Ta'zhen

Ta'zhen stands just under five feet tall, marking her immediately as visually distinct from the rest of the Stenza, save children. She is very toned, and missing her right arm, using a gel prosthetic to replace it. Her body is covered in scars, some older than she willingly lets on.

Ta'zhen is most notable among Stenza for her remarkably short height and for her body temperature (normal for a human but extremely high for a Stenza).

The insulating mesh is Ta'zhen's second skin, over which she wears, depending on the situation, either battle armor or civilian wear, very frequently pink in color (such as her shirt).   Although she only wears them with her Ceremonial Uniform, she is the proud owner of a pair of mandibles extracted from a large Azorian insect. The mandibles reach from her waist to the floor when she is standing, and so are balanced on her shoulder blades when she wears them.

Following her citizenship trial, Ta'zhen was outfitted with a medical gel prosthesis, which in its current iteration is outfitted with circuitry capable of operating a personal communication device, scanning objects of Stenza manufacture, and accessing data.

Kayla Kavanaugh was born in Esterholt, Ohio, in the local year 1996, to Martha Kavanaugh and a man she barely ever knew. Martha would take several other husbands throughout Kayla's lifetime, and other men she never married. (Martha's relationship history follows a pattern Ta'zhen would later describe as "meet guy in bar, give him tragic line about how bad her last boyfriend was, extract pity sex, coerce into whirlwind relationship, have violent breakup, meet new guy in bar by the end of the week".)   When Kayla was four, her general fear of large quantities of water irritated Martha to the point that she threw Kayla into the backyard pool, where she nearly drowned. Her elder siblings, Erin and Patrick, recovered her and called for help. The fallout included the siblings' grandfather Cornelius filing for custody and attempting to put the screws to the local district attorney to file charges, but the court case failed to materialize, and the custody battle waged on.   During this time, Kayla attended school mostly uneventfully until roughly the summer after ninth grade when, on a whim, she slipped out of the house and made a break for it across town, looking for something to take her mind off of things. At one edge of the Hendesrons' field, near the woods, she found a transport pod containing an alien warrior on a ritual hunt. The alien broke out of the pod, chased her, and ultimately caught up with her, leading to a fight resulting in several shattered lawn gnomes and pieces of broken patio furniture, as well as breaking Kayla's leg. The alien yielded, however, when Kayla managed to drive a kitchen knife into his cooling unit. He set her leg and explained the purpose of the hunt he was on.   While she recovered, Saeh'han introduced her to the language, stories, and culture of the Stenza. Several weeks later, Saeh'han took Kayla to Mudewei, where Creyth offered her protection under the cultural rules of hospitality. There, she spent several years immersed in the culture and further honing her combat skills. (During this time, on a hunting trip, she says that she recalled learning in school that humans evolved as persistence predators and, seemingly with no lead in, followed an injured Basket Horns across the Frozen Wastes for several hours. Shortly after starting, a strange pup started following her. She knew by then that pups were adventurous sorts and let the child stay so that she could return later with them and some food. She explained what she was doing to the pup as they trekked, until they found the Basket Horns collapsed in the snow. Kayla put it out of its misery and began the process of cutting out the heart and lungs for Hunter, as instructed. It took a while as she was just one person, but finally she was done, and made the appropriate offerings, to find the pup consuming them already. When she told this story to Saeh'han and Ŭlœsh, they tentatively floated the idea that she'd been tailed by Hunter the whole time.)   Finally, she was set for her citizenship trial, due (to T'zu-Crae's meddling) to take place on a rocky hell planet known as Desolation, where the water is filled with flesh-eating bacteria and the air can be toxic. She was sent with a granola bar and a canteen full of (exceptionally cold) water. During a brief fight with one of the robots she had accidentally activated, some Desolation water splashed on her right arm. She was forced to use half her water supply to kill the bacteria, and then to spend the rest of her stay with a dying arm.   To the shock of everyone, and perhaps most of all T'zu-Crae, she returned alive. Saeh'han removed her arm and designed its gel replacement. She took a new name as a citizen of the Stenza empire: Ta'zhen (a name version of the Stenza word for "tiny", which Tzim-Sha had called her before her ordeal). She was fully adopted into the Clan of the Lost and joined their military unit (she still hadn't shaken the idea that she had something to prove).   Her first tour was spent on Azor, and lasted just under a year. While there, among many other things, her effort to save Tzim-Sha's life resulted in their entrapment behind enemy lines. Their two-week escape back to the Stenza line involved hiding in caves and supplementing rations with the native enormous bugs. It also included sharing secrets: Ta'zhen spoke about the time her mother tried to drown her, and Tzim-Sha mentioned the death of his entire clan (she noted his victory in this matter). Although she was never formally promoted to an officer position, she found herself in the unofficial and unenviable role of helping Fourth Officer Siah'ywe and Third Officer Ludek with the management of Tzim-Sha's outsized ego.   She then spent much of a year outside of Mundeen, the capital of Muxter, after requesting a transfer away from duty on Albar. She and Tzim-Sha designed The "Muxteran Prisoner" Gambit but as a consequence of the efforts of learning Muxteran language and culture for the gambit, she asked to transfer out. Tzim-Sha found a placement for her in the engine tech team of the Annihilator. She would later describe her posting as Third Officer as one of the most grueling years of her life.   Tzim-Sha also set Ta'zhen up with Testho, after Ta'zhen was caught alone in a corridor by a stranger and forced to escape, and two years later, she helped him construct the gathering coils and smuggle them to Earth ahead of his Leadership Challenge. Shortly after this, when he was revealed to have disappeared, leaving behind only his transport pod, the coils, and a partially empty canister of DNA bombs (about which Ta'zhen had no prior knowledge, despite otherwise being a party to the plot), she volunteered to go to Earth for her own search effort.

Ta'zhen identifies as female, as signified by a feminine name per the grammar of Mudeweian Stenza, but her small size has slotted her into a fair few male "gender suggestions", causing her to view gender as optional.

Lesbian

While on Earth she only reached a middle-school level education, she finished out on Mudewei and was by many accounts a diligent student. She caught up to her apparent peers in only a few years, and following her citizenship trial, continued educational pursuits, learning Muxteran and a trade as an engine technician, to say nothing of training with the military.

Ta'zhen joined the military under the banner of the Clan of the Lost because at the time she thought that was what one does. While her deeds on Azor earned her a promotion to Fourth Officer (and later Third Officer after Siah'ywe's death in combat) and a life-long bond with Tzim-Sha, following being stationed at Mundeen she transferred out into civilian work. She was hired on as a ship's technician aboard the Annihilator, where she found a form of mental peace working with her hands, and furthered her studies. She has since learned two more languages, along with a better understanding for the inner workings of a Stenza engine and the accompanying subspace drives.

She attained citizenship through her ordeal on Desolation, which cost her both her right arm and most of her ability to perceive herself as human outside of very basic biological facts. Her citizenship has also afforded her the opportunity of military service where, through clever use of pattern recognition, not attracting undue attention, and an escapade behind enemy lines on Azor with Tzim-Sha (then First Officer), she was first promoted to Fourth Officer before assuming the role of Third after Siah'ywe's death. Ta'zhen was content with this, having observed the First and Second officers routinely challenge each other and decided that she wasn't cut out for it. However, these antics left her with much of the responsibility for coordinating troop movement and maximizing enemy casualties while minimizing their own.   In civilian affairs, she is a well-regarded food hunter, able to keep pace with all but the most athletic Stenza and an equally capable archer.

The item for which she feels most guilt is the knowledge that somewhere, someone is in stasis because she refused to go quietly into that good night (and, consequently, that she is the reason T'zu-Crae is the current leader of the Stenza empire, rather than Saeh'han, who was originally sent to capture her). To her mind, all of T'zu-Crae's actions while leader are, on some level, her fault.

Exceptionally blunt, but she absorbs almost everything. She has learned several languages during her time with the Stenza. She also comprehends the basic principles behind Stenza space travel, subspace, weaponry, and robotics, though she cannot tell you the math behind them. She can assemble for you a subspace drive, for example, but be unable to tell you how to calculate subspatial coordinates.

Ta'zhen has deeply internalized Stenza concepts of appropriate social behavior, including the hospitality code, taboos on self-deprecation (and by extension deprecation of the group), and the role of a blood sibling. She takes ideas like social good and "giving back" very seriously, and also believes that she must prove herself "deserving" of a place in the community, either by showing her mettle or paying it forward in some way, and oftentimes both.

Ta'zhen has been able to pick up Mudeweian Stenza and the principles of use for many forms of Stenza technology very quickly, as well as veritably absorbing cultural concepts like a sponge.   On the other hand, she is terrible with pure mathematics, as well as certain forms of applied mathematics, considering them too abstract to work with.

Ta'zhen took to pups almost immediately upon being introduced to them, to the point she could not resist the urge to coo over them (when she first learned the "no baby-talk" rule). As a consequence, she is very accepting when they decide to pile on top of her for sleep, and has found this a very useful sleep aid over the years.

Ta'zhen maintains a cool exterior and head in the face of nearly any crisis. This does not keep her from expressing emotions, nor from becoming overwhelmed by them, but does allow her to manage circumstances as they arise.   Additionally, she places a high value on children and childcare, a value seeded by her past and crystalized and given words by her interaction with Stenza culture. It factors into her assessment of others, and her interactions with children and their parents or caretakers. When it comes to her siblings, she feels a sense of duty toward them, especially the youngest of them.

Ta'zhen's method of dealing with deep and complicated emotional questions is to physically relocate herself with a shadow of a hope that these problems will go away.   She also maintains an interesting relationship with the value and concept of a life (including if it is acceptable to kill someone). While this code was adopted from more traditionalist aspects of Stenza society and is seen as a virtue within that context it causes her problems outside that context.

Ta'zhen has a tendency to flick her middle finger with her thumb (on her left hand) if particularly nervous. She also has a "thinking face" as described by Erin Kavanaugh which consists of staring at nothing in particular while her eyes dart around in a noticeable fashion.

Due to the fact that without the insulating mesh she risks freezing to death, Ta'zhen only bathes when she has access to hot water. Periods between this can range up to a few weeks.

Creyth   Saeh'han   Tzim-Sha   Testho

Cornelius Kavanaugh   Martha Kavanaugh   Patrick Kavanaugh    Erin Kavanaugh   Alyssa Kavanaugh   Ryan Kavanaugh    Elle Kavanaugh   Jake Kavanaugh

She has adopted the Stenza religion, which views the stars in the sky as corporeal manifestations of numerous but by and large distant gods. Because these gods are not wont to meddle in the affairs of mortals and those two that do are widely viewed as all-benevolent (but not all-powerful), she believes it is safe to honor them (compared to the interesting interpretations of Christianity that come from some sides of her Earth-based family). In particular this manifests as specific devotion to Iradae and the principles of the blood sibling relationship he patronizes, despite all the trouble Tzim-Sha causes her.

Ta'zhen has a tendency to say "scheiße" in place of its English variant, "shit".