Name: Emlyn Pendry

Some are drawn into a life of crime by poverty, others from a search for adventure. For Emlyn, none of that mattered to her. She only cared about speeder bikes, and for some reason, the best bikes and the best riders all belonged to the speeder gangs. She didn’t go out of her way to find these gangs, but as soon as she started making some of the best speeder bikes around, they went out of their way to find her.

As the place grew in reputation and popularity, she had to add security to her staff, which she chose from amongst her new friends. At first, they were just her customers, but they became much closer in their relationship and their proximity after hundreds of jobs. They would spend so much time in her garage drinking her booze while waiting for her to finish their custom jobs, she decided to hire a bartender rough enough to handle them, and her shop ended up doubling as a speeder bar.

When change happens gradually, we are hardly aware of it. Emlyn felt like she was just working on making the best speeder bikes she could, though lately, she came to realize that she had somehow also started her own speeder gang. She wasn’t sure what to do with this information. She didn’t want to be a gangster, but she ran a gang. She tried to convince herself it was just a legitimate business, but memories of times she had been robbed and she had ridden out with her crew to exact violent revenge didn’t really fit her straight-laced businesswoman narrative.

Should she close up shop, disband her crew, and go work on speeders in secret? But what about those who depended on her, called her boss, and looked to her for direction in her life. If she abandoned them, they’d get swallowed up by one of the many speeder gangs around her, and while she called many of them friends, she definitely didn’t want to see the crew she’d come to love to get involved with what they were doing. Maybe they could keep pretending to be just a mechanic/bar? She knew that was unlikely, especially since the Hole Worms had opened up shop nearby and seemed to take her existence as a threat. Some in her crew advised taking the first shot and blowing up the Hole Worms’ new space to scare them out. This conversation proved to her how deep into the criminal world she truly had gotten.

A commotion in the common room caught her attention, and she came out to see everyone caught in rapt attention to a strange broadcast. The galactic transmissions had been hacked, and she was hearing some pirate broadcast broadcasting a poetic call to arms. She listened deeply to the stanzas against the struggles and injustices in the galaxy. She closed her eyes and let the words wash over her. The broadcast ended with that one sentence that touched her so deeply. She was sure she’d have been brought to tears if she didn’t live in this world of ultimate toughness.

At that moment, she remembered the strange group of visitors from yesterday, searching for some random they called the prophet. After they left, one of her crew told her they were pretty sure they were from the resistance, which sounded interesting, though she forgot about it moments later when one of the many nightly fights broke out. Now she thought back to them, thought to that sentence, and realized this was the thing she had been given this gang for, to play her part in the salvation of this galaxy. She called her crew together, grabbed the fastest speeders in the shop, and chased out after her visitors from yesterday.

She still didn’t know who the prophet was or where he was, but she was confident she could help in her own way by offering protection.