Name - Sofija Sobral
Occupation - Xenobiologist with the Tkrai Advocacy Foundation
Biography - Sofija Sobral was born thirty-six years ago to parents of Chilean and Croatian descent in Goye, a small city on the planet Orpheus. As a child who enjoyed nothing more than to play outdoors, the young Sofija bore firsthand witness to the effects of the colonial administration's terraformation initiative. She spent her childhood watching the very world around her transformed by the human settlers. The primitive native ecosystem of Orpheus was trampled roughshod underneath an invasion of plants and animals introduced from Earth. The wispy, moldlike growth that covered the hills outside her home in pale magenta was smothered under a blanket of moss and grasses. Escaped cats and dogs, birds, fish, even salamanders and toads eradicated the fragile populations of small alien animals; everything the humans brought to Orpheus seemed to destroy native life. It was these early hikes and forays into the hills that decided Sofija's path through life.
Upon completing her compulsory education, Sofija moved to Ciudad Capolican, the capital and largest city on Orpheus where she dedicated herself to a rigorous curriculum at the prestigious Institute of Nueva Araucania. There, her studies revolved around ecology, organic chemistry, alternate biochemistries, and comparative anatomy. Alongside her studies, Sofija completed exhaustive studies on the ecological havoc being wrought upon the alien ecology by the terraformation efforts. Even before completing her studies, her efforts won the young Sobral distinction among conservation circles on Orpheus and the remaining worlds. Upon completing her studies at the Institute of Nueva Araucania, Sofija worked alongside prominent bioethicists and xenoecologists to limit the scope and damage being meted out by the colonial administration's ongoing terraformation of Orpheus.
Sobral's work on Orpheus was cut short soon after her career began. For after some thirty years after disappearing into the cosmos, the Listeners had returned to finish what they had begun at Earth. Without warning, their constructs appeared above many of the remaining human worlds including Orpheus. Sofija happened to be present at the capitol in Ciudad Capolican as part of a hearing when the Listener construct above Orpheus was first detected. During the ensuing panic, she was swept up alongside the heads of state and taken aboard freighter vessels requisitioned to participate in the hasty evacuation effort. As the Listener construct approached her home planet, Sobral watched from low orbit as the meager fleet of warships abovee Orpheus launched a valiant yet futile assault on the Listener construct. The alien vessel effortlessly destroyed the defense fleet and descended toward Orpheus, where it proceeded to lay waste to the planet and nearly all of its inhabitants.
The ship upon which Sofija had escaped upon fled to a handful of colony worlds only to find broken, burning cinders where lush planets had been only weeks before. The Listener onslaught appeared to have been complete. But at last, the ship that had spirited her away came upon Brahma and found it intact. When she landed down in the city of Nai Kolkatta, she found herself amidst millions of refugees of worlds ravaged by the Listener onslaught. It was in those hectic times, when the cities of Brahma were bursting at the seams with such an influx of displaced people, that Sofija found herself living as a vagabond as so many of the new arrivals had. Still mourning the loss of everyone she had ever known on her home planet, the educated xenobiologist from Orpheus was reduced to life on the streets of Nai Kolkatta. She survived on taking menial, odd jobs when she could find them, panhandling, and worse. It was during these dark days that Sofija considered taking her own life.
But in her darkest hour Sofija met Erko, one of the batlike Tkrai native to Brahma. Erko, like the other Tkrai that had traveled to the human cities cropping up out of the jungles in search of work, had fared little better than Sofija and the other displaced refugees. Sofija empathized with Erko who had also been been subjected to mistreatment living in the gutters of Nai Kolkatta, and the two quickly became close friends. Erko invited Sofija to live with him in a hut in the Indigenous Quarters, and she in turned helped him improve his English that he might find higher skill work.
Through his fellow Batmen neighbors, Erko learned of the Tkrai Advocacy Foundation - a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lot of the maltreated Batmen. Erko immediately insisted that Sofija contact the Foundation, which he believed could benefit from someone with Sofija's level of expertise. Heeding her friend's advice, Sofija made her way to their office in Nai Kolkatta and provided them with her credentials. Many of the foundation's management positions had background in exoconservation, and were amazed to learn that the esteemed Sofija Sobral had not only survived the destruction of Orpheus but arrived at their office in search of work. Sobral was welcomed to the team on the spot. In addition, the foundation agreed to take on Erko as well -citing the need for someone capable of speaking both English and the indigenous languages of the Tkrai.
With new and gainful work, Sofija and Erko left the slums of the Indigenous Quarters for an apartment in the city. With a new home and new hope, the unlikely companions look forward to assisting the Foundation in preventing human colonizers from causing undue damage to this brave new world and the Batmen natives that share it as their home.
