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HISTORICAL FIGURE
NAME: Davik Lorso
AGE: 43 G.S.Y.
STATUS: Deceased
SPECIES: Human
HOMEWORLD: Coruscant
FACTION: Ryloth Exchange
RANK: Crime Lord
HEIGHT: 180 cm
WEIGHT: 91 kg
SIGNATURE POSSESSIONS:
Catscratch
As Crime Lord of Ryloth Davik Lorso had made quite the impression on the galactic underworld, as shown by the fact that infamous bounty hunter Talia Al'Saif tried to collect his bounty. Although his death was rather dull for a man whose life was one big spice-fueled party, some items of his rather remarkable art collection have survived the test of time:
A PAINTING BY A NABOOAN MASTER
Luka Amidala painted her “Smiling girl in front of Nabooan landscape” two centuries ago and it is heralded as her greatest work. Davik owned it, but was forced to sell it in order to get free from the persecution following the scandal of Czerka corp on the planet of Wrea. Later on Ryloth he had it retrieved illegally and estimates its current value to be close to a million credits.
GOLD ENCRUSTED VIBRO-RAPIER SEALED IN CASE OF BAKURAN WOOD
The Kel Dorian fencing master Bar Ferdi was the only recorded non-force sensitive to have beaten several Jedi in a single duel. His notorious skill, utilizing a technique very similar to the Makashi style, made many believe his signature vibro-rapier possessed magical abilities. Bar Ferdi died four years ago on Ryloth by the hands of a lone sniper.
LETHISK-CLASS ARMED FREIGHTER: CATSCRATCH
His signature ship, Davik flew the Catscratch all across the Galaxy and hosted many a spice-filled party inside. Floors of Bandomeer yew, hidden compartments and a great stereo installation, this particular Lethisk-class Armed Freighter is a true luxury vehicle for the adventurous smuggler or the aspiring Crime Lord that wants to ride the highs of spice. Truly one of a kind and a ship that's not only has many a smuggling port on its charts, this ship is still recognizable as formerly belonging to Davik Lorso by not only the rarity of the ship, but largely due to the specific remodeling of the interior (it is linked to the left).
LEGACY
All around the galaxy small references to Davik Lorso persist. Whether it's his signature drink of 'Bantha milk with a hint of Glitterstim', musings of other characters that have once attended one of his parties or visited Ryloth during his rule, the man seems a legend among the criminals of the Corellian Run. While records of his life may exist in the archives of criminal databases, the true survival of his legend is due to simple storytelling. For those who simply cannot shoot a blaster effectively, Davik is an example of someone who never needed to use his blaster to get to the top. A Crime Lord by wit alone, whose legend approves of the new generations sampling their own merchandise.
CRIMELORD'S LIFE STORY
The Zabrak was clearly looking for something as he scanned the cargo hold with the point of his blaster. He had boarded the Lethisk-class Freighter with the intent to kill a man and in doing so assuring himself of enough giggledust to last a week. The Zabrak was a nobody who was persuaded to the task by someone eager to put our title character out of business. The man himself? He was hiding in the only secret compartment in that very hold that he was able to –barely- fit inside of. His heart racing, clothes drenched in sweat and afraid that any movement might mean the end of him, Davik is trying not to think about it too much and is therefore delighted that you’re here for him to tell his (possibly entire) life story.
“You’re probably asking yourself why a man as handsome, intelligent and charismatic as myself is currently hiding from a lowlife who exhibits none of those three qualities. Well, the answer is quite simple: He has a blaster, and I do not.
I guess this is technically speaking my fault because I chose not to update my security door and instead bought this really nice new holo-communicator, but I’m sure that if I could move my arm and show it to you there’s not a single fiber in your body that wouldn’t want it too. It’s great. It’s also sort off the reason I’m in this predicament in the first place, as I forgot to block my frequency after delivering a shipment of spice with my Twi’lek delivery. You see, the man I sold the Twi’lek to was looking to get into the spice business as well, but the local gang forbade it. Together we came up with this great ruse wherein he’d pretend to buy a new exotic slave for far more than the market value and I would have her swallow the spice in little bags. Pretty brilliant plan, wasn’t it? Well it was, and it would have succeeded if that slave had been careful enough not to eat and drink anything. You see, if you swallow spice you have to be careful that your stomach isn’t working and the only way to do that is not to eat and drink. Otherwise the bags go open and you die a horrible death. Needless to say, the local gang found out, murdered the buyer and I realized too late that they were coming after me as well.”
The Zabrak now thumped the floorboards with his heels to try and find a secret compartment underneath and he was being very thorough. Surely thinking he was being very smart, although he paid no attention to the wall where the actual secret compartments were.
“But really, the real root of my problem finds its origins with Czerka. Might as well tell you, as that’s the place where I left my moral compass behind and if I still had it the slave would probably be reunited with family instead of dead in some lower district body dump.
Next month it will be twenty years ago since I was promoted deputy chief of the Czerka operations on a rather insignificant planet called Wrea. Only held the position for about forty-two days before we were smacked with lawsuits for breaking every law in existence, something my predecessor had apparently seen coming as he had disappeared with roughly two hundred thousand credits of Czerka funds. Now, during my time at Czerka we did some pretty awful stuff ranging from coldblooded murder, illegal pyramid schemes and corporate manipulation but in order to avoid conviction we all but destroyed the planet’s government and sold our business interests to the Exchange. Headquarters weren’t happy about that, though, and decided to make the local chief into an example and double-cross us to have the locals execute him. I was lucky that I had only just recently risen from the ranks and I was still somewhat of a nobody to them, thus killing me didn’t seem to be worth enough to top my bribes. Lost everything that day, my penthouse, speeders, slaves and immense fortune all wasted on bribes to the authorities and Czerka headquarters so I could fly out into the galaxy a truly free man again.”
Suddenly Davik heard a loud sobbing. The Zabrak assassin had seen his supply of spice vaporize before the closest sun and had curled up on the floor of the cargo hold with his blaster resting on a crate a good couple of feet away. Suddenly, however, he jumped up again and grabbed the pistol muttering something about the red light district.
“But if I had nothing, how did I get this starship? I’m sure that’s what you’re wondering right now.” Davik said knowingly as he carefully opened the hatch and climbed out of hiding. The Zabrak was gone and after locking the doors and pulling up the ramp he made his way to the cockpit. After several moments of preparations he sat down and steered the freighter from the urban landing.
“It’s a long story, really, but I’ll give you a short summary. You see, unemployment didn’t quite suit me and being poor even less so. To ensure that I wouldn’t have to become familiar with the galaxy’s working stiffs I began to utilize former Czerka Corp freelancers that smuggled and dealt in the infamous spice triangle and had on occasion assisted Czerka operations on Wrea while I was still in the executive branch.
One of those freelancers was Gith Carran, an Iridonian smuggler who in accordance with her people’s drive to excel had mastered flying and never failed to shake off the authorities in her Lethisk-class armed freighter, which she quite affectionately called ‘her little piece of junk’. It’s that same piece of junk that we find ourselves on right now as I plot the course back to my new home of Ryloth “
A few seconds after he’d said it the small freighter jumped into hyperspace to the Corellian Run. It would take two days for him to reach the planet, so Davik traded in the cockpit for the lounge area where he filled a glass with Corellian brandy and slouched down on the couch. The stress had exhausted him, but at the same time he felt high from the excitement. With the life he’s been leading you couldn’t really call him a young man at twenty-five, let alone at forty-three, but as far as he was concerned his rise to riches and power were only just beginning and that was all thanks to his protégé.
But before we meet this orange wonder from Ryloth let’s go back the down-on-his-luck-Davik as he tried his best to recover from his bankrupting exit of Czerka corp. Like almost every criminal enterprise in the galaxy, Davik’s rise started on the cesspit of Huttese excess called Nar Shaddaa. He had often visited the smuggler’s moon on Czerka business to meet and make deals with various sentient representatives of morally abject businesses ranging from spice smuggling and prostitution to slavery and political assassination. Espionage, be it political or industrial, was almost always a step these important sentients ignored as they skyrocketed to the top. They had taught Davik a philosophy that he had often tried to argue but ultimately was forced to concede to, namely that it took much longer to spy and steal one thing than to assassinate a figure head and profit from the inevitable chaos by taking everything.
It was this same philosophy that allowed him to rise the ranks of the Nar Shaddaa underworld by storm as his former associates employed his talents and subsequently allowed him to take over the business of their rivals, allowing Davik to grow and expand as long as he kicked up a certain percentage to the Moon’s elite. Eventually he became the overseer of a spice mine on Ryloth that was operated by slaves. It’s there where he met the orange wonder from Ryloth, aka his protégé, Motte’tori.
Davik cleared his throat “Motte’tori, that little conniving bastard was the key to regain my former wealth and status. I first noticed him at the packing station of the mine where he, at age five, had persuaded his fellows to do his work for him while he relaxed and berated them for their poor performance. Immediately I knew that the little shit could be very valuable to my control over the mine and I quickly dragged him out of the manual labor department and into the very important job of personal assistant to the Overseer. Me. As one could expect, he rose to occasion and as I divided my time between running the mine and educating the child, he’d divide his time between learning from me and devising better ways to influence and essentially brainwash the slaves to increase production. Even at that young age he had me baffled.” Davik rose from the couch and opened a drawer of a nearby cabinet to retrieve a single silver coin with an energy spider on either side, a token he had kept. “Back then I thought this was the key to unlimited wealth and thus luxury: the energy spider of which we made the ultra-addictive Glitterstim. Motte’tori, at age twelve, shattered that illusion and showed me it wasn’t the spice that made the mines so profitable, but the slaves. Never had I paid any real heed to the import of strong slaves and the export of the old, or where they went after we’d sold them. Motte’tori, nosy little shit that he was, found out and saw a business opportunity. He had paid such good attention to my lessons that he knew them better than myself.” Davik smiled and let the coin run through the fingers of his left hand as he had done a decade ago whenever he needed to think. Right now he only did it for the sheer nostalgia and he tossed it carelessly back into the drawer. “I implemented the kid’s ideas and together we devised a propaganda machine that brought his brainwashing tactics, his charismatic influence, not just to the willing ears and eyes of his extended family at my spice mine, but to all those on the planet Ryloth. That was twelve years ago and in a fifth of the decade we ran the most profitable slaving business in the Gaulus sector and the spice mine on Ryloth was the most efficiently run in perhaps the entire galaxy. That’s when we hit a little snag.” he grimaced thinking about it as he recalled the war that had eventually made him the planet’s crime lord.
“Our success didn’t go unnoticed and a coalition of gangs decided that they could no longer tolerate the threat our growing business posed to theirs. I remember the night when I was in my office with Leanna, the Twi’lek beauty that had captured my heart and could with a mere look or with a single word shock me to the bone, as I could with a press of a button on my datapad. The gangs entered our holdings, the slave quarters and spice storage as well as mine as those of my protégé, on top of their speeders with their blasters drawn. Only when I saw the body of a mother drop to the cold ground and stay there lifelessly no matter how hard the toddler pinched her arm, that I realized they had not set their blasters to stun and were mercilessly gunning down every slave old enough to stand on its feet.” Davik wiped a tear from his cheekbone, refusing to give in to more he blinked a couple of times and emptied his glass of brandy with a single gulp and refilled it. “I told Leanna to fetch Motte’tori and his young family, as he was an adult by then and married with a young daughter still on her mother’s breast, while I prepared my ship, this one to be exact, for our hasty escape.” he lifted a picture frame from the cabinet, but refused to look at the picture of himself and a young Twi’lek woman of astonishing beauty. “She was selfless, something I was and still am incapable of, and personally blocked the hangar door to allow Motte’tori and his family to reach the ramp. I watched how my predecessor, the former crime lord of Ryloth, murdered her in cold blood with a dark smile on his face.”
The communicator on the wall suddenly beeped and buzzed and pulled Davik back from his depressing remembrance as he shot back to reality and reached for the small device to open the frequency. “Davik? Hello, Davik?” a thickly accented female voice came from the speaker. Davik recognized it to be Misa Kat, the Cathar slave he bought after Leanna’s death and his rise to Crime Lord to be his ever present companion inside the large urban palace. Davik sighed, “What is it Misa?”
“You’re in hyperspace now, so this is a recorded message to remind you that you have to approach Ryloth through the Death Wind Corridor if you’re coming from the Corellian Run.” the voice of Misa explained and Davik was thankful she was so thorough in her job, as he had completely forgotten the problems he’s had with pirates in his sector lately. He rushed to the cockpit to change course and prepare for the tricky navigation through the Corridor that wasn’t named death for the sheer easiness which it is to navigate. A novice pilot, or someone flying a bigger ship, would not be able to fly the same route and expect the leave the corridor alive, as such it provided Davik with a much needed secure way onto his planet.
But as he’s preoccupied with steering the ship and trying to stay alive, let’s swiftly review the last great Rylothian underworld war. Davik himself was never much of a deadshot and Motte’tori had never even held a blaster, but with the sheer strength of their combined minds and network they crushed the Rylothian gangs’ offworld business and due to an increase in Motte’tori’s appearance on the planetary holonet and his vivid descriptions of the horror the gang did in the name of criminal greed, the people of Ryloth bonded together to become a vigilante movement and they all but lynched the gangs, prompting the gangs to initiate a last desperate personal attack on the face of the vigilante movement, Davik’s protégé, and did with his family what they did with the love of Davik’s life: they murdered the wife and young child in cold blood. The then crime lord escaped the planet and took refuge in Nar Shaddaa, where Davik eventually tracked him down and tortured him mercilessly for weeks until he finally froze him in carbonite and took him home to Ryloth. His network helped him to restructure the Ryloth underground and bring it all under his rule while the people mourned together with his protégé. It was here that they began to follow different paths as Davik was returned to a seat of power that surpassed the one he had at Czerka, but Motte’tori had lost everything he ever cared about. With everyone that ever knew of their decades long cooperation gone the two split ties. Davik took up the mantle of crime lord, while his protégé who had been essential to his rise now became a voice of the people and began to actively seek to reinforce the ban on slavery in the senate, always urging for the Republic to reinforce the laws that has so many of his fellow Twi’leks enslaved and extorted. He died within the year, presumably by a heart attack while championing against forceful prostitution on the Core worlds. Despite all his charm and intelligence, Motte’tori was still made of flesh and blood and vulnerable to poison and blasterbolts.
Hours had gone by when Davik landed the Lethisk-class armed freighter in its private hanger below his urban palace. Misa was waiting for him there and purred with affection as she saw her owner return uninjured and wealthier than he had been when he left. She knew he needed to leave the palace once in a while, but always dreaded every second her protector wasn’t home. They walked together to his throne room first, where above his throne hung his predecessor still frozen in carbonite and then on to his private quarters where his pleasure slaves and modest variety of spice was already waiting for him.
The man that ruled Ryloth had returned.
THE END OF LORSO RULE
The annual podracing championships had always been a very popular event in the Gaulus Sector even after Davik had taken the underworld crown by storm and made the championship into a celebration of his being. Sure, that sounds like something only a severely intoxicated and arrogant egomaniac would proclaim and much to the disgust of the law abiding Rylothians, Davik was exactly such an egomaniac. He had been ever since he exacted his revenge on his predecessor and took the title of Crime Lord. One academic had once tried to convince him that he was suffering from a chronic depression as a result of an emotional trauma and his many spice binges were just him trying to self-medicate, but as that implied weakness in a world where weakness wasn’t really something you should show, the academic met a quick death in the form of a blasterbolt.
Offworlders didn’t really notice the tension surrounding the forced homage to the underworld kingpin and seeing a middle aged human sitting in a private box with a scantily clad Cathar curled around him on the couch was strangely enough a quite normal sight in the Outer Rim. As such the general mood surrounding the podrace championship was positive and the names of the contestants were enthusiastically chanted. Ofcourse, Davik didn’t have to watch the race to know who’d won as the race had been bought weeks ago and sold to avid gamblers all around the sector who had most fiercely proclaimed their loyalty to him.
Davik was watching the race on a flatscreen that followed all eight racers as they sped across the planet. Misa, his feline slave, was sleeping with her head resting on his lap and he had just taken his glass of spiced Bantha milk to his lips when the glass protecting his private box from the much hotter Ryloth atmosphere shattered. There was a moment of shock for the forty-three year old crime lord as Misa violently awoke and knocked the glass of milk out of his hand and down his expensive tunic. She immediately drew back from him expecting a violent outburst, but to her surprise Davik’s attention was fully claimed by the open shuttle that leveled with them. There was a moment of incomprehension written on his face until he recognized the two men holding the blaster rifles, they were his lieutenants. “I’m going to kill you” Davik muttered as he watched them leveling their rifles for the killshot. That would’ve been his end, but just before they pulled the triggers two podracers finished their first round and sped past the shuttle, unbalancing it and causing the shots to miss horribly.
With luck seemingly on his side, Davik quickly snapped out his submission and jumped over the back of the couch and ran for the exit with Misa only a foot behind. The shuttle leveled out just as the slave turned the corner, but instead of the blaster rifles the shuttle’s laser cannons fired and blew up the entire shuttle. As Davik and Misa escaped towards their speeder, chaos ensued as the crowd had first thought the shuttle had been a camera crew (as they didn’t notice the glass shattering) but once it destroyed a significant part of the same stands the crowd immediately made for the exits in their usual hysteric way.
“Bloody backstabbing bastards!” Davik yelled as the luxury speeder sped off towards his highrise estate. Misa looked at her fuming owner with large eyes of confusion and shock as it hadn’t fully dawned on her what had just happened. “Never appoint a Chiss and a Twi’lek as your lieutenants! I’ll have the gangs hunt them down!” Davik continued and behind them the speeder lanes that had been deserted for the championship now filled with anxious and hysteric drives crashing into each other and certainly not abiding the traffic rules. Davik noticed it, but he was too caught up with the swoop bikes that were following him at a much higher speed. “What the kes are the Swooping Nines doing here!?”
The answer came a mere moment later as badly aimed blasterbolt passed by his speeder as it turned a corner. “They’re with them! I’ll take Morris Macken’s head!” Davik cried as he retrieved a C-210 blaster pistol from the glove compartment and shoved Misa into the driver’s seat. “Take us home!”
What ensued was a rather sloppy blasterfight as Davik’s shots mostly missed the uncoming swoopers, but still deterred them from coming too close to get a clean shot off themselves. Bystanders were hit, police sirens followed the swoopers and when the shuttle of his lieutenants appeared overhead and fired into the speeder lanes all bantha poo quickly hit the fan. Later they heard over the holonet that the shuttle had hit a daycare with its laser cannons and the daughter of a top government official had died as a result, causing a violent reply from the military where even the corrupt officials were overtaken with anger and outrage. Thanks to the police interference and their focus on the swoop gangs, Davik and Misa got a ten minute window to gather up all they could in the estate and leave the planet before the either Davik’s lieutenants or the military came to end his reign. They spend five of those ten minutes getting the carbonite statue of Cavalas Onn into Davik’s personal starship and just as Davik entered his bedroom to take his hidden stash of credits, his datapad violently bleeped with a message from a military contact. “Davik, Lennu Team 3 is almost at your door. run.”
Suddenly more anxious and rushed than ever, Davik abandoned his run for the stash and instead took the two nearest items, a painting and a fancy encased vibroblade, and quickly made his way for the hanger. The moment he lifted the ramp and shot out of the hanger bay, the front doors of his estate were blown open and a full military squadron barged in with orders to kill.
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