CHARACTERS OF KALANDAR:

GOTHAR PALPATINE

The most infamous inhabitant of Kalandar is also the most hidden one: castle Wherdann's ruins, at the feet of Manarai mountains, offer shelter to renegade Imperial dignitary Gothar Palpatine and his acolytes.

To trace back the history of the renegade is difficult since, after his exile, Imperials don't talk about him, as if he never existed and Gothar himself went to a great length to erase all traces that might lead back to him, to his activities and to his projects. Everybody, however, seems to agree on one thing: before is fall from the Empire Gothar Palpatine was one of the most despicable creatures the New Order has ever spawned. It is not known whether the young dignitary was actually a relative of the Emperor or, as many believe, he was just adopted and raised in the court as one f the many experiments of the Emperor to train Dark Side adepts. It sure that, since the age of eight, Gothar inflicted his presence on the court of Coruscant proudly displaying the family name of the Emperor and making life miserable for everybody around him. Strong in the protection of his master and aware of the deference that his last name provoked in the other dignitary, Gothar saw no reason to hold or control his arrogant, tyrannical and wicked attitude. Even today, in Coruscant, many remember the accidents, the plots and the scandals he orchestrated at court with his sneering behavior and the many careers that were destroyed because of his capriciousness.

Once he reached majority of age Gothar was given the title of First Dignitary of court. An unfortunate turn of events for the Rebellion and for the empire, for once ensured in his new position, Gothar decided it was his duty to actively take the helm of the war against the newborn Rebellion: with a free hand and unlimited means at his disposition, he started conceiving a number of operations, all incredibly improbable and twisted, that should have crushed the Rebellion and, what was more important, should have made of him, in the eyes of the Galaxy, the Empire's greatest strategic genius and savior.

A picture far from reality, since Gothar Palpatine was not at all the genius he thought he was: many of his operations invariably backfired, other gave random and uncontrolled results but, as a rule, they usually harmed the Empire more than the Rebellion.

It is unclear what happened at court at this moment: maybe the Emperor saw in Lord Vader a far worthy and more powerful servant that his private "experiment" could ever hope to be. Maybe Lord Tion - a noble from the Tion cluster and a longstanding rival of Palpatine, increasingly growing in reliability and influence at every failure of Gothar- was finally successful in moving against his enemy, or maybe, more simply, the Emperor had finally grown tired of that useless youth who only excelled in creating inconveniences and embarassment to the Imperial cause. Whatever the cause, suddenly the empire exiled Gothar Palpatine out of the court: he was branded an outcast, stripped of every title, rank and power within the Imperial hierarchy. Lord Tion took the role of First Imperial Dignitary in his place and the Emperor all but forgot about his unfortunate and disastrous apprentice.

Whether it was a last punishment or a more sinister development that casually surfaced in the first days of the exile, Gothar's body started growing weak ad twisted, just like his own former Master's. even if the gaze and the build remained those of a young man, his skin wizened, his bones grew weak and his muscles grow tired and sick.

His obsession, yet, did not weaken: on the contrary, it grew stronger. Convinced that his exile was the result of Tion's plots or even a gigantic secret test of fidelity secretly chosen by the Emperor, even as an outcast Gothar Palpatine continued to plot and scheme, this time not to crush the Rebellion, but to get his place back in the Imperial ranks. In the years spent at the Palace he had had the chance to freely cultivate two of his greatest passions: genetics and the study of the Force. He often made use of the former, although now, with limited and crude means he could obtain little or no results (actually, even with the Empire's unlimited resources and wealth had had rarely obtained more than poor and distorted creatures or babbling and agonizing monsters); the Force, after his exile, did not answer his call as before: far from his Master and half-blinded by despair and bitterness for his fate, he scarcely could use it in an effective way. In his further attempts to regain fame, fortune and honor he only managed to obtain new enemies. He passed from simple outcast to actual criminal wanted by the Empire which, especially under Lord Tion's request, would not be satisfied with the exile of his old enemy but wanted him dead.

Ironically, the only help Palpatine ever received since then has come from that very world of Rebels, renegades and outlaws he ad so far ignored or even persecuted.

Saved from a stormtrooper squadron by Mark Todd, a Rebel pilot whom he had met as an enemy during his Imperial days, Gothar was forced to make use of all help he could obtain. With the help and support of Todd (the only one who wouldn't care about his past) Palpatine started delving -with great disgust- in the underworld of the Galaxy, working alongside thieves, smugglers, informers and spies.

Today Gothar Palpatine is still lost in his plans to conquer his power back. In his megalomaniac mind he thinks the Empire will never survive without him and therefore he supports and encourages all actions, even Rebels ones, aimed at inflicting damage to the Imperial war machine. But his true desire is to be accepted back in the Empire: he dreams of finding the key to the Rebel conflict ad to enter, uninvited, the battlefield offering the final solution of the civil war to his Emperor. This makes him a very unreliable ally: he might start on a mission with the purpose of destroying the Empire only to switch sides once the battle begins to show himself good at Imperial eyes.

Palpatine has two other ambitions: to find a cure to the rapid decaying of his body, that makes him incapable of running, fighting or sustaining any physical effort that another human of his age would find normal; and to take revenge on Lord Tion by casting him out of the Empire just like he thinks the new dignitary did to him.

Gothar has an endless list of defaults and very few qualities: he is nervous, psychically unstable, arrogant and megalomaniac, he is addicted to lies and deceit, even when they are not necessary. Moreover he is wicked and twisted in his reasoning: he is unable to see the most straightforward solution even when it's in front of him, convinced as he is that any of his complex plans will be implicitly superior to any other way the events might offer.

His only quality -if such it can be considered- is perseverance. Anybody else would understand that his days in the Empire are over, but he continues relentlessly, plan after plan, failure after failure, to plot new schemes to regain his long lost seat of power.

Gothar has very few allies and even less friends. The Empire despises him, and those few who take an interest in him are only looking for him in order to collect the reward on his head and please Lord Tion; the Rebellion is -with every reason- reluctant to trust him and the information he might pass on.

With time, Gothar has unconsciously developed a glimpse of respect and loyalty for the other renegades with whom he has learned to work, especially for Todd who offered him his help in the worst of times without asking nothing back, but it remains to be seen if this loyalty would hold in the moment in which Gothar actually spotted a chance to return in the ranks of the Empire .

Gothar Palpatine
Type: Failed Jedi

DEX 3D
Blaster 5D
Dodge 6D+2
Lightsaber 6D
Lightwhip 7D
Melee Combat 5D+1
Melee parry 5D

KNO 4D+2
Alien Species 7D
Bureaucracy 6D
Cultures 5D
Languages 6D
Planetary Systems 5D
Streetwise 5D
Survival 6D
Willpower 6D+2
Jedi Lore 6D+1
Dark Side Lore 7D
Sith Lore 5D+2

MEC 2D
Astrogation 3D
Communications 5D
Repulsorlift Operation 4D+1
Space Transport 3D+2

PER 3D+1
Bargain 6D
Command 6D
Con 7D+1
Forgery 5D
Hide 6D
Investigation 5D
Persuasion 6D
Search 5D+2
Sneak 6D

STR 2D+2
Brawling 3D

TEC 2D
Computer Prog.Rep. 4D
Droid Programming 7D
Droid Repair 5D+2
First Aid 6D
Medicine 6D+2
Genetics 8D
Security 5D

Force Sensitive? Yes
Force Points: 5
Character Points: 10

Force Skills: Control 6D, Sense 6D+2, Alter 6D

Force Powers:
C: Absorb/dissipate en., control pain, reduce injury, detoxify poison, short term memory enhancement
S: Danger sense, life detection, life sense, sense Force, receptive telepathy.
A: telekinesis, injure kill
C-A: control an. pain, inflict pain.
C-S: Farseeing, lightwhip combat, projective telepathy
S-A: dim other's senses
C-S-A: affect mind, control mind, Force lightning.

Equipment: Lightsaber (5D), bioscanner, medpac.

A Quote: "This time it can't fail."

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