unofficial_ambassador

[- OOC Information -]

Name: Tess
Do you play any other characters in Outer Divide? Nope. I have played in a couple of journal-based games in the past, but they have all been completely prose-based, so this network format is new to me.

[- Character Information -]

Character Name: Inara Serra
Fandom: Firefly/Serenity
OU, AU, or CR AU: OU
Canon Point: post-Serenity (film)
Journal: unofficial_ambassador

Character History: http://firefly.wikia.com/wiki/Inara_Serra
There are conflicting timelines presented in interviews about when Inara’s illness was diagnosed. I’m saying it was just prior to leaving Sihnon because it makes more sense than when she was twelve.

Personality: Due to years of rigorous training, Inara gives off a particular first impression. Since she exercises a strict control over her own body language and external displays of emotions, she appears calm and in some circumstances almost aloof. If she wants you to, however, she can make you think that she thinks you’re the most interesting or important person in the room.

Internally, however, Inara is not in nearly as much control as she lets on. Her life has been thrown into turmoil since she was diagnosed with a terminal illness, and she is both angry and afraid for the future. The strategy was to cut herself off from any emotional connection – she had not contacted her close friend Nandi since leaving the Guild House despite being willing to defy the order to shun her, and she got frightened and fled Serenity when she realized that the sense of community that she felt with the crew was just as dangerous to this strategy as her unspoken romantic feelings for the ship’s captain were. Even when she returned to a Guild House upon leaving Serenity, she did not return to House Madrassa and instead sought out a place closer to the Rim where she did not know anyone. However, this is not truly a solution as she is not able to sever her emotional bonds and feels the loss of their company keenly.

Despite herself, Inara tends to form strong bonds with others, and is likely to disobey orders from authority to protect those she cares about. She was close enough to Nandi to associate with her despite an edict from the Companion’s Guild to shun her, and was willing to pay Serenity’s captain with her own money to have the crew assist Nandi when she contacted Inara asking for help. She has a strong affection for everyone on board Serenity, even those that she doesn’t always particularly get along with. Though they bicker nigh-on constantly, she is in love with the captain of Serenity, Mal Reynolds, but is afraid to acknowledge it as romantic relationships are frowned upon for Companions for obvious reasons. If she were to abandon the Guild to be with him, the fact that she is flying around the galaxy with known smugglers who have just led to a huge uprising on pretty much every single planet ever would likely lead to being shunned by the Guild, which would not only leave her adrift from the only life that she has known for the past seventeen years, but cut her off from access to the medications that she needs to take to survive. Currently, they are provided by a hospital in the Core worlds as part of her annual Companion health screening. Still, mentions to her of Mal by others tend to break right through her hard-earned composure, leaving her spluttering in indignation.

As a Companion, Inara chooses her own clients from a database of people who pay for the privilege of being selected. When possible, she tends to stick to particular regulars, and has said that she chooses clients based more on a feeling of spiritual compatibility between herself and that person than physical appearance. She is bisexual but generally prefers men; however she does occasionally select female clients.

Inara is a strange mix of naïve and worldly. She was born on Sihnon and began her training as a Companion at age twelve on the same planet. She has training in a wide variety of subjects, including non-sexual matters from languages to swordplay, but has spent the majority of her life cloistered away from the real world. Things are not always the way that she expects them to be, which can be frustrating or frightening. Not to mention that the crew that she has traveled with for the past year are particularly adept at getting themselves into situations of the nearly-being-murdered-by-various-disgruntled-folk variety. For the most part, she tries to look the other way while crime is occurring, but she has occasionally participated in a caper when things have gone particularly pear-shaped. Companions are members of the social elite where she is from, so Inara expects to be treated with a certain amount of deference and respect in most situations. This is something that she exploits on occasion to get crew members out of various situations. She is also used to a certain amount of luxury in her living situation – her shuttle on Serenity is decorated with silks and gilt trim, but she is not above eating protein mash with the rest of the crew.

Inara is a Buddhist and believes in reincarnation, though it’s more of a continual transmission of intentions/mental state rather than the same person being continually reborn. However, she does not practice particularly regularly (sort of the “Christmas Catholic” of Buddhists) and does not often speak of her beliefs to others.

Before her illness changed things irrevocably, Inara was also incredibly driven and ambitious. Only the best and the brightest were permitted to train at House Madrassa (from a planet of five billion people, she was one of forty) and even among them she stood out. She had aimed to become head priestess of her Guild House and was apparently only a couple of years away from attaining that goal when she left.

Powers/Abilities: This will likely not be relevant during her stay on Verdana, but the physical control that Inara learned during her Companion training allows her to communicate with other people who have received similar training through body language and facial expressions. She can also recognize training in others, even if they are trying to hide it, as with Saffron the con-woman.

Inara’s decade-long training included arts such as calligraphy, song, musical instruments (an incident involving a dulcimer ended Nandi’s relationship with the Guild, but Inara would at least be passable with most instruments present on 20th century Earth that might be played in genteel company such as a harp or piano and traditional Chinese instruments such as the zheng), and dance (both solo traditional dance and dances which might occur at functions).

She has been trained in etiquette for high society social situations, as well as the rituals that are required as part of her profession, including a sort of tea ceremony. There is a psychological component to her job as well, listening and offering advice, so there is likely some psychological training.

Inara is fluent in both English and the Firefly universe’s bastardized version of Mandarin Chinese (it is not tonal as with actual Mandarin, so it would likely be difficult for a native speaker from present-day Earth to understand). She was trained to work on Sihnon, which is home to a continent full of “Cultural Protection Enclaves”: places meant to preserve minority cultures from Earth. Many of these enclaves enforce strict official-language laws, so to work in those areas she would need at least working knowledge (“Which way to [place]?” “How are you today?”) of several other Earth languages though many of them, especially from countries that had less political clout at the time of the Diaspora, may not be particularly similar to their 21st century counterparts. The Israeli enclave is a sort of ‘gateway’ to the other enclaves because it has an independent spaceport, so she speaks enough Hebrew to be able to communicate where she wants to travel to a shuttle operator.

As Inara generally would not be armed while working, her weapons training is largely academic. She has been trained in fencing and archery. Her skills with guns do not extend far beyond “is able to hold a pistol in a menacing-looking manner”. In an actual battle situation she prefers to use a bolt thrower, which is like a traditional bow and arrow but uses nanotechnology to put more force behind the projectile. Companions are normally safe in work situations as they operate a database system that bans anyone perceived to be dangerous or excessively deviant in some way from contracting them, but she has some martial arts training just in case. This would be enough to disable a lone attacker in an enclosed space, but not enough to take on multiple opponents.

She has some incredibly minor medical training along the lines of first aid, and has assisted with the birth of a baby on one occasion.

Also, I didn’t really know where to put this since it’s not really a “power” or an advantage at all, but slightly over a year ago Inara was diagnosed with a terminal illness. There is basically no information on this anywhere except that it exists (the references to it in the series are very oblique) so what follows is entirely head-canon. I chose to base her illness on chronic myelogenous leukemia because it has a phase that is largely asymptomatic, but it’s kind of a “space version” as she is not visiting a doctor nearly often enough and is likely monitoring her own cell counts. A genetic mutation causes the creation of abnormal white blood cells, which crowd out the regular white blood cells, leading to a suppressed immune system. The symptoms of early phases are all fairly vague: fatigue, fever, bruising, shortness of breath, unexplained weight loss, and bone pain. Inara is taking a medication that inhibits the protein that causes the creation of the abnormal white blood cells. The side effects of the medication are fairly mild (for cancer treatments, anyway), and include headache, rash, nausea, muscle cramps, heartburn, and risk of secondary infections due to low white blood cell counts. Also, oddly, you can’t drink grapefruit juice because that makes the medication not work (true story) [If you're reading this app now to get a handle on the character, bless you for getting this far, sorry it is so long. As of May 2014, thanks to the work of Mordin Solus, Inara is in remission.].

Possessions: Overly elaborate pretty dress, beaded necklace, matching earrings, several dozen jeweled hair pins, two gold bangle bracelets, silk slippers, ornamental veil. Basically nothing but an incredibly fancy and impractical outfit.

Arrival: Ship

[- Writing Samples -]

Network Sample: [The communication device is something that Inara has never seen before, but it’s not unintuitive. Perhaps the best option at this point is to send a message directly to whichever megalomaniac has them locked up this time]

你好:

I am certain that you are unaware that the ship that you have captured serves as transportation for a registered Companion. The workers may be rough, but one cannot ask for everything when one is working in the Rim. Guild House Madrassa will send a search party to find me if I do not check in, and it would be extremely distressing to see any of your people injured or worse over a simple misunderstanding. 此致
敬礼

Inara Serra
Registered Companion
House Madrassa

[Hopefully, everyone would be released peacefully and the ruffian(s) wouldn’t attempt to call her bluff. Of course, with Serenity, plans never seemed to play out as one hoped.]

Log Sample: Waking up naked in some kind of stasis coffin was certainly something that didn’t happen every day, even when traveling aboard Serenity, a ship seemingly doomed to interesting times. It was disconcerting, to be sure, even when the thick glass holding Inara in place slid away seemingly before her hand could push against it. Not quite as disconcerting however, as discovering that she was completely alone. Generally when things happened, Mal was right in the thick of it cursing and breaking things and by and large making things worse. The eerie silence was incredibly unnerving.

Inara slipped from the chamber carefully, looking over her body for injuries. She could not remember how she had arrived here, so it seemed reasonable. However, there didn’t appear to be anything wrong. Had they been captured in their sleep? Had they gone without a fight? It was not in the nature of anyone involved to simply submit.

Looking around again once her feet were on the deck, she quickly noticed a metal locker below the chamber from which she had emerged. Just as she was readying herself to check whether her kidnappers had left any of her hair pins in, the locker opened with a soft click. Inara was grateful to find her clothes inside and dressed as quickly as the garments would allow. They did not provide a terrible lot of protection against the cool air, but it was better than being naked if she happened to encounter any of the others. Or enemies.

Inara swallowed hard. She could defend herself, but if she were outnumbered significantly or the enemies were armed then she was in trouble. In more trouble. If that were even possible, considering that she was stranded seemingly alone on a strange ship and she couldn’t see any signs of the crew or hear any other sounds.

Including the hum of life support.

“ Rung tse fwo tzoo bao yo wuo muhn . . .”

It was possible.