Calixto Vernier

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Calixto Vernier is the CEO and founder of Ascendant Forgeworks, an megacorporation specializing in logistics and body armor development that has branched into several spheres of the arms and supply industries. Ascendant primarily supplies the New Republic and planetary governments, but also maintains a small and selective base of private clientelle. Vernier is an open critic of the Jedi Order, and has pushed for allowance of privately funded study of the training of Force-Sensitive individuals.

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=="Its a new age, and its not going to be defined by lightsabers, or who can talk the biggest game about their side of the Force. For the cost of a dozen Jedi, I can provide recruitment, outfitting, AND transport of division and regiment sized forces to any world in Republic Space. The private sector has once again surpassed the Jedi Order in utility, efficiency, and dare I say it loyalty. Congratulations distinguished members of the Senate, you can now bulldoze that eyesore of a temple and put in something that can actually bring in some tourism revenue."== -Calixto Vernier, Address to Senate Arms Subcommittee 195

From the Dust, we come....

"Yes, I was born a farmboy. There were Nerfs involved, because I know how to slaughter them and I can tell you when the milk goes bad. Not a bad life for a kid, even if it gets boring real fast. Nothing like a war to show you how much you can miss shoveling Nerf shit."

-Calixto on his origins

Calixto's exact birthworld has been lost to the records, and he hasn't been in a rush to correct the discrepancy. A dozen agricultural worlds have claimed his parentage, and each seems to have compelling evidence to support its claims. According to the Forgeworks PR department, his world was a moderately wealthy agricultural world with a number of middle class farmsteads and plantations that supplied food to adjoining, less fortunate planets. However, the Mandalorian Wars would bring an end to this prosperity. Recruiters conscripted and otherwise lured the young men offworld, and the needs of the Republic Military meant that the world was forced to sell at steep losses. What did it matter that other worlds suffered when the war machine had to be fed? His world succumbed to economic depression even as it had been spared the worst of the fighting. Those remaining at home couldn't find a job, and the bulk of the planets workforce was under arms and being shipped to combat zones across the Republic.

He like a large number of the young men of his world served, attaining the rank of sergeant and attaining several commendations. Again, exact records are hazy unless one actually were to dig through military archives, but by his own account none of his work was classified and it was doing his duty rather than any attempt at heroism.

Mustering out before the final years of the war, Calixto struggled to find a job like everyone else at home. The farms were gone, prices had skyrocketed, and the world was slipping into abject poverty. In desperation, Calixto and a couple of his squadmates sold their family farms and managed to secure a handful of tramp freighters. The same desperation that had caused him and his compatriots to sell their farms (those who would later become the board members of Ascendant) caused worlds on the edge of the combat zone and those with already precarious economies to become dependent on anyone who could make deliveries or provide emergency services such as weapon and armor repair, medical supplies, and any number of other vital services. Even as the war raged, Calixto began to see profits being made hand over fist...not on the desperation of others as he saw it, but upon filling basic needs: needs the Republic could not meet. They were too busy trying to fight off the Mandalorians...and too busy catering to the whims of the Jedi.

Tragedy and Opportunity

"You ask if I hate the Jedi? No, I don't. But I know that Ascendant Forgeworks places its emphasis on technology and on equipping the masses. The Republic told us the Jedi would save us, and placed their faith in single men. They could have outfitted troops with that time and money, built starships and tanks. Revan and Malak showed us that the Jedi is an expensive tool, but more importantly a dangerous and fickle one."

-Calixto, explaining his stormy relationship with the Jedi Order

Even as the war waxed and waned, Calixto and his compatriots snapped up contract after contract. As they grew more confident they began modifying the equipment that they shipped, striving to create more effective tools with which the average Republic defense force and citizen had to protect himself. They came to be known as crafters and modifiers of high quality body armor, and their philosophy was widely thought to be 'We buy you time for that one last shot'.

The end of the War saw Jedi being declared heroes. Revan and Malak...these two who would later return to massacre the Republican fleet. Where many saw tragedy and innocene lost, it also saw the birth of Ascendant Forgeworks, which had begun purchasing its first formal factories after starships became insufficient for the needs of their factories. The defections of Revan and Malak were touted by the board as proof that the Jedi were an expensive and outdated relic, a source of rogue and dangerous mystics at worst. The real heroes of the Republic were soldiers and citizens, and they needed to be armed against threats from without and within.

Ascendant Forgeworks acquired several of the contracts that would be needed to rebuild the Republican military and once again put it on a footing for war. Their primary goal was to preserve the Republic and those who wished to maintain their independence: their unspoken objective nothing less than the obsolescence and dissolution of the Jedi.