Jarrow Rusher

"A little history comes in handy."

- Jarrow Rusher

Jarrow Rusher was male Human mercenary brigadier who operated in the Grumani sector during the Republic Dark Age.

The Daimanate
Jarrow Rusher commanded the mercenary force Rusher's Brigade, fighting for various Sith Lords in the Grumani sector. In c. 1,032 BBY, Rusher and a number of other mercenary leaders were summoned to meet with the Sith Lord Daiman in the Sanctum Celestial on the planet Darkknell, and Daiman hired them to fight for him on the world Gazzari. During the resulting battle against the forces of the Sith Lord Odion, the majority of Rusher's forces were wiped out. Rusher and the other survivors fled to their ship, the Diligence, but before they could leave the world, the ship was boarded by hundreds of child refugees that were being led by the Jedi Knight Kerra Holt.

The Dyarchy
Forced to take the children with them, Rusher and his crew flew their ship to the planet Byllura, hoping to drop the children off there. Compared to the oppressive regime of the Daimanate, Byllura was beautiful and idyllic, at least for Sith space, and Rusher was eager to allow the refugees to stay there and clear from his ship. Kerra was uneasy, however, and made Rusher promise to give her an hour to check the place out. Far from safe, Byllura turned out to be controlled by the Dyarchy, a pair of twin sibling Sith Lords, Dromika and Quilan, with incredible powers of persuasion. The arrival of the Diligence caused them to hasten their plans for galactic conquest, beginning with several of Daiman's unguarded systems. Kerra warned Rusher in time to bring most of the refugees back aboard the Diligence, minutes ahead of the arrival of the Dyarchy's Force-Sensitive enforcers, the Unifiers. When Rusher tried to have the Diligence lift off, the Unifiers attacked, first by trying to jump on and cut into the ship, then with speeders. Though the Diligence had little operational armament, Rusher came up with the clever tactic of slamming the non-working gun emplacements on the Diligence into the swarming speeders, easily destroying their attackers. With the Dyarchy's fleet lifting into space, Rusher ordered the Diligence out to sea and away from the chaos.

Rusher brought the Diligence to the Dyarchy's main compound to recover his latest recruit, Beadle Lubboon, and refugee Tan Tengo. Learning from Lubboon that Kerra had fought her way into the compound, they soon realized she was top level, battling for her life against Dromika and Quillan. Rusher again used the tactic of slamming the gun emplacement, this time into the top floor's window, providing Kerra a distraction and a means of escape. When she tackled Quillan and brought him aboard, Rusher was furious, his cardinal rule of never allowing a Sith aboard his ship now broken by the young Jedi. His fury was short lived, though, as the Diligence reached orbit and all aboard witnessed the appearance of Sith Lord Arkadia Calimondra's fleet. At another Sith's mercy, Rusher had no choice but to surrender his ship to her forces.

Guests of a Sith
Arkadia had the ship follow them to her capital planet Syned, where Kerra and Rusher met the Sith Lord face to face on the icy surface outside her capital Calimondretta. Surprisingly, Arkadia claimed that she wanted to help Kerra and Rusher with their refugee problem and showed them around her "enlightened" Sith regime, impressing Rusher enough with her efficient city, knowledge of history, and her beautiful looks. She successfully convinced the Brigadier that she could provide a safe home for the young refugees, who would become subjects of the Arkadianate. With the promise that he and his crew would be able to safely depart Syned after delivering the children, Rusher agreed to help transport them to the city. While he and Kerra were having an audience with Arkadia, he met the Bothan spy Narsk Ka'hane, who had worked for several different Sith Lords but was in fact an agent Vilia Calimondra, the grandmother of Arkadia and the matriarch of the Calimondra family. Narsk demanded the return of his prized Cyricept Mark IV stealth suit, which Kerra had stolen during a mission to Darkknell.

While Rusher was completely taken in by Arkadia’s seemingly warmth reception, Kerra refused to trust her because she was a Sith whom the Jedi did not regard as being fair players. She criticized Rusher's plans to drop the student refugees on Syned, leading to a heated argument between the two. Rusher accused Kerra of being unreasonable, maintaining that the Diligence was his ship and that they were foreigners on Arkadia's planet. He also argued that they lack sufficient knowledge of any safe hyperspace routes back to the Galactic Republic. In response, Kerra criticized Rusher for his willingness to work as a mercenary for different Sith Lords and suggested that his energies could instead be put into into working for the people. Rusher interjected that he had more important things to do like accomodating feeding his 560 member crew and 1,700 passengers. Their argument was interrupted by the arrival of one of Arkadia's Citizen Guards who invited her inside Arkadia's museum for a private meeting with the Sith Lord.

Brigadier Rusher was instructed to wait outside once he had finished discussing transporting arrangements for the student passengers with the Arkadianate engineers. Kerra's meeting with Arkadianate turned out to be an attempt by the Sith Lord to recruit Kerra as an assassin to kill her grandmother Vilia. During the early part of the meeting, Arkadia allowed Kerra to view her family Bequest where the young Jedi woman found out that all the Sith Lords in the Grumani Sector were members of the Calimondra family, a powerful Sith clan fractured by internal rivalries. Vilia held a managerial position among the sector's Sith warlords and used the Bequests to dispense patronage among her grandchildren. Arkadia tried to justify killing her grandmother by claiming that he was behind the death of her father Chagras and that she was responsible for the internecine conflicts destabilizing much of the Outer Rim. Kerra turned down the offer on the maxim that she did not work with the Sith. In retaliation, an enraged Arkadia had Kerra taken into custody and imprisoned.

An Unlikely Partnership
Meanwhile, Narsk attempted to convince Rusher to return his stolen stealth suit but the latter was uncooperative, arguing that they could wait until the refugees were being transported to Calimondretta on the icecrawler. Rusher and Narsk were present when Kerra was being taken away by Arkadia's Citizen Guards as a captive. Arkadia then demanded that the refugee passengers aboard the Diligence be brought immediately to Calimondretta. A large icecrawler was already waiting at the southern garage bay to transport the student refugees to the settlement’s main atrium. She also reiterated her promise that Rusher and his mercenaries could leave Syned after finishing their errand. She handed him a set of coordinates in a datapad which purpotedly led to the Galactic Republic. In reality, she intended to kill them by sending them on a one-way journey to the Nakrikal Singularity, a black hole.

When Rusher queried about Kerra and offered to take the Jedi offworld, Arkadia replied that she would be imprisoned and then executed. The Sith Lord was unwilling to have an enemy Jedi creating havoc in her domain, just as she had done so earlier in the former Dyarchy. Arkadia intended to interrogate the Jedi woman on any intelligence on the Republic and other Sith warlords before executing her personally. She also recruited Narsk to carry out the task of couriering her younger brother Quillan to Vilia and then assassinating the matriarch; completely unaware of his true loyalties. . In return for his services, Narsk got Arkadia to order Rusher to return his stolen stealth suit. Rusher had no choice but to comply with Arkadia’s command. Through unknown means, Vilia discovered her granddaughter's plot and sent a transmission to Narsk's implant, ordering the Bothan spy to turn against his "current" employer Arkadia by launching her own "counter-plot".

Cognizant of his new orders, Narsk approached Brigadier Rusher, who was uncomfortable with the fate of the captive Kerra. However, the Brigadier was unwilling to balance the lives of a thousand student refugees with that of one person. Still, Rusher tried to assure himself by dismissing his anxieties as not being part of his job. Narsk convinced the Brigadier that following Arkadia’s orders would pose a danger to his crew by citing the developments that occurred during the Bequest. The Bothan added that they could use explosives to damage the tractor beam emitters within Syned’s atmosphere, allowing the Diligence to escape the Arkadianate. For this escape attempt to succeed however, it would require the full support of Rusher and his mercenaries.

Rusher agreed to cooperate with the Bothan spy's plans and arranged for one his mercenaries Beadle Lubboon to transport Narsk's stealth suit and Kerra's lightsaber to Calimondretta. For his plan to succeed, Narsk also needed the support of Kerra to provide a second diversion for Arkadia's forces. Narsk modified the settings on Rusher's comlinks, allowing him to relay the instructions to Lubboon while evading detection from Arkadia's sensors. In return for Rusher's cooperation, Narsk paid him by giving him half of the coordinates that led to a safe hyperspace lane which ended at a jump-point in neutral space leading to the Galactic Republic. Narsk also presumably explained to Rusher that the earlier coordinates which Arkadia had presented earlier was actually a one-way death trip ending in a black hole. Finally, he promised to give the second half of the coordinates to Kerra on the condition that she helped create a distraction that would allow both parties to escape the Arkadinate.

The Great Escape
Rusher was able to fulfill his part of the bargain. First, he dispatched Beadle Lubboon to deliver Narsk's stealth suit and Kerra's lightsaber to the Bothan. Lubboon was able to evade Arkadianate security by hiding the suit in a pouch and the lightsaber in his left arm; while feigning a broken arm from a fall. While Narsk was being briefed by Arkadia on the details of his mission to assassinate Vilia at Embarkation Station 7 which involved using a modified shuttle and a hoverchair fitted with the nerve toxin Chagras's Blood, Lubboon entered the hangar and returned Narsk's stealth suit. He then recused himself from the meeting on the pretext that needed to go to the infirmary to threat his broken left arm. Shortly later, Narsk joined Lubboon at the infirmary where the Duros was waiting with the lightsaber. Narsk had also departed early on the pretext that his Bothan physiology was allergic to the bioweapon Chagras's Blood that was to be deployed against Vilia and Quillan during the assassination attempt. Chagras's Blood was a nerve toxin extracted from Synedian alga.

Keeping to his side of the bargain, Narsk was able to free Kerra from her prison cell in the Impound before she could be exposed to Chagras's Blood, which Arkadia had planned to deploy as part of a planned irredentist military campaign following her grandmother's death. Narsk was able to get Kerra's cooperation by explaining that Rusher was collaborating with their escape attempt from the Arkadianate and that he needed her support in order to escape to the Republic. The Bothan also gave Kerra the second half of the hyperspace coordinates leading to the safe jump point. The second stage of Rusher's plan involved hijacking Arkadia's icecrawler and using it to transport an artillery cannon into Calimondretta to launch an attack with the purpose of creating a diversion that would keep Arkadia's forces preoccupied, which would allow Narsk to escape offworld with Quillan.

As part of the escape plan, Rusher worked with the Arkadianate Citizen Guards to drive the icecrawler to the Diligence. To transport the student refugees, Arkadia’s staff had suspended several levels of metal scaffolds at the rear of the icecrawler. The Arkadianate driver was a male Nazzar, who had been promoted from a rumblecar driver to being the icecrawler's driver. Rusher’s crew had removed the cannon barrels on one side of the Diligence to enable the icecrawler to connect with the liner by extending its bushing towards the liner’s entrance hatch. However, Rusher had secretly made arrangements with his crew to hijack the icecrawler. On the other side of the tunnel, Team Ripper led by Zeller was waiting to launch an attack on the Citizen Guards. After the door opened, Rusher’s crew attacked the Arkadianates, quickly wiping out all resistance. Meanwhile, Rusher personally killed the Nazzar driver by breaking his neck.

By the time the pressure between the two vessels had equalized, Rusher’s mercenaries had seized control of the icecrawler. Rusher and his crew then removed the metal decking and loaded the icecrawler with their ancient artillery cannon Bitsy. When the ramp lowered to disembark the "refugees", Rusher's troops had the cannon ready to fire deep inside Calimondretta, causing significant interior damage. The destruction caused by the cannon did what it needed to do, allowing Narsk to escape on the modified shuttle with Quillan, whom Arkadia had hoped to use in a plot to assassinate her grandmother. He also foiled Arkadia's plot to assassinate both Quillan and Vilia by switching the red hoverchair containing the nerve toxin with a harmless brown one. During the escape attempt from the hangar, Narsk activated the nerve toxin which killed the ground crew before they could stop the shuttle from departing. Keeping to her side of the bargain, Kerra created another diversion by fighting several of Arkadia's Citizen Guards before taking on the Sith Lord in a lightsaber duel herself.

Meanwhile, Rusher had the Diligence cause even more destruction by having its crew shed its massive cargo assembly pods. These multi-ton pieces crashed onto Arkadia's parked military fleet and the tractor beam emitter, destroying them in a massive explosion. This effectively sabotaged the second stage of Arkadia's conspiracy by ending her irredentist plans of exploiting the future crisis to invade other Sith states. The destruction of the tractor beam emitter would allow the Diligence to escape Syned's orbit into hyperspace. With their job done, Rusher and his troops boarded the Diligence and lifted off, preparing to escape. Knowing that Kerra was still in Calimondretta and reasoning that she was likely to be at Arkadia's museum near the planet's surface, Rusher ordered a precision shot fired at the museum, which opened a hole in its roof and allowing Kerra an avenue of escape to the surface. He soon spotted Kerra lying unconscious on the frigid surface of the planet and had the Diligence to pick her up along with a few hundred defecting citizens from Calimondretta, who were unhappy with their lives under Arkadia's rule. Rusher personally carried Kerra back aboard the ship and was present in the medical bay when she woke up.

After she recoverd, Rusher explained the detail of how they had found her and were using coordinates to Republic space given to them by Narsk, half of which Narsk had scrawled on Rusher's arm and the other half on Kerra's. He offered to drop Kerra off on Tramanos on their way to the Republic so that she could continue her mission. He also joked that should the Jedi woman ever choose to hire the Diligence, he might cut her a reduced rate. Meanwhile, Narsk made it back safely to Vilia's planet where he received treatment for his ears which had been damaged by the acceleration of the shuttle's engines. The failure of Arkadia's assassination conspiracy preserved the status quo in the Grumani Sector with Vilia remaining in her managerial role as the Sith family matriarch. Vilia also assumed custody of both Quillan and Dromika, with the latter being spirited away from Byllura by two of Vilia's other agents.

Appearances

 * Knight Errant