The Final Chapter

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Nariis

The Final Chapter

Post by Nariis »

In the following posts will be Nariis' story, from beginning to end.

Nariis stared through the viewscreen, eyeing the approaching fleet with a battle weary eye. She toggled the comm switch and hailed the leader. "The next five sectors are clear, continuing on with the scouting." Without waiting for a reply, she closed the switch and jumped out of the sector.

At one point, Nariis would have found the scenery before her beautiful, but now she just thought of the massive nebula as a perfect hiding place for an enemy. She dropped a scout drone and a series of mines to warn her if anyone was indeed inside the nebula. Scanner technology still hadn't found a way to penetrate the dense nebular forms.

Finished with her scouting, Nariis sent a fast communication back to the rest of the alliance, then leaned back in her chair to await their arrival. Her scanners detected a mass of enemy ships two sectors away, and now she just needed to wait on the rest of the alliance to engage them. Checking to make sure her cloak was fully operational, Nariis then leaned back and closed her eyes, letting her mind wander into the past...and what lead up to her being where she is now.
Nariis

Post by Nariis »

Could it really have been only ten years ago? It felt like longer than that. Only ten years prior, Nariis had been a normal child growing up in a colony. She and a younger sister used to run up and down the hills surrounding the colony, exploring and playing until hunger or nightfall drove them home. One night changed her life though -- the night that raiders invaded the colony, murdering the adults and kidnapping all of the children to sell as slaves. Nariis never saw her sister again, though she never gave up trying. For several years, she languished as a slave until she was able to make her escape. Luck was with her at that point, she had hid in some cargo onboard a trade ship and was found by the lonely, yet kindly, owner of the vessel.

Rhodry had no children of his own, so he adopted Nariis as his own daughter, protecting her from the slave hunters and teaching her the trick of trading and bargaining for the best deals. When she turned sixteen, Rhodry surprised her with her own trade ship, telling her that it was time for her to go out on her own and make a name for herself. What she didn't know then was that she would never see him again. The loss of her family a second time cut deeply into her, and she devoted herself to trading and shipping goods to ports and planets.

After a long time of working alone, an alliance approached her, offering her safe haven and protection from other hunters. Nariis accepted, but initially never allowed herself to get too close to any of the alliance members. As the years passed by, Nariis would float from alliance to alliance, trading and gaining more recognition from larger and stronger alliances. After some time, Nariis finally let her guard down and began to make friends with members of the alliance she was in at the time, as well as with people in other alliances. She settled down into one alliance, and slowly began to think of them as family.

Five years of working with different alliances, petitioning for peace, fighting to protect Federation assets and alliance assets, even serving several stints as president of the WQ Human council...all had taken their toll on her, emotionally, mentally, and physically. Her body was scarred from the many battles and ambushes she had been in, her mad dashes to an escape pod rarely ever leaving her unscathed from falling bulkheads or loose live wires. Emotionally, she was worn out from always making the same mistake of trying to make up for her twice lost family. Errors of judgement, letting herself be lead by the heart instead of her mind had left her hurt and bitter towards everyone, seeing their happiness as an insult towards herself. Very few people were able to still get past the walls she had built up around herself to attempt to push people away.

Perhaps that explained the way her personality began to change. Those she still trusted commented about it from time to time, usually along with a worried look. She began to deliberately do or say things to push more and more people away from her, wanting the solitude even though she continued to crave a family, a place to call home. Though she shocked even herself, when in a burst of anger and depression, she sent out a coded message to a member of an enemy alliance, telling them of several of the major moneymaking routes her alliance used. When her mood cleared, she fell into a guilty haze...admitting her deed a few days later to the leader, fully expecting him to cast her out. His forgiveness only made her feel worse...and she continued to beat herself up for what she had done.
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