Background
Tahlenna of Vohk was born on Starbase 443, which provides protection to several nearby mercantile and mining planets. Her parents, Vohk and Tahl'ar, met on the Starbase; Tahl'ar was a noncommissioned officer recruited and assigned by Starfleet to oversee upgrading the starbase’s weapons system, and Vohk was a security guard. Tahlenna loved to explore the base and sneak into its maintenance tunnels to explore the base’s innards. She also tended to seek out hiding spaces to avoid the other, few children on the starbase, who were mostly human and mocked her appearance. When her father learned she was doing this, he urged her to challenge the bullies to a fight, but she refused, as she was bigger than them and knew she’d hurt them—which would neither earn her friends nor be a fair confrontation. Despite this, one day after a child had said particularly hurtful things not just to her but about her parents, Tahlenna flew into a rage and attacked the child, breaking his wrist and a few ribs. Her father was proud even if no one else thought well of her for it. She hated he was proud, and this spawned years of tension between her and her father. Indeed, both parents wanted her to be a proper Klingon and learn and complete all the rituals and acts of honor that were part of her heritage. Such things felt largely distant to her, and even though she often did her best to learn from her parents, she found she fell short and kept to finding other ways to learn and amuse herself.
Chief among such activities was sneaking down to the reactor level and spending time with the Chief Engineer, Dirk Kaylen. An old man who was past retirement age, the commander of the station had not yet asked him to step down as no one knew the starbase’s systems like he did and he was still excelling at his duties. Kaylen taught Tahlenna a great deal about the reactor—largely in response to all the questions she asked him. Kaylen also told her stories and sang her songs from Earth, her favorite of which was the old ditty, “You are my sunshine.” He began calling her by that nickname, much to her parents’ disgust, which made her love it more.
When she was 13 years old, an extraordinarily well orchestrated attack from space pirates trying to make off with the valuable products of a mining shipment being processed at the starbase resulted in the deaths of both her parents. Despite her difficulties with them, she nonetheless mourned them considerably, and spent a great deal more time with Kaylen. As she got older she gained permission to work as a sort of intern with the engineering core. Kaylen died of old age shortly before she reached 18. She decided both in his footsteps as well as her parents, she would enroll in Starfleet to pursue an officership in Operations. She generally kept her head down and studied hard and ignored all the people asking her why she wasn’t pursuing the security track instead.
On her first assignment she served aboard a science vessel, the U.S.S. Levesque. Working in Engineering under the command of a savvy Chief Engineer named Lt. Amanda Gordon, she and Gordon became fast friends, one of the few she had made over the years. A massive warp core failure badly injured Gordon, and Sunshine dove in to pull her out of an area being flooded with radiation and power surges. After getting Gordon clear and in defiance of orders to abandon the room and the shop, Sunshine went back in to finish what Gordon was doing, shoving a critical piece of equipment back in place to safely shut everything down, which required her to hold onto a blazing hot metal rod until she could work it in place. She suffered tremendous burns to her arm and right side, her hand nearly completely burned off by the time rescuers got to her. Gordon died form her injuries. Sunshine had to have her arm amputated above the elbow and despite skin grafts fixing the worst of the damage, has noticeable burn scars. She has only just been released for duty after receiving physical therapy and her new prosthetic, and is looking forward to her next assignment.
Personality
Sunshine is quiet until she’s loud, dutiful until she’s stubborn. To her the greatest trait is loyalty, and while she does not speak aloud of honor as often as many Klingons do, she holds herself strictly to a personal and cultural code of conduct such that obviously personal honor means a great deal to her. She generally follows orders but has gotten in trouble from time to time disobeying orders if she felt they were a betrayal to her crewmates or her ship. She hates to owe someone favors—but will always repay them in full. She does not seek out fighting the way a stereotypical Klingon might, but she will not back down from one if one is offered—provided of course it would not risk damage to her precious ship. Sunshine is very hands on, and doesn’t like to do things from a distance, be it fixing things, fighting, or learning. She is highly protective of both the ship’s engine and systems as well as the crew that maintains them, but telling which she is dedicated to more may be a challenge. She is not as vocally curious as she was in her youth, but her intellectual side is still driven by the joy of discovery.
Appearance
Sunshine is a 6’4” Klingon with tan skin and dark brown hair tied into a topknot high atop her head. Due to her injury on the Levesque, she has burn marks on her right shoulder, part of her neck, and cheek. Her right arm prosthetic is largely steel colored with bronze-colored accents. In addition to her standard issue uniform, she tends to wear a toolbelt with the various favorite tools she reaches for in the course of her duties.
Random Facts About Engineering
Sunshine's three leading subordinates are Ensign T'Kad, a Vulcan; Ensign Wanda Bolson, a human-alien hybrid; and Crewman Wafula, a human.
