Request for a Street kid character portrait [JawaStu]

Hey, if anyone's interested in taking this concept and making a character portrait, it would be appreciated. A few of the other characters in the game have already been illustrated by SWAG members, so here's my request too ;) Below is a short description and some background to get a feel for who/what he is.

Template Type: Streetkid
Name: Rat (Dariv Balt)
Species: Human
Sex: m Age: 16 Height: 1.72m Weight: 68kg

Physical Description: Scraggly, lanky youth with messy, shaggy, sandy hair, partially knotted and beaded. His skin is slightly dusky and could use a good cleaning. His brown eyes hold too much bitterness for one his age. His heavy black boots are well worn, and laced over his tight black pants. He has various chains and studs adorning his clothing, including his prize Vornsky leather jacket.

Personality: Quiet and withdrawn, mildly nervous and defensive, he's slow to trust. A thick vein of bitterness towards life runs from his heart.

Background: Dariv Balt hasn't led an easy life. The son of a space dock worker, Farral Balt and service woman Elsa Shiplund, he was born, unwanted in 1009ABY on **Planet**. The result of a short lived fling, Dariv developed in a loveless home, his parents didn't love one another, but were together out of convenience and legal obligation to raise their child, nor did they love Dariv. His parents resented Dariv for locking them into a lifestyle neither desired. Farral was a drunk, and enjoyed spice a little too much, and was, as a result, prone to violence, both around the cantinas and at home. Violence was the only way he knew how to express his dissatisfaction with his situation. Elsa wasn't much better; negligent and escaping in spice. Dariv was exposed to hardship early on, and his situation hasn't much improved.

Dariv grew to be a shy, reserved boy, avoiding human contact when possible; from his experience, drawing attention to himself only resulted in beration and pain. Adding to his personal struggles were strange sensations that he quickly learned to deny and not to talk about. In times of stress, sometimes he seemed to have a heightened reactionary sense; he knew when something bad was going to happen and was often able to avoid dangers moments before they could cause harm. He could also sense other beings around him, almost like ghosts at the edge of his senses. Farral, upon first learning of his son's strange sensations reacted the only way he knew how; he beat the child to quell any further flights of fancy and imagination. In time, he developed a minor twitch in his right eye from the stress of his life. Growing in fear and anger, he was not saddened when his life changed forever.

In 1019, when Dariv was 10, Farral was killed in a bar-side brawl. Drunk out of his skull, he picked a fight with a particularly nasty Devaronian, instigating the fight on the basis of the alien's heritage. The Devaronian left a smoking hole in Farral's chest from his blaster and fled the planet. Elsa and Dariv never shed a tear for the loss of the man, both feeling they were better off, that the galaxy was better off, without him. Not two months later, Elsa would disappear, leaving Dariv for work, and never returning. He still does not know what happened to his mother.

Though only 10, Dariv was already capable of taking care of himself, at least in the most basic of levels. He remained in the family's small shack for three months, avoiding the landlord until he emptied out the place, assuming it abandoned. With no place to live, Dariv was left alone on the streets. For a time, he made his way on his own, begging for handouts and stealing when he needed to. His premonitions aided him well, warning him of danger and helping him get out of sticky situations. By the time he was 11, however, he had become entangled with a gang of youths led by an old human male, who's name was never truly revealed. Here he was taught to hone his pickpocketing and thieving skills and how to handle a weapon, in his case, knives.

His life in the gang wasn't much better, but he was mildly safer. The other kids in the gang, slightly older than himself, took it upon themselves to give Dariv a new name. Picking up on his nervous eye twitch, and his withdrawn, cautious nature, the began to call him "Rat"; a name which has stuck to this day. Rat did manage to find a semblance of friendship in another youth who joined the gang in the months following his recruitment, a young half-breed named Cam. The two of them worked together to steal from anyone they could and managed to make a fair team. Cam disappeared for a while a year later, and though he did return, he would disappear from time to time for increasingly longer periods of time. Feeling abandoned by his only friend, Rat became bitter, but still held out hope that they would be reunited at some point.

Life didn't improve much over the next three years. Cam was occasionally around, but spent a great deal of time elsewhere, and Rat wasn't sure where; Cam didn't talk much about it, other than to say that it made him happy. Rat, meanwhile, continued fighting for survival. His skill with a knife increased and his accuracy in throwing them; sometimes it seemed that they made their mark more through hope than skill of arm. When he was 15, Rat was engaged in a particularly desperate struggle with a Rodian mugger who sought to take what little money he had away from him. With desperation and anger welling inside him, Rat managed to defeat the much stronger and skilled attacker in unarmed combat, severely injuring the being through what seemed to be his anger alone. He left the scene a couple items and credits richer, and emotionally drained. The encounter left him much more weary and shaky than he'd ever been, whatever happened in that alley filled him with power, but then left him hollow and weak.

By 16, after 5 years of activity with the youth gang, Rat wanted out. Cam reemerged as Rat was planning his escape, telling him a tale of impending doom and insurgent fighters for whom he had important information. He'd found trouble... and a possible way off this rock. Rat didn't ask questions and ran with Cam, seizing the opportunity for escape. They ended up as crew on the insurgents' ship and made their way to possible freedom, or at least away from their unhappy pasts.

Objective: To escape his past, become "something" instead of the nothing he was born into.