Bravo Fleet
Summary
Lieutenant Draia Theroh is the one you never expect it from. The all-encompassing responsibility of duty was ingrained in Draia from a young age. Although she hasn’t always answered the call, she attends to her duty as Chief Engineer for the USS Ascension in a stern interpretation of professionalism. Despite how much effort she clearly puts into not cursing or slipping into Cardassian colloquialisms of her youth, her lack of interpersonal tact always comes out eventually.
Appearance
Given her genetics and her long hours of physical labour, Draia’s frame is relatively lithe but also supple. She’s not all hard edges and flat planes. As a Cardassian, her skin tone is ashen. The facial ridges on her chin, nose, over her eyes and at her forehead aren’t as pronounced as some. She inherited softer facial ridges from her father’s side of the family. Her emerald eyes were from her mother. In the sunlight, her black hair has a slightly teal shimmer, but she hasn’t gotten much sunlight in her adult life.
Personality
Draia can often be abrasive, impatient, fearless, and demanding, as well as soft, sensual and inviting. She is seriously lacking in tact. It has been said that she has an old soul, with the eager eyes of a child. Draia was born with that peculiar brand of charm and humour that makes you love her, even when she’s insulting you.
On every occupational application, she writes that her ambition is “to be buried alive.”
Her hobbies and interest mostly feature sleeping.
Strengths and Weaknesses:
+ Hedonistic
+ When she’s focused, she can shut out the world
+ Observant
+ Strangely charming
+ Natural curiosity
– Impatient
– Little emotional control
– Impulsive
– Scrappy; she likes to hit
– Her compassion his strong, but her compassion is selective
History
Early Life (2368 – 2387)
Although Draia was born on Cardassia, she was raised on the Cardassian colony of Hezem for the most part. She was born the 11th of Yatyut in the Cardassian calendar, during the Federation Standard year of 2368. Shortly thereafter, the colony world of Hezem was ceded to the United Federation of Planets in the re-drawing of borders that came from the treaty between both empires. While Draia’s mother answered the call of duty in the heart of the Cardassian Union, the remainder of the the Theroh family continued as pioneers of the colony’s transition under Federation rule.
Draia’s mother served in the military all her life. To this day, Draia has never asked her mother what position she serves or even what branch of the military she answers to. Draia’s father came from a family of political influence, which is what afforded him the luxury of indulging in art for most of his life. Come the wars with the Federation, and then the Klingons, and then the Federation again, Draia’s father was always awarded military contracts to produce propaganda.
Draia’s mother treated her children and husband as if they were her junior officers, and they all were ever-so-eager to make her happy. Although Draia had demonstrated an ability to affable and sociable as a child, Draia’s mother decided it would be most appropriate for her children to be home schooled, and so they were. Although Draia’s parents had little involvement in the education process, only the very best tutors were provided to their many children. Family is all, after all.
Education in every meaning of the word (2387 – 2391)
By the time Draia graduated from her initial education, the Theroh family made arrangements for her enrolment in an institution of higher education that had been newly constructed on Cardassia Prime. When Draia questioned her enrolment, and even her field of study (energy systems), she was reminded that her parents and her grandparents knew better than her. When Draia was halfway through her education, she had tasted enough freedom to give her a hunger for more.
On her transport back to Hezem between semesters, she took the first opportunity to jump ship. Risking stranding herself during a stop over, she managed to find employment quickly at a refueling station.
Draia first learned of the life of a miner from a young man she worked with, and courted, at the fuelling station. Like all great Cardassian loves, the intercourse of their courtship was arguments and accusations. The young man’s father was a miner, and the young man would tell Draia stories that his father had told him. Draia began to think about mines during the day — while she worked in the fuel processing plant — and she would dream about mines in the night. She fantasized about mines, even. The very thought of being buried deep in the flesh of a planet, dark and dank walls of rock all around her, enveloping her — it brought her to ecstasy. Draia’s young man, he wanted to be a pilot; he wanted to see the stars. She left him behind when she went to work with his father, down deep in a mine.
When that mine in the depths of Lyshan III began to show signs of haunting by metaphysical manifestations, the mine was visited by investigators and the military alike. As the mine was a joint venture between the Cardassian Union and the United Federation of Planets, the ghost stories were investigated by a collection of Starfleet and Cardassian officers. She met them in the repair shop where she worked, when they beamed down to the mines to investigate the mystery. Having never met anyone from Starfleet before, Draia was thunderstruck by the sheer curiosity their officers demonstrated throughout their interviews and inspections. That thirst for knowledge —for no sake, but its own sake— was entirely alien to Draia. Entirely alien, and entirely fascinating. The Starfleet starship had barely left orbit around the mining world, and Draia was leveraging her long-term residency in the United Federation of Planets to submit an application for Starfleet.