Appearance:
Tahirah is tall and strong, with dark skin and long,curly hair reaching about her shoulder blades, usually bound when on duty. She appears to be half Arabic, half African in descent. She is muscular, somewhere between a boxer and a gymnast. Tahirah typically wears parts of her old Earth Federation uniform, patches systematically removed and replaced with various Barony symbols, and her code name, Sister Vulture, in Arabic where her rank insignia once was. She usually wears a grey cloak over this when she is out in the desert. |
Training/Special Abilities:
Tahirah is a trained sniper, though not in any official capacity. She is proficient in all conventional long-range firearms she could have conceivably used. She prefers long-range combat, and is proficient in many ambush tactics. She knows the soldiers under her very well, and considers them her brothers, sisters, sons, and daughters, hence the first part of her code name. She is fluent in Arabic, a few tribal languages, and English, which she speaks with an English accent.
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Personality:
Tahirah is informal, friendly, and proud. She enjoys the company of those soldiers under her, and tries to make them feel comfortable. While she tries to be friendly and light-hearted, in a combat situation she stays cool and on target. |
Weakness(es):
Sister Vulture's biggest weakness is her attachment to the people around her. She would move the world for her companions. To lose one would be heartbreaking. To be betrayed could be the thing that breaks her. |
Background:
The woman who would walter to known as Sister Vulture was born Tahirah Mebwimbique in southern Egypt to a goat herder and a Baha'i missionary twenty three years before the Great War. She lived there until she was fifteen, and spent most of that time either helping tend the herd with her father or teaching the Baha'i faith to the people surrounding her village. However, as she got older, local tyrants began to move, the Federation oblivious to their actions, and oppress Tahirah and her people, forcing them at gunpoint to work in factories that made more guns for the tyrants to subvert more villages and peoples to their will.
Ever the activist, Tahirah's mother pursued many methods of non-violent protest against the tyrants, and even made a formal complaint with the Federation. Not liking opposition, the military government razed her parents' farm and arrested them under charges of sedition. They were later shot publicly.
Not able to tolerate this any longer, Tahirah left the factories on foot and wandered the desert for a while before luck had it that a Federation-backed resistance group found her. They trained her and raised her a soldier. She was, as she was raised a pacifist, hesitant about any sort of fighting, but then, one of the soldiers said something that would become Tahirah's motto for the rest of her life:
"God's will is law, but sometimes God must be disobeyed, for the survival of His worshippers."
Tahirah served with distinction in the resistance--such distinction that, by the time she was twenty-one, the Federation offered her a mobile suit pilot position. She accepted, and was spent some time as a Federation soldier. During the Great War, however, she lost her faith in the government--she felt as though she was fighting for the very people who killed her parents. So, she resigned, and worked with local governments for several years, organizing militia and trying to keep the peace while the Federation fell and the Colony drop ravaged even far-away lands.
For years, Tahirah worked in this capacity, until one of the fledgling baronies, led by several of her fellow resistance fighters, approached her for leadership of a squad under the banner of the Desert Baronies. She accepted, and has worked for them ever since.
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