Akanseh

On Dac, Akanseh, a male Mon Calamari who was both a skilled surgeon and a generous person, aspired to bring cutting-edge medical services to the underserved planets located in the Outer Rim Territories, with the goal of helping those most in need. Before he could achieve this, the Galactic Empire conquered his planet. Akanseh fled his homeworld, successfully avoiding becoming one of the countless Mon Calamari slaves scattered throughout the galaxy. Akanseh spent several years in hiding, working to develop a mobile surgical suite to fulfill his dream of providing medical services to those in need. The suite was primarily operated by medical droids programmed by Akanseh himself, with the intention that they would perform routine operations under his supervision. The unit was designed to fit inside the cargo hold of a freighter and could also be assembled into a field surgery unit.

Around the time of the Battle of Endor, Akanseh completed his surgical suite and began traveling to remote planets, hoping to assist underprivileged individuals in need. He traveled on free-trader ships, exchanging his medical services for free passage or a reduced fare. While traveling to a new planet, the freighter carrying Akanseh was captured by an Imperial Interdictor cruiser. The Mon Calamari was taken to Kal'Shebbol and brought before Moff Kentor Sarne, an Imperial warlord and the ruler of the Kathol sector.

Sarne seized Akanseh's medical suite and recognized that the doctor's medical skills and knowledge of droids and droid programming would be valuable in his dungeons as an interrogator. As a peaceful individual, Akanseh chose not to resist and became a compliant prisoner, following Sarne's orders. However, Akanseh employed his own methods. Instead of torturing prisoners for information, he persuaded them to trust him enough to willingly share what they knew. He did not want to harm others and knew that if he couldn't obtain the information this way, the prisoner would be handed over to Imperial interrogators and droids. His techniques proved effective, and the Moff took note of his success rate.

Akanseh once interrogated a stubborn resistance fighter, attempting to get the young Human to reveal the location of his comrades who were causing trouble at Kal'Shebbol's starport. Treating the rebel's injuries, he tried to convince the prisoner to see reason and share 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 if he didn't. At that moment, Sarne entered the interrogation room. Having heard about Akanseh's success with his subjects, the Moff had decided to observe one of his sessions. After watching Akanseh fail to persuade the subject to talk, Sarne presented the Mon Calamari with a hypo-syringe and a clear liquid that, when injected into a subject, would cause their blood to 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, he would suffer the same fate as the prisoner.

Despite working for Sarne as an interrogator, Akanseh was still considered 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.

Freed from imprisonment, Akanseh learned of a New Republic mission assigned to track down Moff Sarne. The Moff had escaped from Kal'Shebbol with most of his fleet, and the modified New Republic CR90 corvette FarStar had been tasked with pursuing and neutralizing him. The doctor signed onto the FarStar mission, viewing it as a way to atone for the actions he had performed in Sarne's service. However, while Akanseh admitted he had done some medical work for the Moff, he did not reveal the nature of that work to Lieutenant Judder Page, the New Republic officer in charge of assembling the mission. As 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, declaring them "reasonably complete."

As the chief medical officer on the FarStar, Akanseh was responsible for overseeing the medical bay, managing medical supplies, and maintaining the pool of medical droids. He ran the medical facility efficiently, ensuring it was always well-lit, warm, and stocked with hot food. The crew often joked about getting injured just to spend a few comfortable days in sickbay. Akanseh's droid programming skills also proved useful, as the medical droids had to be well-suited to handle a crew composed of a diverse range of species. His ultimate goal was to recreate his surgical suite, but he understood that, since it was not part of the FarStar's mission, it couldn't be prioritized. 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. Its 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's 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 stopover 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's 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—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 the 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 of 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 bloodstream. Akanseh examined the dead crewmember and pronounced that he had been completely drained of blood. The feeder plant was stopped by a gaseous poison developed by Varel DeVay, the corvette's xenobiologist.

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 re-education center.

Weeks before the FarStar's 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 who had suffered at the hands of Sarne's torturers.

Akanseh was a Mon Calamari known for his kindness and generosity, characterized by orange-brown skin and black eyes. He possessed a remarkable ability to gain the trust of others, even in challenging circumstances. He firmly believed in assisting those in need and was dedicated to bringing medical services to remote planets, even while serving on the FarStar. In his view, denying medical care was as reprehensible as causing harm. Although a skilled shipboard doctor, he was easily confused in combat situations and was not an effective combat medic. Akanseh was generally peaceful and non-violent, although he 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 discover his past and expose him, and he had no compunctions about lying to cover up his past deeds.

Akanseh possessed extensive knowledge of alien species and was highly skilled in medicine, capable of performing complex surgery and operating bacta tanks. His experience with using a droid-automated surgical suite gave him expertise in computer programming and repair, as well as in droid programming, especially concerning Emdee-series droids. He was also adept at repairing malfunctioning droids. As a Mon Calamari, Akanseh was amphibious, capable of breathing both in and out of water. He thrived in moist environments, while dry environments tended to depress him, causing him to appear withdrawn.

Although trained to use a blaster, Akanseh typically did not carry one, preferring to carry only medpacs and a surgical field kit. Before his capture by Moff Sarne, Akanseh owned and operated a mobile medical suite staffed by droids, which could be broken down and carried in the hold of a freighter.

Akanseh was created by West End Games for Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game in The DarkStryder Campaign, which was published on July 17, 1995. The "Crew Notes" section of The DarkStryder Campaign suggested that Akanseh should find the redemption he sought during the adventure by performing a truly heroic act, such as sacrificing himself to save others. However, the developers also stated that the gamemaster and players were not obligated to remove Akanseh from their campaigns. In The Kathol Rift, Akanseh's story was concluded by stating that, if the players had allowed him to survive to that point in their campaign, he would remain at the Q'Maere Research Facility to care for those who had suffered under Sarne's interrogations.