GenderFemale
Age39
AppearanceAt 1.7 meters Tegan is taller than your average woman, but not terribly so. She is lean and lanky, her athletic frame shaped by hours spent in the pool. Her right arm is amputated above the elbow and replaced, in situations requiring ambidexterity, by a functional cybernetic prosthesis. Otherwise Tegan has grown accustomed to move about without it as it alleviates the clash between her phantom limb sensation and the presence of the prosthetic.
A typical redhead, Tegan's skin is fair and freckled. But her most striking features are her pale amber-colored eyes, a side effect of the traumatic brain injury she suffered. As well as the chemical burn scar across her left cheek.
Too many hours in the field had taught Tegan to appreciate function over form when it came to clothes and so she can often be seen sporting trainer outfits in varying color schemes. Many of her scientific colleagues have tried to suggest to her that such attire does not fit her station. But their words mostly fall on deaf ears as Tegan does not cater to similar conventions.
PersonalityTegan's personality suffered a drastic shift after the accident. If before she was excitable and outgoing. The 'darling' of her company in the marine cops, as the meaning of her name suggested. Now she is quiet and contemplative. But kind for all the hardships she'd suffered along the way of recovery. Open-minded and freethinking, Tegan doesn't stand on ceremony and follow any perceived scientific hierarchy. She is not a fan of arguments from authority. Especially not if said argument cannot be backed by facts and rigorous evidence base. She is candid and straightforward to a fault. Her long recovery has taught her the benefits of patience and perseverance.
And, surprisingly, for a scientist, she can be quite the romantic. Often entertaining whoever would listen with amazingly vivid and immersive stories of ancient cultures and civilizations and their way of life.
RoleLinguist
Main Duties:
- Maintaining and keeping the ship's linguistic database up to date
- Developing and maintaining software and AI linguistic tools for field-work deployment
- Initial assessment of any new linguistic phenomena encountered by the crew of the Arcadian
- Comparative anthropological analysis of any and all new linguistic samples acquired
Secondary Duties:
- Training and maintaining field readiness of personnel for underwater archaeological work
Skills- Pattern Recognition - Identifying systems and rules in complex, seemingly random data. Deconstructing sound patterns (phonetics/phonology), word structure (morphology), meaning (semantics/pragmatics).
- Data Analytics - Collecting, managing, and interpreting linguistic data, using statistics and visualization to find patterns and build a linguistic map. Breaking down complex linguistic phenomena and challenging assumptions about language.
- Computational Linguistics: Using tools for Natural Language Processing (NLP), text analysis (e.g., Praat, ELAN), and developing language software.
- Anthropology/Xenology/Culture Immersion - Understanding that language is tied to culture, requiring deep contextual knowledge to grasp nuances. To that effect, study and knowledge of relevant cultures is required at deeply detailed level.
- CMAS Confirmed Scientific Diving Instructor - An instructor level diver with advanced level specialization in underwater archaeology. Personal Belongings/EquipmentAside from the outfitted linguistics lab Tegan works in and any field-work tools she is provided with during the execution of her duties, she has few personal belongings:
- Cybernetic arm
- SCUBA gear
- A Rosetta Stone keychain
- A replica of The Voynich Manuscript, a gag gift from her parents
BackgroundBorn and bread in the Greater London area, Tegan grew up with parents devoted to their science - archaeology. As a young child she was exposed to the world of scientific inquiry and the marvel of discovery. So it was quite shocking to both her parents when she decided to explore space in a much different manner, under the banner of the Marine Corps. But, being the freethinkers that her scientist parents were, they accepted her decision and send her of to training school with their warmest blessings.
Nearing the end of her training, however, tragedy struck. Tegan's company was bound for hostile environment survival training on Saturn's many 'irregular' moons. A shuttle was supposed to leave the company and return aboard a Marine Corps Cruiser ship in geosynchronous orbit around Iapetus.
The cause of the crash was never really determined. Tegan was among the few survivors. When she'd woken up in the medbay of USF Hermes, there was a residual limb above the elbow where her right arm should have been. Her face was bandaged, concealing a chemical burn on the right side and a traumatic brain injury had caused some sort of inflammation in her eyes, resulting in the bleaching of her irises. Leaving her with a pale, glass-like amber color in place of her once chocolate brown. But, most importantly, leaving her catastrophically disabled in the eyes of the Marine Corps and unable to ever serve in any military branch in an active personnel capacity.
As the crash occurred while Tegan was on active duty, the Marine Corps took care of all her medical bills until she was given a clean bill of health and properly discharged from the service.
Feeling bereft and purposeless, Tegan returned to Earth where her parents welcomed her with open arms. Thankful to anyone and everything that their child had survived, even if not intact. She was alive and that's all that mattered to them. Tegan was another thing, however. And she still had a long road ahead of her adjusting to life with a missing limb and severed from her previous purpose in life. Her parents did their best to help their daughter recover. Both suspended any and all field work and focused on teaching instead in order to be there as moral support for Tegan. The road was long and arduous. Tegan's time was occupied by therapy, PT, helping her parents with their research and teaching in order to keep her mind active.
Pool therapy gave Tegan back a sense of balance and serenity in those first moments of emotional insecurity and turmoil. She would let herself sink to the bottom of the pool and just stay there for as long as her lungs would allow. She got better with time, being able to stay underwater for longer and longer periods of time. The improvement happened gradually and naturally as it happens with any skill you train over time. Until, finally, her physical therapist suggested she try SCUBA diving.
This suggestion proved pivotal for giving Tegan a new spark of life. She'd found a new purpose. Initially it was to get her master diver certificate. But long before she'd gotten there a new interest had presented itself. Marine archaeology. Naturally, her parents were ecstatic. First of all, their child was leaving the trauma of the accident behind and was finding joy in life again. And second, she was doing so in their field of work.
In university, however, her interest quickly shifted to anthropology, or more precisely linguistic anthropology. Her parents' support never wavering, Tegan went on to graduate with an MS in Linguistic Anthropology and PhD in Comparative Linguistics. By this point she was ever the scientist her parents had always wanted her to be. With many hours in the field, diving underwater archaeological sites across the globe and working actively in the field of Comparative Linguistics. At one point, when she'd been just shy of thirty-seven, the USF had contacted her with an offer she couldn't refuse - a xenolinguistic project run from Pluto. The rest, as they say, was history.
MiscellaneousTegan is an avid amateur dancer. As part of her recovery regimen her therapists recommended dancing to correct any balance problems caused by her brain injury. It stuck with her much like swimming and diving and now it's a form of stress reliever whenever she can't get in or underwater.
Tegan is a surprisingly good story-teller.
Writes to her parents daily.
Allergic to dill and parsley.
