Anika Bluehair

Mother of the Numab

Physical Description

General Physical Condition

Anika has lived a very physically demanding life. She has the muscle to prove it as well as the fat stores to show that she's been able to gather plenty of food and water. She has bright, alert eyes and her skin is darkened from a life of surface dwelling.

Identifying Characteristics

Her hair has an unusual blue tone to the black. For most Numab people, black hair is either flat black or has red undertones. Hence her last name, Bluehair.

Apparel & Accessories

She wears loose fitting clothes that are pinched off at the wrists, ankles, and neck. She usually wears a utility belt at her waist. Her long hair is typically covered in a head covering that also covers most of her face. She does take the face covering part off when she's inside, but always wears it when outside. She also has special googles she'll wear while on the surface during the day.

Mental characteristics

Personal history

"Anika Bluehair, the dread pirate-conqueror, came up like a weed in the barrens of the Borderlands--living on scraps and always searching for more." --Retired Explorer Rand Belmont

Childhood

Anika grew up as a member of a small tribe of scavengers. While they did not enjoy the protections of a larger tribe, she learned the value of observing the world around her and finding secondary uses for things. She also learned basic survival skills for navigating the surface and underground areas of the Borderlands and the Wastes. This was a difficult, but good time in her life that was mostly peaceful.

Early adulthood

A little before she hit puberty, her tribe was slaughtered. She was the only survivor. She managed to intercept a different tribe a few weeks after the massacre. Impressed that she had survived for so long on her own and her inventiveness, they allowed her a place on the crew-- so long as she worked for it. It was through these experiences that she learned to navigate the cultures of the different tribes and begin to see the commonalities between them. The travels also allowed her to study the ways animals and plants were adapting to the novel environments. She began to develop a paradigm of looking to the natural world to find solutions for living in the Wastes.

Adulthood

As an adult she struck out from her foster tribe to create a new crew. She was very young to be a captain, but she gathered crew members from different tribes, including the five main ones-- Arglissima, Memedi, Sawiwa, Hui Det, and Aufan. Such cross-tribe collaboration was unheard of before Anika's crew. Together, they came up with many inventions that transformed life in the Wastes and Borderlands,including the first Sadi and battery operated engines. Before Anika, engines were powered by combustion and steam. Vehicles were mostly rovers that had a tendency to get stuck in the sand dunes or roll over.
Anika became convinced that hoping for a pass into Piromere for her people was a path to ruin. She believed that the only way her people could survive and thrive was to learn to adapt to life in the Wastes by learning from the natural world and by establishing peace between the tribes. She became a champion of peace and ended The Numabian Wars by designing, ratifying, and enforcing the Accords which established the Numab Confederacy.

"Death"

In her final years, a new disease broke out. It was given many names, but Solirium was thought to be caused from a combination of bad airs and staying exposed on the surface for too long. To this day, the cause of Solirium remains a mystery. The afflicted become erratic, moody, loss of balance, and even violent. No cure has yet to be discovered. Anika and her crew visited the tribes and people who were falling ill with this new and mysterious disease. They searched for the cause and cure until they too were afflicted. With no cure in sight and a threat to survival of the whole, Anika and her crew gathered all the afflicted into a single fleet and went searching for a cure in the Blistering Wastes. It is said that the fleet still sails the blistering dunes to this day, with Anika at the helm, leading her people to a future salvation.  This last sacrifice of Anika lives on in the Numab people's memory is a source of inspiration for epic poets, singers, and artists. Those who are afflicted with Solirium will often go the Blistering Wastes as their last ditch effort to reunite with Anika's fleet and potentially be cured.

Gender Identity

Anika is a woman. Because of the lingering social norms of gender roles from the origin culture that gave rise to both Numabian and Piromese cultures before the fall, Anika was a staunch supporter of breaking gender norms. She advocated for clothing based on function, which meant looser, flowing outfits for the heat and head to toe coverings to keep out sand, dust, smog, and other irritants. These designs greatly increased survival, but went against traditional norms and were non-gendered clothing. She also believed that having mixed gendered crews was beneficial and that gender shouldn't be the quality by which people were assigned to crew positions or duties.

Education

"She must have been a sorceress. For how else could an illiterate girl create so many innovations?" --Retired Explorer Max Jamison

Anika was mostly self-taught. Her family and tribe taught her much of the basic skills for survival as a child. A naturalist at heart, she took to observing and learning from the flora and fauna she saw while she traveled. Because she didn't learn to read and write as a child, she would generate songs and rhymes to help her remember her observations. Later in life, she did learn rudimentary reading and writing as a young adult for trade and diplomacy purposes. However, given the numerous treaty violations, she found the written word to be lacking in substance, preferring oral tradition and repeated affirmation as binding contract.

Accomplishments & Achievements

"Anika Bluehair was a simple person who was called upon in extraordinary times." --Numabian Guardian

She worked various positions on crews through most of her young adulthood. She proved to have a strong aptitude for crew life and created her own at a young age, becoming one of the youngest Numabian crew captains ever. She lead an unconventional crew and generated many innovations, including the Sadi. As her message of peace, acceptance, and higher quality of life spread, she gathered more and more people to her crew until she commanded a fleet of vessels in the wastes. She refused to unite them all into a new tribe though, rather insisting that tribe affiliation did not have to be a barrier to collaboration and that all the tribes were already one people, the Numab. With her increase in status, she became a power broker in the region. She managed to get all the tribes to agree to the Accords which established the Numab Confederacy and end the Wars. She continued on as a leader for the Numab, helping to establish the Gathering Place and the Order of Guardians.

Mental Trauma

Surviving the slaughter of her tribe at a young age was a wound that never truly healed for Anika. It along with the chain of violent clashes she witnessed between tribes in her teenage years convinced her that war was something to avoid at all costs.

Intellectual Characteristics

Anika is a naturally curious and observant person.  She is both incredibly practical and creative. This flexibility in her thought processes combined with her drive to make life better for all people meant that she was a trailblazer and an inventor.

Personality Characteristics

Motivation

She wants a better life for the Numab people who come in future generations than the current short and bloody one's they currently have. She wants to end the violence between the tribes and unite them.

Image from https://www.artbreeder.com/beta/image/596528c3e5af45865a27c39bce46

Ethnicity

Numab

Age

38

Pronouns

she/her/hers

Gender

Woman

Eyes

Mossy pale green, cat eye shape, alert

Hair

Long and black with a blue tone, often tied back with simple leather ties

Skin Tone/Pigmentation

Medium brown, mostly clear of blemishes with a few wrinkles

Height

5' 5"

Weight

135 lb of working muscle and fat stores