Written and Created by: Ian Schue
Copyright ©1997-2003, All Rights Reserved
Index
Critahn
Ithka
Ossix
Lady Vatican
Lo'Tahl
SulaGo Back to the Characters Page
Critahn (Cree’tawwn) is an insectoid hunter of unknown galactic origin. A character with six limbs, each of which is both a leg and an arm, Critahn is known best for injecting his victims with various poisons, his use of his personally-produced silk fibers, and his incredible strength. Crawling silently across ceilings, Critahn lowers himself on a strand of silk to his victim, snaring them like a spider. His weapon of choice is the Keetsal Dart-Rifle, a semi-automatic weapon capable of firing both conventional and armor-piercing darts, loaded with up to three different kinds of toxins for paralyzing, killing, or slowing his victims. With two compound eyes and several well-adapted sensory hairs, Critahn is capable of operating in total darkness, high temperatures, and in nearly any condition thinkable. His only drawback is his difficulty in frozen landscapes, especially with snow and below-freezing temperatures. Critahn’s custom-designed starship is called KX-39, which is the model number of the original chassis. Critahn is as uncaring for the cries of his victims as he is in the name of his ship.
Ithka is a large, reptilian creature, resembling what a creature might look like if you took a dinosaur, a squid, and a lobster, and bred them. Ten feet tall, dark black with gray stripes, with two large arms. Three fingered hands, mostly covered in boney armor, with numerous tentacles looping out from his sides holding weapons and equipment. A large head with two large eyes, with a mouth full of silvery teeth. He speciallizes in robotics, building a vast array of attack droids to assist him in taking his prey. Most of his attack droids resemble crabs with twin turrets on their backs and weaponry aside their powerful ripping claws. Ithka has an interesting ship, in that it has no windows, numerous blister-like formations on it surrounding huge weapons pods, and the back of the acorn-shaped ship has a jaw-like docking clamp, big enough to latch onto the side of a ship such as the ThorHammer. Racing in, Ithka's ship literally bites its opponent, clamping down teeth-like projections that lock his ship in place as he either cuts his way in or uses a docking port he's clamped over. Any ship caught in his clutches has no chance of escape. His last encounter with the bounty hunter Redhawk left his ship badly damaged and his droids destroid, but it is unlikely he is finished. No one has a clue how old Ithka is, but he has been around for a very long time ( at least four hundred years ) and he'll likely recoup his losses and make another try. Ithka is a hunter-killer, meaning he takes payment to kill other bounty-hunters. That alone makes him one tough sucker, and rumor has it he keeps the corpses of his victims frozen in his ship where he studies them to learn how to kill better.
If it is true about some bounty-hunters being sadistic and terrifying, Ossix is at the top of the list. A four-armed, human sized creature of unbelievably-cruel habits, Ossix is known to eat his captives alive, regarding them as mere flesh to be consumed. His exoskeleton-like body with mantis-like mandibles and three-fingered claws are a fearsome sight to anyone cornered or held captive. Devoid of anything one could call pleasure, Ossix blankly nibbles at his victims in a methodical fashion, knowing only that doing so is terrifying for them (although he doesn’t really understand it himself, ignoring their please for mercy). Over a long period of time, he slowly eats non-vital parts of his captives, making it an effective torture method for gathering information. Ossix is also known for his particular specialty at jobs of kidnapping. He’s captured high government officials, military officers, taken bankers from the depths of their secured facilities, and even Amar’I dignitaries. One of his peculiar methods for kidnapping, is through cloning copies of the victims, replacing them just long enough to make an escape cleanly. Cloning is incredibly expensive, and so his buyers pay handsomely for his efforts. Ossix cuts costs by having clones made to only live a few hours or days.
Lady Vatican is probably one of the most colorful and psychotic bounty-hunters of them all. Believing herself to be ordained by God himself to bring justice to the galaxy, she swoops through the galaxy in her powerful cross-shaped starship, The Disciple, taking bounties and hunting bounty-hunters. Her self-designed set of morals is so strict that she has yet to find a person that she believes doesn’t deserve death. Dressed in a suit of armor that has been designed to make her look like a female pope, she hands out a swift punishment to anyone in her way. Few match her skill in combat and tactics, and her starship is legendary for its speed and firepower. It is said, by those victims who she turns over alive, (a rarity), that the inside of her ship is like a gothic inquisition torture chamber, complete with a rack and several hooks for hanging victims by their thumbs.
Lo’Tahl is a self-modified police patrol droid, humanoid in shape, with large powerful arms and stocky legs. Despite his appearance, he is incredibly fast and agile, able to assess and operate in a situation in seconds. His arsenal includes a pair of lasers built into his wrists, a gas-grenade launcher build into his left shoulder, a plasma-torch on his right arm, and a pair of fold-out blades on his forearms. He spends his time developing a hunting program, which he uses to help predict the actions of each adversary, based on his extensive collection of past experiences. His major weakness, however, is coming up against other bounty hunters who have no predictability. Such bounty-hunters as Redhawk, and Sula. Lo’Tahl has no ship of his own, since his last vessel was destroyed in an encounter with the bounty-hunter Redhawk, some years ago. While Redhawk was negotiating with a buyer, Lo’Tahl managed to steal Redhawk’s captive bounty. He barely made it into orbit before a furious Redhawk neutralized his ship, boarded, took back the captive, and left Lo’Tahl with a lifeless ship falling out of orbit. Lo’Tahl managed to survive the crash, but his ship was totally destroyed. A small price to pay for stupidity.
Sula is a dark-gray-furred wolf, the son of the great Adures, The Gray Ghost, his mother. Born into a life of bounty-hunting, Sula learned the trade from first-hand experience, helping his mother with his first kill at age nine, and his first bounty at age twelve. When his mother became incapacitated after a hunt gone wrong, he quickly moved to protect her, but soon found out just how cold the world of bounty-hunting was. Several other bounty-hunters arrived quickly to finish off his mother while she was unable to defend herself, and Sula was forced to flee for his life, forever scarred with a deep hatred for all other bounty-hunters. Continuing his life-lived trade, he most often takes jobs where he is to hunt down and kill other bounty hunters. He managed to kill all but two of those responsible for his mother’s death, the last two nearly killing him when his attack turned into disaster after trying to lay a sneak attack on the ship of Redhawk and the human’s short-term ally of Lo’Tahl. Now, with his muzzle and much of his body cybernetic, Sula continues his trade again, always searching for a way to get back at his two most hated enemies. His ship, The Black Track, is uniquely designed in that he operates it by hooking his body up to the cybernetic terminals of his specially designed chair. Able to withstand greater G-forces, do more complex maneuvers and perform multiple tasks at once, Sula is a force to be reckoned with.