- Name: Caldessa "Dessa" Voxevlyn
- Date of Birth: unknown
- Place of Birth: Helion City, Lyran Protectorate, Lyra
- Known Relatives: none
Background
Caldessa Voxevlyn, or Dessa to her friends, was born into one of the lesser noble houses of the Lyran Protectorate. The Lyrans are human, settled on their homeworld untold millennia ago by "Space Gods" that their legends say enslaved them until a slave uprising 5,000 years ago drive the Gods away and freed the people. Though the sciences is generally believed to be the purview of the Lyran men, young Dessa chose to study archaeology. Her intelligence and curiosity led her to start questioning the official history of the Lyran Protectorate, something generally discouraged.
Dessa was not intimidated by the taboo and managed to sneak her way to Taea, Lyra's sister world and home to other humans who the Lyran Protectorate considered to be primitives. There her curiosity took her to the space god ruins, where the evidence clearly showed that much of the Official History was false. Efforts to promote her theory led to ridicule and eventually got her blacklisted from the Lyran scientific community. The stubborn Dessa kept digging though, and finally became enough of a nuisance that the Ministry of Truth got directly involved. Since she was a noblewoman (by birth if not comportment) her death or disappearance might raise suspicion or worse turn her into a martyr for conspiracy groups, so Dessa was locked up in the Tower.
No one knows exactly where the Tower is located, but it was assumed to be in or near the capital Helion City. Accommodations in the Tower were good; the prisoners had rooms with decent furnishings, nothing that could be used as a weapon or to injure themself though. Like a prison there was a strict schedule - when the prisoners were allowed out of their rooms, when they were brought to a common room (assuming they were allowed to mingle with any others), when they were fed, and access to the library (filled with Ministry of Truth propaganda). Prisoners were generally kept in cell blocks with less than 10 prisoners, and the cell blocks were segregated by sex.
Dessa was imprisoned in one of the women's wings and was the sole “guest” until a new person was brought in one night. The newcomer wore strange clothes and had unusual features, unlike any Dessa had seen on Lyra or Taea. She said her name was Allie, and despite being to speak with and understand Dessa, claimed to be from another world far away. Her claims proved to be more than true when Allie's friends arrived and freed her and Dessa using technology Dessa had never seen before.
The rescuers offered to take Dessa with them. Faced with either remaining a fugitive on Lyra facing possible execution, fleeing to the more primitive Taea, or going off into the stars to explore new worlds and learn about new peoples, Dessa chose the latter. After a period of orientation, Dessa has become a part of the Expeditionary Forces team and serves as a xenoarchaeologist.