Deklaen Toshvahr
Character · also known as Dek
A scarred human man, a Republic-trained slicer traveling with his family and seeking passage off the colony world of Ghauba.
Appearance
A scarred adult human male. The published chapters describe him only as visibly scarred and give no further detail of his features, build, or dress. He is consistently seen at the side of his partner Damika and their daughter Tammea.
Personality
Dek is first and foremost a devoted father and partner, focused entirely on getting his family to safety — it is he who puts up the payment for their passage off-world. Tammea remembers him as calm and gentle, a warm and steady presence in her life. He is an extremely skilled slicer who served alongside Damika in the Republic's Slicer Corps, and under fire during the escape he stays technically capable though visibly rattled — bitter and cursing, jaw clenched — working a colony security terminal to bring the city's defense grid back online. Even amid the disaster he shows occasional flashes of dry humor. Above all, he is fiercely protective of Damika and Tammea.
In the story
These sections contain spoilers, grouped by arc. Open only as far as you have read.
Arc 1 — Escape from Ghauba
Deklaen is a scarred human man, partner of the Zeltron slicer Damika and father to her daughter Tammea. He first appears in an Ghauba cantina, where the family is negotiating passage off the colony with freighter captain Quinel Neviden; it is Deklaen who makes the payment offer for the run.
He and Damika are both described as "extremely skilled slicers" wanted by the Empire. Both served in the Republic Slicer Corps' Special Operations Division as cyber-warfare specialists during the Clone Wars, in the same unit, and became a couple in that time. After the war they turned their skills against the new regime, ultimately sabotaging Star Destroyers under construction at Kuat Drive Yards — the act that drew Imperial forces down onto Ghauba hunting the pair.
Initially wary and distrustful of the newcomers, Deklaen relents once Damika vouches for Quinel's intentions. During the assault he works to bring the colony's neglected automated defense grid online, activating its turrets as a last measure of resistance. He takes charge of moving the group toward the spaceport and helps hold off Imperial troops during the retreat, and is shown as a devoted father who calmly steadies Tammea through an empathic panic. As the family reaches the Misfit Stray, Deklaen is struck by a blaster bolt to center mass and killed — the first of Tammea's two parents to die in the hangar ambush.
Arc 2 — Cloud City Blues
Deklaen does not appear directly in this arc. He is present only in Tammea's grief as she struggles with the loss of her parents: she remembers him as a gentle parent-figure with a calm, gentle voice, who was "shot down mid-sentence" on Ghauba.
Arc 3 — Crossfire Run
Again Deklaen appears only in memory. Tammea speaks of "Dek" — the familiar short form of his name — while Quinel Neviden calls him "Deklaen"; he is remembered as one of the two slicers whose sabotage of the Star Destroyers drew Imperial retaliation onto Ghauba. Wrestling with survivor's guilt, Tammea blames her parents' actions for the colony's fate; Quinel counters that the Empire, not her parents, bears the blame, and that honoring Deklaen and her mother means continuing to live.