Redstar

RedStar keeps watch over the town of Stary Yar.

Overview

Group/Faction Affiliation: Lucky Bastards

Status: Unknown

A former chief engineer with a long career at sea behind her, Rebecca ‘RedStar’ Starbäck was no stranger to hard work and was used to thinking on her feet. She reached some level of notoriety as a level-headed counsellor, a hard negotiator and above all a defender of the human aspect in conflict and survival. She was above all known for her extensive knowledge about the Cult of Papa, both through research, but also first hand experience. Her thoughts and writings can be found in book format and on tapes around Chernarus.

Appearance

Used to the functional clothes of the engine room on a large freight carrier, RedStar always favoured practical clothing, either a Gorka jacket to keep the down pours of the northern mountains from getting too uncomfortable, or hunting gear for its strength and practicality. She held her unruly brown hair in place and kept it from falling in her eyes with a green scarf tied around her head.

Origins

Her parents were killed in a car accident when she was three and she was brought up by her uncle in the north of Sweden. He taught her to fish and hunt, and he told her about nature and the circle of renewal and how everything has its place in nature. Nature -the great goddess always moved forward and She would always win in the end. Adapt and move on, don’t dwell, always respect the balance in nature, those were the words to live by. Well into her thirties, she had worked on many ships before Stella hired her as chief engineer on her freight carrier The Lucky Star and she found her new family, the Lucky Bastards.

Demeanor

Always composed and logical, RedStar’s council was sought by many of the groups and leaders around South Zagoria. The Bastards mostly stayed non affiliated, but RedStar negotiated a lot of deals to ensure their relative safety or neutral/friendly status with a lot of groups. Trust was a big factor in her diplomacy though, and she lived by the sentiment:

“I don’t care who you are. I don’t make deals with groups, I make them with people. Not necessarily because I like them, but because I think they are capable of keeping their end of the bargain. A woman is never more or less than her word.”

Valuing humanity and fairness isn’t the same as being a philanthropic altruist, RedStar wasn’t charitable for the sake of giving (she left that to some of the other Bastards), she was a utilitarian. You got her help if you deserved it (Walter Greene), if there was a gain to be had for her later (Felix le Loup), or if you were simply a friend to her (Finn & Brokk). Friendship didn’t come easy though.  

Most of the time she left the day-to-day business and social interaction with neighbours and fellow survivors to Tom, Hybris or Cyrus. However if something interested her she would make sure to get involved and she very much enjoyed spending time telling and listening to stories around the campfire in Stary Yar.

Nothing can prepare you for or protect you from the torments of life in the apocalypse. Life in South Zagoria comes at an expense to everyone. It’s rough and gritty at the best of times, but add a constant threat of war and being hunted by Cultists - it changes you. And even though RedStar was never a timid person, years of trying to walk the thin line of politics, always looking over her shoulder for enemies took its toll on her.

To show weakness was never an option, but inwards RedStar came to doubt her strength and ability to see clearly more than once. Especially in regards to The Cult of Papa.

The thoughts and writings of RedStar.

Actions

Koschei and the Cult

When Karlos the Butcher came to Stary Yar one very dark night, RedStar had only seen the violent side of the Cult, not the psychological. The Bastards had been sieged and attacked by red armbanded people before, but Karlos’ mission was to spread the word of suffering; the word of Papa. He would turn out to only be the vanguard to a more sinister venture; Koschei the Undead had noticed the Lucky Bastards and wanted them destroyed. RedStar and Tom followed Karlos to meet one of Koschei’s Banshees and an acolyte of Papa, Drekavac, in Kamensk. Following the two Bastards’ refusal to be sacrificed in the name of Papa, Drekavac slaughtered Karlos with a machete, and RedStar ended up shooting him to try and stop him from killing an innocent bystander. (Hear RedStar tell the story at the Stone Circle outside Pustoshka).

Koschei was allegedly furious. He haunted RedStar’s dreams, but the next time they met in person, The Cult had decided to commit a form of collective suicide and Koschei wanted RedStar to be the one to carry out the deed. She refused. Not because she wanted him to live, having heard his very tragic life story, but because she knew that there must be something else behind his request. If he wanted her to kill him, there must be a more sinister plan brewing in the background. She didn’t realise that regardless of who actually pulled the trigger Koschei would be the second Cultist on her conscience. And the third one would make her leave Chernarus for good.

"I will be ready. We will make that woman ours, wherever she may be hiding."

Capture and torture

During one of their ferocious attacks on Stary Yar, Dark as Midnight shot and wounded RedStar who, calculating her odds, surrendered rather than be gunned down. She was taken captive by Altradoran and driven to a deserted factory outside Solnichny. She was held there, drugged and without much food for several days until they gave her an overdose that almost cost her her life. Altradoran was secretly plotting against their allies Cult of Papa, and arrangements were underway for RedStar to be sold to Koschei, who had been hunting her for months, as part of the trap.  

Over a week into her captivity, when she was given a radio to make her daily monitored call to let the Bastards know she was alive and for them not to retaliate in force, she managed to send a message on a private channel to Teddy, who realised where she was being held and rescued her. Finding out her deceptive trick, her jailors Iris and Hades were furious, and called on Draven. The overlord-to-be of Dark as Midnight had a fondness for knives and started cutting up RedStar's upper arm, a torturous deed leaving her branded with wounds forming the word 'PAPA' that would never really heal.

Resisting RISE

RedStar’s position as an adviser to some of the groups in South Zagoria, combined with the fact that the Lucky Bastards -despite their neutral stance to most conflicts in the area, was a fighting force of considerable strength occasionally made them a target of attention of new and upcoming groups. Not long after the aggressive blood cult RISE settled in Stary Sobor, they demanded the Lucky Bastards support them in their war against some of the Bastard’s long standing friends. When RedStar firmly and decisively refused, RISE launched an attack on the Bastards with SunJin in the lead. The hostilities continued, although never reaching open armed conflict again, as a vendetta between RedStar and primarily RISE leader Mirimas and member Sunjin lingered and flared up every time their paths crossed.    

Krystôf and the Cult of Papa

RedStar surveys the view from Stary Yar cliffs.

Their rumour preceded them, shaking RedStar to the core, but when the new Cultists came to Stary Yar, she was ready and accepted her new destiny. The Preacher was a frequent guest in Stary Yar, and he and RedStar talked for many hours as she tried to figure out what the new generation of Cultists actually wanted. She was adamant that trying to understand their purpose and plan was key to defeating them once and for all. Altradoran, on the other hand, wanted to destroy them all for their massacre of the Forsaken Motorcycle Club. He sent Joe Fraser, who negotiated a deal and joint venture to thwart the Cult. RedStar agreed to share whatever information she obtained with the Forsaken Loyalists, but she also convinced them to hold off on killing Krystôf and the new Cultists.

On their first meeting since that day in the Solnichny factory when she was his captive, RedStar and Altradoran came to a mutual understanding before Dodge shot him thinking the Bastards were being deceived by the canny motorcyclist. Knowing he might die facing the Bastards again, he had prepared a letter that was delivered to RedStar. The letter did, apart from bewilder and annoy her, give her access to his collected documentation about the Cult hidden in Nagornoe. Krystôf and his fringe Cultists came back to Yar for one last session. A visit that in a way sealed RedStar’s destiny. Over time she had become obsessed by the thought that whatever she did, the seed of corruption - as she chose to call the idea and the essence of the Cult - would continue to grow inside her until it consumed her and destroyed everyone around her. When one of the deranged Cultists accompanying Krystôf told her Papa would always watch over her, and then attempted to set fire to himself, she shot and killed him in cold blood.  No Cultist would decide when they died in her base. Not Koschei, and not this one.This made her realise that she would always be their target, and they would win if she didn’t regroup and try another tactic. She had their relics; Koscei’s Bone knife and letter, her own and Altra’s research. The only way to defeat the Cult was to literally wipe the idea from her own mind OR turn the gun on everyone who had ever heard of the Cult, including herself.

RedStar relaxes briefly in the home of the Lucky Bastards.

Notable Relationships

No matter what anyone tried to convey, they were all people to Redstar. Some hid it better, and some were impressively enough, just that; human.

Lucky Bastards

Tom and RedStar were colleagues on The Lucky Star ,and she always appreciated his faith in other humans. Hybris and RedStar’s relationship was complicated, but they had been through a lot together and their estrangement troubled her. Jim was one of the people RedStar would entrust her life to without a doubt , and she knew that behind his gruff façade was a truly kind soul.

Black Sheep

When Stary Yar became too hectic or felt too confined, RedStar was always grateful to be able to spend some time with Finn & Brokk in Guglovo. She valued their unconditional friendship more than she would ever tell them. Although they didn’t always end up on the same side in conflicts, she would never betray them for anything, not Walters and wolves’ hunt for Andi or various relationships with other groups.

Black Paw & Serdtse Volka

Shadow was one of the few people in Chernarus who scared RedStar. In a way they were good friends. Neither of them really opening up to other people, they had a mutual understanding of respect based on having known pain. But every time they started to talk about it, they always got interrupted. RedStar never did figure out why Shadow let Felix lead the Wolves, when she in RedStar’s mind would have been a massively more competent leader.

Based on necessity RedStar accepted Felix le Loup’s arrogance and deceitfulness, after all he was the leader of a group who had saved the Bastards on several occasions, and the Wolves was not a group you wanted as an enemy. They didn’t see eye to eye though, and their discussions would often get heated. RedStar was rumoured to be the only one to have told Felix to go fuck himself and lived to tell the tale. When Felix killed RedStar’s friend and fellow Bastard Jim, the future relationship between them was brought to a head.

The ex-Ranger, come Wolf Teddy Smoke Roosevelt would always have a special place in RedStar’s heart for saving her from DAMN. He had made sure the Bastards were safe the first months as they settled in Stary Yar, and when he left RedStar was heartbroken.

RedStar negotiates with Felix of Serdtse Volka.

Walter Greene

Although they had met on several occasions before the dark rainy night when Walter broke into the camp in Stary Yar looking for medication to treat his infected chain-saw wound, it was then they actually talked properly for the first time. They shared a strong interest in the Cult, a connection that went both ways, and Walter was the only one who could understand what being targeted by the Cult really felt like.

Walter had seen how the Cult had desecrated Jari’s body, and feared that they would do the same to John Stalverns, and he brought RedStar to help exhume and burn his body, and give him a proper burial close to his cabin in the western woods. An operation the rest of the Wolves would strongly dislike.

Walter subsequently set up base in Kamensk and watched over the Lucky Bastards, and he was a frequent guest in Stary Yar, and continued to be a close friend to RedStar.

Sayid al-Jazari

RedStar didn’t mind the founder of the Golden Jackals’ sometimes grumpy demeanour, it really made her feel like she was back with Stella on The Lucky Star again. You knew where you stood with Sayid, in RedStar’s mind he was a welcome breeze of fresh air or actually holding true to his word. They also shared an interest in Koschei the Undead, and shared information about the Cult. Before Sayid left Chernarus for Jordan, he left all his information to RedStar to protect and use if necessary.

Georgie Luz

Georgie was one of most frequent visitors in Stary Yar and he often consulted RedStar about the internal and external affairs of the 506th. He and Hans Gruber even stayed in Yar for a couple of months to sort their friendship and the future of the 506th out.  

Altradoran

Even though the Machiavellian dealmaker Altradoran oversaw her capture and subsequent torture, RedStar never hated him for it. She felt contempt and disdain in the beginning, but their many radio conversations left her more vexed than angry. She just wondered what someone so normal was doing with murdering psychopaths like them. She also realised he had kept her alive in captivity, emphasising her value alive. Although it would be too generous to say RedStar forgave Altra for what he did to her; accepted him, adapted and moved on. In a way, she realised, they were very similar, he had paid a steep price to get his revenge on the Cult and she grew to admire his resolution. They were, after all, enemies with aligned goals.

Cult of Papa

When RedStar finally came face to face with the Cultist who had hunted her for months, sent his Banshees and Cultist friends to capture, rape or kill her, all she saw was a tired old man weighed down by a lifetime of suffering. In the end Koschei the Undead compared RedStar to his own lost daughter, and said he wanted to repent his several lives worth of sins with his own life. RedStar refused but told Hybris to make sure Koschei never came back. Before he died, he gave RedStar a letter to take to what was left of the Guardians, and a knife he had made out of Jari’s femur bone which she always kept with her, but hid when she left Chernarus.  

The leader of the next generation of Cultists, Krystôf the Preacher was a frequent guest in Stary Yar. Although he had RedStar very nearly deceived, adamant they had no ill intentions, she also wanted to keep him close to try to figure out what heinous plans the Cult actually had. In the end staying so close to the Cult of Papa had them really crawling under RedStar’s skin.

Where are they now?

Realising the only way to defeat The Cult of Papa was to thwart the source of their power, RedStar decided to leave South Zagoria. She saw no other way to save her friends and allies from the idea of the Cult, the seed that she knew one day would manifest in her with devastating consequences. Only a few people know where she is and what her plans are.