Name: Elara Sode
Codename: Shady Lain
Species: Human
Homeworld: Talus

Age: 35
Gender: Female
Height: 5'8"
Weight: 137 lb
Skin: Pale
Hair: Brown
Eyes: Blue

Occupation: Retired

Personal History:
Elara Sode was born to wealth. Her father was the CEO of a prominent import/export company on Talus and her mother was the heiress to a family of merchants. Her father did everything is his power to raise her in a respectable manner, teaching her the refined grace of an upper class woman and raising her to eventually inherit his company, or to at least found her own. Elara had no interest in such things, however. She knew that money made the worlds go 'round, but she also knew she could make her dreams come true without it.

Elara had a strange obsession with old crime holos. She would watch them over and over again, trying to glean whatever knowledge she could or fantasizing over the 'perfect crimes.' She was smarter than all that, though. She knew that the holos were only fiction, that the only way to really gain useful knowledge was to find it first hand. There were only two ways to do that: go out and commit some crimes, or find someone who is willing to teach you what they know. Any thought of the first option was quickly eradicated, though. Elara loved her parents and she knew what sort of trouble she would cause for them if she were to be arrested. The media would be all over it if the heiress of a major company were to resort to criminal behavior. So Elara's only option, then, was to find a willing tutor.

Finding a tutor was no easy prospect for Elara. Professional thieves, even retired ones, blend themselves well with society and they often made themselves large networks of 'friends' to keep themselves that way. Money, however, was a strong motivator for people to throw off their former friends. Four months after Elara's 15th birthday, she had found a man managing a shop in a middle-class district. The man denied her accusations at first, then laughed her off as a child, and finally reverted to outright hostility. However, Elara was determined to live her dream and the man reluctantly gave in.

The man gave Elara difficult jobs from the start. He figured that with enough effort, he could turn this innocent, young girl away from a life of crime before she got herself into more serious trouble. What he did not expect, was that Elara could be so driven to such an end. So the man began telling her stories about jobs gone wrong and the terrible things he had been forced to do. He told her about how vicious Hutts could be, he told her about the depravity of gangsters, and, finally, he told her about the killings of his comrades and associates. Elara was swayed by these stories so significantly that one day she did not return. The man was relieved as thought he had finally turned her off his own path.

Within a week, Elara had returned. She told the man why she wanted to be a thief. She told him about her dreams and aspirations. She told him about her anxiety at living a life without excitement and adventure. Elara's passion had stunned the man. Never once had he met someone so driven to a single end, especially not a teenager. It was at this point that Elara's training truly began.

Elara trained under the man for nearly seven years. He taught her slicing, lock picking, criminal law: all the things a professional should know. From time to time, he would send her on jobs to steal minor things, gradually increasing the difficulty of the jobs and eventually introducing her to some of his contacts. Under his guidance, she steadily grew to become adept with her new skills.

And then he was gone.

The man had gone missing from his store. Elara couldn't find him at his home nor any other place he frequented either. She spent nearly a month looking for the man, but it was a forgone conclusion. The man had either skipped town or was dead. Her intuition told her it was the latter, but she couldn't help keeping up hope. The man had grown to become like a second father to her and she couldn't just let him go overnight.

It was at this point that she decided she would strike out on her own. Elara ran from her home and leveraged some of her mentor's former contacts. She soon found herself working with a crew to steal from a local bank. This would be Elara's first big job and the others knew it. She was untested in their eyes and would only be a burden. Elara, contrary to their expectations, performed spectacularly. An unforeseen complication occurred when the slicer failed to fully disarm the security system and the alarm went off as they were leaving the premises. Elara intuitively knew which routes she could use to escape the police and she led her companions along until they were safely outside the cordoned area.

From that point in time, Elara quickly began to build a reputation for herself and her crew as they continued robbing a variety of venues. This was in no small part due to the fact that nearly every job they pulled nearly got them caught and Elara got them out every time. With the frequency of 'incidents' rising, the crew Elara was working with began to suspect her of leaking information. They reasoned that the only way she could possibly know how to get out safely was because she was working with them. The crew simply could not believe that her sensitivity to danger and natural intuition could be so high. She chose to flee rather than face their wrath. The entire crew was caught or killed on their next job and the true informant had come to light. Elara, however, never learned about this.

Using what money she had fled with, Elara boarded a freighter to the Mid Rim and found herself on Nar Shaddaa for the first time. It was an unfamiliar place for her and the locals were less than pleasant, but she believed she could make a life for herself here. She quickly built herself a new network of contacts using the skills she had learned from her mentor and the diplomacy she gained from her father. Within two months, Elara was billing herself as a freelancer and was back in work. Over the next few years, she built a new reputation for herself amongst the crime bosses and Hutts she worked with as a true professional. While she never seemed to have money, she was living her dream. Elara was happier doing the dirty work for Hutts than she ever was as the heir to a fortune.

This was until things started to go sour for her again. A string of bad jobs starting in 5 ABY hit Elara hard. Her luck began to run out, it seemed, and it was only a matter of time before she got caught or killed. As much as she loved her job sometimes, she was beginning to believe that her job didn't love her in return. She started contemplating a change in career, but her past employers got in her way. They all had too much on Elara for her to simply leave. If she were to break ties with the cartels, that would be it. She would never be able to work a job again. She would have to flee and hide out on some foreign world, living in fear that a cartel enforcer was just three steps behind her.

Elara's luck was at an all time low. Her money was running out and she was resorting to living on the streets outside a starport on Nar Shaddaa while looking for work. That was when she met the captain of the 'Broken Arrow,' a wookiee who went by the name Otociiirurra. While between jobs, she happened to bump into the wookiee. She never really knew how she could fail to see a creature so large in such a thick crowd, but what happens, happens. Though terrified for her life, for she believed at the time that she had inadvertently angered the beast, she tried to talk down the wookiee. Though confused as to why the woman was talking so much, he was impressed by her eloquence and believed that Elara would have some use as a negotiator. He offered her a position on his ship immediately.

Elara initially refused the position. She was terrified of having a local crime-boss send some of their muscle to deal with her and she certainly did not want to drag this wookiee into it. The wookiee, however, offered her a solution to her problem. He was employed directly to one of Durga the Hutt's immediate subordinates and he believed that while in his employ, his own protection would extend to her.

While torn on the loss of her career, Elara knew that her current position was untenable. She reluctantly agreed to employment by the wookiee and has been traveling with him since.

The vault door was imposing. Elara had seen some impressive security features on private collections before, but this one really took the cake. Supposedly, the slicer at the other end of her data-link would take care of the security, all she had to do was wait and walk through when the door unlocked. A thought crossed Elara’s mind: that thing looked heavy. Even if the door did unlock, how was she supposed to get it open? Her associates were going to cut the primary power the moment the door was open and she was going to get stuck with the grunt work.

“Ten seconds.”

The voice on the other end sounded calm as ever. What bothered her, then, was the crackle in the data link. The bunker they were in was doing an all too effective job at interrupting their communications and she had been forced to boost her ‘link output several times since arriving. Her part of the job was coming up now, at least. She had little to do before entering the vault and she was bored out of her mind. Now, though, she needed to be vigilant for anything that might compromise her goal. That Rodian paid well for what she was here to get and she intended to follow through.

A loud screwing noise was heard from the door as the massive bolts inside retracted. Elara stood up and approached the door, waiting for the lights to go out. The cameras in the corner had long since been disabled by one of her associates, but she made sure to keep her face hidden from it at all times, just to be sure. The lights went out for a moment but the emergency lighting quickly replaced them. To her surprise, the door started to swing open before the power was cut. Not enough to slip through, of course, but at least that’s a few inches she wouldn’t have to do herself. Nonetheless, she cursed her colleagues for not waiting a bit longer before killing the power. This was why she hated working with others, they always found a way to screw her over.

“Go.”

Elara laughed a little at her misfortune. It was easy for that runt to tell her what to do: after all he didn’t have to open this door. Nonetheless, Elara began to heave on the door. It was lighter than she had expected, but still considerably heavy. She managed to open it by half a foot before she gave up on that prospect and decided to slip through the gap.

---

The first thing Elara noticed was a pedestal in the middle of the room. A quick glance told her that what sat on top was undoubtedly valuable, but not what she was looking for. It was probably even more trouble than it was worth, so she went to work searching the shelves that lined the room. It wasn’t long at all before she found her mark: a small, platinum statue of something Elara couldn’t even begin to guess at. The thing was gaudy but the client wanted what the client wanted, and the client wanted this. Part of the job she was assigned was to make it look like a smash and grab, so she began pulling things off of shelves that she thought had some value to them and carefully placing them in a sack on her back. She loved these sorts of jobs, anything the client didn’t specifically ask for, she could keep herself. Anything she could hide from her compatriots, anyway.

As Elara made her way around the room, she alighted on the pedestal again, this time examining the object on top more closely. It was a cube. It certainly looked old and there were intricate shapes on its surface, but she couldn’t imagine any value to it. It might hold some sentimental value to its current holder then? What sounded like a footstep echoed from behind Elara as she reached to pick up the cube and examine it more closely. There was a moment of panic as Elara realized the sound. She was supposed to be the only one anywhere near the vault right now. She had been caught and she knew it, so she put her hands out where they could be clearly seen. What use would getting shot have? As she did so, Elara turned slowly to face the source of the step... But no one was there.

A moment of confusion passed as Elara tried to determine the source of the noise. She was absolutely certain that someone had been right behind her. Never had she been so wrong, but she was glad that she was. If she had been caught, who could know what would have happened? Elara turned back around to face the cube one more time. Looking at the cube now, she began to feel anxious. She no longer wanted anything to do with the cube. Whatever this thing was, it probably would bring more trouble than it was worth.

Elara decided that it would be wise to make a hasty retreat. After that scare, she really did not want to risk staying for too much longer. Even if someone hadn't come along, they would soon. Someone was no doubt monitoring the bunker and facilities like this just don't go dark without reason. She grabbed a few more valuable looking objects off of some shelves and slid back out of the vault, making her way down the corridor into the bunker beyond.

Updated and probably completed, unless I have a revelation on subtlety or how to smooth out the 'where she is now' portion. If anyone has any advice on subtlety in story telling or the proper use of foreshadowing (or not. Probably not), please let me know. It would be much appreciated.