T'Svai

Early Life
K’Dor S’Gef T’Svai was born to T’Hirat, an art restorer and former archaeologist, and Sorik, a plant geneticist. Even by Vulcan standards, her family is a little eccentric.

She grew up in Shi’Kahr, a major city on Vulcan that put her in contact with many Federation species - well, relatively speaking. Vulcan is not as much of a tourist destination as, say, Risa is, but she spent her early life reasonably aware of Starfleet’s exploits. Her social circle primarily consisted of Vulcans.

Being part of a relatively prominent and relatively traditional family by Shi’Kahr standards, she was betrothed at the age of seven as is custom to another Vulcan, now a biophysicist, Kuslaya. (Though T’Svai would deny this, it is very possible that her original enthusiasm for exobiology was at least partially derived from a desire to be close to her spouse and participate in their interests.)

Traditional Vulcan custom stipulates that a Vulcan’s clan teach them the basics of logic and emotional suppression, in addition to things like clan history and etiquette. In theory her grandfather, Solik, would have taken on this task. He was the eldest, and the only member of the clan to have completed Kolinahr, making him the most qualified to instruct in the arts of logic. However, soon after T’Svai had completed her kahs-wan, he was revealed to have developed Bendii syndrome. It was during one of her lessons in telepathic communication that she learned of this fact. During her first successful mind meld, she became clearly and distinctly aware that Solik was feeling pride.

The time after that was chaotic for a number of reasons. Solik’s emotional control slowly destabilized, meaning T’Svai and those of her siblings still learning the basics of emotional control were often swept up in torrents of stray emotion projected outwards from Solik’s mind. Solik, T’Svai’s older brother by twelve years, had already completed much of his education, and so was only minutely affected by this disturbance. T’Svai, however, was forced to learn emotional control very, very quickly in order to withstand such projections without becoming emotionally compromised herself.

Her kahs-wan was less than a year later, towards the end of 2410. She entered the Forge with all of the basic logic and survival training conveyed upon her by her family. Since her clan had lived near the Forge for generations, and given her accelerated training in logic, it is safe to say that she had an advantage beyond some of her peers to start with. Her greatest challenge came when she came across another participant in the ordeal - not a stranger, not a friend, merely a loose acquaintance who had been injured by the poisoned claws of a le-matya and, in the resulting delirium (or, perhaps, lack of preparation), was unable to locate either an antidote nor other resources necessary to treat the wound. Though it is forbidden for participants in the kahs-wan to help the other test-takers, and custom dictated she merely report the incident once the trail was complete, T’Svai found an appropriate antitoxin and left it anonymously for this colleague to use. She reported the incident after the test as normal, and the colleague assumed they had merely gotten lucky in finding what they needed to survive. She has revealed this incident to no-one, and has no plans to.

Her younger siblings, Sazhek and T’Khus, were born in 2442 and 2446 respectively. Around this time T’Svai also learned the basics of meditation. At this point Solik was no longer able to assist with such things, and began to grow frustrated by his eroding mental control, so her grandmother T’Les took over logic training from this point on.

Until the end of Solik’s life, he had the support of his family, who took great pains not to frame his eroding emotional control as shameful, burdensome, or a personal failure in any way whatsoever. While some of his emotional outbursts were violent or angry in nature, a vast majority were positive, ranging from joy to pride to wonder and so on. The K’Dor S’Gef clan’s collective adherence to logic was greatly strengthened by this experience, but they also learned that it was illogical to place judgement on others simply for being emotional. It was not the emotions, but what was done with them, that must be viewed with caution. They took to looking down upon those who judged emotional species harshly for that reason, and to this day T’Svai will not tolerate any kind of prejudice for that reason - though she doesn’t view destructive tendencies kindly and never will.

She attended the Shi’Kahr academy and performed adequately across subjects, but particularly excelled in physics. However, she had more of a drive to pursue Exobiology, her justification being that it was more practical (and her true reason being that it was more interesting.) T’Svai was a dedicated student, though no more or less so than her peers, and intelligent, though no more or less so than her peers. Actually, in all respects, she was a frustratingly average Vulcan, and could find very few opportunities for distinction. Her main area of interest during this period of time was nonpathogenic microorganisms from other planets.

T’Svai was able to get hands-on engineering experience from an early age for a number of totally logical reasons. Sazhek was a budding aeronautical engineer who enjoyed making model planes and ships for educational reasons, which often became (logically) scattered all over the (logical) house and occasionally hit things. Sorik’s greenhouse, housing all kinds of plants from other planets, was in need of frequent alterations to its structure, irrigation system, lighting, climate control, and so on, particularly after that time a seed pod was exposed to excessive lighting and exploded on Sorik, turning him purple for a month. T’Hirat’s art restoration efforts at the T’Plana-Hath Museum, which T’Svai was often called upon to observe, required their own attention to detail. Once T’Khus and Sazhek started their respective computer programming and engineering efforts, that extended to other tasks like fixing the home’s comms equipment after Sazhek tried to upgrade it to use dark matter transistors and somehow made it so all comms came through in Andorian, and so on. T’Svai enjoyed doing this sort of thing.

At the same time, Exobiology wasn’t as satisfying as she’d initially hoped. She enjoyed learning about new species, and gaining a complete understanding of how they functioned, but doing so on Vulcan’s soil wasn’t enough. It was like trying to understand a sehlat by looking at a single claw. Her family wanted her to join the Vulcan Science Academy, as many of them had done for generations, but that seemed to pose the same problem as any other posting on Vulcan. She’d considered the Vulcan Expeditionary Group, but it made no logical sense to her to seek out new life and new civilizations in isolation from the ones that were already known. Besides, there was more yet to learn. Logic was fine, all well and good, but extraplanetary organizations like Starfleet somehow managed to make leaps and bounds where logic only made small steps at a time, and T’Svai found that fascinating. She wanted to understand it. So, in 2468, T’Svai took the Starfleet Academy Entrance Exam.

(Incidentally, T’Svai was married in 2464 to her once-betrothed, now-spouse, Kuslaya. Though the marriage was more born out of logic than love, they exchange correspondence regularly and have unquestionably learned to love one another despite the distance. The ceremony was held in Sorik’s greenhouse. A plant almost tried to eat one of the guests, but didn’t. It was lovely.)

T’Svai did not find the preliminary test or entrance exam difficult, and passed on her first try with flying colors. Dynamic relationships and hyperspace physics were things any Vulcan child knew by the time they were fifteen at latest, after all, and T’Svai had no trouble interacting with members of other species politely. She was hardly the sort to start monologuing about the virtues of logic. She was therefore accepted, and started at the Academy in 2469. Communication with her family was sparse during this time, often terse, but never cold

T’Svai’s parents eventually came to accept her decision, which ended up being conveyed to her right before her deployment on the USS K’Warko. She had the message printed and framed, and keeps a copy in her quarters to this day. (Or, rather, would have if the Phoenix hadn’t been destroyed.)

Starfleet Academy
Though her sights were originally set on pursuing her lifelong interest in Exobiology, she quickly became aware that it would be logical to branch out and learn some essential aspects of how starships function, just in case an emergency were to occur during one of her assignments. Once she was informed that she’d excelled far beyond expectation in Engineering and Astrogation, a professor recommended she take Advanced Subspace Geometry and Statistical Mechanics, which it turned out she had a knack for. An Andorian friend (and roommate) at Starfleet Academy, Shass Th’akaahress,  firmly pushed the old human adage ‘Go with the flow’, and since her performance made focusing on operations quite logical, she indeed did so. She had no academic trouble before, during, or after this transition. The source of most of her stress was seeking approval from her family, which could only be done, she knew, if she excelled.

The decision to switch to Operations was less approved of by her family, but they could not deny that her marks were exceptional across the board and that technically the subject matter was science-related.

As for her social life at the Academy, there was not much of it. She had the aforementioned Andorian study buddy and a human roommate who she is no longer in contact with. There was no logic to prolonged social interaction. She never became truly lonely, as her appetite for knowledge far outweighed her need for social life, and she became extremely close with her two friends during her time at Starfleet Academy. She also remained in contact with her friends from home during that time. However, her adherence to Vulcan tradition and customs without having anyone to share those values with did present some difficulty, and she occasionally wished there were more Vulcans going along the same path she did. She remained motivated by telling herself there must be a first for everything, and that as Surak was alone in his adherence to logic before the Time of Awakening, so too must she be in forging this smaller path.

Technically speaking, her specialty is Applied Spatial Geometry with an emphasis on navigation system modifications.

Starfleet Career - USS K'Warko
Her first assignment was on the USS K’Warko. Unlike the Academy, T’Svai quickly found herself unable to remain asocial. There were no other Vulcans aboard, and Operations was so surprised to learn a Vulcan was assigned to their department that the experience was rather like being stuck with a group of golden retrievers. It occurred to her during that time that aloofness was in fact not logical. It took some time to adjust to non-Vulcan social norms to the point that she would not have described her colleagues as true friends until year 3 of the 5 year mission, but she did get there eventually, motivated by a mix of scientific fascination, an understanding that work was more efficient when one got along with one’s colleagues, and admittedly a desire to alleviate the loneliness that had started to slowly creep up on her at the Academy.

Since her previous concentration at Shi’Kahr academy was in Exobiology, she could often be found lurking on the science decks. For the most part, the posting was uneventful - being a light escort, very often the K’Warko was found accompanying more vulnerable vessels while they did the ‘dirty work’, so to speak.

Friendship did not come easily, but she did find herself roped into a number of unusual antics anyway. The Captain of the vessel, Captain Praanor, enjoyed giving motivational speeches for no good reason whatsoever on topics ranging from leadership to espionage to what to do when your warp core starts making an odd noise, and to Praanor, her crew was like her family, so there was no real strict adherence to rank to start with until the going got tough. Her friends were all notorious pranksters as well, which was a bit of a cultural adjustment. Whether it was rewiring all of the lights in the ship to be a slightly more flattering color, inverting the gravity in the mess hall for Captain Picard Day, or accidentally transporting a large group of tribbles unpredictably around the ship for several hours, or the scorpion venom incident, weird things happened very, very frequently on the K’Warko, and it’s safe to say that from this, T’Svai got a bit of a mischievous streak, as well as a certain love for making people laugh. She wasn’t particularly prone to laughter herself, of course, but if other people were going to experience emotions around her anyway, why not contribute to making them good ones? She has a very, very dry, deadpan sense of humor, but it’s there.

During the first year of the five year mission, a parasite came aboard and caused the members of the crew with iron-based blood - i.e. most of the crew - to become ill and periodically enraged, even violent. While the cure was found quickly, the cure being to shoot the affected with a specific frequency of light, a joined Trill’s symbiont was killed by the parasite just before the cure was found. Captain Praanor was devastated by this loss, and mourning consumed the crew for a while. During the intervening time T’Svai had found herself immune to such problems of emotion and did her best to help, but she didn’t know enough and the sheer scope of the issue was just too large. She learned very quickly that it was possible to use logic to its utmost and still fail.

On the K’Warko, her first unusual accomplishment of real note was a dizzying (but mathematically sound) maneuver she performed to escape the orbit of a planet with very high gravity and jump to warp in record time following a failed First Contact. This first maneuver, called ballsy by humans and essential by T’Svai, earned her the nickname The Crazy Vulcan, which she decidedly omitted from letters home. It is worth noting that the nickname was affectionately given, and though she couldn’t understand it she did register that it suddenly meant other members of the crew were suddenly more open and likely to interact, so it did not seem logical to dissuade them. After all, names mean very little.

There was another incident around the third year of the five year mission in which a solar flare disabled navigational equipment during a survey of a quadruple/quaternary star system. By T’Svai’s standards, this incident wasn’t very interesting. She’d been paying attention to their bearings before the displays had shorted, she was capable of basic (to Vulcans) math, and she’d remembered a chart of that system from Astrogation. Flying without the aid of computers therefore just required careful timing and careful aim. Getting to the nearest Federation starbase was, to her, thus a no-brainer, but something about the concept of a Vulcan flying ‘blind’ was amusing to people and only spread her reputation. Once docked, functionality was restored easily.

After an incident around the fourth year of the five year mission in which there was damage from a tachyon explosion across several decks, she also diagnosed a problem with a warp core that would cause said explosion, thus preventing it. (Causality is theoretically inverted when tachyons are in motion.) This time the Vulcan sense of smell came into play when she recognized the smell of ozone as an indicator of something operating at a very, very high voltage. This too added to her reputation, as walking towards the site of an incident she knew was going to occur at an as yet unknown time (though she had known, it was just a particle physics problem and she’d explained this after the fact) was deemed by her friends to be illogical, and no amount of explanation could persuade them otherwise. This was another defining moment - not only was she a skilled navigator, she was also ready, willing, and able to put herself at risk to prevent the ship from being destroyed and so familiar with the ship that she’d found the problem without even needing to complete a diagnostic. Vulcans by nature (well, nurture) have cool heads, but her area of distinction was in quick thinking and being willing to make decisions when some unknowns still remained.

The K’Warko being an escort, T’Svai saw occasional battle. She was often called to participate in emergency repair teams or escape craft piloting, being a navigation specialist. To the former point, she gained a great deal of respect for Jefferies tubes. Jefferies tubes are a vital, wonderful system that can be used to navigate a ship when turbolifts are down, transporters can’t reach an area, or when the traveling individual must remain unseen, and frankly, every crewman should know how to navigate them.

T’Svai completed the Command Training Program during her last couple of years on the K’Warko.

Joining the Phoenix
Once the five year mission was over, she returned to Vulcan to reunite with her family and re-center, as her time on the K’Warko had greatly impacted the way she expressed herself. She took plenty of time to contemplate whether to switch paths once again and belatedly attend the VSA. Eventually she decided to take a second commission, having reached a point that her skills would be better served on another starship. There is a distinct possibility that she had also become used to the camaraderie she’d had with members of other species aboard the K’Warko, a camaraderie that was nigh impossible to find on Vulcan, but if asked, she can and will deny this. Her family, seeing that she was content and flourishing in Starfleet, largely put aside their misgivings. T’Khus in particular enjoyed the stories about pranks and insisted on making her own personal contributions to future ones.

On the USS Phoenix, she planned to bring her experience and skill set along with her to ensure the ship operates as efficiently as possible.

Personality
Blunt, stoic, to-the-point, slightly arrogant, and very task-oriented. She recognizes a need for diplomacy and has some inkling of human norms, but she’s solidly Vulcan outwardly. This was intentional, thanks to her family’s reminder that she is representing Vulcan as part of Starfleet. Inwardly, she has an innate curiosity that took her away from the VSA and Vulcan as a whole to begin with, she’s very ambitious, and she is not at all prideful. If there is an opportunity to try or learn something new that could be of value later, she will take it. She bears the slightest hint of prejudice towards non-Vulcans, but recognizing the illogicality of this tries not to demonstrate it. Once comfortable with people, she has the tiniest hint of a mischievous streak and enjoys making people laugh.

Family
T'Khus, youngest of the clan, is a student at the Vulcan Science Academy who aspires to one day become an Intelligence agent with either the Vulcan High Command or Starfleet itself. She is bright, inquisitive, blunt, and while quite logical does not hesitate to show enthusiasm for her areas of interest. She is betrothed, but not married.

Sazhek, second youngest of the clan, is a highly introverted quantum information scientist who works for the Vulcan Science Directorate. Sazhek is a traditionalist, and is very critical of other species and even non-Surakian Vulcans. He has trouble concealing contempt, and has some of T'Khus's curiosity, but motivated by his brother Sartik's effortless seriousness is very careful to hide it. His current project is on the feasibility of using dark matter as a tool for quantum computing. He is betrothed, but not married.

Sartik, the eldest sibling, is a very respectable, traditionalist aeronautical engineer who works with the Vulcan Expeditionary Group. He assists them in developing new technology for flight, and specializes in warp mechanics. He is married.

T'Hirat, T'Svai's mother, daughter of T'Les and Solik, is a former archaeologist and current art restorer at the T'Plana-Hath Museum.

Sorik, T'Svai's father, is a botanist who works with the Vulcan Science Academy as a Professor of Botany and a researcher. His area of specialty is exobotany, and he is known to bring samples home to test growing techniques. Sorik once brought a specimen of gahv-mor [amethyst leaf in Vulcan, found by the Vulcan Expeditionary Group] plant from Kepler-16 to his greenhouse to analyze its interactions with enzymes. A seed pod exploded on him, and he turned purple for the entire month of T’keKhuti. It went away on its own.

T'Les, T'Svai's maternal grandmother, matriarch of the K'Dor S'Gef clan, is a retired member of the Vulcan High Command. A minister in her youth, over the course of her career she developed a reputation for strict adherence to paperwork and borderline ruthless logic. She was never privy to any landmark decisions, but she continues to render advice even in retirement. She is a strict traditionalist, her commitment to logic having been further strengthened during her time as Solik's telepathic attendant, that is, the one who reinforced his emotional control by taking his emotions into herself, after he contracted Bendii Syndrome.

Solik, T'Svai's maternal grandfather, was once a Kolinahr master and a member of the Vulcan High Council, though like T'Les never aspired to or rose to a position of great power. As a Kolinahr master, he took on a student, L'Amhau M'Arev Solik. The shared name was a source of confusion. After he developed Bendii syndrome at the age of 180, when T'Svai was 11, he and his student decided in conjunction with the rest of the family (save for the children) that he would donate his katra to the monastery at Kolinahru to assist in the future research of Bendii syndrome, a condition so rare as to be almost folkloric. He perished at the age of exactly 200, much earlier than most Vulcans, thanks to the aggressive progress of the disease. The details of his death are shrouded in mystery to this day, unknown to all except L'Amhau M'Arev Solik, now a monk, who currently carries his katra in the hopes of assisting his research in eradicating the disease forever.

Solik (monk) is not a blood relative of the K'Dor S'Gef clan, but is the current (temporary) carrier of Solik's katra. He is a Kolinahr aspirant at the Kolinahru Monastery and neuroscientist with the Vulcan Science Directorate, specializing in the Vulcan metathalamus. He maintains correspondence with the K'Dor S'Gef clan.