Jagen Wrice

"Dad, I wanna be a Clone Trooper when I grow up!"

The only notable fact of its beginning is that it began in Coruscant; the giant, all-encompassing monolith packed with more population density than thousands of habitable star systems combined together. The grime-coated jewel at the centerpiece on the crown of all the most prolific commercial and industrial interests the Galaxy had ever seen - never pleasing to look at on the outset but with a visibly undeniable importance to all grand schemes that came and went.

Grand schemes that didn't much concern the trillions of citizens who inhabit it besides the names changing on the voting ballots, especially in the case of a particularly low-income family living in a two bedroom apartment on the 1255th level beneath the artificial surface of the planet. A father who worked on and off, sometimes three jobs, sometimes none - a disabled mother and a milieu barely enforced by the rule of law in the sense how the upper levels were. This all of course including the kid they had gotten against their better judgement or foresight, barely able to provide for him let alone offer him stable grounds for an education. Modest is what one could call life like it, if they were forced to embellish the situation with the most decorative word possible.

Being the carefree blue-eyed kid that he was during his earliest years (both literally and figuratively) he developed a great attachment to the Clone Troopers in particular, the soldiers portrayed in posters and holos as the action heroes protecting of all Republic even if he had never seen one in person so deep down - and would never see until his adulthood well after the Clone Wars had ended. A trooper costume made of cardboard and plastic sitting in the corner of a small room plastered with posters of the boys in white, both official propaganda of the Republic and his own crude drawings... it was a young kid's escape, his power fantasy to escape the bleak city sector that sunlight would never reach.

It was of course never up to Wrice to be conceived into such a situation, nor which particular hand of cards he was dealt by the sheer act of drawing breath. Now, next a person would probably expect the sentence "but he made the best of it" to segway the tale into a bright ending, though in that case they'd completely stray from the truth. For you see there was only one way for a kid grown like him no matter his genetics or past innocence, a kid unguided by good role models that'd be present in his life, a kid with no path of academic education due to his finances, a kid born with no future in a place where the sky and stars were urban legends to end up:

Gangs.

Wrice knew how to assemble and disassemble most forms of black market blasters before he gave up on middle school, the various seasoned felons of his dingy, dark and overcrowded city block becoming his impromptu teachers and parents wherever his own were not present. And it was so that where he lacked in any sort of formal school merits, he definitely grew a name for himself in the criminal underworld of the underworld's underworld.

When Wrice finally reached adulthood he already seemed beyond redemption, having become a callous, seasoned criminal who cared little for life beyond how many credits it was worth to whoever clutched it. But then again in an odd, twisted way it almost looked as if in the end it was his only way forwards beyond the darkness when he was approached by a real employer in search of his very specific skill sets; a company calling themselves "Orban Six". A stable salary, a job that appreciated his experience and most importantly an opportunity to leave Level 1255... no, an opportunity to leave Coruscant altogether, to see that the sky and what lied beyond weren't just stories.

In truth Orban Six was never any kind of "legitimate employer" as one might've already guessed... but rather a combination of a mercenary sleeve and a private military for paying customers, known for recruiting criminals and other dregs of society in their ranks. People who accepted credits but who nobody would miss. A company with no cause other than money that often treated their mercs as cannon fodder for fat imperial contracts with little regard for the physical and mental health of those they hired, often waging campaigns of grinding attrition or outright suicidal missions that left their partakers broken and exhausted in many ways. All the worst shitholes of the galaxy, ones where even the Empire won't bother sending its own agents. Whether it was sitting months in muddy trenches amidst shelling and creeping hypothermia or delving in ghost ships devoured by project Blackwing, it was all he eventually came to know.

Though with the experience and contracts came credits and all the benefits those held within the civilized Galaxy, and in a range of black market investments he has come across a full set of a 5th hand Katarn armor worn by the Clone Commandos during the past, including old Clone training programs that, in one way or the other, had found themselves outside Kamino. Wrice is a Clone Trooper in all but genetics - a human mercenary replicating a trooper, Albeit a particularly imperfect one at that with arguably more faults than qualities ranging from apathy towards people and rampant alcoholism to a completely nihilistic world view.

yet in a kind of twisted unwitting manner even through the fallible ways and cynical world view of this almost total washout of a human being, with his armor, training, experience, impeccable combat prowess and a callous trigger finger he holds up the legacy of the icons who once kept order in the galaxy during a more hopeful time. Like a ghost from the past, he fights just as fiercely as the Clone Commandos did on their first drop to Geonosis on the first day of the Clone Wars. Whether this waning light of faint ideals of his innocent childhood will be enough to overturn his fate remains to be seen, as unlikely as it might be.

Wrice is almost unanimously described as a pale, large yet lean man with sharp features overshadowed by his jaded aesthetic. When unarmored most of the imposing aura of his 6'3" frame stems from his buff physique despite him being naturally lean, essential for his line of work even if partially achieved with anabolics. His quite blonde hair is often short and shaven from the sides but still carelessly messy, his face shaven but with no routine, leaving him a coarse stubble. His eyes hold an indifferent gaze only garnered by seeing things no man should ever see, his tired expression not all too welcoming even when neutral.

Scars riddle most of his being, from his head to his toe; blasters, grenades, cannons, slugs, he has negotiated with them all during his working days. A particularly evident identifying mark is the three-pronged scar running from his forehead and over his eye, then dividing in two towards his cheek as well as his nose.

Whatever it is, no blaster or fragment could do it.

The path from the grimy underworld of Coruscant to that of a corporate mercenary was always sparing in its moments of glamor, and it is always destined to reflect deeply in Wrice's person no matter what kind of human he would've otherwise become. Indeed, in the rare moments when Wrice is faced with the civilized world instead of some derelict ship at the Outer Rim he is often seen as nothing if not a stoic soldier who cares little for that which doesn't concern his work.

Forever a workaholic, a mind recluded by perpetual horrors and a callous front to top it off, many find it difficult to socialize with him beyond forced co-operation during missions if not for his ever deadpan sense of humor that seems to prevail even in the worst situations. But that which he lacks in social development he duly makes up for with his experience on innumerable battlefields and unthinkable slaughterhouses, for he is not only experienced in personal combat but quick to take control of the situation and assume the leadership role as well with an unimaginably level head that is always held above the mayhem.

In short, he is a cold but assertive presence with a bleak history and even bleaker future, stoic and reclused with his emotions to a bitter extent - but in the end a loyal warrior who has a deep understanding of his line of work and who won't leave a comrade behind.