Full Name: Atii Ironcrest
Age: 24
Species: Human
Culture: Mandalorian
Lineage: Ironcrest Lineage, descended from Clan Ironstone
Occupation: Independent bounty hunter
Ship: The Ironcrest, heavily customized JumpMaster 5000
Weapons: Dual WESTAR-35 blaster pistols; GALAAR-15 blaster carbine
Status: Sole surviving member of the Ironcrest Lineage
Known Alias: The Red Hound, an underworld nickname she personally dislikes

Background

The Ironcrest Lineage

Atii was born into a Mandalorian family that survived by becoming very good at being forgotten.

The Ironcrest Lineage was small even before Atii's birth. Its members traced themselves back to remnants of ancient Clan Ironstone, whose destruction occurred thousands of years before Atii was born. Following the death of master bladesmith Dunesa Rul, Clan Ironstone and its rivals were hunted down in retaliation. The Ironstones seemingly disappeared from history.

Not all of them died.

The survivors eventually abandoned the Ironstone name and became the Ironcrest Lineage. Their ancestry was preserved privately through family histories, armor, oral tradition, and one particularly dangerous artifact:

Dunesa Rul's lost dagger.

The galaxy believed the weapon had disappeared.

The Ironcrests knew otherwise.

It became their most closely guarded heirloom, passed between generations but almost never displayed. Even many people acquainted with the Ironcrests never knew they possessed it. Atii grew up understanding that the dagger wasn't simply valuable. It was physical evidence that her lineage had survived something history said had destroyed it.

The Ironcrests therefore developed a culture somewhat different from larger Mandalorian clans. They didn't have armies, territory or political influence. Survival depended upon family, discretion, craftsmanship and preserving what remained.

Atii grew up surrounded by old things.

Old armor.

Old weapons.

Old stories.

And relatives who reminded her that surviving was itself a form of victory.

Childhood

Atii's childhood wasn't miserable.

That distinction matters enormously to who she became.

Before the Empire took everything from her, she was happy.

She grew up energetic, competitive and almost painfully curious. If something mechanical stopped working, Atii wanted to take it apart. If someone told her she couldn't do something yet, she'd spend the next week trying to prove them wrong.

Her father encouraged the mechanical streak. He taught her basic starship maintenance, wilderness survival, tracking and eventually marksmanship. Her mother was harder on her, particularly regarding discipline, Mandalorian history and combat training.

Atii loved both of them fiercely.

She was also a troublemaker in precisely the way you'd expect from a child raised around armored warriors.

She climbed things she shouldn't.

Touched equipment after explicitly being told not to.

Tried weapons before she was ready.

Asked uncomfortable questions during serious conversations.

And was intensely competitive with other young members of the lineage.

Losing irritated her.

Being told she lost because she was younger irritated her considerably more.

That stubbornness never disappeared.

It simply became useful.

The Destruction of Mandalore

Then came the catastrophe that shattered the Ironcrests.

Most of the lineage was lost during the destruction of Mandalore.

Armor, records, possessions and people representing generations of Ironcrest history vanished in an extraordinarily short period. Those who survived scattered rather than risk gathering together and giving the Empire another concentrated target.

Atii escaped alongside a small number of relatives.

They salvaged whatever they could.

Armor became especially important. Mandalorian equipment that might ordinarily have passed from parent to child over decades suddenly changed hands because there was nobody else left to inherit it.

The Ironcrests became refugees carrying pieces of their dead.

And among the possessions they refused to abandon was the dagger.

Moff Gideon

Eventually, the Empire found them.

The remaining Ironcrests were intercepted by forces associated with Moff Gideon.

What happened afterward became the defining event of Atii's life.

The survivors were captured.

Their possessions were searched.

And the secret the Ironcrests had successfully protected for generations was finally uncovered.

Dunesa Rul's supposedly lost dagger was taken.

The surviving Ironcrests were executed.

Atii fought back.

It wasn't calculated bravery. She wasn't making some grand final stand.

She saw someone taking the object her family had protected for thousands of years while the people who had protected it were being murdered.

So she attacked.

She lost badly.

Gideon ultimately used the Ironcrests' own heirloom against her. The blade tore from around the corner of her mouth, across her cheek and back toward her ear, permanently splitting part of it.

She was subsequently beaten and tortured.

Atii remembers fragments more clearly than the entire experience: the blade, the sensation of blood filling her mouth, voices, the floor underneath her, the sound of Imperial boots, and eventually silence.

The Imperials left her behind with the dead.

They thought she wouldn't survive.

They were wrong.

Corellia

Locals on Corellia eventually discovered Atii.

Barely alive, severely injured and surrounded by what remained of her family, she was taken somewhere she could receive treatment.

Recovery was ugly.

Her cheek healed into the enormous branching scar she carries today. Her ear never completely recovered and remains visibly split where the blade passed through it.

Atii refused extensive cosmetic reconstruction.

Not because she romanticizes what happened.

She simply doesn't want to hide it.

The scar belongs to her now.

More importantly, pieces of the Ironcrests survived alongside her.

Her mother's helmet became Atii's.

Her father's enormous fur cape became hers.

Other surviving armor components belonging to fallen relatives were recovered, repaired, resized and incorporated into her equipment.

Consequently, Atii's armor isn't a uniform suit.

It is a family tree made from metal.

Every scratch she adds sits beside scratches made by people who are gone.

She takes exceptionally good care of it.

Becoming a Bounty Hunter

Atii didn't immediately become some unstoppable hunter.

She needed credits.

She needed transportation.

She needed information.

Most importantly, she needed a way to survive without belonging to anyone.

Bounty hunting provided all four.

Early contracts were unimpressive: locating thieves, recovering stolen property, tracking debtors, escorting cargo, catching low-level fugitives and occasionally discovering that a supposedly easy bounty had six friends and a repeating blaster.

Atii learned quickly.

She discovered that hunting people required considerably more patience than shooting them.

She learned to read docking records, question witnesses, follow financial trails, recognize forged transponder codes, predict escape routes and understand how frightened people behave.

Her Mandalorian training made her dangerous.

Experience made her a bounty hunter.

Eventually she acquired and heavily modified a JumpMaster 5000.

She named it simply:

The Ironcrest

Its red, black and white hull with gold trim mirrors her armor, but beneath the paint sits a practical bounty vessel customized almost obsessively for one person.

The interior is cramped.

The cockpit is packed with instruments.

The workshop doubles as storage.

Her living quarters are barely larger than necessary.

Secure detention cells hold captured targets.

Weapons, spare components and tools occupy virtually every available compartment.

Atii knows every strange noise the ship makes.

She can tell the difference between The Ironcrest complaining and The Ironcrest actually being broken.

She occasionally talks to it while making repairs.

She denies doing this.

Nobody believes her.

Reputation

Atii occupies a peculiar position in the galactic underworld.

She's simultaneously unknown, recognizable and historically significant, depending entirely on who's looking at her.

To Ordinary People

Atii Ironcrest is nobody important.

A traveler might recognize the armor and conclude she's Mandalorian.

A dockworker might remember the strange red-and-black crescent-shaped ship.

A cantina patron might recognize her scar.

But her name doesn't command rooms.

Atii prefers this.

Fame makes tracking targets harder.

Among Bounty Hunters

Here, she's beginning to matter.

Atii has developed a reputation as a promising young hunter who accepts contracts slightly above what someone her age should reasonably be attempting.

Her specialty is pursuit.

Targets don't necessarily fear her because she's the deadliest gunslinger they've ever encountered.

They fear her because losing her is difficult.

Change planets?

She follows.

Change identities?

She investigates.

Switch ships?

She checks docking manifests.

Hire mercenaries?

Now she knows you're frightened.

Atii is patient enough to spend days gathering information and aggressive enough to capitalize instantly when the opportunity appears.

That combination has earned grudging respect from older hunters.

It has also earned jokes about her stubbornness.

The Red Hound

Among certain criminal circles, Atii has acquired the nickname:

The Red Hound.

Red armor.

Red ship.

Relentless pursuit.

Atii absolutely despises it.

She thinks it sounds ridiculous.

Unfortunately, complaining about a nickname is one of the most efficient methods ever invented for ensuring that everyone continues using it.

So The Red Hound persists.

Among Criminals

Stories about Atii are beginning to become exaggerated.

Some claim she tracked a bounty through several systems without sleeping.

Others insist she boarded a ship alone.

Someone inevitably claims her scar came from wrestling some monstrous predator.

Atii occasionally hears these stories while sitting anonymously in cantinas.

She doesn't correct them unless they're particularly stupid.

Her actual reputation is simpler:

If Ironcrest accepts your bounty, running is preferable to fighting, but neither guarantees success.

Among Mandalorians

This is where her name carries considerably more weight.

Most Mandalorians still won't immediately recognize Ironcrest.

Older warriors, armorers, historians and people unusually knowledgeable about ancient clan histories may.

The name produces questions.

Ironcrest.

Ironstone.

The similarities are uncomfortable.

Her armor makes those questions worse because knowledgeable observers can tell immediately that the pieces aren't all contemporary.

Some are inherited.

Some are old.

Some have clearly been repaired repeatedly.

Then there's the helmet.

Atii rarely explains anything.

Those knowledgeable enough to connect Ironcrest with Ironstone generally fall into three categories:

People who think she's lying.

People who desperately want to know more.

And people who know enough history to understand why asking too many questions might be impolite.

Historians and Collectors

These are potentially more dangerous than criminals.

Collectors of ancient Mandalorian artifacts might regard the Ironcrest name as an archaeological curiosity.

A serious historian could potentially connect the lineage to Clan Ironstone.

And someone exceptionally knowledgeable about Dunesa Rul might eventually ask the question Atii least wants anyone asking:

What happened to the dagger?

Officially?

Atii doesn't know anything about it.

Privately?

She knows exactly who took it.

Imperial Remnants

Most Imperials have never heard of Atii Ironcrest.

A handful potentially have.

Records from the execution of her family could still exist.

As far as those records are concerned, Atii should probably be dead.

The discovery that one Ironcrest survived would therefore create an uncomfortable problem, particularly for anyone aware of what Gideon recovered from them.

Atii knows this.

It's another reason she doesn't chase fame.

Her Secret Hunt

Every bounty serves two purposes.

The first is obvious:

Credits.

Fuel isn't free. Ammunition isn't free. Repairs certainly aren't free, and The Ironcrest possesses an almost supernatural ability to discover expensive mechanical problems immediately after Atii gets paid.

The second purpose is invisible.

Information.

Atii remembers Gideon.

She remembers the dagger.

And she remembers what happened when she tried to take it back.

So she builds connections.

Brokers.

Smugglers.

Mercenaries.

Former Imperials.

Weapons dealers.

Information traders.

Crime syndicates.

Every completed bounty expands her network.

Every favor creates another person she can contact.

Every captured Imperial officer potentially knows someone else.

Atii isn't charging blindly toward Gideon anymore.

She tried that once.

She carries the result across her face.

This time she's doing something far more dangerous.

She's becoming good enough to hunt him properly.

And ultimately, that is where Atii stands at twenty-four.

She isn't a legendary Mandalorian.

She isn't the galaxy's greatest bounty hunter.

She isn't feared across every criminal syndicate from Corellia to the Outer Rim.

Not yet.

She's something much more useful for the beginning of her story:

Atii Ironcrest is becoming someone.

The underworld is beginning to recognize the red armor.

Hunters are beginning to recognize the ship.

Mandalorians who know their history are beginning to recognize the name.

And somewhere in the galaxy exists an ancient dagger belonging to a clan everyone thought died thousands of years ago.

Atii intends to make sure that eventually, Ironcrest is a name nobody forgets again.

Scenarios:

1. The Rusted Halo

2. The Same Bounty

3. Unexpected Passenger aboard The Ironcrest

4. The Helmet Comes Off

5. The Job Goes Wrong

6. The Mandalorian Historian

7. The Final Blade Lead

8. The Moff Gideon Encounter