Kairishana sh’Zharath
Andorian Female

Place of Origin: Born On Andor In 2369

Height: 5’9″
Weight: 150 lbs
Hair Color: White
Eye Color: Dark Grey

A fairly typical Andorian appearance–blue skin with dark eyes, sleek long white hair with a silvery shine, a muscular but slender frame and an angular bone structure with long, mobile, expressive antennae.

Born only a few years before the start of the Dominion War, some of Kairishana’s (“Kairi” for short) earliest memories are of news reports on the Cardassians and the Dominion leading up to the start of the conflict, and later during the years of it. This spurred a childhood fascination with the areas of space and species involved; along with her native Andorian and Federation Standard, Kairi was fluent in Cardassian by 15 and Bajoran not long after. She has degrees in galactic affairs and political science, with a focus on that region.

Following her initial training, Kairi spent three years on Cardassia; following this she was recalled to headquarters where she was selected to attend advanced training in first contact procedures held at Starfleet Academy as part of a year-long advanced/continuing education course for Starfleet and diplomatic corps personnel, which she recently completed before receiving her current assignment. She was selected for the Vesta posting in part due to her recent first contact training, but also a natural compliment in knowledge and skill to the ship’s more senior diplomatic representative, Isabella Cerin, who while familiar with the languages, cultures, and political layouts of the Klingon and Romulan Empires, the Ferengi Alliance, the Dominion, and the Tzenkethi, had rather less expertise with the Cardassian Union and some other associated species in the region.

Strengths & Weaknesses:

+ Rapid physical reflexes which are matched by a quick analytical mind and an ability to rapidly assimilate information and adjust to changing situations.

– For a diplomat, Kairi has a relatively short temper…Though it’s not at all atypical for an Andorian. In an effort to avoid taking it out on alien counterparts (or political superiors in her own chain of command, for that matter), small pieces of decor and office equipment often suffer from her wrath in their stead–she went through no less than 22 datapads while on Cardassia, enough to get a reprimand for destruction of government property after one too many instances of accidentally snapping one in half in anger and frustration.

Ambitions: Kairi aspires to be part of making successful first contact with a new species. Long term, she sometimes dithers with the idea of getting involved in local Andorian planetary politics someday, as well.

Hobbies & Interests: Kairi enjoys ice dancing and ice sculpture carving, though she isn’t very good at the latter. She also likes sampling alien cuisine and drinks (a tendency somehow not damaged by her time on Cardassia), playing darts, and reading; she maintains that reading the works a culture reveres, reviles, or otherwise notes is an important component of coming to understand it; for this reason she has read a wide variety of traditional and modern Cardassian works prior to and during her assignment there. Like most Andorians, she is reasonably competent in a fight and with a ushaan-tor blade.

Languages:

Fluent: Federation Standard, Andorian, Cardassian, Bajoran.
Conversational: Klingon, Romulan, Vulcan.
Partial: Nausicaan, Lissepian, Breen.

Like many Andorians of her generation, Kairishana is an only child; her parents tried in vain to provide her with siblings but in the end were unsuccessful in this attempt. Other than the looming concerns of her people, she had a relatively happy and carefree childhood; growing up in the suburbs of Lor’Vela with her parents, Shelessara, a reporter covering the Andorian planetary government, Varasani, an artist and ice sculptor, Shavras, a scientist, and Thelian, a history professor at the University of Andor. Fascinated by the area of the galaxy embroiled in the Dominion War and events leading to and following it, and the species involved, she studied the Cardassian and Bajoran languages with a colleague of Thelian’s in her late childhood and early teens; later, she studied galactic affairs and political science at the University of Andor, taking the entrance exams for the Federation Diplomatic Corps shortly before her graduation and reporting for her initial training on Earth following.

During her latter university years, Kairi married Thy’rali, Ulaev, and Shelithan, whom she had been paired with in childhood; though some young Andorians were choosing not to go through with their pre-arranged matches in the wake of the resolution of the species fertility issues, the four had been carefully raised in proximity to one another by their own parents and found they were well-suited to one another; Kairi is especially fond of Thy’rali and vice versa. Kairi and her spouses are balancing career and family in the typical sense, but made perhaps more complicated than it is for some other species due to the number of people involved: During her time on Cardassia, the entire quartet relocated there, allowing for the conception and birth of their children, and later to Earth during her year there; however, this time the family is split to a degree: Kairi and Thy’rali, a writer, are aboard Vesta with the children (twins Aravaeli and Threlas, a 5 year old shen and thaan, and Salathiah, a 2 year old zhen), while Ulaev, a Starfleet security officer, has been assigned to a different ship, and Shelithan, a civilian xenoarcheologist, has gone back to traveling to dig sites on various worlds, with stops at the apartment the family is still maintaining on Earth at a complex in Alaska catering to Andorians while he prepares papers for publishing. While reluctant to place their three young children on board a ship which had so recently emerged from its recent time-jump incident and presumed destruction, the ship Ulaev received orders for did not allow family aboard, and after several years of lackluster publishing of papers Shelithan needed to return to active research in order to preserve his career. The family discussed the possibility of Thy’rali remaining on Earth or returning to Andor with the children, however she was dead-set against being left to raise three young children on her own and so the decision was made for them to accompany Kairishana aboard the Vesta.

2390 – 2394: Federation Embassy, Cardassia
2394 – 2395: Advanced First Contact Training, Starfleet Academy, Earth
2395 – Current: USS Vesta