I have always found that my most successful characters are ones that have something to do. For example, my politico princess accidentally killed her newlywed husband on their wedding night, straining tensions between her world and a rival planet forcing her to run - and she had to straighten out the mess before she could go home.

Or my Rebel who was more a IRA terrorist than your typical upstanding Alliance freedom fighter. He was a very dark, more than slightly psychotic self destructive terrorist with an arc to learn moderation. He was never quite a White Hat good guy, but he got much better and considerably less violent.

or - switching genres - I had a ancient Celtic goddess in our superhero game, the personification of winter who had lost her memory. She had to figure out who she was and learn to be less of a cold *****.

I mention this all because I've got a great concept - but she has a happy family life. No trauma, no evil fathers she has to redeem back to the light side, nothing that I can immediately think of for her to work for or work against. There's a couple of small things - but nothing that I could put into a bullet point format to hand the GM for potential game material.

So I thought I'd come to you guys, see if someone had a "Hey, how about this!" that I could incorporate into her background. Here's what I have now:

Zarana Durian

Technician: Engineer

Twi'lek Female

It was late one night when the stillness of the Tatooine outback was disturbed by a badly dehydrated, nearly dead, very pregnant Twi'lek female stumbling out of the darkness and into the homestead of Thane Durian and his two young sons Quentin and Loran. While Thane may be a gruff and hard man, he does have a heart. He gave the mystery woman shelter and the family attended to her the best they could until the child was born.

And then much like how she arrived, this mystery woman fled into the night, leaving her offspring behind.

(Super secret history: What nobody knows is that this mystery woman who came out of the dark one night was one of the Ten Wives of Abdi Varra, a harem of twi'lek women hand picked by the powerful crime lord himself. Those biologically superior women were predominantly used as breeding stock for Varra, desperate for having a healthy heir to his empire.

Varras' lieutenant, sick of his master's treatment of the women, arranged for them to escape while Varras was on Tatooine for a meeting. Furious that his most precious 'property' was taken from him, Varras punished his officer and scoured the planet to recover what was stolen from him. Fortunately the immensity of the Tatooine wastelands prevented any family reunion. . . for now.)

That was nineteen years ago now. Since then, the girl - named Zarana - grew up living the hard life of a moisture farmer. Despite the teasing and the fights, all three siblings were very close - more than one rival farmhand wound up eating a face full of sand for an inappropriate remark, rude gesture or a slight towards one of the Durian clan. As one once put it "No one is allowed to beat up my sister but me!"

Being a genius with machinery from a very early age, Zarana was also invaluable to keeping the farm running. She could strip and rebuild a moisture vaporator before anyone even knew it was offline. She spent countess hours in the garage tearing down and repairing droids, speeders, and equipment or with her Jawa friend Utti at his repair shop in the nearby town of Green Lands

Surrounded by men, growing up a tomboy, isolated in the Tatooine outback, one would think that she would desperately crave getting away someday - but no, Zarana loved wandering and exploring the deserts. The endless and ever changing dunes were fascinatingly beautiful at sunset, the countless crags and endless valleys in the canyons were constantly exciting.

It was on one such excursion, after attending to the repairs to a string of vaporators near the Dry Wash Canyons south of the homestead, she found a secluded cave, untouched for seemingly hundreds of years. Inside, deep towards the rear, was an alien skeleton, nearly mummified from the weather, wearing tatters of brown cloth. In one withered claw was a strange tube adorned by several strange controls.

The device, whatever it was, had long since to cease functioning. Not only did she not know what it was or what it did, she had no idea what was wrong with it or how to repair it. Finally, a challenge worthy of her skills! Returning home, Zarana bolted the door to the garage shut and spent the next two days simply trying to figure out how to open the mysterious device - at least without destroying it - and then another three weeks trying to reverse engineer the technology within.

After a solid month of experimentation, the device sprang to life - and nearly took off her head with a green beam of pure cohesive energy. The blade, she discovered through further trial and error, could cut through nearly anything. With some minor modifications to the beam emitter systems she could shorten the blade - allowing her to use it as a very effective fusion cutter. It also makes a cool sound when waved around.

(Super secret history: Zarana's "awesome cutting tool" not just a lightsaber but a prestigious blade handed down through six generations of powerful Jedi. Crafted with the finest Kryat Dragon Pearl, it repelled the Nightmare King and his army of Never-Was, it was wielded at the Fall of Arcadia against The Forty Seven Sith and was eventually lost at the war of the Medusa Cascade. And now it opens stubborn food containers)

Since we dont know what era we'll be playing in yet - Rebel vs Empire, Prequels, New Republic, Neo-Republic or whatever - I've kept the setting pretty easy to plug and play into any era. And like I said, there's a couple of threads I can see, but nothing I can think of to be proactive with.

So, what do think sirs?

Lightsaber has a homing device in it, and finally the elderly senile failed Jedi is able to track it down.... But simply does not believe that Zarana isn't Force sensitive. Keeps saying it's her destiny. He can't feel the Force in her because he's lost his own connection.

Then, while she's hanging out with the old man, the Empire captures her family, zips them off to space, and questions them. Knowing nothing, they are all sentenced to various prisons.

Now it falls to her to get them out.

The most obvious would be to find her mother, or to have the father find her. But, again, that's obvious.

Setting dependent, of course, but the idea that someone close to her is in trouble, and in a pinch, she uses the lightsaber to help them. Maybe a situation where no one can see it was her. So there's a flash of light, a lot of yelling, and then the problem is resolved.

Stories begin to circulate about a super hero. Eventually someone connects the dots to the lightsaber and the Jedi. That could go south quickly. Does she tell the family? Does she continue to help those who need it? A costume to protect those she loves, some stealth or subterfuge, then fwish.

Do the rest of her family know about the lightsaber or have seen it? Do they know what it is (and the implications) or are they ignorant?

The saber is famous so does it have any special markings that could be recognized? or a special blade color? does that old scholar that happens to walk around recognizes it? (or *that* old crazy heremit from the Jundland wastes....if you want to go for broke)

Maybe someone external (one of the neighbor's farmhands that ate sand and holds a grudge?) sees her use it as a fusion cutter and calls the empire?

Perhaps the saber is Sith, not Jedi and Darth Badguy really wants his family blade back.

I don't know man... I'd be hard pressed to skip FSE for a character like this... especially with that back story. You can skip all the flashy Force powers, and keep her connection to the Force very subtle.

If you're looking for something to get her off world and on the run... I'd go with Bounty Hunters. She doesn't know what she has or the importance of keeping it hidden, so there's no reason for it not to be hanging from her belt.

One minute, she's in Mos Eisley buying parts for the moisture farm, she gets a bad feeling, and the next she's on the run from a team of Bounty Hunters desperate for the bounty on Light Sabers... the best thing is that she doesn't even know why they're after her.

If you want to start the game with her aware of her back story, then maybe they manage to catch her, run an ID, and discover that she's Varra's daughter (DNA tagged bounty sheet, right?) and start to celebrate - double bounty!

Naturally, she manages to escape somehow, and now she's on the run with a head full of info she has no idea of what to do with... with Bounty Hunters, Imperial Agents, and Daddy's boys all on her tail...

Lightsaber has a homing device in it, and finally the elderly senile failed Jedi is able to track it down.... But simply does not believe that Zarana isn't Force sensitive. Keeps saying it's her destiny. He can't feel the Force in her because he's lost his own connection.

Then, while she's hanging out with the old man, the Empire captures her family, zips them off to space, and questions them. Knowing nothing, they are all sentenced to various prisons.

Now it falls to her to get them out.

I like the crazy drunk old man hanging around (and attracting unwanted attention) and it works with my idea that she's as force capable as a rock. The closest she'd get to interacting with the Force is "Oooh, an energy field surrounding all living things? I wonder if I can build a detector to measure it's wavelength!"

And the family being captured might work well with the vague idea that we seem to be batting around of all the PCs being kidnapped by someone (a bad guy to be determined) for a Force Training boot camp. She gets spotted with the saber by someone in power, mistaken as a "Jedi" and shanghaied and her family captured and sent to prison.

Do the rest of her family know about the lightsaber or have seen it? Do they know what it is (and the implications) or are they ignorant?

The rest of the family will most probably have seen it, but I like the notion that nobody knows what it is, that they think it's just a noisy fusion cutter.

I'd be hard pressed to skip FSE for a character like this... especially with that back story. You can skip all the flashy Force powers, and keep her connection to the Force very subtle.

The only reason I'm less inclined to go latent force user is that I just did that and I dont want to travel the same ground again. I do like the "It's a Jedi! Save us! Save us!" "Um, no - actually I'm not. Why do they always say that!" idea. Not necessarily a Refusal of the Call, but more that she doesn't know that the phone is even ringing.

Naturally, she manages to escape somehow, and now she's on the run with a head full of info she has no idea of what to do with... with Bounty Hunters, Imperial Agents, and Daddy's boys all on her tail...

I thought of the obvious "find mom" angle (although it didn't really ring my bell) - but yeah, father 20 years on would have all kinds of bounty postings, wouldn't he. I like that. Everyone is after her, and she has no idea why.

She could just dream of wanting to know who her people are and want to visit her homeworld, finding her clan would be the first step towards finding out about her past.