hypatia skye
Character Name: Dr. Hypatia Skye
Position, Occupation: Noblewoman, Scientist/Businesswoman
Character's Political View: Neutral
Age: 76 (apparent age: 28)
Sex: F
Eye Color: Brown
Hair Color: Black
Height: 5’6”
Weight: 125 lbs.
Marital Status: Single
Birthplace: Naboo
Languages: Basic, Nabonese, Gungan, Neimoidian
Species: Human (genetically modified)
Family: Duke Mirroden Skye (father, deceased), Duchess Niiara Skye (mother, deceased)
Duke Aidan Skye (brother, deceased)
Physical Description: Dark hair and eyes, olive skin, slender build.
Background:
She was born and raised in one of the noble houses of Theed, but turned to science and engineering instead of politics.
Professional History:
After graduating at the top of her Engineering and Aesthetic Design class at the Royal University of Naboo, Hypatia (then using her original name, Ciianha), she went to work at the Theed Palace Space Vessel Engineering Corps designing classically beautiful vessels. Her love of nature was expressed in the sleek lines and elegant interiors of the ships she created. However, she had an urge to build larger ships for wider use and distribution than the modest needs of the Naboo royalty.
Several years before hostilities began, she was tapped by the Trade Federation to design the environmental systems for a new space station of unprecedented size. Interested by the challenge and excited by the opportunity to help develop something truly new, she took the job.
Despite the compartmentalization of design teams, as her work progressed, she became increasingly aware of strange design features of the station. A reactor of previously unimaginable power requiring a cooling system of epic scale. Radiation shielding and cooling systems for grossly oversized power conduits, and turbopumps for gigantic plasma coils. Gathering snippets of information from other engineers, she came to the horrifying realization that the space station she was helping design was to be a weapon, useful only for obliterating whole planets.
Knowing that she could not quit without arousing suspicion and probable death at the hands of the Neimoidians, and that the Republic Senate would never believe and act on such an outlandish horror story even if presented with plans, she remained with the project, determined to find a way to sabotage it as much as possible without being caught.
With great effort, she managed to make the exhaust ports for the reactor’s cooling system into a set of radiating straight conduits leading to the surface. Doing this in a station with thousands of decks, power systems, hangars, subsidiary reactors and the like was no mean feat.
As the Trade Federation moved toward conflict with Naboo, Hypatia considered leaving the Project. Fearing that her designs would be closely scrutinized after her departure and the Project itself relocated to insure secrecy, she decided to play the traitor and stay. She acted the part of someone obsessed with her high position and salary, taking on a persona the highly-competitive Neimoidians took as natural.
Even before the blockade of Naboo it was well-known that the Republic was weak, and its anemic response convinced Hypatia that the course she’d chosen was the right one.
When the Clone Wars began, Hypatia hoped that now the Republic would listen to her warning and do something about the Great Weapon. She took a “vacation,” and had a close friend act as her double, visiting a popular resort within Separatist space while Hypatia herself slipped away in disguise to Coruscant. However, fighting her way up the rungs of the mammoth bureaucracy of the Galactic government to get an appointment with someone she could show the plans to and expect action was, for her, a struggle comparable to the Clone Wars themselves.
The massive Republic bureaucracy proved to be even more tangled and impenetrable than its legendary reputation implied. She tried to reach the Jedi Council, but the layers of officials erected between them and the millions of “fans” and assorted crackpots attracted to them were nearly as impregnable as Chancellor Palpatine’s bureaucratic fortress. She was forced to return to the Project and defend her pipes as best she could without seeming to do so.
One by one, bends were introduced into the conduits as they were routed around more important structures placed by other departments. All, but one.
As the tide turned decisively against the Separatists, Hypatia reasoned that the Great Weapon would be scrapped by the Republic before it could see completion. As the Republic fleet drew near, Hypatia fled along with many of the other designers, going into hiding. However, the fact that such a terrible thing had been conceived and begun—as well as the creeping totalitarianism of Palpatine’s “New Order” made Hypatia desperate to find a better way.
Plagued with guilt for her involvement in the Great Weapon Project, she dedicated herself to creating only in the service of Life. Hoping to put the nightmare of the Great Weapon behind her, she immersed herself in comprehensive, multi-disciplinary research aimed at discovering the roots of the Galaxy’s problems, and how they could be solved. Combining psychology, anthropology/xenology, biology, mathematics, and extensive study and development in the areas of chaos theory and emergent order, she developed a predictive science of social behavior comparable to weather prediction.
This new science convinced her that the Galaxy had entered an all-embracing cultural decline that neither the recently-enthroned “Emperor” Palpatine nor the nascent Rebellion could reverse. If Galactic civilization was a dying organism, then perhaps Life itself held the secret to creating a new, vigorous culture in its place.
Returning to Naboo and the wealth her family possessed, she began a program of genetic research and development, hoping to find the key to creating a ‘New Civilization’ that would emerge from the spreading destruction she believed would fall upon the Galaxy in the next few centuries, arising in time to stave off a total collapse. To help fund her research, she founded a modest but successful cutting-edge biotech firm, Lifespring Technologies. In addition to providing a needed source of income, Lifespring Technologies would also enable her to gradually introduce the technological basis of her ‘New Civilization’ as solutions to the otherwise intractable problems of the Old.
Departing from a research mission to Alderaan’s rain forests, she reached space, only to be confronted by the manifestation of her darkest terror: the Death Star.
Fleeing the destruction of that world, she desperately sought a way to contact the Rebel leadership with what she knew about the station, hoping against hope that the weakness she’d included in the original Separatist design still existed in this new manifestation of the Great Weapon. But before she could even locate a significant Rebel installation, news of the Death Star’s destruction at Yavin reached the Galaxy.
Having seen the pure horror of the Great Weapon’s descendant in action, she became utterly driven to achieve her goal of a ‘New Civilization,’ a society which “made the Galaxy worked for everyone, to the disadvantage of no one,” where no one would ever contemplate building such a horrible thing ever again. To help insure that she would be alive to guide her project to completion, as well as permanently protect herself from Imperial retribution arising from her role in the Death Star’s destruction, she used her knowledge of genetics to reverse and arrest her aging process.
Creating a new identity as her daughter “Hypatia,” she poured herself into the long-term struggle to save the Galaxy before the Long Night extinguishes the lights of civilization for good.
Personality:
Hypatia is intensely driven to achieve her goals and will expend every effort she can muster to achieve them. However, she rejects the nostrum that “you have to break eggs to make an omelet,” certain that should she begin down the path of amoral expedience or the sacrifice of others, her dream would become just one more vicious predator fighting over dying body of civilization rather than acting as an agent of resurrection.
She plans extremely thoroughly, and for the long term. If she were a chess player, she’d be the kind whose pieces are always where they need to be before they’re needed, always several moves ahead of an opponent, and positioned with consummate skill. She is a “position player,” acting with extreme subtlety to invisibly “guide” events in the direction she desires without others even noticing her involvement or intention.
She also employs a jiujistsu-like strategy of “using forces rather than fighting them.” Instead of resisting a more powerful person or agency (e.g. Palpatine, Cordann, Xizor, etc.) she seeks to predict and/or plan for a wide range of their possible actions and interactions, and arrange her own affairs so that their actions advance her cause in the (very) long-term. This does not always succeed, but then she has given herself plenty of time to recover from failure…
She has a regal but kind disposition and a gentleness of spirit. She has a deeply sensual side that delights in tasteful luxury and refined aesthetics, but rejects “conspicuous” displays of wealth. She would never buy a million-credit wrist-chronometer, even though she can easily afford one.
Hypatia has been a fully sexually liberated woman since her teens, proud of her femininity and beauty and not the least bit ashamed of her body or sexuality. However, her near-obsession with her Work has kept her sexual activity at a minimum. Nonetheless, she has taken the time to master certain esoteric sexual practices intended to use the power of sexuality to seek mystical enlightenment.
In addition to her passion for science, she also eagerly studies and practices mystical disciplines, often technologically or pharmaceutically enhanced, in order to probe the mysteries of consciousness and existence.
Hypatia has an adamantine ethical code that forbids her to initiate the use of force against anyone, for any reason, and she refuses to kill, even in self-defense. She would be willing to kill in the defense of innocents, provided no non-lethal option was available, but lacking combat skill, she probably would not succeed very well at it.
She is well aware of the temptations highly-driven (if not obsessed) utopians and social reformers like her face, to impose a “better world” on people by force, to sacrifice countless individuals “for a higher good.” She has resolved to avoid these temptations by staying well away from the “slippery slopes” that could lead there.
Vehicle Of Choice:
For transportation on a planet, she has a gorgeous, super-sleek, high-performance gleaming electrum-hulled airspeeder designed along classic Nabonese lines. For interstellar travel, she has a beautiful Nabonese star yacht that is a statement of quiet luxury from stem to stern, as well as a selection of freighters and utility vessels owned by her company.
Some of these vessels are lightly-armed with ion cannons and lasers so that their pilots and crews can defend themselves if necessary. She does not attempt to impose her pacifist views on her employees, respecting their rights to defend themselves as they see fit. These armaments are of ordinary civilian level, though generally with more elegant design in terms of aesthetics, energy-efficiency, and accuracy.
Hypatia has also developed a modest fleet of specialized frigate-class capital ships mounted with powerful tractor beams and gravity-well generators and Naboo N-1 fighters with tractor beams and bucky-fiber cables. This fleet is intended to provide emergency rescue services after a space battle, using their tractor beams and gravity well generators to draw dangerous debris from space battles away from planets. The fall of a kilometer-long chunk of Star Destroyer or Mon-Cal Cruiser is sufficient to wipe out a planetary biosphere.
She hopes to develop and deploy a network of cloaked recon probe relays using tight-beam coded hyperspace communication links to track the movements of Imperial and Rebel war fleets with the ultimate goal of being able to rapid-deploy her own fleet to the scene of a battle that could endanger a world in time to prevent planet-wide catastrophe. In-game, she may be beginning to deploy this probe network over a limited space, such as the sector Tel’thranan is located in. Galaxy-wide deployment will (apart from GM request or permission) take place outside of the scope of the sim.
Base Of Operations: Tel’thranan
Weapons: None. (See Augmentations to Body) She does employ significant numbers of well-trained and well-equipped guards and security droids, though her primary strategy is to avoid open combat with any powerful foe altogether.
Form of Dress:
She usually wears a blending of Thranan and Naboo styles, such as bodystockings or dresses somewhat less revealing than the Thranan norm, with a selection of broad metallic collars and exotic Naboo hairstyles. She also has a simple red and white meditation habit she wears during when performing spiritual and mystical practices, and a selection of dresses and sleek business suits.
Augmentations to Body:
In addition to her apparent agelenssness, Hypatia has introduced modifications into her own genome that give her the ability to generate a wide variety of pheromones as well as detect scents from others, giving her a kind of empathy. She can also “fever scent,” generating pheromones that can intoxicate or incapacitate an opponent, raise or lower sexual desire, and render another person highly suggestible. Hypatia can produce a specialized scent undetectable to most humanoids that she employs as a “key” for certain high-security access points within her facilities.
Provided the opportunity to enter a deep state of meditation, she can also generate a cocktail of psychoactive chemicals from her skin, a genetic modification derived from certain amphibians that are widely sought-after, but illegal on many worlds. These compounds enable her to create and share a wide range of psychedelic and mystical experiences with another by employing advanced Tantric sexual techniques.
Through her enhanced scent glands, and a special interface that employs chemicals derived from the stomach of a Sarlacc beast and electromagnetic stimulation of the brain, she is able to temporarily mind-link with a supercomputer composed of networked nested shells of high-powered droid brains. This computer continually receives a flood of data from the HoloNet and other publicly available sources, as well as data collected and transmitted by the vessels, stations, outposts, and investigators of her own company.
While joined with this computer, Hypatia is able to temporarily augment her intelligence to a hitherto unheard of degree. However, this process is very taxing, and she must sleep for an entire day afterwards, and is limited in the frequency of sessions.
Eidetic memory and ambidexterity.
Abilities:
Highly exceptional intelligence (even when non-augmented) and a wide range of scientific knowledge and skills. She is also very skilled in meditation, Tantra, and other mystical techniques.
Superhuman Powers:
See Augmentations to Body. Hypatia is not Force-sensitive, but she can employ her mystical techniques to (sometimes) generate the sort of “psychic experiences” reported in our world, such as remote viewing, divination, synchronicity control (e.g. “Magick”) and heightened intuition. Though far less powerful, and requiring a much greater degree of concentration and effort than the Force abilities of a Jedi, they can sometimes offer her significant advantages (or disadvantages, when the information she gains is wrong!) relative to non-psychic “normals.” They also give her some degree of insight into the Force, comparable to a career mystic like a Tibetan monk, yogi, or shaman here on Earth.
Special Notes:
Hypatia’s plan to build the “New Civilization” will not cause any publicly noticeable changes within the sim’s time-span or that of presently available film and novelized canonical material through the period of the Galactic Civil War (if not longer), apart from GM request or permission. For the near-term (the time-scale of the sim and canonical material leading at least to the height of the Yuushan Vong war), she intends for her Project to be invisible to the public and major players in Galactic leadership, while she acts to moderate the worst of the damage resulting from the wars. The sheer size of Galactic civilization and the limits of her resources insure that she cannot accomplish her goals before about 300 years or so.
She has neither the power, wealth, or resources to oppose any significant power-player (e.g. the Empire, Cade Cordann, the Rebellion, Prince Xizor). Instead, she must keep the true dimensions of her plan secret while planning and acting on a scale of centuries. Her plan is to slowly and subtly introduce the technological and ideological foundations of the ‘New Civilization’ in a dispersed manner over the next few centuries, so that when the time is right, it will seem to emerge from everywhere at once with apparent spontaneity. She is “doing the things most people think just happen.”
The unexpected widespread devastation wrought by the Yuushan Vong could conceivably force her to act more abruptly, and the possibility of recruiting Vong Shapers after the peace could (of necessity) accelerate the biotech revolution she seeks to implement, but apart from a GM-decided temporal ‘fast-forward’ of some sort, this is unlikely to affect the sim.
She is stupendously rich in Earth terms, but in the Star Wars Galaxy, she only qualifies as a modestly wealthy and influential individual, comparable to the CEO of a successful high-tech firm on Earth, where Emperor Palpatine is President of the United States and Secretary General of the UN (but with Force Lightning, a limitless supply of Stormtroopers, a bottomless military budget, and no constitutional limits on his powers…), and Cade Cordann is George Soros, Warren Buffett, the Sultan of Brunei, and the House of Rothschild in one, with a controlling interest in the nation of Brazil and a web of less-obvious connections extending around the globe.