Star Wars universe. Many planets, big galaxy. This galaxy happens to be far away and long ago.

Dusty was one of the more earnest and friendly wildkin children and in his first year of life quickly wormed his way into the good graces of many of the handlers tasked with watching over them. His accelerated learning ended up helping him to quickly nail down what mixes of different social leverages such as compliments, bribes, and emotional manipulation (the puppy dog eyes got a lot of use) would result in benefits like extra dessert or extra reading time.

When boot camp began in his second year of life, he ended up learning and excelling in a more show-case method of fighting that was almost more about manipulating what the opponent does than physical activity. His activities of course continued but with higher stakes. The benefits he now sought were less ‘extra dessert’ and more ‘sneak around after lights out’, however the mercenaries running the bootcamp were far less tolerant of light shenanigans than his child-year handlers. They gave him just enough rope to utterly hang himself with before using footage and feed from his own collar in order to gain evidence on all of the people he involved in his misadventures, both those that helped him and also those that he encouraged or helped himself. All his wildkin friends that followed him were punished and several handlers that had previously shown him kindness even from the previous year were fired and it was made clear to everyone that they should blame Dusty for it. The punishment details and extra training almost felt like an afterthought to the real punishment of sudden isolation that he experienced.

The takeaway lesson from this was that friends will turn on you when given enough incentive and that being nice is not enough to stop bad things from happening. He also gained valuable insight to the things that their owning company did and did not care about, things that would be used as leverage to punish vs what unspoken rules are not punished for breaking as long as there is plausible deniability. Many of his previous friends among the wildkin would no longer associate with him, but he learned enough to continue socializing through deals and negotiations, which caught the eye of the handlers enough to put him in a focused track for diplomacy missions in his third year of specialized study.

As part of a proof of concept to investors, many wildkin were put through graduation tests to showcase their abilities. In the case of Dusty and others of the first generation of wildkin clones, he was put in a military company in a wargame against obsolete drones controlled by the Trade Federation. However the Trade Federation sabotauged the test by leaking information provided by them by Protein Solutions for the purposes of the war game to their droids (the camera feeds of ProSol drones following them and the gps in their tracking collars), leading to an ambush that wiped out nearly their whole company. Dusty and several others only survived due to a mix of being in an advance spy group to infiltrate and obtain the mission objective and their burgeoning abilities with the force.

Afterwards, the company was to be broken apart and shuffled into other companies, but Dusty and a few others were noticed doing anomalous things and were going to be shipped (in carbonite) to a secret research facility for tests. Using their new ability to sense minds to secretly communicate and navigate, they were able to break free by convincing a company trainer to remove their collars through a mix of natural sympathy and Dusty's first purposeful mind trick. They stole a ship from the company and went on the run, fleeing to Federation Space under fake identities that one of them created with computer specialty training. After a series of various jobs of questionable legitimacy, they ended up taking over another ProSol ship and discovering that there were 20 2nd generation (still mid-growth) wildkin in it... most of which were force sensitive. Not able to care for 20 children on their own... they took their problem to Corusant and convinced the Jedi Temple to take them in.

This did take some convincing due to his being functionally an adult by this time, but he was technically less than five years old and seemed ernest enough that an exception was made for putting him through the jedi training... even if some others of his party were denied that training due to emotional issues such as anger issues. Dusty spent the next three years at the Temple or on missions, becoming a Jedi Knight two and a half years in.

(6th month, 26bby) “The Gathering”, Dusty was taken to a system of ice caves (likely with some others) and told to seek out the crystal that calls to him. While seeking for them, he runs into an ice weasel that is picking a fight with a snake. He rescues it away from the snake, scolding it for picking a fight with something so dangerous and continues searching only to find it picking a fight with another snake. He once more interferes to the critter’s seeming displeasure and it manages to convey to him an intense sense of resolve and needing to do this, so he reluctantly lets it go. The third time he comes across it fighting, he starts to interfere once more before recalling the weasel’s resolve and stops himself to let the fight play out. He barely restrains himself when it manages to bite the weasel, unleashing venom before the weasel gets a killing blow and breaks the neck by whipping it back and forth. Afterwards, impressed by the creature’s resolve, he sees the weasel try to carry the snake towards a certain direction, but seems woozy from the poison so he helps carry the snake while being led to a place where he sees her take the snake into a den where a group of kits hungrily await. The snake is just large enough to feed them all and the mother takes a rest to sleep out the venom, digging out a spot to curl up in. In the process she kicks out a crystal that tumbles into the main den area which starts to glow, calling out to him. Not wanting to upset the den, he uses his influence ability to convince one of the weasels to bring the crystal out to him and afterwards it decides to follow him instead of returning to the den.

(8th month, 26bby) “Shistavanen Trial of Age” in Uvena Prime, Dusty was essentially dumped in the wilderness with only a radio and various other bare minimum supplies. He did get to keep his lightsaber, but otherwise could not rely on any technological conveniences. Needed to survive on his own for a month before making his way back to civilization with proof of a feat of hunting to show for it. While not particularly proficient in tracking, plant identification, etc… his abilities to see anything near him in any lighting condition went a long ways towards helping him avoid predators and pick out an appropriate hunting target. It was a tough go and there were many times that he went hungry for lack of being able to catch food for much of the first week or two, but by picking an aggressive target (and drastically setting the stage for an ambush) that wouldn’t run away and baiting it into a fight, he was able to secure both a long term source of meat and also his hunting trophy. In the end he tracked down a puma-esque critter that spends a lot of time in a lair where he was able to keep track of it while setting up his ambushes. Afterwards he was recognized as an adult in Shistavanen society and given a token made of the teeth of his trophy in order to prove it. Some Shistavanen will react negatively to an outsider wearing that mark, but most will recognize him as an adult and member of their society as long as he interacts with them in the proper and correct way.

(7-9th month, 25bby) Pirate Hunting (Demon Gang) to repay debt to Rusty. After a year of initial training, Dusty convinced his master to help him (or at least allow him to as a test) seek out this gang in order to meet an old obligation. After following possible targets from a distance while running cold, was able to witness one such robbery. Having done a bit of research, he already knew that non-human crews would not be killed, so he wasn’t worried about letting the robbery take its course and stealthily following them to a nearby planet where they would release the ship’s crew and get some down time. He arranges to interact with them at a bar, hiding his status as a member of the jedi order for the moment while he speaks with them and ‘convinces’ them to take him to meet their leader. At their base, he is captured and interrogated by said leader where he sounds her out on what her ethics are and whether she’s willing to move her area of operations or otherwise stop targeting certain ships (they are not part of the republic after all, he isn’t obligated to arrest her), but after it becomes clear that she has an intense hatred of humans and will kill them indiscriminately, he escapes his cell, takes out the central power to disable the base weaponry and calls in Master Mondek to help him arrest the leaders and call in the local law enforcement to capture all members that do not escape. It’s possible that local corruption allows them to run free afterwards, but their organization will at least be dealt a heavy setback and need to move to a new sector now that their hideout is known, freeing up the area for now. Perhaps other pirate crews or gangs will move in eventually, but for now he is able to fulfill his obligation to Rusty and meet with him to thank him for the help he rendered their group when they were in need. Hopefully the pirates in the area don’t want to take revenge on him TOO badly.

(10th month, 25bby) Raid on Trade Federation. After the Separatist Crisis, Dusty finds a lead on a purchase order of Wildkin by the Federation and seeks them out to free them from their unlawful owners. While on return from trip to ‘south’ end of the galaxy, on journey back from previous adventure, they make a detour to Cheltea in order to do a surprise inspection on the Wildkin training facilities to check for force sensitive wildkin. The trip also serves the purpose of testing Dusty’s emotional discipline in the face of his past and seeing his still imprisoned people. Knowing that he is not in a position to actually rescue his kind yet, he resolves to help in what way he can, seeking to use force powers to communicate with those of his kind beyond the sight of cameras. In the process he helps to organize the start of a rebel cell by sharing his story, giving them more insight into how ProSol works, and helping them to create a secret way to communicate with each other without their AI collars picking up on it. He also tries to investigate their systems or speak with the wildkin after hours or something which puts him alone enough to be attacked by a monstrously powerful droid. Outcome of fight not yet determined.

(5th month, 24bby) Graduation to Knight: Misadventure following Kit to track down a bounty hunter to stop them from stealing stuff from the vault. Ends up solving puzzles and get through illusions and wards to get into records and vaults where he finds and purifies a sith crystal from an ancient sith wildkin.
Skill - Physical feats of merit while maintaining focus past distractions
Courage - Fight a strong and fearsome opponent that you do not have a strong or assured chance against
Flesh - Withstand a gruesome injury, persisting past the pain to show a level of discipline
Spirit - face the darkness within yourself
Insight - solving puzzles, see past illusions, etc

After becoming a Jedi Knight, received a padawan from the Wildkin he rescued, a raccoonkin named Kit. Their first mission was to investigate an abandoned research archealogical post and they arrived to find the place abandoned. An ancient evil was awakening and reanimating the dead. In the ancient ruins, Dusty found old records and artifacts of the force... including a spring of purification and an observatory with a telescope that lets one hear the celestial song of the force. It was here that he was first exposed to an ancient lycanthropic curse tied to those heavenly bodies. In the end, the ancient evil could not be stopped due to the sheer amount of dead on the planet that were rising against them and a medical emergency with his padawan caused them to have to flee. While on the way back (having barely recovered) they were diverted to a rescue mission on a floating city in a gas giant where EM storms had made the station very dangerous to those living there. They were able to restore power to the station and rescue (most of) the personel on it, but due to complications with escaped research specimen, Dusty's first experience with a full moon, and a sky kraken drawn to the defenseless station, it was a slightly pyrhic victory. The station ended up partially destroyed before shielding was returned to power. Worse of all, all the slaves of the station 'somehow' were able to remove their tracking collars during the power outage and near destruction of the station. Given that the slaves were wildkin and the sky city was a research facility owned by their old company Protein Solutions... they weren't really all that torn up about it. Nor were they all that torn up when the human administration who had abandoned the station with wildkin still on it returned to the station expecting to take charge and discovered all of their slaves angry and free.

After that with Dusty's curse no longer flaring up (go figure, no full moons in space), they chalked it up to a chemical exposure from the research facility and continued on their way, taking a sabatical from missions to recover. An unexpected trip to Infinitas somewhat derailed these plans...