Jeren Sansiri

Early Childhood Jeren was born on the planet of Lianna, a neutral world in the Allied Tion Sector that served as the headquarters of Sienar Technologies - the world's only major feature. His parents were both workers in the technical sector, one working for Sienar as an engineer, the other as a research scientist specialising in hyperdrive engine technology. The complex and sometimes hazardous nature of the latter's work essentially ensured that both Jeren and his younger sister were raised mostly by just the one parent, for which reason he never truly developed any particular attachments to either parent, having grown to dislike his father fairly early on, simply through a clash of personalities - Jeren being inclined towards the recklessness of youth, while the other was simply too conservative in his views for either to live harmoniously with the other.

Being raised alongside his sister did not, of course, help that particular situation to any great extent, since his parents were of the view that he was supposed to be the more responsible child, serving to restrain the tendencies of his more impetuous sibling. Although Jeren became rather protective of his sister over time, given that he was constantly having to keep an eye on her, he nonetheless does hold her in slight resentment, since he always felt that she had a far easier time with her childhood than he was permitted as a result. That noted, he prefers to push aside prejudices of childhood and thus treats his sister with typical civility, and really sees her as about the only reasonable member of their remaining family, thus making her the primary point of contact between Jeren and his relatives.

The de facto state of one-parenting family became more of a permanent feature when Jeren's mother was killed during an accident that occured aboard a small shuttle carrying experimental hyperdrive engines that she had helped to design, when he was aged but 11, his sister being only a year younger. Since she died while both were not yet into their teenage years, neither of them felt particularly at a loss, since their mother had not been a particularly stable presence within their lives anyway, so Jeren really doesn't reflect upon the event with any great feelings of grief, though he has been known to observe that he'd wished he had gotten to know his mother better. Still, his natural pragmatism prevents such a sentiment from forming into a major life regret. Nonetheless, it was this simple occurrance which caused him to turn his eyes away from the technical field in later life, settling for a profession which, ironically, would be far more dangerous, while yet serving as a bridge between his personal enjoyment of risks and the technically-heavy atmosphere in which he'd grown up, since neither of his parents had ever felt inclined to leave their work back at their places of employment.

Military Career

Upon reaching the standard age of enrolment at 18, Jeren signed up for service in the New Republic Military and was sent to attend classes at the New Republic Military Academy on Carida, despite the objections of his sole remaining parent. Throughout the first year of basic training, he engaged in infantry training, learning basic marksmanship, tactics and military history, along with obtaining basic flight training. Upon completion of that year, he decided to focus entirely upon flight training, since his reflexes and good hand-to-eye co-ordination had served him far better in starfighter simulations than it ever had done during the periodic wargames the academy engaged in for ground-based troops.

After that point, he was trained to fly many different types of ship, ranging from working as a navigation officer aboard military transports, to flying death-defying speeds in a fighter no bigger than 8 metres in length. It seemed inevitable that he would prefer the more risky of professions amongst pilots, enjoying the idea of being strapped into what was little more than a cockpit with a couple of engines attached to the back. Everything after that simply seemed too slow and ponderous to satisfy his particular interests. When it came to determine the direction of his career, it was almost a forgone conclusion that the starfighter corps would be his preference.

This choice being confirmed upon his graduation at the age of 22, Jeren was commissioned as a First Lieutenant aboard the Republic Cruiser RSS Redoubtable, which served primarily on skirmish operations within the Outer Rim Territories. Since he had completed a four-year course, rather than opting for the faster three-year course, he was able to bypass the lower grade of Lieutenancy, settling into his new squadron with the callsign of Red 8 Two years after beginning his tour aboard Redoubtable, he was promoted to Captain and took command over the third wing in the squadron, giving him his first taste of responsibility beyond writing basic mission reports.

With the Redoubtable being one of the ships responsible for protecting Republic interests within what was essentially a lawless area of the Galaxy that operated primarily on the fringe of Republic law, it was inevitable that all aboard saw a significant amount of combat action over the years, as Jeren himself found out. It was under such circumstances that he came to gain a deeper understanding of the stakes that all starfighter pilots played with when engaged in combat - it was not a game, and it became clear to him that the life expectancy of most pilots was not particularly long. Only a handful ever reached retirement age. Such a notion led the pilot to develop a slightly more serious streak over time, developing the kind of reserve that only comes after losing a few friends to directed blaster cannon fire and almost experiencing a similar fate personally.

After serving two and a half years aboard the Republic cruiser, his career was forced to take a different path when it was attacked by several pirate gunships when apparently infringing upon territory under the 'jurisdiction' of that fringe group. Despite destroying one of the three ships and inflicting heavy damage on the second, the cruiser was forced to withdraw with heavy damage and significant casualties, both to onboard crew and to the starfighter pilots that had served to cover the retreat. The ship had managed to retain sufficient hyperspace capability to jump out of the battle, but little else was particularly salvageable. As a consequence, it was scuttled in orbit of the Bilbringi Shipyards, on the orders of the Senate's Military Appropriations Committee, since it was felt that it would be too expensive to repair a cruiser as old as the Redoubtable, so the crew was inevitably reassigned.

Jeren's next posting was, ironically enough, at the shipyards where his previous assignment had come to an end, working a member of one of the several fighter squadrons designed to protect the outpost and escort newly constructed ships to their new headquarters, where they would be assigned full crews and placed on assignment. Although he personally considered it to be a somewhat drab position when compared to a frontline combat assignment, those were nonetheless the orders he had been given, so he remained there for over a year, obtaining his promotion to Major in the 15th month of his time at Bilbringi, at which point he requested a transfer to a posting more appropriate to his abilities.

Anticipating the possibility of being reassigned to another capital ship's fighter squadron, it came as something of a surprise when he was offered a place among one of the several tactical squadrons located on the galactic capital of Coruscant, under the command of the Jedi Order. Since that organisation had limited numbers of personnel available for the various duties it was called upon to perform, the Order had routinely employed military officers for the escort and potential protection of Jedi delegations and even the individual Jedi themselves. Although he felt that the assignment itself was likely to be as tedious as his time at the Bilbringi Shipyards, he had yet to see the capabilities of the Jedi up-close, having always dismissed the Holonet reports on such as mere hyperbole. It came as something of a surprise to find himself working alongside some of the best pilots in the Galaxy.

Perhaps more important, at least in Jeren's eyes, was the simple propensity of the Jedi to go looking for trouble or, rather, to go wherever trouble seemed to be in order to throw themselves in the middle of it and either resolve whatevers problems had attracted their attention in the first place, or not to leave at all. As a consequence, the pilot gained more combat experience within the three and a half years he was assigned to the Jedi Temple than he had found even when serving aboard a military cruiser patrolling some of the most dangerous areas within the known regions of space. A few months prior to what would mark the destruction of the Jedi Order, Jeren was reassigned to a Republic base located within the Vergesso Asteroid belt, alongside a promotion to Lieutenant Colonel. His participation was in part the result of the notion that Jedi would likely spend time aboard the station, during the operational lifespan of the asteroid base, despite the fact that it was not a facility under the direct jurisdiction of the Order. He thus took command of the second of the two tactical fighter wings stationed aboard, ostensibly for the protection of the base from fringe groups like pirates and smugglers.

The Purge

To the human pilot, the notion that the Jedi could somehow be wiped from the face of the Galaxy was never something he had contemplated. He and his squadron mates had flown with Jedi, walked alongside them, and lived with them. Though the camaraderie with the Jedi was nowhere near as close as the pilots had with each other, it was difficult not to get to know some of them personally, and to find friends amongst the ranks of the Order. And they had watched the Jedi fly and, occasionally, fight as well. Rarely was it so that a Jedi was killed in view of their military counterparts, and even when such an unhappy event occurred, the odds were near impossible in their eyes. When the Purge arrived, and Jedi started being killed off in numbers, the shock was significant.

Jeren, of course, was somewhat aloof from those events - the assignment being necessarily isolated, something of a secret from many in the Republic's governing body and certainly moreso from the military - but as reports trickled in from the Core and worlds further from the Republic capital, disbelief was obviously the first reaction. The shock was difficult to overcome, but inevitably it had to sink in. More poignant to Jeren's mind was the people that had never been included in the reports: the officers that he had known on Coruscant that had been assigned to protect the Jedi. If the latter were being wiped out, the former would have died alongside them. That knowledge made the situation intolerable to him, and adjusting to a galaxy that now seemed so distant from the one he had known before proved to be a difficult task.

The creation of the Empire in place of what had once been the Galactic Republic was not something held in particularly high regard by the pilot, either. Though no direct connection to the removal of the Jedi from galactic affairs could be made with regards to the Empire, the timing always seemed a little suspicious to his mind, and it was that, among other things, that persuaded him not to voluntarily recall himself to the nearest military headquarters for reassignment. As far as he was concerned, he had signed on as a Republic pilot, and he would remain that way until he was officially recalled, or somebody told him it had all been a big mistake. Whichever happened first.

The Rebel Alliance

Now serving as an impromptu base for refugee senators and even a few Jedi that had escaped the destruction of their Order and the decline of the Republic they had been brought into existence to protect, Sanctum was to become the staging area for a resistance to the new order that was coming - a place where the values of what was rapidly becoming the 'Old Republic' were upheld. A small military force was put together, and in the midst of such, it left those pilots that had been assigned to Sanctum prior to the crisis somewhat uncertain of their place within the scheme of things. There were new officers outside the hierarchy they were familiar with, though the pilots themselves were now part of a defunct military - one which had been reorganised into the Imperial Fleet. Where would that leave them?

Jeren himself simply kept the orders of the immediate superior that commanded the two tactical squadrons as a whole, and observed the emergence of the fledgling resistance movement with reserved indifference. It was fairly clear to both himself and the pilots he worked with that they could either work within their own command structure or simply choose their paths independently. At the request of Senator Nila Wyn, one of those that had escaped the demise of the Republic and who seemed to have some authority within the newly-formed resistance, he departed Sanctum in the company of ex-Senator Rhiara D'loroc and her companions, as well as with his astromech droid and another officer from the pilot squadrons, travelling to the obscure gas giant of Bespin, to negotiate the procural of resources for the fledgling movement.

Despite a few problems encountered while on Bespin, the mission nonetheless proved relatively successful, and it remained only for them to return to Sanctum - via a circuitous route to prevent their ship being tracked - and determine what was to happen next. As it turned out, events had already moved ahead of them, with Sanctum under attack by a significant pirate force that compelled those on the base to withdraw from the area in a hurried evacuation. Jeren's primary concern, beyond the safety of those he had been assigned to escort, was the lives of his colleagues, since it was painfully clear that none of them would have allowed a battle to rage around them without their involvement. Nor did the irony that, when their squadron had finally been called to defend the facility came, Jeren himself had not been present.

Where they would go from there was an uncertain thing in his mind, but at least one thing was painfully clear: regardless of what happened now, he was bound up in whatever plans this rebel alliance had for the future, and as such, he continues to be resigned to the fact that his abilities are inevitably at the disposal of a movement that had but one purpose in mind: the restoration of the Republic.

If Jeren could be said to have one major flaw, it would be in that he is often his own worst critic, tending to mull over his own mistakes and problems more than is perhaps healthy, at least as far as his overall equilibrium is concerned. Admittedly, such a thing originates with his desire to ensure that he does well, but it nonetheless tends to create issues when he doesn't feel he's quite up to standard on what he is doing, which can lead him to over-compensate for perceived deficiencies. Unfortunately, the fact that he tends to hold himself to such strict standards usually means that he does the same with everyone around him, which doesn't always make for an easy-going atmosphere. That noted, he tries not to be too vocal of his thoughts where possible, preferring instead to keep his reservations to himself unless in so doing further problems could arise.

When not worrying over such things, the pilot does tend to be relatively relaxed in terms of his overall approach to people, even if he does prefer to keep things more formal and courteous, rather than simply lapsing into a familiarity that he otherwise feels uncomfortable with. The only real exception to the rule tends to be with the members of his own squadron, since he doesn't agree that it would be possible to trust other people so regularly with each other's safety and yet continue to remain aloof, so there is often a marked difference in his attitudes to them and to people not included within that group. Even within the camaraderie of the squadron, however, he does tend to distinguish between times when a good, friendly attitude is both appropriate and preferred and those times when a more serious approach is required. This usually manifests itself while engaged in actual flight duties, when he prefers that everyone keep the comm chatter to a complete minimum. Under those circumstances, he can be very abrupt.

As a rule, he can be considered to be somewhat monomaniacal, if not a complete workaholic. Admittedly, he has relaxed a little in that regard since the Empire came to power, since he tends to believe that there isn't much of a hierarchy to work with as far as the Rebel Alliance is concerned - certainly nothing that compared to the structure of the Republic Navy that he was trained to work within. Still, he tends only to sleep for a few hours at a time, and can often be found engaged in paperwork or in working on his starfighter when ostensibly off-duty, simply because he doesn't feel there's usually a good reason to not be working when taking into consideration the kind of resources possessed by the Imperial Navy in comparison to the small fleet maintained by the Alliance - thus, with fewer people, there's more work that needs to be done to ensure there's any kind of a chance of competing with the Empire.

Personally, Jeren does maintain a rather dry sense of humour, and is not completely immune from the ego-generated fighter-jock humour that most pilots tend to indulge in. Otherwise, he tends to be calm and methodical, at least when he isn't anxious about something or other. As far as his temper goes, it is fairly non-existant, although he can be quite good at feigning anger or irritation when he decides a more forceful tone is required to handle a situation.|-

Apart from a handful of scars obtained through training and various combat situations over the years, Jeren doesn't possess any particular markings that might be used to distinguish him at first glance. Although not as tall as he would prefer, he is relatively well built as the result of maintaining a strict exercise and dietary regime, one that he picked up while at the Republic Military Academy on Carida. Consequently, he appears to be in fairly good physical condition, although he occasionally has problems with mobility in his left arm, having severely dislocated his shoulder during a training exercise in his second year. He generally keeps his hair short, retaining a standard military cut, although he maintains that it is only because he doesn't like taking off his flight helmet to find his hair a mess. He always remains clean shaven.

In terms of attire, he usually can be found wearing either a duty uniform or the black flightsuit that is used by Tempest Squadron. He does however have a more formal uniform that he kept from his time with the Republic Navy, though he retains it primarily as the result of the fact that the Alliance has yet to develop any such uniform code for its military forces. That noted, he prefers to avoid wearing it where possible, since he was never 100% comfortable with the dress blacks. Beyond that, he usually always carries a gunbelt replete with his personal blaster, although as a pilot, he considers his sidearm as something of a last resort.

Since he's used to moving around quite a lot, from one assignment to another, or from planet to planet, Jeren doesn't bother to keep many personal possessions. Beyond his clothing, he only has a few ornaments in his quarters, and those mostly consist of framed promotion orders that he keeps as momentoes. He also keeps a holophoto of his family on his desk, but such is about the only physical link he has to his family, most of whom remain on his homeplanet of Lianna. Other that that, he keeps a chronometer on his person for the purposes of timekeeping, and usually a personal commlink for when he is on duty, although he often leaves it in his quarters to prevent people from pestering him or, rather, to prevent him from knowing about it, which amounts to much the same thing.

In terms of his military equipment, he owns a personal Astromech droid with the designation R3-B7, otherwise known as 'Skit', which itself is abbreviated from 'skittish', due to the fact that the droid seems to often simulate that particular quality. The R3 unit is the second droid he has had assigned to him, having had an R2 unit while serving aboard the RSS Redoubtable, though having been forced to acquire a second one when the astromech was destroyed in the battle over Generis which almost destroyed the cruiser itself. The droid is grey in colouration with dark blue panels on the upper dome, which is opaque, rather than transparent, having been replaced at Jeren's preference early in his ownership of the droid. The astromech is set to factory standards, thus having no after-market capabilities, but Jeren finds it amusing to leave the droid lacking the regular memory wipes that many seem to consider mandatory.

Alongside that, he also carries a standard military-issue Blastech DC-17 sidearm blaster as part of his basic equipment, and he carries it holstered on his right hip whenever he is on duty, though he rarely has either need or opportunity to put it to use, which is just as well, since he has never felt comfortable about engaging in ground combat of that ilk, preferring instead to fight his battles in the air or in space. He usually also carries but a single spare Tibanna gas canister, since as far as he is concerned, even using up the one normally held by the weapon indicates extreme circumstances that are both beyond his purview and area of expertise.