Phoenix

Born to loving parents on Corellia, Andromaeu Harbler's family soon moved to Tatooine as a result of her father's gambling debts.

Although her parents did their best to keep her unaware of the problems, Andromaeu was aware that something was wrong. Additionally, their efforts would have been better spent towards trying to pay off those debts - which eventually grew to the point where the moneylender Jonathan Harbler owed, Jabba the Hutt, grew tired of excuses and decided to collect - sending out a bounty-hunter to collect Andi's father and her family, if the money wasn't there to be handed over.

The money wasn't there, but Andromaeu managed to escape slavery; Jonathan attempted to win at least a bit of time by killing the bounty hunter - he failed and ended up a smouldering pile of ash. Tanya Harbler managed to distract the hunter just long enough that Andromaeu - who had only just returned from an errand her mother had sent her on - could successfully run away.

The bounty hunter decided that having one person to hand over to Jabba was better than potentially having no one at all - and left, leaving Andromaeu an orphan; she later found out that the hunter had been sent by Jabba, but never discovered if her mother was alive. Considering the rumours about Jabba's treatment of female slaves, however, Andromaeu was left to hope that her mother was dead.

Andromaeu renamed herself Phoenix, to try and cover herself if the bounty hunter came back. Then she gathered what she could from her home and left to learn how to survive on the streets.

She learned fast - hunger is one of the most powerful motivators there are, next to pain. And if she didn't succeed, quite often she wouldn't eat that night. And, in this manner, and from a couple older children in the street gang she'd joined, she learned how to steal - shoplifting, picking pockets, fencing stolen goods.

She was capable of surviving on her own then, when her gang lost out in a turf war. Rather than risk death or slavery - two of the usual options for defeated gang members - Phoenix struck out on her own. Setting up camp in one of the neutral zones surrounding a small, charity-run clinic, Ix scraped out a sort of living; she didn't go hungry, most nights - but she didn't really ever have quite enough to eat, either; had things continued on that way, in spite of the vitamin suplements she was given by the clinic, she would have ended up sterile and stunted for life. As it was, she was lucky that she started puberty late - by the time she started, she was getting three regular meals a day, in quantities large enough to give her the energy she needed for the growth spurts she went through.

By the time she was fourteen, Ix had been on her own for about four and a half years; the remains of the old gang had died, been absorbed into other gangs, or otherwise vanished. She hadn't come to the attentionlaw enforcement agenciesshe stole from, cared about one picore or ess