Commander Snowfire K'Leysha

Like most members of her race, Snowfire has a slim build that compliments her height. She wears her white hair long, sweeping down around her shoulders when it's not tied back. She's rarely seen without at least one PADD and several other pieces of assorted technology - most of which is not quite standard.

None

Starsight, Earthdance, Bladesong, Zephyr

Starseeker, Shatterglass, Dawnglow, Silvermoon, Firestar, Voidancer, Deathbane

Technically all of Clan K'Leysha can been seen as Snowfire's extended family. This, however, would imply that she has an extended family numbering in the multiple billions.

Snowfire's family heralds back to one of the largest of the Ilythiiri Houses at the time of the Reformation and one of the few who managed to adapt after the intervention of the Narkuth Yvalm (4). Of the Nine Clans, the central focus of K'Leysha is probably the hardest to understand. They were tasked by the Narkuth Yvalm to safeguard the spirit of the Ilythiiri people, to bolster it when needed and to stop it becoming prideful or arrogant. Sundance was born to the – then Matriarch – of her house as her first-born daughter. Although that once would have laid out a path of scheming and eventual corruption, the Reformation changed that.

Sundance came of age two years after the launch of the first Ilythiiri mining vessel – graduating from the Great Academy of Delmah in 46,200 AF. Over the next two hundred years, she pushed hard for the scouting and colonization of L'Ilhar's Euol. She met Windblade at the 46,350 AF conference on the viability of extra-solar travel and found him to be one of the few there whose opinions matched hers. She always believed that the stars were within reach and over the course of the year-long conference they fought hard to bring a majority of the council around to their view. When the dust finally settled, they found themselves the co-leaders of the FTL drive project. Over the next few decades, they grew closer and slowly began to acknowledge their mutual attraction. They were joined before the Goddess in 46,411 AF, shortly after the launch of the Ssin'urn Q'elak (5).

Snowfire is their second daughter and was the first of their children to manifest her Gifts. Both Windblade and Sundance come from long lines of Gifted (K'Leysha drawing Gifted to their ranks in ways no other clan could match) and as such have passed much of their potential on to their progeny.

Intelligent, and possessed of a keen ability to think outside the box which is only empowered by the knowledge she retains from her time in the IDF, Snowfire is rarely without a plan for a given situation. Her Gifts give her an edge that is hard to match in social situations, and time on the Talya teams have allowed her to hone her control. That control however, is still not quite powerful enough for a Tri-Gifted. Very little ever is. And, as her experience and Gifts give her an edge, the same also hamper her. Her experience is geared towards working within an organisation that works very differently from Starfleet. This can cause..issues - especially when ingrained reflexes override conscious thought. And her Gifts can make this worse - as shown in her reaction to the leader of the Horizon's Children.

Manifesting her Gifts at the age of only 25, Snowfire was immediately entered into the Great Academy in Sess'engrin like her mother had been before her. Although initially confronted with problems due to her age and the pure, unfocused power of her Gifts, she managed to conquer both within twenty years. By that point, her age was no longer as huge an issue and she had learnt a modicum of control over her Gifts. Snowfire is probably one of the youngest Tri-Gifted ever born, but such a burden was not easy for her. Mindspeech is difficult enough to control, but both receptive and projective Empathy in addition to (thankfully minor) Fetching was almost too much for her to bear. It was only through a combination of neural suppressants and iron control that she managed to survive her first two decades at the Academy. However once she found her focus – and more importantly, was able to control it – she advanced quickly. She might not have been a genius, but she wasn't unintelligent either.

On a more emotional level, the Academy was much more difficult then Snowfire let it appear. She was cut off from her family most of the time, unable to have the contact and physical love that she should have had. Although they attempted to make this up to her later in her Academy years, she missed out on much of her childhood and has suffered for it. Both in the IDF and then on Earth, where she eventually found herself, Snowfire has gone through life with a heavy handicap of emotional immaturity that she is still only beginning to understand. She graduated from the Great Academy in 47,350 AF with degrees in everything from starship design and gravitational mechanics to ancient Ilythiirian history. In truth she graduated late, holding off from the Ceremony so that she could cram more learning into the decades she spent at the Academy.

She joined the Ilythiirian Defence Force straight out of the Academy, leaving Delmah midway into what human historians would call the Ilythiirian Council's Golden Age of Exploration. Although initially assigned to the command track, the need for Gifted prompted by contact with the Melkaren Empire found her reassigned undercover, deep within enemy territory as part of the Talya (6) teams used to incapacitate the Melkaren Empire in preparation for the IDF attack that effectively won the war. Due to her Gifts she was placed in on of the teams on the Melkaren homeworld that were tasked with the capture of the Melkaren Emperor. She learnt one of the most important lessons she has ever learnt in that operation. Snowfire was placed as one of the primary Hazers of the team purely due to her aptitude in Empathy. She helped cloud the minds of the Emperor's bodyguards in preparation for the attack and was then tasked to provide covering fire. Her confidence got the better of her however. Although the specifics have yet to be declassified, she somehow suffered severe burns to one arm and parts of her upper body that – despite the best efforts of IDF medical – have left permanent scarring. She did something stupid, suffered for it and to this day when asked about them replies that they are a penance for that stupidity and overconfidence. But regardless of her failures, Snowfire stuck with the Talya teams for seventy years in total before an upswing in pirate activity and a need for competent captains drew attention to her command track experience.

She was transferred out of the teams and sent back to the IDF Academy. It was a strange experience, not least for her. Although not unheard of, it was quite rare for a teacher to be outranked by their pupil. Snowfire spent seven years at the Academy, most of which was spent catching up after an IDF battle group tracked the raiders that had been plaguing the eastern border of Council space back to their base and wiped them out. But even then, her refresher course could not last forever. Eventually the call came and she was assigned to a Barrasylan (7) class light cruiser. The next seventy years was absorbed by a slow, steady progression through the ranks and the successful attainment of her own commands. But when the Ilythiiri encountered the Tusterian Confederation, Snowfire found herself once more on the firing line. Due to her experience with the Talya teams in the last major conflict the Council had been involved in, she was chosen to captain one of the five vessels infiltrated into Tusterian space as part of Operation Vanguard. This operation was almost her undoing as an IDF officer.

Operation Vanguard was the Council's solution to Tusterian aggression. It is also one of the major reason that the Ilythiiri are so distrusted by several Federation races. The Confederation had no single ruler, no seat of absolute power that could be used to force a surrender. So instead of fighting and defeating the Tusterians in space – which the Council was quite sure they could do if they needed to – they opted for an easier option. 

Five Su'aco (8) class vessels were used to land Talya teams with very specific orders on the core worlds of the Confederation. In conjunction with a heavy IDF assault on key Tusterian systems that drew away most of the orbital presences above the core worlds, the Talya teams detonated a series of antimatter warheads in the atmospheres of the planet's they had infiltrated. In an instant, two hundred Ilythiiri killed almost twenty five billion Tusterian civilians. The actions shattered Snowfire's belief in the IDF. Only the intervention of her family prevented her resigning under protest and the part she played in the murder of so many haunts her to this day. But her commitment, her unyielding faith in the purpose of the IDF died that day, quite possibly never to be revived.

This crisis of consciousness was quite possibly one of the reasons Snowfire was chosen as part of the the small group of IDF officers ordered into Starfleet as part of the personnel exchange included in the conditions of the Treaty of Kahzet. She attended the Academy shortly after the Council signed the Treaty and graduated in 47,561 AF (2405 AD). However, like her time at the Great Academy (and on the occasions when she had time to refresh her knowledge) she stayed on as a graduate student until the heavy casualties inflicted by the Borg Invasion had her assigned to Starbase 10. 

During her time at the Academy, Snowfire was completely exposed to another culture in a way she – and no Ilythiiri – had ever been. She embraced the experience, but she was in the minority of the 'Starfleet group' as they were dubbed. On Earth she found an acceptance and peace that was all too rare outside of clan and family and it changed her significantly. The older members of her family hardly understand her now, but as more and more Ilythiiri begin to interact with the Federation, her views are spreading quickly among the younger generations. On leaving Earth in 2409, Snowfire has become very different from who she was when she arrived eight years ago.. She has come to accept what she has done instead of hiding from it and has made connections with many people as they've passed through the Academy, even venturing to start teaching small classes about her people.

Minor scarring across most of one arm and the lower half of one side that rises up her back. These are from burns that she sustained during the operation that captured the Melkaren Emperor. During her years at the Great Academy, she became addicted to a form of chemical stimulant. This addiction continued until a few years before she graduated when she almost killed herself with an overdose of the drug.

Four years of cross-discipline postgraduate work at Starfleet Academy before being assigned to Starbase 10. Outside of Starfleet, Snowfire has 200 years of experience within the IDF (ten of them in training, seventy in the Talya teams, forty in the command track and eighty in command of starships).

There was one? “When you have lived as long as I have and seen all I have seen, you can tell me if I can learn a moral lesson at a school. Outside of it, yes. Within, not since my years at the Great Academy.”

Translations in Order: 1. Citadel 2. Home 3. The Mother's Pearl 4. Not shared. 5. Beautiful Speed 6. Huntress 7. Shadowstar 8. Wind