Name: Vespa Tehrani
Age: 34
Race: Human, born on the planet Senar. Member of the Voice of Senar cult and its highly spiritualised hive mind, 'the Harmony'.
Appearance: Vespa is of average height and build, with a sandy complexion and wispy, mousy brown hair that she wears short for work purposes. She has a nubian nose and thin lips, though her eye colour is not natural due to a pair of sight-enhancing implants that have replaced the original lenses of both eyes. Such occular implants are extremely common on Senar and have the side effect of colouring the user's irises a milky silver-blue...which doesn't help Vespa's rather odd demeanour one bit.
The traditional dress for members of the Voice of Senar is their distinctive white and blue robes. Obviously this is not always practical on a starship, and the crew of the
Chiaroscuro are more likely to see her in a simple engineer's jumpsuit or else her sealed hazardous environment suit.
Job Description: Drone controller (although she prefers the more floral Senar title, 'animus'). She remotely operates a team of salvage androids in environments which are too extreme or too dangerous to send human operators.
Education: Vespa is a qualified animus of the Voice of Senar's kine guild.
Prior Experience: She has eight years experience in repairing and directing drones in mining operations on Senar's mineral-rich moons. Currently, she is qualified to operate up to four drones at once.
Personality: Serene, spiritual, and has an unfortunate tendency to stare due to her mind often operating on two planes at once. Vespa is quite talkative and is happy to discuss work and her philosophical views with the rest of the crew, although her use of “we” as a personal pronoun can take a bit of getting used to. When she is alone ('alone' being a relative term for a member of a hive mind) she likes to pass time by stargazing.
Background: Of the various groups that retreated to the fringe worlds seeking spiritual escape after the Triple Alliance War, the Voice of Senar (hailing from the planet of the same name) is probably one of the strangest. Believing that all conflict stemmed from disunity, they sought to merge their acolytes in a single gestalt consciousness which they called 'the Harmony'. This was achieved by integrating each citizen with a cortical implant, each of which was in turn connected to a vast data transfer network. This artificial hive mind allows the members of the Harmony to share their thoughts, feelings and experiences on an almost innate level. As the Voice of Senar began to spread out across space, a series of hyperwave transmitters allowed the members of the Harmony to hear each other even over light years of distance. While undoubtedly advantageous in terms of empathy and information exchange, the Harmony gives its members some unusual outlooks on personal identity, privacy and even death - which outsiders find weird if not outright disturbing.
With every citizen of Senar receiving a cortical implant at a young age, the members of the Harmony have little reservation about fitting their bodies with further implants to assist in their work and their day to day lives. Not surprisingly, many outsiders find this practice strange, or even repulsive, adding to the Voice of Senar's mixed reputation.
Strange though they are, no-one could argue that the Voice of Senar aren't productive members of the Terran Alliance. Because of their emphasis on integrating the bionic with the organic, the Voice of Senar also produce some of the most advanced robots in the Alliance. Many of these are operated by specialists known as anima, who direct the androids as if they were extensions of their own bodies. Their ability to multiply labour by controlling several drones at once (easy for someone who has been sharing and partitioning their mind for most of their life anyway) is their unique selling point in a market of historically unpopular AIs and more limited non-sentient robots.
Because of Senar's rather esoteric technology, the qualifications of their kine guild were only officially recognised by the Athenian IRE (Institute of Robotics Engineers) two years ago. However, it wasn't long after that before an influx of Senar anima and other technical specialists entered the market as they sought out lucrative employment opportunities for their skills (and, inevitably, a chance to spread the ideals of the Harmony across the wider Terran Alliance). Vespa is one such specialist, who until recently was working on reconstruction work on the glassworld of Haber VI. When a job opening was announced on the salvage vessel
Chiaroscuro, the group of anima working on Haber put forward Vespa as one of their more experienced engineers. The offer of a Senar drone squad - with a dedicated handler and maintainer - was a welcome opportunity to reduce the risks (and costs) of a generally dirty and dangerous operation, and Vespa secured the job despite seriously weirding out her interviewers.
Personal Equipment: Vespa brought a team of six androids with her to the
Chiaroscuro, as well as all the equipment and tools she needs to service them. Her hazardous environment suit includes a hyperwave transmitter in the helmet, which allows her direct control over her drones.
Nestled unobtrusively inside Vespa's skull is the cortical implant that all members of the Harmony use. She also has a pair of implants in her eyes which provide image enhancement in poor visibility, as well as limited mechanical interfacing (though generally only with Senar tech which is designed to receive it).
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