Captain Mytasha Shiv, totally not a smuggler

Context

The Old Republic is one of the Bioware Star Wars computer RPGs, this one with a not-so-successful MMO format. It is part of the Extended Universe, which is no longer considered canon since 2014.

Its strength is to offer eight distinctive story tracks (one per character class). Here is a version of the Smuggler track, covering the first 15-ish levels before class specialization kicks in. As such there are S P O I L E R S for Ord Mantell.

Since this is a RPG, Mytasha is but one possible version of the Smuggler, who is extensively customisable.

As often when we present “sample” video game Player Characters, the profile includes additional sections about the game universe.

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• This profile features a sample or customized Player Character. See our video games writeups FAQ for more.
• This profile assumes a specific video game playthrough. See our video games writeups FAQ for more.
• This profile features tabletop RPG mechanics about the video game’s gameplay. See our video games writeups FAQ for more.
• This profile features non-canon hypotheses about in-game events and mechanics. See our video games writeups FAQ for more.

Background

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I am Cathar, hear me roar

Cathars  are essentially lion people. They are famous for their nobility, fighting prowess and traditional hunter lifestyle. Cathar, their homeworld, is dominated by savannahs where mighty predators roam.

Cathars were nearly exterminated when their world was attacked by Mandalorians. The Mandalorians wanted to face the reputed hand-to-hand combat prowess of Cathars in battle, but with all-too-common Mandalorian hypocrisy they bought field artillery to a knife fight.

The Cathars eventually recovered their numbers, but history hasn’t been kind to their diaspora. Planets with large Cathar populations often ended up devastated by invasions.

Even though their population was much reduced for a while, Cathars evidence a broad ethnic diversity. In many cases, one might think that two random Cathars are from related but different species.

It might be the same situation as with Humans and Near-Humans. Or perhaps different Cathar tribes simply became distinct as they had few exchanges due to the hostile terrain and faced different environments.

Cathars have great recuperative powers, sharp retractile claws, and often demonstrate considerable ferocity in battle.

Powers & Abilities

Mytasha is a jill-of-all-trades, and a mistress of quite a few. She’s a :

• Pilot.
• Cybernetics engineer.
• Gunfighter.
• Swindler and fast-talk artist.
• Connoisseur of conveniently compact luxury goods and their discreet transportation.
• Droids improvement specialist.
• Driver.
• B&E artist.
• Paramedic.
• Stealth expert.
• Small starship mechanic.
• And all-around problem solver… for a fee.

Whenever she has tried her hand at a new craft she has emerged as being at least fairly good. Her top 3 skills are probably gunfighting, piloting, stealth and electronic… her top 4 skills are gunfighting, piloting, stealth and electronic augmentation of infantry and droids – she’s exceptionally skilled at those.

Oh, and procurement and conveying of not entirely legal goods so okay, that’s 5.

As can be surmised she’s very fast (both physically and intellectually), sharp, adaptable and curious.

Being Cathar, she also has retractile and surprisingly sharp claws. And a superior power of recovery.

Gear

Captain Shiv loves her gadgets, and carries an amazing amount of them on her weapons belt and hidden among her clothing. Important bits include :

• A heavy blaster pistol – that is, a sawed-off blaster carbine turned into a powerful pistol intended for close-range, high-impact engagements. Same thing as Han Solo uses, basically. This specific model had been modified so its accuracy doesn’t suffer as much as with most heavy blasters when it comes to range.
• A “scattergun” blaster. Though undetailed in-game, I would imagine that it’s a radically shortened blaster rifle, about the size of a sawed-off shotgun. It has even more punch than a heavy blaster but an even shorter effective range. From in-game use, one surmises it has no cooling systems and one has to open it to (carefully) vent the heat sink so it can shoot again.
  Mytasha carries this on her left hip in a swivelling holster. It is meant to be fired by surprise at somebody right in front of her, shooting from the hip in a remarkably literal way. Like most scatterguns it is a custom gunsmithing conversion.
• A stealth belt. This doesn’t make her invisible per se, but the slight ripple in the air is very difficult to spot from a distance. Close by, it does produce a faint buzzing sound though.
• Mini-grenades – both concussive and flash-bangs.

Click for a larger version.

History – pre-game

(This History section is original rather than something covered in the game, and is only one of the possible, imaginary takes on the Smuggler Player Character.)

Mytasha Shiv is purely a product of the diaspora. She has never even seen Cathar, and the closest connection she has to the homeworld are some cheap adventure movies she saw as a girl. These were, truth be told, really bad.

She grew up on the water world Jodaka, in the Corsair Outback  region (so named for historical reasons), where there’s at best a score of Cathars. Jodaka’s small population works primarily in aquaculture. Mytasha’s parents are among the trickle of immigrants that came to Jodaka to build a new, quiet life for away from the wars and troubles.

Though ocean farming on a remote low-pop planet may not sound like the most exciting thing in the galaxy, business is actually pretty good. Many Jodakan products are delicacies, the government is well-run, and the capital on Dineth Island is a semi-wealthy city with a robust starport and good amenities.

Mytasha mostly grew up on Dineth rather than on the farm, in order to attend school.

A star is born

Mytasha originally wanted to become a dancer. Her vocation then shifted to huntress of large creatures using a vibro-knife, then explorer, then heavy isotope music star, then artillery expert (yeah, that one was puzzling), then Jedi, then comedienne, then medical doctor, then singer. The singer one actually stuck for a whole year as she performed with a high school band, with okay results.

After deciding that she now wanted to be a pirate, then a music recording label mogul, Mytasha discovered her vocation as a pilot, and then as a droids programmer. She embarked on a general engineering cursus in college, reasoning that it could give her a foundation as both a small starship flight engineer and as a droids hardware engineer.

Click for a larger version.

That one stuck for a whole three years, during which she proved a gifted student. She did eventually opt for a robotics and cybernetics curriculum, but somehow managed to also acquire a sports and tourism piloting license.

She also volunteered for basic paramilitary defense training with the Jodakan militia — since she wondered what it would be like to become a commando.

At this point it seemed she would ditch everything to become a speeder bike  designer instead. But her parents somehow convinced her to stick with the droid thing, which actually was a workable business. Aquaculture on Jodaka used a lot of undersea droids, which required significant maintenance and repairs.

Wherever I may roam

Mytasha operated a seaspeeder with robotics supplies and tools as an itinerant aquadroid repairwoman, but rapidly grew bored with it. She then bought for a pittance a half-wrecked Corellian light freighter spaceship, claiming that she would “teach herself to repair it” and take her business “to a higher scale”. This was met with considerable scepticism.

Mytasha *did* rebuild her semi-wreck within about a year, and set out to conquer the galaxy in the rechristened Not-a-Crab with her droids repairs and improvement small business.

She also spent a lot of time hanging around the underground music scene of other planets, discovering new bands and styles. She dabbled with some success in music journalism, and a few open mike soirées in stand-up comedy clubs.

Time in the underground also put her in contact with spice dealers (“spice” as in “narcotics”), and she received lucrative offers to use her starship to smuggle such goods. This made way more money than repairing and improving droids as an itinerant fixer.

Mytasha eventually agreed to run ryll. Ryll is a type of drug that is mostly used for pharmaceutical purposes but is heavily regulated due to its potential use as a narcotic.

Over the months Mytasha gradually shifted to smuggling and building more “grey” goods – stuff that isn’t completely illegal but heavily regulated. Her artisanal kits to turn droids into combat-capable units were a robust seller, and she occasionally smuggled passengers and weapons – leveraging the technical skills she had developed to spoof shipping manifests and customs identifications.

As the Cold War ends

In late 3,643BY, Mytasha was on Ma’ar Shaddam to ship a crate of very expensive and taxation-intolerant blaster optics to Hutta. She was approached by a Rattataki named Nekev Nisrok who wanted to be smuggled to Hutta. The two became friends, and Mytasha even agreed to take another passenger, a friend of Nekev named Meeyelle Mahr, to Tython.

During the trip to Hutta, Mytasha and Nekev decided that they would associate in an undetermined future as Nekev could build custom weapons for droids converted to combat roles. Nekev also sold a custom blaster scattergun to Mytasha, training her to use it as a freebie, and a modified barrel to increase her heavy blaster’s bolt stability.

After dropping Meeyelle — a nice young Jedi who would also become a friend — on Tython, Mytasha returned to her scheduled trip. This time it was to ship crates of made-in-Ma’ar-Shaddam blaster carbines to Ord Mantell.

History

Captain Shiv had been hired to smuggle a shipment of very expensive blasters to Ord Mantell, a planet plunged in a nasty civil war over secession from the Republic. She deftly ran the blockade and landed next to an isolated warehouse, where her clients would hurriedly get the containers and run.

Unfortunately, it was a trap. The boss of the warehouse, one Skavak, was secretly working for the Separatist side of the civil war. While Captain Shiv was dealing with an urgent problem, Skavak knocked out his assistant — a young man named Corso Riggs  — and absconded with the entire shipment of blasters… and Mytasha’s freighter.

Riggs told Shiv how to contact his boss. This man, running contraband from a nearby Loyalist fort, was almost as affected by the betrayal as Shiv. The final client was one Rogun the Butcher, who needed the blasters to protect his operations from Separatist “requisitions”.

As could be surmised from his nickname, the Butcher would likely come after Shiv and her clients with extreme prejudice if the blasters weren’t delivered.

Stranded amidst a civil war

Whilst her clients tried to delay Rogun, they also provided Mytasha with information to track down Skavak, largely by infiltrating Separatist turf to steal data. Thanks to her considerable stealth and combat skills, Captain Shiv was highly successful – and made some money on the side by taking payment from the Republic military to mess up with Separatists.

The Not-A-Crab. Click for a larger version.

Increasingly determined to murder the fur out of Skavak, Captain Shiv nearly tracked him down. But her quarry escaped in time, revealing that he wasn’t actually working for the Separatists either and had merely used them to delay pursuit.

Mytasha realised that it had been possible since a young woman employed by Corso’s boss, whom Mytasha had been supporting, had been working for Skavak all along – until Skavak betrayed her too. In a cold rage, Mytasha executed the informer – after she told them that Skavak was headed for Coruscant.

Though Captain Shiv hadn’t recovered the Not-a-Crab or the blasters, her dogged (so to speak) pursuit of Skavak had devastated the local command of Separatist forces, allowing for a well-publicized Republic victory.

Furthermore, her adventures took place while a young Republic Special Operations trooper, Jaevna Shilo, eliminated a large chunk of the Separatist leadership and exposed their Imperial masters.

To Coruscant

Though she’d had loved to hog the glory and milk it for what it was worth, Mytasha had another priority – get in touch with contacts on Coruscant and hound (so to speak) Skavak down. Fortunately, a Republic general offered a free direct flight to Coruscant for her and Shilo, so the two heroes of Ord Mantell could appear before the Senate.

However, the Esseles transport ship they were on was attacked by an Imperial star destroyer commanded by Grand Moff Kilran , who wanted to capture a Republic ambassador aboard.

Though the Esseles was utterly outmatched, Shiv and Shilo (plus their allies Aric Jorgan and a droid repurposed by Mytasha) forced the Captain not to surrender, repelled Imperial boarders, recaptured the Esseles that had been stormed by Mandalorian mercenaries while they were busy… then launched a strike against the Imperial battleship, destroying its tractor beam and enabling the Esseles to escape.

(In this version of the story the Smuggler leaves Corso Riggs behind on Ord Mantell because there’s only so much tolerance for sliminess in the galaxy. This isn’t feasible in-game, unfortunately.)

Description

Mytasha is a small-ish young Cathar with a raspy voice. Her sentences occasionally have a slight sing-song quality to them.

She favours practical clothing with sturdy boots, trousers and a vest both full of pockets, and a big cowboy-style weapons and tools belt with a large gun on each hip. There’s so much stuff on her belt that it probably couldn’t be worn by a man.

Personality

Shiv is one of those flamboyant scoundrel types – sassy, witty, sarcastic, thrill-seeking and self-aggrandizing. She perennially insists that everything she does is entirely legal, ethical and honest and that she is simply a legitimate entrepreneur offering useful services.

Click for a larger version.

Though she often seems chiefly motivated by greed — and frequently presents herself as a complete mercenary — this is because she has considerable expenses. Flying an old, hand-repaired light freighter costs a bundle, and though she’d like to save to buy a better ship this is going to cost millions.

Also, she really likes money – though it’s not as exclusive a motivator as she pretends it is.

Most of her dreams are now about procuring a cool, sexy light freighter and extensively modify, upgrade and improve it for flight performance, stealth, combat, reliability, comfort, built-to-specs technical amenities, versatility, etc. plus cutting edge crew droids such as a C2 series. The bill would be astronomical though, even if she does a lot of the engineering herself as planned.

Heart and mind

Behind her constant “am I getting paid for this ?” refrain also lies the traditional scoundrel with a heart of gold type. She’s a sucker for a sob story and likes helping – though in a way it boils down to thrills and as another way of feeling great and important.

Mytasha is quite witty, and her dialogue is full of patter, jokes and amusing repartee – often punctuated with gestures and expressions that border on miming. She did want to be a comedienne, after all.

Captain Shiv is a particularly dynamic and confident lass, trusting her talent for having talents to always come on top of bad situations and achieve her goals.

Her goal is travel, fun and commerce, not combat. But as the galaxy careens toward another horrible war, she and everybody else doesn’t have much of a choice.

Macho macho man

Though Mytasha has become a part of the galactic smuggling scene, she doesn’t fit in well. This is a men-dominated industry, and many of those have a subculture of acting like dashing, suave rogues oozing with wits, charm and skill. In this subculture, women are primarily a way of keeping score and displaying status.

This lead to widespread abuse, both of actual molls and of women who find themselves in desperate positions — such as war widows on Ord Mantell who have lost everything and get approached by men from the smuggling underground. And as a pretty young Captain of her own freighter, Mytasha is valuable goods.

This has led Mytasha to a policy of keeping most guys from the scene at arm’s length as cordial business contacts – said arm ending in claws if necessary. In contrast she is friendly toward women from the scene, both out of solidarity in a difficult and dangerous industry and to occasionally provide relief to exploited ones.

However, exploiting Mytasha’s sense of solidarity among underworld women is the surest way to rouse her Cathar temper and get unceremoniously murdered.

Got your back

Though she used to sleep around with a lot of musicians she liked, Mytasha has had little romantic life since she became a smuggler. That would instantly reframe her as somebody’s chick, especially if said man has underworld connections (which is the case of about 90% of the guys she knows), rather than as a Captain.

She thus prefers to associate with droids she modified herself, and with a few capable female friends – preferably straight to avoid rumours. Nekev is the main exception to the latter rule – the Rattataki is bisexual, but people have learned that talking crap about gunship-on-two-legs Nekev Nisrok is likely to get you slaughtered before you can blink.

Quotes

Ambassador: “Look, this ‘Ironfist’ mercenary you’re up against… I know his reputation. He’s a killer. He’s never been foiled, never been captured, never been arrested. This is a serious menace.”
Mytasha (miming cooing and exaggeratingly batting her eyelashes): “So what you’re *really* saying is, when I kill him, I’ll be famous ?”
Ambassador: “…”

(Networking with underworld contacts) “I wouldn’t mind meeting some like-minded individuals… to maybe discuss some wholly legitimate business practices ?”

Viidu: “The blasters Skavak stole in your ship belonged to Rogun the Butcher. As employers go, he’s not the most forgiving.”
Mytasha (with an exaggerated “meh” gesture): “Should I be terrified just because he calls himself ‘the Butcher’ ?”

“So, yeah, it’s all taken care of except for the part where you pay me.”

(Reflexively) “I don’t know what you’ve heard about me, but I’ve got nothing to do with any criminal activity – promise !”

(Stretching her arms and fingers and rolling her head to show readiness) “You’re about to see a real live hero in action.”

(Singing to herself) “Credits, credits, credits !”

(With an ample “meh, shit happens” gesture) “Heh, that’s the way the flatcake  crumbles.”

(After an overwrought comment about her attractiveness) “Yeah, that was slick. Slicker than a greased Hutt .”

By Sébastien Andrivet.

Source of Character: Star Wars: The Old Republic MMORPG. Female Smuggler voiced by Kath Soucie.

Writeup completed on the 18^th of February, 2016.