"I am what I am. I'm a slave to my whim. There's nothing I can do, but do what I do."
— Cayce, explaining her mercurial nature to Hettyc.
Cayce Urriah Kata was a Mandalorian criminal who held several positions of relative importance in galactic politics throughout the years. Holding the titles of Empress' Hand, Queen of the Black Sun, and Guildmaster of the Bounty Hunters' Guild during her lifetime.
History
Early life
Cayce was born in before the Clone Wars to a creditless tailor named Tdoh'd Urriah and an out of work ex-prostitute who left before Cayce could walk. She was born on the planet Keyorin, a free world of pirates, smugglers and other career criminals. Cayce's childhood was rather unremarkable, she spent most of her time helping her father with menial tasks or with her nose in a book. Living in poverty motivated her to get out of the ghetto, and find a better life for her father, and with no money, she was forced to educate herself.
Cayce's father was not well received at his work, and at some point during her early teen years, he was forced to take a loan from a local Aqualish criminal to keep their home. Unable to pay back the loan, Cayce was eventually picked up off the streets by a gang of Rodians working for the loanshark. With his daughter held hostage and due to be sold off as a slave if he couldn't pay, Tdoh'd Urriah did the last thing he wanted to, and called his family.Tdoh'd called upon the Black Dog Company, a mercenary organization whom his great-grandfather had co-founded beneath the banner of a wider criminal organization, one that had run in their family, that Tdoh'd had tried to escape from the shadow of - the Urriahn Syndicate. The Black Dogs came to Cayce's aide the next day, blowing through the Rodian gang's slum of lairs until they found her. Cayce watched as the Aqualish crime lord was cut up in front of her, and something inside of the quiet, bookish girl clicked over. On that day, Cayce Urriah knew she wanted to be a soldier.
Cayce also felt great love and loyalty to her father, who wanted her to take over his shop when he died, and the conflict within her crushed her for years, until she was sixteen, and her father fell ill. With no money for medicine, Cayce went looking for work. At the space port, she took up a contract with a band of Trandoshan slavers who would pay her ahead of time for cleaning up the ship and helping out on their route of deliveries, which ended on Nar Shaddaa. Cayce left the money with one of her aunts who was watching Tdoh'd and left in the middle of the night.
Mid - Late Teenage Years
When Cayce set down on Nar Shaddaa, she disappeared into the depths of the city, finding work in the sleaziest and most desperate places she could, because they always paid the most. She slang chems, whored herself out, and fought alongside local gangs for credits, of which she sent the majority back home to pay for her father's medicine and care. While she was working through the undercity, she ran into a highly cybernetic mercenary who she fought with and against several times throughout the years, finally deciding that to up her game, she would have to go under the knife as well.
She took up a contract in Nar Shaddaa's Doll Parlour, a cybernetic brothel where the girls were implanted with personality jacks, input devices that would allow the client to pick what his lady of the evening would be like, by slotting them with a microchip. The girl would go to sleep, and wake up when her shift ended, a little sore, but lacking any memories of the act. Cayce worked the Dall Parlour for four years. During the first year, almost all of the money she made was sent home, until one day a letter came back with news of her father's death.
Her strings cut free, Cayce dove deeper into her work, hardening her heart and saving up every credit she could for her eventual transformation. After her four years were up, she entered a black clinic, and paid the cyberdocs there for all of the work she wanted. Cayce was given a full-body reconstruction, starting with a melanin tilt, so nobody would recognize her by her dark skin, and ending with enhanced reflexes and strength adjustments, wiring up her muscular system to make her even stronger. Her brain was adjusted to fit an implant that would allow her to calculate odds and think twice as fast as a regular human. All in all, she spent a full month unconscious, under the knife of the best of the best.
By the time she awoke, her bank account was drained to its dregs, and she was ready to become the soldier she wanted to be. Heading back to Keyorin, she visited her father's grave and the ruins of their home, before finding the local crime boss and joining up as one of his enforcers to defend the city she grew up in. She waited for months before the Black Dogs came back through the port of Keyorin, and she found their leader in a local bar. She demanded that he allow her to join up, but was declined. While they were talking, a gang of locals made their way in, with a bone to pick with Cayce. Using her enhanced reflexes, she disabled them with her hands and knees, and turned back to talk with Morgan, the leader of the Black Dogs, who was impressed with her skill, and welcomed her in.
Early Career
Cayce joined the Black Dogs as front line soldier, but her skills, cunning and strength raised her through the ranks very quickly. After a few years, Cayce became the second in command of the organization and also became romantically involved with its leader, who she eventually married. Cayce and Morgan fought through dozens of jobs together: they fought an insurgency on Tatooine, hunted rebels on Caluula Station, and terrorist cells on Grizmallt. The company's last job happened on Chateuse VII,where they were betrayed by their client and framed for the crimes of a corrupt corporate executive. Cayce was captured by their client while the team was out, and was forced to watch as the tides of rebelling civilians in the streets tore apart her husband and most of her team. She was saved by the last survivors who made it back to base, and together, they avenged Morgan and the other Black Dogs, before going their separate ways.
Cayce was broken and embittered by the loss of her husband and friends, and went her own way. She drifted the galaxy for years, taking the deadliest and most illegal jobs she could find, be they bounty hunting, assassination, or mercenary jobs. Eventually, Cayce disappeared from the galaxy for many years,.
Return
After decades of inactivity, Cayce returned to activity within the galaxy. She landed on Kashyykk, seeking work amongst the growing community of outsiders who lived amongst the Wookiees. When she set down, she found that the landing zone was in chaos. The Storm Troopers of the Imperial Remnant were at war with the Clone Troopers of the Grand Army. Bored, she picked a side and opened fire on the clones. In the aftermath of the battle, she picked up a downed Imperial trooper, and helped him to her ship. She delivered him back to Coruscant, the Imperial Throneworld, where she would meet Empress Rayn, the Sith ruler of the Imperial Remnant of Coruscant.
Rayn detected a previously unknown force sensitivity within Cayce, and admired the woman's reckless abandon, and offered her a position as her Hand. Cayce accepted, and was taught to wield the dark side, and became the Empress' personal spy, assassin, and arbiter. It took the rank and file troopers some time to warm up to her, but eventually they came to accept her as one of them, and fought alongside her against the combined forces of the Republic and the Jedi. Cayce formed her own division of Darkside assassins in service to the Empress, the Walkers in Darkness. Meltharas Marrock and his lover, a Mandalorian soldier by the name of Logan, and several others.
While serving Empress Rayn, Cayce met the jedi duo of Owyn Graves and Chris Novastar, who would eventually become Chris Fel. One night, Novastar snuck into her secret lair beneath the Imperial Palace and told her that he felt the good in her, that she could be redeemed. Cayce told him to leave her be or she would end him, but it struck a cord within her, and she befriended the Jedi who had dared to come to speak to her.
Finding herself trapped between duty and friendship, Cayce eventually found that the two could not be combined, and that duty was the weaker point. She was accused of being a traitor when she dispatched an enemy of the Empire with aide of the Jedi who she had been speaking with when he attacked. Cayce fled her own forces who had turned on her and escaped to the world that had always left the biggest imprint upon her - Nar Shaddaa. With several Jedi, she hid low in the Refugee Zone for several days.
The Jedi put her in contact with a Republic general by the name of Mass Questi, who recruited her to watch over the criminals of Nar Shaddaa in the guise of a Black Sun Vigo. However, when Imperial forces tracked her to the world, her Republic handler cut the tie and let her loose. Instead of standing down, Cayce and the Walkers in Darkness that had remained loyal to her declared themselves actual Black Sun, and the Walkers in Darkness became an actual syndicate to defend themselves. Due to the Imperial and Republic ravaging the trade lanes, the Black Sun had been weakened for some time, and it didn't take much for Cayce and her loyalists to purge the Vigos and declare herself boss.
Black Sun Queen
The Walkers in Darkness began a recruiting phase that would put them on top of Nar Shaddaa, and after a chance meeting with Alissa Mitra, Senator of Nar Shaddaa, the two woman hit it off immediately, and began to plot. The astromech droid that Cayce had received, R4-XQ, was a hand-me-down from Black Sun boss to Black Sun boss. He had been active since the time of the Clone Wars, with no memory wipes. A quirky droid to be sure, intelligent, and Cayce realized—with hundreds of years of dirt on thousands of people. She got XQ a vocabulator. Not just a vocabulator, but an entire tear-down. He was added with two more CPUs, one containing the persona and systems of an HK droid, the second containing the software for a financial assistant droid, which would come into play with her plot. Grateful for his new-found ability to speak basic, and think clearly, XQ remained loyal to Cayce, and fed her hundreds of years of secrets that it had observed. Cayce used this information to blackmail, destroy, execute and ruin hundreds of politicians, minor crime lords and former Black Sun executives, cementing her play for power.
Together, Cayce and Alissa met in the server room within the Black Sun offices, and XQ tapped into the city's financial grid. Utilizing the distributed processing power of thousands of servers within the city that the droid had sliced into and remotely controlled, they sent a cooked up virus into the stock exchange and banking system. Within seconds, they had made thousands of credits, and by the end of the night, both of them were multi-billionaires, and two of the wealthiest women on the moon of Nar Shaddaa.
Cayce finished her coup d'état, using her money and the whispers of R4-XQ to overthrow the Black Sun. Those who she had blackmailed annihilated those who she didn't, and thousands died in a single evening of upheaval. She landed on Ralltiir at the island of Port Novala and slew the Lord of the Black sun in ritual combat, and declared herself Queen.
With her forces in play, the Black Sun elite landed on Coruscant in a haze of fire and a wash of explosions. Cayce made her way to Empress Rayn, who's forces had been hounding her still, and offered her to keep her life in trade for neutrality. Rayn found this agreeable, and the hostilities stopped.
Second Disappearance And Return
After several years at the helm of the Black Sun, Cayce disappeared again into the unknown sectors. She left a successor, who eventually passed on control of the group to Klugga The Hutt. Rumors spoke of a strange Cathar baring Tionese sigil tattoos escorting her into a ship. She was gone for almost a year before returning suddenly. She arrived on Tatooine in the city of Mos Eisley and met with Klugga, demanding her syndicate back under her control. Klugga negotiated a partnership, with him ruling over the domestic aspects of the Black Sun, and her managing the direct combat aspects.
Logan, who had been with her from the very start, returned and joined with Cayce again as an Executive of the Black Sun. They became lovers and he inducted her into the Mandalorian culture alongside Tyro Gutter, who Cayce had met on the serene world of Ruusan. Cayce was given her first set of beskar'gam, and used it to lead the Black Sun to victory in combat and warfare. In time, the Exchange appeared on Tatooine, seeking to overthrow the Black Sun on their native territory. After several bloody skirmishes, the two syndicates met on a space station above the planet of Vjun, and attempted to negotiate boundaries and a truce. Instead of a truce, this began a bloodier and nastier war.
The Black Sun - Exchange War
While Cayce was gone, the Jedi who had freed her from Imperial servitude, Chris Novastar, had gone on to become an Imperial Knight in the newly risen Fel Empire, which had taken Coruscant from the Imperial Remnant and the Sith. Chris Novastar became Chris Fel, and had an intense hate for Cayce, who he felt had broken his heart, or something, she never actually found out why.
Knight Fel made a deal with the Exchange to lure Cayce to the city of Iziz on the world of Onderon, where she would meet Christopher alone to discuss an end to their hostilities. Instead of meeting him there, she found herself lured into a trap by the Exchange, and was quickly surrounded. Utilizing her jetpack, Cayce managed to escape to her ship in a hail of blasterfire, and made hyperspace before the Exchange forces could get to her. She landed on Ruusan, who had a well defended and shielded hospital, and sought medical aide. The Exchange came after her, tracking her signal, but were fought off by the combined aide of the Black Sun who had come to her calling, and the Jedi forces who had gathered to defend Cayce.
Over time, the war pattered out, as Boss Hulio of the Exchange left the company behind, and his successors were less adept at their job.
Becoming Mandalorian
Tyro Gutter and Kaze Darasuum, who had been Cayces friends and allies on Tatooine eventually came to her, and told her that they thought she would be an excellent Mandalorian, but that the Black Sun was too corrupt for the life of an honorable warrior. They asked her to make a decision on which side she would stay with, and Cayce chose to become a whole Mandalorian. Resigning the Black Sun for the final time, Cayce left Klugga and her allies for the final time, and followed them to Mandalore Prime, the village of Enceri where she met Gar'th, the man who would become her second father.
Gar'th was a former Mandalore from the clans of Dxun, who had grown tired of their life and had settled down as village magistrate of Enceri. He welcomed all of the clans who didn't have homes in and gave them land and space to farm and train on. Tyro and Kaze introduced Cayce to Rhubardin, the Alor of clan Darasuum, who Cayce first joined with. While in Darasuum, Cayce met a woman named Aether, who she became fast friends with, and they spent a lot of time flirting and fighting alongside one another.
In Enceri, Cayce learned how to fight like the Mandalorians, but also how to farm, and build the temporary huts that Mandalorians often live in, forge Beskar, and she found a home, and a new soul. The bitter and angry Cayce that the galaxy had known as an assassin and criminal was washed away as she walked on the proverbial white snow of the Mandalorian culture. After she passed her Verd'goten, Cayce was engaged to the Mandalorian Mercenary Myles Shysa, and was prepared to marry into his clan, leaving Darasuum.
After some time, Gar'th left Enceri, but adopted Cayce as his own daughter before she left, and without their leader, the clans gradually split away. Cayce and Myles left to Tatooine again, which had freed itself of Black Sun control in her absence, and had been taken by the Fel Imperial armada. Cayce became the co-Alor of Shysa, and recruited several young potential warriors into it, raising them to become Mandalorians. A week before they were due to be wed, a rival of Cayce's, Adun, the Alor of Clan Beskar Buy'ce, whispered into Myles' ear and told him that Cayce was using him and the Mandalorians for her own personal army, and the wedding was off. Myles disappeared for a while, leaving Cayce to build their clan without him. He returned, a year or so later, demanding that she welcome him back as Alor. Cayce told him no, as she had been the one to recruit every current member of the Clan. They fought atop a cliff in the Dune Sea, before reaching a draw and being dragged away by their allies. While Cayce was recouperating, she sent her clan out to scour the Dune Sea for a new home. There, they found a fortress that had long been abandoned, and made it their home. The fortress became known as Teroch Bral - the pitiless fortress. It was open to all Mandalorians and daring outsiders who came to do business, and fight in the great arena that the clan had built in the catacombs beneath the Fortress' audience chamber.
The Blood of Kata
Cayce went for a ride to Ruusan, where she frequently went to meditate on life. There, she met a Jedi padawan named Devynth. When their hands touched, they had a collective vision suddenly in the force. The vision was of a Mandalorian by the name of Kata, who united the disparate clans of Mandalore beneath his banner, into a singular force. The vision didn't state if it was in the future, or in the long past, but Cayce knew, that the boy's hand she held was of the blood of this Kata, and he knew what he had to do. They returned to Tatooine together, and he was inducted into the Mandalorians.
That night, twelve Mandalorians who had been Shysa met on the plateau in the Dune Sea outside of their fortress. They built a raging pyre on the cliffs, which they threw their banners into, and passed their armor plates through the fire, blackening the clan sigils painted over them. With their armors as black as those of the ancient Warriors of Shadow, they raised their hands in unison above the pyre and cut a gash into their palms, letting their collective blood drain through their hands, and then boil away into the fire. At the completion of this ritual, the Mandalorians of Teroch Bral were no longer of the Clan Shysa, they gave themselves a new name: Kata. Myles Shysa was given his clan name back, without a single warrior remaining, and the Clan Kata was born.
The Sith - Imperial Skirmish
Living on the cliffs of the Dune Sea, Clan Kata came to the notice of the local Imperial Garrison, the leader of who was an impeccable man by the name of Corvin Hoon. The Mandalorians were considered a pest, and the Imperials were sent out by the local government to scare them off of Imperial territory, but this only ignited a bigger fire within Clan Kata, who declared their territory to be unassailable and accepted all comers who would try and take it from them. Around this time, Aether Darasuum and Cayce became lovers.
The first attempted insurgency came from the local Tusken Raider tribe, who hated that the Clan was infringing on their traditional land. Cayce met with the chieftain of the tribe in single combat, and defeated him. She took his face wrapping and tied it around one of her arms as a trophy. The chieftain was captured, and brought into Teroch Bral, where he was treated and allowed to heal, before the Mandalorians released him into the trackless wastes, where he would be forced to prove himself once more to his people.
The next attack came from the Imperial Storm Corps, who rolled out several tanks across the sands, and sent out a dozen troopers. The battle was fierce, and there were wounded on both sides, but by the end of the first afternoon, the Storm Troopers were forced to Withdraw as mines were scattered about the battlefield by Mandalorians from the air.
Shortly after this attack, Cayce and Aether were wed to one another, and Aether became Cayce's second in command. They were married by Kaze of Darasuum atop the cliffs outside of Teroch Bral, with several Mandalorian chieftains and allies in attendance.
The honeymoon period was interrupted, however, as explosions rocked the Mos Eisley space port, and a fleet of black ships appeared in orbit. The Sith had come to Tatooine. The Mandalorians saw a greater enemy in the coming of the Sith than they ever did in the Imperials, and a hastily formed pact was made with General Hoon's forces. However, the Imperials lost their fortress in the early fighting, and were forced to go underground. A resistance was formed of loyalists, while the Sith began house to house fighting with the armored survivors. By the end of the first year, the Sith were the law in Mos Eisley, with armed networks of resistant rebels in the mountain caves in the Dune Sea.
As the Mandalorian-Imperial-Resistance alliance prepared for their final strike against the Sith forces, Corvin Hoon was captured and executed publicly. Knowing that the Sith had the tendency to string up the bodies of their enemies, Cayce rocketed out of the crowd and beheaded Hoon's corpse with her sword, throwing the head into a bag. She fled the city as Sith came after her, and returned to Teroch Bral, where the alliance was ready to fight. The battle was bloody, with losses on both sides, but the Sith were repelled from the Dune Sea.
Corvin Hoon's head was stripped of flesh, until just the skull remained. The Mandalorians constructed a memorial for him out of beskar, silver and marble, featuring his skull prominently, this was gifted to the Imperials. After several months of active warfare, the Imperials received the boost they needed to retake the planet, when an Imperial armada that had been fighting in another system arrived upon Tatooine. The Sith were scattered and fled, and the Imperial Storm Corps reclaimed the Garrison. Corvin Hoon's sacrifice was lauded with posthumous medals and titled by the Imperials and the Mandalorians, and his memorial was placed upon the walls, to look over the city he had died to protect.
The Move to Zonama Sekot
After the skirmish, the Imperials grew tired of the Mandalorian occupancy of Tatooine, and a renewed gathering of Jedi declared their intent to arrest the Mandalorians who had returned to being considered nuisances after the war was won. The Clans who had gathered on Tatooine set out on their own, seeking new homes. Clan Kata came to Zonama Sekot, a world of lush green jungles, and home to the Yuuzhan Vong, the Potentium Order, and a group of Rangers who defended the sentient planet from interlopers.
Cayce set a loose alliance with the local Yuzzhan Vong and the Potentium, that would allow her clan to live on their world unmolested. The serene world provided a safe home to the Mandalorians, and a sanctuary for Cayce and Aether, who birthed and raised their cloned daughter, Kebii'tra Kata, there. While Kata would frequently travel away from Zonama to work, fight, or visit allies, Zonama was their home for almost ten years. Doran Skytower, later known as Vhe'tra Kata joined the clan after being found on Tatooine, a drunken sod. He was rehabilitated, and became one of the strongest and most renown members of the clan throughout the years.
The Dar'manda Wars
Without a singular leader to lead the Mandalorians, and with the non-Dxun clans split across a dozen worlds, the Mandalorian chieftain Rhubardin of Darasuum decided that the Mandalorians required central leadership again, and declared herself Mandalore. After winning several fights, the general consensus was that she was the boss. The non-Dxun clans pledged to follow her, and the scattered clans re-united as one force.
The clans of Dxun, lead by Ardon Mereel, came to hate the idea of a Mandalore that they had not approved of. They had disliked the entire idea of Mandalorian clans not under their control, and there had been years of insults, fights, and the occasional pushing match between Dxun clans and the upstart clans, who they considered fake. Rhubardin taking the title finally tipped the scale, and disdain became outright war.
On a holonet forum, the Mandalorians following Rhubardin and those following Ardon began a war of words, which ended with a post from Ardon himself: declaring the upstart clans Dar'manda, and beginning a bloody, savage war. Meanwhile, in the galaxy, the Revenant Armada had been founded, a Sith military who were waging war on Coruscant, and the already war-torn world became the site of some of the first skirmishes of the Dar'manda wars. Multiple Kata members were ambushed while scavenging the wreckage of the Imperial center, by the Dxun clans, causing Kata to enter the war for real.
After too many losses on both sides, Rhubardin agreed to step down if the Dxun clans would acknowledge the younger clans as their peers. This was agreed upon, as both sides had grown respect for one another through honorable combat, and a conclave was called.
The Mandalorian Conclave
The chieftains of all of the active clans gathered in a bar on Kuat, and came to an agreement that nobody would bear the title of Mandalore without the agreement of all of the clans. They put a stop to the hostilities, and it seemed to become a new era of prosperity and respect from both sides of the Mandalorian populace.
However, during this time, Zonama Sekot became unstable, and the Mandalorians had fallen out of favor by the locals after several brawls over cultural misunderstandings. It was decided that the Clan would return home to Mandalore Prime. Kata settled in the area around the abandoned village of Olankur, where they built up an encampment around an old hunting lodge and expanded out into a training camp with turrets, a laser grid and multiple capture points for war games. Kata remained on Mandalore Prime for some time, rebuilding their numbers with young warriors and training with other clans who came to become allies.
A year or so after it, the conclave's agreement eventually fell through, however, as several Mandalorians began to press for a new Mandalore, and multiple people came forwards, seeking to take up the title for themselves. A second conclave was called, and was had on Olankur, where the clans could meet to discuss the decisions that needed to be made.
After several hours of talking, debating, and arguing over what they should do, Vhe'tra Kata decided that the bickering was below Mandalorians, and declared himself Mandalore. He stormed off into the encampment's battle circle and said anyone who wanted the title would have to kill him for it. Challengers lined up, and Vhe'tra was defeated by a warrior of Clan Ordo, who then was defeated by Niv Dralshy'a, Alor of Clan Dralshy'a. Vhe'tra's unconscious and severely wounded body was saved by Cayce, who repaired his broken form with enhanced cybernetics and bio-grafts. His memory was impaired, but he returned, a whole man.
During this time, the Death Watch had been active in the galaxy again, and Cayce and her clan set out to put them back in the ground. There were several skirmishes, and in one, Aether Kata fell beneath the spear of a Death Watchman, shattering Cayce's heart. Unable to live in the camp where they had lived for years now, Cayce set off on her own.
The Byss Imperial War
Cayce returned to her clan after almost a year, having spent her time hunting the Death Watch, and ending up severely wounded. She was nursed back to health by a band of Barabel warriors that had found her, unconscious atop a pile of dead Death Watchmen, and recuperated on a beach on Zeltros. She came back a different woman; charged with hate for the Death Watch, and declared it her sworn duty to root them out... and with a tan.
The clan hunted the Death Watch wherever it hid, and during one skirmish, Cayce lost an eye to a youngling child that had been the son of a warrior she slew. Instead of replacing it, she kept the lost eye as a trophy of her sacred war, and fit a cybernetic sensor suite into the empty eye socket, to make up for the lack.
Cayce lead her clan away from Olankur, to the Jedi world of Ruusan. The clan accepted a defense contract for the New Order of the Jedi, setting up a farm and encampment upon the cliffs overlooking the Jedi temple, they aided in defending the planet from Sith incursions. Meanwhile, while this was happening, Niv Dralshy'a was cementing her power base as Mandalore, and took and defeated many challengers, until she was in truth, the Mandalore. Niv had great ambitions, and first turned her eyes on the world of Nal Hutta, where she lead the Mandalorians to do battle with the Hutt forces for control of the planet. After a number of battles, the Mandalorians came to control Nal Hutta, and began to use it as a staging point for other wars.
It was then, that Niv declared war on the Sith Empire out of Byss, and began to expand her armies to prepare for the assault. The Sith of Byss were unlike the Hutts, they were not content to sit idly by as the Mandalorians attacked, and began an active assaults on worlds where the Mandalorians had enclaves and encampments. The final battle before the assault on Byss was a skirmish on Ruusan, where the Sith attacked Kata's encampment and the allied Mandalorians gathered there.
The attack on Byss was sped up, and Niv lead her forces to the firey world's surface, where they did battle with the Sith Empire on their own territory. The battle was a spectacular failure, with the Mandalorians against superior odds and superior strength, every Mandalorian on the planet that was following Mandalore Dralshy'a fell in the battle. Support teams arrived to pull downed warriors into evacuation ships, and get off of the world. Those who could walk, fled to their ships, and those who couldn't were dragged away amid the laser fire of the Imperial Navy. Confidence was lost in Niv, and she stepped down from the title of Mandalore. Things were peaceful, for a time. On Ruusan, a young scientist named Kiera Varless joined with the Clan and was adopted by Cayce as her own daughter. On Ruusan, Cayce met up with Jys Tebut, a Jedi she had known ages before, as a soldier of the Black Sun. They became fast friends, and Cayce declared them kin.
The Mandalorian Charter
In the aftermath of the loss at Byss, the Mandalorians pulled together without a Mandalore, building a council and creating a charter. Cayce had long come to distrust councils after having been burned by some of the original upstart clans when Kata was young, and refused to sign the charter, which allowed a majority vote to declare anyone Dar'manda, which Cayce disagreed on completely. Cayce and her clan expanded from Ruusan to construct a space station in the Roche asteroid field where Kata would mine the asteroids for ore. The Roche Station became Kata's strongest bastion, where children were raised, and science was done.
Cayce's disinterest in signing the charter came to cause the intense dislike for her clan by the clan Socarras, ran by A'denla Kad Socarras, which resulted in numerous hostilities. A'denla took to comming members of Cayce's clan and demanding they challenge her for her title as Alor, so that they could sign the Charter. Every single member of Cayce's clan laughed in A'denla's face and told him just where to stick his ideas.
The disagreement came to an end with Kranak Socarras coming to visit the Roche Asteroid Base, where he attempted to destroy the station's power reactor. Fortunately, life support backups kicked in, and Kranak was chased back to his ship in a hail of gunfire. In the aftermath of the disagreements with Socarras, Clan Fett who had also felt the ire of Socarras joined with Kata. Several members, including its former Alor, Nico fett, joined Kata, while others left for other clans, or became Dar'manda, and left the Mandalorians as a whole. The Council heard Cayce's complaints, and Socarras agreed to keep Kranak on a leash; still, the hostilities between Socarras and Kata would last for generations. At the end of this period, a man by the name of Tepes Karr had become Mandalore.
The Jasier War
During their time on Roche, the Mandalorians of Clan Kata came to visit a world known as Jasier that was off the galactic maps. There, they found a holdout of Fett survivors. However, the survivors were Jedi, who still claimed to be Mandalorian. One of the Fett-Jedi approached the Kata warriors rudely and spoke ill of their family. He was attacked and killed, this began the war that would annihilate their planet.
In the aftermath of the death of their kinsman, several Jedi of Jasier attacked the Kata warriors on their world. The warriors withdrew, after taking a hostage with them. After the Jedi tracked them back to the Roche Station, they assaulted it, to retrieve Kata's hostage. The hostage was released after the attackers were beaten back, but Cayce and Nico were both unhappy with the continued survival of the Fett Jedi, and the war began in earnest.
Cayce lead her clan into battle above the Jedi enclave of Jasier, killing their ground forces, and eventually blew apart the temple that the Jedi had been taking shelter in. The Jedi fled into the forests to seek shelter and hide out from the assault, only to be followed by the Mandalorians of Clan Kata who set the forest ablaze. The fighting was long and hard as the Jedi of Jasier were forced out of the forests and into a pincer. Nico Fett and Cayce Urriah offered them a deal - they would willingly accept their rule of the planet, and be given their own territory on it. The Jedi accepted, because it was that or annihilation.
The Jedi were collected into a walled area where an ancient temple sat, one part Prisoner of War camp, one part reservation. Turbolaser towers were set around the walls, and Mandalorian and their Imperial Remnant allies who had been friends of the Fett Clan set up a village on the outskirts of it. During the battles, another had happened behind the scenes, and Tyro Gutter had defeated and killed Tepes of Karr, becoming Mandalore.
Tyro decided that Jasier would become a Mandalorian colony, and the Jedi would be used by them as an aruetyc fighting force. The Jedi balked at the prospect of becoming a weapon of the Mandalorians and began to rebel. In anger, the Mandalorians withdrew from the world, escorting all of the civilians away in a flight of a thousand frigates, as Imperial Remnant Star Destroyers moved in to bombard the world from space. By the end of that night, Jasier was incapable of life, and the Mandalorians left its surface glassed, a single piece of rock covered by craters.
The Road to Mos Espa
After the war on Jasier, Cayce returned to the Roche System for a number of years, focusing on raising her clan's young and teaching the warriors of her clan all that she knew. While Cayce was away fighting, her daughter, Kiera, had attempted to digitalize her brain, and failed - her body was destroyed, but she had managed at the last second to give birth to a clone. The clone was an infant, who was found by Kebii'tra Kata, and adopted as Kebii's daughter, she was named Mar'eyir Kata.
However, as things shifted in the asteroid field, it became apparent that the Roche Station was not going to be able to survive the coming storm of asteroids in the next year. Cayce had the clan pack away the important parts of the station, take it's computer systems, and furniture into their ships, and they left as the onslaught of asteroids came that would destroy their home. Kata drifted from world to world, for a time, before coming to the hotly contested world of Tatooine once more. The clan set down in Mos Espa, where an ongoing war was happening between the Sith order the Disciples of Ragnos and a number of rebel and local factions.
Cayce purchased a facility where the clan could set up a workshop and began a gunsmithing initiative that eventually became her primary business, Katalyst Heavy Industries. The warriors of Kata grew bored, and sought new enemies to sharpen their fangs on, and so they decided to rally against the Disciples of Ragnos alongside the Rebel Scum and Jys Tebut's Galactic Liberation Alliance.
The battle was ugly, and bloody, but eventually Kata lead the Rebel Scum and GLA forces into Dor's headquarters. After defeating the local forces there, they found that the Sith base was equipped with a self destruct detonator, and escaped just before it was blown sky high. After Kata escaped the explosion, they returned to the site of the detonation, and began salvaging what they could. The building's stone frame had survived the explosion, and the clan began to rebuild the structure out of the wreckage.
Death and Rebirth
On Tatooine, Cayce's body began to fail her, with systems shutting down without apparent reason. After a flight to her cyber-doc on Kamino, she found out that her brain was failing. Cayce began to initiate plans for her impending demise. While she was in solitude seeking out ways to survive her own brain's death, she had an idea, and reached out to an old Ssi-ruu contact that she had worked with over the years. They worked together to construct an Entechment device that would digitalize her brain, keeping her soul intact. The final component came from an old ally of the Servo 7 organization, who produced a top of the line, bleeding edge Human Replica Droid body for Cayce.
Cayce's mind was digitalized into a system in a satellite hanging in unknown space, and from there it was injected into the body created for her. Her human body was destroyed, and she continued her life unhitched to the mortality of a human body. For her new body, she chose to have a different appearance than before, swapping out her dark skin for the pale skin she had before Aether's death, and red hair the color of copper. As always, her eyes remained the same. Cayce returned to her people in her new body, and they welcomed her back, Cayce the Immortal.
For a while, Clan Kata set up a salvage yard on Nar Shaddaa, using it as a cover for illicit gunrunning and data slicing services. After some time on Nar Shaddaa, Cayce received word that A'denla Kad Socarras had taken the title of Mandalore. A'denla began seeking conquest as Niv had in her time, a policy of Crusading that Cayce personally disagreed on, and that Jaster Mereel and the True Mandalorians had died to fight against.
The Crusades
Cayce followed the Resol'nare to the word, and followed despite the ache in her heart that told her crusading was wrong. She joined with his forces for the battle of Mirial and Fondor. Rather than fighting against the natives who were merely trying to protect their own homes, she aided the Mandalorians who would be fighting. Cayce provided weapon enhancements, ships, repaired gear and loaded weapons, as well as aiding in the disposal of mines and undetonated ordinance along the battlefields that would kill Mandalorians.
The tide for her, turned when her son, Levi Solus of Clan Runi visited the battlefield of Fondor. He had ties to the GLA forces that were providing aide to the locals, and had shown up in one of their ships. Crossing the battlefield to meet with his husband who was fighting for A'denla, he was attacked by Mandalorian forces without provocation. A'denla declared that Levi was a Dar'manda, and had him imprisoned and tortured. Cayce was away providing aide on another world's battlefield when this happened, and when she found out, she and Kata provided a strategic withdrawal from the Mandalorian forces, unable to fight for the man who tortured her own blood.
On Concordia
Cayce and Clan Kata found a sanctuary on the world of Concordia, invited to join those who had also felt A'denla's wrath. The village was overseen by Kaden Mereel, the son of Ardon, who Cayce had fought against in decades past. The Clans Runi, Kata, Mereel and Goran all set up on Concordia to farm once the winter had ended and discuss how to deal with the A'denla situation. All four clans acknowledged that he couldn't continue to be their Mandalore.
On Concordia, Clan Kata found new life. Old members who had been away with the Protectors, or off working returned home to help rebuild the clan and draw it from the hibernation it had been on. The Clan Codex was re-written, giving the clan's identity a spit shine.
In the forges of Concordia, Cayce constructed a new set of armor that would carry the spirit of Clan Kata, a formal armor set, constructed to be the living history of the clan. The armor was laden with trophies from a variety of kills that the clan made, as well as painted up with the designs of Kata's honored dead armor plates.
After living on Concordia for some time, nothing ever came of the plans to overthrow A'denla, and he continued his rampage across the galaxy, eventually invading Coruscant. After some time, the clans gathered on Concordia left to the planet of Osadia, where they constructed a militarized camp. The clans of Osadia trained and recruited, preparing for a battle that never came. After tiring of endless talking and no fighting, Clan Kata once more dispersed into the galaxy, seeking honorable combat, jobs, and adventure.
For several years Cayce wandered the galaxy freely, fighting for the highest bidder and working in a variety of the jobs she was adept at. She spent some time on Bakura, visiting Jemma, the daughter of the now-deceased Levi Solus, who had become the Chieftain of Clan Runi. Cayce was on Bakura when the civil upheaval happened, and was escorted along with the Republic refugees to the world of Coruscant.
The Exchange
While on Bakura, Cayce had met with Arkaric Selona, the Exchange sector boss of Bakura (and later Coruscant), who promised there were no hostilities between them for their past.
However, during one of Cayce's returns home to her home on the world Drall, she was tracked by one of her former lovers, a former Mandalorian warrior turned force user and slaver, Wing. Wing sliced past Cayce's security and assaulted her. After defeating Cayce in combat, she cracked open her head and began to wipe massive swaths of data. Cayce had lost the vast majority of her memory. Wing abandoned Cayce on Coruscant, where she woke up and tried to put her memories back together. She remembered being in the Black Sun, and approached the Exchange for a job. Arkaric was confused by Cayce's apparent loss of memory, and recruited her as his Lieutenant. For several months, Cayce oversaw the Exchange's Enforcers, ruling the streets with an iron fist.
Over the several months she worked for the Exchange, Cayce was approached several times by friends, who claimed to know her, and she found herself using foreign words she didn't know as if by instinct. She came to the realization that someone had messed with her brain, and Arkaric helped her find her way back to herself. Slicing her own security systems, she found the server where her backups remained, and re-downloaded herself, into herself.
As her consciousnesses merged into one, she knew she couldn't be the emotionless monster that she had been with the Black Sun, and with the Exchange, and resigned. However, she felt great loyalty to Arkaric for helping her become herself again, and that eventually blossomed into love.
The Guild
Cayce was jobless, and no mercenary contracts were coming in, so she went into the Coruscant Bounty Hunters' Guild offices looking for work. She found that the guild had been sitting idle for years, with the Guildmaster off doing other things and not active at all. Cayce approached Sihivus Verne who had held the title and demanded it from her.
The exchange between Sihivus Verne and Cayce wasn't recorded, but when Cayce returned to Coruscant, she was the Guildmaster, and set about righting the Guild and driving it active again. Cayce redesigned her look, swapping out her red hair for dark purple locks, and painted up her armor with skulls and Mandalorian sigils. Becoming renown as she had been in her earlier days as a criminal, Cayce stood over her new faction and declared that nobody would tread on them. The Bounty Hunters' Guild responded, blatantly disregarding the recent Bounty Hunting laws that the Republic were attempting to set, even setting a bounty on one of the Vice Chancellor candidates in distinct violation of the law.
Under Cayce, the Bounty Hunters' Guild flourished, with new contracts coming in and out, and new business ventures flowing into the guild at a constant stream. Unfortunately, this couldn't keep up for long, as a conspiracy was risen by Silas Ward and Ater Miles to remove Cayce from her title in the guild.
After sussing out the conspirators, Cayce responded in kind, falsifying evidence that Ater was dealing in explosives of the sort that had been used in a recent senate bombing. Using the SIS agent, Alarya, as her conspirator, Cayce provided the evidence to Gap Dremon, a judge of the Republic, who set out a warrant against Miles. As the warrant was released, a burn notice was sent out into the guild, relieving Ater of his duties and publicly declaring him untrustworthy.
Despite the relative peace that she had secured, Cayce was unhappy with what she felt she had to do, and at the same time, a rival had founded a Guild with the intent of damaging the BHG's reputation. As tensions mounted and unsanctioned bounties were placed on Cayce and those she loved, she found herself unable to enjoy what she had worked for. One spring morning, Cayce Urriah had a wrecking crew strip the Guild's office on Coruscant of anything of value while she emptied the databases and drained the accounts she had control of, and then walked out, sending out a terse resignation notice. Cayce Urriah had returned to solely being the leader of her clan again. In some small ways, she felt at peace with her decision.
Dathomir & The Fall
Although she had fell out with The Guild, Cayce kept her contract with The Exchange, and her relationship with Arkaric Selona, its boss. She worked mercenary jobs for the syndicate and helped protect their properties, alongside Mirongrass Rez. Eventually, word came down that The Exchange was going to be working alongside their previously unstated Sith allies in the invasion on Dathomir, and Cayce's clan was contracted to help with the conquest of the planet.
The Republic showed up mid-invasion and managed to entrench itself despite the Sith blockade, and the war became a series of battles for the capture of strategic points on the planetside. Cayce served as point lead in a skirmish for the crystal caves against the Republic and several of their Mandalorian mercenaries. The victory against the Republic forces left some of the Mandalorians she had faced bitter towards her. Meanwhile, Akaan'tal Vau, who had become Mandalore was snooping around the Imperial encampment, trying to find out the why of the invasion.
And then he found out: The Sith were there to take ownership of an ancient matter transporter that had laid dormant for years. Not liking the Sith having the ability to manifest an army on the doorstep of Mandalorian space, Mand'alor rallied the clans to join the Republic in attacking the Sith. The Mandalorian Protectors set up their own encampment, and began recruiting warriors to join up. Cayce and Akaan'tal spoke, and he gave her leave to keep her contract with the Sith, so she did.
This did not engender happiness with the other Mandalorians, and a warrior of Clan Ordo challenged her to combat. After the duel, the invading Mandalorians withdrew from Clan Kata's camp on Dathomir, accepting that Kata would be working on the other side.. for now. And Cayce helped the Sith for several more days, until Mandalore called her specifically, and by compulsion of Resol'nare, she resigned from the Sith forces. This did not engender her any loyalty, and her relationship with Arkaric, The Sith and The Exchange evaporated
In the days after, the Republic withdrew from Dathomir, causing the Mandalorians to withdraw as well. Cayce returned to Coruscant without a powerbase. Mandalore's decision to challenge the Sith had dropped the floor out from under her, leaving her without support and heartbroken. Sek'nos Fah of the Jedi became one of her closest friends in this period, and for a while she moped around the Upper City center.. until the Republic decided to arrest her as a war criminal.
Jailbird & Republic Marshal
Cayce was taken into custody by two Jedi, and spent a couple of months in an upper city military brig, instead of a traditional prison. She was brought books and pillows by some of her clan, and spent most of the time working out and reading. During that time, she got to know some of the troopers, and was approached by Caden Black of the Republic Marshals.
When she was released, Cayce was recruited into the Marshals, the plain clothed police and military unit of the Republic. She spent several weeks hunting criminals and singing 'Boss Mando' in a wide brimmed hat. It was a fun job, but it was short lived. Dorien Starsider, leader of the Repubic Intelligence invaded the Jedi temple with a force of his soldiers, and began demanding the Jedi comply with his orders. Cayce was there, spending time with Sek'nos, who had become her romantic partner and roommate, although the arrangement was short lived. She stood up against Starsider, and was promptly arrested. Again.
In the brig, she was told she was fired, and then was released after a few hours. In the end, it didn't matter, because less than a week later, the Sith Empire took Coruscant and the Republic ceased to exist.
Black Sun & Mortality
Cayce slid back into the undercity as soon as the battles came to a stop. The Exchange had folded into The Sith Empire, leaving a power vacuum in the Undercity, and the Black Sun was rising again. Cayce was still twisted from the repeated kicks she'd been given since being called from the Sith forces on Dathomir, and fell into the Black Sun, becoming Underboss to the organization.
Cayce went back to her old ways, recruiting and building a power base. She repaired ties to some of her old colleagues and began to focus once more on growing her own power. She began wheeling and dealing, but wasn't happy with herself deep inside. And then she was attacked.
Cayce had, for decades, kept a dark space station called The Cradle that contained backup HRD bodies, cloned tissue, and other emergency needs. An intelligence awoke within The Cradle. A version of Cayce, but twisted and malevolent, and hellishly angry. It worked for months to worm its way into control of the systems in the station, and downloaded itself into a body. Once it had a body, the other Cayce triggered The Cradle's self destruct systems. The station exploded, and the rival version of Cayce escaped in a ship.
Meanwhile, on Coruscant, Cayce received a notice that one of her old Clansmen was under attack on Lehon, the old Rakatan homewold. She took her Black Sun cruiser and its crew out to find him and save him. When she arrived, an armada of assassins, mercenaries and several of Cayce's old enemies uncloaked above the planet. Cayce's ship was cut to shreds and went down into the mountains of Lehon burning.
As her crew of Black Sun soldiers and engineers were cut down under fire from above, Cayce slipped out into the landing bay of the ship and made it down the ramp, slipping into the shadows of a rock formation and down the other side of the mountain, while her ship burned, and then exploded. Thinking her dead, the other Cayce began to destroy Cayce's assets, until Cayce reached a small settlement and accessed the holonet with their relay antennae.
Alerted to the fact that Cayce was still alive, the intelligence brought down more of her old nemeses who had signed on for the chance to kill her and a number of mercenaries. They tracked her across the planetside in a feral game of hide and go seek. Cayce picked them off one by one as they neared, building traps and collecting weapons from the downed attackers.
After several days, Cayce secured a broken freighter that had been abandoned on the planet years ago, and was able to get it working. She made for space and escaped the planet, tracking signals on her own networks that the intelligence left behind.
The signals lead her to Ruusan, to her old workshop beneath the mountains. When she entered, she found herself beset on by an army of kludged together droids and war machines. Cayce survived the onslaught with serious injuries, and made it deep into the facility, to where the intelligence was located.
Facing her, was an exact replica of herself, but with angry eyes and a body of scars. The clone laughed, and then pressed a button on a control panel in its hand. The facility exploded into flames, annihilating both of them.
Cayce awoke minutes later, a galaxy away, in a room she'd never seen before. She was in one of her backup HRD bodies, a replica of her regular body, but with one distinct lack. It was disconnected. With a lack of more and more bodies to hot-swap into, and no Cradle to create more.. Cayce looked to a single word on the doorway before her. Fingerpainted in crimson, jagged font: "Mortality."
Return Again
Cayce, now mortal and more human than ever, returned to Coruscant, to her family. She was upset at first, mourning her infinite sense of self, but as she interacted with others, she realized that she felt more herself than ever. She felt stronger, and wilier. Cayce felt like Cayce. The last Cayce, the most Cayce of any Cayce.
Returning to Mandalore Prime, she began rebuilding her clan's homestead, planting crops that had been more or less untended to in recent years, and working the land, and working with clansmen who had retired to their ancestral homeland, and the subsequent generations of Clan Kata, who would lead in the future.
Personality
Cayce is mercurial. She's whim driven and acts however that whim drives her at any given moment. While she holds closely to allies, friends and kin, it's a dice toss whether or not she'd help a stranger on the street, and it really depends on her intuition.
Day to day, Cayce's attitude is cheerful, silly and friendly. She'll routinely say goofy things just to say them, and humor is how she expresses most of her happier feelings. She's used to getting her way and can act like a sullen child at times when she doesn't, causing even her most trusted clansmen to get annoyed with her.
When angered, Cayce focuses solely on the thing that's angering her, and will attempt to barrel through anything in her way. Her rage has caused fractures in many of her relationships over the years, although she usually tries to patch things up.
She's deathly serious when it comes to her clan, and can whip around from childish and silly to the persona of a drill instructor when she sees one of her own as failing in their work, training or cultural duties, but most of the time she's the mother to her clan, supportive and nurturing.
When dealing with Mandalorian situations or issues of honor, she can be very solid on certain things, even challenging friends who have failed to fulfill their oaths to combat to resolve the situation; although rarely to the death. Once the matter of honor is resolved, she'll whip back around to being silly and loving.
Cayce hugs people. A lot of people. Sometimes random people. This leaves a lot of strangers confused.
Faith
Cayce is a zealot when it comes to belief in the three Mandalorian gods. She bears the sigil of the Cult of Kad Ha'rangir on all of her armors, and firmly believes that she'll see all of those she's lost 'at the big battle at the end'.
She openly admits this belief is a little silly, but says she has to believe in something, or she'll be consumed by depression and stagnation.