Name: Mala Katlego Age: 33 Gender: Female Sexual Orientation: Bisexual Play-by: Nina Sosanya
Amherst crew info Background: Military Rank: Staff Segeant Second (Non-fighting formation) Specialization: Mechanical Engineering Years of service: 15
Appearance: Mala is 5'7" with dark brown textured hair which she usually wears in braids and then tied back from her face. Her skin is a medium brown color, and she's been blessed with a very good complexion. Then again, she's not spent a whole lot of time in the sun. Or even planetary atmosphere, which has probably helped. Still, she's not particularly beautiful, though she is the sort of woman who with a wardrobe change and a makeover, probably could be. But that's not something she is at all interested in.
Mala is very much a woman who believes in practicality first, and that is certainly reflected in her wardrobe. When she's not in uniform, she still tends to wear plain tan or grey pants and simple cut tops that she can just pull on in the morning and not really have to worry about for the rest of the day.
Personality: If nothing else, Mala is a highly competent woman, and she takes pride in that competence. She likes her current position, and has little desire to move beyond it in the near future. Which is probably for the best, since doing so would involve going into more generalized leadership positions, and she doesn't really have the skills or temperament for that sort of thing. She doesn't have the charisma or force of personality that a true leader needs, and she knows it. Which, as far as she is concerned is fine. She's not an ambitious person, a trait that would probably bring her into conflict with her parents if she ever really saw them. So instead she makes sure that she is away working as much as possible. Deep down she realizes she's running away from them, and all their ambitions for her. But the crash of the Amherst seems to have made that somewhat of a moot point.
Issues with her parents aside, Mala likes to consider herself practical and straightforward person. And she is for the most part. She is very good at working through problems even under stress, and she has quite a talent for managing to find creative solutions to seemingly insurmountable problems. She is also loath to leave a project or a problem unfinished, especially if she thinks there is any chance of success. She will be one of the last ones to admit that the Amherst has been irreparably damaged in the crash.
She is, overall, much better with machines and computers than she is with people. Then again, due to the nature of the military, those folks at least she has learned how to deal with them very well, at least in professional situations, where things like rank and assigned roles matter. Outside of it she is less good. People are complicated, and don't always respond to logic like machines do. It doesn't help that she dislikes conflict, and prefers to avoid it when possible.
History: Mala was the only child of two military parents, and there was never any doubt that she would be expected to follow in their footsteps. Fortunately, she had little resistance to this idea and did exceedingly well in her early schooling, and scored high enough on the entrance exams to land one of the coveted places in the FSP Military Academy. At the Academy she did very well in her engineering and math classes, and less so, though still acceptably in her other classes. Not being at the top of all her classes didn't bother her very much, but messages from home always seemed to include hints and implications that her parents were expecting more of her. At first, she didn't pay much attention to those hints. She liked the Academy, her teachers seemed pleased with her, and she had good friends. Her parents were literally light years away, so it didn't feel like their opinions were quite as important.
Until she came home on leave after her second year. It started with a lecture over dinner the first night she was home - a long speech about her family's history, and how they expected great things from her. How she was expected to carry on the family traditions, and uphold the Katlego name. Apparently to them, going into engineering wasn't enough, wasn't worthy of a child of the Katlego family. They wanted her to go into command, wanted her to become a captain someday, when Mala had absolutely no interest in that direction. Needless to say, it was not the most relaxing trip home. Nor were any of the others over the next few years. But try as she might, Mala couldn't get her parents to see her point of view. Her first posting after graduation, to the patrol ship Kyoto, was almost a relief, since it was a three year assignment. When she returned home, she'd been promoted to ensign, and immediately took on another posting to avoid having to visit home. This became the pattern for things. She would take assignments that put her as far away from home as possible, for as long as possible so she didn't have to deal with her parents' ever increasing pressure on her.
Which is how she ended up on the Amherst, as a member of the Engineering crew. She liked the position quite well, and she liked the crew of the Amherst. Even the mission wasn't that bad, even if it had been deadly boring so far. That didn't mean she'd wanted to crash down on some backwater colony in the middle of nowhere.
At the very least Duloth is prettier than the dragon she shared shell with, though she’s still far from the graceful and attractive creatures that they imagined the golden queens would be. Being confined as she was she’s badly undersized and will likely not get much bigger than the greens in the group. There’s always hope that she’ll have a late growth-spurt, but it’s not likely. She’s not terribly proportioned and seems reasonably healthy all things considered, but there will always be extra work needed to maintain the physical fitness that comes so natural to her clutchmates. The first months will be hard, having had to share nutrients with Grith but once they get past the initial malnourishment Duloth will have a high chance of being every bit as strong as the others.
This little gold will always look a little spindly and pale, with knobbly joints and eyes that seem a little large for her, but this doesn’t seem to put any damper on her personality. She’s a happy thing, bright and expressive and will instantly show her absolute loyalty to those she believes in. There’s no question that she would do anything for her people, these including anyone that shows kindness to her chosen. But she is not a doormat, not by a long shot. To those she respects she will bend over backwards, but anyone else needs to be careful about trying to take advantage of this. Size and looks aside, she is still a queen and carries the full weight of her power over the other dragons and though she won’t use it often, this will come out when the things she loves have been hurt.