Jaa’Brin Kuma (ja’brin koomuh) was officially an educator and librarian in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. Kuma was not well known, owing to his reclusiveness, but respected by his friends and tolerated by others for his work in research and development. Although force sensitive, he was not trained as a Jedi. His unique combination of technical ability and sensitivity meant he could create useful tools that a Jedi or mundane technician could not. Not all of his ideas and creations succeeded, but enough did that he was allowed his freedom from the usual responsibilities the temple demanded of it’s occupants.
Kuma would occasionally take on a student for private tutoring despite not being a Jedi. These would typically be those with less control or power in the force, but who were strong of mind. Despite the fact that Kuma was a devout pacifist, his students would often come to serve as special operatives for the Republic. This would later prove both his salvation and finally his end.
After Order 66
For the Jedi and any working with them on Coruscant Order 66 was almost immediately a death sentence. Those who could, ran, those who couldn’t died. Kuma’s relative anonymity and was both a blessing and a curse. Nobody thought to look for him at first, but likewise, nobody thought to warn him either. As his work spanned several laboratories and included remote monitoring, he realized the danger just in time to escape the initial culling and find refuge in the tunnels of the lower levels of Coruscant.
Kuma took some precious few tools he could grab from his immediate work space or which he was wearing at the time of his escape. Among his tools were a prototype lightsaber and blaster he’d been tinkering with for years. Although he’d never used such tools, his sensativity to had guided their creation and he found them instantly useful in his escape and survival. Against storm troopers and other mundane assailants he was sure of his survival, but he’d do all he could to avoid direct confrontation with the red bladed hunters who had appeared.
The former reclusive and aloof tinkerer became a resistance cell leader. In these last few years of survival he had accumulated true friends and even fostered orphans for periods of time. As his friends fell, though, this brief warmth subsided and the truth he had known since Order 66 was issued finally became the only truth. He was hunted prey and he would not survive his pursuit. He could, however, slow down his hunters.
Final Days
With most of his friends dead, captured, or fled off planet, Kuma was left with the stark reality of his imminent end. His tactics changed from carefully planned disruption to a strategy bordering on recklessness. Empty enclaves left nothing to protect and Kuma began leaving deadly, massively destructive traps for his enemies. As he moved from cell to cell he would collect mementos of his fallen friends, stitching ear rings and scraps into his clothes and affecting a bandoleer of lightsabers of his fallen brothers.
Moving quickly and ignoring his personal well being Kuma began dismantling the last of his workshops to avoid their discovery by the Empire’s dogs. He had no illusions that the tools would be effective in any grand way, but still he wanted to prevent his legacy from being an asset to the Empire.
Finally the day he knew would come finally arrived. Having completed laying the trap in his final hideaway, he turned to find his former student Stinju Dashstar. Dashstar had recognized the pattern of recent disruptions in the ancient bowels of the city planet and took a squad of troopers to the place his old teacher had trained him expecting a battle. After a brief exchange during which Kuma did his best to convince his former student that he was the last of the resistance on the capitol, Jaa’Brin provoked Dashstar to take the fatal shot that would trigger a dead mans switch. The explosion collapsed the tunnel that served as the ceiling to the cavernous void that had once served as a small village, destroying everything below.