Artemis

Corrupted image taken in 2897

(Potentially)

Artemis was the Captain of the **Dawn's Hope** from 2897 until it was abandoned and decommissioned from UEE databases in 2925. Although the reason for the ship being damaged and abandoned remains unknown, it is indisputable that she enjoyed a renowned military career. Artemis led vast numbers of UEE Marine strike teams against Vanduul clans during her career and her extreme contempt for the Vanduul after experiencing a personal tragedy at their hands, is often regarded to be the reason she was so respected for the duration of her service by those that served under her.

*"Remember this men, you are Imperial Marines! Not all the Vanduul in the pits of hell could overrun you!"* - Artemis at a Vanduul raid in 2909 inspired by General Lewis Burwell Puller.

## History

Artemis was born Maya-Bella Curzon in the city of New Prime on Terra III to a very affluent family in the developing heart of UEE space. Her mother, Selestia Dawn, was a committed and hard-working engineer within the UEE often away from home on confidential missions at military installations across UEE space. Consequently, much of Maya-Bella's childhood was spent at home with her father, Tyonis Curzon, who had established a multi-billion UEC business enterprise in urban planning development and could often work from home to care for Maya and her younger sister.

Maya's youth was not uneventful. She would often rebel against her parents and authority figures when she felt challenged or not taken seriously, as growing up in such a high-class and snobbish household had left her feeling disconnected from her peers that were not so lucky in life. Many would see these outbursts as a spoilt child having a tantrum and this meant that Maya found it incredibly difficult to make and maintain any long term friendships with more humble peers. This made her ardently resistant to her father's wish that she pursue a career in white collar politics and she became determined to prove that she was nothing like her family. After being punished for several misdemeanours involving anti-social behaviour, petty theft and underage drinking aged just 16, she discovered that her father was having an affair with one of his colleagues and was embezzling money from his company at the same time. These issues finally boiled over after several months and she took it upon herself to run away from home and join the UEE's youth navy program.

### Early Career

Maya found a great deal of serenity and order within the navy as an efficient outlet for her temper while also being able to form lifelong bonds with her fellow troops as everyone was equal, regardless of social status outside of the forces. It seemed as though the navy was her natural calling, impressing her superiors and excelling in her academics. Thanks to her training, she was beginning to mature and develop into a valuable young woman, although she would soon find herself maturing far quicker than she was expecting to.

#### Personal Tragedy

In 2884, aged 19 and excelling within adult navy service at the rank of Ensign, Maya learned that her mother, while working in the Caliban system had become caught up in the fall of the system to Vanduul forces and the UEE could not extract her. With no viable options of saving her, Maya-Bella's mother was presumed dead and likely 'harvested' at the hands of the Vanduul. Devastated, Maya returned home to Terra III in an attempt to build bridges with her estranged father and sister, anxious that should anything happen to them, at least their bond could be their legacy rather than their feud. Maya-Bella returned to find that her father was filing for bankruptcy following the loss of a bid to consult on the Synthworld development, which had caused the majority of his company's shareholders to cut their losses and abandon him altogether. This crushing defeat had turned Maya's father into a drunk and Maya was concerned for the wellbeing of her sister, now age 15.

#### Cutting Ties

One evening, while apologising to her father for her actions as a teenager in an effort to get him to change his ways, the discussion became quite heated and Maya's father became enraged, telling her that no matter what she did, she would never live up to the woman her mother was. Despite Maya's best efforts to diffuse the confrontation, her father then proceeded to strike her in a drunken rage.

Now certain her father was nothing more than a washed-up lost cause, she fled her home with her sister and took her to live with their grandparents before she had to return to the Navy. That was the last time Maya-Bella ever saw her father.

#### Ambitious Return

Once back on duty, Maya had her heart set on proving her father's parting words wrong. She knew that she could make her late mother proud simply by doing the right thing, being a role model for her sister and succeeding in her career. With this nigh insatiable ambition in full force, every penny that Maya earned was invested straight back into additional training, resources and supplies. Over the next decade, she played a vital role in dozens of Vanduul clan raids across the systems as she began to rise through the ranks, often heralded by her fellow troops for being a rare gem of inspiration, she would be seen at the table discussing strategies that she would then go on to execute and command unlike many other troops of her calibre who often took more of a back-seat in the actual conflicts. Maya's quick wit and brutal resolve meant that even when a plan had failed, she could navigate her and her troops out of it safely and alive whilst still managing to complete the assignment in wiping out the Vanduul threat.

### Defining Moments

By 2890, Maya was establishing herself as a formidable asset to the Imperial Navy on the cusp of promotion to Commander and those serving with her began referring to her as *'Artemis - Goddess of the hunt',* a name that would remain for the rest of her life. Now aged 25, she was serving as bridge crew on the Navy ship **Dionysus** which was evacuating civilians and children from a high risk attack zone. When the lumbering vessel was moments away from being annihilated by a swarm of Vanduul Blade fighters, it was Artemis that convinced the Captain to wait for the swarms final laser offensive to hit the Dionysus' sensor array so that at the moment of impact she sent a feedback resonance through the beam, back at the Vanduul, causing a domino cascade of neutrino's that eliminated the entire swarm. This encounter won her several commendations from the UEE amongst many other benefits and her promotion to Commander.

In 2896, Artemis believed that while there was much more to be done in the fight against the Vanduul, it was time for a change. A change that could mean she was more effective in her ability to command troops and strategize. So, upon being promoted to Captain in 2897, she accepted an offer to join the UEE Marines by being given her own ship on the condition that she could choose her crew. Artemis was able to secure a good number of crewmen that she trusted to serve on her ship alongside several Privates and Ensigns. The ship, she named **Dawn's Hope** as a subtle yet poignant nod to her mother's maiden name and the proud journey she had endured to make her proud of her in death. Artemis decided that for its' maiden voyage the Dawn's Hope would cross the Terra system as a symbolic gesture to her mother, inviting her sister, who was now a successful university professor, along for the ride.

### Legacy

Captain Artemis endured hundreds of skirmishes during her time in charge of the Dawn's Hope working under the UEE Marines. Her crew were a family and they would rescue, defend, pursue and protect the people of UEE space for 28 years before the distinguished vessel was mysteriously run-aground on the Stanton moon of Lyria in 2925 where the crew and Artemis herself were presumed dead. The Dawn's Hope had severe damage to its internal components and breaches in the hull appeared to have come from the inside suggesting that if the crew were escaping something, then whatever it may have been, it was already inside.

Eerily, some 20 years later in the early months of 2945, a woman called Maestri Dawn had passed away in her sleep at the age of 80 in a retirement home in New York, Earth. She was undergoing a post-mortem, as all reported bodies must, when her DNA flagged as an identical match for Artemis. While many said that Artemis could not have survived long enough on Lyria and would have likely starved in her escape pod in any event within such conditions at the time, there are a selection of individuals within the navy who believe that her name was a careful anagram of 'Artemis' and her surname was simply a repurposing of her mother's own maiden name. These naval officers who had served under her during her service believed that she was more than capable of the feat and would only have done such a thing to protect those she cared about. The fact that she never revealed her true identity, they say, is because whatever she hid from, was still out there.