Yanim Terrika is a kanad offworlder, originally of the Sidikan Clan. Trained as an engineer and certified in ship maintenance, Yanim became disillusioned with false promises of opportunity in space after taking part in the HarkArk Corporation's search for the Kauzen Oracle, which ultimately lead to the Battle of Zeruel, where Yanim earned a major bounty in combat. She would use this money to create the Terika-Belladonna Company, a sort of mercenary special operations unit, with the goal of attacking galactic institutions which limit the freedom of individuals.
History[]
Yanim was born in the capital city Ébo on the planet Kanadys to a middle-class family. She, along with her brother Ryvik Sidikan, attended the Academy, the central learning institution for all minors in the city, where she was given a general education including the Kanad language, history, mathematics, discipline, natural sciences, marksmanship, and computer science. At the age of 15, she graduated an above-average student with a keen interest in technology, and was accepted to the State Naval College of Sciences. Finding the general fleet engineering program too difficult, she transferred into the ship maintenance program and graduated after two years, in early 2382.
Yanim surprised her family by choosing not to enlist in the Black Fleet, as she had intended to do once certified. Instead, she departed Kanadys in search of work abroad, which quickly introduced her to trouble. Abandoned by a dishonest employer on Duroma, she became interested in recreational drugs and nearly bankrupted herself before finding a short job which brought her to Terra by Summer. There, she changed employment once more and applied for a position with HarkArk aboard the armed merchant vessel Archius XI.
The Archius[]
Initially isolated and competitive, Yanim slowly settled into a team mindset and gradually let go of an anti-human and anti-khergian bias installed during her youth. After several weeks of difficult conditions and combat, Yanim became highly attached to the crew and dedicated to its survival and success, but also became the subject of extreme suspicion by the leader of the ship's science team, leading to personal grief and unwanted tensions. Nonetheless, Yanim eventually promoted to become the Head of Engineering aboard the ship.
While pursuing the Kauzen Oracle aboard the Archius, Yanim augmented herself using a computerized neural implant which she named YS-X. This device would later save her life, as it was able to reroute failed connections within the nervous system caused by an unknown chronic condition resulting from said exposure. Yanim underwent a general period of brilliance aboard the Archius, which she attributed to the freedom offered by its well-furnished laboratory and the generous budget offered by the company. Yanim hoped to move to somewhere within Sol space to open her own firm at the mission's conclusion, as Harken Saw had promised a large payday.
Things began to go wrong after the crew made a stop on Duroma at Yanim's suggestion, where she intended to lay low and purchase more drugs. She encountered an operative of the Kanad Collective's State Security, a field agent named Arkadam Sidikan. Unaware of his intentions, Yanim spent a harmless, yet intimate night sharing her narcotics with him, and the two briefly considered their encounter romantic. However, by morning, Yanim had divulged secret information to Arkadam, who returned to inform his superiors. Meanwhile, Yanim departed with the crew, which was soon ambushed by a large State Security inspection team that boarded the ship and briefly held the crew captive. Yanim learned of Arkadam's trickery and was implored by the force's leader, Colonel Vorokar Vor'Pangn, to return to work within the Collective. Instead, Yanim took part in a crew-wide effort to retake the ship, which resulted in the SS's intentional destruction of the fueling station at which the Archius was docked, and for Yanim to be regarded as a criminal by her homeland.
These events deeply effected her, as she alone had become an exile. Unsure of how to react, Yanim began pouring her efforts into weaponizing herself, improving her weapons and armor, and adding a blade to a snakelike mechanical appendage attached to her YS-X system, which she called the "demon's tail." Since the Archius crew had become her sole support system at the time, her chief priority was to protect and assist them. Unfortunately, the very next battle resulted in the death of Archius captain Jeremy Spacehawk and a humiliating defeat of the crew. Additionally, two crew members which had apparently died at the fueling station returned, and Yanim did not believe their explanation of how they escaped alive. Believing that her last remaining benefactors were on the verge of collapse and that a major betrayal had occurred, Yanim departed the Archius.
The Belladonna[]
Together with Rask Vor'Pangn and Virin Rozel, two captured members of the SS force which nearly destroyed the Archius, Yanim hijacked the smuggling vessel Belladonna, belonging to the serek Neasha Kyral. The latter eventually agreed to join the kanads in a plan to become pirates. While arming their new ship on Terra, Yanim encountered Arkadam once again and nearly killed him, only to release him instead after learning that he had been an ineffectual officer and was on the run from the law himself. After recruiting a kanad doctor, Gataska Vor'Pangn, the crew learned of the approaching Battle of Zeruel. Yanim rushed to Termina Central in hopes of claiming money owed for her service aboard the Archius, but this was denied. Yanim then learned that the Archius mission had endured, but her former employer considered her a failure.
Yanim, having lost her sense of purpose, was on the edge of suicidal depression when she decided to commit to the battle in hopes of scoring a major bounty. Failing that, she would at least die in the process. Her crewmates, underestimating her grief and willingness to die, all agreed to take part as well, and so the Belladonna took part. During the battle, the Belladonna itself was used as a massive remote controlled bomb, destroying one of the Crimus's largest land-based weapons, a quadruped mech known as Daedalus. The crew was awarded a 2 billion credit bounty, but the victory was hollow as Virin had died during the struggle. The ship-less crew escaped the planet's ultimate destruction with the help of the Boome Marines, whom they warned of Harken Saw's plans.
Yanim was finally informed, via Harken Saw, of how her crewmates had avoided certain death. Dwan Theidrum, it was revealed, possessed incredible abilities which he had hidden from the entire crew aside from Lion, the other crew member which survived inexplicably. This knowledge only angered her further, as Yanim couldn't understand why Dwan had not used his powers more liberally to help the mission, or at least to save the lives of several now-deceased comrades. Believing that she had lost her only friends because of her tendency to rely exclusively upon logic instead of faith, and unwilling to consider her earlier dream of settling down, she determined that the only course of action remaining was to take her action out upon the institutions which manipulated her and her former friends. Rask and Neasha, her two remaining partners after Gataska's resignation, helped to finance a new ship.
The Muramasa[]
| The Archius XI |
|---|
| Main Crew
Head Command: Jeremy Spacehawk
|