ID.File> Kirya Galkarot (03)
Daughter of a regional governor, the highborn Kirya was born on the planet Arak in the Terran year 1954. Enlisting into the Arakian Imperial Navy at 19 as a Marine, the young woman sought to prepare herself for governorship by using military service as a method to gain leadership experience and augment her social respectability. Ultimately however, Kirya would find the military lifestyle as enjoyable as it was challenging, causing her to switch career paths and remain in military service.
Within the Marines, her first posting was as a Centurion, a powered combat exosuit operator. In this role, she would steadily rise through the ranks over the course of several campaigns that saw her pitted against pirates, dangerous wildlife and hostile indigenous life on multiple Arakian colonies. The opening phase of her military career had proven successful and Kirya would reenlist as a naval officer, trading her exosuit for a starched lapel and dreams of commanding her own fleet at some point in the distant future.
That dream would eventually be realised when Kirya was age 40, but her dream would twist into a nightmare only one year later as she came face to face with the reality of actual warfare. In the years prior to this, tensions between the Arkamni and Arakian peoples had steadily built until an inevitable flashpoint was reached. In response to this continuing political turmoil, the Arkamni would launch an incursion into Arakian space. Although the two peoples had originally been kin in the distant past, the Arakians broke from the Arkamni following a dispute that boiled over into a bloody military campaign. History, ever a harsh teacher, had decided that neither had learnt their lesson the first time and so the two once again readied their weapons, boarded their ships and prepared to do battle. On one side stood the physically hardier Arakians, on the other stood the psychokinetic Arkamni.
Both sides knew the importance of a successful opening to the campaign, a grand gesture to signal their superiority over the enemy and cause a surge in support on the home front. Even a fleet command could not save Kirya from this harsh reality and, unfortunately, it would be the politicians and not the admirals who would make the decision. With only a limited flotilla at her disposal, the commander would voice her objections in the strongest possible manner. Unfortunately, the Empire had commanded its navy to jump and the only permissible response was to jump – She would follow her orders or her command would be given to someone “More capable”. With the option of facing the Arkamni incursion force or the high command of the Arakian Empire, Kirya chose the lesser of the two evils.
With limited resources at her disposal and with her enemies having the advantage of their battlegroups being in close proximity, Kirya would find herself limited to small-scale engagements and raids at best. The results were, predictably, hardly the grand gesture the Empire desired. Following only a small handful of significant engagements between Arakian and Arkamni forces, the majority of the Commander’s ships were left destroyed or disabled; even her own command ship was heavily damaged and nearly crippled, such was the fighting that even her own vessel had to be committed to the line multiple times over.
Kirya’s part in this conflict had been played, but she was not the only actor within it. Further Arakian fleets squared off against their Arkamni counterparts and managed to break the back of the incursion over the course of several major engagements. Although the war had been short and her forces ill-suited to the task handed to them, the damage was done. Kirya’s record was marred by a black mark and her body had not escaped a similar fate, gaining permanent facial scarring as a result of battle damage to her ship.
Having been told to lead the charge and being so decisively turned away by the enemy, Kirya was high up the list of individuals deemed in need of punishment for their failings in the conflict. Dishonourable discharge for all those who had failed in their initial assignments was the outcome desired by the politicians who took a close interest in proceedings and the Admiralty was subject to much pressure from these interested parties as the court martials slowly worked their way down the list to her name. Although standard procedure was a hefty demotion to the role of a simple ship commander, the political pressure still had not eased by the time Kirya’s case came to the fore. With little other choice, the officer called in favours to swing the court martial in her favour, barely.
Although she had managed to retain her commission, Kirya’s next posting would be far from respectable and far beneath that of a ship commander. As if having fallen through the ranks was not bad enough, her eligibility for assignments took an equally rough tumble. The next posting for the officer was the Onyx Legion; on account of her prior Centurion experience, she had been assigned to what was, in all but an official capacity, a Centurion penal unit and suicide squad.
For eight years, with no favours and precious few friends remaining, Kirya had to make do with what she had. Handed one crappy set of orders after another, the officer remained relatively ostracised, even within the Legion, and had trouble rebuilding her network in such an environment. After all, when survival is not expected, allies come and go like the changing of the wind. If nothing else, she was at least kept within Arakian controlled space, allowing her to slowly work on rebuilding her image. Had she been banished to the frontiers or beyond, any real recovery would likely have been impossible.
By the time she was 49, Kirya’s fortunes seemingly began to turn when a new dossier crossed her proverbial desk, not that she exactly had one given her position. A special mission, targeting the Collective, had just dropped into her lap. She didn’t know who she had to thank for the mission, but she had just been pitted against one of the most hated foes of her people, one they had sword to exterminate at any cost. Very little was off the table when the Collective was targeted; if the mission provided nothing else, perhaps it would provide some entertainment?
So hated was the Collective that the Arakians had a habit of pushing their luck, sometimes even straying into territory they did not control in lightning raids. The target planet would be Draconis IV, located in the Gamma Draconis system, on the fringes of Strax Ascendancy controlled space. The plan, as all things are on the surface, was simple; a small Onyx force would insert via orbital drop onto the planet, sweep and clear their sector of Collective presence and evacuate before the local Straxian garrison could derail the mission. However, contact with the Straxians was highly likely; the Onyx force was cleared to defend themselves, but it would only be a matter of time before the Ascendancy diverted significant reinforcements to confront the unidentified force. As with all lightning raids targeting the Collective in foreign space, the Straxians were not forewarned about the operation.
Led by Kirya, the powered armoured Onyx Centurions inserted onto Draconis IV without issue and set about engaging and destroying any Collective presence over the course of several days. Unsurprisingly, the sudden military action on their planet roused the Ascendency garrison, who mobilised their rapid reaction forces to meet the threat. Being a backwater and not having expected such a bold action, the leading Ascendency forces were beaten bloody by the superior arms and armour of the Arakian Onyxes. The mission timer was truly ticking now – With the Ascendency becoming militarily involved, in addition to suffering significant casualties, reinforcements would be summoned up with all haste.
Best estimates for how long the Onyx team could last once reinforcements made planetfall was roughly one week, assuming that the reinforcements consisted of second-line, rapid response style, frontier forces. Such a description could not be further from the forces that actually arrived to aid Draconis IV.
The Ascendency had not been aware of the existence of the Collective, let alone their presence on Draconis IV. As such, they had interpreted an orbital drop of advanced troops on a clearly special operations style mission as the precursor to an all-out invasion. It had taken longer for the planet to receive its reinforcements, but they came in the form of the Ascendency’s 1st Star Fleet; the premier fleet of the Straxian navy and headed by the flagship of the Ascendency’s leader, the SNV Leviathan.
With the Grand General personally leading some of the Ascendency’s most veteran forces, the Onyx team was quickly put on the defensive, suffering multiple losses and forced to go to ground. The Arakians lasted a week, not because they were able to fight the Ascendency but because they were continually retreating and attempting to evade the Straxians. In the end, the inevitable happened with Kirya being the last Centurion to be brought down after a day-long last stand.
Leading from the front, the Grand General himself was present at this last stand, eager to find out who these invaders were and recover their technology for the Ascendency. With the final, towering, Centurion brought crashing down and its wreckage secured, Ascendency engineers set about cutting into the suit to secure the pilot and begin their investigation of the machine.
As the engineers began their work, the power armour’s emergency hatch was jettisoned and the pilot leapt free. Clad in a sleek, skintight, jumpsuit and armed only with a magnum, Kirya continued the fight. Her superior physical strength allowed her to best a number of Ascendency soldiers, before being overcome and pacified by a pair of the Grand General’s personal guards, a pair of synthetic combat units. The Arakian did not go quietly, however, damaging one, Ivanna, significantly, while the other, Tekla, escaped with no significant damage.
The now captive pilot and what remained of the Onyx power suits were taken aboard the Leviathan, allowing both Straxian interrogators and techs to begin the process of teasing out their secrets. During the journey back to Strax, the computers of the Centurion suits were far more cooperative than the captured pilot; they yielded information and did not injure the Straxian technicians, unlike the Arakian did with her interrogators.
Amarkovek, the Grand General, would predictably grow impatient with the slow progress; the Ascendency had been invaded and they still had precious little information to act upon. Feeling the need to act, the Grand General took a personal interest in the interrogation of the captive pilot before becoming directly involved. She had impressed him with her skill in battle, perhaps she had even gained his respect, but he knew that she had certainly captured his curiosity.
Entering the interrogation room, he dismissed both the AKB interrogators and his synthetic guards, to the protest of the AKB agents, before taking a seat opposite Kirya. Thus, the game of mind and wills began anew. The Grand General spoke to the Arakian as if they were equal, each carefully picked word and crafted sentence tempered with respect and cordiality. The AKB was an effective tool at extracting information from the enemies of the Ascendency, but sometimes they became too tunnel visioned on their objective. Sometimes, one had to reframe the interaction, level the playing field, willingly come down to the other party and speak to them as an equal.
This was, however, easier said than done. A natural language barrier separated the two and in it both minds saw an opportunity. As the two continued to meet time and again, the barrier was slowly negotiated with one side slowly learning the other’s language piece by piece. It was all part of the game, both sides knew this, they just had to be careful about who was playing who at any given time.
Between these visits, Kirya had begun to build up a picture of the Grand General as well. Mostly learning of his story by overhearing her guards, the Arakian pieced together what she could and took the measure of the Straxian. With a growing interest, she began to open up to Amarkovek and even ask her own questions. In a short time, her respect for the Straxian would become clear; evidently, his rise from a child fighting in his world’s resistance to the leader of one of the galactic arm’s most powerful factions intrigued her. Moreover, she seemingly found some kinship with the brutal and efficient methods and tactics he had used to secure that position in life.
Over time, Kirya’s situation improved, with her being allowed various freedoms and receiving better meals. During one of their regular meetings Amarkovek would present Kirya with a datapad. The Grand General had established contact with the Arakian Empire and sought information about their “Lost” officer. Put bluntly, the Empire had listed the entire Onyx team as KIA, Kirya included. In the eyes of the Empire, the Collective had been purged, the Onyx team had been lost and there was nothing further to say on the matter.
The Onyx Legion was a suicide unit, its ranks filled out by the disreputable and the outright undesirable; Kirya knew this, yet she struggled to internalise how nonchalantly the entire operation had been underlined and forgotten about. No rescue attempt, no investigation, no desire to even find out the truth of what had happened on Draconis IV. It was pathetic. It was a disgrace. It was just the same politicking that had sabotaged her fleet career. Vocalising her story more freely in her angered state, Amarkovek was able to build up a picture of her past, sparingly probing her with the odd question here and there, as he listened to the furious Arakian lambast the Empire which had effectively abandoned her.
Taking his time to consider the options presented to him, Amarkovek returned to Kirya with an offer. The Empire clearly thought her dead and had no interest in getting her back, so why not start anew? Transferred to a comfy officer’s quarters, Kirya was left alone to consider the Grand General’s offer of an officer’s commission within the Ascendency. She would have to go through the Ascendancy’s basic training, as everyone else did, if she were to accept, but that seemed to be the only caveat. It only took the former Empire officer twenty-four hours to think the offer over, call Amarkovek to the room and accept. Seven months later, Kirya would don Ascendency colours as she took up her commission as a Captain in the CAFSA.
Over the following years, Amarkovek and Kirya would continually grow closer to each other, especially during the two years of Operation Moonlight against the Union on Artemis Prime. Perhaps predictably, the two would be married, with the ceremony taking place one and a half years after the Artemis Prime campaign. The news of the marriage and Kirya’s ascension to the rank of Grand General was unexpected by the wider galactic community, though the well-connected within the Ascendency had seen it coming for a time already. If Kirya still had any doubters remaining, they would be decisively silenced by both the news and the decorations she had earnt during her service.
The power couple complimented each other perfectly and this would quickly become clear to both the Ascendency and others as they went on to lead the Ascendency through the Great Campaign and other conflicts. With every new campaign against their foes, the two seemed to become closer and their love for each other deepened.
Art, character, Leviathan Rising/Strax Ascendancy universe © Kernkraftwerks
Also a huge thanks to my friend AnonymousG3 for helping me fix up his bio properly!
If you like my work, consider supporting me on Ko-fi!
Also join my telegram channel for art updates!
Within the Marines, her first posting was as a Centurion, a powered combat exosuit operator. In this role, she would steadily rise through the ranks over the course of several campaigns that saw her pitted against pirates, dangerous wildlife and hostile indigenous life on multiple Arakian colonies. The opening phase of her military career had proven successful and Kirya would reenlist as a naval officer, trading her exosuit for a starched lapel and dreams of commanding her own fleet at some point in the distant future.
That dream would eventually be realised when Kirya was age 40, but her dream would twist into a nightmare only one year later as she came face to face with the reality of actual warfare. In the years prior to this, tensions between the Arkamni and Arakian peoples had steadily built until an inevitable flashpoint was reached. In response to this continuing political turmoil, the Arkamni would launch an incursion into Arakian space. Although the two peoples had originally been kin in the distant past, the Arakians broke from the Arkamni following a dispute that boiled over into a bloody military campaign. History, ever a harsh teacher, had decided that neither had learnt their lesson the first time and so the two once again readied their weapons, boarded their ships and prepared to do battle. On one side stood the physically hardier Arakians, on the other stood the psychokinetic Arkamni.
Both sides knew the importance of a successful opening to the campaign, a grand gesture to signal their superiority over the enemy and cause a surge in support on the home front. Even a fleet command could not save Kirya from this harsh reality and, unfortunately, it would be the politicians and not the admirals who would make the decision. With only a limited flotilla at her disposal, the commander would voice her objections in the strongest possible manner. Unfortunately, the Empire had commanded its navy to jump and the only permissible response was to jump – She would follow her orders or her command would be given to someone “More capable”. With the option of facing the Arkamni incursion force or the high command of the Arakian Empire, Kirya chose the lesser of the two evils.
With limited resources at her disposal and with her enemies having the advantage of their battlegroups being in close proximity, Kirya would find herself limited to small-scale engagements and raids at best. The results were, predictably, hardly the grand gesture the Empire desired. Following only a small handful of significant engagements between Arakian and Arkamni forces, the majority of the Commander’s ships were left destroyed or disabled; even her own command ship was heavily damaged and nearly crippled, such was the fighting that even her own vessel had to be committed to the line multiple times over.
Kirya’s part in this conflict had been played, but she was not the only actor within it. Further Arakian fleets squared off against their Arkamni counterparts and managed to break the back of the incursion over the course of several major engagements. Although the war had been short and her forces ill-suited to the task handed to them, the damage was done. Kirya’s record was marred by a black mark and her body had not escaped a similar fate, gaining permanent facial scarring as a result of battle damage to her ship.
Having been told to lead the charge and being so decisively turned away by the enemy, Kirya was high up the list of individuals deemed in need of punishment for their failings in the conflict. Dishonourable discharge for all those who had failed in their initial assignments was the outcome desired by the politicians who took a close interest in proceedings and the Admiralty was subject to much pressure from these interested parties as the court martials slowly worked their way down the list to her name. Although standard procedure was a hefty demotion to the role of a simple ship commander, the political pressure still had not eased by the time Kirya’s case came to the fore. With little other choice, the officer called in favours to swing the court martial in her favour, barely.
Although she had managed to retain her commission, Kirya’s next posting would be far from respectable and far beneath that of a ship commander. As if having fallen through the ranks was not bad enough, her eligibility for assignments took an equally rough tumble. The next posting for the officer was the Onyx Legion; on account of her prior Centurion experience, she had been assigned to what was, in all but an official capacity, a Centurion penal unit and suicide squad.
For eight years, with no favours and precious few friends remaining, Kirya had to make do with what she had. Handed one crappy set of orders after another, the officer remained relatively ostracised, even within the Legion, and had trouble rebuilding her network in such an environment. After all, when survival is not expected, allies come and go like the changing of the wind. If nothing else, she was at least kept within Arakian controlled space, allowing her to slowly work on rebuilding her image. Had she been banished to the frontiers or beyond, any real recovery would likely have been impossible.
By the time she was 49, Kirya’s fortunes seemingly began to turn when a new dossier crossed her proverbial desk, not that she exactly had one given her position. A special mission, targeting the Collective, had just dropped into her lap. She didn’t know who she had to thank for the mission, but she had just been pitted against one of the most hated foes of her people, one they had sword to exterminate at any cost. Very little was off the table when the Collective was targeted; if the mission provided nothing else, perhaps it would provide some entertainment?
So hated was the Collective that the Arakians had a habit of pushing their luck, sometimes even straying into territory they did not control in lightning raids. The target planet would be Draconis IV, located in the Gamma Draconis system, on the fringes of Strax Ascendancy controlled space. The plan, as all things are on the surface, was simple; a small Onyx force would insert via orbital drop onto the planet, sweep and clear their sector of Collective presence and evacuate before the local Straxian garrison could derail the mission. However, contact with the Straxians was highly likely; the Onyx force was cleared to defend themselves, but it would only be a matter of time before the Ascendancy diverted significant reinforcements to confront the unidentified force. As with all lightning raids targeting the Collective in foreign space, the Straxians were not forewarned about the operation.
Led by Kirya, the powered armoured Onyx Centurions inserted onto Draconis IV without issue and set about engaging and destroying any Collective presence over the course of several days. Unsurprisingly, the sudden military action on their planet roused the Ascendency garrison, who mobilised their rapid reaction forces to meet the threat. Being a backwater and not having expected such a bold action, the leading Ascendency forces were beaten bloody by the superior arms and armour of the Arakian Onyxes. The mission timer was truly ticking now – With the Ascendency becoming militarily involved, in addition to suffering significant casualties, reinforcements would be summoned up with all haste.
Best estimates for how long the Onyx team could last once reinforcements made planetfall was roughly one week, assuming that the reinforcements consisted of second-line, rapid response style, frontier forces. Such a description could not be further from the forces that actually arrived to aid Draconis IV.
The Ascendency had not been aware of the existence of the Collective, let alone their presence on Draconis IV. As such, they had interpreted an orbital drop of advanced troops on a clearly special operations style mission as the precursor to an all-out invasion. It had taken longer for the planet to receive its reinforcements, but they came in the form of the Ascendency’s 1st Star Fleet; the premier fleet of the Straxian navy and headed by the flagship of the Ascendency’s leader, the SNV Leviathan.
With the Grand General personally leading some of the Ascendency’s most veteran forces, the Onyx team was quickly put on the defensive, suffering multiple losses and forced to go to ground. The Arakians lasted a week, not because they were able to fight the Ascendency but because they were continually retreating and attempting to evade the Straxians. In the end, the inevitable happened with Kirya being the last Centurion to be brought down after a day-long last stand.
Leading from the front, the Grand General himself was present at this last stand, eager to find out who these invaders were and recover their technology for the Ascendency. With the final, towering, Centurion brought crashing down and its wreckage secured, Ascendency engineers set about cutting into the suit to secure the pilot and begin their investigation of the machine.
As the engineers began their work, the power armour’s emergency hatch was jettisoned and the pilot leapt free. Clad in a sleek, skintight, jumpsuit and armed only with a magnum, Kirya continued the fight. Her superior physical strength allowed her to best a number of Ascendency soldiers, before being overcome and pacified by a pair of the Grand General’s personal guards, a pair of synthetic combat units. The Arakian did not go quietly, however, damaging one, Ivanna, significantly, while the other, Tekla, escaped with no significant damage.
The now captive pilot and what remained of the Onyx power suits were taken aboard the Leviathan, allowing both Straxian interrogators and techs to begin the process of teasing out their secrets. During the journey back to Strax, the computers of the Centurion suits were far more cooperative than the captured pilot; they yielded information and did not injure the Straxian technicians, unlike the Arakian did with her interrogators.
Amarkovek, the Grand General, would predictably grow impatient with the slow progress; the Ascendency had been invaded and they still had precious little information to act upon. Feeling the need to act, the Grand General took a personal interest in the interrogation of the captive pilot before becoming directly involved. She had impressed him with her skill in battle, perhaps she had even gained his respect, but he knew that she had certainly captured his curiosity.
Entering the interrogation room, he dismissed both the AKB interrogators and his synthetic guards, to the protest of the AKB agents, before taking a seat opposite Kirya. Thus, the game of mind and wills began anew. The Grand General spoke to the Arakian as if they were equal, each carefully picked word and crafted sentence tempered with respect and cordiality. The AKB was an effective tool at extracting information from the enemies of the Ascendency, but sometimes they became too tunnel visioned on their objective. Sometimes, one had to reframe the interaction, level the playing field, willingly come down to the other party and speak to them as an equal.
This was, however, easier said than done. A natural language barrier separated the two and in it both minds saw an opportunity. As the two continued to meet time and again, the barrier was slowly negotiated with one side slowly learning the other’s language piece by piece. It was all part of the game, both sides knew this, they just had to be careful about who was playing who at any given time.
Between these visits, Kirya had begun to build up a picture of the Grand General as well. Mostly learning of his story by overhearing her guards, the Arakian pieced together what she could and took the measure of the Straxian. With a growing interest, she began to open up to Amarkovek and even ask her own questions. In a short time, her respect for the Straxian would become clear; evidently, his rise from a child fighting in his world’s resistance to the leader of one of the galactic arm’s most powerful factions intrigued her. Moreover, she seemingly found some kinship with the brutal and efficient methods and tactics he had used to secure that position in life.
Over time, Kirya’s situation improved, with her being allowed various freedoms and receiving better meals. During one of their regular meetings Amarkovek would present Kirya with a datapad. The Grand General had established contact with the Arakian Empire and sought information about their “Lost” officer. Put bluntly, the Empire had listed the entire Onyx team as KIA, Kirya included. In the eyes of the Empire, the Collective had been purged, the Onyx team had been lost and there was nothing further to say on the matter.
The Onyx Legion was a suicide unit, its ranks filled out by the disreputable and the outright undesirable; Kirya knew this, yet she struggled to internalise how nonchalantly the entire operation had been underlined and forgotten about. No rescue attempt, no investigation, no desire to even find out the truth of what had happened on Draconis IV. It was pathetic. It was a disgrace. It was just the same politicking that had sabotaged her fleet career. Vocalising her story more freely in her angered state, Amarkovek was able to build up a picture of her past, sparingly probing her with the odd question here and there, as he listened to the furious Arakian lambast the Empire which had effectively abandoned her.
Taking his time to consider the options presented to him, Amarkovek returned to Kirya with an offer. The Empire clearly thought her dead and had no interest in getting her back, so why not start anew? Transferred to a comfy officer’s quarters, Kirya was left alone to consider the Grand General’s offer of an officer’s commission within the Ascendency. She would have to go through the Ascendancy’s basic training, as everyone else did, if she were to accept, but that seemed to be the only caveat. It only took the former Empire officer twenty-four hours to think the offer over, call Amarkovek to the room and accept. Seven months later, Kirya would don Ascendency colours as she took up her commission as a Captain in the CAFSA.
Over the following years, Amarkovek and Kirya would continually grow closer to each other, especially during the two years of Operation Moonlight against the Union on Artemis Prime. Perhaps predictably, the two would be married, with the ceremony taking place one and a half years after the Artemis Prime campaign. The news of the marriage and Kirya’s ascension to the rank of Grand General was unexpected by the wider galactic community, though the well-connected within the Ascendency had seen it coming for a time already. If Kirya still had any doubters remaining, they would be decisively silenced by both the news and the decorations she had earnt during her service.
The power couple complimented each other perfectly and this would quickly become clear to both the Ascendency and others as they went on to lead the Ascendency through the Great Campaign and other conflicts. With every new campaign against their foes, the two seemed to become closer and their love for each other deepened.
Art, character, Leviathan Rising/Strax Ascendancy universe © Kernkraftwerks
Also a huge thanks to my friend AnonymousG3 for helping me fix up his bio properly!
If you like my work, consider supporting me on Ko-fi!
Also join my telegram channel for art updates!
Category All / All
Species Jackal
Gender Female
Size 2294 x 1606px
She is a beauty.
And has an excellent backstory too. I love the detail you've put into her, shows they're quite well worked-on.
And has an excellent backstory too. I love the detail you've put into her, shows they're quite well worked-on.
Such a sharp uniform. The whole thing looks great :D
That goes for the other two alts as well~
That goes for the other two alts as well~
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