Ada Lynx

Ada is the youngest of eight children, with five brothers and two sisters. Her father, a prominent member of Ilya's Storm Chasers, served as primary Shielding mage on a Storm Breaker employing five of her other siblings.  

Disaster

When she was five, her oldest sister was swept away by a wave during a particularly violent storm on The Endless Sea. Unable to cope with the thought of losing another child, and blaming her husband for both the tragedy and the dangerous profession followed by her adult children, Ada's mother filed for divorce and relocated herself and her three youngest children to the planetary capital of Ilyana the next time her father's ship left port.  

Ilyana

Ada spent her childhood roaming the shores of the capital with her two youngest brothers, picking up pretty shells and other gifts from the ocean to craft into baubles for the tourists that frequented the shores and restaurants of her new home. While she missed her father and oldest siblings, they'd spent months away from home before on their many expeditions, and her mother often reassured her this was her turn to have an adventure while they sailed.   And so she spent the years waiting, and exploring, and scanning the Endless Sea for signs of their return, long after she forgot the sound of their voices or the rough scrape of her father's fingers against her cheek.  

Mother's Decline

As Ada grew to adulthood, she watched her mother retreat into a shell of herself. When her second youngest brother decided to join the Storm Chasers when he came of age - hoping to find their father and siblings, or what had become of them - her mother gathered her two remaining children and made them promise to never sail the Sea. When her youngest brother attempted to appease her by instead accepting a job gathering saltcaps for the many rows of restaurants lining the edges of the spaceport, Ada watched again as her mother collapsed from grief at his proximity to the Sea, holding her close and demanding she stay away from the water.   But Ada had inherited her father's wandering heart, and her brothers' desire for adventure. And as she watched her youngest brother's smile fade at the long hours spent in the dark caverns where the salt mushrooms thrived, she swore she'd never allow her mother's fear to clip her own hunger for exploration and knowledge of the unknown.  

Escape

This proved more difficult that she'd anticipated. Her mother, desperate to protect her youngest child, kept a closer eye on Ada than ever before. Unable to experience even the small modicum of freedom she'd enjoyed since their move to Ilyana, Ada felt her own joy fade, much like she'd watched her mother's and brother's disappear all those years before. Desperate to escape and retain her own adventurous spirit, Ada snuck away one night when her mother was sleeping, using her entire savings - a modest amount of credits lavished upon her by her brothers through the years - to book one-way passage on a small portal hopper leaving that very night.   She never looked back.

She landed on Janikk Station, attempting to justify her presence on a fully-booked space station with no reservations, no papers, no luggage, and no credits to attempt to buy her way into the good graces of the Mordena mercenaries running the station.   Ada found it exhilarating.   After spending most of the day bouncing between countless administrators with a variety of temperaments ranging from boredom to incredulity to outright frustration, Ada finally caught the attention of a young healer in training looking for one of the station's medical guests. She offered to share her bunk in exchange for assistance with the more menial tasks required to keep the medlab operating efficiently.   Ada quickly accepted, and her universe changed forever.  

Janikk Station Medlab

Originally tasked to help sanitize and organize Medlab, Ada was quickly drawn to the strange plants and other alchemical ingredients stocking the cabinets she maintained daily, asking often about their varied uses and effects. She began spending her free time wandering the Primary Hydroponics Bay, studying each plant even as she studied the planet below.   She researched all she could about Janikk, the enticing and forbidden wilderness inhabited by her surprisingly patient and generous hosts. Which wasn't much, considering how little they permitted outsiders to know about their home, or how infrequently the planet had allowed explorers to survive prior to the mercenaries' claim on Janikk. And yet each dead end - and dead explorer - merely fueled her desire.   She'd just have to explore it herself, and peel away its botanical secrets one by one.  

Joining the Mordena

After seven months working to earn her keep on the station, gleaning what she could about the lives and homeworld of her Mordena coworkers, Ada gathered her courage and asked the question that had been burning in her thoughts since shortly after her arrival: What would it take for her to join them?   Braced for rejection, or worse yet the insistence she leave the station and never return, Ada was instead gifted a question in return: Why had she taken so long to ask?   Greeted with open arms and open hearts, it wasn't long before Ada took the Yukkanit Tenael, eternally joining herself to the Tenecknaab of the brutal and mysterious planet below and earning the right to uncover her secrets.   And finally, for the first time since she'd waved her last farewell to her father at the tender age of five, Ada was free to follow the calling of her adventurous heart.   Finally, she had found where she belonged.