Lielieja’s childhood was an adventurous one to say the least. For the first ten yeas of her life, Lielieja lived and traveled with her father aboard their ship “The Harlequin”. A smuggler by trade, her father chased deal after deal, more often than not just managing to scrape by. That never seemed to dampen their spirits however and despite his questionable parenting, Lielieja turned out just fine. They were living the dream, or so Lielieja thought until everything came crashing down. Eventually some of her fathers “friends” managed to track him down and kill him during a pick up on
Torize. Having decided to go off on her own for a bit, Lielieja was spared the same fate but the aftermath was brutal.
Stranded on an rough and tumble outer world planet with no other family to speak of and nothing but the clothes on her back, life was hard after that but her father had taught her well. Street smarts and a knack for hiding in the shadows kept her alive until she attempted to stow away on a certain blue Twi-lek’s outbound ship. As punishment, Leilieja was conscripted to the labor gang and spent the next three years mining volcanic minerals on the planet’s toxic surface. Despite the harsh climate and dangerous conditions, her snarky attitude helped her keep her alive, if barely.
During one incident, a faulty face mask permitted poisonous gasses to leak into her helmet. The gasses burned the skin around her eyes and severely damaged the nerves in her face. If it wasn’t for the help from a crazy old inmate, Lielieja would not have survived. Her last year on planet was agonizing. The pain in her face and dampened sight was nearly debilitating. When the crazy cotter who saved her life offered to teach her some “magic tricks” to help offset the effects, she agreed. Surely it couldn’t make things worse. To her surprise, she excelled in the things that he taught her and was able to finish out her sentence in one piece.
Regaining her freedom was hardly a glamorous affair however. Scarred and yet again with nothing but the clothes on her back, she was rereleased on the system on which she had spent the past three years as a slave. She quickly set to work "earning" her passage off planet, wanting nothing more but to get as far away from that godforsaken place as possible. On the shuttle to Coruscant she piqued the interest of a jedi who did his best to convince her to accompany him to the Jedi Temple for training. She quickly brushed him off however, not ready to enslave herself to a cause after only so recently regaining her freedom. She did however allow him to generously set her up with a contact who was able to fit her with cybernetic implants to help offset the handicap of her injuries from the poison gas.
Lielieja found a place for herself with an underworld gang and spent the next two years working with them until a misunderstanding between herself and her superior (a blue skinned Rodian) nearly resulted in her death. Tired of running from one death trap to another, Lielieja finally decided to seek out the jedi who had previously tried to convert her and despite her age, began training to be a jedi. Her seedy background got her into quite a bit of trouble during her first years of training but none of her elders could deny her skill and eventually she was sent to Tython for further training under the tutelage of master Yuon Par.