Tassiana

## Tassiana nar Anxo

Adopted by an asari mother after the death of her biological parents, **Tassiana nar Anxo** is a quarian mercenary within the Vengeful Spirits and a former member of the *Anxo*.

## Biography

To understand Tassiana, one must look back at the events leading up to her birth - events that would shape the person she would become and affect her for the rest of her life. Tassiana nar Anxo was born the daughter of Anjia'Ilus and Ren'Tirrel vas Milazi, a pair of quarian smugglers widely known for being able to get anything in or out of the Fleet. They were mostly small-time, bringing in things ranging from wildly unorthodox pornography to experimental suit modifications and exporting quarian weaponry, technology, and rare ship parts. And while they were rather successful, they always managed to stay mostly under the radar; but their position operating within the fleet was unique, and that eventually caught the interest of more dangerous clientele.

Ren and Anjia were contacted by an asari mercenary band operating out of Omega, calling themselves Owea's Titans, who wanted to do something big - something that would put them on the same level as the Blue Suns and Eclipse. They wanted the pair to commandeer a ship, load it up with as much of the Fleet's eezo supply as it could carry, and bring it to Omega. In exchange, the Titans offered the vas Milazis an extremely significant sum of credits, and as a show of good faith even promised them a quarter of the credits in advance to prove that they were legit.

Anjia, who was heavily pregnant with Tassiana at the time, was strongly against the Titans' scheme, as she knew it most likely meant exile if they were captured, but Ren had always been a man with big ambitions. In the end, greed swayed the both of them to risk it all and take the job. It took a bit of planning and some favors being called in, but eventually they were ready - or so they thought. By a spectacular combination of bad luck and poor execution, their plan progressed no further than stealing a ship, which was very nearly blasted out of the sky by an entire fleet of angry quarians as they hastily made their escape. They just barely managed to get away, with both of them being severely injured in the commotion, and limped into Omega to nurse their wounds under the protection of one of their off-Fleet contacts, an asari named Teofilia T'Iowe, before their rendezvous with the Titans.

Ren patched himself up as best as he could - though he knew he was likely only delaying the inevitable - before going to meet with Owea's Titans to explain to them that the heist had failed, and to sheepishly admit that he'd spent most of their money just trying to put the plan into motion. Infuriated, and far too high to be capable of any reasonable thought, the Titans opened fire on Ren, shredding his suit and killing him on the spot before deciding to go after Anjia as well. Unbeknownst to them, however, Anjia was already dead. She had gone into labor early, likely brought on by a combination of the immense stress she was under and a terrible, blood-boiling infection, and had only just managed to give birth before succumbing to her wounds. The Titans had found out about the couple's plans to stay with Teofilia after digging into Ren's omni-tool and were closing in quickly on her apartment, but the asari knew Ren's silence meant he was likely dead as well, and fled with the infant Tassiana. By the time the Titans reached Teofilia's apartment and found Anjia dead, her body had already begun to grow cold.

Tila took shelter deep in the unmapped, abandoned eezo mines of Omega with Tassiana, who was already deathly ill due to the filthy environment she'd been born into. In a surprising show of selflessness, Teofilia did everything in her power to keep the quarian baby alive. Having studied medicine for a time, she knew enough to administer powerful antibiotics to quell the infection, and shielded her from the toxic environment with a powerful biotic bubble. Although it was utterly exhausting for her to sustain, Teofilia managed to keep the bubble up for several days until she was able to resurface and buy an actual quarian sterility bubble to place Tass inside of.

It took a while for Tassiana to stabilize, and for the attention put on them by Owea's Titans to die down, but eventually Teofilia deemed it safe enough to come out of hiding and take Tass to a doctor to get her some real help. The asari and newly orphaned quarian kept a low profile for the next several months, with Tass in and out of the clinic with fevers and Tila searching for a place for the two of them to stay at. Fortunately, thanks to her having already established a good relationship with Omega's matriarch, Aria T'Loak, in the past, Teofilia was offered a small, cheap apartment and a steady supply of credits to live off of - the catch being that she would provide Aria - and only Aria - with her rather unique services until otherwise stated.

It worked, for a few years, at least. Teofilia managed to balance working for Aria with being the adoptive mother of Tassiana fairly well, and Tass - although living on what was arguably the most dangerous space station in the galaxy - was happy. She spent a lot of time running around with all of the other grimy orphans on the station, causing mayhem and getting into trouble wherever she went: stealing, sneaking into abandoned or otherwise off-limits areas, getting into fights with anyone who looked at her sideways, and antagonizing anyone from crooked store vendors to drugged-out vorcha. It's safe to say that Tila spent a small fortune on suit repairs and medicine for Tassiana, whose scuffles would almost always leave her with a cracked visor or punctured sleeve before she was rushed to a clinic.

It was after one such fight, while she was recovering in the clinic, that Tassiana was visited by a giant scarred turian who tersely informed her that she was being returned to the Fleet - immediately. Tass protested quite violently until the turian revealed that Teofilia had gotten caught up in something that she didn't want to follow her home, and had therefore begged Aria for one final favor before she disappeared: bring Tassiana back to the quarian Fleet.

Heartbroken, and disbelieving that anything could spook her adoptive mother, it took the turian quite literally throwing the young girl over his shoulder and carrying her to the shuttle to get her off of Omega. As one might expect, she wasn't happy about being abandoned and returned to the Fleet - a place she'd never been, and had no desire to go to. Sadly for her, though, she wasn't given much of a choice in the matter. To make matters worse, at least in her mind, the Conclave and Admirals were also well-aware of whose child she was. Teofilia had told her a few times about her parents and what they'd done, and Tass had a feeling people hadn't just forgotten their betrayal in the past ten years.

Although her return came as something of a surprise - and her being delivered by Aria's people, no less - the quarians made an attempt to welcome her back to the Fleet by inviting her aboard the Anxo, the vessel her mother was originally born on. She didn't have any family still living, so she was instead placed in the care of an older woman who was to serve as her guardian until she became of age.

Unfortunately, what started as merely a uncomfortable situation quickly snowballed into what Tassiana believed to be her own personal hell; her guardian, Etina, remembered well what Tass' parents tried to do, and on the few occasions that she deigned to acknowledge Tass at all, she treated her with complete and utter contempt - even outright hostility at times. She was also forced to attend school, something that didn't suit her at all, and it wasn't long before she starting picking fights with anyone and everyone she could just to get sent away. Her outbursts became so bad that she hospitalized another girl after flinging her across the room in a dazzling display of her latent biotics, at which point she was severely punished by her captain - or she would've been, if they'd have been able to find her.

She disappeared most days, hiding deep in the systems of the Anxo, crawling through vents and finding solace in the solitude. It took her years, but she found places where no-one had been in ages - places that she would spend days, even weeks at a time holed up in before resurfacing to steal enough food and water to stay alive. It was in those secret spaces that she hid when she got into fights, was caught stealing, or just needed to escape the constant judgement of her people. Many people aboard the Anxo saw her as a menace, some even going as far as to nickname her the 'Outlaw of the Anxo', and her reputation as a pariah on the ship only grew worse.

One might assume that over time the fire raging inside of Tassiana would dim, and that she eventually mellowed out, but entering her teenage years Tass found her restlessness and animosity only growing worse. She could hardly interact with anyone aboard the ship without an altercation of some sort occurring - usually one involving her unstable yet rapidly developing biotic abilities; it got to the point where the Anxo's captain, Filla'Gos vas Anxo, had to seek Tass out and threaten to bring her before the Admiralty Board if she didn't stop. Rather than stop, though, Tassiana decided she'd make the ultimate escape and stow away on a trading ship heading to Omega, leaving the misery of the Fleet behind forever.

Unfortunately for her - or fortunately, depending on how one looks at it, she was discovered shortly before they arrived on the station. She was taken back to the Fleet and hauled, extremely unwillingly, to Filla'Gos' cabin where instead of being punished, Filla presented Tassiana with an shocking offer: if she agreed to curb the use of her biotics and stop her outbursts against the rest of the ship's population, Filla would offer her an unofficial place aboard one of their smaller resource gathering vessels, along with limited weapon and tactics training. After getting over her initial disbelief at the situation, Tass took a moment to consider everything the Captain said and very cautiously accepted her terms. From then on, she was recognized as an unofficial member of the Veluzia, and in her extended absence from the Anxo following her deal with the Captain, the bad reputation she had grown so used to slowly faded away.

The crew of the Veluzia took it upon themselves to train Tassiana, some of them doing it because they didn't want her to be completely useless, but others because they believed she still had the potential to become someone great - despite her rocky past. She excelled at using guns, and it became clear that combat was where both her skills and her interests laid. And although she didn't have anyone to help her figure out how to control her biotics, she used any time she had alone to train and really push herself to her limit to figure out what exactly she was capable of. When she finally turned eighteen, she was ready to become an official crew member of the Veluzia - and more than ready to finally have the freedom to go out and explore the galaxy.

She spent as much time as possible on the Veluzia, sometimes in search of spare parts, sometimes to oversee an exchange, once even to escort a newly procured ship back to Fleet - anything to get away. Deep down she had the nagging desire to go back to Omega, to try and find out what became of Teofilia - the woman she considered her mother - but the opportunity to do so never presented itself. She had a sneaking suspicion that any tasks assigned to the Veluzia were intentionally aimed away from Omega, to keep her from going back, but, then again, she had never been the most trusting; even now, after all the time she'd spent with her crew, she never truly let her guard down around them. That isn't to say she didn't care about them, in fact, they were probably the only people she didn't actually mind being stuck with, it was just hard for her to express that to them without making herself uncomfortable.

Little of note happened in the two years after her eighteenth birthday, but several months after turning twenty an integral piece of the Anxo's filtration systems was damaged, and Tassiana and the Veluzia's crew were among a handful of ships chosen to go out and find a replacement part to get it fixed. Tass and her crew were sent to Korlus, a stiflingly hot, trash-ridden garbage heap of a planet in the Terminus Systems largely inhabited by criminals, scrappers, and gangs. Although not at all pleasant - not even for the people living there - Korlus was almost guaranteed to have what they were looking for given the endless number of crashed ships littering the planet's hellish surface. After a rather rocky landing, Tass and the rest of the crew began asking around for anyone who may have had the part they need, and were pointed in the direction of a group of scavengers who had set up shop in the stripped-out carcass of a massive gunship.

Immediately upon entering, Tassiana sensed something about the situation was amiss. The so-called scavengers' operation looked far too sophisticated for them to just be the common trash-diggers they were pretending to be, and a cursory glance around revealed they had more weapons and drugs laying around than scrap. In fact, she didn't see a single piece of machinery that could've been of use to them, and told the Veluzia's captain just that - she knew something was wrong and wanted to get out of there. The captain, though, knowing how desperately they needed that part, moved forward to begin negotiations with the sickly-looking batarian who seemed to be in charge.

Everything else that happened that day was a blur. The next thing the group of quarians knew, they'd been surrounded, and their attackers began electrocuting each of them into submission. Tassiana panicked; with her captain already having been taken down, and the rest of them being outnumbered three to one, she let loose a massive burst of raw biotic energy. But never having used her biotics offensively, she lost control, and the instability of Tassiana's abilities set of a massive chain of explosions that completely engulfed everyone and everything around her.

When she opened her eyes again, everyone was dead - her crew and the scrappers both - and the wreckage of the ship she had been standing in had been blown apart. The shock of what just happened - what she had just caused - sent her into a daze; she felt like her entire body had gone numb. She was ready to turn around and dazedly stumble back to the ship when a shaky, charred hand reached out and grabbed her ankle...the hand of a scout, a woman named Despina, who seemed to be the only other one to survive the explosion. Tassiana snapped into action, picking up the smaller quarian and carrying her all the way back to their ship. She took off from Korlus in a rush and sent a distressed message to the Fleet explaining Despina's condition, and as soon as they arrived the injured woman was rushed to the med-bay to be treated.

Back aboard the Anxo, Tassiana knew she couldn't tell the truth about what happened. She risked exile, even execution if she did. So instead she spun a brief, emotionally-detached story about slavers capturing everyone else while she had stayed back to guard the ship. She also explained that Despina had been the only one to escape, but was caught in the blast of a grenade and had barely made it back to the ship; with the wounds she'd sustained, Tass felt guilty, but she knew there was virtually no way Despina would survive to refute her story.

And Tass was right. Despina died in the hospital later that day, her suit having been blasted open, exposing her fragile body to infection, but not before she was able to chokingly gasp out three dying words: *She...killed...everyone.* Despite the lack of evidence, Tassiana's story was shaky at best, and her history of violence made it easy to believe that Despina was telling the truth. In all honestly, people \*wanted\* to blame her. Tassiana was arrested under suspicion of treason and imprisoned aboard one of the Fleet's military vessels until the Admiralty Board could decide what to do with her.

It took several weeks before she was finally called to a trial. The factual evidence against her was not overwhelming, but the trial was centered more on her character rather than whether she'd actually committed the crime. The Admirals unanimously agreed that she had never placed the safety of the Fleet above her own petty whims and desires, recalling her many past alterations and scornful dismissal of nearly everything she'd been provided, and pointed out that she'd acted so poorly towards her own people that no-one was even willing to speak on her behalf at the trial. Her captain, Filla'Gos, had stayed silent next to Tassiana until called upon to give her opinion on what should be done. As she had years before, Filla looked at Tass, knowing there was only one way out of this for her, and told the Board that she believed the best course of action was to send Tassiana on her pilgrimage. If she could find something to prove her loyalty and dedication to the Fleet, she would be welcomed back and forgiven for her mistakes in the past. If not, she couldn't return, and would live out the rest of her life as an exile - following in the footsteps of her parents.

Though somewhat taken aback, this solution satisfied the Admirals, and they agreed to Filla'Gos' proposal. Tassiana was given no more than a small pack of supplies, flown to Omega, and dropped off without ceremony. But despite her dire circumstances, and ignoring the fact that she'd essentially been exiled, Tassiana turned around to look at the red lights of Omega around her and smiled, genuinely, for the first time in a long time. Finally, after a lifetime of feeling like she'd been caged and left to rot, Tassiana felt free. And with a whole galaxy waiting for her, she planned on putting her freedom to very good, very profitable use...

## Personality

Most quarians feel bound to one another, whether through some inbred sense of community or a desire to better their species and ensure their collective survival. Tassiana feels no such obligation; in all honesty, she spurns her race, and feels most comfortable when she's as far from the Fleet as she can get. Perhaps it's because she grew accustomed to running rampant through the alleys of Omega, unfettered by the Fleet's influence, or maybe the way she was treated after being brought back left her bitter. Whatever the reason, she feels a certain disconnection from the quarians. In her eyes, she is the opposite of everything they value: selfish, competitive, secretive, aloof - and she sees no need to change any of that just to conform to their expectations.

Tassiana's early years on Omega, although brief, taught her she had to be strong if she wanted to survive. She learned to always make due with whatever is available, no matter how little that is, and that sticking to one strategy won't always work; adaptability is key. She tries to come up with backup plans and alternate ideas in case something fails, and is rarely unprepared for whatever may come next. That said, she also tries to be as straightforward as possible - be that in a fight or in a conversation. She doesn't like to overcomplicate things, and once she's chosen to do something, she almost always follows through.

Tass isn't usually very chatty, but if she has a question she won't hesitate to ask, and if she has a problem she will gladly - and loudly - voice her concerns. Unless something catches her interest, she remains quietly aloof in most circumstances. Her solemnity can be somewhat frustrating, especially when it's blatantly obvious that she's simply choosing to ignore whatever is being said, but there are times when she'll surprise everyone by murmuring a snarky comment that reveals she's actually been listening to everything. She got quite good at feigning ignorance aboard the Fleet, where she would often catch people whispering behind her back, and like most quarians she has a mean poker face.

Tassiana considers herself quite indomitable. She won't often back down from a challenge - she's quite competitive, more than most people realize - but this can put her in some tight spots since she doesn't show the least degree of self-restraint, ever, in anything she does. Her selfishness and lack of regard for others has left her with few friends, so she's had to grow accustomed to being on her own and not leaning on others for help. This self-imposed isolation throughout her life helped her learn how to do things on her own, though, turning her into quite the independent young woman but leaving her interpersonal skills with something to be desired.

Were Tassiana ever asked what she considered the most important thing in her life to be, she'd state that nothing in her life is more important than herself. But, other than that: money. Self-preservation and greed go hand-in-hand, and she possesses both qualities in spades. If she's being paid, Tassiana doesn't often care what she has to do, what it involves, or who she screws over in the process of doing it. She feels a certain disdain for the universe at large, and is particularly unconcerned with how her actions affect others. It would be fair to say that she possesses a certain degree of ruthlessness, and now, with the newfound freedom to do whatever she wants, the galaxy would do good to sleep with one eye open.

## Physical Description

Tassiana fills out an abnormally tall and defined figure, standing a massive 5'11" and weighing right around 185 pounds. She is extremely fit, and takes great pride in her rather Herculean body; it's all she \*can\* take pride in, really, as it's the only thing about her that anyone is clearly able to see. She is much heavier than the average quarian - something that can be partially attributed to her similarly-larger than average stature - but the majority of that weight is made up of tight, sinewy muscle. Looking at her, it would be difficult to point out any part of her body that \*didn't\* look statuesquely chiseled under the heavy fitted material of her suit.

Cold blue eyes hide behind a cool blue mask, with an asymmetrically-lined navy and grey scarf framing the hazy silhouette of Tass' face and trailing loosely down her torso. The rest of her outfit is comprised of muted greys and blacks, with the exception of her skirt, which matches the blue shade of her headscarf. Overall, Tassiana's suit looks rather worn out, with frays, scuffs, a tear down the side of her skirt, and a long scratch across the front of her mask that she still yet to fix, giving her a slightly reckless, rough-and-tumble appearance - a look that fits her quite well, given her personality. A weapon belt is also slung across her shoulders holding her Adas Anti-Synthetic Rifle and several biotic grenades, while her Carnifex pistol hangs threateningly at her hip.

## Armament

Tassiana utilizes an Adas Anty-Synthetic Rifle and an M-6 Carnifex heavy pistol. Her biotics, though she's untrained, are usable in combat. She uses the Combat Abilities Barricade, Concussive Shot, Incinerate and Tech Armor.

## Appearances

* Faces, New and Old
* Depot Dowanubo