VII. Tzvi'Nahal nar Neda
Name: Tzvi‘Nahal nar Neda [s-VEE nah-HALL (nar) NAY-da]
Race: Quarian
Gender: Female
Age:18
Class: Engineer. Researcher, Sabotage/Distraction
Appearance:
Tzvi is a tad thin for what should be healthy, but has made herself fit for combat and more physically demanding technical work, and her body has matured to what it will basically look like for the rest of her life.
Commonly, the quarian wears dark and/or dull armor, to avoid standing out and for work purposes in general, and her overlapping clothing matches this unless outside of work. In such a case, Tzvi traditionally wears a bright, royal blue hood with elaborate swirling patterns. It's an especially nice piece, especially from a small clan in the Migrant Fleet, that was given to her by her closest friend for her fifteenth birthday. Tzvi often feels it's proper, polite wear and has immense pride and value in it, often careful to avoid any damage to it.
Tzvi has slightly smaller eyes than the average quarian, and the glow that comes from her mask is often brightest and most noticeable the first moment it is hit by a light in the dark. Her face is smoother than a humans in structure, with large brows, but the cheekbones a bit too small for her standard. She's a mostly average looking quarian otherwise, with no damage of any kind to it other than a tiny scrape across the right edge of the bridge of her nose from an accidental scratch by some machinery or other.
Background:
Childhood
Tzvi was born in 2158 to a small clan, of around thirty people, that had recently earned their own ship, the Neda. It was an especially connected and supportive community, acting much like a big family to her. Not only was her father and mother actively involved in her life, teaching her and preparing her for future, but so were any uncles, aunts, neighbors, and friends of the family - and this would indirectly connect them to those more out of their main group. Her best friend was a serious, fiery, and dutiful member of the Neda but, even when she disagreed with Tzvi, could understand her viewpoint, and they spent most of their lives together. Many of their other friends had somehow been introduced through the other.
Conflicts weren't uncommon, but they were often solved and treated as much more personal matters, and people felt a responsibility to each others well-being; a pride as their own clan with their own ship.
Early on, Tzvi participated in selling small things when the Migrant Fleet orbited other planets by seven: food, refreshments,nick-knacks. The activity was enjoyable, often a family-like gathering with familiars (including her friend, Sisel, who she met this way) and a chance to interact with alien cultures. It created a long series of positive experiences with outside groups, usually praising her and behaving warmly toward her as one of the innocent youths. It was around ten, then eight or nine years after the First Contact War, that Tzvi met and chatted with a human traveler who took to her - appreciating her enthusiastic, curious, and friendly nature - and gave her an old coin from the days humans only lived on their native planet. The writing was unfamiliar, with a face slightly raised from the coin's surface, and it was a present from not only another culture, but from one of the first humans she had ever seen. It made enough of an impression on her that she's prudently kept it with or on her at all times.
Arts and crafts was something that Tzvi and Sisel continued to do when they had free time, but much of her life later on was enveloped by training in mining, basic self-defense, and more active involvement with her family, friends, and general community (both by devoting more time to work on the ship and social events). Her mother, a member of the military, taught her the basics of shooting and self-defense and, when Tzvi was curious, the ways a weapon works and how to maintain it. A quick learner and a good eye, she was a good shot from a young age, and her sharp eye improved with her work as a miner. As the Fleet needed every piece of material they could get, it was necessary to find as much as possible, and Tzvi quickly became one of the best at her job with practice. And this both contributed to future practice with guns - mostly pistols, but she began practicing more generally in her last years in the Fleet - on the ship and later in life, where the marks were often more well hidden.
During some contracts with outside groups, appreciating the quarians' commonly more expert skill in mining, a number of loud protests swelled from local workers, who acted toward her and her peers with notable hostility. It was slightly shocking, having been accustomed to very positive, if occasionally patronizing, interactions, but the workers - either out of personal or legal restraint - never acted violently or did anything about their participation. For the most part, it only reminded Tzvi that there was any dislike toward her people, and it was at least partially understandable why there would be.
With her work in mining and on the ship, and practice as a hobby, Tzvi discovered a deep interest in destroying machinery and taking it apart, and then learning how it worked. She often went to find assistance or clarification from others when she was stuck, or simply needed an answer, and was almost always provided help when asked for. It allowed her to excel quickly through, and she grabbed whatever information from whatever source she could understand whenever possible as her interest and knowledge grew. Through abuse of the eventual omni-blade she obtained, and anything else she was allowed to mess with that was no longer vital to the ship, she learned much about how to create viruses (even of her own), send misinformation of various kinds, and affect other technology without touching it. By sixteen, she even had some very basic understanding of how to cause "explosives" through sabotaging a weapon or the like, usually by somehow causing the mass effect fields to backfire.
The Pilgrimage
It was during her fifteenth and sixteenth year, throughout which Tzvi was an apprentice of one of the engineers to learn to deal with the much more complex issues of a ship and other knowledge he had on other technology, that the ship caught a serious illness. It was either from a returning quarian from their pilgrimage or an individual that had traded outside the ship, but it had managed to get enough people sick on the Neda that they were isolated from the rest of the Fleet. It made the Neda's needs much harder to meet without the aid of other ships, when no one could come into contact with them, and those that were due for their Pilgrimage were sent on their way to ease some of their burdens. Eventually, some were forced to start early and, even though they were somewhat important to the Neda, this included Tzvi and Sisel.
Friends and family, those alive and well, did their best to give her useful advice, practice and training, and items in the real world. Her teacher helped improve the omni-tool that she had further, and her mother tried to push Tzvi's skills in shooting and encourage her to avoid fighting when unnecessary. Her father taught her some basic cultural and social aspects of other races that were important to keep in mind and made sure she had one of the old crafts from her childhood and pieces of quilts hung over their homes. Everyone gave what extra advice they could. Sisel and Tzvi left together onto the first planet with civilization of any sort (a mining colony on Tyr), but soon had to split away and work on their own.
Sisel's departure removed all restraint from Tzvi's home that was left, other than whatever impression had impacted her mind. Tzvi spent the last two years more surviving than looking at and learning about the awing galaxy or finding something useful to bring home. Originally, she took the immediate opportunity to mine, at a low income, until she had enough to both improve what equipment she had (as much as was possible) and fly to a place with more opportunities in career and objects of value. For a while she did a long series of small jobs of a large range based on her skills, all technical, that often involved repairing, computers, and, for a brief time, research in engineering.
The life Tzvi was living in then was very different than on the Neda. Often either due to racism, cultural norms, or both, people were more cold and apathetic, far more likely to betray her or lie, and, sometimes, made it difficult to be in a certain place or get a job, especially without willingness to take a low pay. When she was lucky enough to gain a small job in research on a more technologically advanced planet, she finally found a turian friend that could sympathize with her troubles and provided some help, later giving a cup with her name across it, carefully checked to make sure the translation was correct. Despite the other troubles on the planet, she was beginning to adjust until her employer pressured her into hacking a computer for data. It was intended to learn what a competitor was currently doing and if they had any information that could help the company Tzvi was working for, and though she gained the data successfully and left a virus to block attempts to trace it, the deed was still found out and got her boss killed.
Assuming she would be next, and suddenly in the fear it may even be her co-worker she had befriended, Tzvi left immediately, farther and farther into the Terminus system. More and more, her jobs became damaging and unethical toward others, by what she had been taught as moral, whether it was direct offense or not. After roughly a year doing jobs in the system, she's done plenty of assassination and sabotage, though always from a distance, giving her experience. She's come across a small number of scratches, often from a number of close calls, but never serious and always easy to repair.
None of her jobs had been very long-term, and the quarian often lived off the pay of the passing job. The first one she came across after a significant dry spell aimed to carry along a vague trade securely from one point to another. She had been convenient to the boss. Arriving to the Citadel to meet with others in some bar, however, didn't provide the much needed and important cargo or information. After searching for people that weren't there for an hour, Tzvi impatiently grabbed a glass of water to fill her stomach and desperately searched for another job in the crowds of patrons, even proposing possible tasks they might like someone else to do. She stumbled along one just forming in what would soon be a mercenary group called Nova. She's eagerly participated and fought to ensure its continuation since, seeing a real opportunity that hadn't been possible before.
Equipment:
Armax Arsenal Brawler Pistol - With the best recoil damper she could get, often used with cyro ammo.
Devlon Industries Striker Sniper - With a kinetic coil to increase the accuracy and damage, used with armor piercing rounds when appropriate.
Aldrin Labs Light Onyx Armor - With a hardened weave to make technical and biotic damage less severe.
Ariake Technologies Logic Arrest Omni-Tool - Heavily played with/changed by Tzvi, with what was available, to improve speed, power, and to focus in producing misinformation, viruses, etc. that can produce "illusions," break the other team's technologies (and know what those technologies are), etc. without direct interference.
Most of the guns were what she gained from jobs, by paying with what saved, extra money she had, and either personally modded or given boosted mods that she found or bought elsewhere. Her sniper and armor are somewhat ineffective and old, but have done the job thus far.
She has several small objects that often hold little other than sentimental value. Her hood, one or two bracelets, statues, etc., a cup from a co-worker, and an old coin given to her by a trader. She has a few strips of colorful cloth that she hangs on beds or walls.
Powers:
*Electronics
Personal Quarters Location: The middle-starboard side.
VIII. Jeanna Cynthia Hawthorne
Name: Jeanna Cynthia Hawthorne
Race: Human
Gender: Female
Age: 36
Class: Heavy Armor Support (Soldier). Aboard the Tyrus, Jeanna maintains the ship's armory and combat equipment.
Appearance:
Jeanna stands at a height of 6' 0", although an inch of her height can be attributed to her cybernetic leg prostheses. With over ten years of service with the Systems Alliance military, Jeanna is accustomed to carrying herself with military precision, even when she is in the presence of friends. In her casual attire, Jeanna prefers to wear clothing that extends to cover her arms and legs, as she is rather sensitive about their artificial, cybernetic nature. Even though her cybernetic limb replacements have a synthetic polymer layer that closely resembles her natural skin tone, close inspection will reveal their artificial nature.
Background: Jeanna Cynthia Hawthorne was born on Earth in 2140CE, 8 years before the discovery of the hidden Prothean data cache on Mars. After humanity discovered the vast network of mass relays, her family was one of the first colonists to arrive on the Shanxi colony shortly after it was discovered. Jeanna was the only child of two parents, both of whom served in the Systems Alliance military. Her father served as a marine with the Alliance military, while her mother served as an Alliance combat medic stationed at the colony. Her father was constantly deployed on various assignments and was rarely able to spend time at home with his family. But during the few months he was able to take a few months off duty, he would always return to tell the young Jeanna tales of the various worlds that the Alliance had been discovering with the use of the recently-discovered mass relays. However, the last time Jeanna sees her father is in 2157CE, when he is suddenly called back into active duty to accompany the retaliatory forces against the turian patrol fleet that destroyed an Alliance expedition fleet.
Although the retaliatory strike was successful, the conflict with the turian forces escalates further to the orbital bombardment of the Shanxi colony. As conflict rages on, the colonists begin struggling with maintain access to food and supplies, and Jeanna's mother is called into service to accompany other Alliance forces stationed on the colony to search for supplies in the ruins of the destroyed cities, but is caught in one of the bombardments and killed. With the loss of her mother, this is one of Jeanna's darkest times as she struggles to make it through on her own during Shanxi's occupation. Only by hanging onto the hope that her father is still out there fighting is she able to find the willpower to keep herself alive. However, with the conclusion of what is later named the First Contact War, Jeanna's worst fears are confirmed when she learns that her father was killed in the initial retaliation against the turian patrols. Having lost her parents, Jeanna had nobody to turn to for help. However, when the first wave of Alliance military recruiters arrived on Shanxi, Jeanna jumped at the first opportunity to enlist, knowing it was her way out of her constant feelings of helplessness and ensuring what happened on Shanxi would not happen again. Although she had not reached the required age of eighteen years to enlist, her impassioned pleas were enough to convince the recruiter to overlook the age requirement.
As a new Alliance recruit, Jeanna proved herself to be a dedicated and skilled individual. With her reserved personality and disregard for personal glory, Jeanna did not stand out as much from her louder, energetic peers, although her superiors often noted that she had the qualities of a capable leader and tactician - in several deployments, she was observed as being able to keep herself and others focused and coordinated during high-pressure situations. Over a decade later and having earned the rank of Lieutenant Commander, Jeanna's experience and skills were put to the test in 2170CE when the human farming colony of Mindoir came under attack by batarian slavers. The Alliance forces were faced with overwhelming odds against their favor as they attempted to fight off the batarian forces, but Jeanna was unwilling to let Mindoir suffer the same fate that she had witness on Shanxi. However, as the strength of the Alliance offensive began to falter and the batarian forces continued to gain ground, Jeanna was soon faced with the conflicting choice of saving the lives of the people under her command or the lives of the colonists. However, with the sheer force of the batarian defenses turning the tides in the assault and cutting her unit off from the other Alliance ground forces, Jeanna realized that neither goal was possible. With no other choice, she forced herself to give the most difficult order a commander could ask of those under their command. Gathering the few members of her unit who were still able to fight, she ordered them to remain behind with her to mount a final defense to allow the injured members of their unit to escape, knowing full well that those who remained would not survive, including herself. Jeanna and the few who remained behind were only able to fight off the advancing batarians for a few minutes before they were completely overrun, but those precious minutes were enough to allow the rest of her unit to escape in the chaos.
Miraculously, retreating Alliance forces were able to intercept the batarian advance in time to rescue Jeanna, the only surviving member of her unit, although to find her grievously wounded and in gravely critical condition. Her body had been completely broken - the bones in her limbs are shattered, her spine suffered a number of fractures in multiple locations, leaving her body paralyzed. Her injuries were so severe that doctors had to focus all of their attention on keeping her condition stable before they could begin to repair her other injuries. After spending nearly two years drifting in and out of a coma on a hospital bed, Jeanna constantly relived the nightmare of Mindoir whenever she drifted back into unconsciousness, only periodically waking up to find herself unable to feel or move any part of her body. With her physical condition stabilized, Jeanna required an extensive network of cybernetic implants to repair her severely-damaged spine, and cybernetic limb replacements for her arms and legs.
Jeanna spends the next year adjusting to her new life with her cybernetic limbs. Although she has fully recovered physically, she finds herself in a constant state of mental torment, constantly recalling the names and faces of the people she had ordered to their deaths, and battling the guilt of being the only one who made it out alive. After a long period of coping with her feelings of guilt and regret, Jeanna returns to serve in the Alliance military as soon as the doctors declare her healthy and fit for release, as she is more than eager to distance herself from the doctors and nurses constantly taking care of her. As one who was accustomed to protecting and looking out for others, having the situation reversed was an especially unsetting experience. Although Jeanna finds herself adjusting comfortably to life back in the Alliance military, the first signs of the mental trauma she had suffered soon appear. During a routine training exercise, Jeanna finds herself experiencing a sudden flashback of the horrors she had experienced on Mindoir - the sounds of gunfire and explosions, and the sight of soldiers lying strewn on the ground lifeless. In a sudden uncontrolled outburst, Jeanna nearly kills a fellow marine. Although the injured marine later declined to press charges against her, Jeanna is horrified by her actions and refusing psychological treatment, immediately retires her service with the Alliance military.
At this point in her life, Jeanna feels as if her life is spiraling wildly out of her control. Knowing that she is a danger to everyone around her and continuing to struggle with the guilt of ordering several of her marines to their deaths, Jeanna feels as if she no longer deserves to continue living on. Deciding to use the remainder of her life doing something good, Jeanna sets her sights on Omega Station, the infamous haven for criminals and other outlaws, knowing would be impossible for her to take down every criminal on the station before a well-aimed mass-accelerated round inevitably ended her life. On Omega, Jeanna tracks down a shipment of high-grade weaponry and armor being transported by the Blue Suns mercenaries. Seizing this opportunity to arm herself with the equipment necessary to take on Omega's criminals, Jeanna mounts a solo raid on the Blue Suns shipment. She is successful in stealing the shipment from the mercenaries, however a fierce firefight ensues across the open streets of Omega. Although Jeanna is ready to risk her life taking down as many of the mercenaries she was able with the weapons she acquired, she encounters a lone female quarian by the name of Kasyra. Unwilling to endanger an innocent life in her self-destructive rampage, Jeanna experiences a sudden change of heart, and decides to help the quarian escape the mercenaries in pursuit. With Kasyra's assistance, the two evade the Blue Suns mercenaries and depart Omega for the Citadel, where they later meet the individuals who would invite them to form the multi-racial and multi-talented mercenary group known as Nova.
Equipment:
During her solo raid on the Blue Suns' arms shipment, Jeanna was able to liberate several containers of exceptionally high-grade weapons and armor. Although her quarian acquaintance, Kasyra, provided assistance in finding a buyer for the equipment, Jeanna kept a set of the equipment for personal use.
Heavy Colossus Armor - The armor's extensively upgraded armor plating and mechanical augmentations make it exceedingly heavy and bulky, although Jeanna is able to comfortably move around in it with the strength of her cybernetic limb replacements. With its heavy mechanized combat exoskeleton, the armor is essentially a wearable miniature mech.
Upgrades: Ablative Coating, Combat Exoskeleton, VI Shield Interface
M-76 Revenant - An exceptionally large and heavy assault rifle. With its upgraded kinetic coils, the Revenant's ability to provide heavy continuous suppressive fire makes it a true horror on the battlefield.
Upgrade: Kinetic Coil, Frictionless Materials
M-358 Talon - Although physically small, the Talon is effectively a highly compact shotgun in pistol form with devastating lethality at close range.
Upgrade: High Caliber Barrel
Ariake Technologies Logic Arrest Omni-Tool (Omni-shield variant)
Fragmentation Grenades
Powers/Talents:
Fitness, Combat Mastery, Adrenaline Rush
Font Color: Plum
Personal Quarters Location: Far port side, directly beside the med bay.
Theme
(8 Dawn Music Blades of Destiny (Vivien Chebbah))
IX. Kasyra'Tala vas Ryushei nar Sherana
Name: Kasyra'Tala Vas Ryushei Nar Sherana
Race: Quarian
Gender: Female
Age: 29
Class: Engineer
(Appearance)
Kasyra is tall for a Quarian woman, standing at 5'10. The overlapping layers of cloth over her armored enviro suit are black with intricate white patterning swirling across them. She does not wear her hood in the traditional Quarian woman style, rather having adapted a slightly more masculine style leaving her helmet visible from behind in order to make way for an affectation resembling the hair that Quarian hoods are meant to be evocative of. It glows slightly when she is not in a combat situation, however as the thin hairlike tendrils are simply technology meant to look like hair, she turns them black in combat situations so as not to give away her position. Many ask if Quarian hair really glows after seeing her, but she always replies with a sly look and silence. Beneath the grey colored gas in her mask little of her face can be seen, though her eyes glow like all Quarians, albiet with a slightly cold gleam to them. In battle a minimal HUD can be seen projected onto the inside of her helmet with writing in Quarian.
Background:
Kasyra is a child of the Heavy fleet, having been born on an original Quarian heavy cruiser and taking a repurposed Batarian cruiser as her home on completeion of her pilgrimage. She is cunning, devious and brutal towards her enemies, and often appears cold at best towards those she knows.
Her life in the fleet was spent training to crew the heavy cruiser Sherana, where she learned everything from small arms combat to combat repairs to the basic operation of all critical systems. With a father in the ships marine complement and a mother in the command staff, she was pushed toward these things greatly and embraced them with vigour. She rapidly became skilled in all of the things she was expected to know to function on a warship, but she particularly excelled in boarding tactics and small arms use, becoming something of a shipboard hero just before her pilgrimage for the marksmanship she displayed in the use of the heavy pistol. Despite this, she never had any close friends, her time always taken by practice and study and the constant drills the ship went through to stay combat ready. Her parents were always proud of her, but also always busy with their own roles aboard the ship, leaving her somewhat detached from the community that grows within a Quarian ships crew.
When the time came for her pilgrimage, she was given a modded Haliat Armory Stiletto pistol and dropped off on the Citadel to fend for herself and prove her worth to the Migrant Fleet. What first occurred to her was to bring back a ship for the fleet, having seen the run down state of the three-hundred year old ship she was born on and realising the need for new ships. She quickly realised, however, that she would need far more credits to purchase one, and after only a few days on the Citadel she found her meager supply of credits dwindling fast. She knew she would have to find work soon, so she turned to one thing she was particularly skilled in at the time: combat. She sought to hire herself out to a merc band or private security firm, anyone that would take her. She was quickly noticed by a local group of Blue Suns mercs, who contacted her and arranged to meet for an 'interview.' Being new to the cutthroat world of mercenaries she accepted without question, not realising that they intended to take her as a skilled slave and force her to repair tech for the rest of her life.
The mercs met her in an allyway on Tayseri Ward, armed and armored, but expecting no fight. She was lead further away from the main thoroughfares before one of the mercs behind her pulled a stunner. A quick jab in the back and she was out. A Batarian engineer slung her over his shoulder and they began carrying her back to their current base. When she found herself coming too over his shoulder right outside their base, she realised what had happened and knew she needed to act while she still had her omni tool and gun. She quickly summoned a defense drone from her omni tool one handed, a trick she had long practiced while training on the Sherana, which proceeded to buzz around the Batarians head and zap him. The shock hit only his shield, but it distracted him and the others long enough for Kasyra to grab the pistol off his belt and fire it into his gut point blank three times. The merc dropped her immediately and keeled over, trying to stop the blood that was rapidly pouring out the gaping wounds in his stomach, but Kasyra rolled and came up with her own pistol, immediately gunning down a Turian who had been standing nearby and had ended up the second target for the drone. She then ran for the nearest cover, a Skycar parked nearby, under a fusilade of fire from the remaining two mercs.
They advanced, activating tech armor and a combat drone of their own, and would have gunned her down on the spot had the merc boss not witnessed the quick action. He ordered them to stand down and offered the Quarian a job within the same sentence, citing the need for a new engineer to replace the one she'd just mortally wounded. With a choice between death and paid work, Kasyra chose the paid work. However, she had been exposed to some of the worst trickery that the scum of the galaxy could offer, and she did not forget it, nor forgive it.
She was given the omni tool of the engineer she had just killed, her first ever killing, and there she found a number of new programs as yet unknown to her. The engineer had been rather fond of cold based powers, Cryo Blast and Snap Freeze in particular. She added these programs to her own omni tool and soon learnt how best to use them.
For the next four years Kasyra worked with the Blue Suns, gaining a reputation as a cold hearted killer and skilled engineer in equal measure. She never made friends within the the Blue Suns group she was with, always remaining somewhat off to the side of the group on her own. She showed no remorse for those among the squad who died and even less for the people they were hired to kill. Throughout the time she was spending her credits on upgrades for her gear and putting some aside for her eventual purchase of a ship for the Migrant Fleet.
Her life as a merc continued for almost four years, until, approaching the end of her fourth year with the Blue Suns, the ship they were traveling on came under attack from a Blood Pack vessel whose commander held a grudge against the Blue Suns Captain onboard at the time. The Blood Pack closed for a boarding action and after a furious combat spanning both ships, the crew of the Blood Pack ship lay dead, along with all but four members of the Blue Suns crew, two of whom were so badly injured that they had to be immediately placed in the med bay. She was then alone with the captain of the Bule Suns band, who had also survived. It was at this point that Kasyra decided to terminate her contract. Permanantly.
She calmly entered the med bay and after a quick and brutal hacking program she trigggered the Medi gel dispensers to overdose the two wounded mercs, sending them into drug induced coma's. She then calmly walked to the bridge, humming the almost sing-song tune of the phrase that would get her back into the Migrant Fleet as she went. The first thing the captain felt was the blast of cold on his back, before his arms, legs and back froze solid and didn't feel anything anymore. Kasyra walked around so she could look the heartless Turian in the eyes.
“It's a shame you wont be feeling this you bosh'tet, you certainly deserve it. But nonetheless I thank you for all your credits, your ship and your attitude. You made me who I am. Now you pay for it.”
She pulled his gun from his belt, briefly noticing that it was the same one the engineer she had first killed had carried. She put it to the Turians frozen chest, his eyes accusing, just like everyone elses always were.
“Fitting that this gun will end the career it started.”
She pulled the trigger, the high velocity round causing the Turians whole body to shatter and explode in a shower of dark blue ice. She left the gun with the pile of ice.
After throwing all the bodies, including the still comatose survivors of the attack, out the airlock, she set the ship to make a series of jumps to get to the Migrant Fleet, avoiding all the Blue Suns 'checkpoints' she knew of. She funneled all of the crews credits to a new account for herself and took all of the high grade gear they had, leaving the rest of the supplies for the fleet to pick over.
Upon arriving at the Migrant Fleet, Kasyra was immediately allowed back in with her pass phrase and codes. She was given the right to choose her new ship as the one she had just brought back was taken to be cleaned up and refitted for Quarian habitation. She chose the ex-Batarian heavy cruiser Ryushei, and thus her name became Kasyra'Tala vas Ryushei. The ship was equipped with a number of scout vessels, and she immediately requested assignment to one of these, not believing herself ready to be thrown straight back into the very social Quarian society after such a brutal pilgrimage. The request was granted, as bringing back an entire ship was considered a very good pilgrimage gift. She continued on the scout ship for some time, even becoming friends with the crew of the small vessel after a time. She began to integrate somewhat back into the crew of the Ryushei. When not aboard the scout vessel, she trained with the Migrant Marine compliment of the Ryushei, and with her great amount of combat and tactical experience she excelled like never before. She quickly found herself assigned to the Quarian Special Ops teams, guarding scientists in Geth space and other particularly dangerous jobs, as well as participating in the occasional agressive resource acquisition in the Terminus. These missions kept her skills sharp and afforded her a position of both respect and isolation aboard the Ryushei. She was an elite combatant, and a cold one at that. That caused the majority of the crew to be distant, not wanting or knowing how to interact with such a person, despite the military nature of the ship.
After eight years of relative peace, her scout ship was caught on a planet near Omega by a Blue Suns squad with a long memory. They had been sent by the Turian captains brother to hunt down and capture Kasyra. That order would cost them their lives.
They found the ship while four of the five crew where away, and killed the pilot. There they waited to ambush the rest of the crew. Kasyra was traveling as rearguard for the Quarian squad, and this was all that saved her from the hail of bullets that cut down the other three Quarians with her. Managing to find cover behind a nearby rock, but not before glimpsing the Blue Suns colors, she waited, knowing exactly why they were there. First came a Turian over the no mans land, believeing her an easy catch. He paid for his mistake with a bullet between his birdlike eyes. Next came two humans, this time ready for her attack, but they were met with ice and fire from her omni tool, and quickly found their lives coming to a painful end. With only a Batarian left in the ship, she chanced an advance, over the field of Quarian and Blue Suns dead. Activating her defense drone and charging ahead, pistol blazing and omni blade at the ready, she crossed the short space quickly and with only a few glancing shots to her shields.
Upon getting into close quarters with the Batarian, she cast a cryo blast on his legs and tackled him to the ground before stabbing her omni blade into both his shoulders in rapid succession. She then slashed across his eyes with the tip of the omni blade, before plunging the blade into his stomach and twisting, breaking the blade in the process.
After the killing, she carried his body out and dumped it with the other Blue Suns remains before slowly taking all the Quarian bodies back onboard the ship. She set a course for the Fleet, but only on the way there did it finally strike her that all her friends had just died, and for no other reason than the petty vengeance of a hired killer. At that moment she stopped the ships progress and turned it around, setting the new course to Omega. She now saw herself as little better than the man who had tried to kill her, and she planned to return the favor in kind, having no real place on the Fleet anymore as a sole survivor and knowing almost no-one. She arrived on Omega and then sent the ship back to the fleet with the bodies of the dead crew aboard. She wouldn't steal from the Fleet for petty vengeance's sake, nor deny the families of the crew closure.
Once on Omega, she traveled tot he Gozu district, known to be a major Blue Suns held area of Omega, and begun to blatantly provoke the Blue Suns against her. After a squad was found dead in the apartment she had rented to draw them out, one of their members pinned to the wall with cutlery and with her name carved into his chest, the Blue Suns mobilised a full search of the district to find her. Utilising her intimate knowledge of Blue Suns tactics and communications, she avoided them for a time, before ambushing one of their patrols in the street and murdering them too, while provoking the leader of the local Blue Suns personally.
The entire operation had been, from the very start, a means by which to end her own life while spiteing the Blue Suns as much as possible. But all that changed with an intercepted transmission and an attempt to further disrupt the Suns.
As she was listening in to the Blue Suns comms, she happened to come across an alert that one of their high priority weapons shipments was being raided. They'd lost the crate, but managed to pin down the Human woman who'd taken it and they had reinforcements en route. Kasyra didn't particularly care for the life of a human, no matter how brave or stupid they were for taking on the Suns alone, but she did care about stopping the Suns. She quickly made her way to the location of the firefight, and with her flanking position made quick work of the current forces. She briefly talked to the Human, declaring that she would be staying to hold off the reinforcements, but the Human, who's name was Jeanna, talked her out of it with a surprisingly empathetic argument. The first time since her crew had died that someone had bothered to talk to her as an equal and with any care at all, she decided to leave the Gozu district with Jeanna.
However, now, a plan was starting to form in her mind about how best to cripple the Blue Suns. What had begun as suicidal rage was now crystalising into cold hate of a potency she had never conceived possible. She would use her knowledge of the Blue Suns operations to strike surgically, wher eit would most hurt and where they could not defend against her. The first step was to sell these weapons to an old contact on the Citadel. She convinced Jeanna that they needed to get rid of the gear they had stolen, and that the Citadel was the best place to do it. She bought passage off Omega with some of her remaining credits from her Merc days, and once away called her old contact to arrange to have the crate smuggled onto the Citadel and sold to him.
The sale went smoothly, and while Kasyra and Jeanna where getting a drink in Flux and decideing what to do next, they ran into a multi-racial group who where forming a new Merc band, all full of hope and optimism. Initially skeptical about joining another merc group, Kasyra eventually decided that if she joined willingly, it would be different to her murderous time among the Blue Suns. And so, after a few more drinks, Kasyra signed up as a founding member of Nova, and latter contributed the rest of her credits toward the purchase of a ship for the budding mercenary band.
Equipment:
Quarian Light Colossus Armor, recolored
Haliat Armory Stiletto Pistol, heavily modified to allow swift accurate firing in favor of damage.
Armali Council Nexus Omni-tool (with Omni-Blade, Right hand)
Ariake Technologies Logic Arrest Omni-tool (with Cryo Omni-Blade, Left hand)
Powers:
Defense Drone
Cryo Blast
Snap Freeze
Incinerate
Damping
Ammunition:
Cryo Rounds
Font Color: #330033
Theme:
[NOTE: ERROR, would not show title, link, or video.]
X. Kosso Irak
Name: Kosso Irak
Age: 30
Gender: Male
Race: Drell
Class: Adept
Ship Role: Lacking any real expertise in technology, Kosso helps the crew in less direct ways. Though he hasn't been with the Nova crew for more than a few months, in that time he has acted as an unofficial representative for the group. His previous connections to the galaxy's criminal underworld give him an edge when scouting for possible jobs and steering the crew away from any potential dangers. In this way, he acts as a liaison for the group; contacting employers and enemies alike, setting up meetings, etc.
Appearance: Kosso is tall (6 ft, 5 in) with a wiry frame bolstered by a lean musculature. His skin is a green so pale it borders on gray, and his face is quite unremarkable, by Drell standards, free of noticeable scars or other deformities.
Background: Kosso was born in the year 2146 CE on the Hanar homeworld of Kahje. His parents, both closely tied with a notable Hanar family, respected the contract between the Drell and the Hanar immensely, and continued their tradition of service by offering their son's loyalty as well. From a young age, Kosso was groomed to become a bodyguard for a wealthy Hanar client. His childhood was an isolated, lonely experience. Within one of the smaller "dry-domes" on Kahje's surface, most days were spent being trained in the art of combat. It was here he picked up skills that would guide him throughout his life; he became proficient with all manners of close-quarters combat, and by the age of 13 could disarm and incapacitate any enemy that his mentors threw at him.
Though he showed great promise, especially in the use of biotics, in his teenaged years Kosso decided that he didn't want to spend the rest of his life on Kahje as a simple guard. He wanted to see the galaxy and to live a fulfilling life, and to that end he stowed away on a freighter bound for the Citadel, leaving behind his very ashamed parents. And so it was that Kosso arrived on one of the seedier wards of the citadel at the age of 16, with only a few credits to his name and no idea of where to go next.
Life was not easy for Kosso. He found odd jobs here and there, but his surly attitude and lack of any marketable skills kept him coasting in and out of employment. It didn't take him very long to realize that the grand life he wanted for himself was still nowhere within reach, even though he had left the bright, confining bio-domes of Kahje behind. He had a choice to make: catch a ride back home, or find a job that utilized the skills he had spent the majority of his childhood honing. He chose the later. A job as a bouncer at a dirty, lower-ward strip club evolved into a career within the lower rungs of a small organized crime group operating solely on the Citadel. Here, his skills finally served him well. For a while, he worked as a simple henchman: performing shakedowns, the occasional robbery or participating in the latest smattering of gang violence. His actions may have been morally reprehensible, but that didn't matter. He had been groomed since birth to serve as an unthinking tool for a Hanar's benefit; now, he exercised his new-found free agency with a sort of unrestrained glee. Every job was one he chose to do, and each was exciting, adrenaline filled and vivid.
That was all well and good, but it turns out that living without a plan for the future isn't always the greatest idea. Kosso was eventually buried in debt, all of it owed to the very crime lords he worked for. Loans had been given and not repaid, and now some very powerful people were getting angry. Just when he thought he might have to flee the Citadel, Kosso was approached by an Eclipse recruiter, who seemed impressed with his biotic prowess and offered him a position in the group, where he could be further trained. At this point, Kosso owed both C-sec and his own employers a lot of money, and with no other options, he accepted.
For the next few years Kosso did occasional contracts for Eclipse and further honed his biotic powers. He stayed away from jobs that involved potential murder or assault, instead working with illicit substance transport and, quite ironically, working as a bodyguard for certain wealthy clients. Luckily for him, Eclipse was not too demanding of its members, and allowed him to choose most of his own contracts as long as he did exceptional work (which he always did). As promised, Kosso's biotic skills were also tested and trained. Kosso had never been around so many other biotics before, and his drive to succeed within the group drove him to become a master biotic, with his own close-quarters combat style.
This was a comfortable life, and it enabled Kosso to pay off his debts and even accumulate a small amount of savings. Just when he was thinking about dropping out of the group, however, he met an Asari maiden named Suna. Suna was a highly-esteemed Eclipse commando, and the two became fast friends during their first job together. Afterwards, they became lovers, and developed a strong relationship over the following years. They worked incredibly well together, playing off of each other’s strengths, and soon they found themselves high within the ranks of Eclipse, an elite two-person strike team that could be called upon to resolve the missions that regular Eclipse commandos were not subtle or witty enough to accomplish. Specifically, the two practically ran Eclipse’s smuggling operations. Red sand, pilfered weapons, stolen tech: they saw it all, and their actions made them practical heroes of the criminal underworld.
Kosso didn't quite believe in the concept of "soulmates," but Suna was almost enough to change his mind. However, the Drell could never shake the fact that he would die long, long before his partner (who was only around 200 years old), and convinced his lover to start living to the fullest, in an attempt to cram as many exciting experiences together as possible before he died. Suna, touched by his passion and vigor and looking for a little excitement herself, consented.
The two began a wild and dangerous gambit. They took whatever interesting contract they were offered by Eclipse, no matter how dangerous or strange. They dove headlong into the galactic drug trade in which they had before only dabbled, sampling as much product as they sold. At the same time, they began (secretly) selling information about Eclipse to any and all buyers, including the Alliance, C-sec and the Shadow Broker's network of spies. It was a dangerous and exhilarating game they were playing, and they knew that if they were caught they would be executed by the very group that employed them. But it did have its rewards, and between the contracts and the information leaking on the side, the two became very wealthy. They used their money wildly and without regard for the future, and they were happy. Those were the best years of Kosso's life.
Of course, that couldn't last. Kosso planned one of his largest and potentially-profitable betrayals: he alerted C-sec about a very important Eclipse smuggling deal happening on the Citadel, and helped them set up a sting operation. The operation was botched. Kosso lost his lover, and Eclipse caught on to his betrayal. Luckily, his wealth and the vast network of allies he had built for himself in the years prior gave him means to escape, at least temporarily. Though he knew he should head to the borderworlds, small colonies where he could lie low, something kept him hanging around. Perhaps it was a sense that he had unfinished business, perhaps it was just a continuation of his self-destructive behavior. Whatever it was, he spent a year bouncing around the galaxy, with Eclipse assassins always one step behind. Somehow, he managed to evade them time after time, their constant failures only edging them on. Humiliated that one of their own had managed to betray them (if only for a while), Eclipse stayed on the hunt.
No matter how good he was, Kosso knew he couldn’t evade his pursuers forever. Finally, with his credits dwindling and his luck about to run out, he caught wind of a small group of people with big aspirations to form a mercenary squad. The would-be merc company was looking for a suitable ship to house their operations, and Kosso, realizing that he had stumbled upon an opportunity he could not ignore, contacted them and set them up with one of his old friends in a Volus shipyard. With his help (and the majority of his remaining credits), the team was able to grab a ship that was well above their paygrade: A sleek, relatively modern Turian frigate to be named the Tyrus. In return, Kosso joined the new mercenaries, ensuring himself a way to utilize his skills while finally dodging the heat that had followed him for the last year. Like always, Kosso doesn’t have plans for the future. In fact, he’s not even sure what he’s doing; He’d planned on sticking with the merc group only temporarily, but has now found himself drawn into the fold in a way he can’t explain. And though he remains distant from his teammates, hiding his past behind an impassive face and dark shades, he can’t escape the truth. He’s part of Nova now.
Equipment:
Elanus Risk Control Light Duelist Armor (in chest and leg pieces. Usually worn beneath traditional Drell longcoat or other clothes)
Elanus Risk Control Predator Pistol
Polaris Bio-amp
Elanus Polarized, glare-reducing Shades
Powers:
Lift
Singularity
Warp Ammo
Reave
Pull
Stasis
