Lionola Ayun
Trivia
Species: Hapan
Gender: cis woman
Age: 39
Marital status: single
Civil Rank: Simineth
Occupation: military
Rank: Fleet Captain
Division: Royal Hapan Navy
Biography
Born to the rural world of Dreena within the Hapes Cluster, the life of Lionola Ayun was supposed to be quiet and her path set before her: to become a farmer and one day run the Ayun family's farm. But fate had planned otherwise and her life would become as adventurous as it’d become tragic. Life as a farmer is strenuous and in bad years might become even spartanic, still Lionola had a healthy childhood through the love and care of Bregor and Asarhia Ayun. Her parents met at a young age and soon after Asarhia gave birth to what would become their only child, their daughter Lionola, inheriting Asarhias dark skin tone and rebellious nature along with Bregors strength of both mind and body. However, their life as farmers on what many sentients would call a backwater planet even in the rich society of the Hapes Cluster together with the burden of child care put a hefty toll on the health and relationship of her parents. Adding to this, their high morals and distrust of authority made them outsiders in the otherwise tight-knit rural community, a feeling Lionola cannot to this day fully shake off.
Everything changed on that fateful day nearly thirty years ago. Lionola - despite her young age already helping on the fields - heard the loud thunder of swoop bikes from afar. Drunken, frustrated and looking for trouble, a group of men descended on the family farm, which just happened to be on their way. A raging horde of mercenaries, swoop gang members and local drunkards encircled the farm on their speeders, destroying crops and sheds and scaring the beasts of burden, when Lionola’s parents made the mistake of stepping out of their farmhouse and tried to run them off. To small Lionola’s luck, she was out of sight in the highest grown crop fields, but she could not make any noise, she stood still and witnessed the scene, her heart racing and her eyes filling with tears. The mob yelled sexist slurs towards Asarhia, and when they jumped from their bikes and tried to molest her, Bregor took out a blaster rifle that had been hidden behind the doorframe. Not intending to use it but to scare them away, he pointed it towards the masked molesters, when a shot hit him in the chest. In the shock and silence that followed, Asarhia then took the rifle and fired a full salvo in the attacker’s general direction, upon which they finally scattered and ran towards their bikes.
Both women were devastated by the loss of Bregor. Asarhia tried to care for young Lionola, but the grief - and the hatred - would not diminish with the years, and would soon become unbearable for her. That was when Lionola noticed the change in her mother, saw her drifting away, from work, from her, from life. The drugs she took to numb the pain made Asarhia a shadow of her once so fierce and proud self, until one day, she also was gone, making Lionola an orphan at just 14 years of life.
The Hapes Consortium, the government, provides for its citizens, but the cluster is home to billions of sentients and Lionola was not easy to be taken care of. She ran away from foster homes more times she could count, ultimately ending up alone in the huge cities of the cluster’s core planets and their vibrant underground club scene and angry subcultures. As much as she despised the venom that had lead to the deaths of both her parents and the collapse of her small world, she turned to a fast life of drugs, meaningless sex and squatting with just 16. By her rebellious nature, no one would have guessed how nervous and insecure she really was.
Neither for the girls, nor the occasional boy, did she ever develop a romantic interest. Some of the other, older women in the squats however tried to steer her away from the self destructive life she lived, for she, now 19, had reached the bottom. Only then Lionola took a moment to reflect on her life and situation, and finally accepted that drastic measures needed to be taken to survive the mess she'd maneuvered herself in. To not be killed by the demons that had taken her mother from her. Thus she left all but her views and closest friends behind, said goodbye to her squat and said goodbye to the drugs and with a bitter taste in her mouth turned towards the government for help and education, for she did not have a formal degree in anything yet.
The only option she was offered in Year 7Day2 though was to join the Royal Hapan Armed Forces as a bomber pilot – and to everyone’s surprise, she signed up - Lionola Ayun of all people, the teenage rebel, the uneducated working class backwater-planet farmer girl, the anarchist squatter.
It was everything else but easy, since for the first time in five years, she had to accept being ordered around again, to shut up and do what she was told. But the lack of alternatives kept her biting her tongue and clenching her fists and teeth. Because there was one more reason for her to stay and rise the ranks: Starships, capital class starships. Since childhood had she been playing with toy starships, imagining herself as a brave fighter pilot, daring smuggler captain or sincere frigate commander. And slowly but steadily, she came closer to her dream, growing in character, learning important skills and accepting more and more responsibility. She had tears in her eyes when she finally entered the bridge of a Nova Battle Cruiser, her battlecruiser. Not only was she determined, she also must have done something right, for she later became Fleet Commander. By then she had decided to serve the Hapes Consortium in good or bad, and there was plenty of both. Together with her fleetmates she rescued an allied planet from being overrun by an invading force, defending herself against superior numbers and destroying her attackers. It had not been an easy time, for Lionola was not all too happy to be part of the Imperial Union, both fearing and despising the Emperor and his lackeys, of which she herself had become one. But the danger did not lie in external forces, but the forces within, when greed and aggression took control and she – together with two friends, also senior officers – tried to secretly occupy an enemy planet by constructing cities, until the Royalty found out and stopped the project before the diplomatic disaster developed into a catastrophe. Lionola had learned her lesson and from that day onward stuck to the rules and lead by example, to against all odds become Naval Commander and then commander of the entire Royal Hapan Armed Forces, by then with the rank of Admiral. Finally commandeering the largest of starships, Battle Dragons and even huge Imperial I-class Star Destroyers. Just when she thought she had reached the end of the ladder, she had been called to the Royal Council to serve as the Minister of the Exterior, by then no longer part of the Imperial Union. When she retired from that office, she was accepted into the Chume’doro, the Royal Guard, which she serves until the present day, as a highly decorated Fleet Captain.
In her free time she aspires to become a semi-professional shockball player, as she currently plays center for the Hapan Hawks.
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