Character Profile - T'Shan

T’Shan
Vulcan/Andorian Female

Place of Origin: USS Sojourner

Physical Description

T’Shan is the result of the meddling of extradimensional beings as gratitude to her parents, Starfleet officers who found themselves in a position to save the beings on a long-distance exploration mission. Her anatomy is not so much a hybrid Vulcan/Andorian physiology, but one with elements of both and several traits inspired by but not featured in either. She is not a higher being by any means, her overall physical condition is equal to that of a healthy Vulcan woman of her age and lifestyle. Her hearing is slightly better than that of an average Vulcan, but her eyesight is a little below standard, closer to an Andorian average.

Her base skin tone is a cerulean blue except for a blotchy strip of lime green that runs from slightly above the middle of her eyebrows to a bit below her navel. The green and blue portions darken as a tanning response. Her hair is thermoreactive and whitens when warm, blackening at the ends. Her eyebrows however are purely black and speak to her Vulcan ancestry, but thicker than would be common, even in her father’s family. Her ears are also large and pointed in the Vulcan fashion. She has lavender eyes.

She experiences a discomfort there is no word for in Federation standard in average temperatures where her body will think it is both too hot and too cold, she can endure great extremes at either end but prefers an excess of thirty C or less than 8 for maximum comfort, and will often wear thermal or cooling uniform underlays where she does not have a room to herself where she can set the temperature.

Her metabolism can be unpredictable, and although she has the iron stomach of a Vulcan, she has several common Andorian allergies, but most are treatable. She has an Andorian predisposition to increased injury from several types of energy weapons that can paralyse her body’s healing factor, but she also possesses the typical Vulcan resistance to many kinds of ionising radiation. She keeps fit through regular exercise, following an Andorian regime of daily holographic challenges and preparative body-strength exercises.

Her antenna are excessively sensitive by Andorian standards, which grants her an unrivalled spatial awareness in open areas. In any enclosed space however, like almost everywhere one finds on a starship, she will bury them in her hair when she does not have confidence in sustained silence or stillness to keep them from overwhelming her. Fortunately her thick hair provides quite excellent insulation, and as such many don’t think or believe that she has them. Her telepathic abilities are fairly mild, not particularly developed and are purely touch-based.

Personality Profile

T’Shan has always been an overachiever, and this seems unlikely to change. She is energetic, attentive, and sympathetic to the needs and feelings of those around her, while essentially logical in the Vulcan tradition. In spite of her consistently positive intentions, to the less logical, she can seem cold and odd.

She maintains Kolihnar and all the necessary exercises (and some unnecessary) to suppress her emotions, but her powerful Andorian instincts and adrenal glands can overcome her usually masterful calm in the event of any circumstance that activates her well-buried fight-or-flight response.

She socialises eagerly but can miss some cues and overstep some boundaries among any society less literal and direct than Vulcans or Andorians, and as such she is strategic about how deeply she engages others outside of a professional setting.

She takes great pride in her work, and is generally positive and optimistic, but can be prone to mood swings in emotionally extreme circumstances, though these are rarely obvious to others. She is happiest when she has a task to perform, and functions well with others but better apart.

In spite of her kolinahr, she is competitive and has difficulty turning down challenges. She takes the honour of both her Andorian clan and Vulcan lineage seriously, though sometimes struggles to reconcile the standards and expectations of both in a single existence. She wishes she was closer to her mother’s people.

She enjoys most kinds of recreation but is very capable of entertaining herself for almost indefinite periods. Since childhood she has learned and practiced the amvhuii (a wooden instrument likened to an Andorian didgeridoo) but does not consider her abilities to be at the level where others should witness them.

She reads prolifically during her downtime, and follows the teachings of Savaar, an almost 300-year old Vulcan pacifist philosopher who leads a total non-violence movement. For reasons of personal ethics, she will not consider security or tactical assignments, but has no qualms with the performance of her duties that may be in support of acts she might consider defensive violence performed by others. She will pinch a neck or lightly stun when required, but if asked to launch a torpedo, she would face a dilemma.

She is a competent officer in all departments except flight control and adapts quickly to the rhythms of any station, but in pure experience she’s strongest at the head of a competent Operations department. She can be exacting as a leader but has awareness and sympathy for the limits of those under her command.

Early years Biography

2370
T’Shan is conceived through the intervention of a multidimensional being. Her parents had hoped for descendant children but found themselves incompatible even with the best efforts of Federation medical science. She is born towards the end of the year as a healthy, and somewhat medically remarkable child. There were 32 papers published about her by credentialed scientists before her birth.

She is named T’Shanthosa ko-fu’Rovak Zheishiotsu-Aitanovar in the traditions of both side of her ancestry, but only ever known as T’Shan.

Her parents raise her aboard the USS Sojourner until its return to port four years later.

2374
In 2374 T’Shan’s mother Surtha felt drawn back to the distant planet alongside several other Sojourner crewmembers who had been similarly ‘rewarded’ on the mission. She was not seen again, and T’Shan would later learn that to the best knowledge of Starfleet, they had ascended to a higher plane of existence.
T’Shan was left to be raised alone by her father, who requested transfer to Vulcan, where she would be raised in the traditional ways.

2386
Even after achieving the third-highest aptitude test of her graduating secondary education cohort, T’Shan is denied entry to the Vulcan Science Academy on the grounds that she was not entitled to enroll as a native Vulcan, and must reapply as a resident alien. Though the rejection devastated the young woman, the anonymous intercession of a certain Ambassador served to to overcome the prejudices of the admissions body.

T’Shan instead declines their offer, and despite her almost single-minded focus on becoming a scientist since the age of eight, applies for the Andorian Imperial Guard.

2387
T’Shan visits Andoria for the first time. Her mother’s clan reject her, but do not deny her lineage, and allow her to wear the name Zhai, but not to be addressed by it. She enlists in the Imperial Guard’s officer school, and after a few months of study she sets off on her first tour, which starts less than a week before the Romulan cataclysm of Hobus.

2388
Six months before her scheduled graduation, T’Shan is challenged by another enlistee to Ushaan combat over a love rivalry. T’Shan is victorious at the cost of the challengers life and resigns her commission shortly after. She would tell the academy overseers unable to accept the violence inherent to the Imperial Guard lifestyle, and they granted her an honourable discharge.

2388
T’Shan is accepted at a mid-semester intake at Starfleet Academy due to her prior experience. She takes the Operations track, specialising in starship operations and management.

History

2390
T’Shan graduates second in her class after the conclusion of her cadet cruise. Her first assignment is to Utopia Planitia as an Operations officer with the reconstruction efforts. The scale of their work meant her individual contributions went largely unnoticed, but over her three years on the station she earned a deserved reputation as a dependable operator.

2394
T’Shan accepts assignment aboard the USS Attenborough, a light explorer venturing galactic south. Within a year she was assistant chief of operations, and seemed to be on the fast-track for command.

2395
An official reprimand is entered onto T’Shan’s file after an incident during an urgent diplomatic mission. An early-stage warp-capable culture who had voted against Federation membership had been invaded by another warp-capable race of warlike zealots. During the course of the diplomatic mission, T’Shan found herself seduced by an individual she did not know was being prepared as a sacrifice to the invaders to bring peace.

When the invaders found that their sacrifice had been sullied, they withdrew from the talks and scoured the largest continent. Though T’Shan’s actions were not found to be negligent, in her Captain’s view she had exercised poor judgement with unforeseeable but devastating consequences.

2396
T’Shan takes a three-month sabbatical and returns to Vulcan to re-take the Kolinahr ritual and work with Masters to better suppress her emotions. After the completion of the ritual, she is assigned to the USS Letayo as its first operations chief after a fresh refit.

2398
T’Shan learns that her father has resigned his commission and gone into exile in Vulcan’s forge, after he made unsubstantiated allegations against the head of Starfleet Security, accusing her of murder and conspiracy. The witnesses he presented seemed determined to discredit him, and the inquiry was quickly dropped after their testimony exonerated the Commodore.

2399
Ready for a new challenge, T’Shan puts in a request for a transfer.