Uthka Varzeekh
| Uthka Varzeekh | |
Esteemed Scholar
of the Gvurrdon Sector | |
| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office varies | |
| Preceded by | none |
|---|---|
| Succeeded by | none |
| Born | 1056 |
| Died | 1208 |
Uthka Varzeekh was a noted scholar, warrior, and psion from the Vargr Extents.
- She was a Gvegh Vargr.
Description (Character)
She is a female, Gvegh Vargr of timber wolf coloration of gray and white pelt. Her eyes were born blue and faded to a pale gray through her years. She reads, writes and speaks with a thick desert accent the regional and racial language Gvegh. Her Personal Day is roughly 24 hours.
Image Repository
History & Background (Dossier)
Uthka Varzeekh was born in 1056 on Ngoerrgh (Gvurrdon 1216) a pre-stellar, desert, hellworld that challenged the survival skills of its people. Though the desert wastes were punishing to the original colonists of Uthka’s world, they managed early spaceflight long enough to reconnect with the visiting interstellar community. Ngoerrgh was annexed, almost as an afterthought due to proximity, into the Dzen Aeng Kho or Society of Equals.
Her childhood was wracked by sexist marginalization, with females relegated to the household, cubs rearing and other family and pack needs. She was denied ED5 schooling but was already rated beyond what grade school for males could offer. However, after her eighteenth birthday, Uthka broke tradition of the sands and enrolled in the reclusive Ngoerrgh Institute of Thought and soundly aced the entrance. She Majored in Psioncology after her teenage years of overhearing the female folk prattle and gossip about mystical topics, (psionics). Added to her Major was the Minor in Sophontology. Uthka wanted to understand the mortal plight of all sophonts – the sophont condition.
At age 19 and having graduated from trade school, Uthka Varzeekh was faced with pressure from the interstellar polity to consider taking the Equality Test. She witnessed that those who failed the Test had their canines, an empire symbol of strength and endurance, removed and often forcibly, mercilessly and sometimes without anesthetics. Those failures were the Inequals. At the sight of a toothless Inequal for the first time, Uthka resigned herself to protest the Equality Test by choosing the life of an Unequal. By law, Unequals were required to wear the muzzle and waist belts of the Unequal, symbols of their shame and passive-aggressive protest against the Equality Test. At only nineteen years of age, Uthka closed the doors to many careers she could have placed in easily. But first to come was higher education which she could not be denied by law and her Unequal status.
The only educational center on Uthka’s homeworld that openly educated Unequals took her in. The Grey Institute eagerly took her in after seeing her break with sexist tradition and her marks in trade school. There, she continued her Major in Psioncology and the Minor in Sophontology. Here was a future Scholar in the deans’ eyes. Uthka spent eight years earning a PhD with Honors in her field. Not one to skimp on the application of her knowledge, Uthka Varzeekh took her doctorate to the Law Department of the same university and was accepted despite protests from public outcry outside The Grey Institute. Uthka passed the planetary bar and added Attorney to her resume. With the doctorate and law applications under her belt and ready to take up activism against un-equality, Uthka received a strange invitation from a distant world, outside the Society of Equals, to Spinward in the Thirz Empire. Her Major and her interest in the sophont condition had not been missed by those watching for key words and stories of her choices. Uthka’s resume had reached the Zhodani and Thirz ears of the Sibiatl mobile Psionics Institute. On the remainder of her scholarship and passage paid by Sibiatl, Uthka was inducted into the world of Psionics after she tested in the upper echelon of Vargr Psionic Strength Index.
At age 29, Uthka Varzeekh tested and trained in psionics. However, her much focused Abilities were limited to a top-of-chart Psi-Vision, Psi-Hearing and Out Of Body Projection, such that initially the instructors at Sibiatl could not decide how to apply Uthka’s talents. The Oruelaen, the Psi Corps of the Thirz Empire stepped into the mobile Psionic Institute and offered Uthka a career as an Agent in the realm of Psychohistory and wide-scale manipulation for the good of sophonts she would be aimed at. Though it seemed like a good initial offer, Uthka remembered her activism and turned down the Oruelaen and returned home to the Society despite their warnings of stifling culture in the Dzen Aeng Kho. Uthka could not leave behind her fellow, marginalized Unequals in the fight to abolish the Equality Test – an Orwellian nightmare to them.
Using her education and psionic training, Uthka Varzeekh dove into research and became a Scholar of Psychohistory. To allay fears of her psionic training, she tacked on the study of the culinary arts as a Chef. She wrote and had published four, journal articles on Psychohistory in just two terms. Unrest on her homeworld destroyed the local Downport and degraded it to an E-rating. Terrorists and fundamentalists fought against the Feudal Technocracy wanting to increase involvement with the interstellar Society of Equals. Fighting on the surface and in the skies was a weekly episode of fear to Uthka’s people.
Uthka found herself conscripted into all-female paramilitary units and driving ground vehicles, flying support aircraft and even taking flight on starships to resupply one side or the other. She did not care so long as she survived the turmoil of her Desert world. She came to see the sophont condition shared by both sides and their commonalities, differences and the causalities for the violence. Between fighting seasons, in the hot summers on the sands of Ngoerrgh, Uthka Varzeekh continued her research into Psychohistory for answers to stop the bloodshed and find peace. But her first brush with Cassandra’s Conundrum came when in her third term as a Scholar; her proposition to an Alternate Basic Theory of Psioncology reached the wrong ears. Accusations of the abject depravity of a female, Vargr, Psion and Unequal to boot daring to shake the foundations of the higher science of the mind spouted like geysers against her research. How dare an Unequal, a lower caste heathen and Zhodani lover deign to tell the community there was a different way? The proposition destroyed her reputation in the public eye as a radical thinker. However, a quiet promotion for her thinking outside the box continued to elevate Uthka to Associate Professor in the Psychohistory and Cliodynamics Department. That same term, those learned whom she had insulted with her denied publication struck. Uthka was nearly killed by a terrorist bomb that took down the library on the campus of The Grey Institute. She was trapped for five hours under heavy rubble and nearly gave up until she found her escape after five attempts with the help of her psionic, Out Of Body Projection ability. In apology for lax security and her willingness to stay on staff, the Unequal Vargr was again quietly granted tenure and she went on to quieter and simpler research breakthroughs in Psychohistory and managed to upload six papers to the planetary network under a pen-name as well as six new recipes for Ayurvedic Tea blends which received accolades in tea enthusiasts. This is where she developed a passion for tea. Fighting continued and Uthka had to stop her research to lend her support to the cause to abolish the Equality Test on Ngoerrgh. When the campus was stormed by terrorists and then followed up by local riot-control law enforcement, Uthka had had enough of her homeworld. She took to the stars to continue her passive protest among the interstellar community.
As the Grey Institute’s records were destroyed and burned, Uthka had only her abilities and her resume now that her reputation had fallen with the center of learning for Unequals of her homeworld. She meandered from one short-term employment to another as an ‘advisor’ to administrators from townships to system governors. Her invaluable advice bordered on precognitive ability and was augmented by her psionics. She was able to see causality in all things about her and after some time observing the environment and social situation, give a report that predicted many conflicts, unrest, upheaval and uprisings. But still her status as an Unequal limited her prospects. Eventually sank so low as to pass herself off as an eccentric fortune-teller complete with her desert robe decorated with coins, a Vargr crystal tarot deck, and reading tea leaves at the bottom her cup during an interview with the sophont seeking her advice. These were her thin years.
Without a pack to support her, Uthka Varzeekh landed a lowly job as an attaché servant to one Dame Qithka Cannagrrh of Pack Cannagrrh, an Equal Entertainer and propaganda actress. As the Dame’s chauffer, steward, secretary, advisor, (even private fortune-teller) and personal chef, Uthka kept her psionics hidden to use only when critically necessary. Through the vocation of field correspondence, Uthka found herself in her best element, among sophonts of every stripe, able to see the lines of causality and advise Dame Qithka when it deemed the esteemed writer to ask her Unequal assistant. The two had many squabbles over the Dame’s perception and Uthka’s foresight, causing the Unequal desert nomad female to clamp down into silences she termed quietus, in response to the burn of Cassandra’s Conundrum.
When Dame Qithka Cannagrrh learned that her brother had gone seeking adventure in the Spinward Marches of the Third Imperium, she followed after and dragging her Unequal Uthka behind her. The two females caught up to Senior Scout and Courier Gevaudan Cannagrrh on D’Ganzio in Lanth subsector when the Fifth Frontier War broke out between the Imperium and the combined, interstellar forces of the Outworld Coalition. By the end of the War, Uthka had Gevaudan, the Imperials and even an ex-pat Zhodani psionics instructor believing the belt-bound Unequal had precognitive psionic abilities. More than once, Uthka Varzeekh was convinced herself that she was melding her skills use with tapping her mental powers.
Uthka Varzeekh followed the Dame, her brother and the Artemis Group about the Spinward Marches, until she and Gevaudan Cannagrrh were banished, exiled from the Domain of Deneb by the new Archduke Norris before a court of other subsector Dukes, and at least three Viscounts. The trio returned to Gvurrdon Sector with many adventures along the way.
The Psychohistorian and eccentric fortune-teller caught wind of a strange, galactic phenomenon through whispers carried along the border between the Vargr Extents and the Zhodani Consulate. Taking precautions against the psychic tsunami that would later be named the Empress Wave, Uthka lay down in a Low Berth, psi-shielded in a helmet and encapsulated in an insulated vault prepared for disciples of psionics. Reserving a cryo-sleep capsule drained Uthka’s credit accounts as she was neither Zhodani nor an Oruelaen Vargr Agent. The female slept through the Rebellion, the Collapse and did not see the light of the local vault’s star until 1184 when she was successfully wakened with a summons from her old friend and mistress, the elderly Dame Qithka Cannagrrh for a special enigma the Dame felt only the Unequal could unlock.
Uthka Varzeekh passed away after 1207 when coming up one last time from quietus to reveal another prediction that she was to die of old age the very next year. She had never taken anagathics and had lived and slept beyond her years. She was entombed in a cemetery on Dzuerongvoe, one reserved for Vargr Psions.
Personage Timeline
- (1056): Birth of Uthka Varzeekh.
- (1208): Death of Uthka Varzeekh.
References & Contributors (Sources)
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- EXTERNAL LINK: The Pakkrat
- Traveller Wiki Editorial Team
- Author & Contributor: The Pakkrat
- Author & Contributor: Lord (Marquis) and Master of Sophontology Maksim-Smelchak of the Ministry of Science