(Some background behind one of my most favorite characters I've ever made, a government assassin whos gone mad from his job and the torture that has come with it. Stuck on a planet dying from its own aliens who are destroying everything and their leader holds a deep grudge against him since he murdered his wife who was in charge before him.)

Staller sat on a flat sone that stuck out over the little cavern, there wasn’t much space inside the cave that lay level with the half open mouth. The inside followed with the small cliff side of a hill and at the belly just past the steep hall of sharp columns lay their fire, grass and stick beds, and plenty of drying out fish caught the other week just a walk away from the cliff. The fish were hardly much of a meal, their scales were covered in so much chemicals and odd bits of even odder trash could only be torn off by scrapping them against the trees, not to forget the fish looked thinner than him. Sometimes when being cut they had to be cut open outside so to dump what trash was left in their stomachs. Then they’re baked over the fire till the meat is fine black char else the two of them would be sick for weeks. Too dangerous of a risk when on the run, this was their fourth hideout on the snowy fields of a dying forest. At this point he felt like being turned in might be a better fate, he wouldn’t have to eat burnt skeletons of critters anymore, not that Dray’s cooking would've ever been different in the first place. The man couldn’t boil water right without having the beds go into flames. Staller couldn’t cook either, not with a broken arm, he was too clumsy with his right  he once knocked himself out with a wooden spoon and he didn’t even start the fire yet. He chuckled to himself weakly, he remembered the day well, Dray was scared to death that he killed himself by a spoon! His own first mate, best cannon shot of Sal Breach, dead on a cave floor on the run in a strange alien planet by his own soup spoon.
He shook his head and went back to looking at the forest, watching as the cloudy skies were thin enough to show the purple and pink lines running along a goldening half of a sun that ever so slowly slipped past the unseeable horizon. For once the clouds looked to be a milky white but when the sun will disappear from them they will return to their dark grey, foggy shadows of their former selves. But for now he will enjoy the last of the day, it was the only break he had, a break that showed him of the world he imagined this place to be; beautiful clouds of fluffy cotton, crystal blue oceans so clear you could see the fish look back at you, snow so crisp and white it stuck to you like sand at a beach, trees of strange colors, white with splotches of black and moss with leaves so fine they were like colored silks, animals so fair their coaks shined in the sun and scales glistened in the moonlight. This was no land he hoped to see. Snow covered everything, from his shoulders to the rocks and boulders hidden deep beneath his feet along with the grass, he had broken his own leg in half running through these rocky lands, now he must wear two makeshift braces of wood and grass spun into thick rope, hardened sap keeping everything all together delicately. The fallen and falling snow was grey and black, clumping into balls of soot, it seemed to forever stain his gloveless hands and bare neck, he didn’t dare touch his face until he could wash his hands of new soot but he still holds doubts that it has worked in any way. It was simply too hard to wash it all away with just boiled water, even for Dray who was equally covered. But Dray didn’t care, he never cared for his hygiene but he was usually very clean. In times of survival or sailing aboard the Twin Seas he wouldn’t care to shower, it was his only usable supply of water and he couldn’t waste it. But there was plenty planned to be spared for cleaning regularly…
He remembered the day he met Dray for the first time. He was just a little boy from the big bustling city, having known no world beyond a market maze of stalls and a wave of of crowd, always flowing, always turbulent, always loud and crashing into his peaceful neighborhood that he was the only child of. All he had as playmates were his friends in school and his older brothers and sisters who weren’t kids anymore. Not even the twins which were just a few years older acted out on their childish nature, like it had just vanished from their shared brains the moment they had pass their 15th birthday. Like they just showed their backs to their ways and stepped right into adulthood. He had no one most days, no one in a wild garden of rose bushes, purple and yellow flowering weeds, magled trees that were once too young to be played on by twelve very rough kids, but they played on anyways. He often hid in the tall blue grass and looked down at the soft dirt, ripping some grass to make a clear patch and bundling them all together to create a brush. Tying them with more grass he would then draw, draw whatever he could, whatever he imagined; knights bowing to a princess, ballerinas dancing in the theater he had just went to the other day, his father grabbing his belt buckle as he watched the twins pull themselves out of their current fight. He’d draw until the street lighter came to light the street lamp wicks aflame or his eldest brother, Elic, came home for a visit. He was also too old to play but he was a great listener to Staller's stories and a great actor to his imaginary games, though he couldn’t run he could sure wave a stick around as fast as a sword. Elic had fought in one of the last wars, a war between all planets. A queen had gone mad with her power after freeing Howltie from a steel fist and fought to rule almost all in the universe which led to her downfall half way through, in the kids books at least but not in the scrolls he's still yet to read at the libraries. The wars against Howltie were to keep from having to pay the high prices each damaged planet wanted her to pay. The wars were brutal and long, Elic was always put in the first wave and suffered heavily, he lost sight in his left eye and all feeling in the same leg with ugly scars to match. He never much cared, he always compared himself to his elder brother, the first and oldest of them. The one who got the blunt of their father longer than they ever had. He was named Tin Jin and Staller remembered how he used to be vividly. He was as cold looking as their father and always silent, those frozen grey eyes searching every inch of your soul before he carefully spoke in a hushed voice. He never spent much time with Staller, every time he'd get frustrated when he had to, even remembering his voice now was casting drowsiness on Staller, something in his voice was so different than the rest he couldn't control it. He felt bad though, his younger years was the only time he could learn about him but he never got to like the rest… he too went to the wars but much earlier on, a war against the crooked Nalmares. They were the most brutal, accepting nothing but victory or a lost were the other side had great trouble bouncing back from. The stories of what happened to Tin Jin are very muddy, no one of his friends in the war knew exactly what happened in the moments he got horribly injured. None the less he too was paralyzed but from the waist down and heavily brain damage. JaKa couldn't bare taking care of him and their mother so he was taken to his own home taken care of by plenty of nurses.
Staller chuckled to himself, what he wouldn't give for his life. Finding one girl was hard enough but to be surrounded and taken care of by them? "Lucky bastard." He mumbles, shaking his head, "I'm stuck in this shitty planet that has a bounty on my head and he gets all the bitches he wants in a warm mansion all to himself. I better get a metal an house like him when I get back."
As a child he couldn’t understand when or why it all went down but he now understood. Jaka had thought Elic to be teaching little Staller too much about fantasy and not enough about the real world. His own father banned his second son from ever playing with him again to strengthen his grasp on his studies and ‘real world skills.’ They still played in secret just once or twice a month instead of every week to keep Jaka’s suspicions low. Elic was his only escape from his parents, he was the only sibling who had left to the outside world, the rest were just waiting for Staller to be old enough to escape with them.
The wind kicked and bit at his face, snow falling off dead branches of trees scraped his eyes as he watched the few birds of this world fly away from their deathbeds. A strand of smoke slipped between the trees’ fingers headed straight in an angled line. Something wasn’t right, could they have already found them this quickly? No, there would be more than just one torch, more flames in a dangerously dry forest of the dying. A scout? His fears gripped at his ribs, wishing to be free of their rotten cage as they whispered sweet worries to his mind. His heart pounded but warmed his limbs, stirred his muscles to move. It was the last he could remember before his mind began to haze and browns and freezing ice of the coming storm was all he could see in the coming darkness of twilight. He gripped his long sword attached to his back, scout or not he had to keep their hideout a secret just a little longer…