Kalia Suuk

"Salacious, perverse, and uncouth… Yet inexplicably efficient and swift. She may be a damn whore, but that woman will get the job done better than any other officer in Andromeda."

- Director Utusan Amigani

Kalia Suuk (designation: Agent X41822N) is a veteran agent of the Ankoran Covenant's shadowy and mysterious Ghost Program. A veteran of the Covenant-Bos'Tuxica Conflict and Covenant-Dominion War, Kalia has 139 years of experience as a soldier, assassin, and spy, having altered the course of history over her lengthy career though a series of high-profile assassinations, sabotages, and salacious encounters.

As a Covenant Ghost, Kalia is a mostly unknown figure in galactic politics, despite having been part of the most politically sensitive of all the Andromedan Covenant Territories’ missions, but has become famous internally within the Ghost Program - or perhaps infamous - for her salacious personality and nymphomaniac behavior; a coping mechanism the ankoran has developed for avoiding confronting the mental scars her training as a Ghost left her with.

Kalia is the commanding officer of the HCSS Guidance, a Ghost-Class Shuttle operating within the Andromedan Covenant Territories.

Early Life
Kalia was born on the farming colony of Lusara, in 2771 AD in a small village along the coastlines, where she grew up working as a farmhand for her father. Faithful, chaste, and hard-working, the young ankoran spent most of the twenty-five hour days hauling crops to feed the family's livestock, and cleaning after animals.

On her twelfth birthday, a strong Psychic Drone had enveloped the coastal region. Although everyone in the community was affected and complained of headaches, Kalia suffered the most, leading to speculation that she was a Psionic - a fact her father was previously aware of, although not the full extent of. Kalia was unaware of her psionic sensitivity at the time. This speculation was soon proven to be a reality, with her psychic powers elevated by the mental stress caused by the ongoing drone, Kalia unexpectedly unleashed powerful telepathic and telekinetic abilities without any control. The extent of the damage caused the collapse of several buildings and several major injuries amongst nearby bystanders.

The paramedics that arrived at the scene soon discovered the cause of the catastrophe, and Kalia was taken to Gaiyama by government agents to be assessed, despite the protests of the Suuk family. The destructive spectacle was proof enough that Kalia would be a valuable addition to the Covenant Ghost Program.

Being placed in the tutelage and care of the Prophet's Academy for Talented Youth, Kalia was trained to control her newly unlocked powers and to restrain her abilities to prevent further outbursts. Initial tests classified Kalia as a Psionic Hypersensitive. She was prescribed a Psionic Dampener and conscripted as a Ghost cadet.

Ghost Training
"She's our star pupil. I've never seen anyone so determined to make it through this program."

- Director Aey Kor commenting on Kalia After her education at the Prophet's Academy for Talented Youth concluded, Kalia was relocated to an orbital training facility in an undisclosed location, leaving her life as a farmer behind her. Despite this, she remained in contact with her parents through the use of heavily-encrypted and heavily monitored video relays that prevented Kalia revealing any sensitive information to her family.

Kalia became the focus of resentment, jealousy and sexual desire from many of her fellow trainees during her conscription, many of whom saw the former farmer as an overtly favoured cadet for her hypersensitivity, and as highly attractive. Kalia became initially reclusive from the attention, uncomfortable with the advances of the other cadets at the academy.

Team Blue
As her training progressed, Kalia was placed in Team Blue as part of the Academy's curriculum of team-based training.

One of her first training missions was a hostage rescue scenario, set in a fictional district of Talika Vae. While Tukotin Atalata directed teammates Utu Arami and Kaewin Tulatu, Kalia abandoned the group attempting to complete the training scenario on her own. Although her team was eliminated early in the training mission, Kalia was able to reach the hostage. The training exercise ended in failure, with the hostage killed upon Kalia's arrival.

Tukotin was left upset by the encounter. Kalia displayed high competence but a lack of teamwork in other training scenarios following the hostage scenario and several failed attempts to pass the exercise, in which Kalia blamed her team for their poor performance, Kaewin shouted at her that if she had worked with them, their poor performance wouldn't have mattered. The lesson finally sunk in.

The following day, Team Blue passed the hostage crisis exercise with no casualties, and Kalia began to improve her relationship with the rest of Team Blue, most drastically with Tukotin.

A Shift of Personality
The open nature of the orbital academy soon led to 'experimentation' on Kalia's part, as a method of dealing with the stress of the brutal training regime. After a streak of failed tests and simulations, the young ankoran and Tukotin became intimate with each other, sharing their bodies with each other during their off-time to deal with the stress of their harsh training regime.

These sessions, although initially tame and short, soon became more intimate and exotic. Branching out with Tukotin, Kalia soon found herself engaging in sexual situations more and more often, and with more and more people. Her old chaste personality soon eroded into her infamously characteristic hypersexuality, and her reputation with it shifted from the chaste recluse to that of a lustful and outgoing woman. Her trainers, although not disapproving of the new Kalia, reminded the cadet to focus on her training over other’s bodies.

Mission to Gaiyama
Kalia's first-ever assignment was given to her during the course of her training, as an exercise to see how she would cope under the pressure of a real mission. Sent to Aeoi Katha on Gaiyama, most famous for prostitution and sex-oriented businesses in the region, such as sex shops, strip clubs, and adult theatres, Kalia was instructed to locate and assassinate the kingpin of a local sapient trafficking operation, using kidnapped victims as sex slaves.

Arriving in the city, Kalia took on a disguise as a seemingly helpless woman, attempting to lure her target into attacking her. Shortly after her arrival, two men attempted to attack her, as predicted by the Ghost trainee. Both were left severely injured by Kalia's telekinesis, while Kalia mentally probed their minds for information on her assassination target - Ziryab Al-Zarkali, a jāraja exile.

Kalia was able to track Ziryab down using the information she was able to acquire intruding from the depths of the two thugs' minds, locating him in an abandoned section of an industrial arcology complex. Raiding the facility, Kalia was able to dismantle the trafficking operation, killing several of Ziryab's operatives, and freeing the enslaved victims of his operation. The vast majority of Ziryab’s victims escaped during the chaos, returning to their families. Confronting Ziryab, the jāraja attempted to capture and rape the Ghost-in-training, although Kalia foiled the attempt, ripping out one of Ziryab's mandibles in the process.

Ziryab ultimately escaped the assassination attempt, though his trafficking operations were ruined. Kalia was commended for focusing on rescuing the slaves being held hostage, despite the jāraja's escape. The cadet disagreed with the commendation, knowing the trafficker would still be able to claim more victims in the future.

Graduation
Having gone through her training and completed multiple training and live assignments, Kalia graduated from the Ghost Academy in 2811. Kalia made it her personal mission to track down Ziryab Al-Zarkali and kill him, hoping to set right her failure in Aeoi Katha.

Rogue VI
When a Carina Foundation facility on Etia went dark, the Covenant assigned Kalia to investigate the sudden loss of communications. As it was discovered, a rogue Virtual Intelligence that the Carina Foundation had been developing had gained access to the facility defence grids, and slaughtered the majority of the facility crew.

Doctor Gaevis Aoepta, one of the facility’s few surviving staff, provided Kalia with a needed rundown of the situation at hand, before instructing Kalia on how to prevent the VI from escaping the facility - starting with the destruction of the facility’s communications array, which the VI was attempting to reactivate. Although Kalia was required to fight through the facility’s security mechs, the Ghost was able to retract the transmission dish before the VI uploaded its program off-world. Unfortunately, the rogue VI overwrote the retraction command, still attempting to beam itself off Etia. In order to prevent the rogue VI escaping - an action that could have devastating consequences for the Andromedan Covenant Territories - Kalia climbed the transmission dish to destroy its antenna, destroying the entire communication array in the process as the Ghost broke the array’s support columns.

Doctor Gaevis Aoepta was then able to fill Kalia in on the details of the entire situation, rather than the bare-bones. The Carina Foundation had been developing the VI as a new naval security suite for Covenant warships that would control its cyberwarfare and auto-turret systems. Unfortunately, the VI’s Friend-Foe Identifier had been compromised by a coding error, causing the VI to become rampant, attacking anything and everything without control. The VI’s core files had been fortified in one of the facilities’ other sites, and surviving staff could not delete its files. Kalia was required to physically unplug the VI and destroy its harddrive.

After a daunting trek through the other site facilities in order to breach Kairos Station, where the VI had fortified itself, Kalia fought through the site’s remaining security mechs. Breaching charges were utilised to enter the VI’s server room, before Kalia destroyed the hardware the rogue program was running on by throwing a grenade at the server stack, shutting the facility down.

Hunt for Ziryab
On the 20th of December 2801, Kalia was able to locate information on one of Ziryab Al-Zarkali’s slaving rings. Ziryab has returned to the city of Aeoi Katha on Gaiyama, where Kalia had originally encountered him during her final examination mission as a Ghost cadet. Kalia was able to quickly uncover where Ziryab was hiding out, and with the aid of local law enforcement breached Ziryab’s hideout and captured his agents.

Breaching the hideout resulted in a hostage situation, as one of Ziryab’s men grabbed one of the civilians the trafficking ring had enslaved. As Ziryab’s agents held the slave hostage, they demanded the city police and Ghost drop their weapons and ammo, and hand over their women to the slaving ring - Including Kalia. Opting instead to open fire, Kalia expertly terminated the slaver with a single bullet to the head, leaving the hostage unharmed. The rest of the slaving ring were quickly killed during the ensuing shootout, though none of their captives were injured.

Yet Ziryab had gotten wind of Kalia’s approach, and fled, forcing the Ghost to pursue him to a shuttle station, where Ziryab was attempting to escape the planet. Kalia fought through Ziryab’s mercenary escort, traversing the shuttle station’s cargo terminals. Upon reaching the docks, however, Ziryab was already aboard a shuttle, having escaped Kalia at the last second. Ziryab and his agents would go on to hijack the transport shuttle, using it to reach another hideout, where he could sell the shuttle’s crew and passengers, despite the loss of his prisoners in the city.

Assassination of Daenatus Saydonia
In 2827, Kalia was instructed to assassinate Daenatus Saydonia, a wealthy ankoran businesswoman from Hyetiana, who had become a major part of Daemoclef’s civilian shipbuilding industries. In truth, Daenatus was using her business empire to launder large quantities of money in order to fund several subversive ankoran cults, and providing vessels to these groups for conversion into terrorist warships. Kalia was ordered to ensure Daenatus could not continue her terrorism financing scheme via a clean assassination.

Daenatus was on Daemoclef at the time, in her partially-constructed Saydonia Towers, in the colonial capital, Koras Vae. To reach Daenatus, Kalia appropriated the aid of Daenatus’ former security chief to access the still-under-construction Tower Two. Daenatus has fortified herself in the top of Tower One’s penthouse apartment, and surrounded herself by a private army of Nebulae mercenaries.

Upon her covert arrival into the towers, Kalia began her stealthy ascent up the tower, towards her target. Unfortunately, Daenatus, suspecting the Covenant might have discovered her illegal actions, had prepared for a Ghost’s arrival, and had equipped several of the mercenaries with x-ray spectrum detectors, rendering Kalia’s Hostile Environment Stealth Suit ineffective. This forced Kalia to gun through the horde of mercenaries, though the battalion-strength mercenary band was no match for the elite assassin. Of the 400 mercenaries on Daenatus’ payroll, Kalia killed 369 by the time she reached her real target.

Having been forced to fight her way up 30 flights of stairs, two elevators, and across a bridge, when Kalia finally reached Daenatus Saydonia, she quietly killed her target using her combat knife, stabbing her through the throat.

Appearance
Standing at 2.1 meters in height, Kalia is regarded as tall by ankoran standards, with an appearance capable of inspiring both lust and fear in others of her species; A thin waist and wide hips accentuate her strong, muscle-bound legs and highly-toned, athletic breast. Kalia is regarded as stout by ankoran standards, despite her abnormal height and lean chest.

Kalia’s scales are polynesian blue, gradually transitioning to navy blue around her hooves.

A large knife scar remains etched into Kalia’s back from her time fighting in the Covenant-Bos’Tuxsca Conflict.

Hypersexuality
One of Kalia’s most defining and notorious personality traits is her hypersexuality - a salacious and lustful woman eager to bed any man, woman, or xeno she meets. This nymphomania has become an infamous moniker for Kalia, and one of the few things she is remembered for by those that know her.

This hypersexual personality formed as a dubiously unhealthy coping mechanism for the brutality of her training as a Ghost, childhood conscription, and the horrors that Ghosts must regularly come into contact with and put down. Kalia remains on a constant suicide-watch and is undergoing therapy and on anti-depressants, though genuinely enjoys the perverse lifestyle she has developed in coping with the horrors of her career.

When particularly stressed, Kalia is known for allowing her promiscuity to come to the forefront of her personality; becoming flirtatious and forward with her advances - especially when troubled by events or memories. Kalia has been known to act much more eccentrically during these periods of stress, and to become recklessly impulsive and nervous.

The Ghost is known to keep Drakniar pheromone perfumes, unusual aphrodisiacs, and other lewd and obscene trinkets on her person.

Faith and Devotion
Heavily devout, and extremely dogmatic in her approach to the Covenant’s state religion, Kalia is a pious adherent of the Andromedan Theorationalist sect of the Covenant faith. Kalia’s adherence to religious law and policy is extremely strong and maintains strict prayer schedules as demanded by her interpretation of religious doctrine.

Kalia additionally keeps copies of holy books and sacred texts form a variety of Andromedan religions; most notably from the Cult of Drakon, and the ancient teyan Hakai faith, which she studies. Kalia considers Drakon to be a divine precursor of some kind; misinterpreting the draknisi religion significantly in her attempt to make it fit her world-view.

While Kalia is not as conservative as some of her people, she remains a staunch defender of the ideological beliefs that the Covenant uphold as divine.

Abilities
"One shot, one kill. Centre mass - nice and simple."

- Kalia Suuk A crack shot with an incredible aim, Kalia is a hyper-lethal ranged assassin and adept marksman. Her abilities as a close-quarters combatant are less refined, though Kalia nonetheless remains deadly with knives, daggers, axes, and swords. Being trained in several martial art techniques, and with her psionic abilities to aid her, Kalia is capable of killing even without a weapon; though rarely does so.

Kalia dislikes shotguns, and has forgone their use in her deadly arsenal of weapons and devices used in her duties.

Psionic Potential
Kalia Suuk classifies as a psionic hypersensitive - one of the most potent psionic-sensitive individuals possible; although in turn one of the most susceptible to psionic phenomena, both natural and induced by others.

Although Kalia is fully capable of psionic spellcasting - indeed, it is how she earned the Ghost Program’s attention to begin with - the Ghost agent prefers other methods of employing her psychic abilities to outright magicks; Kalia is a potent empath, telepath, and technopath, with mild precognitive abilities - though limited to only seconds before an event would occur. Nonetheless, Kalia’s primary employment of her great psionic potential is in the supplement of her already-impressive physical abilities.

When using her psionics to boost her natural abilities, Kalia has a supernatural reaction-time of 0.003 microseconds, alongside improving her physical running speed and reflexes beyond the physical capabilities of the ankoran species. When not actively using her psionics for such purpose, her natural abilities fall back into the baseline for ankoran.

Kalia is mildly psychometric.

Trivia

 * Kalia's agent designation (agent: X41822N) is a reference to November "Nova" Terra from the Starcraft universe, a Ghost operative of the Terran Dominion with the same agent code.
 * Kalia Suuk is left-handed.