Vir Calder

Vir Calder
Biographical Information
Race	Human
Born	Year -45 Day 113, Fondor
Physical Description
Gender	Male
Political Information
Affiliation	Ternion Corps (Year 21 to Present)
Prior Affiliation	Galactic Republic (Year -27 to -3) Galactic Empire (Year -3 to 4) Bando Gora & Order of the One Sith (Year 20 to 21)

Vir Calder, a career military officer, is best known for his former role as a high ranking advisor to Emperor J. Charon. Currently, he is the commanding officer of Ternion Corps, a Clone Wars veteran association that has gradually activated new front line combat units with a fresh birthing of Clone soldiers.

Early Life in the Republic

Vir Calder was born in Year -45 on the world of Fondor. His father, Tao Calder, a spacecraft mechanic and an immigrant from Tatooine, passed away when his son was about five years of age. His mother Nim, née Favron, a native of Fondor, was employed as a greeter at the main planetary spaceport. Calder's mother insisted on providing Calder as much education as she could provide. When higher education demanded more funding than her means, Calder enlisted in the military. Following his father's footsteps, he was trained as a spacecraft mechanic and served with the Navy. Upon the completion of a rigorous officer's training program designed for promising enlisted personnel, he became one of the rare enlisted men to be sent to the Military Academy of Carida for his eventual commissioning as an officer. Subsequent promotions came slowly while the galaxy enjoyed peace, and Calder tended to be assigned to backwater bases where his name was unlikely to appear on the reports for superiors in important positions. Nevertheless, he continued to learn continuously, the habit that his mother instilled in him from a young age. He took part in various training programs that the Galactic Republic military offered its junior officers, including flight training. Two decades later, when tensions with Separatists heightened, demands of war placed the aging officer in an unlikely place, the cockpit of a starfighter, to fend off an unexpected Separatist raid. Now recognized for his previously unidentified talents, he was whisked away to command a task force of freighters, followed by the command of a frigate. As the Galactic Republic transitioned into the Galactic Empire, he continued his career in the Imperial Navy.

The Empire

It was in the early days of the Galactic Empire that Vir Calder met an ambitious fellow mid-level naval officer named J. Charon and the two quickly formed a friendship, exchanging thoughts on everything from leadership theories to the best place for a casual meal on Coruscant. As Charon's career growth crossed into the realm of politics, Calder took a different direction after being named a naval liaison officer to Imperial Research Development (IRD). When the directorship of IRD became available, Emperor Trey Connel personally promoted Calder to the rank of vice admiral, jumping several grades, to put him in that vacant position. Calder's work with IRD was largely classified, but he was generally credited as the officer that enabled naval engineers working for him to make several technological advancements, including bolstering the hyperspeed of at least one Imperial I-class Star Destroyer significantly.

In Year 2, Charon came to power as the Emperor. Needing people he could trust, Charon made Calder the military governor of Fakir Sector (home of IRD) and an Advisor to the Throne, all the while still the Director of IRD. It was around this time that rumors began circulating that Calder's work with IRD, with Charon's direct involvement, was slowly turning into the occult. Among Calder's last accomplishments under Emperor Charon's reign was a successful defense against a Rebel raid on Berchest, capital of Fakir Sector, in Year 4.

When Emperor Charon abdicated, Calder submitted his letter of resignation to allow the incoming Emperor, Greyson Uebles, full freedom to appoint a new candidate for this High Command position. The new Emperor chose to retain him in a ceremony taken place on Coruscant.

Calder's career with the Empire came to an abrupt end shortly after. He returned to Berchest on Year 4 Day 273, visited the main IRD research station, and took an IRD-modified YT-510 shuttle entrusted to his department by Matrel Byden from the station down to the surface. Calder's long time aides who had met him on the surface reported that his demeanors deviated noticeably from the norm, becoming uncharacteristically frazzled and unreasonably demanding. He ordered the immediate re-equipping the shuttle with extra fuel tanks, ready to take off as soon as possible, and without additional crew. Calder personally piloted the shuttle to the Imperial Star Destroyer Shadowstone orbiting above Berchest, where a private droid army (later found to be funded by the Falleen Federation) had just wrested control of the ship from Imperial personnel. Calder was never seen again.

When Falleen Federation intelligence officers studied the vast amounts of recorded video from surviving battle droids, Calder was only seen twice, both long before the Battle of Beta. In a corridor off of the docking bay, he walked straight toward the droid which had recorded the video, nearly walking into it as if he did not realize the droid was there. As the droid stepped aside, it recorded an impossible glow of red in Calder's eyes. The study into the droid's logs failed to conclude why the droid yielded to Calder, rather than stopping and interrogating him. Then, another droid patrolling the ship recorded Calder, again with the inhuman red glow, mumbling to himself while closing the hatch of the YT-510 shuttle, and the shuttle undocked from the Shadowstone moment after the star destroyer exited hyperspace in Falleen space. This second droid raised his blaster rifle at the closing shuttle hatch, but it would find the blaster mysteriously bent, thus failing to fire.

The Empire assumed Calder played a leading role in the loss of Shadowstone. Falleen records and narratives of those involved in the subsequent combat aboard the ship, however, did not name Calder as a participant.

Disappearance and Return

Vir Calder was not seen between Year 4 Day 273 and Year 19. A freelance intelligence network identified the modified YT-510 shuttle at a refueling station far in the galactic northeast in Year 19, and promptly reported this sighting to the Empire. This was followed by an anonymous tip of a resident of Lorahns System that Calder had met with a former Imperial comrade, SyberJedi, by then the leader of the Jedi Order. Several months later, he was spotted at the world of Malastare, this time in the company of Con Semper, and appeared to have made Malastare his home. Although 15 years had elapsed since his disappearance, it was said that Calder did not appeared to have aged. His peers at Bando Gora later claimed that Calder did not age due to the effect of time dilation from prolonged faster-than-light hyperspace travel with IRD-modified YT-510 shuttle, but this claim could not be substantiated.

Bando Gora / Order of the One Sith

In Year 20, Con Semper joined Bando Gora, which was later renamed the Order of the One Sith, and Vir Calder followed. It was at Bando Gora that Calder revealed that he had been a Force Sensitive individual, and that he had been honing his skills in the Force under the tutelage of Semper. Calder held a number of command positions in the Bando Gora/One Sith military organization, and was granted the title of the Fist of the Dark Lord by Darin Byrch. Shortly after, after a lightsaber duel with Semper, he was made Darth Azymus.

When the One Sith was betrayed from within and fell apart, Calder, Semper, and Semper's wife Areagla Loomis decided to seek a new venture together with the Ternion Corps.

Ternion Corps

The name Ternion Corps dated back to the early stages of the Clone Wars. After the end of the war, the various units of the corps formed their own veteran associations, but most of them remained loosely connected to each other. Uncharacteristically, the camaraderie passed down to the children and grandchildren of the veterans, officers and enlisted alike. Membership grew, and the veteran associations began to merge, and the Ternion Corps name began to return. The local chapter of the Ternion Corps at Malastare, the veteran association of the Malastare Rifles Regiment, was one of the leading groups within the umbrella organization.

Vir Calder came in contact with the Malastare Rifles and quickly struck a fast friendship with the semi-nomadic para-military group that hired itself out as mercenaries while upholding the proud history of their Clone and non-Clone forefathers. Calder, who as a mechanic worked with Clone pilots and crews during the war (though none of whom were Ternion Corps members), felt at home with this merry group, and these Dugs and Clone descendents respected Calder for his service during the war and for his experience as an Imperial flag officer. When a particularly challenging job resulted in the untimely death of the leader and deputies of the group, Malastare Rifles members unanimously elected Calder as its new leader. When Calder followed Semper to Bando Gora, the Malastare Rifles opted to follow Calder to Venaari. Coincidentally, Semper, also a Clone Wars veteran, had served with Ternion Corps's 105th Armored Division. With Semper being Calder's Master in the Force, it in turn gave Calder greater influence across the Ternion Corps local chapters.

Thus, when the Order of the One Sith collapsed and the trio of Vir Calder, Con Semper, and Areagla Loomis sought company with Ternion Corps, its members welcomed them as their leaders.

With the assistance of capable deputies, Calder began to expand the nascent production facilities that he inherited from past Ternion Corps projects. Meanwhile, through House Arkoh, which Con Semper was the head of, Ternion Corps received a second birthing of Clone Troopers using the original genetic template. Later joined by Zal Ragath, these four survivors of the One Sith debacle began to truly revive the Ternion Corps name.

Personal Life

Vir Calder is a well known droid enthusiast. While in the Empire, Emperor Charon frequently gifted Calder droids on special occasions. In Year 3, for example, on Calder's birthday, the Emperor gave him a pair of Droideka and a Battle Droid squad; these droids remained in Calder's collection to this date, serving as his personal bodyguards. These droids are said to be the catalyst that turned him into a collector. In more recent years, he had been seen scouring various markets for rare droids; he has boasted that he owns at least one of every model of droids ever manufactured. In Year 20, Semper and Loomis presented Calder with several hundred security and military droids. In Year 21, Calder started release droids of his own programming into the market, starting with the Altisian Jedi Order Lightsaber Instructor Droids created for Altisian Jedi Order, and then the RA-7-ST Storyteller Droids created for Ternion Corps. According to rumors, he owns deep space X7 factory stations, exact location unknown though likely to be in the southeastern quadrant of the galaxy, fully manned by labor droids and producing droids.

Calder calls a modernized Arquitens Light Cruiser home. The Wanderlust, as he named it, saw combat during the Clone Wars and became into his possession as military surplus after the war's end. While the military-grade communications and sensors systems stayed in place, most of the interior troop facilities were eliminated during the overhaul that Calder oversaw personally. According to Calder's own admission, a number of luxurious creature comforts were added for his own enjoyment, but the bulk of the interior spaces gained during the overhaul were transformed into droid shops and droid storage facilities. Other than Calder himself, very few sentients are allowed aboard the Wanderlust, as Calder prefers the company of droids and distrusts most others. The docking bay hosts the two small ships Calder typically uses as his personal transports, the YT-510 shuttle Sojourner, the ETA-2 Actis-class fighter Esprit, and the ATR-6 transport Ambition.

Calder's lightsaber is among his most prized possessions. Part of the weapon's hilt is made from the tooth of a beast whose species Calder had never revealed to others. A servant who had waited on Calder at Venaari commented that it appeared to be a tooth of a young Krayt dragon.

The ancestral histories of both his paternal and maternal families were poorly kept due to most of their members being obscure commoners. Even when Calder had access to the Galactic Empire's vast databanks, he was not able to unearth anything significantly new. According to paternal family lore, as he had told a journalist during an interview in Year 3, the Calder line traced back to a Tatooine man named Cal and his wife Dur more than 20,000 years ago. When the Old Republic established its presence over Tatooine, the new government began registering the citizenry, imposing the Coruscant custom of surnames for newborns. Up until that point, the community from which Cal was a part of was mononymous; to abide by the new laws, couples began giving their children surnames that were the combinations of their mononyms, and thus Cal and Dur's son, born one year after the Old Republic's arrival, was registered as Pae Cal-Dur. Subsequent generations took on the republican patrilineal tradition, and thus began the Cal-Dur line. Some generations after Pae Cal-Dur the spelling of the patrilineal surname was changed to Calder for reasons unknown. On Calder's maternal side, even less is known of the Favron lineage. Family lore had it that the Favrons had moved to Fondor from a backwater planet somewhere nearby. Based on a passenger log Calder discovered, Milou Favron, six generations before him, appeared with laborer listed as his profession and immigration listed as the reason for travel, was from the Fondorian moon of Nallastia. Milou Favron arrived at Fondor with his wife and three young children.

Calder never married and has never been romantically linked publicly.