Jay Mertaal grew up hard. He was about ten when his parents and baby sister 'disappeared'. They literally vanished into thin air. Jay and his younger brother Blyss came back from the scrap yard they worked in one evening to find the slum shack they called a home empty. The boys had been too young to know about their parents political activities. Nobody in the neighbourhood would say a thing about what had happened and soon afterwards the authorities came to take Jay and Blyss away. Terrified that what had happened to their family was about to happen to them the two boys ran and never went back to their home.

They had always been poor and so life on the streets was only different at night. They scavenged among the scrap heaps and rubbish dumps and picked pockets to make enough credits to buy food. With nowhere to go they slept in doorways, huddled together for warmth. They had to fight the weather, the hunger and the lowlifes that preyed on the weak in order to survive. It was a miracle that they did.

When he was old enough Jay joined the planetary defence force. Blyss chose not to follow him however and instead got a job aboard a light freighter hauling cargo. The brothers saw each other less and less as their paths diverged. They both had a strong survival instinct but Jay looked after Blyss as long as was necessary, but not a day longer. He had been too young for the responsibility of caring for another, and he ran for freedom as soon as his conscience would let him.

The military was the only real way to get off of Travnin for a boy like Jay and Travnin was the kind of place you really wanted to leave. But the military didn't agree with him, and neither did the Empire. Taking orders didn't come naturally to a boy that had made his own decisions since he was 10 years old and Jay saw the empire for what it was: a group of wealthy power mongers twisting the galaxy into their own image. It's laws were there to keep people like Jay down. Jay showed talent though. He was good with a blaster and a formidable combatant. Jay made it to officer swiftly but didn't like taking orders from the top officers any more than he did from the lower ones. He stayed long enough and saved hard enough to buy a very second hand B-Wing and get the hell off that rock and away from the law he had learned to despise.

For the first time in Jay's life he was free. For about 5 years Jay worked as a hired gun, then a body guard and then a bounty hunter. But hunting wasn't his idea of a living. More often than not he liked the target a whole lot more than he liked the people he was working for. So far his experience of freedom had been little better than army or street life. Jay needed to find his niche. Jay didn't want to be in pest control, but he certainly didn't want to lead a dull life either. His taste for drink, spice and women had developed during his army days and become totally ingrained when he was working in the underworld. He liked the adrenaline of the chase, but not the thrill of the kill. He liked to travel, meet new species and new people, but not to help enforce the rule of his employers. So as his new profession Jay traded in his fighter and five years of savings for a heavily modified YT-2000 and a cargo of military grade blaster gas and started a new career in Smuggling.

And now for the first time in his life Jay truly felt free. The life was seedy and exciting enough that Jay managed to stay comfortable. In many ways the scrapes he was getting into were more exciting. His life mattered more to him now he was doing something he enjoyed so he actually felt fear and that made the thrill of escape all the more intense. He was working for himself now, trading rather than taking on cargo's more and more. The credits mattered little to him. Jay spent them as fast as he earned them, but for the first time in his life he was having fun.
But of course it didn't last. His ship, the "Too Late Now" was docket at Rianna shadowport when the corporates attacked. In about fifteen minutes his ship, his cargo and just about everything he owned was turned to spacedust. The pretext for the attack was "intergalactic piracy". And so Jay took a transport to the core to find whatever job he could manage. He'd survive somehow. But trouble comes in threes. Jay got drunk on the transport and went bezerk when he saw a vidclip of his home planet being "purged" of political and social undesirables. Principally these "undesirables" were being sold into slavery, and rather than being politically or socially undesirable they were just ordinary people. The corporate secporate sector needed workers and the Imperial governor of the Minos Cluster needed cash. Jay was thrown off at the nearest port, where he met a Blue Star Pirate and agreed to join. The rest, as they say, is history!

Pirate

Swashbuckling.
Sabbac.
Drinking.
Carousing.
Looking at glittery things, and pretty girls.
Stealing stuff from people who have too much already.