Yolandi Dekker

Yolandi Dekker is a crew member aboard the Mordred, while she did not actively seek out the Reavers to sign on, a certain chain of encounters and events lead to her seeking refuge and employment aboard the Mordred under the command of Lauren Blackwell. She pilots a battle suit simply named 'Zou' (Z-oh) but is equally capable on foot with Zou acting as a teammate due to an autonomous AI control unit.
== History ==
Yolandi Dekker was born on Earth and from a relatively young age, quickly learned to be self-sufficient. Her father was a laborer who was barely home due to long work hours and little free time to spend with her mother and her. Her mother was a homemaker who raised Yolandi as best she could despite the circumstances. The family was not particularly wealthy and there was a few spots where money got very tight. Yolandi, in her teenage years, began to fall in with a rougher crowd. She never told her mother who she was hanging out with or what she was doing in those outings, but she maintained a lie that she did in fact get a job to help pay for things. The truth was that she had gotten mixed up with a motorcycle gang and had taken to home invasions, smash and grabs, and protection rackets to make money. Her parents never knew the truth of this, but never questioned the money that Yolandi brought home, her father now unemployed after a work accident left him disabled and her mother slowly succumbing to Alzheimer's disease making home life that much harder for them. Eventually, an incident had left Yolandi's face on the nightly newscast and the gig was up. Her mother by that point was in an assisted living home for Alzheimer's patients but her father threw her out of the house after a very heated argument about how Yolandi had disappointed him and how she should be thankful that her mother lacks the mental faculties to realize that her daughter was a criminal. Yolandi left Johannesburg and Earth for that matter to find a new life. Sol authorities had not forgotten about her and there was still an outstanding bounty on her head for the crime she had been implicated in. After a chance encounter with a rookie bounty hunter, Yolandi became a full time fugitive, finding a place among a veteran smuggler's crew and helping run illicit goods throughout the Sol system.
History from there is a bit hazy, but after some time, Yolandi found herself a new life as a freelance mercenary, slowly garnering funds and notoriety till she was able to purchase a second-hand suit. While the suit's model designation was Zou, it quickly became the suit's name in general. She wasn't a particularly imaginative one when it came to names, so she just called it what it was already called. The two had plenty of experiences together, however Yolandi had disabled the learning inhibitor on Zou's AI core, allowing it to more or less become a 'him' in the sense that he was slowly learning and gaining a sense of being an individual. The two are inseparable in most cases, both have developed a bond that is not unlike a person and their dog. They trust each other with their lives and well being and have carved their path across the stars as such.
=== Burning Sails ===
Yolandi was in the Chalice when Lauren and the remaining survivors of the Reavers had decided to run a bit of a recruitment drive. Yolandi needing money felt they wouldn't be able to pay for her expenses and ducked out to find another bar to hang out in. At the other club, she had a run in with a bounty hunter named Starlight, who had a bit of history with Yolandi and reminded her that she did have a bounty on her head. Yolandi left the club and through a series of bad decisions, ended up on the wrong end of Starlight's gadgets. Narrowly escaping with Zou, she fled to the market deck of the station and upon re-encountering Starlight, tore apart a frozen food shop to escape again. However, Zou had suffered some damage from earlier and was unable to flee as quickly as it had before. A brief tangle with Starlight and her mark, left Yolandi incapacitated and Zou carried her to the Mordred where he then brought her on board with Lauren's permission. Yolandi awoke in time as Lauren was getting ready to leave with the new crew (mostly people who had come from the Chalice.) Yolandi asked to sign on and took it as a sign of fortune shining favorably on her for the time being as staying on the station would have ended in certain doom.
== Personal Equipment ==
Yolandi has few worldly possessions, a wetsuit for diving, a set of street clothes, a set of work clothes for working on Zou, a small revolver type concealed carry pistol, and a machine pistol that she had gotten off the rookie bounty hunter in her youth. Zou is a two ton assault battle suit, equipped with an AI core, 25mm autocannon, heavy armor, and a microfusion reactor to power him.
== Trivia ==
Zou's design and name come from a suit of battle armor from the universe of Battletech.
The machine pistol is also from Battletech's mechwarrior RPG universe.
While Yolandi in her current timeline is synthetic, there was a time when she was a normal human. When she became a synth isn't exactly known, but it has greatly prolonged her lifespan.
Yolandi is an avid diver, her synthetic body is equipped with a gill system to allow her to breathe underwater and her wetsuit is simply designed for her comfort and of course modesty.
Yolandi currently has a 1,000,000 credit bounty on her head for a mishap with a trade baron's daughter. While this would imply that she is homosexual, the truth is that she's simply been around so long that she doesn't particularly care who she's with for such encounters, man or woman. To her, sex is sex, and she's not one to be a choosing beggar.
Yolandi despite being synthetic, requires oxygen to breathe. Food, drink, and sleep are optional to her, but given that she was once human, they do aid in her comfort. She is a heavy drinker and often smokes, while this hasn't had any direct impact on her, the long term effects on her synthetic body are unknown at this current time.
== Media ==
WiP
Category:Characters
Category:Sails
Category:Sails Characters