Kaldroa
From An Evolution in RP :: Database
Character Name: Kaldroa Titles and or Nicknames: Kal Affiliation Unaffiliated Age: 28 Relatives: Coming from a clan based society Kal has a rather extensive family but he associates closest with his mother and father (Mauphi and Naurean), his brothers (Autran and Colbin), and his sisters (Lorkray and Uella).
Overall Appearance: Kal has a thin and light build and is just a little short of the average height at about 5'8". As a Ryn he carries the traditional long white hair and mustache of his species which makes him appear much older than is 28 years. Perhaps the most noticeable physical features would be Kal’s tail which is the same color of his dull grey skin but bristles in a tip that is the same color as his hair, which he usually keeps wrapped around his waist. Perhaps what draws the most attention from him though are his vibrant yellow eye which rest above his beak like nose. He is most fond of his nose though, because through it he can make music just as easily with a pipe and can easily mimic the noises of astromech droids.
When it comes to clothing Kal’s style is often conflicted with his surroundings. Typically he likes to wear bright colors, usually in red or blues. However, as a Ryn, his race is often met with mistrust and sometimes hate, in some sectors it’s even legal to hunt Ryn for sport. In areas like these he usually wears his dark brown over coat, tied tight to hide his tail with the hood drawn over his head. For jewelry he usually just wears gold hooped earrings in each earlobe along with a silver stud in his right ear, but he sometimes wear bracelets and rings on his fingers for more festive occasions. When in the kitchen though he always wears a white chef’s shirt and a pair of comfy loose fitting black pants.
Character Avatar: Owen Wilson, but all Ryned up, courtesy of Mike (thanks!)
Personality: One thing that has been constant about Kal’s personality is his short attention span. His parents always told him of tales from when he was a boy of him getting in trouble and lost in a crowd, moving from one thing that caught his eye to another. Because of this Kal hardly stays in one place for very long, tending to get bored fairly easily and always wanting to see new sites to satisfy his curiosity. Because of this he usually walks around in his own world not always aware of the goings on around him and can often be seen doing a small dance mid-step whenever a song gets stuck in his head, which is quite often.
Most of Kal’s personality comes from his family, a group of nomadic Ryns who went from one place of the galaxy to another in search of work. Like most Ryn they had a few taboos such as never sleeping in the same place twice, which may have attributed to Kal’s wanderlust. The Ryn also had a song and dance for almost any occasion which is where Kal’s love of music comes from. His family was quite proficient in skills that tailored towards the...let’s say less than legal professions and performed a number of forgeries and scams. Kal however was not as skilled in these areas so they gave him the job of preparing food, which is where his passion for cooking comes from.
Though friendly, outgoing, and just a little odd in person Kal is completely different in the kitchen. While he learned the basics of cooking at home in a friendly atmosphere he perfected his culinary arts as a slave in a Hutt’s kitchen. There, tempers ran hot and verbal abuse and outbursts among chefs was the norm. After leaving this place and seeking employment elsewhere Kal has often intimidated other chefs with the fiery attitude he deploys in the kitchen, and it has cost him more than a few jobs as well. This didn’t bother him so much as a chef of his skills and talents always eventually found work elsewhere. In fact this worked well with his wanderlust, as when he left he went to a variety of different kitchens and studied under numerous other chefs. Because of this he accumulated vast culinary experiences, and can perform a meal to the satisfaction of almost any species he comes across.
His family, being Ryn, have been met with hostilities in prejudice during their travels. Instead of lashing out with the world and the species who have wronged him, he looked instead at his family. People thought they were a bunch of dirty crooks, and though that was true to an extent, fundamentally they were wrong. They were hardworking and fun loving people despite some of the nonsense that others believed. Because of this he never judges a whole race of sentients based solely on the acts of a few and develops his opinions on people by an individual basis. These hostilities also made sure his family taught him the basics for self defense and hence he usually carries a knife on him. However Kal is by no means a well trained fighter, and would much rather avoid conflict, and would rather runaway than fight. He is spontaneous but always carries a datapad with him that holds numerous recipes, music tracks, and more importantly his own personal list of 10 Things to Do Before I Die. However, once he marks off five of these tasks he adds five more so he always has something to look forward to.
History: The Ryn were sometimes met with suspicion and other times open hostility in various places throughout their galaxy. Because of this many formed familiar bonds in the forms of clans, and Kaldroa’s family was no exception. After Mauphi and Naurean got married they had five children, Kaldroa being the youngest. The family was involved in various cons, Naurean helped his son Autran the arts of forgery and Colbin the finer points of pickpocketing. Mauphi was a natural at reading fortunes with sabacc cards and taught her daughters how to do the same. Kaldroa, or Kal as he began to be referred to as an earlier age, was taught in these fields as well but did not distribute the same talent in these crafts as his siblings. He did however learn to play sabacc pretty well, and though he could not read fortune he did manage to win a few credits from people who didn’t expect a child to play so well.
Unfortunately some gamblers reacted very poorly to losing to someone so young, and in one incident, violently when Kal was eight. After this experience Kal’s parents thought it’d be best if he worked behind the scenes to support his family, and therefore spent most of the time under his grandmother’s care while she prepared meals. At first Kal wasn’t thrilled with his new assignment, it didn’t seem nearly as exciting as the other jobs the rest of his family pulled. But after a while, and several whacks on the head by a wooden spoon, he began to learn how to cook properly and enjoyed it. His grandmother also gave him a new perspective on why they were important to the family. The family pulled scams to put food on the table, and it was up to them to put a spectacular food on the table with a small budget. So in a way if they didn’t do there all in the kitchen it made the family’s hard work pointless.
He worked with his grandma for several years, in what they called their kitchen. What their kitchen actually consisted of was a cleared out space wherever their family was staying and a heating plate with a few pots and pans. After a while cooking became not only his job but his passion, and he would always make a habit of swapping recipes with people his family came across and buying a few cook books with his earnings. His family, though never wealthy, never turned down someone who was looking for a hot meal, and that included a variety of sentients, so Kal expanded his cooking knowhow to carter to people with different tastes. At the age of thirteen his grandmother died and Kal took over her duties as head of the kitchen.
Kal would stay with his family for another five years when he got an itch to go out and try and make a name for himself. What he wanted to do was attend one of the most prestigious culinary schools in the galaxy on Coruscant, but the meager earnings he had saved up with his family made that an impossible goal. Realizing this, Kal boarded the first ship he could afford to the planet closest to Coruscant...which wasn’t close at all. But when he settled on the world he found work a restaurant. He saved up his money once more until he felt like he learned enough and bought passage to another world closer to Coruscant. Kal continued to do this for two years in hopes that he would save up enough money to get to the Core Worlds and at the same time have an impressive resume for the culinary school by the time he got there.
Unfortunately things didn’t go as planned. When Kal was twenty a transport that was supposed to take him to the a new world closer to Coruscant instead headed for Hutt space. It turned out the crew onboard were actual slavers who captured their prey with deception. After being herded to an auction Kal was bought by a Hutt named Momza. Her first intention was to purchase a Ryn because of their rarity in that part of the galaxy and for divination. This panicked Kal because a sabacc deck was just a tool for gambling for him, but luck was on his side when a guard stole a thermos of soup he had made and remarked on how good it was. Momza, a glutton as all Hutts are, also considered herself a gourmet and had an impressive kitchen staff on display. She demanded the soup from the guard and finding it acceptable, instead sent him to work in her vast kitchen.
The kitchen was unlike any that Kal had ever worked in before. Loud jizz music blared and people had to scream orders. In his first few minutes there he was barrage with swearwords that he never heard before, and a fight nearly broke out between two chefs over the proper preparation for a pastry. This was however broke up by a burly four armed Besalisk named Goro Say, the head chef in the slave kitchen. After settling that dispute he then turned on Kal and didn’t even ask for a name, just set him to a stove and barked out orders for him.
Several months passed and Kal began to understand why tempers ran so hot in this kitchen. The Hutt was picky and he saw one chef dragged off to be fed to some creature because one of the Hutt’s meal was undercooked. When your life depended on culinary perfection of course it wasn’t going to be a friendly atmosphere in the kitchen. Before long Kal was cooking and swearing with the best of them, and caught the attention of Goro Say. Say took him under his wing more so than the other chefs and taught him everything he knew in the time they spent together. As time passed Kal learned that Say’s attitude was one of necessity, chefs discovered their full potential under his stern lessons, and he cared for all his staff and felt a blow every time one was dragged off due to the displeasure of the fat Hutt. And though the hours were long and hard in the kitchen the times off together showed a deep sense of comradery between the chefs, most transactions in the kitchen were forgiven, and over drinks and cigars everyone was friends again by the end of the shift. Through their times off Kal also learned how to make decent booze with cheap equipment and can to this day make decent wine with a container, fruit juice, a prophylactic, and just a little bit of yeast.
Four years passed and Kal made a lot of friends, and lost just as many in the kitchen. The toll was taken harder though on Say, the head chef, more than anybody else. Perhaps that was why he responded so soon to an offer from one of Momza’s rivals to get rid of the Hutt. For the next couple of months Say started putting in minute levels of toxins in her food until the Hutt finally died from the poison. The many slaves in Momza’s palace rejoiced when the Hutt died, and the kitchen staff was no different and began looting the place before boarding the nearest ship off world. With enough loot for everybody to live decently for a while Kal and Goro parted ways.
The first several stops from Momza’s that Kal took were dedicated to finding his family again, which he eventually did. There was a happy reunion and he stood for several weeks rejoicing with them until he told them it was time to go. With enough credits he now could afford a trip to Coruscant, and with his now large resume and improved skills he easily got into the culinary school. This however was not the happy time that Kal was expecting. Though he excelled compared to most students the habits he had picked up in Momza’s kitchen stuck with him, he was just as hot tempered and vulgar preparing a meal for class as he had been when his life depended on it, and unfortunately not all was forgiven with these chefs when the stoves went off like back at the old kitchen. After a harried argument with one of his instructors a year into the program Kal found himself kicked out.
Things weren’t so bad though for Kal. Though he didn’t finish the program he did have some training and after a demonstration of his skills in the kitchen he could find work in other kitchens. Unfortunately his strange kitchen mannerism lost him a few jobs but he always managed to find work on a planet that was essentially one huge metropolis. He stayed on Coruscant for about another year until the politics that would lead up to the purge and the Empire began to happen. The air was thick with politics and debates seemed to follow him where ever he went. No longer comfortable with Coruscant Kal left the planet and sought employment elsewhere. Since the purge Kal has gone where the work is. Not much has changed for him since the transition from Republic to Empire, he’s still hopping from ship to ship, planet to planet, kitchen to kitchen. All in all he’s been happy with his decision to leave Coruscant as he has learned even more recipes and met even more interesting people. Though this life may cause some fear, Kal is perfectly happy wondering where his next paycheck will come from and where he’ll end up sleeping next.
NPC: None
Possessions: A backpack that contains few changes of clothes, a kit of kitchen utensils, and spices. Kal also owns a vibroblade, and a datapad that holds his recipes, a selection of jizz music from various artists, and his personal list of 10 Things to Do Before I Die.
