The Walk-in.

Born into a life of scrounging in Coruscant's undercity, Millia did not see true daylight until she was seven years old. Hemmed in by infinitely towering skyscrapers on Level 1312, the blaze of flickering neon lights and warbling sirens are her earliest memory. From even before she could walk, she would accompany her father to his work: a droid retrofitting station, small and discreet in a two-room garage. About as soon as she was a waddling toddler, she took up the duty of providing supply tools and refreshments as needed to him and his occasional assistant. She never knew her mother, though she was told that she was an influential figure in the Republic Navy, a venerated hero whose call to duty in keeping the galaxy safe kept her from her family. She'd realized that was a lie when she was only four years old.

Just three years later, she realized she was Force-Sensitive. At best, if word got out, she'd be sent to join the Jedi Order. At worst, she'd find herself forced into employ under one of the crime lords and syndicates teeming in the undercity. Either way, she'd be separated from her father, whose health had begun to grow frail due to the smoke and grime he inhaled in his work. Still, with the abilities she slowly developed in secret, she began to sense when someone meant to cheat her father, and she even learned the ability to guide their thoughts to move them to provide him greater credits than agreed upon for his work. At nine years of age, she could levitate chairs in an orbit above her head. Soon, she expected that she could start removing some of her father's burdens entirely with her burgeoning abilities.

That would all change when she walked into her father's shop.

Carting in a heavily damaged - but no less insufferably chatty - droid that referred to her, her father, and the woman all as "meatbags", the fiery-maned woman put her father up to the task of repairing the droid. In the days that followed, the woman, who visited often to check in on the progress, would reveal her name as Mira, but little else. Yet, something about her piqued Millia's curiosity - some strange connection needled the back of her neck. Intent to discover it, Millia reached out for the woman's mind, as she had dozens of times before. Only this time, instead of a brief flourish of colorful thoughts and images for her to try and piece together, she felt only a cold, insurmountable wall blocking her sight.

"It's rude to pry, kiddo."

Wearing the barest trace of a smile, the woman stood up and departed after speaking those words. Panic-stricken and fraught with all sorts of imagined problems she'd wake up to, Millia didn't sleep a wink that night. The next morning, returning at the same time as usual, the woman wore a new item upon her utility belt. An item she gently handed over to her father, asking him if he knew what it was. He nodded and handed it back to her, confusion written upon his expression.

She pointed to where Millia sat on a nearby crate, glaring at the human woman. "That one over there is one of us. You should let me send her to Dantooine. There's someone there who could train her. A child shouldn't grow up in this kind of place."

Jumping up from her seat, a dozen objections flew from that child's mouth. The woman didn't understand; her father was sick, he needed her here with him. The Undercity devoured the sick and weak. She would not leave her father to such a fate.

"If his illness is caused by his working conditions, then all he needs is a change of scenery," she'd said, waving a dismissive hand at Millia's worries. She shoved a thumb at the droid - nearly repaired - she'd originally brought in. "That one gets himself busted up nearly as often as he loses his memory. Your father is competent enough to repair him, and patient enough to ignore his prattling. That makes him rare enough that I want him. He comes with me, you go to Visas. How's that sound?"

Millia met Visas Marr less than a month later, much of that time spent aboard Mira's starship traveling to Dantooine. The sight of the rolling green pastures, a horizon that seemed endless, and a brilliant light cast by Dantooine's sun left her stupefied, far more so than the Miralukan waiting for them at the spaceport. The introductions and explanations of what it meant to be a Jedi had already been explained to her along the trip, but her new master explained them again as she and her father toured Dantooine's enclave with the blind Jedi. Along the way, Millia only spotted a few other Jedi in and around the enclave, and only four of an age similar to hers. She'd heard that the Jedi had all but been wiped out in recent years, but she'd always figured that to just be a baseless rumor. After she pointed this out, Visas solemnly confirmed the rumors - there were very few Jedi left in the galaxy, and the Order itself was still in the process of rebuilding itself up from ruin.

"But you will be a shining light that restores hope to this galaxy, a star heralding a new journey and a brighter future."

Millia wondered how she knew what stars looked like, since she was blind and all. She didn't mention it, of course. She nodded her head and acted like she agreed.

---

The Padawan.

Two years after Millia had begun studying under Visas's tutelage, the Jedi Order split in two. Unable to agree upon the Order's future, those who believed that the Jedi must tread carefully, lest they repeat the sins of the past, took up Dantooine - peacefully - as the center of their new enclave. Friends that Millia had made departed the planet, heading for Coruscant, where the Republic-sanctioned, larger Jedi Order stood, while strangers arrived - always one master, alone, or with one pupil in tow. Far fewer Jedi called Dantooine home than had before when who would leave had left and all who would arrive would arrive.

While Visas had always kept her from dashing forward too quickly, and would often admonish her temper and impatience, she'd never placed a vise on her Padawan's desire for knowledge and understanding of the Force. In this regard, this new Jedi Order chafed Millia almost immediately. Suddenly, knowledge was meant to be doled out in small, measured doses to "impressionable, young Padawans", for fear that too much drive and too much hunger for knowledge would create another Revan. This Order already feared that the one on Coruscant would fail in the coming years, with its few Masters teaching many Padawans at once. In their eyes, they would need to weather that storm, and so vigilance and discipline must be at its highest within their number.

Unfortunately, even if Visas was one of the four founding Masters of this new Jedi Order, Millia was not free of these restraints. Frustrated by these needless limitations, she found herself considered an impetuous troublemaker by many Masters within the Order when she tried to find creative ways to circumvent these rules. It wasn't her fault that so many of the earlier rules they'd set in place had convenient loopholes for her to exploit.

Regardless of the uphill battle she must fight in order to accrue new knowledge and lore, they could not truly stifle her growth in wielding the parts of the Force she already understood. And grow she did. At thirteen, she'd far exceeded even the Padawans years older and more experienced than her. She was a prodigy - that much was clear.

In her sixteenth year, a vision of Dantooine's Crystal Caves shook her awake. She'd seen deeper into the caves than she'd ever traversed when she'd found her kyber crystal - one of the few remaining within the explored parts of the Caverns - three years ago, past blocked tunnels and far, far into the creeping darkness. Within each of these tunnels she passed through, she saw waiting kyber crystals.

This knowledge went unappreciated by Dantooine's Masters, who knew better than she that a shortage of kyber crystals had long plagued Dantooine - even before the end of the Jedi Civil War. With the Republic doing its best to quietly undermine Dantooine's Jedi Order, likely hoping to force a reunification with the swelling Jedi Order on Coruscant, it was proving difficult for them to get new kyber crystals. Two Initiates would soon take their journeys into the Caves, in the hopes of becoming Padawans. But what if there weren't any crystals left within to be found?

"If the Masters won't step forward and solve the issue, I will."

With these words echoing within her mind, she entered the Crystal Caves during the dark of night. Not even her master knew.

Cutting her way through the blocking stone and entering these untraveled tunnels, the Force washed through her like a glacial wind, shivering her to her bones. Such terror that she'd never understood a person could feel gripped her then.

The ground rumbled; the air grew stale and of death; Millia's body froze in place. A creature so massive that it took up the entirety of the tunnel, its head ringed with a crown of spikes, twin tusks bigger than her arms dripping green venom emerging from its jaws, and with claws the same, reached out to claim the foolish girl who'd freed it. Soon after, the two Initiates who would enter the Caves in the coming days would meet their end before it. Because of it. Because of her.

And then Visas Marr was there, her lightsaber clashing against - but not cleaving through - the creature's thick hide. Her master did not wield the Force against it, instead tearing stone from the ceiling and walls, crashing them down upon it before it struck at its new foe. And then Millia was being rushed away, looking over her shoulder in time to see the gargantuan monstrosity brush aside a mountain of rubble, seemingly unharmed by the collapse. It began to pursue, but Visas brought down more stone in its way, giving them their chance to gain distance from it.

Back within the familiar tunnels, the sound of the creature still echoed behind them, distant but following them with ease, as if it could sense or smell them. The entrance was in sight, the dawn shining through it. There was almost no where else to run. She looked to Visas, seeing a steel determination set her jaw.

Shoving her and shouting for her to continue running, Millia witnessed the full might of her master that day. Perhaps due to her species and her natural attunement to it, Millia had always felt the Force as a vibration around her, almost like an aura of energy gathering into a dense, compact form in which a Force-Sensitive could then use. The vibrations that surrounded Visas Marr in that moment were deafening, so powerful that Millia's teeth chattered. Stone split and shattered throughout the long tunnel, causing a cave-in so massive that the rumbling of the pursuing creature was lost in the cacophony of falling stone and debris. When the dust settled, only the quiet sounds of a few pattering stones falling loose from the ceiling disturbed the silence. The creature, perhaps buried and dead in the debris somewhere in the darkness, made no noise.

"It survived, Dear Padawan," her mentor said, sensing her hopes. "Now, we must depart this place. It feeds upon our memory, the touch of the Force. The Caves must be sealed. The Council must be made aware." She spoke her last words softly, the unfortunate truth of what would come next known by them both.

She would learn that she'd looked upon a terentatek, a creature believed to have been warped from its natural state - perhaps once a rancor - into the foul monster it now was by Sith mutations and alchemy during the Great Sith War. As they were now, the Force could do little to harm them, and they could sense when a Force-Sensitive grew close to them. With these abilities, their masters had sent them out into the galaxy with one intention - to hunt and slay the Jedi.

Immediately, a great titanium door began its construction over the Caves' entrance. It seemed the other Masters also all believed the creature had survived.

Millia stood before the Council the next day, her own Master absent. Her misdeeds, foolishness, and recklessness all laid bare, a punishment was quickly agreed upon. It was clear that Visas Marr was insufficient, or unwilling, to temper her Padawan's reckless streak. If things continued as they were, she would soon again endanger herself again, as well as those around her.

At sixteen, Millia received a new Master, an ancient Aleena who went by the moniker Stoke. An ancient, plodding, unexciting Aleena who went by the moniker Stoke. Millia understood exactly why she'd been saddled with such a Master. The irritation she felt over the change could only be matched by the shame she felt whenever she saw Visas Marr, now Padawan-less, walking the enclave. Weeks went by, and the time for the two Initiates to earn their lightsabers passed without any attempt to get new crystals from off-world.

Dogged and determined to fix things, Millia decided that she'd solve all her problems in one fell swoop. Delving into the archives unauthorized, she located the coordinates of the hidden planet Ilum, a place where new kyber crystals could be obtained. With this success, she would resolve the shortage on Dantooine, which would also prove that Master Marr had raised a fine Padawan. She was not so naïve to expect that she'd ever be placed back under Master Marr, but maybe the amount of time she must serve before she could take on a new Padawan might be lessened with the... bartering Millia had in mind when she returned to Dantooine with a pile of kyber crystals in tow.

In the weeks that followed, Millia quietly researched and eventually contacted several suitable assistants for her task on Ilum. Once that step was completed, it was time to act. Planning to borrow one of her Order's Quartermaster-class supply carriers and make the journey, she was quite shocked to find an ancient Aleena Jedi Master already waiting aboard for her.

"Have you considered how sprinting full speed into the dark is what caused this whole mess? Look before you leap, this time."

Strangely, after speaking these chiding words, Master Stoke took a seat at the co-pilots chair, far too big for him as it was. When Millia did not immediately join him, he patted the chair beside his patiently.

"We both know my words fall upon deaf ears, Padawan Koth. On Glee Anselm, a warband of Anselmi have begun stirring up conflict with the Nautolan populace. Our Order has received a request to soothe over this conflict before it escalates. Upon completing "your" mission, you may join me there, so that you can do some good for the galaxy alongside me. Should you agree to this, I shall allow you your trip to Ilum."

With no options but to accept the deal, Millia nodded dumbly and sat down at the piloting controls. They departed Dantooine with the official leave to do so, far different than what Millia had expected. Upon dropping Master Stoke off upon the swampy planet, promising in words that she would come as soon as she was done, Millia then headed for Ilum.

Loyalty: To Master and Friend. Millia is willing to do anything to aid her father, Visas Marr, and all those who have supported and helped her. To her, these bonds are unshakeable.

Morality: 70

Strength: Unquenchable Thirst. Millia's desire to understand the Force propels her forward. Mysteries, artifacts, tales of bygone ages - she eagerly seeks out and absorbs any and all information she can learn from them.

Weakness: Boiling Blood. No matter how Master Marr tried, the hot-blooded nature of her apprentice has yet to be cooled.

---

Obligation: 30 (+5 xp, +10 xp)

Loyalty. A problem child among her Order, it was only thanks to Visas Marr that Millia excelled as she did. Due to her own failures, she is no longer her Master, but Millia would do anything for her. This loyalty to her is what has sent Millia to Ilum.

Millia is a young girl with pale pink skin, short, and prone to puffing out one cheek when annoyed - a common occurrence. She wears the well-fitted, stately attire common for a Jedi, which wears the symbol of Dantooine's Jedi Order proudly upon its breast. The motile tendrils emerging from the back of her head tinge from pale pink to deep blue at their ends. Flowing smoothly, as if eternally submerged underwater, they coil and uncoil as if with a mind of their own.