Ilika Suhk:Tiji

**Ilika Suhk:Tiji** is a Suhkrahm female born in the trench city of Agoh, of the tribal-nation Basikela within the borders of the Olidom of Hvaas. An underexperienced tactician, she leads a crew of four aboard the Heshlum-Type 44 tank the *Warpath* in the Hvaas Grand Military. Enlisted at the age of sixteen by her father, Lakem, in the Youth Guard in the hopes that it would secure her future and allow her reproduction rights. She immediately became adept in the Youth Guard. Upon turning eighteen, she enlisted into the Hvaas Grand Military, choosing to serve in the Mechanized Armored Corps of the Mechanized Infantry branch of the Grand Army of Hvaas. After serving three years, she was allowed admission into the Women's War Academy. Here, she chose to become part of a tank crew in armored warfare. She served within several tanks, moving between tanks and learning in a classroom setting before finally seeing her first battle at Cartathop during an insurgency uprising. As tank gunner, she served under her mentor, Commander Jagkese of the Cataclysm.

After years of experience as a tank gunner, she was promoted to Osinneron Command Leader at 29. She was ordered to take command of the Warpath, which saw combat in the Kigbaas War. However, she would not see combat herself. Despite seeing some of it in the Cartathop Insurgency, Ilika instead looked elsewhere to climb the steep ladder within the Hvaasian military. Looking to the School of Special Tactics and Warfare, she enrolled and began training for her next step in her career.

## History

### Early Youth

Born in the Third Enlightenment of Rinchasi, in the 89th Saeculus of Rinchasi to Lakem Tekish:Suhk and Daru Sadit:Tiji, she was gifted the lineage name of Suhk:Tiji; thereby combining her name Ilika to create Ilika Suhk:Tiji. In accordance with the rite of newborns, she was taken from her home within the trench city, brought above surface and taken to a sanctuary where she was gradually introduce to the light of their sun. This was commonly known as sun baptism. Exposure to sunlight merely lasted fifteen seconds, but within those fifteen seconds, her body is partially ravaged by radiation. This forced her immune system to respond to the damage, thereby giving her body a fighting chance to live in the harsh existence of Remsar. After this ceremony of sun baptism, the newborn was brought back into the shadows of their home and given an injection of radical-strict imporite; to prevent the growth of cancer and promote the healthy growth of DNA now that her genetics have been altered.

Growing up, Ilika and the Suhk family found themselves living comfortably in Agoh until her father was promoted as chief researcher for the corporation, DenMec, which had a focus on improving the genetics for all people on Remsar. The only problem for them was that they would have to relocate to the trench city Kyakursa, deep within the Olidom and in the tribal-nation of Tekovot. Being only five provided some benefits, but her memories of Agoh would remain strong within her as they eventually left for Kyakursa. Upon arrival to Kyakursa, Ilika soon found it difficult to cope or even understand why her father was missing for many akrons. One akron, she did not even see her father's face for a single santhra, concerning her mother whom she remained at the household, raising Ilika by herself.

Daru, like many mothers of the Suhkrahm bloodline, taught their sons and daughters the way of life as a Suhkrahm. Among these important lessons included the ability to cope when emotional distress happened. As before Daru's generation, many of the males were obligated and sometimes conscripted by the Olidom to serve in the military to fight a multitude of tribal wars. With her husband now seemingly gone for long periods of time, Daru reflected back on her own memories of dealing with depression.

She sought to teach her daughter on using her imagination and explore her artistic side as a way to avoid any emotional depression. Raising a single child was no easy task as Ilika was far from being a quiet and peaceful child. Seeking an outlet, Ilika became violent and often times would harass children of her own age when she would interact with them at parks. Fearing for her child, Daru demanded her husband to give his time to her. Agreeing, Lakem stayed for two santhras but worked from home. This allowed him to properly give attention to Ilika. Unfortunately, no one understood why Ilika was becoming aggressive in spite of her father's attempt to be around her more.

One day, they discovered Ilika was being attacked by a group of girls and a single boy. The parents of these children managed to stop the attack but the attack left Ilika was a bruised face, bleeding lip, and fear that settled within her like seedling that would grow into something dark. Leaving home from where they were among friends and family, Kyakursa provided another challenge and that was living among different bloodlines.

Frustrated and afraid, Daru, demand that Lakem do something to help their daughter. A month after turning eleven, Lakem decided to take his daughter one day the core of the city, a place she had only seen from a distance within the confines of their enormous and maze-like city. Her father would explain to her that there are other bloodlines besides Suhkrahm, and that in Kyakursa, there were many who would not look like her, behave like her, or treat her equally. As they neared the rotating globe-like sphere core, she looked up and saw the true light of their Olidom. Every beam, every arm, every panel rotated at incredible and unpredictable ways, shifting and changing where the light would go.

With her father's words echoing in her mind, she knew she was in a different world, far from home.

By age sixteen, she was enlisted by her father into the Youth Guard, where she learned basic skills of survival, self-defense, tactics, and physical exercise that pushed her both physically and mentally. One lesson in particular had her and a group of twenty teens, venture outside the city to learn how to endure the sun and survive on basic supplies while sand and cracked ground became their friend. It was also a dangerous lesson, where the consequences and pain were as real as the heat that grew into excess pass 55 hadium. The temperatures were hot enough where exposed skin would sear from direct sunlight, leaving a burned skin and swelling pain as a lesson not to forget sunscreen. The class would endure this for a week, creating shelters in the land that rebuked them. They managed to salvage water where the air became thin, and found food where food could not be found. After the naanthkrim was over, they would return back to Hvaas, their skin black, their eyes red, and their teeth bloody from eating and drinking food mixed with sand.

The Youth Guard allowed her to experience a way of life that tribes that live in the sands of Rasha endure on a daily basis. Despite the harshness of the environment, she grew to love it and found herself volunteering santhralok (monthly), earning her immense respect by her superiors. Jealously still found its way among some of her classmates who believed as Suhkrahm shouldn't allow to be among them.

In

Despite the typical jealousy observed by her fellow classmates within the Youth Guard, she succeeded in graduating third in her class and achieved the Gulloninite Medal of Pathfinding. Her skills of scouting were sharpened over the course of two years, perfecting by the third and finally was allowed to teach newcomers in the Youth Guard. By the time she graduated however, she was approached by the Hvaas Grand Military to see if she was interested in pursuing a career within the military itself.

More than happy about her new found prospects and future, she agreed. Her father meanwhile discovered this and quietly approached an enlister to see if he could pull her out of the military, fearing that her chances of being seen by the Shadow Mind would be gone as a result. An official whom he spoke with argued that it was ultimately her choice to decide, despite the fact that the age of accountability and personal responsibility happened by the age of 21.

Dreading the notion that his daughter would now be an enlisted soldier of the Hvaas military, he attempted to fix the problem that he saw by sabotaging her enlistment. Only this was met with immense resistance by the military itself. Sabotage, ruse, trickery and fraudulence on behalf of family or other known relatives was illegal within the Kingdom. Her father was soon sentence to prison, leaving her mother alone. Knowledge of this was only learned by the time she was welcomed within the Women's War Academy.

Fearing now for her father's well being and freedom, she contacted leaders within her division. The leaders had explained the situation to Ilika, that her father had broken the law and an oath of loyalty to the Kingdom. He would be sentence for several saeculum's in prison outside of the city of Hvaas.

## Women's War Academy

The Women's War Academy is an academy built entirely around the idea of exploiting the biological neurology of the female brain, believing that females with a high order of intelligence could multitask under times of stress. This was seen as vital to the Hvaas Grand Military after the Glass War saw a shortage of combat-capable male soldiers. The academy is located and built directly into the mountain side of Akas, which sat between the village of Binush and the trench city Cruna.

Women within the Hvaas military were not regarded as being superior however, and are often trained side-by-side with their male counterparts from Dnakashi Military Academy during war games.

Ilika who had joined the Hvaas Grand Military at the age of 19, had joined as a recruit with the rank of Enlisted Junior. As an EJ, her responsibilities were plenty and education took centerfold in her training. For the first saeculum, physical exercise was paramount to recruits, forcing them to run on the cracked surface outside of the academy. Education followed directly behind physical exercise, where educators taught recruits in the arts of melee combat, weapon handling, equipment understanding, mathematics, science, geography, and history.

In her first year, she had been recruited into the Special Division of Predictable Intelligence. The division was comprised of numerous volunteers and those asked to join. Many of those who joined were immediately given numerous arithmetical problems to solve on a frequent basis, even outside of schooling. This was an attempt to see how often they were able to compute problems ranging from simple mathematical equations to problems that required extensive studying.

The SDPI was difficult, more difficult than combat divisions within the military.

It was here that Ilika struggled for the first time in a long time to keep up with her fellow classmates. Math, while one of her stronger skills, didn't realize the mental exhaustion that it had on her. She began to fall behind in her class as well as her physical exercises. By her second year, she was contemplating of washing out completely.