Nara Ustrjan

Hello! Draft here, be patient with me! (Kind if in a "Get it done and then make it good" vibe rn)


Nara grew up on Kalaran, the Kalshta homeworld in a far-flung stretch of the galaxy. The Kalshta are a fiercely isolationist people, rarely interacting with the rest of the galaxy in any meaningful way other than to enforce the markings of their territory. Their First Contact came entirely unwillingly, and they have no interest in getting to know the rest of the galactic community. Getting to know the Kalshta is next to impossible, as ships that enter their space are likely to be warped away or outright annihilated.

The reason for this is quickly clear upon entering one of the planets in their core system. The Kalshta live in what looks on the surface to be a technology-powered utopia. It, in all ways, appears to be the utopian ideal. People work largely only as much as they want to, and all basic needs have been catered to, leaving people only to focus on leisure and their field of choice - Almost always one of the sciences. Kalshta are not born, they are grown, produced in vats in whatever numbers and specializations society needs out of them. In a way, their entire lives are predetermined for them... And Nara was, unfortunately, one of those that this society left behind.

Kalshta children grow up in nurseries of 10-25 children, cared for full-time by a team of staff dedicated entirely to ensuring their enrichment and development. They are completely catered to for the first twelve years of their life, seeded during this time with what will almost universally become their greatest passions - Immersed in puzzles and challenges related to whatever they were produced for. The entire process has been studied over the course of hundreds of years and thousands of iterations, all to determine the scientifically perfect way to raise a child. Nara was, unfortunately... One of the failures.

See, it wasn't her fault, or the fault of the engineers that made her. It was entirely the fault of Kalshta bureaucracy and perfectionism. When she was fifteen, her nursery was destroyed in the aftermath of an experiment gone wrong, and her entire nursery group simply... Vanished. Right into thin air. Efforts were made to find them, but they were quickly abandoned, left to fend for themselves. It was determined that a group like theirs was grown enough, and capable enough, to make it on their own, and additional resources did not need to be expended tracking down the missing children.

It hadn't even been Nara's idea to leave, either - It had been the group's de facto leader, Kelb, who'd made the choice. Everyone else had just kind of... Followed along. The gang lived this way for a couple of years, free children of Kalaran. No responsibilities to look forward to. It went well! Kalshta didn't exactly need food; They photosynthesized. They found an abandoned facility to call their own, and reveled in their teenage rebellion. In petty theft and small-tier supervillainy and robberies and taking whatever they wanted, the rest of the world be damned. It was their oyster. None of them had a plan for what would happen next... But did it matter? They were siblings, here. They were family. And everything would be okay, forever.




...Everything fell apart when Kelb was caught in the latest of his little money-making schemes. This time, espionage - Stealing research to give it to a rival lab in exchange for an eyewatering amount of money. See, Kalshta society didn't like criminals, and this was one of those places where the veneer of paradise began to fail. A technological utopia didn't survive by passing up an opportunity. Prison labor was not only normal - It was the expectation, up to and including taking part in research for experiments. And people who committed such a serious crime as this? They rarely came out of their time unchanged.


Kelb was taken, dragged off to a lab somewhere. Nara was distraught - Maybe it was just sibling love. Maybe it was deep friendship. Maybe there was a deeper feeling at play. Even Nara couldn't say for sure. All she knew was that she needed to save him - Half to get him back, and half to demand he explain why the FUCK he'd done that. Especially because, with the severity of his offense, she might not see him again otherwise. And so... She prepared. The rest of her group was too scared, and so she did it on her own. She'd always been the best shapeshifter among them, very nearly a prodigy, and pu that skill to use in her self-imposed mission - Rescue Kelb. Get the family back together.


Needless to say, it went wrong. Nara was pretty good at what she did, but... Not good enough. She rescued Kelb from the planet he was imprisoned on, an icy world at the outermost edges of the system. Dragged him out of the lab. But on the way out, she disrupted one of the projects, a contained black hole that was being used for research into a new type of power generator. It was a minor miracle that her mistake didn't annihilate the entire planet and was quickly contained, but it did result in, to her horror, the destruction of the lab she'd left behind.

And that is a much worse crime to Kalaran than it would be to Earth. Even excluding the deaths that occurred as part of it, the crime was a horrific one, but at least she had her brother back. Kelb was in her arms again. And they made their escape...


Or tried to, anyway. The bastard sold her out to save his own fucking skin, without a single regret, and Nara found herself surrounded. She did the only thing she could do - Commandeered a shuttle and fucked off, rocketing herself through the stars with nothing but a broken nav-console to guide her. And eventually... She landed here. On Earth. An alien among humans.

She took on a new shape, a new form - Human. Based everything about it on what cultural research she could do. Short, conventionally attractive. Weak-looking. Young enough to be forgiven for ignorance, old enough to not draw too much scrutiny. And she did her best, but lives in constant fear of Kalaran finding where she's hiding.



In a standard setting, she's hid her ship somewhere she can access it later and is living a life as a normal person, albeit watching over her shoulder almost constantly. In a superhero setting, she's playing the role of a hero, using her powers for good in the vain hopes that, if Kalaran comes, humanity will need her too much to abandon her.