Musician Archive

Inability to tell good from evil is the greatest worry of man's life.

- Cicero

I am not Sefen Vyngaard. I write these words with a certain resolve, firm in this knowledge, this denial of the self I have been creating. It is not who I am. This much, I know to be true.

All the rest seems a convenient lie, perhaps not even a good one.

I am without memory of my past. It's called amnesia. Where I have went is a blank field on the datapad of my mind. I sometimes wonder who I was before I lost my memory, who I hoped to be before I lost everything I was. Who were my parents? Was I married? Did I love them, any of them? Do I have children somewhere? Or am I alone?

I blame the Empire, mainly because I have no other explanation. Does it make it right? It seems fair to rebel. The Rebellion has taken me in, given me a purpose, and the means to complete it with.

But does that in the end, make it right? I can't say with any certainty.

I'm a musician right now. Actually, it's a convenient cover story, and I happen to like the sound of music enough to use it rather efficiently. I recall studying the basics in that cantina in Coronet City. Tuning, cleaning, and checking over of the instruments. Syncronizing when I solo, and when I should get creative against the other performers.

Meanwhile... the band nearby spills out noise over the crowd of people at tables in thestyle of one of Naboo's less visited waterfalls. Some listeners wince. I've gotten quite good. Someone called me a master once. I think it was Iboa. I'm just a guy with a mandoviol. I play the nalargon sometimes too, with a classy hand. Or my chindkalu horn, but only if I'm feeling lonely on those starlit nights when the moon is full in the sky.

I could get used to this. Naboo is very lovely this time of year, which is to say it's very lovely every day of the year. It does rain a lot though, but I don't mind. I like it then too. Alciril makes sure I'm dressed well enough to withstand the contempt of my lessers , the cheers of my fans, and I know no fear from the humble raindrops falling from the skies. Good enough for me. And when I can find the time from my schedule, I look out onto the river near that Bothan Ambassador's settlement. Nowi, I think her name is. Never get to talk to her anymore. I should take up fishing on that river, if I ever retire from the intelligence business. It would be relaxing.

I pull out my mandoviol, the one Kezie Acoma made for me, back when she still worked the music biz. It's reassuring, somehow. That I can strum it, and it sings in it's sweet voice out to the crowd. Occasionally someone listens to it. That's all I ask for. Tips never killed a man, but the Rebellion helps me when it's slow - when I killa man.

I put away my mandoviol, and I draw my blaster. It's a FWGS model. It's slightly cool to the touch. I hold it, and feel more confident. I've killed men. And women. I'm not proud. It's not something you can be proud of, and I guess that's why you could say I'm a "good guy" or a "nice man". I haven't gotten to liking it. Provided you don't think any less of me for putting my blaster's barrel to a local Imperial civilian guard's neck and leaving him and his coworker slumped over each other. I guess that qualifies as murder in most circles. I don't try to deny it, but I don't like the Empire's methods. I kill people who harm others. They killed a world of people.

Does that make me less bad or more good than they? Can't rightly say. ..

The Empire gave me some credits and a blaster. And one of the folks onboard the station gave me a slithorn. Is it gratitude when you take what someone gives you and turn it against them? I doubt it highly.

Maybe it's justice then. All those people on Alderaan couldn't have been rebels. It's just not possible. Or even probable. The wildlife could have been called untamed, but rebellious? Hah, no. So I give back to the Empire what it sowed. I give it death. The market in death is always active in a civil war.

I shout about freedom. I'm fighting for a old Republic, one that sounded fairly okay compared to what the Empire is like now. I don't have any way of justifying what I do based on that though.

After all. I don't even have a memory to speak of. Were my parents Corporate Sector Authority traders? Maybe Nubian royalty? Perhaps Imperial nobility instead? Where was I born, and have I visted it without knowing it? I could have done so a hundred times by now - or never.

That's when I drink a Ruby Bliels. I don't drink myself drunk. Somehow, I get a bad feeling when I start to get drunk. Maybe it's a guilty concience. I drink not to forget, but to hold off on remembering. Not just yet. I like this life, I might find out I've lived a life too ordinary. Or maybe a life less admirable. Did I call myself admirable? Hardly...

But I do know the Empire did something to me, something wrong. The Rebel medical techicians tell me I was definately narco-interrogated vigorously at one point. They can't say when exactly, or by who exactly, or anything exactly.

The Empire uses it a lot on Rebel spies. The Rebellion, prior to my joining up with them in Anchorhead, has no records of my being part of their organization. Which isn't too unusual, they take all kinds.

Which is just what the Empire said, when they processed me as a refugee. I wasn't on any data structures in their computer banks. No luck there, if there's ever any luck there to start with. Now that's more unusual.

It means either I'm from a place not controlled by the Empire, a place with poor recordskeeping, or I just appeared out of nowhere one day. I could even be a creation of the Men in White, one of their projects that got lose. Because of me, they lost a whole base. Noone knows why, they were all just dead.

I like to think the last one is merely conjecture. I stand in front of the mirror like I do before every show, every autograph signing, every time I get up in the morning. I straighten my tie, adjust my goggles, and I make silly faces at myself to cheer up with.

I raise my undershirt and I look at all the scars. They're there. So many of them. I have scars all over my chest. I have burn marks on my back. I don't remember any of it. I doubt very strongly that I was ever drunk enough to take that and miss it. My hands are callused. Musicians don't get hands like that, and it's a lifetime's worth of them.

I've seen calluses like these on Benny M's hands back on Tat. And others like him. Brawlers. Common men of uncommon resolve.

Tomorrow, I'm going to go out in the Nubian rain, and I'm going to find a dojo. A Teras Kasi one. I don't know. Maybe all of them. I've been in a few barfights, I can throw a right and make it talk for my walk. It happens. It's a learned skill, like finding water on Tattooine. You either learn it or you end up taken like a newbie. I even had a vibroknuckler, although I lost it on one flight off of Rori. Probably lost with some of my other luggage. Happens.

I'm going to start asking questions. Someone has to know the truth of it. The answers are outside, on some world, somewhere.

I place my mandoviol gently under the table for the next gig later, and I stand up to leave with my blaster under my black synthleather jacket in one clenched gloved hand.

The Rebellion needs me.

Today I'm Sefen Vyngaard.

It's showtime.

Sefen Vyngaard - Starsider

He cannot long be good that knows not why he is good.

- Richard Carew

Wonderful biography!