Celle Do'Nis

## Dossier

Celle is an engineer well versed in the construction of large-scale military and civilian installations. Her work has taken her from building hydroelectric dams for the Hegemony to bunker complexes for the war effort. She is also intimate with how to clear out enemy fortifications with minimal damage. Her typical position on a battlefield is in support of her allies as she sets up field fortifications and turrets while providing shield boosters to those under heavy fire. Only when pressed will she have to enter the frontline where she rains fire with grenades, bullets, and her trusty flamethrower.

## History

Celle Do’Nis is the third and final child in her family and the only one to go on to higher education. Being born to a lower caste, their options for work were limited by their talent as much as their lack of money. Most of her family were nothing special; her father was smart enough to go to college but did not have the money to attend when he was younger. Most of them worked as menial labor for factories and farms though they did have enough money to live a mildly comfortable life. They did not fear food shortages or medical treatment but luxuries were few and far between. Her good grades in school and early start to work meant her family thought the investment of what spare credits they had into her college was worth the risk of debt.

Celle started work at the age of 12 where she helped her mother who worked as a welder. Her young years were spent in school or on a construction site and through this, she became obsessed with building. To her, school was just a hindrance to the excitement of seeing the metal and glass towers of the construction site. It helped that she could easily get through her coursework if she paid attention but she was no genius. Her father helped tutor her even if some subjects were out of his ability to help with. Nevertheless, she was eager to go to work and see the massive structures that she was helping to build. Accidents happened all around her, but never to her, and death was something she had seen as early as the age of 15. The small jobs she had were not overly dangerous but the same could not be said for the laborers around her. Some crawled into confined spaces only to find asphyxiating gasses had accumulated inside and never came back out. Others were standing at the wrong place at the wrong time and materials fell on them, crushing their limbs or taking their life.

In fact, the first death she witnessed was that of a boy not much older than herself falling off one of the scaffolds and landing on his neck. He was dead instantly and the body lay only meters from her. At first, it scared her and she wanted to stay away from any tall point where she could not be safely secured. Then she heard of other deaths and realized that they were rare occurrences. Over the course of her time on various construction sites, she saw a dozen deaths, most of which were due to the negligence of the worker. Still, some of the deaths were from people in the upper castes who had never done these jobs pushing them to finish ahead of schedule. In their impatience, they forced their underlings into dangerous situations and when someone would die the supervisor would wash their hands of the incident without so much as a slap on the wrist. A great sense of unfairness swelled up at these sights even at Celle’s young age. Some say that kids have a natural sense of right and wrong and to the young batarian this stank of inequity. Death was never something Celle wanted to see, but the fact that it happened slowly stopped affecting her.

Finally, she was sent off to college and the atmosphere that she was thrust into was foreign to her. Higher castes flaunted their status and slacked on their coursework. Their excesses should have been their downfall but money always seemed to solve their problems. Many of the upper caste kids skipped class and had people like her take notes for them, do their homework, and even write some papers though this was all paid for. An upper caste was once caught cheating and they were only reprimanded because of a small donation from their parents. Celle barely had enough money to live and go to school just like a few of her other classmates. Because of their similar situation, they banded together and slowly a bond of comradery formed out of their desperate situation. They worked to help out anyone in their little band of lower caste members. They pooled their money, work, and knowledge so that they could afford a little better life while passing their classes with top marks. Slowly, duty to the Hegemony and their work for their fellow batarian became their purpose. They thought they might be able to change the attitudes of those in the upper castes by becoming them. To them, the corruption and perceived laziness of the upper echelons of their society needed to be purged, though they planned to do it with words or by enacting reforms.

Finally, Celle and her merry little band graduated. It was liberating but also terrifying. Celle had accomplished what no one in her family had before, even if it had been with a lot of help. Now she worked for a good company who was employed in designing many of the heavy infrastructure programs that the Hegemony was performing. Her civil engineering degree was put to good use and she was content, though a little stressed. Her newfound flow of money was enough to elevate her a few levels in the caste system but she took only the bare minimum so that she would not be totally shunned by her peers. Her austerity was self-imposed as she wanted to spread her wealth to those less fortunate. Celle believed that by doing this she could encourage some of the lower caste students in college to do this too when they got out and thereby making it a better system. What remained of her new wealth she funneled back to her family so they could have a few more days of fun a year. Maybe her father could someday realize his dream and go to college one day with the extra support she provided. Even if she wanted a better life for her family and the lower castes there was little she could do about it now.

Then, years past and she got more comfortable in her place in the hierarchy of the castes. Still, she never wanted to be like those she saw in college and she was always mindful of her position like any batarian would be, but for a much different reason. She saw her friends from college change and grow into monsters in her eyes. Some became powerful in their own right and climbed the social ladder with great strides only to lose themselves to their wealth and become opulent pigs like those they once despised. Others seemed to waver due to either their bad habits or their newfound prestige leading them to commit social suicide and become outcasts who fell into crime and poverty. Celle tried to stay grounded as she always went back to see her family and know their plight. Her friends seemed to drift farther and farther away from their families and some even scorned them as dull freeloaders or turncoats who would not help them for fear of reprisal by the upper castes.

Slowly, they all drifted away as Celle went on with her own endeavors. She knew how to rub elbows and play the game as anyone in her position would need to. Her goals of changing the Hegemony by words seemed to only fall further and further by the wayside as her work became her focus. Her old connections would come in handy sometimes but she loathed when she had to use the influence of people she knew to get projects or funding. She began to lose steam and seemed more deflated by the week.

In 2186, Commander Shepard destroyed the entire Bahak system. Nationalist zeal spread through the Hegemony and many signed up to fight the Alliance. Military spending soared and Celle felt a burning rage well up inside her. The young woman was fed up with her self imposed task as it seemed fruitless. Her plans to make lower caste students band together and help their peers seemed only to make them lazy and dependant on her help. Her social contacts only cared about climbing the caste system and could care less if the lower castes were left to rot. Everything just seemed futile and so a change of pace was welcomed.

The day after the annihilation of the Bahak system Celle signed up for the military. The training was tough and grueling. Many of her peers looked at her move into something they saw as beneath them as idiotic. Celle saw it as noble as she was with those less fortunate and they were part of a righteous cause to strike back at an enemy that attacked them unprovoked. Her time on construction sites had made her no stranger to hard labor but after so many years in a cushy life designing what she had once built the training was no easy task to complete. Several times she was close to wiping out but only her sense of purpose kept her from quitting. After this war, she would come back victorious and start a life as a politician and force the change she had tried to voluntarily create. Officer training was, of course, the next step after her time in basic training but war came faster than anticipated. The opening days of the Reaper War were brutal and many of her fellow fresh recruits were culled by idiotic orders by higher-ups and upper caste politicians who turned out to be collaborators with this new enemy.

Instead of building defenses to claim worlds from the human aggressors, they fought a different enemy. One that forced her to kill her own people to save them from being integrated into the enemy’s war machine. It scarred her. It scared her. It overwhelmed her. Luckily, she was selected to be pulled off of the dying world of Khar’Shan. Her talents were needed if the Hegemony was ever to rebuild and so she was plucked out of the frontlines and whisked away to Council space. This reprieve is probably the only thing that saved her from dying by her own hand or that of the Reapers. What little of the Hegemony’s war machine was left fled their worlds and left their fellow batarians to die at the hands of the Reapers. Celle would have been appalled at this had she been in a right state of mind but to her, the flight to the Citadel was more like a dream.

Only after the sin had been committed did she realize what she was party to. Now she was surrounded by death and suffering as she was forced into the refugee camps to build up batarian living standards wherever they were located. Struggling against Council stigmas and the defeatism of her own people she made some headway but it was a never-ending struggle. The displaced masses of the galaxy kept streaming in and when Earth fell, her heart sank again. The Hegemony’s great enemy was even defeated by this new menace and their superweapon the Crucible was nothing but a paper tiger. Even the terrorist, Commander Shepard, had died to the Reapers and though it was a small blessing it was only one small good note in s flood of bad news. Unlike the fall of Khar’Shan, this time such a crushing defeat did not shake her resolve. Instead, it spurred her on to make this war as painful as possible for this new foe. To make them pay for every inch of land with so many lives it would bleed them dry. Still, she held onto her old grudges and her time in the camps only fueled her hatred of the upper castes as they condemned so many to death on forsaken worlds or in the ghettos the survivors now inhabited.

So she joined the fight once again. This time for better or for worse with the people she once called her enemy. Be they the aliens that caused her people to suffer for so long or the upper caste types who would go on to use people like her to live just a little longer she would fight with them so that maybe survival could be assured long enough for her vision of batarian society could be met. There would be no fleeing from this fight only a defiant last stand until either she was left standing or the Reapers were wiped out. If the combined assault on earth by the galaxies forces showed anything it was that no matter the species those leading them had failed long before this war. Though this could be called a fight for survival it was really just a desperate struggle to see how many of the enemy Celle and her new allies can drag down with them. If she survives it is just a bonus but one she hopes for all the same.