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buggingoutIN CHARACTER
Name: Valin Horn
Fandom: Star Wars
Age: 29
Point in Canon: 42 ABY, pre-Fate of the Jedi
Alignment: Heaven
Powers: Force abilities, except telekinesis (disability carried on the Horn Y chromosome, not even kidding). He's got the rest of the Jedi arsenal, though, including mind tricks, augmented speed/stamina, etc. His main strengths are with animals, particularly insects: he can "talk" to whole swarms of them and convince them to do things.
Personality:
Valin's never been much of a leader, and the idea that any of the younger Jedi might look up to him is something of a bemusing one. Still, he's well-respected for his level-headedness and easy-going nature; he doesn't let the little things bother him and is pretty patient with other people (and animals). He's much more likely to make a joke than an angry remark. But just because he's happy to let other people take charge doesn't mean he's incapable of acting on his own -- his father would be appalled if that were the case -- and it doesn't mean he follows blindly. He did as a kid, and it led him into trouble a few times, but childhood hero Anakin Solo set him straight. He's much more logical these days, thinking things through to be sure what the best course of action might be, and he's not afraid to take a stand against people he respects if he thinks they're doing something wrong.
Brief History:
Born on Corellia thirteen years after the Battle of Yavin, Valin spent a great deal of his formative years on various spaceships. Sometimes his mother's freighter Pulsar Skate, sometimes his grandfather's Star Destroyer Errant Venture. Said grandfather Booster Terrik was one of the more well-known smuggler types, and Valin's mother Mirax dabbled in the business from time to time, so young Valin grew up with the darker side of the market around him and rarely wanted for anything, even after his younger sister Jysella was born and he had to compete for attention.
(SIDEBAR: Canon now seems to say Jysella is just three years younger than Valin, but this directly contradicts Zahn and Stackpole's previous canon where Valin was still an only child at the age of six. So I'll say there's a six year difference unless/until it comes up in future!)
Still, he learned a little humility when he started attending the Jedi Academy as a child. His father was the famous Jedi hero (and Rogue Squadron pilot, and ex-CorSec agent) Corran Horn, and the ability to use the Force ran strongly in the Horn family. Like his father and grandfather, however, Valin didn't have telekinetic powers, so his time was spent communicating with animals, training his emotional and mental prowess, and trying to avoid academic lessons. He was a few years younger than the Solo kids and didn't interact with them much at the Academy; his best friend was Sannah, a young Melodie girl brought from Yavin 8 by Anakin Solo and Tahiri Veila. It was with Sannah that he snuck away from the teachers during the Yuuzhan Vong invasion of the moon, to "help" (they mostly hindered) Anakin and Tahiri fight to save the Academy and its students.
Unfortunately, Yavin 4 and the Jedi Academy were lost to the Vong, but all the students, including Valin and Sannah, were able to escape. They spent a few months aboard Booster's Errant Venture until the new Jedi base was set up in the Maw, a space station in the midst of a collection of black holes near the centre of the galaxy. There the Jedi students were protected and trained for the rest of the Yuuzhan Vong war, much to the chagrin of Valin who considered himself more than capable of helping out his hero -- and of continuing Anakin's legacy when the elder boy fell in battle. Never mind that he didn't even build his own lightsaber until close to the end of the war.
Almost sixteen by then, Valin spent a few more years at the new Academy when it was set up on Ossus, training and also helping to build up the place and assist with the younger students. He didn't have an official apprenticeship as such, though he got a lot of one-on-one tuition from various Masters such as Kam Solusar, Kyle Katarn, his own father Corran Horn -- and even Kyp Durron, much to Corran's dismay. It was during this time that Valin mellowed out a little and transitioned from an impatient teenager to a well-rounded young adult, particularly when he gained the responsibility of assisting with the founding of a local Academy on Corellia. By his early twenties, he was a Jedi Knight and off on missions around the galaxy, though he was almost always paired with a Jedi quite a bit older than himself, something that plagued him until recently.
Valin was involved in the attempt to "neutralise" Jacen Solo on Coruscant, after the Jedi finally deemed Solo too dangerous to continue his path of being a crazy darkside-using self-appointed Chief of State (seriously, it took them like, a year?!). He was later part of the mission to destroy Centerpoint Station, preventing either side from using it in the war. Since then, Valin's spent his time on missions, helping out at the Corellian Academy, or chilling at his parents' home (or sometimes the Jedi Temple) on Coruscant. He even has his own group of buddies called "The Unit", whom he constantly subjects to bad holovids for his own amusement. (Some of them may or may not star Garik Loran.)
Like many of the young Jedi who resided in the Maw, Valin was influenced by a powerful Force user called Abeloth, though he wasn't aware of it at the time. As of now, this doesn't mean much, but for the past couple years -- in fact, almost exactly since Valin and the others destroyed Centerpoint Station -- Abeloth has been gaining power and her influence is spreading. Childhood acquaintance Seff Hellin has already fallen to the strange psychosis that Abeloth's influence induces, making her subjects believe that everyone -- except those also affected -- is an "impostor", and that it's imperative they reach the Maw where, unknown to them, Abeloth will feed on their life force until they die.
Of course, this doesn't actually matter for Valin now. Right?
Oh. Okay. We'll see.
Played By: Hans Matheson
SAMPLES
Third Person:
The music store was the one place Valin had found so far where he felt at home, despite being billions of miles, several millenia and probably a few dimensions away from Corellia itself. Not a single instrument had a counterpart he knew of, but they all had functions he knew well, all boiling down to the one: making beautiful sounds.
He'd quickly transposed his own knowledge of music to the signatures and keys used here -- the main difference seemed to be the only-slightly-different alphabet usage -- and he'd picked the one they called a "guitar" to try out today, much to the patient amusement of the shop assistant (a young woman who, though at first cynical of the stranger who clearly couldn't afford to actually buy anything, was gaining an appreciation of his talent). He pieced together the way different points on the strings made different notes, that the little ridges on the neck indicated the changes, that he could pick out individual notes with his fingers or strum chords with his thumb.
He grinned, carefully picked out the melody of the theme tune for Javis Tyrr's holoshow, and then spent a moment deciding which chords would be necessary for an equivalent of Jysella's favourite current chart song.
The sound that came from the guitar when he started to strum made both him and the shop assistant cringe.
He shot her a questioning frown, and she pointed to the hand fingering the chords. "You're barely holding down most of the strings. You've never played before, right?"
"Nah, never s--" He checked himself. Probably weird to say he'd never even seen the instrument before last week. "Never had a chance. But it seems logical, the note progression; I'm sure I had the right ones..."
"There's a reason music takes practice," she told him with a smile. "You haven't developed the muscles for most of those chords. You might be a theoretical guitar genius, but without regular practice you won't be able to play for shit."
"Ah." Valin grinned ruefully. Of course. There were similar instruments at home; he was just more used to the ones that didn't care much about the exact muscle development of your fingers and wrists. "Guess you're gonna be seeing a lot more of me, then."
The woman tilted her head to study him, and Valin sensed more amusement. "Guess so."
