Jux Ned'ix

Jux was a Verpine born on the Korpil Colony within the Roche Asteroid Field in 41 BBY. Through the decades he grew to be an advanced engineer by galactic standards, going as far to even do something as prestrigious as working on the V-19 Torrent starfighter project in 23 BBY. In 21 BBY, he was scarred and distatched from the hive after the Rec'la incident. After spending a year on Nickel One, he left the Verpine Hive to venture the galaxy as a freelancer in search of a way to repair his wounds where he eventually found himself contracted to Topatz Shipping in 13 BBY with his droid, and friend, Silver One.

Description
Ned'ix looks like any other Verpine with the exception of a few things. The most obvious of these is that he is missing his right antenna which was torn off in the Rec'la incident and, due to it, was cut off from the Hive. He also features vestigial wings, a rare occurrence but not unheard of among Verpine, that still have the capability to flutter through they wouldn't provide any lift due to their small size that doesn't even surpass the width of his torso.

As with all Verpine, his body is segmented with hands and feet that are a mix between that of a humanoid hand and an insectoid claw. The carapace is tough and has the capability to deflect casual strikes by a blade and even glancing blaster bolts. His sexual organs are hidden under it, the carapace acting as clothing itself and allowing him to wear nothing but a belt if he wants to. The head is reminiscent of that of an Earth ant with mandibles and, in Jux's case, a prolonged and angled snout. Two large beady eyes provide their vision with the capability to see microscopic details.

Their internal structure is similar to that of an ant, along with nothing that would be called a heart but rather a system of muscles along his main arteries that pump the blood throughout the body. While this system has a redudancy to it that makes the circulation difficult to cut off, it is not as efficient as a normal heart would be.

Childhood (41-31 BBY)
Jux was hatched, along with several dozen others, on 5:4:17 BrS, a Centaxday, in the Korpil Colony. A Verpine child is considered to be of up to ten years of age until they reach the age of young adulthood, and Jux was no different. Along with the other newborns, he was tended for by the colony in schooling, care, health, and of course play facilitated with other Verpine. The schooling went by considerably fast when compared to other species, due to how much faster they mature and the instant radio communication between every member of the colony further facilitating their intellectual growth. It was during these years that he would meet Kiluop, Muguon Gur’hen, Retus, and Kil’lur, of which the former three were from his hatch group and the latter an older Verpine. They would be great friends over the years and Kil’lur would become something of a mentor to the young Jux, assisting him in his studies and enjoying in telling stories; a reason Jux would become fascinated in history later in life. By the age of ten, when he grew to be considered a young adult, he had finished the equivalent of a primary education and somewhat of a secondary education.

Young Adult Years (31-21 BBY)
He would go on to continue his education, eventually finishing an equivalent to a secondary education in math, science, history, and literacy by the age of 13 (28 BBY) with help from Kil’lur, and become the apprentice of an engineer named Kal’lik shortly after. The next five years would see Jux develop to become a proficient engineer by Verpine standards, and an excellent engineer by the standards of humans, under the guidance of his mentor. Through this they had also formed a close bond, so close that he considered him to be as close his hatch mates. By 23 BBY, at the age of 17, Jux decided to leave Kal’lik’s mentorship and become a worker under Slayn & Korpil, a Verpine starfighter manufacturer. He would become one of the members of the project that would eventually become the V-19 Torrent starfighter, being partially responsible for the design decisions concerning the internal workings on the engine fuel flow. Upon the Clone Wars starting he looked at it with fascination, especially at the success of the V-19. In 21 BBY he takes leave from the company to go on a trip with his old mentor, who he kept in contact with, to the world of Anaxes. This was to do some freelancing, most notably in being a temporary engineer for the First Army. To get there, the Verpine transport vessel Rec’la was used which also transported numerous other Verpine to the world and a few to Brentaal IV to assist in reconstruction efforts.

Rec'la Incident (21 BBY)
The Rec’la was a medium passenger vessel that also contained a cargo hold slightly larger than what would normally be on a craft of its size. At 182 meters, it was slightly over two times larger than the GR-75s in service but featured no armaments of any sort. A crew of 16 maintained the vessel, mainly allocated to piloting and engineering, but also at least two security and a few workers. While the Verpine passengers, around 160, could also take part in manning the vessel, that was and is usually discouraged due to some few prior incidents of said vessels exploding. It made stops at Slayn, Korpil, and Nickel One to pick up passengers and cargo before departing and going along the Perlemian Trade Route where it crossed the systems of Taanab, Tirahnn, Chazwa, and Vurdon Ka. During the hyperspace jump between Vurdon Ka to Castell, a group of around 20 Verpine, who had smuggled weapons onto the ship, shot their way to the cockpit where they took control of the craft. During the short battle onboard a message managed to be sent out, requesting assistance, and resulted in the deaths of several of the hijackers, all of the security, the pilot, and several passengers. Jux, Kal’lik, and the surviving crew and passengers were taken as hostages aboard the vessel bound for Anaxes.

The message managed to be received by Republic forces in the orbit of Castell, who had just recently conquered the planet, and intercepted the transport as it entered the system. While there were numerous vessels in the system, including a few Venators, the Arquitens-class light cruiser Beloven was assigned to the task alone. When the defenseless transport decided to run, the Beloven overwhelmed the civilian deflectors of the craft and disabled its engines with its laser cannons. To assist in boarding operations, in the case negotiations went sour, two more Arquitens-classes arrived in support of the Beloven, the Rantax and the Alkar. The hijackers in control of the vessel, then revealing themselves to be Separatist partisans, refused all attempts at negotiations which forced the boarding of the vessel by the cruisers. All three Arquitens-classes supplied their troops, totaling three squads of ten each, to the operation and chaos ensued aboard the transport. Numerous hostages were taken and used as shields, or as bargaining chips. Other hostages saw the opportunity to jump the more heavily armed Verpine hijackers. Jux and Kal’lik remained hostages, as most of the passengers decided to do, as the sounds of blaster fire went about the ship. A hijacker Verpine, carrying a particularly unstable explosive, was running down the hallway the two Verpine and numerous others were hiding in when stunned by a Clone trooper. Unbeknownst to him, he had just let the unstable explosive hit the ground. Kal’lik seeing this occur in slow motion from his view, chose to shield the younger Jux seconds before the explosive went off. Despite it being unstable, it was low yield and didn’t do much damage to the ship itself. However, it had completely blown up the stunned Separatist, killed multiple Verpine in its radius, and stunned the others. Kal’lik was unfortunate, while he did save the life of Jux, the rear of his carapace was cracked and his organs ruptured or damaged. Within a minute he was dead in Jux’s arms, managing to distract his former student from the fact his antennae has been damaged. In a show of cheesy affection to the dying Kal’lik he did the Verpine equivalent of a kiss by rubbing his mandibles against his former mentor’s.

After all of the Separatist has either been killed or stunned, the former were taken prisoner, and several Clone troopers and numerous passenger Verpine were dead. After investigation it was revealed that, at some point, several tons of conventional explosives and small arms had been loaded on at some point which brought suspicion of corruption within one of the Hives themselves. It was suspected, though never confirmed as none of the prisoners admitted to it, that the plan was to ram the ship into Anaxes or another planet along the Perlemian Trade Route. The prisoners were handed over to the Verpine Technocracy after interrogation, and the passengers were temporarily held on the Pelta-class frigate Guri’idor. The shock of his long-time mentor dying was enough to distract him from the searing and burning pain on the back of his head from his cut right antenna, something he fully realized after feeling it and seeing his severed antenna on the ground. During the explosion, a fragment had managed to ricochet off the wall and sliced off his right antenna from the root, including a slice of skin just under his antenna which contained a complicated system of nerves. This negated his ability to communicate via the radio waves, effectively cutting him off from the bureaucracy and democracy of the Hives. Due to its complicated nature and the seriousness of the injury, there was and is no known medical procedure to reattach it, or at least no one competent enough to do so and regenerate the missing nerves. He had to come to terms with this as he was transported along with the other passengers aboard the Verpine transport Ru’iju while the prisoners were transported back to Nickel One via the Verpine warship Ala’ira.

Nickel One (21-20 BBY)
The full effect of his injuries hit Jux as he arrived at Nickel One, his residence for the next year. Not only was he severed from the Hive due to the broken antennae, barred from taking part in its bureaucracy or democracy, but he was also looked down upon by his peers as most Verpine with broken antennae often either went mad, became criminal, or simply killed themselves. Due to the harassment, often too subtle to be noticed by other Verpine, he grew distant from his former hatch mates and eventually lost contact with them. Kil’lur attempted to console Jux, but his attempts were futile, and he instead suggested that he start to study medicine. If Jux does, he might be able to find a way to repair the broken antenna. This brought some hope to him, but he and Kil’lur maintained only a rocky relationship by late 20 BBY. Eventually he decided to leave the colony, finding himself to be alien among his own kind, and said goodbye to Kil’lur before taking a transport to Lantillies.

Contracted Shipper (20-15 BBY)
There he started work in a local shipping company as a technician before eventually gaining his pilot license and being promoted to be charged with the piloting of the cargo vessels. At the conclusion of the Clone Wars he still worked at the company, but the new Galactic Empire intensified the already present, but subtle, discrimination against non-humans originating from the Pius Dea era. In order to escape it, he quit in 17 BBY and went to the Outer Rim world of Columex. He continued his work as a pilot, eventually succeeding in becoming a captain for a short time before he quit in the same year and went to Boonta. He worked with another local shipping company as a captain where he learned how valuable a blaster could be. He continued this job until 15 BBY, all the while studying medicine in his loneliness but never finding enough time to do any major breakthrough. At best it kept him distracted from his homesickness, along with reading history, but by 15 BBY he had mostly come to terms with that and instead found himself lonely.

Freelancer (15 BBY-Present)
During 15 BBY he found an offer he had to take. By purchasing his own ship and working as a freelancer he could set his own hours, to an extent, and jumped on the chance to purchase a used but worn Barloz-class for 14,000 credits (3,500 under average). He repaired the vessel in under a month by renting out a docking bay in one of the local spaceports, purchasing tools from a nearby shop, and using a combination of gathered scrap and purchased material.. He named it the Zz’setet, and also purchased Bronze One and Bronze Two, two ASP-7 labor droids for a discounted price of 1,500 for the pair (500 under average). From Boonta he would start freelancing around the Outer Rim and to cope his loneliness, which was made even worse by being the sole crewmember of the ship excluding for the two dumb labor droids, he purchased a 3PX-series protocol droid he named Silver One for 2,000 credits. He programmed it to also act as the ship’s medical droid, serve as the ‘first officer’ and co-pilot, and made it so he could have casual conversation with it. It nearly bore a striking resemblance to Kil’lur in its manner to the point where it was programmed to conversate with Jux about history, though it slowly developed a unique personality of its own due to Jux’s own insistence to not wipe the droid’s memory resulting in quirks, similar to R2-D2’s, being developed. Eventually he found himself at Syned in 13 BBY doing freelance work, before finally being contracted to Topatz Shipping at the Dravian Spaceport where he continues to study medicine, talk to Silver One, conduct shipping, and deal with the stress of being a lone Verpine. In 12 BBY, he made a transport run for Jabba the Hutt, under the watch of the bounty hunter Chenx, from Naboo to Tatooine, and finally to Nar Shaddaa. He had a distaste for the hunter throughout the entire trip due to his rude and sketchy attitude. The cargo, while secret, was obviously something at least organic due to the oxygen tank that was attached to the tank. After reaching Tatooine he was paid 10,000 credits and dropped off the cargo and Chenx, along with refusing the offer to work under Jabba as a pilot. When he made it to Nar Shaddaa he found a crate with weaponry worth 12,000 credits in total. With his contract not stating what he suppose to do with them, he sold them for a profit and ended up making 22,000 credits for the entire trip.

Personality
Jux is an introverted Verpine due to the trauma he sustained from the loss of his antenna. Despite that, he does not shy away from speaking up for himself or being stubborn when conducting business and has made a friend out of his droid, Silver One. While he does long to rejoin his Hive, his lack of self-worth as a result of his injuries as made himself introverted even towards the Hive that now views him as a lawless insect scattering about the galaxy.

However, his emotional state since the incident has been mostly recovered by distracting himself with conversations with Silver and feeding his obsession with medicine to repair his injury.

Traits and Abilities
Jux, as previously mentioned, is considered to be a proficient engineer in the Verpine community and an excellent engineer in the galactic community. This is in part due to the biological trait that all Verpine have which is the ability to see microscopic details, something that would usually require machinery for other species, and be able to accurately manage those microscopic details. Another ability he has, due to his biology, is the extremely tough carapace that can deflect regular blades and even glancing blaster bolts. He is also a capable pilot, more so when it comes to piloting small freighters like the Barloz-class.

Despite his experience in the Outer Rim and his proficiently with his D-22, he is still a rather poor combatant and would get pummeled in hand-to-hand combat. Due to this, he prefers to flight rather than fight, but is capable of using a blaster as previously mentioned if there is no other way.

His engineering expertise has been demonstrated to be in the areas of starships and droids, from his experience working for Slayn & Korpil on the V-19 Torrent, repairing the Barloz-class he would come to call the Zz'setet, and reprogramming Silver One.

Equipment
Being a trader, Jux doesn't have much in the ways of armaments. What he does have is a D-22 pistol, modified to have a bigger handle and grip, for self-defense, and the single light laser cannon aboard his freighter Zz'setet. The freighter itself is an unmodified copper-plated Barloz-class medium freighter that was repaired by Jux in 15 BBY and has been in use since then. For his clothing, due to his biology he also doesn't have much in the way of that. He prefers to wear a durasteel helmet with scaled armour overlaying his remaining antenna and a utility belt with an assortment of loops, pockets, and a holster for his D-22.

In his service are also three droids. Two of them, Bronze One and Bronze Two, were two bronze-plated ASP-7 labor droids whose social interaction went as far as saying boops and beeps in affirmation and negative to Jux. To get himself a companion and someone to conduct deals with, he purchased a 3PX-series protocol droid which he extensively reprogrammed to be more living and efficient.

Further Reading & References
Jux Ned'ix's Google Doc

Verpine from Wookieepedia

[1]Base Picture for the Zz'setet