in the temple, it became painfully obvious that the boy was not like other children. He never smiled, he never disobeyed even the simplest of commands and, to the worry of varying instructors, never seemed to be shaken from this state, constantly quiet, dispassionate and only coming gradually alive when allowed to make repairs.
Often busy overseeing less well-behaved children, most instructors often gave up on conditioning Usay – it was apparent that he was not suppressing his emotions, it simply seemed it was how he WAS, and after all being calm, patient, impartial and detached was all good traits in a Jedi, though Usay’s often complete lack of emotion and in some cases sympathy, hardly was the way the Code was to be interpreted.
One particularly troubling episode saw Usay getting lost from his caretaker and wander into a bar to fix a broken droid, only to have his cool nature provoke some drunks into ‘shaking’ some sense into him. A Padawan sent to locate the Youngling saved Usay from further harm but the boy, 7 years old at the time, did not seem particularly shocked or surprised to have been struck and merely apologized to the Padawan for forcing him to come for him. While he seemed unaffected, Usay often recalled this rough treatment when thinking of how he differed from ‘people’.
Since, to say the very least, Usay’s mannerisms were unnerving, by the time he approached the age of thirteen, no Master was forthcoming to take him on as Padawan, despite the boy’s obvious skill and potential. Not really being able to see a way for the boy to ever make do outside the Jedi Order, where he would be even more out of place, the Council at last decreed that Usay was to be taught by the controversial Master Zor’en Vendrack, who, after losing his sight and Padawan upon Utapau a decade prior, had not yet taken on a new learner. Seeking to restore some confidence in Vendrack and perhaps offset his more rebellious streak, the human was given Usay as an apprentice and promptly sent on a mission.
Padawan
((The Gateway to Eternity))
This first mission turned out to be rather complicated, and not only because Usay initially dawdled off and had to find his way back to his new Master. Despite the simple mission of rendezvousing with Kushiban Master Inyek Kilvaari quickly causing a spiral of events that would not only touch upon painful events of Zor’en’s past, but also included encounters with a Dark Jedi, quite the few Sith and a hostile rancor.
Quickly sensing something was not quite right about his apprentice, however, Zor’en also found the time to, as the first Jedi ever in charge of Usay, probe the boy about his past, convinced his state of emotion was a treatable condition. Feeling he had let down his first apprentice, Kai’ali, the Master was determined to do right by the new Padawan, much to Usay’s complete indifference… for now.
((The Gateway to Eternity: Journey to Utapau))
Eventually establishing that the mission would take them to the very world at which Zor'en had lost everything - Utapau, the Masters Naasha Vryl and Zor'en Vendrack made arrangements for transport aboard the vessel Flight of Kyrena piloted by the spy Hrost Vangis. Joining the mission alongside the Masters Vryl, Vendrack and Inyek Kilvaari was Usay, Zor'ens other Padawan Dehrsin Vall, Ciala Aryos, the fallen Jedi Corvus Antarian, failed bounty hunter Neth Edon Naasha's former Padawan Lixis T'ell as well as the droids T3-N2 ('Entoo') and T3-F8 ('Effate'). Recognizing Usay's inherent interest and talent with droids, Naasha gifted Entoo to Usay shortly prior to the mission. The group was also joined by wayward Sith Sanctus Custodus and some unexpected stowaways in shape of Zor'en's lost Padawan Kai'ali Anesu, the Zabrak youngling Kahiti Norvos and her friend, Davian Korran. Another edition to the crew was the frigid and hostile Jedi Knight Silhani Niss'uk, whom Usay soon managed to get on the bad side off, despite his intentions to the contrary...
Jedi Abilities
“I fix things.”
- Usay states his primary talent
Gifted with natural potential and a cool, emotionless mind, Usay’s skill with the Force seemed prodigious since he had an unparalleled gift to concentrate compared to his peers. He was especially adept at ‘fixing’ things, as long as all the pieces were present, Usay could usually fix a mechanical item without the aid of tools, though the process took great toll on him.
Lightsaber Forms
Thusly, it took a great deal for Usay to even draw his blade, especially when, considering his low age and relative frailty, he was more often told to stay safe than actually participate in combat.
The Force
Usay was a sweeping natural talent with the Force, even at a young age. It was difficult to say if he had great potential, or simply just tapped all of it because of his concentrated, dispassionate approach, but the end result was known to baffle his new Master the first time he saw the boy ‘fix’ something. Usay’s speciality was manipulation on a microscopic scale, indeed, his method of ‘fixing’ something involved joining the threads of a broken wire one by one mentally, by tugging and pulling little pockets of air – an ability he also used to fuse the wiring afterwards by simply concentrating the heat from overstressed components.
When it came to people, Usay was a bit at a loss however. As he put it himself, he did not ‘know’ them, and had no idea how to transfer his fixing technique to living tissue, though he of course knew most of the baseline abilities including sending things flying and sensing danger, although this particular sense often suffered under his attached, serene approach to things and his general ignorance, meaning anything but an obvious danger tended to be ignored.
Notes from the author
"I wish I could make things up..."
- Phillip Horton's lament at the end of Lewis episode And The Moonbeams Kiss the Sea.
My usual approach to forum arguments is pretty simple: I ignore them and hope they go away and preferably die. If I get really pissed off, I tend to simply type out a full response and then delete it raher than posting. I get to say what I wanted to vent and no one has a chance to contradict me. The case of Usay could be said to really be a grumpy response to the common Sith-supporter position that all Jedi are mindless drones with no emotion, little more than humanoid robots. Fine, I thought Let's see how THAT works out...
Davian is more or less writing her making things up as I go along and other than her Blackadder'esque tendency to ravel into very long comparisons, she has no 'basis'. Usay is quite clearly a different breed, and an emotionally disabled genius was an exciting, if daunting idea to work on. On the other hand, the concept has interested me since I first watched Lewis: And The Moonbeams Kiss the Sea and was introduced to autistic painter Phillip Horton. Phillip was a genius at drawing whatever was in front of him in great detail, but he was hapless in social affairs and lacked a basic abillity to imagine things. I borrowed Usay's extreme gift with making repairs and keen memory for everything he was told at any given time from him.
Another major character inspiration in general was Zack Addy from Bones. Aiding a serial-killer aside, my main point of focus was how Zack was always unwaveringly rational. His approach, while always determined by logic, often made him seem more like an alien imitating a human than anything else, though Zack, like Usay, occasionally attempted to better himself. Usay's strict adherence to rationale and childish outlook (even though a lot can be explained from his being only 13) is based on Zack.
