Aël Veda

 ''"We cast a shadow one thousand years too long. Do you have a smoke?" ''

Aël Veda (eye-ELL VEE-dah) is one of the rare asari in the galaxy. Born to an asari through a mating with a krogan on April 14th, 1760, Veda has three sisters and considers herself to have no family. She was raised mostly away from other asari and inherited her mother's degenerative neural disease as a passive trait; a long maiden era of solitude and emotional maltreatment by her mother and eldest sister affected her strongly. The combination of these circumstances wound up making her have difficulty associating and relating to her own people and with most non-asari, as well. She flitted from profession to profession, settling as a cartographer for almost a century, and then a Citadel Security officer (and Captain for a period of four short years) for another fifty, surviving Sovereign and his geth. Shortly before the final attack of the Reapers, she quit, leaving behind a turian she had come to love, and holed up in solitude in one of her mother's secluded manses.

Upon returning to the galaxy, she was met with an unprecendented sight of destruction from the Reapers and a previously middling species rising to significant power. Disgusted and generally viewed with disfavor, Veda chose to be a roaming fringe element rather than homogenize with the Transcendent Empire. She neither has a purpose in being, nor a purpose in resisting, though finds the Empire's medical advancement fascinating and promising.

Statistics
Player: Cai Melinda Li

Species: Asari

Faction: Independent

Alignment: Neutral

Class: Nemesis (Vanguard)

Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001046027120

Youth
Her early Maiden years were spent with her mother, shuttled from one planet to another. She was mostly left to her own devices while her mother, shame of the Matriarchs, cavorted with young asari and just about every other species around. For roughly five years every decade, her mother would take them both and retreat to one of her immense manses across several typically dangerous planets.

When Ael reached her first century, her mother became too sick to maintain her lifestyle and dumped her with Ael's middle sister, Alta. Having been so heavily influenced by her mother, Ael was difficult to get along with and unresponsive to Alta's attempts to reach out to her. Alta eventually gave up and continued to leave Veda to her own pursuits. At the time, they seemed to be the exact opposite of the overly sexual approach their mother had; rather than dancing and other Maiden pursuits, Veda took up classical voice lessons and advanced biotics training. She was eventually classified as too aggressive and was forcibly discontinued. Thessia's government reached out and attempted to recruit her for their one infamous front-line Commando squad, but she refused all contact.

Being a product of a asari-krogan relationship automatically predisposed her to certain stereotypes - many of which were not untrue. The combination of genetics, stereotyping, and the way she was raised isolated her from her own society.

Early Matron Years
By her three hundreds', Veda became staunchly against her own people's habits, philosophies, and traditions. While much of it was her mother's influence in the way she was raised, she was also frequently ostracized and presumed to be the most likely of her sisters, being so introverted, to follow in her mother's footsteps. By this time, she had gotten used to the rejection from other asari and even went out of her way to avoid other asari, and spit in their faces if she was forced to interact. While her sisters became famous in their own artistic fields, she kept her skills private. Having inherited, much to her eldest sister Nerina's ire, the bulk of their mothers' money, she hid that away, as well.

For nearly one hundred years, she focused on non-asari combat; she visited krogan, turian, drell, and even batarian centers of martial knowledge. From all but the most severe, she was dismissed as too aggressive to study. Taken by a flight of fancy and frustration, she quit those pursuits and began to study plantary cartography under a master cartographer. She remained his student for thirty years and took over the business for the following ten. Unable to take care of the business, she gave it up and spent some time wandering. Her time working on empty, uncharted planets seemed to calm her down, though in retrospect, she sees it may also have been a hormonal shift.

Time Spent as Citadel Security Officer
By her early four-hundreds, she found her newest calling - Citadel Security. Combat training was nothing to her; what was difficult was keeping herself from being dismissed on counts of aggression once more. She instead forced herself to be almost uninterested in her own work. The less she had an opinion on the matter, the less she would react. This led to nearly thirty years of being a basic officer. While never outright violent, she was distant at best and rude the rest of the time. Her biotic assistance could not be denied, however, and she proved an able thinker. While her reports were sparse, her leaps of intuition and ability to put together weak evidence made her a questionable but valuable asset.

Finally, on an investigation of a series of murders in which the organs of the victims were completely removed, Veda had one of her bursts of intuition. Without word to her partner at the time, she went to check on a lead. In a surprise attack, she became the victim of the crime. The murderer seemed most intent on obtaining her uterus. In the process of her uterus being removed, Veda broke free and, still a mess of blood and spilling organs, killed the criminal. She was found and hospitalized later that day.

After that, she put all her efforts into becoming a good officer, not just a satisfactory one. The crime left its mark on her and she never truly managed to fight her nature - she never even seemed willing to - but she devoted all her time to her profession. Controversial but effective, Veda rose in the following ten years and was promoted to Captain during a purge of corrupt officers.

During Sovereign's attack on the Citadel, Veda had the lowest body count, but the highest environmental destruction in Kithoi. Sovereign's signal affected her, but as she was not indoctrinated or perceived as medically traumatised from the event, she was not interested in finding help. The stress and trauma eventually broke the restraints she'd built and she became more aggressive and more difficult to reach. There was some respite two years later when she became involved with Lascus Arkai'ick, but after centuries of refusing to be involved with anyone, friend or lover, she could not fully commit.

Personality and Philosophy
WIP

Medical
WIP

Goals
None.