Slossk

Original image: Athavan Ananthakanesamoorthy

Once, the bounty hunter Slossk was renowned for its endurance and persistence, a tracker capable of hunting prey across a multitude of systems. The Trandoshan was bred and raised on a colony far from Hsskhor where its tribe eked out a miserly existence largely without the use of technology.

Slossk’s reputation for effectiveness eventually led to its employ by the crime lord Sorrek of Nath, who sent it to seek out a dangerous target on Kron’s Lock, presumably some lieutenant of Uro Gruul who had caused a little too much trouble to be left alive. It remains unknown whether Slossk ultimately fulfilled this task, for once it arrived, it never left the space station again.

What is known is that Slossk was grievously wounded in a fierce battle—possibly with the target of his mission—and was horribly crippled. Left with the shame of being unable to hunt, and without the means to return to its homeworld, the pitiful creature remained on Kron’s Lock for some time. Eventually, salvation was offered to Slossk by a Gand surgeon on the station, who offered his services in the form of cybernetics… for a price, of course. Lured by the temptation of returning to the fray, and dazzled by the technical wizardry of the surgeon, which to the Luddite Trandoshan must surely have seemed like magic or the work of the great spirits, Slossk agreed to this price.

The Gand installed a variety of cybernetic enhancements—among them an artificial eye, a replacement arm, and subdermal enhancers to further inflammate and drive its natural regenerative capacity—and each of these new artificial implements cost the Trandoshan dearly. Not only was it suddenly obligated to repay the Gand surgeon for its work, sent on an endless list of errands and dirty deeds, but it became enamoured with the thrill of its newly-found technological advances. In short, Slossk became addicted to the nature of cybernetics themselves.

What the Trandoshan could not have known was that the Gand had been using Slossk as a means of testing experimental technologies offered by Cybot Galactica which had not passed muster for use within the Core Worlds. Yet, far away from Imperial regulation there was nothing to stop a drunken, washed-up surgeon from utilising such equipment on unsuspecting subjects, particularly those as desperate as Slossk.

Over time, the Trandoshan’s insistence on an increasing number of cybernetics began to dull the edges of an already cold reptilian personality, and Slossk became devoid of empathy and increasingly violent. The Gand could no longer control it, and the jobs it was obligated to undertake on the Gand’s behalf became bloodbaths—even those tasks without a need for coercion or force of arms. Slossk began to take increasingly erratic decisions, including assaulting the security forces on Kron’s Lock.

Uro Gruul, for his part, had tolerated the Trandoshan possibly because its presence reinforced the notion that unrestrained violence on the Lock was unwise; yet all things have their limit. Weary of hearing stories of the bounty hunter’s troubled existence and increasingly violent eruptions, Gruul hired a group of mercenaries to track it down. Slossk has not been heard from, nor seen, since—it is therefore assumed that the mercenaries were successful in either eliminating it, or forcing its exile from the station.