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24 May 2018Vallysa
Vallysa was born on a small independent planetary outpost in a system between Federation and Imperial space. As a young girl, she along with her brother and sister would spend hours in their family’s small fleet of old SRV buggies, exploring the landscape and imagining the endless possibilities the future would bring once the planet was terraformed. Her parents were explorers and entrepreneurs at heart, but sadly did not have a good head for business. When a Federation corporation began sub-contracting out the resource and landscape cartography operations to local businesses, her parents were eager to make a name for themselves and aggressively pursued the rights for an exclusive contract. In order to meet the overwhelming demands of the charter, they took out several large, high-risk loans to finance a new fleet of SRVs and hire workers who could pilot them.Their gamble failed. They were not able to earn enough from their exploration data to pay back their large loans or to meet the terms of the contract, forcing them to declare bankruptcy and reneg on their original deal with the Federation prime company. The cost of failure and debt was extremely high, and her parents began running various quasi-legal salvage missions to keep the aggressive and potentially violent loan collection agencies at bay. They were quickly caught by the local authorities and brought up on charges of fraud, theft, illegal salvage operations, and vagrancy. As they became mired in an endless cycle of debts and fees, they descended slowly into the criminal underworld, finding themselves in more and more desperate situations. Unable to cope, they finally turned to drugs to relieve their pain and lost all contact with their three children.
While the Federation company was soliciting re-bids to continue with the planet exploration, a wealthy Imperial Patron was also prospecting the nearby systems under the royal banner of the Lavigny family (this Imperial was a distant cousin of the current Imperial Emperor, Arissa Lavigny-Duval). The man’s name was Flavius Lavigny, and he also shared a passion for human exploration and sought sources of rare elements which could be synthesized into materials to help travelers reach distant stars. While on a planetside trip to examine local prospecting potential, he encountered a young Vallysa (age 14 at the time) who was involved with a local band of rockscape racers. This was early in the decline of her parents, who were just starting to descend into the cycle of debt to their Federation prime contracting company. Flavius enjoyed watching the locally holo-vised races of the rockscape races and kept tabs on several members of the group, including Vallysa, who was by far the youngest but most talented of the gang. From him, Vallysa was first introduced to the strange yet orderly social stratification system of the Imperials, which seemed to her a stark contrast to the Federation’s convoluted business-at-all-costs environment.
After two years of watching her parents grow more and more distant, she began to fear for the safety of her brother and sister and started exploring ways to get out of their debts, which would by law transfer to her and her siblings if they continued to be in breach of contract. Once her parents’ addiction truly manifested and her hopes for them evaporated, she appealed to her friend Flavius for help, offering to self herself into Imperial Slavery if he would settle all their accounts. Flavius agreed, and bought Vallysa’s time for a period of twelve years, after which she would re-enter the galaxy as an Imperial citizen free to choose her own path. Upon entering Flavius’ service, she was transported to a distant system for training and enhancement and lost contact with her parents and siblings. She would a few years later learn of her parents’ death due to some squabble over minor turf or drug conflict. She has no knowledge of what became of her brother or sister or their current whereabouts.
During her twelve years of servitude, she worked hard to prepare herself for her Second Life. She found the open nature of Imperial social structure to be refreshingly honest compared to her understanding of Federation corporate law interests, and fully embraced the concept that any individual could achieve respect and honor through work and sacrifice. To her, her period in servitude was simply the first step in embracing the Imperial society, and she became a firm believer in the value of their social caste system and the ability to influence and earn your way up through the ranks. (She would eventually find out that her master Flavius adhered strictly to the laws requiring fair and professional treatment of Imperial slaves, and that not all Patrons were so inclined). Flavius encouraged her to learn the Imperial accent to fit into society, with the hope that she would one day be able to obtain a permit to travel to the capital in the Archenar system.
After four years of studious conditioning, Vallysa was charged with a variety of tasks for her master which were complex and challenging. He requested substantial assistance in sorting through the raw data his company explorers were gathering from newly charted systems, as well as with the administrative tasks of managing trade margins and cargo routes. She continued to pilot both surface and spacecraft, honing her skills in preparation for her impending freedom. Flavius was grateful of her service, and upon her release from servitude gave her a gift beyond her wildest dream: an old MKII Sidewinder, with a small but functional armament, a cargo hold, and something even more precious...a capable FSD drive. Newly freed, with the skills, drive, and most importantly now an FTL capable ship, she took the name Vallysa and began her own life among the stars, forever grateful to the Lavigny family.