Yulena Shastakar
Name Yulena Shastakar
Position Annexari Special Representative
Character Information
| Gender | Female | |
| Species | Annexari | |
| Age | By her accounts, 38 |
Physical Appearance
| Height | 5’8” | |
| Weight | 130 lbs | |
| Hair Color | Silver | |
| Eye Color | Amber |
Family
| Spouse | Though she has been assigned several compatible breeding partners as part of Order 31, she is not close enough with any of them to consider any long-term relationships. | |
| Children | At least 10 children through government breeding programs. | |
| Father | General Veyări Shastakar (Deceased- killed by Yulena in battle on the fields of Brasov IV) | |
| Mother | General-Locotenent Ţela Ulmovă (Status unkown, presumed deceased) | |
| Brother(s) | At least 3 from her “batch”; several more conceived through both of her parents. | |
| Sister(s) | At least 1 from her “batch”; several more conceived through both of her parents. | |
| Other Family | None of note |
Personality & Traits
| General Overview | With a Spartan upbringing in the Annexari military complex, General Shastakar is a stiff, regimented officer who often struggles to understand the social norms of Federation life. Many of their commodities and conventions feel needlessly improvident to her, as she feels they offer no real benefits outside of offering a mindless distraction from one’s duties. As a result, she can be quick to criticize something she views as “wasteful,” often to the point of coming across as rude and condescending. While it’s hardly in her nature to be snobbish, her blunt criticisms are her way of reckoning with the social gap between the Federation way of living and the lifestyle that she’s grown accustomed to. Having fought on both sides of the Annexari Civil War and bearing first-hand witness to unspeakable injustices propagated by the Moldoviț Regime, General Shastakar has had her fair share of emotional trauma that she has been struggling to cope with on a more private level. While counselling has been recommended by Starfleet to try and address these issues, she actively refuses to undergo counseling, as she believes it will only reinforce what she already knows, and is therefore a waste of time. This can make her difficult to work with virtually any counselor that she’s pared up with, as she can often dig her heels in if she feels their questions get too pointed. |
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| Strengths & Weaknesses | + A respected war hero whose larger-than-life presence can oftentimes be a driving force in convincing the Annexari of the Federation’s noble intentions. + A keen eye for problem-solving. +Possesses a great amount of empathy towards painful circumstances that lie outside of peoples’ control. - Is quick to call out certain things that she feels are “wasteful,” often to the point of being rude. - Has difficulty in accepting that several of her core values may be inherently flawed - Refuses to undergo counseling, as she believes it will only serve to reinforce what she already knows without offering a proper solution. |
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| Ambitions | General Shastakar is not entirely sure why the people have elected her, a militant and mass killer, to represent the Annexari at large; perhaps it is possible that they understand her more than she understands herself, and she needs to do a bit of self-searching to try and understand what others see in her. In the meantime, she will do all she can to ensure the best outcome for all Annexari, hoping their trust in her is justified. | |
| Hobbies & Interests | -Sharpshooting and other tactical exercises intended to hone in on her combat skills. -Rigorous exercise to keep her in fit and fighting form. |
| Personal History | Yulena Shastakar was born sometime during 2365 aboard Krolyat 58, a Krolyat Gate Ship operated by the 58th Infantry Division of the Annexari Land Forces. Having been conceived under Order 31, an involuntary Deca-annual breeding program instituted by the Moldoviț Regime to steadily bolster Military Numbers, Yulena was formally designated as military property from birth. She, along with the other members of her respective batch, were weaned from their mother shortly after birth to finish developing in an artificial pouch, and at three years were developed enough to begin informative education. As a child of the Annexari Military Complex, Yulena received what could be considered as an unconventional upbringing for her species. In particular, she was taught that the Annexari peasantry was to be treated as a separate species from that of the military, even though they were biologically indistinguishable. The first and foremost role of the Military was the protection of any and all agricultural assets of the Annexari peoples from any individual or group considered to be an enemy of the Moldoviț Regime. This, it was reasoned, necessitated an ideological separation from external influences, such as the peasantry, so as to nullify the possibility of bias, and therefore dereliction of duty. The only individuals that Yulena was taught to empathize with were her fellow militants—all others were to be treated with absence of feeling, and—should the Regime determine them to be an enemy of the state— vengeance. Yulena began her formal military training at the age of 15; having been selected by the Military for the Commissioned Officer career path, she was assigned the rank of Sublocotenent upon the start of her training. Following the completion of her training at the age of 20, Yulena was assigned to breeding duties as part of that year’s Order 31. With the Annexari typically having a gestation period of 6 weeks, it was possible (discounting the rare anomaly of having twins, or- even rarer still- triplets) for an Annexari woman to breed as much as 8 children over the course of a given Order 31 curriculum. As a way of encouraging fruitful breeding, it was decreed that any woman who fulfilled a quarter of this quota—that is to say, birthing at least two children during the allotted time frame—would be rewarded for her efforts with an automatic advance in rank. And so it came to pass that Yulena bred a total of four children in her first batch, and returned to duty with the rank of Căpitan the following year. Upon the completion of that year’s Order 31, Yulena was deployed on her first tour of duty as part of the 16th Platoon. Other than routine combat drills intended to keep her skills on point, the first four years of her deployment were relatively uneventful. That changed in 2390, when a farmer’s revolt broke out on the colony world of Făgrăş XIII; with a heavy guerilla presence in the mountains of Făgrăş XIII threatening to upend vital trade routes, the 16th Platoon was one of 50 such land-based platoons assigned to quell the uprising and restore law and order. In what was arguably one of her proudest moments during the three months’ campaign, Yulena saved her platoon commander from an I.E.D., which left her with third-degree burns on her back and neck, but otherwise shielded him from the blast. For her heroism, Yulena was awarded the Medial De Valoste Vițiă, or Medal Of Outstanding Valor, and promoted to the rank of Major. Following the resolution of the Făgrăş XIII campaign, Yulena returned to her tour of duty and things started to settle down for the next 4 or so years. However, that soon changed when mounting national debt saw the Moldoviț Regime implementing drastic austerity measures. Resources quickly dwindled as a result of limited funding, and with several million peasants starving as a direct consequence, several small revolts broke out on various colony worlds across Annexari domain. The 58th was tasked with quelling many of these revolts, often backing up the Secret Police in shutting down any perceived discontent with the regime. Though she was practically hardwired not to sympathize with the peasantry under such circumstances, the Division’s increasingly pervasive use of force against the peasantry- oftentimes jailing entire villages under suspicion of conspiring against the Regime- left Yulena beginning to question the legitimacy of her orders from on high, even as she continued to rise up through the ranks and was awarded the Esțel Măcrusc, or Grand Cross. The following year saw another round of Order 31, and Yulena was recalled once again for breeding. This time around, austerity measures were in full swing, and even the Military was beginning to feel the effects of limited resources. Infant mortality rates were soaring, and it was believed that 1 out of every 14 children bred as part of that year’s program were stillborn. Unfortunately, Yulena was no exception to this phenomenon, and despite breeding a healthy 6 children as part of that year’s batch, she suffered her first ever stillbirth, which devastated her a lot more than she thought it would. She kept a brave face for the sake of her superiors—even as they cremated the remains of the stillborn child, as it would serve of no use to the military— but deep down, she was beginning to second-guess the values that her superiors had drilled into her. When she returned to duty at the rank of General-Major, she was shipped out on her second Tour of Duty, this time as part of the 23rd Battalion. Military drills were heightened as a result of widespread discontent amongst the peasantry, though, blissfully, revolts were few and far between. It was during this Tour that she met the Annexari Head of State, Vasilar Moldoviț; despite what she had been taught, Yulena couldn’t help but feel that Moldoviț was detached from his people, with his public demonstrations framing the peasantry as lazy dreamers who had brought famine upon themselves for their failure to commit to the austerity programme; but not once did his words strike her as anything less than high contempt—treating the workers, the housewives, the children of the farming collectives as little more than indentured servants, unworthy of being considered as the same beings as that of the ruling class, despite their biological parallels. Her dwindling faith in the regime reached a critical turning point in 2402, when a group of peaceful protestors on the colony of Timmisora were ruthlessly executed for attempting to protest unethical working conditions. Incensed by the military’s actions, the peasantry revolted en masse, and within a month of the massacre, Vasilar Moldoviț was forced to formally declare war against a growing dissident faction. Yulena, along with almost the entirety of the Annexari Military, were scrambled to combat the “threat to national integrity”. However, compared to the Campaigns of yore, Yulena observed a startling shift in ethics; virtually any individual who showed even the slightest gesture of discontent towards the regime—whether it be snide remarks, a failure to salute passing platoons, or even something as subtle as a roll of the eye—was to be executed on spot, without trial. Put simply, the Military was given the power to serve as judge, jury, and executioner. And regretful as it was, Yulena found herself in many a situation, ordered to execute an unarmed peasant for a perceived slight. The last straw for her, however, came in early 2403, when 23rd Battalion was ordered to quell an uprising on the commune of Esromaeria V. The Battle for Esromaeria had already been raging fiercely for several months now, with well over a hundred thousand already dead. While their mission brief was to provide support for forces already on the ground, the Battalion found itself assuming an enforcer role once again when it was dispatched to a communal school whose faculty were purported to be teaching their students “radical” ideals. After rounding up both children and teachers alike, Yulena anticipated that the teachers would be executed and the children sent off to be re-educated elsewhere. However, she was horrified when her superior officer ordered her to execute the children, some of whom were as young as six years. Yulena attempted to dispute the order, as she contended that the children were young and still had a chance to be re-educated, but she was subsequently branded as a traitor by her senior officers, and her own troops were ordered to turn their guns on her. She managed to survive the attempt on her life by playing dead, but the students she had been trying to protect were not so fortunate. When she came to an hour later to find the entire student body reduced to a bloody pulp, she cried for the first time in her life and swore vengeance against the Moldoviț Regime. After having her wounds treated at a nearby monastery, she voluntarily surrendered herself to the local militia, claiming that she would leave it up to them to determine her fate, but for her failure to protect the lives of several children she felt were innocent in the conflict, she desired to repent by whatever means they deemed fit. While executing Yulena was on the cards for several weeks, the militia decided that someone of her rank would be an invaluable asset to their cause, and offered her a position in the People’s Revolutionary Army. While they had to reckon with the possibility that she might decline the offer under the pretence that she might be forced to fight her own comrades— even her family— they were surprised when she accepted without hesitation, claiming that those who blindly followed a man as unhinged as Vasilar Moldoviț were no allies of hers. For the next several months, Yulena found herself fighting fiercely alongside the People’s Revolutionary Army, helping to co-ordinate raids on military installations, and even fighting her own father to a bloody death on the fields of battle. However, as trying as the affair was for her, she was surprised that she didn’t have to fight this war alone, as several of her former compatriots also gradually defected to the People’s Revolutionary Army, as they too were growing wary of Vasilar Moldoviț’s mounting paranoia and increasingly unethical tactics. Finally, with revolutionary forces far outnumbering the hardline loyalists, the PRA descended upon Annexar, storming the Imperial Palace, apprehending Vasilar Moldoviț as he attempted to flee, and bringing an end to the bloody conflict. For his part in countless war crimes that saw the death of some 5,000,000 Annexari, Vasilar Moldoviț and his family were sentenced to death by means of 5,000,000 bullets—one for every Annexari slaughtered at his hands. Following a highly publicized execution, the People’s Revolutionary Army reorganized into a provisional government, the first democratic body to preside over the Annexari People in 173 years. With millions dead, resources depleted, trade lines disrupted, and a small handful of loyalist holdouts scattered across the farthest reaches of Annexari domain, this new, Provisional Government knew that they had a lot of work ahead of them—perhaps too much for the Annexari to achieve on their own. At around this time, the Great Archives of Annexar were accessed, and a previous encounter with another space-faring civilization, the United Federation of Planets, was unearthed. With little other options that were readily available to them, the provisional government voted unanimously to re-establish contact with the UFP and negotiate the allocation of relief efforts to their stricken domain. While she felt she hardly possessed the training to serve as a diplomatic liaison between the two civilizations, Yulena was shocked when, by popular vote, the Provisional Government elected her to serve as an ambassador to the United Federation of Planets. She attempted to recommend a few individuals she felt were better suited to the task, but the Provisional Government remained firm in their vote; the people had spoken, and they agreed that if there was any one individual who was cut out to present their peoples before the UFP, it was Yulena. |
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| Service Record | 2368-2380 – Krolyat 58 (Informative Education) 2380-2385 – Krolyat 58 (Sublocotenent- Formal Military Training) 2385 – Involuntary LOA to participate in Order 31 2386-2390 – 1st Tour Of Duty (Căpitan- 58th Infantry Division, 16th Battalion, Company B) 2390-2394 – 1st Tour Of Duty (Major- 58th Infantry Division, 16th Battalion, Company B) 2394-2395 – 1st Tour Of Duty (Locotenent-Colonel- 58th Infantry Division, 16th Battalion, Company B) 2395 – Involuntary LOA to participate in Order 31 2396-2402 – 2nd Tour Of Duty (General-Major- 58th Infantry Division, 23rd Battalion, Company F) 2402-2403 – 2nd Tour Of Duty (General-Locotenent- 58th Infantry Division, 23rd Battalion, Company F) 2403 – Defected to the People’s Revolutionary Army, Ground Division 2403 – Voted to serve as a diplomatic liaison between the Provisional Government of Greater Annexar and the United Federation Of Planets 2403-???? – USS Yorktown (General- Ambassador-At-Large) |