Perdia Detami
From TFC Galactopedia
Categories: Jedi | TFC Episode 1 | TFC Episode 2 | Current Main Cast | Derisians | Andean Mountain Cat
A Bird shall ascend from the land and rise forth to the Knight, and she shall meet with her heart. And when her heart is gone, the Knight shall mourn, and The Bird will be a harbinger of The Darkness. But the Knight will not heed her warning, and the Dark Times will soon come upon them all. - Shakar Lu, The Book of Sights.
- Full Name: Perdia Detami
- Birth Name: Piriia Voran
- Alliance: The Jedi Order
- Rank: Padawan
- Species: Derisian mountain cat
- Sex: Female
- Assignment or Location: Bajor
- Born: 1785 (Janus Ager Calendar)
- Location of Birth: City of Temiris, Derias
- Parents: Senya Voran (deceased), Inyri Voran
- Foster Parents: Pikas Ce'an and Mari Donn; T’meal Aylait (Jedi master)
- Education: Basic education with Mari Donn; Jedi training with T’meal Aylait. Self-taught to read and write in Federation standard English while living on Angosia III. Received some standard Federation schooling while in and out of orphanages.
- Marital Status: Single
- Created By: Perdia Detami
Background:
Perdia Detami was born on the mid-rim world of Derias to a pair of scientists. As was standard practice on Derias, the newborn kitten was tested not only for illnesses but for Force-sensitivity. When she was found to be strong in the Force, her parents chose to send her to the Jedi Order on Coruscant to be raised and trained there rather than have her remain on Derias, where Force-sensitives were treated as outcasts.
Upon arrival at the Jedi Temple, Perdia was placed in the Jedi nurseries in the care of a Force-sensitive attendant named Mari Donn. When the Galactic Empire was declared and Sith sent to invade the Jedi Temple, Donn smuggled the infant Perdia and several other younglings out into the streets of Coruscant before the nurseries were reached by the invaders. Mari Donn was able to contact a few of the Jedi Knights and Masters who had been offworld at the time of the Sith incursion and warn them of the danger; in turn, a few of the Knights were able to land on Coruscant disguised as traders and smuggle the Younglings and Donn to Kashyyyk.
Perdia spent a few months on the Wookiee homeworld, where Jedi survivors were gathering to draw up plans to fight the Reformed Sith Order. The makeshift council of Jedi Masters were not optimistic about their chances against the Sith strongholds on Coruscant and wanted the Younglings to be protected from the Emperor. A handful of Knights and Masters volunteered to take the Younglings away from Kashyyyk and hide them on other worlds where they would watch over them and rejoin the Republic if the campaign against Coruscant was successful. To watch over the vulnerable Younglings, one of the Jedi Masters chose to live in a Wookiee-owned gambling den on Nar Shaddaa so that any Younglings who ran into trouble could be brought to her. Perdia was taken to the planet of Taanab by Mari Donn and Pikas Ce’an, a Jedi Knight assigned to protect them.
The three Jedi lived on Taanab for several years in relative peace, secure in the anonymity their new homeworld provided. Donn was primarily responsible for the often-mischievous kitten, while Ce’an found work as a cargo inspector in the spaceport. Out of fear for their safety, the only Force technique the two adult Jedi taught to their young charge was how to hide her own Force signature from others. The primitive safeguards placed by Ce’an and Donn turned out to be ineffective, as a Jedi Hunter traveled through the spaceport on a mission to seek Sith artifacts on Taanab and ended up discovering Pikas. Mari Donn heard of the arrest from a neighbor and was able to smuggle Perdia away from their home shortly before the Hunters arrived on their doorstep. Donn found passage for the two on a refugee vessel that was heading to Nar Shaddaa, and used the refugee ship to escape Taanab. She never learned Pikas’ fate.
Donn delivered Perdia to T’meal Aylait when the child was only three years old, then disappeared to draw the Jedi Hunters away from the Youngling and hidden Jedi Master. T’meal became Perdia’s surrogate mother and officially changed her name to ‘Perdia’ from her birth name ‘Piriia’ in order to hide her from those who may have gained access to the Jedi Temple records. Aylait knew that the Jedi had very little time left to them, and concentrated the majority of Perdia’s education on basic self-defense – both with and without a lightsaber – and the Force techniques she would need to survive on her own, if it should become necessary. The Wookiees who owned the gambling den where the two lived also taught the energetic child to speak their native tongue of Shyriiwook as a game to keep her occupied.
Perdia spent several years on Nar Shaddaa, though most of her time was spent in the building that housed the gambling den. Aylait went to great lengths to ensure that Perdia kept her presence hidden whenever possible, and took her away from the den to a prepared safehouse whenever the two needed to train. Aylait depended greatly on the Wookiees and taught Perdia to trust the gentle giants, knowing that she would have to leave her young Padawan to the care of the Wookiees if the Sith or Hutts should ever learn a full-grown Jedi was living under their noses on Nar Shaddaa.
Master and apprentice spent only four and a half years together before Imperial Intelligence located their Wookiee-owned safehouse. The techniques Aylait had taught Perdia ended up saving her life: when three Sith (including then-Dapawan Shinsen Korriban) arrived to kill T’meal and collect the Imperial bounty on her head, Perdia kept her presence masked and watched from a hiding place as the Sith tortured her master. Only when T’meal was dead did Perdia reveal herself, snatching the raven’s lightsaber and bolting into the mazelike streets of Nar Shaddaa. Korriban gave chase, but finally lost the younger feline when she collapsed and vanished before his eyes.
When Perdia awoke, she found herself on a world she had never heard of: Angosia III. A young couple discovered her and took her in, tending to the exhausted child. At first Perdia was rebellious and difficult, fighting their efforts to feed, clothe, and bathe her. She accused the couple of being Sith; they in turn had no idea what she was talking about and assumed she was either lying, ill, or both. At their wits’ end, the couple finally took Perdia to a newly established Federation orphanage on Angosia’s capitol and left her there with their surname—Detami.
The newly-christened Perdia Detami remained at the orphanage for a few years, where she was a general thorn in the side of everyone who worked there. She refused to share her living space with the other orphans, was caught on more than one occasion instigating duels between her fellow orphans using tree limbs in place of lightsabers, and rarely slept at night. Within a few years, the orphanage in question had gone through no less than five administrators, most of whom cited Perdia as one of their reasons for moving on to bigger and better things (not to mention using her as a work-related excuse to receive in-depth counseling). More than one scientifically-minded staff member had flatly refused to come back to work after having an encounter with the child, who sometimes seemed to know what they were doing before they did. As a result, security at the orphanage was a bit lax when Perdia chose to escape its confines with her possessions and make a break for the spaceport.
Over the next few years Perdia traveled the Alpha Quadrant as a stowaway, using her innate abilities to get herself out of particularly nasty scrapes. Mind tricks and subtle persuasion helped her to find legitimate passage at no cost to herself on more than one occasion. The further she traveled, the more Perdia realized how much the adults in her life had been telling her the truth: none of them had ever heard of the Force, of Jedi, of the Sith, or of lightsabers. When she was finally convinced that the Sith were nowhere nearby, Perdia settled in another Federation orphanage. She applied herself to her studies while there and caused considerably less trouble than she had while a resident of Angosia. She lived in the orphanage for only a few months before nightmares of the Sith haunted her once again and drove her back into space.
Following her covert involvement in the brief war between the United Federation of Planets and the Galactic Empire, Perdia was quietly adopted by Dr. Elizabeth Denver. She also began to receive intensive Jedi training from Zannah Lyles-McKie alongside her adoptive mother's new husband, Marc Xavier. When Perdia began to truly prove her skills, she and her master were both adopted by the security division of the USS FELIX as civilian experts on Far Galaxy ships and security threats.
Physical Description:
Perdia Detami is a mountain cat (Andean mountain cat) in her mid-teens. She has rust-striped taupe fur with lighter cream-colored areas. The tip of her tail is rust-colored all over, and one ear is completely tipped in rust-colored fur, while the other has a few intermittent stripes. She is skinny bordering on gaunt due to malnutrition, and stands around 5’5” in Episode I. Her tail is longer and fluffier than that of the average feline. Perdia has short, very vivid crimson hair and violet eyes.
Character Notes:
Perdia is not an inherently trusting being. Her entire life she has been hounded by the Sith and abandoned (by choice or by accident) by her caretakers. She deals poorly with social situations and prefers to keep her own company the majority of the time. When she is forced to deal with others, she is often shy and believes those around her to be capable only of extremes. As a result, Perdia often chooses to befriend those who others might consider dangerous or criminally insane on the rare occasion that she does make friends. The quickest way to her heart is through food and being open to the possibility of the Force, Jedi, and Sith existing. When Perdia does give someone her trust, she usually does so fully—but it takes time to earn it.
TFC Canon
![[Main Page]](/galactopedia/stylesheets/images/wiki.png)