Player: Waaagh

Character Name: Tannhild "Tasha" Ilfing

Age: 28

Sex: Female

Species: Hybrid

Height/Weight: 5´9 ft / 205 lbs

Physical Description: Muscular, Sturdy, broad shouldered and of stocky build, Tasha was able to lift one and a half times her own weight at the peak of her fitness, back when she had just joined the Ministry. Her arms are still strong, and so are her legs, and she is an overall intimidating figure. A Veteran of the Winterlight and Quiet Fusion campaigns, her scars are manifold, most evident wherever skin shows trough her curly fur. Her lips are streaked with fine purple lines and scar tissue, her ears edges and the rims of her eyes are somewhat jagged and her fingers and hooves also bear marks of the fight she once struggled in at the side of her brothers and sisters of the 7th Tempest. Of predominantly herbivore genetic makeup, she still bears the sharpness and awareness of any predator. One of her ears is completely missing, apart from a little remnant of skin. On top of her scalp, her fur turns into a long, red mane that extends to almost halfway down her back, usually braided and tied with a ribbon of some sort.

Her fur is of pale blue colour, white mottles covering all of it. Her face is of dark grey colour, bearing an almost green hint, the colour transitioning to grey-blue around her jawline and forming a white patch on the front of her neck. The dark grey continues around the sides of her neck, spreading out over her shoulders and extending all the way down her back, tapering close at her tail. Her tighs are zebra-striped with the same green-grey colour, with similar stripes on her upper arms and the tip of her tail. The dark grey again is striped with something that resembles a splintered camouflage pattern, of slightly darker grey tones, also darkening her muzzle to an almost black colour with a racoon-esque mask.
From her ankles and wrists down, the pale blue transitions to brilliant white. Her tailtip is also white.

Her skull resembles that of a cow, but is slightly longer and bears features of the skulls of a goat and a dog too. Her eyes would resemble those of a wolf, but seem completely black. Dark orbs, that seem to stare trough and into every mind they come across. From the sides of her head potrude two large, curved horns, arcing forward. They are black, turning red first, and then end in small white tips. Would she open her mouth, one would note that the carnivore features of her teeth are prominent, slightly overlarge fangs giving her a vicious grin. Her hooved feet are triple split, and a thumb-like digit with a large claw extends from their backs. Her left hand is missing, the crude stump thickly bandaged to prevent bumps and jolts sending a torrent of pain up her arm.

Background: Tasha was born in Einheit City, a child of a progressive Woman who had given herself up to the cause of Unity. Instead of raising her daughter herself, Yarna Ilfing had Tasha raised in a Ministry established community centre. A healthy, playful kid, Tasha was evaluated in her early teens and found to be adequate material for the Ministry. When faced with the prospect of becoming a Minister, motivated by the support of her peers and educators, she gained new focus in her life and began working hard towards making the basic training. Her character changed, where she had been very open and rather chaotic, she became straight and precise, and despite several setbacks achieved very high marks in her elementary and secondary education processes, and subsequent evaluation at the Ministry Academy aged 17. With the species wars raging outside of the City, new warriors to defend the torch of Unity were sorely needed, and thus Tasha, along with hundreds of others was entered into the basic training circuit of spring 22 ECE.

Again relying on the support of her comrades, while helping others along whenever she could, Tasha successfully passed basic training and entered the pioneer force in 24 ECE after her primary combat training was completed, and was attached to the skyship "Gorgon"´s assault force. Fighting in the southeast, the Gorgon´s primary objective was to skim the sea for purebred infiltrators and hybrid refugees: Operation Quiet Fusion. In 25 ECE, not having seen much combat, Tasha´s unit was detached again from the Gorgon, and assigned to the newly assembled strike force headed for the enemy colony of Variag´s Promise, 7th Tempest. The 7th Tempest was an army of 95.000 strong, compromised of around 18.000 Ministers with the remainder being Einheit City Militia draftees. The army had the goal of cutting off the enemy oil fields and fuel refineries along the coastline of the great black sea. Working in conjunction with a special combat force of Ministry Sturmtruppen, the first great operation of 7th Tempest began: Operation Winterlight.

Heading south, the forces of the Ministry attack force bypassed the closest enemy oil fields and completely ignored the lines of defense the Variag had built, going directly for their primary staging point: The small settlement of Volzth. Mainly compromised of sprawling industrial complexes and underground bunker systems, Volzth was the central from which the Variag supplied their front lines, and where all fuel they sold to the other fighting colonies was funneled trough. Grossly underestimating the performance of the Ministry skyships, their defenses were completely incapable of dealing with the fast, high flying ministry intruders, and upon landing Tasha and her comrades found that they had ample time to prepare for combat before the first defenders finally managed to put up blockades.
They were crushed utterly. Fighting up the great Variag highway, 7th Tempest cut off three quarters of the enemy fuel supply in a mere month, surrounding Volzth while the special Sturmtruppen force began to systematically liberate all Hybrid slave labourers from the Variags oil production plants and refineries. The liberation of Volzth was just as bloody as any other battle, and took a year to be completed. Fighting doorway to doorway, the Ministers freed the town house by house, alley by alley, warehouse by warehouse against an enemy desperately hoping for a relief force to beat them free of the ministry encirclement. Help that would never arrive, as the Variag got driven down into the underground bunker systems. Finally, the leaders of 7th Tempest decided to end the hassle: Tasha and her Pioneer comrades simply went on to blow up and cave in all known entrances to the bunker network, transforming Volzth into a fortress. Until the beginning of 27 ECE, 7th Tempest stayed in Volzth, fighting off several desperate attacks by the Variag, who were trying to get their fuel back. Not letting them, the ministers turned the grounds before the city into killing fields more than once.

By the end of 26 ECE, a shallow ridge, 30 miles long ran in front of Volzth up to the coastline, entirely formed from the bodies of fallen Colonial fighters, covered up by layer upon layer of snow after each battle. But in spring 27 ECE, things changed drastically. The Ministry learned that the Variag were buying up useless hybrid slaveworkers from their closest neighbours, and were beginning to stage massive, public executions in an attempt to stir up the populace of their colony against the hybrid invader. The lives of more than three million hybrids were suddenly at stake, as the previously easily reached camps in the nightlands were cleaned out and their inhabitants marched directly to Variag´s Promise. Drawing reinforcements from wherever they could, the leaders of 7th Tempest began a desperate assault on the enemy colony, trough a thousand miles of empty wasteland directly towards the most heavily defended fortress of the enemy. Where other ministry actions of this sort had been small, expertly planned and executed actions relying on speed and the element of surprise, the Variag expected the Ministry to make this move, and this time did not underestimate them. Having hired mercenaries from various other colonies, they had raised an army whose strength ranked in the hundreds of millions, with their entire populace backing the war that was brought onto them now. The task 7th Tempest faced was impossible to fulfil. Knowing this, the Ministers were clear from the start on that this would be a suicide mission, and that it had to be endured as long as possible to rescue as many Hybrids from the Variag as could possibly be rescued.

By mid 28 ECE, 7th Tempest had reached Variags Promise: a year of bloody combat in the Nightlands laid behind them, dodging the much more cumbersome enemy armies, stabbing them into their flanks and backs. Hit and Run attacks were the order of things, setting ambushes, luring the enemy into traps, constructing ghost armies. Tasha and her comrades became masters at the art of deception, at looking bigger or smaller than they were, often scoring massive victories over numerically superior enemies. Now the most difficult battle of all of them laid ahead: uncloaked and unable to dodge, 7th Tempest began its siege on the enemy city, in the middle of the black, overfrozen ocean, piled up from wrecks of age old ships, a towering fortress of tangled metal, of lightless alleys and dangerous walkways. The battle for Variags promise was bloody and cruel, the Ministers slaughtering their way trough the streets just as the Variag had slaughtered their hybrid prisoners at the mere hint of a Ministry skyship approaching. None were left alive, superior training and equipment making the ministers and their militia counterparts almost invincible after they had breached the walls. Intercepting convoys around the Colony, they managed to free one and a half million hybrid refugees, before they began to run out of replacement parts, ammunition and food by mid 28 ECE and had to withdraw with half of their strength lost to enemy action. For weeks the retreating Ministers were able to see the burning pyre they had made out of Variag´s Promise: and before long the enemy´s vengeance would be upon them. Having amassed an army of 13 million, the Variag tried to cut off the retreating Ministers, but failed even as they used their new weapon: a massive hydrogen bomb of almost 100 megatons yield. Only a flaw in the guidance system of the first Variag missle using this warhead saved 7th Tempest: A steaming cloud of water billowed into the atmosphere, causing the Army to be shrouded in snow as the enemy turned towards Einheit.
The race was on, with 7th Tempest trying to block the way of the advancing enemy before they could bring their crude missle launchers within reach of the City of Unity. This range was just beyond Volzth. What happened then was the staging point for what would later be known as "the great sacrifice".

7th Tempest arrived at Volzth in december 28 ECE, and had prepared the defense by the beginning of february of the following year, when the first parts of the enemy force arrived, testing the ministry´s defenses in multiple parts. Reinforcements from Einheit were put in place, and a quick counteroffensive was mounted to push the enemy back far enough that space for movement could be gained. The offensive ran headfirst into the attack of the Variag, and was badly beaten up as the Ministry units found themselves in a sea of enemies, Tasha´s own Unit cut off for weeks before they could fight their way back trough the enemy lines. They came out sixty miles away from their starting point, and like their own unit, many others had come out in places they had never expected to. The units were badly tangled up, and even the advanced control mechanisms of the Ministry command needed a full week before they could make sense of what had happened. By then, the enemy had brought up the rear and laid siege on Volzth. Unable to move neither forward nor backward, 7th Tempest prepared for the worst, until a relief force arrived. Digging in, driving trenches and fortifications on top of the "Ridge of sleepers", the Ministers received the first attacks in good order, but day by day, endless artillery barrages and attack wave after attack wave turned the snow black and the sky flickered with the yellow lights of burning vehicles and blazing guns. Using the wrecks of the previous attackers for cover, the combatants soon sat a mere hundred meters and only a couple of feet in other places away from each other, resulting in an absolute gridlock. Both sides attempted to free the frontlines up, to get space for movement. Digging tunnels, Tasha´s unit deposited several tons of high explosive material under the enemy lines, the detonations hurling tanks weighing several dozens of tons a hundred meters far across the landscape, causing bodies to rain from the sky. Ministry units then pushed trough the gap, wreaking havoc among the enemy before retreating, leaving the trenches booby trapped with mines and other deadly devices. By mid 29 ECE, more than half the ministers of 7th Tempest had been killed, and the enemy had withdrawn beyond the reach of ministry artillery, preparing for a last great offensive. Understrength and under equipped, with the rest of the Ministry under heavy strain, fighting on Einheits territory itself, 7th Tempest was in no good position to receive another attack. None of them faltered. In the beginning of december, 29 ECE, the Variag began their massive attack. For three months they had stocked as much ammunition as Ministry frontline Aviation and Assault Aviation had let them, unleashing all of it in the space of three hours. Thousands of tons of molten steel rained from the sky, churning the ground´s topside down, plowing new hills into the landscape, the blistering explosions seen as far as Einheit City itself before the storm overcame 7th Tempest. Pressed back towards the City of Volzth and finally into it, the wave of Enemy fighters crashed into them with such force that they couldn´t do anything but yield. Vicious hand to hand fighting broke out in the streets, while the Ministry air force tried to disrupt the flow of enemy reinforcements to the best of its abillities, faced with overwhelming numbers against itself in the skies too.

Tasha herself fought for her life in the ruins of Volzth herself, in the tunnels underneath the city. Due to the work of her pioneers, whole City districts collapsed as the enemy moved across them, black holes swallowing battalions of Variag soldiers on their way to the frontline. Infiltrating the enemy lines, command posts were blown up, and bridges sent crashing into the rivers and abyssals they crossed. But all efforts seemed to come to nothing: Shortly before boreas, the Ministers were still holding but were so badly mangled and scattered that there was no cohesion anymore. For days, Tasha had already been fighting on her own, without ever seeing another White, not knowing where exactly she was, or how the army as a whole fared. Retreating into the tombs under the City, she tried to link up with someone in the rear, gather some ministers to bring another load behind the enemy. Shuffling trough the lowmost sewers of the bunker system, she needed a full day to emerge again. By the time she came back to the surface, everything had fallen silent.

Boreas had already finished the job, obliterating the enemy invasion army and the remnants of 7th Tempest. Tasha stumbled around the ruins for two days, before deciding to leave Volzth, mounting a functioning vehicle she found in the outer districts of the city, and heading off to EInheit City. Undiscovered by the ministry evacuators that arrived a day later, she wandered trough the Nightlands, alone, for more than a year before finally, now, arriving back at her Birthplace.

Personality: Tasha is scarred by her experience of war, and the loneliness of her trek trough the Nightlands. She talks to herself, and is dreadfully scared of silence. Inside her head, she has made up several small characters she used to accompany herself, the loneliness of the dark wasteland outside of the City having been hell to her, seeing as she has never known the meaning of the word before. Even though getting into contact with people again will be challenging for her, She has never been known to be introverted or uptight in social situations. Friendly and open, she sometimes even has a deceptive air of naivity about her.

Because of the scars she took with her during the battles and subsequent trip trough the Nightlands, she is currently unfit to take up her role as Minister again immediately: a fact that bothers her deeply. She doesn´t see her position as a job she can lay off in the evening, but as a bodily condition. Not being able to do what she was elected and trained for is like loosing a limb. With her hand missing, her body malnourished and ridden with sickness, she will need some time to get ready for active duty again, but she hopes that she will manage well enough to file in at the forefront again. She is reluctant to speak about how she lost her hand, or any of her injuries, similarily to how she is unwilling to speak about her achievements in combat.
Contrary to some other Ministers, however, she has the benefit that no one knows about her actions, and all who did are most likely dead.

As a survivor of 7th tempest, Tasha is one of only seven in total who have made it out alive, all of them war heroes in their own right, and all of them survived the battle with wounds rendering them completely unable to perform their duty. Being the only one who was not affected by the Abzero strikes at all, Tasha has a feeling of deep guilt inside her, especially after having read the report about the final stand of her army. She was the only Minister facing away from the enemy when the bombs struck, and retreated from the field of battle without even knowing that the enemy had been defeated. Her feelings about this are deep, and while mostly unrational have a big effect on the state of her mind.
As a Minister, however, she still is an exceptional example of her kind. Straight, to the point, precise, unquestioning, undoubting, always able to use her tongue or firearm straightly when it comes to defending Unity and the Ministry by word and deed. She doesn´t have trouble in arguing with uniclass or outerclass, even seeking discussion at times to probe the individual for their soundness of mind and dedication to the cause. Or malignant potential.

Tasha is extremely patient and calm, the hectic battles in Variag´s Promise´s tight quarters having taught her that only logical, calm and clear thinking would allow her to stay on top of the game, and come out as the survivor. Rational and Precise on duty, she slacks a little while in the confines of her home while always making a pristine figure outside of it. Her home is the counter-pole to her strict Ministry duty, allowing her to always keep herself balanced enough to deal even with the biggest blows that might come to her. She isn´t very interested in the Nightlife of either the Toride, or the Mids, but craving contact with others she will go to greatest lengths. Even though re-integration will be difficult for her, she believes that she can make it.

Misc: Tasha, because of her rather ill health, wounds and the questionable circumstances of her return from Volzth is currently not placed on active duty, but kept in the Ministry Reserve. Once the data from Whitegear is reviewed and the correctness of her actions during the great sacrifice established, she will receive her rank back and once healed and fit again can don the white once more.

Tasha, for Ministry standards, is a below average shot, which is why she was placed with the pioneers in the first place. She has a high understanding of technical things and machinery, and is also able to open locks noiselessly. An abillity she also gained in Variag´s Promise, where Ministry sneak attacks trough hidden passageways often yielded great success. Likewise, she can blow things up just as well while on Duty. She is similarily adept in reading and defusing bomb mechanisms, having been trained extensively in this field prior to her assignment to 7th Tempest.

Gear:

(Once back on Duty) Standard Whitegear /P-IU issue for Pioneers, Improved model for Urban operations. Posesses increased splinter and blast protection while sacrificing some mobillity. Otherwise same features as on standard issue frontline gear.

On Duty, Tasha will carry the standard armament, as well as door-charges and other equipment allowing passage of otherwise impassageable ways.

Privately, Tasha carries a modified ML-K 9mm pistol with integrated silencer and DNA-protected safety. The weapon holds 8 rounds per magazine and is usually loaded with rather curious liquid core, squash head rounds.