Tavari Zima

Tavari Zima, known as Tavi to most, is a Radan resistance fighter credited with founding the field of psi-med. Her abilities and insistence upon helping everyone she can, tend ot earn her friends among the disadvantaged and enemies among the powerful. She's a known ally to many groups, including the Night Knights, but has a checkered past with Syndicate connections. She prefers to avoid interactions with the Protectorate.

Appearance

Tavi is tall and dark-skinned. Her black hair has strands of gray, and is usually styled in various forms of traditional Radan braids. When young, Tavi had a masculine look and was typically referred to as 'he'. As an adult, she went through steps to permanently change her appearance to a more feminine one. Many considered this unusual, as she is a biopsion and could learn the technique to modify her body psionically. However, she found this method to be a "temporary veneer" and opted for more permanent means.

Would you want to wake up in the wrong body every day? And have to put the right one on the way you put on clothes? No. I want what anyone wants - the pleasure of simply being who I know I am.

— Tavari Zima

History

3173-3193: Life on Rada

Tavi was born on Rada and only knew life under the Emerald Legion. In 3193, at the age of twenty, Tavi and her closest friend investigated a Legion facility to deadly consequences. The Legion killed Tavi's friend and wounded her before she was able to escape. Knowing the Legion would hunt her down, she became indebted to an off-world smuggling group to flee the planet.

3193-3202: Smuggling

Forced to work off the cost of the ship the smugglers gave her, Tavi struggled through solo spike drills and alien languages. A failed spike drill in 3195 forced Tavi to crash land on Talmar and, after a week of repairs, unknowingly left with a 15-year-old Ryker Derrix stowed away. With no safe means to return him, and wanting a traveling companion anyways, she instead chose to take responsibility for the teenager.

The two argued frequently, both stubborn in opposing ideals. Ryker was fervent in the warrior-like ideology of the Unchained Armada, while Tavi saw such things an unnecessary risk to life. Once her debt was finally paid, Tavi wanted to moving on from smuggling to more personally-satisfying ventures. Ryker refused to join her, and after a heated argument, they parted ways in 3201.

3202-3208: Volunteer Medic

Her travels to various reaches of the galaxy had shown Tavi the disparity between the rich and powerful and those will nothing. Many struggled with little to no access to proper medical care, and unlike her home, biopsions were rare and expensive to hire. She chose to work on lessening the divide by finding where her expertise was most needed and offering it, frequently probono. Whenever she ran out of funds, she would find more official capacities to assist, earning enough to begin her next journey.

3208-3210: The Legion Incursion

Night Knights logo by Rin Garnett

While volunteering on Astronius, Tavi met the Night Knights. Together, they activated a pre-tech ship manufactory to provide Astronians an evacuation path off the dying planet. The factory had messages left behind by a precog driven feral by The Scream , including a warning about the Emerald Legion. Knowing nobody else in this part of the galaxy had even heard of the Legion, Tavi offered her services to help stop them.

This led her back to Talmar, reuniting with Ryker Derrix and working with his Unchained Armada, the Night Knights, and more to stop the Legion Incursion in the Battle for Talmar.
She remained on Talmar for a short while after to help those who were injured and abused in Legion experiments. Part of this was attempting to aid a friend whose psionics had gone haywire from what the Legion did to her. Tavi was ultimately unable to help, and this failure pushed her to do more.

3210-3220: Return to Rada

Having stolen a rutter back to her home planet from the Legion, she returned armed with knowledge and support to begin liberating her planet. She helped train a variety of resistance groups in various reaches of the planet, and worked with them to pry several areas from Legion grasp. Thousands of others were evacuating to safer locations on Talmar, Devali, and Xeros.

During this time, Tavi encountered more people harmed by Legion experiments. She found ways to combine her metapsionics and biopsionics with medical knowledge to assess damage to metadimensional channels in the brain and develop ways to treat it. This became the field of study psi-med, or psionic medicine.

3220-Present: Psi-Med

Passing the torch of resistance to those remaining on Rada, Tavi returned to traveling to further develop psi-med. However, since most potential treatments were applied in the field and not in a controlled lab environment, they didn't gain much traction in academic arenas. Many hospitals would refuse the treatments, out of concern they would be held liable if anything went wrong.

Gal Pals logo by Rin Garnett

In 3228, psi-med got a boost in credibility as it was used to save a Blue Spire Academy professor, as the request of her daughter and member of notorious Nisoran group the Gal Pals.

Though her native language doesn't have such terms, Tavi is MtF trans.

Timeline

3173	Tavi is born on Rada
3193	Left Rada following her friend's death
3195	Crash landed on Talmar
3201	Parted ways with Ryker
3208	Met the Night Knights, Battle for Talmar
3210	Returned to Rada, began resistance groups
3220	Founded psi-med
3228	Met the Gal Pals

Information

Occupation

Psi-med field researcher

Psionic disciplines

Biopsionics
Metapsionics

Birthplace

Rada

Aligned Organizations

The Syndicate (former)
Night Knights (non-member ally)
Unchained Armada (non-member ally)

As Seen In...

Last Day at Home
Tavi's Psionic Care Guide

Author Commentary

Outspoken

Tavi was the first character I voice with an accent. An entirely fake one that's vaguely-but-not-at-all Russian. It became the official accent of Rada, and one of my go-tos whenever I need a unique voice.

Relationships

Despite coming across as calous at times, Tavi is a difficult person to not become friends with. She sees the good in most people, and as long as they don't cross certain boundaries, she will help even those she disagrees with. Though she's kept much of the stubborness from her youth, she has learned to balance it out with more careful listening and the occasional thoughtful apology when needed.

After their reunion, Tavi and Ryker developed a healthier friendship than they had previously. They still argue, but both have learned the other's well-meaning intentions and come to see the other's perspective.

Tavi largely blames herself for not being able to help to Alice following what the Legion did to her, and still reaches out on occasion to check in despite Alice's self-isolation.

She still keeps in touch with the original three members of the Night Knights - Jareth, Tag, and Hua - and will aid the current group in attacks on and investigations into lingering Legion strongholds outside of Rada. The Syndicate is among the only groups who uses Tavi's psi-med research, and Tag pays her well for further insights despite the fact that she never charges. On occasions she's in the area, she'll stop by Talmar to visit with Jareth and his family.