[Accepted]Pictish20 Tajara Application

[pictish20]

BYOND Key: pictish20

Character Names: 

Spoiler

Species you are applying to play: Tajara

What color do you plan on making your first alien character: Taupe

Have you read our lore section's page on this species?: I have, yes. It’s one of the main attractions of this species for me.

 

Please provide well articulated answers to the following questions in a paragraph format. One paragraph minimum per question.

 

Why do you wish to play this specific race:

Tajara are one of the more active races, with extensive lore and development -- I appreciate the ongoing updates, news reports, and detail their race demonstrates. As a comparatively adolescent space-faring race, their society is still rife with conflict and interesting story threads. I’m drawn to their cold war and the ideological struggles it holds. That, of course, is all without mentioning the ice-world-20th-century aesthetic, which is very tasty, if I do say so myself. Given the ongoing tension on Adhomai and between her peoples, I would like to be part of their ongoing story.

 

Identify what makes role-playing this species different than role-playing a Human:

The most immediately obvious difference between Tajara and other races is their peculiar use of third-person in everyday conversation. This obscures their deeper lying cultural differences -- a comparatively conservative race, many Tajara have a distaste for many deviant beliefs and practices, like inter-species relationships. They are divided by their political beliefs, religions, and ethnicities, yet connected by their traditions and languages. Employment with NanoTrasen offers a bizarre situation for the Tajara, which despite its exploitative behavior, grants Tajara opportunities in larger space. 

 

Character Name: Sonia Al-Rashid

 

Please provide a short backstory for this character

Born mere months before the outbreak of the First Revolution, Sonia’s earliest memories are filled with the weights of wartime life, her parents’ revolutionary ideals, and the loss of her elder brothers to violent Royalist reprisals. Even from her youth, Sonia was a proud revolutionary -- too young to fight, she nonetheless bravely sought to sneak through the prairies near her home in Northern Ras’nrr to bring food to the Hadii soldiers fighting nearby, stopped only by her mother’s keen attention and stern words.

 

Sonia’s youthful optimism was not diminished by the appointment of the Hadii to power over the young Republic. Hopeful for the young Republic and its revolutionary dream, she secured an education at Al’Mari, and a position in the Party. From her position as a low-ranking Party clerk, she began to fulfill her dreams of remaking Adhomai, starting by assisting the party administration in her home city of Ron’Tul. Her Party loyalty was not shaken by Rhagrrhuzau’s departure from Human support, though she believed them to be vital to the development of Tajara society. Her Party Loyalty was not shaken by the president’s assassination and the revelation of other ideologies. Her Party Loyalty was only shaken once as the repression intensified during the war. 

 

She found herself confused by the executions and disappearances -- like the nobles who had claimed her brothers, the Hadii Party was now murdering their own citizens. This Party, which had provided her with the medical and technological aid to outlive her parents, the appearance of enfranchisement, and the equalization of wealth and social resources was now abandoning its -- and her -- ideals. She made a choice: using her position in the Party, she helped a group of political dissidents escape the PSIS, leading them safely through the prairies and across the approaching ALA front line. Upon her return, she found her home of Ron’Tul razed to the ground by the Republic’s firebombs, and at last, decided that she had had enough of the Party, its Revolution, and its crimes. She assumed this adopted name, Sonia, and passed south, joining the Tajara leaving Adhomai for NanoTrasen employment.

 

What do you like about this character?

Sonia is something of a tragic character, filled with lost hope and lasting sadness. She’s looking for a new future, and offers me many different directions to develop her in. Does she secretly desire to return to Adhomai, after one of the factions achieves reunification? Is she done with the planet and its strife for good? What connections will she make aboard the Aurora that might affect that decision? I look forward to finding her future here in Biesel.

 

How would you rate your role-playing ability?

Though I will admit that I often mistype and am constantly falling prey to the classic BYOND issue of talking in the wrong channel, I believe that I have sufficient ability to play the Tajara race. I have enough to play Dionae and IPC, and believe that I can handle the more dense Tajaran lore. I am sufficiently confident to both make this application and to play a Tajara if I am accepted. By the obligatory out-of-ten system, I would say 8/10.

 

Notes: The backstory is a little long and I apologize for that. I appreciate the time you spend on my application, and I am glad and able to respond to any questions you may have.

[Alberyk]

Some questions:

-What does Sonia believes in now? How would she describe her ideology/beliefs?

-How does she see the other two factions?

-What is she doing working in NanoTrasen? What is her plan in the long run?

[pictish20]

I had hoped you would ask those. Answered, in order:

 

14 minutes ago, Alberyk said:

-What does Sonia believes in now? How would she describe her ideology/beliefs?

I would describe Sonia's beliefs as "disillusioned revolutionary-ism." She still fully believes that the best government for Adhomai is a secular, modern republic. The economic and technological impact of human contact, the expanded education and social networks, and the growth of egalitarian opportunities for the Tajaran peasantry are all great achievements for the Tajara. She is proud of the People's Republic's improvement of the lives of most Tajara, and leaves her party and people only with great regret. She struggles with the specifics of the Party and their Revolution, however -- doubting the authoritarian practices of the one-party Hadii state, their corruption, and insistence on clinging to power, Sonia questions if they truly embody the ideals of the First Revolution. Perhaps, the Zhan do not deserve the hatred they are exposed to, for instance... She still pays the Party lip service and uses her party membership both to secure travel off world and housing in the President Hadii Living Complex on Adhomai, but her words lack the zeal they once held. She has hope for the Young Hadii faction and their reforms: her ideal Adhomai would be ruled by a state like the PRA, if it had the actual democracy and respect for Tajaran rights of the DPRA. For the moment, she is distancing herself from the political strife of her homeworld, and sifting through her confusion somewhere where her growing doubts won't earn her a bullet between the eyes or "rehabilitation."

 

40 minutes ago, Alberyk said:

-How does she see the other two factions?

She is conflicted about the DRPA, though she won't yet allow herself optimism. When it existed as the ALA, she opposed it fully. Not only were they an illegitimate attempt to secure power from a government that Sonia still supported, but they did so to install warlord states and military juntas: all around, an unsatisfactory alternative. However, the recent establishment of democracy and civilian rule in the DPRA is a development that she watches with interest. She thinks that their democracy may be critically unstable, and a slight twist of fate may see that constitutional development stripped away by another military coup d'etat. She disagrees with their opposition to humanity and their megacorporations, which have brought growth and opportunity to Adhomai, let alone allowed the Revolution to succeed. Overall, she is ambivalent towards the faction itself, but towards its people, she is guilty of drawing subconscious connections with the terrorists and guerillas she has come to associate their cause with. She is trying to ease this antipathy, but habits are much harder to change.

 

As for the NKA, she has nothing but distaste. They represent an attempt to return Adhomai to fifty years and 90-some million lives in the past. She doubts that they will be able to quell the new society the People's Republic has created, in part because of the Hadiist teachings she has been exposed to and in part because she knows that an educated Tajaran populace will not accept a return to pre-revolution tyranny. Sonia has not yet examined the true nature of the NKA's citizens and beliefs, and is guided more by assumptions than truth, but she perhaps fears the NKA most of all. A victory for them would mean the reversal of everything her life has been dedicated, in her mind. She can tolerate working with an NKA citizen... as long as there's no talk of politics, as theirs is the only cause that Sonia speaks with any meaningful conviction about, as far as politics are concerned.

 

59 minutes ago, Alberyk said:

-What is she doing working in NanoTrasen? What is her plan in the long run?

While her education at the Al'Mari College could perhaps lead her to a more legal-focused career, Sonia has opted to undertake NanoTrasen standard training and take on a job in the cargo department. She appreciates the distance that gives, and allows her to keep nice and busy, free from the incursions of doubt and regret. Her long term plan, on the other hand, is nebulous at best -- in fact, it would not be amiss to say that her short term plan is to develop a long term plan. Someday, she hopes to return to Adhomai, ideally under a unified and stable government. She's growing older everyday, and already approaching what would be quite an old age for the Tajara of generations past. Supported by new medical technology, she hopes that she will have many years left, be that to rise to a new position in NanoTrasen's corporate ladder or to return home and assist in the reform of the Hadiist state. She plans to be buried, like her parents and brothers and all who have come before, near her now-destroyed home on Ras'nrr.

 

Thank you again for your time.

[Alberyk]

Application accepted.