Thanica Vari

## **Appearance**

**Height:** 5' 5''

**Hair Color:** Dark ash-brown

**Eye Color:** Blue-grey

## **Strengths and Weaknesses**

**Skills:** Thanica was a Kiellar Auxiliary and can use Kiellar weapons and armour with a high degree of proficiency. She also knows how to fly the ship and, as such, is a rather important person to have in the team. Also, disturbingly proficient with knives.

**Weaknesses:** She's a Dhasath.

## **Personality**

*"I haven't lived to twenty-eight by being unprepared."*

Thanica Vari is an outgoing individual with an irreverent sense of humour.  Having been elected Commander of the *Defiance*, Thanica has developed into a charming, empathetic young woman with an overwhelming sense of duty to protect her crew from harm.  She can be guarded about her own life and usually won't 'burden' anyone with her problems unless pressed on the issue.

While quite capable of violence, Thanica will usually try to avoid it wherever possible and will usually try to talk her way out of a situation (especially when the oponent she is facing off against is more physically capable than she is).  Thanica can be manipulative, though she is not self-serving.  She tends to plan things in advance and usually has an extra card (or pistol, or knife) up her sleeve.

For Thanica, no personal sacrifice is too great if it protects the crew of the *Defiance*.  This sense of duty even extends to people like Vrondich, whom she does not get on with.

## **Background**

**Role on Ship:** Commander and Pilot

**Crimes Committed:** Mutineer

**Backstory:** Thanica Vari was born to a Dhasath family that fled the Ragon attack on the league generations earlier and who settled on the Kiellar border planet of Karthoc. Despite the security offered by Kiellar Command, the Vari clan never attained citizenship eking out a meagre existence in a barren mountainous region, well out of the eye of anyone who might have attempted to victimise them. The clan remained proud, holding fast to the belief that the League would rise again from the ashes. As the years went past though, that seemed less and less likely and the younger generation began to look to building a real place for themselves under Kielar command.

Thanica dreamed of more and at age eighteen, much to the disapproval of her parents, signed on as an auxiliary for the Kiellar Fleet. Rapid reflexes and a natural gift for star-ship operations saw Thanica brought in as a pilot, though her non-citizen status meant that the odds of getting assigned to a ship that was a desirable posting, and wasn't likely to be destroyed, was extremely low. After serving on a Hyperspace Picket Ship for three years, Thanica was transferred to the *Defiance*, shipping prisoners out to slave mining colonies. Overall she considered this a major step up. Picket ships had a horrible tendency to get blown up. A prison transport was boring, but with the prisoners all held in stasis is was no more dangerous than a merchant run.

While Thanica has never had any particular loyalty to Kiellar Command, she had also never been tempted to compromise her route to citizenship until a number of human prisoners were loaded onto the ship who she mistook for other Dhasath.

Sensing her mood, and also realising that getting Thanica onboard would be just about essential if they want to escape afterwards Vrondich, the Chief Engineer, recruited Thanica to his plot for a mutiny on the ship.

## Adventures Since Joining The Crew

Prior to the mutiny on the *Defiance*, Thanica was tasked with getting the prisoners on side, then with securing the ship's bridge.  She successfully completed the first task, but failed at the second; after stabbing, and killing the Captain, Thanica was quickly overpowered by the rest of the bridge crew.  Thankfully, for her, the Ragon, Sshallah, appeared before the remaining bridge crew killed her in reprisal.  Thanica then stepped in to protect the surviving bridge crew, fearing that Sshallah might decide to feed on one or more of them.

Following on from this, and despite not particularly wanting the role, Thanica was elected as Captain of the Defiance along with Nathaniel Carter, one of the human prisoners.  Thanica reluctantly accepted the responsibility though immediately demoted herself to the role of 'Commander'.  Thanica was elected in a large part due to her very public role in the mutiny; this angered Vrondich who accused Thanica of manipulating the other crew to think she had come up with the idea of the mutiny, an idea which had been his.

When the crew arrived at the 'Pleasure Haven' station in search of supplies, Thanica concocted a plan to make money by cheating at cards, using herself as the crew's buy-in.  The plan went ahead and was unexpectedly successful, right up until the point that Kralmon-Lokar, a particularly unpleasant crime Lord, interupted the scam intent on (amongst other things), killing and eating the Dhasath Commander.  In the ensuing battle, Thanica was concussed while creating a distraction with Sshallah to draw Kralmon-Lokar out into the open.  Despite the injury, the distraction ultimately helped Carter and the other crew members were able to overpower and slay Kralmon-Lokar.

When the *Defiance* crash landed on Gadawei IV, Thanica was originally responsible for defending the ship from hostile locals, though in the ensuing battle she managed to get separated, captured and abducted for study.  The facility she was taken to turned out to have already been infiltrated by surgically altered Kiellar Command agents and, while the crew were able to free her relatively quickly, it was not before the Kiellar agents were able to install a 'saboteur chip' on her brainstem (which would prove to be a major problem for the crew later on).

Following her rescue, Thanica entered into a relationship with Captain Carter. Thanica initially tried to hide the relationship from the rest of the crew, fearing that she would be seen as having manipulated Carter. Gradually, the other crew members discovered what was going on; much to Thanica's relief, nobody was especially scandalised.

Following on from this, the crew met up with another former crew member of the Destiny, Dana Chrichton, now working as a 'Commissar' for an alien faction known as the Gollar Confederacy. The crew was enlisted to help retrieve a missing piece of technology which turned out to be a trap laid by the Comodore Ouroboros of Kiellar Command for Captain Carter. Thanica's saboteur chip was activated and she broadcast the ship's location before her body shut down.

The crew was ambushed and the human members captured by Kiellar Command, though Thanica survived due to the timely medical intervention of Amlai and Saessa, who successfully removed the chip and saved the dhasath's life.

Upon her recovery, Thanica was horrified by what she had done and offered to allow the crew to exact justice upon her, though they declined, instead agreeing to accompany Thanica on a suicidal 'false flag' operation to recover Carter from the Battlecruiser 'Zerataca' while flying a captured corvette. During the raid, Sho'chavuk inadvertantly opened the cell doors on the Zerataca's brig, sparking a riot. In the chaos the crew were able to escape the Battlecruiser by the skin of their teeth, though Thanica did notice that the Kiellar forces had seemingly chosen to allow the stricken getaway craft to escape, rather than shooting it down...