Kuta Yekelia: Hive Queen

Daskalarch Kuta Tettilia Yekelia (a.k.a. Kutti)

Physical Description

General Physical Condition

For most other people, Kuta's diet would have been full of cheap and fattening yet good-tasting foods, one which would have killed most grown men decades before their time. Yet because of Kuta's strenuous activities, constant exercise, rapier wit, and even frugal mindset, Kuta was able to maintain a healthy size, usually even leaning towards unhealthily thin. She lacked most sorts of muscle, but her legs could outpace most women of her age, and especially of her caliber.

Body Features

Quite but not unreasonably tall for a human. Very gaunt.

Identifying Characteristics

She has a scar on her left hand, left by the stitches made when her right hand tried to cut a piece of paper with scissors and ended up poking its counterpart with a scissor.

Physical quirks

Due to her handling of money, supplies, and laws, Kuta popped and cracked her knuckles often, leading to what some might call an addiction. In the later years of her life, she developed arthritis.

Apparel & Accessories

Kuta wore dresses as a formality, often when pushing legislation or discussing issues with the merchant class. However, she switched into more practical clothing as soon as she left work: a plain white shirt and overalls. The sleeves and cuffs were at first rolled back so that they wouldn't catch on her shoes or get soaked as she washed her hands, but her personal staff eventually tailored clothes that would only go halfway down her shins and halfway down her forearm. By wearing such clothing, Kuta unwittingly created a fashion trend in Keyrit, one that stayed in some form or another for centuries.

Mental characteristics

Personal history

Kuta was born in the north of Wlitowa, to much fanfare and ample expectation. As a child, she was reported to make good friends with the keep, especially those further away from her inner circle (i.e, the gardeners and maids), instead of venturing into the city to find friendship with the royalty or nobility. Her household's presence was deemed lacking in the Keyrit Empire, so at twelve years old she, along with several other of the less-important members of her family, were sent to the Keyrit Continent to make important high-level connections. While her cousins, eager to rise within the family, took up most of the upper-class attention, Kuta sought out the attention of the up-and-coming upper class: the well-to-do merchants.
Her family back at home was apathetic to her endeavors; while she wasn't furthering the household name, she didn't do half as much to tarnish it as her cousins. From a very young age, Kuta recognized and capitalized on the apathy. She sought out her own education and her own ventures, learning more about the world on her own terms. Thus, not through networking but through example, she attracted the attention of the Daskalarchy. She was quickly acquired as an apprentice and was taught the tools of administration.
As she talked with her mentors, she began to see the poor in an additional, empirical, light. Thousands of orphans recorded in the books, with equally many homeless, much more so with the Keyrit-Tuhran War still fresh in everyone's minds. There were many legal, and philosophical, reasons why the Daskalarchs' hands were tied, but Kuta had access to plenty of resources herself. With the guidance of her mentors while they were off duty, she appropriated her personal mansion for mass housing, overhauling the rooms to accompany more beds, and refitting the kitchen for mass production. Only just coming of age, Kuta had placed upon herself massive duties yet handled them with aplomb.

Education

As a major noble in the rural backwaters of Wlitowa, she was taught as a child by professors who were brought in from the university in Ak'tawo. Her tutors found her to be both courteous and adept, far from the average experience with upper-class children. Upon moving to Keyrit in her early teens, she took control of her own coursework, enrolling both in Keyrit universities and attending select commoner schools for students her age, sampling both academic cultures. While most teachers were mildly annoyed at her piecemeal interest, she passed nearly all the courses she attended at, or near, the top of her respective classes.
As a Daskalarch apprentice, she gained valuable knowledge in how to manage and compartmentalize staff in order to administrate a long course of action, as well as how to not waste manpower. She learned inventory management and logistics, as well as the process of recycling excess or overused material. She would later apply these very same concepts to food and clothing for the residents of her home.

Employment

During the first half of the day, she spoke vibrantly as a member of the Daskalarchy both to her peers and to the Keyrit House of Majorities. Her role as a Daskalarch was one of infrastructure, and she personally oversaw several minor road projects in the western half of Keyrit.
In the evenings and during the night, she ran a house for the ovwerai, homeless; the ova'aru, orphans, and the ovroterau, widows. She had volunteer and hired staff who would work during the daytime, and she would manage any issues they had once she finished her duty of governance. If they needed supplies, she would personally go out and purchase them. If there were internal issues, she acted as an arbitrator, a mediator, and, as necessary, a legislator. If there were external issues that she couldn't solve herself, she would compose legislation proposals and introduce them to the House of Majorities in the morning. Often her friends and employees would lock her out of her own tenement house so that she could have a day or two to rest and relax. This usually made Kuta angry, but she relented after a few hours.

Accomplishments & Achievements

Her Karot'krau, the All-House, sheltered some 400 people under its roof in her lifetime, and 600 at its peak. More importantly, though, she designed the protocol for the efficient management of mass housing. She was able to use her experience as a housemaster, her power as a legislator, and her connections as a noble to establish similar tenement houses across the Keyrit Empire. The government was successfully able to establish a fundraising campaign, offering the titans of industry access to new employees and naming the new establishments in honor of the nobility. Kuta advised against irrelevant regulations but created standards for processing grants and certifications.

Failures & Embarrassments

Kuta's altruism brought her in direct conflict with a Keyrit campaign for free housing. With half its base gone and its funding undercut, the movement sputtered off and died. As a consequence, she gained the ire of most of the lower urban demographic. Because her tenets often never left their houses on a day-to-day basis, she earned the nickname of "Hive Queen." Kuta, however, readily adopted the name, incorporating it into her identity.

Mental Trauma

Oddly enough, Kuta had very little anxiety, perhaps due to her mindset of looking at the world not as herself but as a third-person bystander. However, seizures and strokes in her later years were likely caused by physical taxation on her brain; she never drank alcohol.

Personality Characteristics

Motivation

Kuta always wondered what it would be like to be poor, yet she was always too afraid to jump into the deep without the security of her finances. Sure, her experiments in frugality gave her a taste, but there were no tragedies or emergencies that left her destitute. More importantly, she always wanted to separate the fantasy from the reality, lest her preconceived notions come off as patronizing as those of her altruistic peers.

Likes & Dislikes

For some reason that's unknown to the public, she hates being called by her middle name, especially by its nickname, "Tetti."

Social

Family Ties

Her ancestors were once prominent Keyrit nobles. Their defection to the Wlitowa Authority during the Keyrit-Wlitowa rivalry earned them titles and land unseen by most of the Wlitowa nobility but also the ire of their Keyrit brethren. Once the tension between the two nations subsided, the Yekrat purchased territory in their native land, securing a foothold and prominence in both countries.

Religious Views

She always thought "Justice is a lie" was true but bleak. She believed that, although the saying was true, it was no excuse to abandon the poor and the needy. She gave generously to them when she could, always out of her own pocket and never out of those of others. She applied the same mentality to the legislation she passed, making the wealthy both happy to donate and happy to not. She never took her wealth for granted, nor did she spend lavishly on other things.
Because of her actions, she was interrogated at least five times by the Harmony Hunters, and more than five times if you don't believe the official record. There were many who swore, up until her death, that she would unleash some power within her that would topple the current order. She had neither such power nor such ambitions.

Social Aptitude

Kuta has surprisingly high agreeableness for a person of her prestige and influence.

Wealth & Financial state

Kuta's family earned roughly half a year's income each day, and she herself saw about a tenth of that income. Even with all that cash inflow, she learned to stretch her wyi as far as it could possibly go, especially impressive given the rigidity of the currency. She intentionally lived on half a wyi a day to explore just how frugal she could be.
She fully owns the tenement house where she works, a six-story mansion on the outskirts of Eryai Etwerai. However, she also owns the equivalent of dozens of square miles in the fertile central rural plain of Keyrit. As a non-main heir of the Yekelia Dynasty, she owns the same size of land on Wlitowa and has managerial access to hundreds of square miles of surrounding territory.

Alignment

Lawful Good, but not a Narc.

Conditions

• Krokroi: Giant's Vision

Ethnicity

Keyrit-Welokyi

Honorary & Occupational Titles

Lady of Yekrat, Daskalarch with Honors, the "Hive Queen."

Life

135 KTG 209 KTG 74 years old

Birthplace

Yekratwerai, North Wlitowa

Current Residence

Eryai Etwerai

Gender

Female

Hair

Flaxen, roughly half a meter in length, but always arranged fashionably

Height

175 cm (5' 9")

Weight

50 kg (110 lbs)

Quotes & Catchphrases

"The Hive Queen is a fine name for me. There are much more violent, and much dirtier, ways to become royalty. I'm the first of my line!" "You'd like a talk with me? Oh, I'm much too busy for a talk with you. Perhaps you could help me hand out clothes, and we could talk then?" "I wish my family came to visit. Oh, I can certainly accommodate for their tastes. I have hundreds at my beck and call!"