Chief Petty Officer Ibis Xeri
Name Ibis Xeri
Position USS Sunrise Survivor
Rank Chief Petty Officer
Character Information
| Gender | Female | |
| Species | Betazoid | |
| Age | 37 |
Physical Appearance
| Height | 5'2" | |
| Weight | 110 (healthy) 92 (currently) | |
| Hair Color | Dark Brown | |
| Eye Color | Dark Brown | |
| Physical Description | Appearance-wise, Ibis is petite, with little feet and slender hands. Being small, she doesn't especially stand out, nor does she break the Betazed mold in the looks department, with trademark dark Betazoid eyes and dark hair contrasting her fair skin. There is a small mole over the right side of her upper lip and she tends to have a faraway look when she isn't smiling. In fact, her neutral expression is always far away, lost in thought. But when she's present she has a brilliant smile that she prefers to share with everyone she can. Her smile and her genuine interest in others makes her a lot more memorable than she otherwise might be and has won her friends in the highest and lowest of places during her SF career. |
Family
| Spouse | Porter Wallace (partner) | |
| Children | Ikemba and Olivia (non-biological) |
Personality & Traits
| General Overview | Outwardly, Ibis is easy to get along with and makes friends easily. She's insightful and caring. Internally, she gets lost in thought quite often. Sometimes much time will pass before she realizes she's become disconnected. She was Optimistic and Free-spirited, but trauma and loss has tempered her exuberance and tarnished her ability to trust just anyone. Although she very much values authenticity, she can sometimes use a mask of happiness to protect herself. Ibis has historically been an idealist as well, although she's no longer as certain as she was when she was younger. - Ibis was once a gifted level telepath, but has lost all telepathic sense due to an illness in her time in captivity. - Although her name is spelled like the earth bird, it’s a Betazoid name that is actually pronounced ih-bis.) - She has a full Betazoid title from her maternal line but no idea what that entails, really. |
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| Strengths & Weaknesses | + intuitive/ resourceful/ clever + compassionate/ social + sciencing (in general, but particularly life sciences/botany) -+ optimist (broken) -+ rises under pressure -+ on the job education, no higher degrees - emotional - vulnerable physically |
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| Ambitions | To recover from the last nine years of trauma on Korix To raise Ikemba and Olivia up and acclimate them to society To find any ambition for herself again |
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| Hobbies & Interests | Botany & Gardening Amateur musical interests in general, singing and woodwind instruments specifically Journaling and sketching |
| Personal History | Pre-Starfleet Ibis was born on Betazed, but while she was a baby her family moved to Earth for her father’s work. Her father was a consultant for the aerospace industry, testing materials and small parts designs, and even while they lived on Earth, he often was away working with private and public contracts. Her father, who Ibis always got along well enough with when he was around, was wholly invested in his consultancy business and very well respected in his field. As to the family, he was inclined to allow Ibis' mother to have her way as she pleased. Mrs. Xeri was a very flighty soul with lots of expectations about her children whom, although she truly did love, were ultimately signs to her of her own success and influence. She continued trying for a girl until Ibis was born, amounting to a total of six children as, to hear Mrs. Xeri explain it, her husband had apparently only been capable of making boys until then. The two oldest sons moved back to Betazed where they had mostly grown up, the two middle sons joined in their father's company, and Ibis was plagued by teasing and pranking from her nearest brother who decided she was insufferable for being the favorite child. All of Ibis' many names and titles are due to her through lineage, but she's pretty sure they were made up. She's only visited Betazed twice and it was obvious that all the Betazoid girls of the more established houses have titles so she's not sure what any of them mean, apart from a battle of prestige and pedigree between their mothers. Growing up, most of her family was very comfortable with telepathy, but Ibis had limited exposure to a wider society of telepaths, and so it took her longer than usual to learn control techniques. Concerned for her daughter, her mother had a telepathy specialist evaluate Ibis, and it was explained that Ibis had a gifted level of telepathic potential that would likely blossom with other development as a young adult, but that she had some asynchronous development due to the limited social exposure with other telepaths. All Mrs. Xeri heard was that her daughter was exceptionally gifted, which she added to the list of things to brag on about the girl. By sixteen, Ibis could play most every woodwind instrument in the orchestra, she drew with the most delicate linework, she had above average grades in maths and sciences, she was a fashion model in the making, she was a social delight... Ibis was of course enrolled in a preparatory school for promising young adults in New York, where they resided, with all other children of the elite and the rich, most of whom were already charting their lives out in fields like science, medicine, statecraft, and the humanities. She did her best to please everyone she knew and tried to meet her mother’s high expectations for her. She had more extracurriculars than she had waking hours in a day to attend. Her mother had all kinds of plans for her future enrollment in University, various arrangements for photoshoots and screen tests, and young men of status and connection for her to 'just have lunch with, dear'— Finally cracking under the pressure, the day she turned 18, she walked into a Starfleet recruitment center and asked where she could sign up and when she could ship out. Starfleet Her mother left her a message of herself crying every day for two weeks, but Ibis stopped listening to them. Basic Training was too demanding to focus on her mother's regrets over her missed life opportunities and wasted social potential. The technical training was exciting to Ibis, although her difficulty with the physical requirements made her afraid that she might not make the lowest bar required for her physiological profile category and end up back with her mother, which proved to be massive motivation to work harder on her mile time. When she made it through Basic, her first assignment was aboard the USS Nimitz. Free to be herself, and largely innocent of anything thanks to a sheltered, elite lifestyle, Ibis was enamored with the whole wide universe and every experience there was to be had in it. Although youthfully awkward, her exuberance, free-spirited nature, and optimism won her friends in every department, of all ranks, and every race. There was almost no one who didn't know and enjoy the company of the little Betazoid Crewman. With her aptitude for the sciences, she was assigned to the Science department as a general lab tech, with her personal interest in life sciences, and particularly xeno-botany. The Nimitz being a Prometheus class battle ship, the science department was small and closely knit and Ibis was practically adopted like family, taken under the wing of various senior non-comms in the department. As a life sciences leaning tech, she often assisted with medical department, and there she began crushing on the young (but older than her) CMO, Dr. Rafe Khadra. She was pleasantly surprised when the interest turned out to be mutual, and it wasn't long before they were sharing quarters. She often accompanied the senior crew on away missions, although her usefulness was sometimes debatable in those early years, and oftentimes she was as much a liability as an aid. Still, her sympathetic superiors seemed to believe she had potential if she would gain the experience to achieve it. Eventually it would pay off. Upon befriending the commanding officer, he found her burgeoning interests endearing and ordered a storage bay to be refitted as a dedicated botany lab. On away missions, Ibis collected all the samples she could and explored observing them under various conditions as well as sometimes breaking them down for constituent parts for possible medicinal applications, an interest she could share with Rafe. Her department head decided that she needed more specialized training than he could offer her, and sponsored her for a year internship under the tutelage of one of his fellows. By the time she returned to the Nimitz, she was far more professional and qualified than she had been as a new enlistee, and she was rated as PO2, meeting new certifications. After a brush with legal proceedings over her participation in a secretive pact with friends she’d made during her internship to help a prewarp civilization overcome extinction, Ibis more publicly founded the “Mercy Directive”, a Lobbying non-profit that pooled experts in many fields to petition and advise UFP leaders to form a council for reviewing responsible action for exemptions to blanket application of the Prime Directive. It was also within the scope of the Mercy Directives' goals to provide expert legal aid in situations where the Prime Directive had been violated under the best ethical principles to preserve both life and limit exposure of the culture. She herself couldn’t remain on the board after a confrontation with the JAG office and an Admiral she’d made enemies with inadvertently over her stunt with her friends, but she contented herself with knowing that, in the end, she had made the best impact she could have in the UFP system. The Mercy Directive remains an active organization under new directorship to this day. She was still naive in love, however, and even though her influence and professional life had taken off, her love life fell apart. In her time away, Rafe had entertained affections with his ex girlfriend, a family friend whom his mother had fixed him up with, but whom he had told Ibis he no longer had any feelings for. She tried for some time to pretend it wasn't going on, But eventually, Rafe left Ibis for his old flame, transferring off the Nimitz and back to the Sol system to pursue research and teaching. She was heartbroken, but didn't want to be. She filled the ache with lots of lighthearted friendships and various romances that burned out quickly. She could never fully invest in them for fear of being cheated on or left behind, so she stayed shallow with her love life for the next five years on the Nimitz, going through one boyfriend after another. Her friends all thought the flighty Betazoid was just living it up, and Ibis went on covering up the insecurity she felt. At one point she tried flirting with Major Porter Wallace. He was one of her oldest friends going all the way back to her first enlisting on the Nimitz, and she'd grown to think of him as attractive physically, if prickly personally, and he had seemed constantly brokenhearted, due to the loss of his wife and child years before. They often spent time together as friends and he was easy to pass the time with. As far as she knew he'd never loved anyone since his late wife over fifteen years before. After they'd both transferred to the USS Sunrise for a survey mission, she thought, what the hell? Sure, he was older, but they were both adults, and she admired him for his passion and bravery. She was a couple shots in on karaoke night and got curious outloud if he'd make an exception for her in his long lonely streak. He gave her all his reasons why that was a terrible idea, and she'd never felt so small from a rejection since Rafe had left her. She tried to save face about it. After all, they still had the survey cruise to serve together. Six months later they were stranded on Korix as slave laborers and fighting against nature to survive. |
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| Service Record | 2380 - Crewman Recruit - SF Academy Basic Training (Enlisted) Science Lab Tech Track 2380 - Crewman 2nd Class - Assigned to the USS Nimitz, Science Department 2382-83 - 1yr Science Internship 2383 - PO2- Reassigned to the USS Nimitz Science Dept, General sciences/ lab tech. 2384 - Founded the Mercy Directive 2386 - PO1 - Quals for bridge duties. Quals for Training enlistees. 2389 - CPO - Assigned to the USS Sunrise as Senior Non-comm (Science Department) 2390 - USS Sunrise is lost |