Revin Sadovu-th'Ven

Born into the prominent, if provincial, th’Ven senatorial family, the oldest child of the Senator’s second son, Revin’s lot in life would have been, assuming the gods had been kind, uneventful. Raised, tutored, married off in some arrangement by either her grandfather or uncle to secure more grand positioning within the strategy game that was Romulan imperial politics. A pawn to either advance her family or secure the fealty of a lesser house to their cause.

But her first handicap in life was a birth defect that immediately slashed her value as a political pawn. Born with poor vision, by the time she was four she was legally blind and by five completely blind, the visible world was robbed from her by a quirk of genetics. Her life was only spared by her mother’s pleas and the circumstance of the family’s cadet branch nature allowing them more freedom in having invalids past the age of accidents or being shipped off to a monastery somewhere. After all, the truly important houses couldn’t have visible reminders of weakness around, but the lesser houses could if they so wished to indulge such weaknesses. The fate of the Empire rarely rested on their shoulders after all.

With this, she was relegated to a life of study and contemplation. Ignored by her father, for the most part, it was her mother who ensured that she had what she needed in life. Tutors to teach history and philosophy, carers to see to her needs, guards to protect her. That isn’t to say she was unloved by her father, but he found it hard to face a reminder of some inherent flaw in the family, lurking unseen until she was born. A flaw that was guarded against for her younger brothers.

Her father, Towh, took it upon himself to teach her the family history when she turned eight years old, their triumphs and failures both, of the family’s occasional struggles with the barbarians of the galaxy, the Federation and Klingon Empire. None of it was the stuff of legend known across the Empire, but each family had its own legends. Over time and with the unfortunate passing of her mother, Nibr, when she was only twelve years old, he actually started to rely on her for counsel from time to time, saying that just as her mother had been his heart, she would be the heart of the family.

And then the death of the Romulan Star Empire, the obliteration of grandfather and uncle’s entire line thrust the entire family’s holdings onto her father. What was left, the estates they lived on and managed in the name of the family, went from being something her father was steward of to ruler over within the boundaries of the newly forming Romulan Republic. Towh threw his support behind the new Republic, committing the agricultural operations under his command to feeding nearby worlds, turning that support into votes and securing him a new senatorial seat with the polite fiction it was just the continuation of the old.

A family ascendant meant however that such things as weakness needed to be hidden from sight least the lessers get ideas that their betters were just like them. Her father spoke to her less, her brothers took up more prominent roles, their childhoods disappearing into being merely officers in the family’s operations. And so, she returned to her quiet studies, tutors provided now by her father to keep her occupied. And over the years her father, who had been living up to that title, grew cold and distant once more.

But that changed too one day as her oldest brother came of age. Xuteh’s coming of age and his enrolment with the Republic Navy, to serve his minimum term, left all the pressure on her youngest brother, Pesh, he himself only a few years short of coming of age and already knowing his duty with the Republic would be delayed until Xuteh returned home. With a lot of pressure for a boy still in his teenage years, Pesh came to rely on Revin, consulting daily with his older sister on all matters assigned him by their father, or when his own studies faltered and needed advice or tutoring beyond the one’s their father paid for.

This was soon discovered and an apoplectic Towh vowed to send Revin to a monastery on Suril III, there to be out of sight and out of mind, banished to a world on the borders of the Empire. Pesh would have to learn to make decisions himself and she’d be away from the estates so none could see her. Towh’s anger led him to not speak to his daughter again, even as she was escorted from the family home and to her midnight flight away.

And here things took another turn in Revin’s life. She was accompanied by a monk, Tenik, who would serve as her minder and who turned into during their months-long journey a much-valued verbal sparring partner. This friendship however was cut short when merely a few days short of Suril III the transport was attacked by pirates, seeking loot and high-ranking hostages they could extort ransom for. Tenik was killed fending off pirates who had come to drag Revin away when the ship’s passenger manifest betrayed her.

In the end, it turned out to be the only thing that saved her as the pirate Trelliah condemned the survivors to death, having taken anything and everyone of value off the ship. This would barely count as a phase however in her life as the time she spent in the self-styled Pirate Queen’s captivity was measured merely in days. Her erstwhile rescuer wasn’t there for a rescue, but to collect a bounty, and not even her. But apparently, with some history between Sidda Sadovu and Trelliah, she took the opportunity to relieve Trelliah of Revin’s presence.

But with a powerful pirate queen’s attention on trying to exact revenge and the nature of Sidda’s work, it would take some time before she could make good on her promise to see her to civilization and into the hands of someone who could see her safely home, a prospect that Revin wasn’t relishing anyway. But over the weeks it took, she got to know Sidda and any awkward relationship sprung up between the two, eventually developing into moreover a few months as each chance Sidda had at seeing Revin into some sort of safety, she failed to do so.

With eventual bounties actually now out on Revin, seeking her return to her father, Sidda made it clear she wasn’t going to pursue those bounties, going so far as to make their relationship a known thing. However, interest in finding out who is putting the bounties out is a valid field of inquiry that Revin herself is most interested in.

After months of living in the company of the Vondem Thorn and at the insistence of her lover, Revin finally opted to take a chance that had never been afforded to her back home, having her eyes replaced with artificial implants, allowing her to see once more. Now aboard the much larger Vondem Rose and its complement of crew, she’s taken it upon herself to learn some skills that would be of use to the crew and more importantly her captain and fiancé.