Lieutenant JG Zorell
Name Zorell
Position Assistant Chief Engineering Officer
Rank Lieutenant JG
Character Information
| Gender | Male | |
| Species | Aenar | |
| Age | 30 |
Physical Appearance
| Height | 5'11" / 1.52m | |
| Weight | 154lbs / 79 kg | |
| Hair Color | White | |
| Eye Color | Pale and sightless; he is blind | |
| Physical Description | An Aenar, with the ice-white skin, white hair, and white antennae of a people who carry no pigment at all. He is lean and long-limbed, with the wiry strength of a climber and the hard, marked hands of an engineer. His antennae carry the small funnel-tipped indentations particular to the Aenar, and his eyes are pale, almost colourless, with no iris to fix on. |
Family
| Spouse | Vethri (shen), Thessa (zhen), and Sorvin (thaan) | |
| Children | Saelis (shen) | |
| Father | ||
| Mother | ||
| Brother(s) | ||
| Sister(s) | ||
| Other Family | Parents: Korresh (chan), Ilwen (shen), Norsha (zhen), and Braketh (thaan) |
Personality & Traits
| General Overview | Gruff, blunt, and exacting, with a presence that fills a room. Zorell does not soften his opinions for anyone. He is short with carelessness, shorter with people who waste his time, and has a dry, cutting humour that lands before its target has seen it coming. New crew tend to find him imposing and a little cold. Underneath the gruffness, he is steady, patient with anyone genuinely trying, and quietly protective of the people in his charge. He gives the best of himself to the ones who need teaching, and the engineers who serve under him learn that the sharp tongue is the price of the most generous mentor on the ship. As with all Aenar, Zorell has strong telepathic abilities, but by the strict custom of his people he does not read minds without consent. Instead, he perceives mood and intention with an acuity that can be disconcerting, and he is hard to lie to. |
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| Strengths & Weaknesses | Zorell's best work is done under pressure, with little to work with. He is a confident improviser, building a fix from whatever is on hand rather than what the manual calls for. Three years working outside Starfleet left him with a broader, more practical view of engineering. Not every solution can be fixed with the Starfleet-approved methods. His temperament is the bigger obstacle day to day. The same bluntness that makes him a clear, trusted voice once people know him reads as coldness, even contempt, and Zorell does little to soften the first impression. He is slow to defer to the chain of command and slower to admit a mistake. |
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| Ambitions | To pick up where he left off in Starfleet and rebuild his career to where it once was. Zorell would never say it aloud, but one day he would like a chief engineer's billet of his own. He sees no reason the gap should slow him down for long, provided he keeps working hard at it. |
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| Hobbies & Interests | Ice climbing, which he learned as a boy on the ice of the Northern Wastes, has never given up. Racquetball, which he picked up at the Academy. Zorell's spatial sense makes him far better at it than opponents expect of a blind man, and one of the few places he lets the competitiveness off its leash. He also cooks, working through the traditional dishes of his people by scent and touch, partly for the food and partly because it is the one piece of home he can carry anywhere and put on a table. |
Service History
| Personal History | Early Years - The Northern Wastes, Andoria - 2355 - 2375 Zorell grew up among the Aenar in the Northern Wastes of Andoria, and by the standards of his people, his childhood was ordinary and quiet. The Aenar keep to themselves, a small and insular community far from the rest of Andorian life, and he was raised in that closed and peaceable world without hardship or drama worth recounting. From a young age, Zorell took up ice climbing and kept at it, learning to read the routes by sense the way every Aenar reads the world. What he wanted, the quiet of the Northern Wastes could not give him: somewhere further to go and a challenge worth solving. Nothing was wrong with the life he had; he simply wanted to see more than Andoria could show him. It was the same drive that compelled him to climb those peaks. Starfleet offered the only way to do that. Academy Years - 2375 - 2379 Zorell entered Starfleet Academy, unsure of what he wanted to do once he was there. He had joined for the challenge of it, to see more of the galaxy and where his path would take him. It led him towards engineering. Zorell found he liked the work for the reasons he liked climbing: the solution to a problem wasn't always the simplest or clearest path. Sometimes the answer had to be built rather than found in a manual. By his middle years, he had committed to the engineering track and stopped drifting. He was a solid cadet who had a talent for creative solutions, the sort instructors trusted with the practical work and did not have to watch. He also picked up racquetball at the Academy, and the game stuck. USS Stalwart, NCC-71522 - Ensign and Lieutenant junior grade - 2379 to 2381 Zorell was commissioned into Engineering after the Academy and posted to the USS Stalwart, a Steamrunner-class heavy frigate. The Stalwart was a border patrol vessel that was assigned to monitor the Federation border with the Gorn, a relatively quiet stretch of space. As a junior engineer, Zorell's daily duties weren't glamorous or exciting; most of the work involved scrubbing plasma conduits or climbing through maintenance crawlways. The Stalwart's senior engineer had little patience for manuals himself, and it was from him that Zorell first learned to build a fix from whatever was on hand rather than wait for the textbook solution, a habit he never lost. At times, the work was frustrating, as it didn't offer the challenge that Zorell had joined Starfleet hoping to find. The tedium was occasionally broken up by the odd smuggler or a stranded freighter in need of emergency repairs. It was the latter he enjoyed most. Independent freighters are common across the Federation, and most carry years of custom configurations, aftermarket parts, and modifications that don't always meet code. After two years of solid, incident-free work, Zorell was promoted to Lieutenant junior grade. USS Stalwart, NCC-71522 - Lieutenant junior grade - Borg Invasion, 2381 The Stalwart was patrolling the Gorn border near Cestus III when the Borg entered Federation space through the Azure Nebula, far from the fighting in its opening days. As the invasion spread and Starfleet recalled every ship it could reach, the Stalwart was pulled back toward the core worlds and folded into a larger defensive formation; a ship of her size had no hope of surviving a cube alone, and didn't try. Zorell spent the worst of it in engineering, holding power, life support, and structural integrity together while the ship took damage she was never meant to survive. He came through it largely unhurt and considers himself one of the lucky ones. Civilian - Contract Engineer on Andor - 2382 to 2385 In 2382, Andor seceded from the Federation over the reproductive crisis. Andorians already in Starfleet were permitted to remain, but the crisis fell hardest on the Aenar, who numbered only in the thousands, and his community called its members home for the survival effort. Zorell resigned and returned to Andoria, knowing what it would cost him. He did not regret the decision afterwards, then or since; it was simply what duty asked of him. On Andoria, he worked as a civilian engineer on contract, repairing infrastructure and equipment across his homeworld. The work was steady and needed, but it was routine maintenance, nothing like the failing systems and improvised fixes that had drawn him to engineering in the first place. Three years of it left him wanting his old career back rather than settled into a new one. He also entered a bondgroup during this time, one of the contributions the survival effort asked of his people, though the bonding struggled to produce a child while the crisis ran its course. USS Ithaca, NCC-75227 - Lieutenant junior grade - 2385 In 2385, a cure was found, and Andor was readmitted to the Federation. The same year, Saelis, the child born of his bondgroup, arrived. He sought reinstatement to Starfleet, returning at his former rank of Lieutenant Junior Grade. His bondgroup and Saelis remained on Andoria; he kept in touch with them from the Ithaca. Late in 2385, he was posted to the USS Ithaca as Assistant Chief Engineer. |
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| Service Record | 2355 Born among the Aenar, Northern Wastes, Andoria. c. 2375 Entered Starfleet Academy. c. 2379 Graduated from Starfleet Academy. Commissioned as Ensign, Engineering. c. 2379 to 2382 USS Stalwart, NCC-71522 Rank: Ensign to Lieutenant Junior Grade Position: Engineering Officer Class: Steamrunner-class heavy frigate 2381 Borg Invasion, USS Stalwart, NCC-71522 Rank: Lieutenant Junior Grade 2382 Resigned his commission following Andor's secession from the Federation. Returned to Andoria. 2382 to 2385 Civilian. Contracted as an engineer on infrastructure repairs across Andoria while resident among the Aenar during the secession. 2385 Reinstated to Starfleet at the rank of Lieutenant Junior Grade following Andor's readmission to the Federation. December 2385 USS Ithaca, NCC-75227 Rank: Lieutenant Junior Grade Position: Assistant Chief Engineer Class: Nova-class science and survey vessel |
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