Athry Silith

"She may not be a telepath, but I'll be damned if she can't read minds."

— Alexia Shantorn

As the Vice President of the Interstellar Regiment for Unified Systems, Athry Silith is one of the most influential people in the galaxy, right behind IRUS President Ravnio. Her mastery of diplomacy and her keen mind have served IRUS for decades, although she was promoted to her current position just 5 short years ago.

Education and Upbringing

Athry Silith was born to two middle-class citizens of Dunston, Stelae and Diant Silith, on the 87th of Manaso 15 years before the turning of the era. She had a relatively steady and stable childhood -- at least, until the disaster that destroyed Starhaven and bombarded Passe-Rath's moon with enough radiation to ensure no one would be able to live there for millions of years.
When the Destruction of Light happened, Athry's parents were some of the hundreds of millions of people whose immediate instinct was to flee the planet in fear of another catastrophic meltdown in the nuclear reactors beneath the God-program monoliths. They immediately took their belongings, their savings, and their daughter and bought passage on a ship to a colony in a far-away star system where they could start a new life.
At 15 years old, Athry was forced to abandon her friends, her school, and her planet in order to move to a small settlement hundreds of light-years away from home. She experienced intense depression for the first few years after arriving, but things changed when she became an intern for the local IRUS outpost that protected the colony. She was assigned minor duties such as filling paperwork and keeping track of supplies in the arsenal, but she found it incredibly fulfilling and eventually gained the respect of everyone in the outpost, as well as making earnest connections with many townfolk in the colony. The colony had no institutions of higher learning built, and no professors to teach for them, but Athry managed to pull some strings in supply shipments and was able to obtain data cartridges of digital college courses in military science, diplomacy, and communications directly from some of the top universities of Passe-Rath, and immediately set to studying them thoroughly. In another 3 years, her coworkers, family, and friends gave her a special gift for her 22nd birthday: a seat on a ship back to Passe-Rath, where she would enroll in an IRUS-funded academy and eventually be on track to officially join the Peacekeeping branch of IRUS. She tearfully thanked them and set off back to her homeworld, where the next part of her life would begin.

Return to Passe-Rath

When Athry returned to Passe-Rath after many years away, she found a very different world than she had left. In just 7 years, the influence and authority of IRUS had expanded massively across the globe in an attempt to find Starhaven's potential saboteur(s) and stop any new nuclear sabotage in megacities before they happened. While this was standard in the university in Passe-Makoa she attended, she found that even her daily life around town was filled with the presence and influence of IRUS. For the first time, it occurred to her that IRUS might not be the noble force of ultimate good she thought it was -- in Passe-Makoa, at least, it seemed to have more nuance than that. Still, she made good work in her classes and completed a degree in communications in two years, then immediately joined IRUS as an apprentice emissary in the peacekeeping branch. She was assigned to work with Alien Relations Division 2A (ARD-2A), the group of diplomats assigned to the 2A sector of Sytalion. This is where her skills of diplomacy truly began to shine.

Averting Disaster

A decade of steady embassy work later, and Athry had made upwards strides in her career, earning a spot as a manager of her division. However, trouble was brewing in the galaxy -- on a planet in the 2A sector, a subspecies of humans called the Yolar who left Passe-Rath over a thousand years ago during the Aulyssian Expansion were rediscovering their long-removed homeworld and how core humanity had reached across the galaxy. They had lost the technology that allowed them to traverse space long ago, and had recently re-invented it, sending ships out to many systems across Sytalion. However, they were focusing on colonizing other planets as opposed to simple exploration, and their sights were set on Passe-Rath. Their myths and stories told of a legendary planet which the ancestors of the Yolar came from, and they had finally found it. They started setting up colonies and outposts in the wilderness of Passe-Rath, and these grew slowly in population and size over several years; until one day, the megacity Corlisk noticed one's presence, barely a few miles from the city's borders.
The Corliskans immediately reacted with outrage. These people who were so far removed from Passe-Rath that they were basically aliens now believed they had a right to the homeworld, and had established a settlement dangerously close to a city with a proud military history where billions of civilians lived. This was something without a precedent: no near-human or non-human species had ever tried to colonize Passe-Rath before. Things were heating up between the Yolar settlers and the Corliskans, and IRUS scrambled to cool things down.
Since the Yolar homeworld was in the 2A sector of Sytalion, Athry Silith's team was assigned to handle the situation. However, unlike her other work attending embassies or writing documents to other planets, this was a situation right at home on Passe-Rath, and what's more, it was heating up much faster than normal due to the headstrong and proud demeanors of both the Corliskans and the Yolar. Neither side would back down.
Athry whipped her team into action, meeting with Corliskan officials and Yolar leaders as well as communicating with Mytheth and convincing her that the Yolar were not threat. The work she did was making a difference, and the situation was slowly resolving. However, things blew up when one day a group of Corliskan citizens ventured out to the Yolar town and made trouble, accosting settlers and vandalizing property. The Yolar, already on edge, retaliated and arrested the offending individuals, but not after a fight erupted and claimed the lives of two Corliskans. When the megacity discovered this, Mytheth rallied a force of guards and marched out to the Yolar town to recover their citizens and get revenge. Athry awoke in the middle of the night to an emergency situation, and immediately took a team of peacekeepers and sped to intecept the Corliskan force. However, she was nearly too late; by the time she arrived, they had already reached the Yolar town, brandishing weapons, met with an equal force of Yolar fighters who were more than ready to attack. She and her peacekeepers got between the two opposed parties and prevented the conflict from erupting into violence; with this crisis averted, negotiations between the two parties could continue and eventually the Yolar and the Corliskans would come to coexist in peace in the present day.
Silith was awarded high commendations for both her bravery and her contribution to diplomacy, and when a position in the highest levels of IRUS administration opened up, she was voted in as Chairman of Planetary Operations, where she spent another long stretch of her career.

Promotion

An unexpected event unbalanced IRUS leadership and changed Silith's career on Dhein 2 five years ago when a psionic individual unleashed biophagy on the world and killed the president and vice president of IRUS in the heart of Passe-Makoa. The assassin was swiftly caught and taken away by IRUS forces, but not after doing massive damage to the organization; leadership immediately passed to Jonathan Ravnio, the then-Chairman of Galactic Operations, and Silith was next in line to become the vice president.
Silith and Ravnio had a complicated relationship, which was further put to the test by their new positions. Ravnio had a tendency to use more forceful tactics to ensure galactic safety and security, while Silith preferred diplomacy, open communication, and some would say was more lenient. Silith and Ravnio often squabbled over the correct course of action to take in major and minor IRUS operations from supply distribution to negotiations to military strategy. Ravnio struggled to move more swiftly and decisively than Silith would allow, while Silith struggled to keep Ravnio's discompassionate streak in check. However, their new positions forced them to work together more effectively, and both were smart enough to know that if they worked against each other the whole galaxy would suffer for it. And so they came to a tenative agreement; Ravnio learned to trust Silith's judgement and Silith learned to trust Ravnio's methods. They may not have been friends, but they were two of the most qualified people in Sytalion and they led IRUS successfully.

Leadership

For the past five years, IRUS has been intensifying its quest for galactic peace and unity, and protecting Passe-Rath from anything that would hurt it. At least, that's the goal... but Silith has secretly been harboring some doubts about IRUS's true intentions. She's keenly aware that IRUS has become more and more antagonistic towards other planets and civilizations, and that they have been greatly expanding their authority over both Passe-Rath and all of Sytalion. Now that she's the Vice President, she's able to influence things more, but her talent for diplomacy has become more and more obsolete as IRUS becomes more overbearing. While she makes steps in the sidelines and the shadows to reverse this progression and to discover its root cause, she worries how much longer she can keep it up before she becomes powerless to stop it.

Current Location

Passe-Makoa

Age

59

Date of Birth

Manaso 87, 9 BDL

Pronouns

she/her

Gender

Female

Eyes

Brown

Hair

Short grey

Skin Tone/Pigmentation

White

Aligned Organization

IRUS

Distinguishing Traits

As a young woman, Athry was an energetic and determined person; now that she's older, she carries herself with a dignified air but still has just as much determination and fire. She is rarely seen in anything other than the standard blue suit and gold pin of IRUS Administration, as well as the blue tie that marks her position as the vice president. Due to a chronic muscle condition she always carries a grey cane, which she occasionally swaps out for a finer wooden version adorned with gold embellishments for official IRUS events.

Personal Life

While she's not managing major IRUS operations or attending embassies on other planets, Athry enjoys reading biographies of historical figures and attending art galleries across Passe-Rath. At least once a year when she finds the time, she makes the journey back to her parents and friends on the colony she left, as well as to check in on the community that sent her back to Passe-Rath for her education. Due to the incident that put her in her current position, she must be accompanied by a cohort of IRUS bodyguards, but she finds this an adequate sacrifice for her safety.
In secret, she is a fan of the popular band Jonesy and the Whales, but she's never told a soul. Even unbeknownst to her bodyguards, she keeps a tape of The Whales Take It Back in her office in the high towers of Passe-Makoa that she listens to when no one is watching.

"Something is wrong within IRUS. I need to figure it out -- because if I can't, who else can?"

— Athry Silith