Safine Tan
| Private Lawyer | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Safine Rael | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Position | Civilian | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Rank | Ensign | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Species | Trill | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Gender | Female | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| DOB | 237012.26 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Age | 30 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Birthplace | Trill Prime | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Writer ID | O238704AT0 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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"If this host dies on a Starfleet vessel, I lose a bet." - Safine Tan, moments before her "death" and the loss of her symbiont.
Safine Rael, third of the Tans but now unjoined, is a Trill lawyer currently confined to a wheelchair. A former police cadet, she has recently graduated from a law degree. She retired from Starfleet with the rank of Ensign on a medical discharge, but still takes fierce pride in her rank.
Biographical Information
- Full Name: Safine Rael
- Race: Trill (unjoined)
- Previous Hosts: Marlee Tan, Alleran Tan
- Subsequent Hosts: Serren Tan
- Date of Birth: 237012.26
- Place of Birth: Trill Prime
- Age: 30
- Gender: Female
- Telepathic status: T0/E0
Appearance
- Height: 162.56cm (5'4")
- Weight: 54 kg (119.05 lbs)
- Hair Color: Dark
- Hair Style: Typically worn in a ponytail
- Eye Color: Brown
- Skin Tone: Lightly bronzed. Her face is sometimes sickly and she is wracked with occasional bouts of nausea, something she calls, "mourning sickness". Being un-joined is rough.
- Birthmarks, Scars: Safine Tan bears significant scarring around her pouch, which is a source of infection and regular sickness for her. Emanating from her pouch is a thick spiderweb of scars, burned nerve endings, that she hates and finds disgusting.
- Build: Thin and weak.
- Face: Safine's face has hardened as she's aged, and her injuries have taken a toll, but her jawline remains sharp enough to cut glass.
- Arms: Remarkably toned from pushing herself around all day.
- Legs: Thin and twig-like from atrophy.
- Handedness: Right
Family
Safine was given up for adoption as a baby by her biological parents. She lived in foster care for a time (and actually quite enjoyed it, her time there enriching and pleasant) before being adopted by a pair of Humans at age 7, bring her even more joy. Despite being Human, Peter and Nikolai raised her on Trill and encouraged her to embrace her culture and heritage.
She never feels disadvantaged for being orphaned and assumes they did so for reasonable, good reasons.
- Parents: Biological parents unknown, adopted by Peter and Nikolai Tarasovich, her "Two Dads".
- Siblings: None known.
- Spouse: None.
- Children: None.
Personality
- Clothing: Safine wears civilian clothing, but wears the Ensign's pip she earned on her collar even though she is retired. She justifies this by saying she earned it, and it's "the only thing I kept".
- Quarters: Safine's quarters are spartan and functional, adjusted for her wheelchair.
- Mannerisms: Safine's personality has hardened after her injury, but her life has continued. She now finds passion in the law, especially defending those who are being unfairly treated.
- Religion/Spiritual Devotion: None.
- Hobbies and Pastimes: Reading obscure law texts and galavanting around the galaxy using the law for good.
- Likes: Exercise (when she can), singing, wheelchair tennis. She also has taken a great liking to be referred to as her rank, and she takes great pride in her (albeit short) service history.
- Dislikes: Dislikes having her wheelchair pushed, and had the handles removed at the rear to make it clear to people.
- Ambitions and Goals: Safine's recent return to the Gorkon has sparked a slight defensiveness about her rank, especially when compared to other officers her own age, most notably Corliss Fortune and Arlo Thornton. She was medically retired, but a wounding comment from Mikali sh'Shar about "not even making Lieutenant" has her longing for a half-pip she has no realistic hope of ever getting.
- Temperament: Occasionally mean and hot-headed, Safine is defensive about her injury and doesn't like being looked down upon (physically or otherwise). However, underneath the nasty exterior is a wounded person who needs to make peace with her injuries.
- Mental problems (complexes and phobias):
- Unresolved Pain - Safine hasn't yet made peace with being shot on Deck 20 of the USS Gorkon.
- Unresolved Quinn - Safine was left with a whole bunch of confusing feelings about Quinn Reynolds that have yet to be resolved.
- From Pain comes Anger - Permanently crippled and in regular pain, Safine sometimes reacts to stress with anger.
- Physical Limitations: Safine's body has no feeling below where her pouch begins, and her legs simply do not work. She has her mobility with her wheelchair, but finds common, mundane obstacles such as stairs and objects left in corridors to be a profound problem.
- Hobbies: An avid tennis player before her injury, Safine has adapted to the wheelchair leagues with some reluctance. She doesn't find it as fun, but since the pool of potential players is smaller, she performs better. She placed second in the Kural provincial championships in 2396, which was of particular pride to her.
Injury
Safine Tan's whole life was upended when she was on the wrong end of a Polaran weapon, on Deck 20 of the USS Gorkon.
As she had received a neural blocker during the integration, she was not fully joined with the Tan symbiont. The disassociation had preserved her. When her isoboramine levels plummeted into the deck plating, the only fact saving her life was that the symbiont was not yet fully bonded; even as much as a few years ago, Safine Tan would have passed into memory, but medical science had made the impossible merely dangerously risky. Her symbiont, his symbiont now, had been successfully removed but at a terrible cost.
The beam's dark work had seared the nerves around her pouch like a big ole' juicy steak. Joining nerves, the doctors had called them, a vast array of fibres that sent signals from symbiont and host.
Those damaged nerves had to be removed to complete the extraction of her symbiont. But those nerves attached to the spine, winding around her back and intertwining with their kin like creeping vines. Naturally, to transmit their signals between brains. They could not be separated.
So the price of her life was the use of her legs. Safine Tan would never walk again. Her career, such as it was, was over before it had even really started, and she was now Safine Rael once more.
Personal Story Arcs
- New Year, New Me: Joined after the death of Alleran Tan, Safine must join a new ship, new crew, in a new body where she adjusts to the pair of voices arguing in her mind.
- Intruder Alert: The Gorkon is invaded, and Safine Tan is critically wounded in the ensuing battle.
- Mourning Sickness: Distraught over the loss of her legs and her symbiont in one day, Safine Rael must come to terms with the fact that her life is not, and will never be, the same. (Theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJIDbxGrRqc)
Friends, Shipmates and Coworkers
Since coming aboard the Gorkon as a civilian, Safine's friend circle remains tight but growing.
Vaala - The shy, clingy, introverted Klingon dedicated years to her life to helping Safine recover from her injury and help her as much as possible, and although Safine feels enormously indebted to her, she also feels paradoxically bitter, as Vaala is a reminder of everything she can never have.
Kael Tam - Not really a friendship, more of a kinship with someone she's never met who died years ago. Tam was one of the doctors who treated her when she was critically injured, but he died before she could properly thank him. She holds onto what she calls an "idealized version" of him.
Christopher Johns - Drinking alone on the 5 year anniversary of her injury, Chris joined Safine for a brief drink, for which she was extremely appreciative (even if she didn't show it in the best way).
Mallora Vossti - Passing out drunk with a pair of new friends (including Corliss Fortune) wasn't exactly a new thing for her, but Safine has found a strange, unexplainable connection to Mallora Vossti that currently she's trying to explore.