Teletha Testarossa
 Teletha Testarossa
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 Tessa shortly after arriving in Gridania. | |
| Gender | Female |
| Race | Hyur |
| Clan | Midlander |
| Citizenship | Garlemald |
| Place of Birth | Garlemald |
| Nameday | 1559 |
| Age | 18 |
| Guardian | Llymlaen, the Navigator |
| Profession | Captain |
| Theme Song | |
Teletha Testarossa, or as she prefers to be called, Tessa, originally grew up in the Garlean Empire. Then known as Teletha nan Terezia, she fled the country very recently, shortly after the Eorzeans defeated Ultima Weapon, using the event as a distraction to steal the prototype airship, Tuatha de Danaan. She is a wanted criminal in Garlemald for the crime and this fact has caused a bounty to be posted in Eorzea via Garlean plants and moles for her capture. Tessa currently resides in the Black Shroud some days north of Gridania.
Contents
Personality
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Appearance
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Biography
Early Life
Teletha is the second generation child of what was originally a conscripted family from one of Garlemald's conquests a number of years before they considered attacking Eorzea. Originally stemming from Adelaide Terezia's, Tessa's great-grandmother, conscription, the family established themselves as well meaning and loyal to the Garlean Empire shortly after the conquest of Adelaide's homeland. A fair minded youth of her old homeland, Adelaide was keen sighted and could see a losing battle when she was faced with one. As such, she accepted her new lot in life and took her forced enlistment in Garlemald in stride, quickly forming her person to fit her adopted homeland and took up arms willingly for the Empire.
Most of the family's standing, however, was due to Adelaide being the mistress to Magnus sas Seneca in her later life. Though her great-grandmother's partner never did much more than the coital with his kept woman, it did serve to influence Teletha's family's standing, as the bastards produced by their coupling took on a more Garlean appearance and as the Terezia family began to fit into the culture. The Terezia line was born from that point with predominantly white or silver hair colors and light eyes, though they did not inherit the third eye of a pure Garlean. On the offhand, Adelaide's involvement with Magnus also became something of a plague upon the Terezia line, as not only did Adelaide's surname become the family name due to the inability for her and her children to take his name, but her being a mistress became a whispered-behind-the-back slight. Calling the women of the Terzeia family whore was not uncommon, whether they were married in or not. Only the Terezia family line's penchant for producing smart minds and capable fighters saved them from being a continuous scandal.
By the time Teletha was born, this family history had become but a stoked fire, still something of a dark mark, but not enough that the general populace considered them in an ill light. Born in 1559 with a twin brother, Leonicus, Teletha and her brother exhibited above-average intelligence from even a young age and was both were quickly scouted as two who would be viable technicians or engineers. This observation became doubly true when both Teletha and Leonicus showed great aptitude with working with magitek. As such, both siblings were entered into a rigorous schooling alongside other youths. Much of the twins' schooling was in part due to the exodus of a number of Garlean engineers following the Bozja Incident, Cid nan Garlond among them. Though Teletha was only three at the time, the loss of a number of the Empire's brightest left a gap to be filled and called for the Empire to seek out new engineers and young hopefuls whom could be trained to the same caliber as what had been lost. This cause and effect greatly increased the strain and workloads placed upon those entering programs of study, often causing a discrepancy between age and material taught.
Though Teletha was outshone by her brother, Leonicus, she was no slouch, proving at an early age that she was just as capable of understand and executing complicate schematics and magitek designs as those around her, despite being graded as less ambitious than her brother. As per usual, most of the designs and principles taught in these classes pertained to military, given Garlemald's tendency to develop for their armies first, and their civil sectors second. The Terezia twins showed perseverance and dedication and were two of a number of young hopefuls thought to be among the best of a new generation of engineers.
The Calamity
When Teletha was ten, her and her brother were handed over to a senior engineer, Lucien nan Creta, whom was thirty-seven at the time, and his wife Caecillia. Spending much of their time with the older man, the twins began to learn much of their more practical design applications from him. For a number of years, they trained under Lucien, often accompanying him to workshops and aiding him with designs. Teletha and Leonicus were both with Lucien when the Calamity occurred, though Tessa was as far removed from Eorzea's issues, seeing as she was only thirteen at the time and quite far from where the moon fell and shattered. As it were, though, the fall of Bahamut's prison was the cause for Garlemald's second retreat from the Eorzean realm as they turned homeward once more. Lucien himself began to work on a new prototype of magitek reaper in hopes that someday it would serve his country to reclaim the Eorzean front they so desperately wanted to assimilate.
First Projects
Given Lucien's focus in weaponry and arms, that became what the twins were most adept at designing. As young as fourteen, the two began to establish a name for themselves amongst the engineering crowds, turning out theoretical designs of magitek weaponry unlike what Garlemald had. It was then that a change came over Teletha's life. Leonicus's designs quickly became classified and gathered up by the Imperial Shadows and the boy was removed from Lucien nan Creta's care. To Tessa's best knowledge, Leonicus was taken to work closely with the Imperial Shadows and develop technology in-line with their needs. Given Leonicus's penchant for designing small arms and devices most useful to those in the subterfuge field, this was the most likely explanation. Disheartened by the loss of her brother's company, Teletha's bond with Lucien and his wife Caecillia grew to fill the gap left behind, and the girl began to think of them almost as family.
Tessa's strengths as an engineer began to emerge as she matured into a young woman. Primarily her best ideas and designs seemed to be aircraft and devices designed shield against aetheric energy. For countless hours she began to sequester herself away in her room, working on some airship here or some shielding generator there. She became a common fixture around the Creta estate as the years went on and as her apprenticeship with Lucien continued. Small and silent, many conversations passed Teletha's ears when she would sit in a corner and sketch an idea. Of the most interesting to her were those told by a friend of Lucien's, Striking Falcon. An officer in the Imperial Shadows, Falcon often shared evening meals with the Creta family, telling tales in a drunken rapport about his conquests and feats in Ala Mhigo during its seizing. Having initially never understood why Falcon was friends with her guardian, Teletha looked past this when Falcon began to mention new technology entering the Shadow's hands from an up and coming engineer they'd taken in. Deducing this was her brother, Teletha was pleased to have found some form of contact with her sibling, even indirectly.
At least reaching the final year of her apprenticeship with Lucien, Tessa entered the engineering team as a full fledged and vetted designer, despite her age. She was well beyond a number of those who had been in the same training she and her brother had entered. Nevertheless, she quickly delved into work for the good of the Empire, crafting designs and weaponry and putting it through rigorous tests with her co-engineers. Coincidentally, she ended up working with the same engineering corp as Lucien.
The Tuatha de Danaan
By her sixteenth year, Teletha began to work closely with Lucien and a team of engineers on a prototype of a small fighter craft based on an advanced design Teletha had created and Lucien had vetted. For nearly two long years, Tessa and a corp of engineers worked on realizing a small battlecraft design, breathing life into a schematic and turning out a working prototype. The craft would take up nearly all of Tessa's time as she fine-tuned the creation. Though it was small, only roughly twice the size of the craft commonly used to ferry people from city-state to city-state in Eorzea, it was entirely streamlined in purpose. Capable of fully supporting a four man crew, the ship was beyond the specifications of many of the previous Garlean small craft and displayed frightening possibilities as an air domination unit, equipped with powerful weaponry as it was.
A fair few higher ups in the Garlean military and the research and development fields took interest in the design, and Lucien seemed hopeful that the Danaan and its following line might become a Garlean staple.
Faltering Loyalty
As days turned to months, the politics of Garlemald grew much more dire. Gaius van Baelsar took it upon himself to bring Eorzea into the fold even as the emperor's condition wavered, taking it up as his own agenda to conquer the realm. Teletha heard much of the distant realm, a land of Primals and beastmen and a people supposedly bound in a unlikely union. For the first time in years, wondered on the idea of the Empire taking yet more people under its wings. For the first time in her life she truly witnessed and understood as conflict broke out and began to effect her, as her work on the Danaan was shelved for the much more pertinent project of supporting the XIVth legion's advance into Eorzea.
Shortly after the Legatus began his conquest, Teletha was struck with an unexpected string of contact with her distant brother. Leonicus was terse in his messages, talking only of a secret project to which he had been assigned, taken away from working with the Imperial Shadows. His notes were delivered to her sparingly, by someone he described as an ally in his letter, but whom never gave her name to Teletha. To this day, Teletha still does not know the woman's name, but she refers to her as Wraith. Always in secret, Wraith would contact Teletha mere hours before a proposed meeting with a location and time. Delighted at the prospect of being able to communicate with her sibling, Teletha found great solace in Leonicus's contact, but much worry in his words, as he seemingly appeared to be much closer to the conflicts in Eorzea from his letters and working on something of terrifying proportions.
Still more tension grew in Teletha as the XIVth legion advanced. The first prisoners of war began to return from the front, shipped there much like chattel as they were conscripted into different parts of the Imperial military. She was not shocked to find them unwilling, given their circumstances. Though she did not deal with many directly, as most were conscripted as fighters, not engineers, she did make the acquaintance of one Eorzean a few years her junior, a hyur named Kaysen Hudson. Though few captured Eorzeans were given the choice, Kaysen opted for the role of an engineer when presented with her dire straights and, thus, landed within the engineering corp Teletha worked for. As such, Kaysen became the first Eorzean Teletha had ever met.
Lucien, who had since been assigned head of the engineering corp, assigned Teletha as Kaysen's caretaker and teacher. Initially, the two did not get along, as Teletha was not surprised to find. From documentation provided when the girl was assigned to her, Teletha knew that Kaysen understood some means of magitek weaponry, as she had been found and captured with a modified magitek firearm. Contact with Kaysen had an enlightening effect on Teletha. She could tell that the girl was bright and understood much in the way of technology. She could see the way the Eorzean's eyes light up with interest when Teletha tried to coax a word out of her with some schematic or design or bit of tech as she tried to ascertain the woman's skills and level of knowledge... but Teletha could also see the dark fiery rage that burned and smothered that interest as the woman realized at what cost this new Garlean knowledge had been bought.
Nevertheless, Kaysen proved at least willing enough to produce work that allowed her to keep her new conscription and, after proving her abilities and at Lucien's suggestion, Teletha was able to procure her the right to live at the Creta estate in a secure room rather than the conscriptees' barracks. This allowed Kaysen some small amount of leisure in her new life. Her first few days at the Creta estate saw Kaysen reacting favorably to Teletha's interactions and they began to share small conversations. As time passed, a resigned sorrow came over Kaysen as she began to accept her new reality. There were many a evening, as she returned with the silent girl in tow to the Creta estate, that Teletha wondered how she might react if forced to produce weaponry meant to kill her kinsmen.
Like a crumbing tower, things happened in quick succession that would shatter the precarious world view that Teletha held. Firstly, as she woke for the morning and proceeded make ready for another long day, she heard a ruckus going on in the room conjoined with hers, the one that Kaysen had made hers after some month's time. Hurrying to it and sliding her access card, she was stopped dead in her tracks. A smattering of blood, a broken dish and Lucien attempting to force Kaysen down, half dressed, to the ground. The man was the first to recover, standing upright and tossing the inconsolable Kaysen aside. Lifting the woman's shirt from the ground, he used it to staunch the sluggish flow of blood from his arm before he looked at Teletha and said, quite simply, that she ought to get ready to work. Without another word, he left.
Standing in shock for a moment more, Teletha rushed forth in an attempt to check Kaysen over for injury or worse. She was greeted with scorn and anger and the accusation that she was "no better than any of the rest of them." This had a profound effect on Teletha and she watched in silent sorrow as the victim of her Empire's crimes collected herself of her own willpower and dressed shakily for her condemned job. To make matters, no small amount of digging on Teletha's part revealed a string of similar cases concerning Lucien. Though it seemed he had never been so bold as to force himself on someone at his own residence, having always chosen other locations for the misdeed. Enraged and betrayed by someone she had considered a friend and nearly a father figure, she began to look into options of transfer. Disappointingly, she found that none allowed her to take Kaysen as a pupil under her and would squarely leave the girl in Lucien's charge.
As it would turn out, Teletha's breaking point came before she could work out any alternative to hers' and Kaysen's situation. The woman she knew as Wraith came to her. This time, she bore no sparing letter from her brother, but a sheaf of notes and documents and a letter nearly thick enough to match them. And, this time, she bore news of Leonicus's death. For the second time in as many weeks, Teletha was stopped dead in her tracks. She pleaded with Wraith for more information, clutching the notes and letter as the woman left without another word, shaking her head. With nothing else to do, Teletha looked to the documents in her hands. The designs were her brother's, what she assumed was every project he'd ever worked on... and one frightening one was notes and copied diagrams of something listed as the Ultima Weapon.
With trembling hands, she read his letter, wherein he predicted his own demise at either the hands of attacking Eorzeans or a kill order from their Garlean overseers and thus, he had taken the matter into his own hands and had taken his own life. She continued reading to learn that Leonicus had entrusted her with all his designs and with all the knowledge he had gleaned from the Allagan monstrosity known as the Ultima Weapon, the behemoth that Gaius van Baelsar planned to turn against the Primals and the Eorzeans without discretion. Floored by the revelation, enlightened by the knowledge and shattered by the realization that her Empire was homogenizing cultures at a massive cost of life and identity, Teletha felt her precarious world falling apart around her.
Still, as she bore the notes close against her chest as if they might embrace her back as her brother once had, she began to devise a plan.
Escape
Over the next week, Teletha stole off in her free time, purchasing a considerable amount of supplies from one vendor here and another vendor there and never from more a few things in any given establishment. Then, through careful timing and under the guise of maintaining the vessel, she convinced those posted outside the hangar where the prototype, her Danaan, was located that she needed to examine and tend to the ship. Stowing the supplies away, she spent an hour or two "overhauling" parts of the vessel to uphold her ruse and then left. With that, she began to bide her time.
Keeping an open eye on activity within the military, Teletha was able to execute her escape as the dawn of Gaius's assault took place. Deeming the attack the best distraction she was likely to receive, Teletha executed her escape and, with never a thought of leaving her behind, took Kaysen with her. As news poured in from the Thanalan front and the rebellious Eorzeans executed Operation Archon, Teletha convinced Kaysen to aide her in ensuring that the Danaan was still in fit condition under the pretense that she wanted to present it as a means to ensure future Garlean victories. Grudgingly, Kaysen accompanied Teletha to the hangar, where the woman lead the Eorzean into the vessel... and them promptly strapped her into the co-pilot's seat and took the pilot's chair for herself. Urging the battlecraft free from its slumber and sending its engines roaring to life, Teletha rapidly explained her goals as the ship attracted the immediate attention of its would-be guards.
Being flown by an engineer, not a pilot, the Tuatha de Danaan's first take off was botched at best as Teletha send the vessel scrapping out of the hangar, ripping part of the building's roof off in the process. At its fastest speed, the Danaan tore through the sky, leaving the city behind. Kaysen reeled beside Teletha, still not believing just yet what was happening, but finding their escape and an enlightening view of Teletha suddenly a very real thing as what few small ships Garlean spared for the chase began to catch up on the Danaan. Under fire and with clear signals to land or be shot down, Teletha turned the weaponry against the two pursuers and was surprised to find that Kaysen also began to take control of the weapons as well.
A tense combat ensued, Teletha's less than admirable flying skills saw the Danaan received a fair deal of damage and any ordinary battlecraft might have been obliterated otherwise. But through the saving grace of having only been pursued by two able craft and through Kaysen's quick uptake of the turret interface, both opposing craft crumbled to the ground below just at the Eorzean boarder. The mountains of Xelphatol before them, the two believed themselves escaped. But a resounding bang and a churning motion overtook the vessel as one of its engines failed from the damage of the dogfight and the Danaan began to sag out of the sky. Frighteningly, the vessel plummeted for the mountains and Tessa only barely managed to crash the ship safely, the ship falling into a grotto and scraping down the walls of the cliff face in such a way that it killed most of the vessel's momentum before striking the earth.
Alive, in one piece, and just within the Eorzean boarder, Kaysen and Teletha embraced despite the crash, with Kaysen breaking into tears upon Teletha's shoulder as she sobbed her thanks, apologies, joys and sorrows all in a messy bawl.
Ixal
Teletha and Kaysen emerged from the wreckage to find themselves in a grotto in northern Xelphatol, the mist clinging to the midlands they were in. Though they had escaped the Garlean scouts that had chased them, their descent and crash into Xelphatol had not gone unnoticed. As the women emerged from the ship, they found themselves greeted at spear point by a very ruffled clan of Ixal. Having crashed in the canyons of their camp, the Xhurok clan had come to investigate the disturbance. It was through sheer luck that Teletha and Kaysen were only captured and not killed on the spot, as the airship had greatly intrigued the Ixal. By the good graces of the wizened leader of the tribe, Razel Xhurok, decided that Teletha and Kaysen would be proclaimed allies, so long that the eventuality of Teletha guiding the clan to the sky of their ancestors was a possibility. For the long years that the Xhurok had remained in Xelphatol, away from the infighting to be found south on the Gridanian border, Razel had guided his clan truly through hardship and kept them a tight-knit family group. He knew, however, that thought the Lady of the Vortex provided succor for all her children, the world had begun to grow smaller and that sometimes unconventional means were necessary to advance.
It was with this that Teletha found herself a new home amongst a far northern Ixal clan. The first two or three moons were precarious and stressful at best, as the tribe and the two women found themselves acclimating to one another. The grotto that the Danaan had crashed slowly turned into a mess of salvage and repairs, and, in truth, a home for the women. For weeks they made what repairs they could with what they did have on hand and stripped away parts of the vessel that would need repairs and materials from elsewhere. During this time, both of them were convinced by a curious youth of the tribe, Tuzal Xhurok, to arm themselves. Though Teletha was the only one to take to the training Tuzal provided with the spears the Xhurok favored, she found herself incredibly lacking in ability with any weapon.
After the turn of a season, Teletha and Kaysen found themselves well integrated into the clan's culture and while they had made few friends, they had dissuaded any enemies they might have had in the clan from acting against them, primarily by remaining out of the way and providing aid when they could. As the leaves grew lush from summer, Teletha and Kaysen trekked south to the Black Shroud in hopes of finding supplies.
Arriving in the city, Teletha spent what remaining bit of coin she did have on supplies for herself and her companion. Her first taste of Eorzea was an interesting one, having never encountered a society like that of Gridania and finding it a vastly different culture than that of Garlemald. Kaysen took the reigns and guided the woman around the city as they gathered supplies and information on merchants specializing in mechanical stock, a rarity in the nature-based society of Gridania. By luck and happenstance, they bumbled into the knowledge of one miqo'te who sometimes hawked spare bits from salvage from the castrums around Gridania or from wreckage he acquired as far south as Mor Dhona. Receiving directions from a fellow in the Shadowed Bower they navigated north to the given address. There, they found perhaps the most womanizing, playboy, jokester of a miqo'te. Though they were initially put off, Kaysen especially, they found in K'urz a reliable supplier of materials and gadgetry they could use to repair the Danaan. Laden with their new goods, they ventured back north.
Framed As a Spy
As the moons passed, Teletha and Kaysen made good time on repairs and additions to the Danaan, returning often to Gridania to receive supplies from K'urz. It was during these trips back and forth that Teletha's appearance would be made known through informants back to those in Garlemald. By proxy and through a mole planted in Eorzean society, it was made known to the various commands and justice keepers of Eorzea that Teletha was a Garlean engineer and, falsely, a loyalist. Branding her as a spy and a Garlean informant, the Shadows sent an attache to Eorzea to seek her out and, hopefully, reclaim the Danaan and the engineer herself. Through the boards and postings of the realm and those people that might inform the various hunters and bountymen of the lands, they gave word that they were seeking delivery, alive and unharmed, of the "Garlean infiltrator and engineer, Teletha nan Terezia, for crimes of subversion, nefarious acts, terrorism against Eorzea's City States and multiple counts of public endangerment" for the price of 800,000 gil.
At first entirely unaware of the price on her head, Teletha ventured to Gridania as she normally might, once ever other week, to receive new supplies from K'urz. Alone this time, Kaysen having elected to remain behind with the Xhurok, Teletha paid her coin and rented a room for the evening, planning to head back out the next day. It was by sheer dumb luck that she turned to head back downstairs and inquire about an evening meal when she walked plain into a man she would eventually become notoriously at odds with, the bounty hunter, Garon Crayson. Clearly, neither of them had planned to find the other there, but Garon recognized Teletha from the information given to him by one of his most trusted of informants and had followed her by dint of investigating and assuring she might actually be the target of the bounty.
Needless to say, it took the seasoned hunter mere moments to realize that she did, at the very least, match the description. As Teletha backed off to apologize, she caught sight of him maneuvering for his sidearm. While she had never been overly cautious before, there is something to be said of twitch reflexes. While she did not know why Garon might consider attacking her, she did not want to remain around to find out and she reached out and attempted to off balanced him. Though unsuccessful, the moment of being caught of guard, stumbling into a bounty target and being some-what off balanced gave Teletha a moment to escape back to her room. Behind her, the thunking of Garon's footsteps clearly suggested he was in pursuit. Kicking open her window, Teletha fled the inn and made a mad dash through the streets of Gridania. Only by ducking into K'urz shop in his mostly hidden alleyway did she escape the pursuing hunter.
Teletha laid low for two days while K'urz dug into the situation and informed her that she had been declared a Garlean spy by, at the very least, the Maelstrom Command. It was not much of a leap for Teletha to presume that the bounty had been posted by Garlemald in some fashion, as she had never set so much as a foot on the island of Limsa Lominsa. Promising to further dig into the matter, K'urz lead Teletha out a back route from the city and she departed the Shroud back to Xelphatol. Arriving some days late to the Xhurok camp, Kaysen's recommendation that she no longer venture to the Shroud unless they needed her to and that she pick for herself a more Eorzean name did not fall on deaf ears, and she took to calling herself Tessa Testarossa from then on out.
A Bounty and a Bounty Hunter
Garon meeting at the Oak Inn.
K'urz discovers source of bounty.
Garon meeting at Fallgourd Float.
Meeting Valindra.
[Events to be fleshed out.]
Capture
Capture by Garon.
Delivery to Striking Falcon at glade in Shroud.
Rescue by Garon.
Travel back to Xhurok camp.
Traits
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Combat
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- Lances:
Relationships
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Rumors
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◢ Common Rumors (Easily overheard.)
◢ Uncommon Rumors (Moderately difficult to overhear.)
◢ Rare Rumors (Very difficult or rarely overheard.)
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◢ PC Rumors (Rumors from other player's characters.)
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Music
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Trivia
- The name of the Ixal tribe that Tessa befriends is a reference to huroks, the mythical species from The Immortals series.
Disclaimer
This character's personality and back-story is an adaption of the Full Metal Panic! character Tessa Testarossa. I do not own the aforementioned work. This character is only a derivative and an homage. As much attention as possible was given to make things lore appropriate and she is not merely a fandom insert, nor is she self-aware of anything related to Full Metal Panic!.
