Nova: Tacharan

Basic Information
Birth Name: Nova Piestewa
Aliases: none
Place of Birth: Arizona
Age:(real and apparant) 40, 29
Male/Female: Female
Current Occupation: Research and Development at Dubine Enterprises, Graduate school professor
Past Occupation: (If different from above): Professor, Researcher at the local university
Appearance
Hair Color: Dark brownish red, with gray
Length and Style: long, thick and in a ponytail
Eye Color: Hazel
Skin Color: Brown, baby
Height: 5'6"Â?
Weight: 130
Nationality: Hopi
Race: (I.E. Vampire, human etc.)
Body Type: Built
Description (if an NPC) or name of your creator(if a PC): Simon
Personal Questions
1. Describe your character's personality
Nova is an aggressive misfit. She came from one of the most famously peaceful cultures known to man, and she came out swinging. She is tireless, relentless, hard-working. She likes to be good at what she does, and she likes to help other people be good at what they do. She has a spiritual, peaceful side, though she's mouthy as all get out most of the time. She also does everything at a breakneck pace, still more accustomed to the idea of a limited life span than the idea of immortality.
2. Describe how your character would appear to a stranger (I.E. typical dress, way they carry themselves etc.)
Nova is pretty much always wearing jeans and a tee shirt. She rarely suffers to wear a bra. Nova is dark skinned with hair the color of red mud, streaked generously with gray. She wears it in a ponytail and doesn't cut or otherwise mess with it. She walks quickly and her speech is fast and clipped.
3.What does your character like?
When Nova isn't working, which is her love and passion, she likes driving fast, drinking hard, working out, clubbing, dancing. She loves hot weather and the desert, used to love the sun but has become accustomed to a dry night under the stars.
4. Dislike?
Doing nothing. People who waste their abilities. The words "can't"Â? and "impossible"Â?
6. What are your fears?
That all of her work will have amounted to nothing. That something would stand in the way of her own brilliance or that of her students.
7. What is your character's strengths and weaknesses?
Strengths: Intelligent, relentless, resourceful.
Weaknesses: Will argue something to death, even after it proves futile. Doesn't believe anything without solid proof. Questions everything even when there is solid proof. Has unreasonably high expectations of herself and others. Can be arrogant.
Hobbies & Skills
Nova works out to unwind, and so is in quite healthy shape
Teaching, research, mathematics, chemistry
Nova is an excellent driver :D
Abilities
Dream Walking
Perception
Flaws
Heavy Sleeper
Cosmetic Traits(These must be minor, see the rules)
Quirks and Habits worthy of mention
Personal History (Please be detailed, this creates your basis for your character)
You won't believe me when I tell you this, but I remember my naming ceremony. It's alright, no one ever does. Impossible to remember something from when you were a baby, I know. But it's true.

I remember that blazing desert sunrise, as though the whole world emerged from darkness to explosive light in one amazing moment. I remember the heat on my skin. I remember the texture of the cornmeal in my mouth as my name was spoken for the first time.

Nova.

It doesn't mean what you think it does, though it turned out to be fitting enough I suppose. It means "chases butterfly."Â? The monarchs were migrating at the time, going south.

I went to public school; not unusual in this day and age, even living on the reservation. I found I was in two worlds and fit into neither; my parents certainly didn't understand me at all, and school was just not for me. I was angry most of the time, as young people often are, though not Hopis of course. Not that I'm bitter about that. Angry at my parents for not understanding or respecting my choices, angry at the teachers with whom I had no patience and none was returned, angry at the other kids for isolating me. I can admit now that most of that was my own fault; there were a dozen small sacrifices I could have made for my parents but didn't. The teachers saw a student that came from a culture of early drop outs and high unemployment rates, who would likely never amount to much in their eyes; I should have fought that image, but didn't. Instead I was as belligerent as possible. As for the other kids...I ran off at the mouth a lot. No one seemed to know how to deal with that, though everyone around me did their best to hammer it out.

Studies were my solace, though my library time was spent exploring my interests rather than the mundane work of school. I simply wanted to learn, and I did, a great deal as a matter of fact, but since I had never thought much about what would happen after school, I did not give much of a care for grades. I much preferred questioning my teachers, taking great glee in pointing out where they were wrong. I would have likely dropped out like many of my peers if not for Mr. Davidson.

I would have slid through his class with average grades and no notice if not for the bonus problem. He was my calculus teacher, and had promised extra credit to anyone who could provide an answer, and the appropriate proofs, to a complex problem he had photocopied off a journal.

I nearly threw the paper away, actually, but I was angry at my parents that day and didn't want to go home. Instead, I stayed in the library, and as I was bored, I decided to give it a go. The problem was actually challenging, and soon I found myself so engaged in the solving of it that the librarian had to tap me on the shoulder and tell me to leave.

It took me several more hours to get to the solution; I stayed up very late that night, and came to school tired the next day. When Mr. Davidson collected homework, I, as usual, did not have it, but I did turn in the solution. He looked at the paper for several long minutes, then walked over to his desk, ignoring the curious muttering of the class, and opened up a journal.

He looked up, asked to see me after class, and went on with the lesson.

Usually when I was asked to stay after class, it was to yell at me for my latest fight, to rebuke me for not turning in homework, or to tell me to watch my mouth. I could have just as easily been taken out to the hall for that, though I'd noticed that Mr. Davidson never seemed to need to do that to anyone. Still, I was apprehensive to say the least.

After class, he told me to wait, and left the classroom. I was about to bail when he came back, my record in hand. He sat at his desk, browsing through it for several moments, then finally looked up. He picked up my solution from his desk and held it in the air.

"This is your work?"Â?

"Yeah."Â?

"Who helped you?"Â?

"No one."Â?

"Explain it to me then."Â?

And so I did. I could see he believed me about halfway through when his eyebrows completely disappeared above his hair. When I was finished, he was quiet for a long time, studying me.

Finally, he lifted up my file and spoke again.

"You'll have to do better than this to get into college."Â?

And so the door was opened. I didn't end up doing as well as Mr. Davidson would have liked, still being full of the piss and vinegar of youth, but I did well enough to get into the state college, and from there I had a clean slate on which to prove myself. Paying for school was another matter; we reservation kids were charity cases by and large, wearing cast off clothing and using donated supplies. I don't quite know what prompted Mr. Davidson to continue helping me; I was petulant at times, arrogant, hard to get along with. But he got me a job, and when that still didn't bring in enough, he took me into his home. I worked as his aide for three years before moving on to graduate school, where he referred me to another generous soul named Mr. Tibson. Mr. Tibson, while just as good hearted as Mr. Davidson had been, was 80 years old and more salty than I was. We had spectacular arguments which would usually end with one or the other of us not speaking to each other for at least twenty minutes, when our next big idea came to us. We also hardly slept as I climbed up the ladder of progression through graduate school and beyond; when we weren't arguing we were talking, thinking, studying, and he was always teaching me. He taught me until the day he died; tough bastard lived to be eighty six before the cancer sticks finally did him in.

Nowadays, I'm the one doing the teaching, though I'm learning plenty too. It started as a way to give back, but now unlocking the potential of my graduate students is a great joy of mine. Still, I found that it wasn't enough; I'd been published, and I'd made progress in my field, but the longer I teach and research and write the less I seem to find time to become involved in the hands on department. I was getting ever closer to that "over 30 glass ceiling" and wanted to make sure I made my mark before that happened.

Dubine Industries seemed like the answer, and proved to be so in more ways than one. Simon made sure I didn't have to sweat the over 30 mark quite so much. I'm hoping my work toward artificial blood will become a commonplace reality in the next ten years.

Odd Questions(To help define your character)
1. A stranger at a bar offers your character a drink, what is a typical response?
Knock it back.
2. Your character finds a lost child alone on the streets. What do they do?
Talk to the child and either find his parents or a police officer
3. A barfight erupts in the nightclub your character is in, what do they do?
Get out of there; some people just can't handle their liquor and there's no reason to stay in a bad situation.
4.What animal does your character most identify with?
The Eagle

OOC Info:

Player name (online is fine): Billie/Verileah/Ladyday
Other Characters you play: Thaddeus, The Wolf
How you came to SA (Other board, friend, etc): heh.

A note on the surname:
While digging for a Hopi surname I came across a story that I think we're all familiar with. Lori Piestewa was the first native american woman to die in combat, in Iraq in fact. Though Jessica Lynch is a more well known name, Lori was one of the soldiers who never made it out. The surname is the last thing I added to this character, but the coincidence was so astounding to me that I felt compelled to take Piestewa. No disrespect is intended with that.