Iylali

Cadet Iylali is a transporter operator on the USS Odyssey.
== Background ==
Iylali was born on the 30th of August 2392 on the Edosian homeworld of Edos. She had one singular parent but was continually surrounded by extended family who helped to raise her. The hometown which she was born and raised in was upon the coast and most of her early memories were of the sea, especially considering how her parent was a sailor aboard a conservational vessel working to study and preserve the oceans. She can remember walking along the shoreline hand in hand with her grandparents, learning to swim, and the excitement of stepping aboard her parent’s boat for the first time. Most of her childhood surrounded the ocean or other forms of nature. Architecture upon Edos was designed for infrastructure and simplicity, not for beauty, but being an idyllic and peaceful race meant they understood the necessity for a balance between nature and technology. All of the cities were integrated with sprawling meadows or forests and greenhouses were common, so Iylali was no stranger to wandering through the gardens in awe. 
In school she was always studious and quite boisterous, the first to raise her hand to answer a question and constantly crave the attention of the teachers and other classmates. She loved to learn and loved to display this, absorbing information like interstellar history and reading as much as she could (both fact and fiction) after hours. In primary school she also took up music and liked to play the instruments of other species. Many Edosians found it easy to pick up as they had the benefit of an extra arm but Iylali always thought that having only three fingers was a bit of a disadvantage. She liked playing string instruments such as the harp and later expanded into woodwind where she could also use her third arm to play percussion at the same time, although that took a lot of time and practice and definitely wasn’t easy. Ending up out of time or skipping a note was always her fear. 
It looked like she was a bit of a perfectionist and while in elementary school she had been eager to show off what she knew, this changed in lower and upper secondary education levels when the workload began to build up and she became more stressed. It was during this time that she became more anxious and less confident than she had been before. She remained good friends with a few people but did not actively go out of her way to create new ones or to show off her knowledge to them any more, instead she was afraid of getting something wrong or letting her family or teachers down. Her solace was always the sea and when she was not studying for exams she often went out with her parent and the crew so she could watch them at work. Now and again she assisted with minor repairs and on one occasion after sailing through a particularly bad storm, the young Edosian was the only one able to fit into a tight space and set up the equipment to bail out the water. 
When she was in secondary education people began wondering what they were going to do with their lives afterwards and most people looked towards vocational jobs or further education. Iylali was eager to learn more but was terrified of having to move away and very worried about getting stressed with the workload, but she knew that she had to be able to grow up and move on. She spoke to her family about this and said she was unsure of what to do. It was her parent who expressed that she had the qualifications (or would do once exams were over) to do anything that she wanted. They expressed that when they were younger they had looked to the stars and wanted to go out there and learn more but they had never been smart enough to. None of their family at all had been spacefarers. Iylali’s early days had been spent sailing on the ocean but now she began to fulfil her parent’s wish of sailing among the stars as well. 
She could have signed up with some sort of freighter company or an exploratory firm but everybody knew that Starfleet was the place to be when it came to research and advancement. One of her friends was applying to join Starfleet and so they decided to do so together, studying for the entrance exams late into the night. On their first shot at the exams Iylali passed with only minor things to change but her friend did not get in. Her friend was dejected but tried to say that Iylali should go ahead without her, but the young Edosian was having none of it. Instead the two opted to stick out their final year of education together so they could use the last year of secondary school to study, and the next time around, it was the both of them who got in and shipped off to the Academy facility at Psi Epsilon III. 
Having someone there with her that she knew was a lifesaver for Iylali because she was totally out of her depth from the time she stepped foot on the campus. Her shyness and embarrassment seemed to manifest tenfold but thankfully her friend was there to do all the introductions and awkward talk for her. It was together that they made more friends, got to know their roommates, and learned to live without their family being right by their sides. They enjoyed clubs such as swimming or hiking and tried out things from different cultures just to get used to it all. At their accommodation they started hosting little nights where they would cook foods and decorate with items from their home culture so everybody could learn. 
Despite the anxieties Iylali also all but threw herself into her education and loved trying out different courses to see what she enjoyed. She much preferred the academic work to the more physical side of things. It was obvious from the off that tactical or security was not going to be the department from her as her aim was always just a little off - she learned to hit the target, yes, but it was never the perfect shot. Her height and stance made her quite formidable but she preferred physical activity to be leisurely and for fun instead of to push yourself to extremes. For a very long time she considered science or medical as the department for her because it related back to the work her parent had done in conservation, but at the same time something nagged at her and told her that she was already living her parent’s dream and she had to be a different person to them. Engineering was perhaps a little too intense for her and so she settled on operations where she could do light maintenance work like she used to and provide support to all departments, that way she was getting the best of all worlds! 
When it came to practical positions and posts aboard a starship she ended up studying transporter theory because it was incredible how you could physically move a person’s atoms and piece them back together in another place. Her studies included safe intra-warp transportation and the safety measures taken to prevent transporter accidents. At the start of her fourth and final year she began her dissertation titled “Transportation and its Applications in Emergency Scenarios” in which she started researching and writing about different situations, drawing from real examples from away teams and ships. This included information on stabilisation for medical transport and the integration of stasis fields into transporter buffers and how to safely conduct a transport with a correct lock if a person was falling from height. 
In order to get real-life experience for their dissertations many of her friends and classmates were considering going aboard a cadet cruise. While she knew that one day she was going to end up being posted to a starship, Iylali was far too terrified for that sort of thing and didn’t put her name forward - only to find that her friend had put her name in for her, knowing that it would do her some good. Iylali was horrified and even more horrified when she realised she was being posted to a different ship to her long-time friend, meaning that she would be alone. Who would be there to make friends for her or do the talking in a difficult situation where they were caught blaring traditional Saurian music at 0100 hours?! Part of her was terrified considering how she would be alone for the first time ever - and the other part told her that she had to get on with it, as this was just part of growing up. 
== Appearance ==
Iylali stands at a rather tall height compared to the majority of humanoids although could be considered short amongst other Edosians. As is the norm with Edosian biology she has three digitigrade legs, three arms, and three fingers upon each hand. She is quite slim although the three legs make up for this, creating a sturdy and strong stance. Often she holds her three hands together to fidget. Her skin is orange in colour, varying shades from ginger to cantaloupe, and here and there she has small scatterings of lighter peach-coloured scales such as around her elbows. Her eyes are a pale yellow and she has two small fins or spikes atop her crown but none beneath her chin. She likes to wear a skirt with her uniform which is neatly pleated to accommodate her three legs. 
== Personality ==
Some might think that Iylali seems a little shy or meek to begin with  and she is definitely quite quiet, liking to keep to herself and stay out of trouble. Quite often it takes someone else speaking to her to start off the conversation as she would feel too embarrassed to go out of the way to do it herself. Once she gets into the conversation things tend to go better and she does enjoy making friends and having a good chat, she is just too scared to initiate that. The Edosian is a hard worker and extremely dedicated and willing to learn, especially when it comes to other species hence her interest in anthropology while at the Academy. 
== Psych Evaluation ==
Iylali is no stranger to the danger which is presented by a life in Starfleet (it was all but drilled in at the Academy) but being part of a starship’s crew for the first time is undoubtedly daunting for her. She fears doing something wrong or upsetting the people senior to her and this contributes to her initial meek appearance. A known people pleasure and bad for thinking the worst of herself when she messes up, she would hate to  get something wrong. Her anxieties are undoubtedly an issue and her propensity for becoming stressed indicates the same, although being in an environment where she has to fend for herself instead of relying on others may force the Edosian to adapt. 
== Other Information ==
==== Likes ====
She much enjoys learning, as much as it brings her stress she likes to get to know new things. She has a desire to learn more about other cultures and loves trying foods from different places; she also finds it fascinating that Earth has retained culture division instead of amalgamating into one large culture like other worlds have. The Edosian enjoys music and loves hearing different instruments - one of the things she will miss most about the Academy is the music society’s orchestra! On the holodeck she loves wading out to the sea and watching the ocean life, and she also takes an interest in gardening and botany although she is always worried that the plants might die if she tried to grow them.
==== Dislikes ====
Being relatively shy she dislikes striking up conversation for herself or having to report in somewhere. This goes for both physically and on paper (or electronically) and she finds herself reciting lines over in her head or proof-reading a report many times before presenting it. She doesn’t like being forced into situations she is uncomfortable with although she knows this is part of the job and is trying to learn to live with that. In truth she dislikes her own fear and wishes that she could go back to the times where she wasn’t stressed and anxious.
Category:Former Characters