Gretchen Serai

"Out of all the species I've encountered, none of them have to feed themselves to their giant kin, Hell, most of them are the largest sentient species in their solar system." Gretchen complaining in private to Fangra in 2011, shortly before she defected.
Gretchen is a "Normal" Selde who was captain of the SEV Contact before having to flee from the Selde Military after being framed.
==Profile==
*Name: Gretchen Herae Serai
*Birth Date: 1831
*Height: 15ft 2in
*Species: Selde
*Gender: Female
*Weight: 18,843 Kg
==Overview==
Born into an average family, Gretchen grew up wishing for a job in the military and spent most of her young life training herself to perform well. In 1850, at the age of 19, she enlisted in the military on the naval officer side, noticing during her self training that she would not make a very good soldier due to a lack of physical strength compared to other Selde.
By 1876, Gretchen had been promoted to Captain and received her own ship after rising through the ranks at an uncommonly high pace. However, this first posting wasn't what she really wanted, and while commanding the aging frigate, she saw little action, being relegated to the homeworld security fleet. By 1900, she finally received the posting she wanted after years of exemplary service, command of the exploration flagship, the newly refitted SEV Contact.
Her time as captain of the Contact was eventful compared to her earlier postings, but was not very active in it's supposed duty of finding other cultures, mainly acting as an escort to diplomats from the few, mostly human, species the Selde had interaction with. Despite this, she was always happy to be captain of the SEV Contact.
Her crews had always described her as uptight and joyless, but would always admit she was fiercely loyal to them and would always do what was best for the crew rather than callously using them. She had a few friends, but even to them would rarely break her composure and show her emotions.
==Defection==
In late 2011, Gretchen witnessed her first officer be trialled, and then publicly executed (aka, devoured by a Selde 'Giant' who in this case was Gargantine Kersal) for charges of treason. Having been best friends since joining the military, Gretchen knew her friend had never committed treason, and started to grow suspicious. When her new first officer was assigned to the Contact, Gretchen had reached the point where she was secretly fearing for her life, especially after she noticed her new first officer wore rank sliders one grade below what her record showed her as being, this service record also showed her to be ruthless, and previously served directly under Gargantine Kersal.
Once the Contact left Selde space, the new first officer 'found' some evidence in Gretchen's ready room 'proving' her to be a traitor and, as the highest ranking officer aboard, ordered Gretchen to the brig under crimes of treason. Gretchen heard the order from the bridge, as it was sent over the intercom, and managed to run to a nearby lift and head towards the shuttlebay knowing that the punishment for treason is death, and that escape was the only viable option left if she wanted to survive. While running to the shuttle bay, the first officer ordered that anyone who captured the traitorous Captain Serai they would be rewarded with a promotion over the intercom as further incentive to the crew to imprison their former captain. Hearing this, Gretchen panicked, thinking she wouldn't be able to launch a shuttle, her fears were gone by the time she reached a shuttle, where the shuttlebay controller had sabotaged the security feeds and deliberately opened the shuttle bay door and smashed herself in the face with a piece of nearby decorative panelling, having left a hastily scrawled message that said 'You owe me a drink for this when your name is cleared Gretchen, and if anyone asks, you grabbed that hunk of panelling and smashed my face in. Take this note with you so nobody else finds it, Your Loyal Crew Member, Kaina'.
Having found the note, Gretchen smiled, patted the officer on the back, grabbed the wooden panel as if using it as a weapon to leave her prints on it and then tossed it to the side before finding a shuttle and clambering in. As she was about to launch, various security crews arrived and started to fire at the shuttle, doing minimal damage to it's shields (Gretchen decided that shields would be a priority) before covering their eyes as Gretchen floored the shuttles sublight thrusters. As soon as Gretchen's shuttle cleared the Contact's shields, before her shuttle could be targeted, she activated the hyperdrive as she slumped into her seat muttering 'Something is wrong on Seldeynia if they have a decorated captain and her first officer framed for treason, I need to dump this shuttle soon, but I need to find someone with a ship first'.
After many days of fleeing and checking transmissions to make sure she wasn't followed, Gretchen finally found a derelict freighter on which to hide, using it's barely functioning shield to hide her shuttle. During the next few weeks, Gretchen systematically stripped the shuttle (she had already removed and spaced the tracking beacon and IFF systems during her first day on the run) and used it's components to make the freighter's systems operational again, starting with life support, then reinforcing the shields, then restoring other systems to an operational state.
After about a month of living on partial portions of field rations found on her shuttle, the freighter was ready to leave the system it was found in (Gretchen moved the freighter from where she found it and hid it behind a gas based planet). Gretchen managed to decipher the language enough to operate the ship using information from the shuttles translation database and the ship's audio systems to translate the written letters on the freighter's consoles. The freighter shuddered heavily when it's hyperdrive was active, but not enough to convince Gretchen to turn it off. Gretchen's one idea of where to go was to go to the co-ordinates in the freighters database filed under 'Current Destination', hoping that the planet would be populated and that she would find someone who could not only fix the freighter more than she could, but also get some Soul Crystals for it's almost depleted reactor in exchange for it's cargo, which she had checked and found sealed containers shortly after boarding. The only thing Gretchen didn't find on the freighter, which during the second day with it's hyperdrive active during log entries she discovered was called the ICV Halnen, was crew, which, judging by the logs, should be present as the last log mentioned a massive, unknown vessel on sensors which Gretchen assumed to have boarded and taken the crew, which would have left at least one corpse if Selde boarding practices were slightly similar to that of the aliens who attacked the Halnen.
In the first month of 2012, while en-route to the Halnen's last destination, she encountered a Selde ship, the Kelnari, which belonged to the bounty hunter Jaqui Hrasai. Instead of capturing Gretchen, Jaqui decided to help Gretchen after hearing Gretchen explain why she was wanted (something Jaqui would always do with her bounties who were ex-military, letting those who she believed to be innocent go), rather than take her back to Seldeynia to claim the significant bounty that Gargantine had placed on her head. The reason Jaqui did this was due to her growing hatred of the corrupt Selde Military, specifically it's leader Gargantine Kersal.
Gretchen sees Jaqui as an undisciplined irritant who is overly friendly, believing strongly that Jaqui is hiding something. However, she will admit that annoying as Jaqui is, she is useful for keeping the Halnen going, (she had decided to strip the Kelnari for parts mostly for it's Soul Crystals, weapons and shield emitters) and despite the obnoxious behaviour, knows how to keep a ship flying.
==Combat Style==
Gretchen's combat style is unusual among the Selde, preferring to get up close and slash foes with quick sword strikes, and will only carry a pistol for long range attacks. She chose this out of preference, after noticing that she could not shoot anything with any accuracy at ranges not much larger than a powder-fired shotgun's useful operating range. Some asked why she didn't choose a shotgun, and her reply is always 'Those things are too heavy'. Her poor accuracy on a firing range was often considered to be the only blemish on her record.
Her choice for actually using the one-handed dress sword was always considered odd, and only made practical by the speed at which she could slash it around with when she had a team distracting her opponents. Should she not be able to get up close, or during the process of getting up close, she will use her pistol to fire off as many shots as possible hoping that a few will hit her foes.
Category:Selde
Category:Characters