Akanseh

"What were you charged with?''" "''Moff Sarne seldom needed anything so mundane as a charge."

- Lieutenant Judder Page and Doctor Akanseh

Akanseh was a male Mon Calamari doctor from the planet Mon Calamari. A philanthropist and accomplished surgeon, he wanted to use his skills to take medical care to the backwater planets of the galaxy. When the Galactic Empire invaded his homeworld, Akanseh fled and avoided becoming a slave. Hiding for several years, he built a fully automated surgical suite staffed by droids and set out to achieve his goals. Since the surgical suite could be broken down and stowed in the hold of a freighter, Akanseh used free-traders to transport the apparatus from world to world.

While being ferried between planets, the freighter Akanseh had booked passage on was intercepted by an Interdictor cruiser. The doctor was taken to Moff Kentor Sarne, an Imperial warlord who ruled the Kathol sector. Sarne saw that Akanseh's talents and surgical suite would serve him well, and forced the Mon Calamari to work for him as an interrogator and torturer. Akanseh did his best to act humanely in this role, using persuasion and coercion to gain his subject's secrets without resorting to violence. Despite this, he still used more forceful methods on occasion.

In 8 ABY, he was freed from his servitude to the Moff by Page's Commandos of the New Republic during the Battle of Kal'Shebbol. Moff Sarne had fled Kal'Shebbol with the bulk of his fleet, and the New Republic corvette FarStar had been assigned to track him down and neutralize any threat he posed. Akanseh signed onto the crew of the FarStar as chief medical officer, hoping to atone for his actions while in Sarne's service. Several months into the voyage, the vessel stopped at the planet Q'Maere in the Kathol Rift. The planet was the site of the Q'Maere Research Facility, a former scientific outpost that had been converted into a penal colony by Moff Sarne. Many of the inmates had been poorly and brutally treated, and Akanseh elected to stay behind at the outpost to care for them.

Early life
An accomplished surgeon and philanthropist on Mon Calamari, Akanseh dreamed of providing advanced medical services to the unprivileged backwater planets of the Outer Rim Territories, and aiding those who needed it the most. Before he could realize his goal, the Galactic Empire subjugated the planet. Akanseh fled his homeworld, and avoided becoming one of the many Mon Calamari slaves throughout the galaxy.

Akanseh spent several years in hiding, developing a mobile surgical suite to fulfill his dream of providing medical services to the needy. The suite was largely staffed by medical droids programmed by Akanseh himself, and the doctor planned for them to conduct routine operations on their own while he supervised. The unit was designed to be able to fit into the hold of a freighter, and could also be assembled to create a field surgery unit.

Around the time of the Battle of Endor, Akanseh completed his surgical suite, and began traveling to backwater planets, where he hoped to aid underprivileged individuals in need. He traveled in free-trader ships, trading his medical services for full passage, or at least a reduced price. While en route to a new planet, the freighter he was traveling in was captured by an Imperial Interdictor cruiser. Akanseh was taken to Kal'Shebbol, and brought before Moff Kentor Sarne, an Imperial warlord and ruler of the Kathol sector.

Working for Moff Sarne
"If you do not cooperate with me, Moff Sarne will most definitely draw the information he wants from you using drugs &hellip; or worse."

- Akanseh, to a captive resistance fighter

Sarne confiscated Akanseh's medical suite, and saw that the doctor's medical skills and knowledge of droids and droid programming would serve him well in his dungeons as an interrogator. A peaceful being, Akanseh chose not to resist and became a submissive prisoner, carrying out Sarne's orders. However, Akanseh had his own methods. Rather than torturing them for information, he persuaded his subjects to trust him enough to disclose the information willingly. He did not want to cause other beings harm, and he knew that if he couldn't get the information in this manner, then the prisoner would be turned over to Imperial interrogators and droids. His techniques were effective, and his rate of success was noted by the Moff.

Akanseh once interrogated a stubborn resistance fighter, attempting to get the young man to reveal the location of his compatriots who were causing havoc at Kal'Shebbol's starport. Treating the rebel's injuries, he tried to persuade the prisoner to see sense and tell him what he knew. Unfortunately for Akanseh, the prisoner was defiant and refused his requests. Desperate not to inflict pain on him, the doctor pleaded with the rebel, telling him that Sarne would use much worse techniques on him if he didn't. At that point, Sarne entered the interrogation room. Having heard about the success that Akanseh was having with his subjects, the Moff had decided to supervise one of his sessions. After observing Akanseh's failure at persuading the subject to talk, Sarne presented the Mon Calamari with a hypo-syringe and a clear liquid that, when injected into a subject, would make their blood boil. Akanseh hesitated to use the chemical substance, and Sarne noticed. The Moff revealed he had a second hypo-syringe, and commented that if the doctor was unsuccessful, then he would suffer the same fate as the prisoner.

Despite working for Sarne as an interrogator, Akanseh was still considered to be a prisoner, and was kept in the detention block in the Moff's palace. In 8 ABY, the New Republic liberated the planet. Soldiers from Page's Commandos, led by Kaiya Adrimetrum, freed all the prisoners in the detention area as part of their invasion of Sarne's headquarters.

Service aboard the FarStar
"The operating facilities are a little skimpy, but Doctor Akanseh says we can make up a lot of that with his medical droids.''" "''If they still exist. Moff Sarne confiscated my entire mobile surgical suite when he put me in detention."

- Keleman Ciro and Akanseh discuss the FarStar medical facilities

Freed from imprisonment, Akanseh learned of a New Republic mission assigned to track Moff Sarne down. The Moff had escaped from Kal'Shebbol with the majority of his fleet, and the modified New Republic CR90 corvette FarStar had been charged to pursue and neutralize him. The doctor signed onto the FarStar mission, seeing it as penance for the acts he performed in Sarne's service. However, while Akanseh admitted he did some medical work for the Moff, he did not reveal the nature of the work to Lieutenant Judder Page, the New Republic officer in charge of putting the mission together. One of the first to join the mission, Akanseh was part of the inspection team that checked out the FarStar at its secret berth in the Sorbiss Valley. He inspected the vessel's medical facilities along with Keleman Ciro and Kaiya Adrimetrum, pronouncing them "reasonably complete."

As the chief medical officer on the FarStar, he was responsible for overseeing the medical bay, keeping track of medical supplies, and maintaining a medical droid pool. He ran the medical facility well, and it was always brightly lit, warm and stocked with hot food. The crew often joked about getting injured just so they could spend a few comfortable days in sickbay. Akanseh's droid programming skills also came in useful since the medical droids had to be well suited to deal with a crew composed of a diverse number of species. His ultimate goal was to recreate his surgical suite, but he realized that, since that was not part of the FarStar mission, it could not take priority. However, he worked in secret during his time on the ship, assembling equipment and medical droids.

Shortly after launching from Kal'Shebbol, the FarStar intercepted an emergency call from the planet Kolatill. It's capital city, Domaz, had been attacked by TIE bombers in retaliation for the overthrow of the planet's Imperial governor. The FarStar arrived in orbit several days later, and Akanseh led the medical relief teams to the surface to help the injured. Shortly after, he was part of the FarStar delegation that met with the political leaders of the planet Gandle Ott, and also a member of the party that was greeted by Imperial Colonel Heget at Imperial Depot 4290-1 on Shintel.

Several weeks into their voyage, the FarStar made a brief layover at Galtea, gathering supplies and performing maintenance before crossing the empty expanse of space known as the Marcol Void. An Imperial agent, known as the "Wraith", had joined the crew of the ship at Pembric II, posing as a man named Drenn. He had come aboard with Breslin Drake, a former New Republic Intelligence Service agent who was managing the ThrusterBurn tapcafe, after running afoul of the local crime lord, Crev Bombaasa. However, Drake had no idea that Drenn was an Imperial spy, and was, in fact, searching for him.

The Wraith used the FarStar communications system to contact an Imperial patrol and arrange for it to attack the corvette. He then rigged one of the K4 security droids on the bridge with a miniature projectile launcher loaded with a poison dart, as well as a shaped charge on a power conduit near the captain's station. While landed on the surface, the corvette's sensors detected the approach of several Imperial ships. Adrimetrum gave the order to launch into orbit and engage the enemy. During the ensuing battle, Adrimetrum was apparently injured following an explosion on the bridge and fell into a coma. In reality, the Wraith's shaped charge gave the appearance that Adrimetrum had been injured during the battle, covering the fact that she had been shot with a toxic dart. Examining her in the medical bay, Akanseh could find no cause for her condition&mdash;the captain's injuries consisted of several cuts, a broken arm, broken ribs and bruising, and none of them was responsible for the coma.

An investigation was launched into the matter, led by the Defel Kl'aal. After reviewing security footage from the command center taken during the battle, it was realized that the explosion that caused the captain's injuries did not correspond to any weapon strikes against the ship. Further analysis showed that the memory buffer on one of the K4 security droids on the bridge had been altered, and that Adrimetrum had apparently slapped at her neck just prior to the explosion. Aware of these new findings, Akanseh managed to locate a small puncture wound at the base of the captain's neck, and a decrease in neurotransmitter activity in her brain. The doctor discovered that a contact poison was to blame for the captain's condition, but the substance did not appear in any of the medical databases.

Drake recognized the effects as being similar to those of a toxin used by the Imperial agent known only as Wraith. He believed that the toxin originated from the planet Sebiris, but had never found the source of it on his trips to the planet. The FarStar headed to Sebiris, and a landing party met with the native inhabitants of the planet, the Sebiri. The headman of a local tribe informed the landing party that the only cure to the toxin was a herb that grew near one of their sacred grounds. The landing party gave the headman gifts, including luxury food items, and he personally escorted them to the site with twelve of his warriors. During their trek into the jungle to the sacred site, one of the Sebiri referred a member of the landing party called Drenn by the name "Petrivoor," an alias that Drake knew the Wraith was known to use. Drake could not believe that the man he had been searching for had been right under his nose, and a brief fight ensued. The Wraith escaped, but it was clear to the crew that he had engineered Adrimetrum's injury. The landing party managed to recover several of the herbs, and returned to the FarStar. Initially, Akanseh was skeptical about the healing properties of the primitive cure, but was amazed when the captain came out her coma after he administered it.

After crossing the Marcol Void, the FarStar made a stopover at the planet Binaros to take on food supplies. The landing party inadvertently brought back the spores of a feeder plant, which took root and began to grow within the ship's lower forward hold. The plant utilized mobile feeders to gather food and nutrients for itself, and also required nitrogen taken from the blood of living animals. One of the feeders attacked and killed a member of the crew for the nitrogen within their blood stream. Akanseh examined the dead crewmember, and pronounced that he had been completely drained of blood.

Redemption
Several months after leaving Kal'Shebbol, the FarStar entered the Kathol Rift, an area of volatile gases plagued by dense lightstorms. A bacteria mutation within the Rift rotted the corvette's food stores, forcing them to stop at the planet Q'Maere within the Rift itself. According to records that the FarStar had obtained, Q'Maere supported a scientific outpost. However, unknown to the crew, Moff Sarne had secretly taken the facility over and converted it into a penal colony and reeducation center.

Weeks before the FarStar arrival, Moff Sarne had stripped the facility of its useful personnel and security troops, and stranded the remaining staff and all of the prisoners. The facility's director, Langstyn Kraay was desperate for a way off the planet, and took a landing party from the FarStar hostage. He hoped that by holding the delegation to ransom, the crew of the FarStar would surrender the ship to him. The landing party was put in with the main prison population, and, together with a New Republic prisoner named Lowen Chase, they staged a jailbreak and took control of the facility. Despite being freed, the FarStar could only take a small number of the prisoners aboard, and the rest would have to remain at the facility. Akanseh, seeing a chance to atone for his past transgressions, volunteered to stay behind at the outpost and care for those patients that had suffered at the hands of Sarne's torturers.

Personality and traits
"It seems your persuasive manner will not be enough to sway this young fool, Akanseh."

- Moff Kentor Sarne, to Akanseh

Akanseh was a kind and generous Mon Calamari, and had a knack for getting other beings to trust him, even in dire situations. He believed in helping the helpless, and was insistent in bringing medical services to backwater planets, even while serving aboard the FarStar. To him, withholding medical services was just as bad as causing injury. Although a talented shipboard doctor, he was easily confused in combat situations and was not an effective combat medic.

Generally peaceful and non-violent, Akanseh was forced to betray his beliefs when he was captured by Moff Sarne. He was deeply ashamed of his time as an interrogator, and simply wanted to forget about it. His greatest fear was that someone would find out about his past and expose him, and he had no compunctions about lying to cover up his past deeds.

Behind the scenes
Akanseh was created for The DarkStryder Campaign by West End Games for Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game. In the "Crew Notes" section for The DarkStryder Campaign, it was noted that Akanseh should find the redemption he sought during the adventure by committing a truly heroic act, such as sacrificing himself in an effort to save others. However, the developers also stated that the gamemaster and players were under no obligation to eliminate Akanseh from their campaigns. In The Kathol Rift, Akanseh was written out of the series by stating that, if the players had allowed him to survive to this point in their campaign, then he would remain at the Q'Maere Research Facility to care for those who suffered under Sarne's interrogations.