R'Tess

"I would have been happy just to be together, even living of the streets on Balosar."
"Languishing in the polluted hellhole that made you sick? That wouldn't be what I call living."

―R'Tess and Stolak Vandello^[1]

R'Tess was a Balosar. Born on the polluted world Balosar, she met the fellow Balosar Stolak Vandello on their homeworld and fell in love with him. Vandello promised her to take them away from the planet, but when R'Tess became sick, he secretly borrowed credits from the Black Sun crime syndicate to get them off faster—though he told her that he was only a transport pilot. Around 9 ABY,^[2] R'Tess and Vandello traveled aboard the Star Cruiser Halcyon as the ship was undertaking a cruise during which the passengers would witness a sungrazer-comet, which R'Tess had dreamed of seeing, colliding into the star Daca. Eventually, a crew of bounty hunter were sent by Black Sun to capture or kill Vandello. Although the two two manged to briely take out the droid 4-LOM, Vandello was eventually forced to surrendered to the bounty hunters, though he and R'Tess were allowed to witness the collision before he was taken by T'onga's crew to Black Sun to likely be executed. R'Tess didn't manage to bring up the courage to shoot the bounty hunters and regretted it it all her life. After Vandello was taken, R'Tess learned that he had paid for their room on the Halcyon for up to a century with his remaining money and so she continued living there and became healthier and stronger. Decades later^[1] in 34 ABY,^[3] the Halcyon was attacked by the pirate Crimson Jack who wanted to capture the Resistance spy Shorr Komrrin who was in the possession of important codes, to sell him to the First Order. But shortly before the pirates boarded the cruiser, Komrrin had left the codes with his young granddaughter Cimina and used a Launch Pod to leave the ship. While the pirates rounded them up in the Halcyon's Atrium, R'Tess and the cruiser's droid D3-O9 told Cimina hers and Vandello's story, before she shot the pirates in the room and the pirates retreated. R'Tess was strong willed individual, though she would have also been contend living a difficult life on the streets of Balosar, as long as she and Vandello would have been together. She liked to etch portraits with a laser.^[1]