Sanam Abbasi

Sanam Abbasi
Profile
Origin	Bretonia
Occupation	Terrorist, xenoarcheologist
Gender	Female
Affiliation	Gaians
Status	Alive
Born	June 17th, 801 AS
Table of contents

Background

The daughter of a lower middle class family from New London, Sanam's early life was an average one. Growing with very little except basic comforts in one of the lowest levels of New London, she learned from the beginning to keep herself satisfied with very little.

Faring only mildly better than her peers at school and with a restricted social circle of people of similar character, her mildly above-average performance at school was found to be enough by her parents to send her to a state-owned college, who were unwilling to see their daughter fall into an even worse position than their own. Rolling up her sleeves, Sanam decided to make the most of her interest for the alien civilizations that preceded the arrival of mankind to Sirius by millions of years by pursuing the study of xenoarcheology and xenolinguistics, and it is in this period that, like many other college students, she found the local college branch of the Green Front.

While at first she only attended meetings to enlarge her social circle, Sanam's interest soon became genuine as the movement's anti-industrial ideology began to attract her interest. Consuming book after book between one exam and the other, Sanam began to consider the acid rains and perpetually-darkened skies of New London she was used to not anymore as part and parcel of life but as the byproducts of a wasteful, inefficient and utterly self-destructive civilization. And, while her zeal for the Green Front's environmentalist and at times anti-developmentalist ideology grew and manifested itself through attendance (and sometimes organization) of demonstrations and debates, the world outside burned.

Having just barely won a long and expensive war against Kusari for the Taus, Bretonia embroiled itself into another conflict against Gallia, a juggernaut of a House that revealed itself after seven centuries with the purpose of conquering the entirety of the galactic west of Sirius. Rolling into the Taus and eventually into Bretonia proper with the capture of the former in 819 and the latter in 820, the war took its toll in the lives of New Londoners, who were swarmed with refugees from the industrial world of Leeds by the billions, and, while food became only scarcely rationed, shortages of just about everything else became increasingly commonplace for the lower classes of New London.

Conditions on New London became increasingly worse as the range of rationed goods increased and so, after having attracted the interest of a recruiter, she renounced (at least for the time being) her career as a xenoarcheologist and xenolinguist and made her way to Islay Base, deep behind enemy lines, with some friends.

Once on Islay, the young graduate was overwhelmed from the beginning. Dug into an asteroid and despite the best attempts by the builders to effectively manage the limited space, Islay's environment was claustrophobic and a far cry from the relatively open college campus, much closer though certainly cleaner to the lowest levels of New London that she had called home. Even worse, Sanam began to resent the people there, which she felt as idealistic and utterly out of place due to their wealthy backgrounds from Cambridge and the greener areas of New London. Unable to socialize due to her arrogance, Sanam could only do what she did best and so she stuck her head once again on political theory, this time preparing herself on the foundations of Gaian political thought while she was all but conscripted into Islay's "armed propaganda" corps as a snub pilot to attack Gallic interests in the system.

By late 825, contact with her parents was all but lost. Unwilling to notify them of a life choice they would most likely not approve of, she wired enough money to them to buy a one way trip to the new Bretonian colony of Sprague before cutting all contacts with them, at least for the foreseeable time.

Personality

In her youth, Sanam conducted a normal life and as a result never stood out for any particular quality. Open, but never particularly extroverted, smart and performing at school but never the first of her class, even her entrance to college was never a certainty to either her or her parents, while her interest for the distant alien past of Sirius, while slightly off to many, never manifested itself much past a few common notions derived from pop documentaries. Sanam's persona undergoes its first metamorphosis in college where from a mediocrity she turns into an increasingly bookish but open person, passing exams with remarkable results and devouring political theory like crackers, all the while constantly expanding her social circle by participating in the activities of the local branch of the Green Front. In these years she is a volcano, passing all exams without any delays or failures, immersing herself in political theory and still finding the time to make herself known on campus by appearing in many debates and demonstrations, gaining the friendship of many. In these years Sanam is an extremely lively person, but paradoxically it is at the peak of her success as an activist, that is following her graduation and following recruitment in the Gaian movement, that her personality takes a darker turn.

Used as she is to having working class and lower middle class friends, she finds many of the people crewing Islay to be out of touch with the reality she lived, not to mention over-idealistic and too distant from her materialistic and "scientific" outlook in life, in a way projecting her own arrogance onto others. On Islay, Sanam has all but dedicated herself to study, reducing contact with the others to a minimum and rejecting any participation to recreational activities which she deems as "pagan superstitions". The more she reads, the closer she becomes, and though she is respected for her knowledge, she isn't endeared to many.

One thing Sanam shares with the others on Islay is an emerging Bretonian nationalism - which could be called even a ultranationalism in her case - though she prefers to dismiss it as a simple hatred for the Gallic monarchy. Having weathered shortages caused by the war that Gallia started on New London and being focused - like most of Islay's crew - on attacking Gallic objectives in occupied Bretonian territory, Sanam has in fact learned to hate all things and people Gallic. To her, Gallia is a nation that hasn't merely fueled itself by stripping entire solar systems of resources, but has dedicated this endeavour to a seven century-long preparation for a war against fellow men. Seen from this angle, this is an even bigger waste than the one practiced by the nations of Sirius and as a result, Gallia is the only nation in Sanam's mind with what amounts to an original sin. No Gaul is spared her hatred, not even the revolutionary attempting to overthrow the monarchy until its dedication to withdraw from occupied Bretonian space is proven.