Wrista Ipex

"I'm looking for something. I'm not sure what or where. But I'll know it when I see it."

- Wrista Ipex

Wrista Ipex was born in 15 BBY. Like many of the Twi'lek species, she never knew Ryloth as a homeworld, instead born on the Imperial capital of Coruscant. Over the course of time, she would find events and her own recurring wanderlust taking her from dubious beginnings as a wayward Coruscanti youth to an upstanding and talented officer of the New Republic Marine Corps.

Birth and Family
Wrista was born a scion of the Ipex clan, an oddly atypical, aristocratic family based in Coruscant's Upper City stratum. The family has generations worth of history in the area, reaching back well into the eras of the Old Republic. The Ipex family has a reputation for producing many talented scientists, particularly in the biosciences. This fact saw the family through the difficult eras in which the Galactic Empire held sway over Coruscant, and also accounted for their social status. The other item of note, was that the Ipex clan's perceived oddness was a function of being a mixed-species family-- roughly three quarters of the family members were human, the family's original stock. The rest were twi'leks, descended from family slaves that the family had voluntarily emancipated and adopted at some point in the past.

Wrista's father was a noted geneticist, and his wife a biochemist. Their work would form the foundation for Wrista's entire life, in a much more profound manner than such things usually do. Before she was born, her parents plied their craft on her genes, making minor alterations to various portions of her biochemistry and genetic makeup. Exactly what they hoped to accomplish in this is only known by them, and whether they succeeded in the experiment is currently unresolved. Wrista was aware of this event in her genesis and what it meant to her on a practical basis, but not the reasons. Her parents, realizing that such practices were frowned upon and questionably ethical at best in the wake of the Clone Wars and the Empire's rise, and illegal research at worst in some cases, kept the alterations they had made to themselves and taught their daughter to do the same. Even the rest of the family were unaware of them.

Youthful Shenanigans
Wrista's early childhood passed without a great deal of note. She had a happy, pleasant, and comfortable home life, despite living under the thumb of the Empire on the capitol planet. Everything was quite smooth-- at least, until the onset of her teenage years.

The young twi'lek girl had never shown much interest or aptitude for the sciences. This was generally accepted as normal for a child, particularly as she was perfectly intelligent-- she simply lacked the desire to delve into the mysteries of such topics. However, as she neared adolescence, a new, more worrisome trend began to develop in her activities. Wrista, who had always been a very physically active child, began to act out, and spend time with the "undesirable" adolescents of the city. Most of this activity featured generally harmless, if problematic behaviour. Vandalism, trespassing, minor thefts, a popular activity known as 'street-running', and the like. However, it wasn't long before she and her friends were venturing into the Undercity levels in search of their thrills, and much of her time quickly became spent in these dangerous areas.