Jaal Ama Darav: Angaran Resistance Fighter

Jaal Ama Darav was an angaran native of the world Havarl and a high-ranking member of the Angaran Resistance, the fighting force that had waged a long and grinding war against the kett invaders of the Heleus Cluster. When the Andromeda Initiative arrived from a distant galaxy, Jaal was sent to observe the newcomers, and what began as a wary assignment grew into one of the deepest loyalties aboard the survey ship Tempest.

Origins on Havarl#

Jaal was a native of Havarl, twenty seven angaran years of age, and came from a famous family. Like other angara he was raised within a large extended household: his biological mother was named Sahuna, and more than five additional mothers helped raise him alongside his siblings and cousins. His father had been a technician at a mine who left for work one day and never returned, presumed taken by the kett, the fate that had claimed so many angara during the long occupation.

As a child Jaal had an affinity for taking things apart to understand how they worked, a habit he kept all his life. He once owned a pet kaerkyn named Alfit, which he promptly disassembled after it died. During his first Vesaal on the sanctuary world Aya he worked at a farm and entered a relationship with an older researcher named Allia, but it ended when his famous, Resistance-affiliated older brother arrived; Allia eventually married the brother instead. Both of them were later taken by the kett, leaving only their children behind.

The Angaran Resistance#

By adulthood Jaal had become a high-ranking member of the Angaran Resistance, the organized struggle against the kett. He fought in desperate engagements across the cluster, among them an assault on a kett base on the frozen world Voeld that the Resistance barely won. He served under Evfra de Tershaav, the Resistance's hard and uncompromising commander.

When the Pathfinder's crew made first contact with the angara on Aya, seeking access to ancient Remnant technology, Jaal volunteered to join them as an observer. The angara, scarred by the kett, were deeply wary of any new species, and Evfra sent Jaal to gauge the outsiders, warning him to be ready in case the human chose to kill him. Jaal was tasked with steering the newcomers to Resistance business on Voeld or Havarl, where they could prove the Initiative's intentions.

Aboard the Tempest#

Jaal took up residence in the Tempest's tech lab, though he ranged across the ship to learn about its crew, and at the Initiative's station he studied the cultures of the newcomers at the Cultural Exchange. At first he was guarded and shared little of himself, but the angara were an openly emotional people who, as he put it, cried and laughed and sometimes fought together, and he gradually opened up to those around him.

When the Pathfinder proved their worth to Evfra, Jaal joined an infiltration of a kett facility on Voeld where the revered angaran scholar known as the Moshae Sjefa was being held. Inside, he was baffled to see captive angara offering no resistance to their overseers' rituals. The truth proved devastating: the rituals were the kett process of exaltation, which physically transformed captured angara into kett. Jaal realized he had been killing his own transformed people for years without knowing it, and he wept over the corpse of a Chosen he had personally seen converted. When the Moshae was found, he rushed frantically to reach her before she could meet the same fate.

After securing the Moshae, Jaal insisted that the captured angara be freed first, against her own wish that the facility be destroyed. The final decision fell to the Pathfinder, and Jaal's regard for them afterward depended on whether his counsel had been heeded. If the base was destroyed, he was cold at first but came to accept it, since the Moshae had been saved. In quieter moments he confessed how much he missed his family and admitted that he had never felt he had a true purpose until he came aboard, sensing that the Pathfinder was bound for something more important than the role he had filled in the Resistance.

Family and the burden of expectation#

Jaal carried a quiet insecurity about his place. Many in his family had achieved great things, and though he had stopped trying to match them he still felt driven to make a difference. He occupied himself crafting gifts for the crew, planning a woven Rofjinn for one companion, a poem for another, and a ceremonial angaran dagger for a third, partly to distract himself from worry about whether he belonged.

In time his exploits alongside the Pathfinder earned him enough standing in the Resistance that he was offered advancement and a command of his own, leading a small covert tech-operations squad to infiltrate advanced kett sites. He declined, choosing instead to remain with the Pathfinder's crew. He made clear that working with them had let him break free of expectation and find his better self, and he expected to stay with the team to the end of the mission.

The Roekaar and Akksul#

Jaal knew the xenophobic angaran faction called the Roekaar would have to be confronted. Their leader, Akksul, had once studied under the Moshae alongside Jaal himself and had been the better and more brilliant student, but years of war against the kett had embittered him into hatred of all outsiders. Seeking a meeting, Jaal and the Pathfinder traveled to Havarl to find a friend of Akksul's named Thaldyr, only to discover her sanctuary besieged by kett and Thaldyr dead by her own hand to avoid capture. Jaal lamented that Akksul had twisted her devotion to spread his xenophobia, and reluctantly reached out to the Moshae to arrange a meeting.

The matter turned personal when three of Jaal's siblings ran off to join the Roekaar and his mothers asked him to bring them home. At the Forge, the ancestral birthplace of the angara on Havarl, Jaal found the Roekaar had forced out the civilian scientists and confronted his own siblings, who opened fire before he called them off. He learned that Akksul planned to destroy the Forge with explosives stolen from the Initiative in order to further demonize the newcomers. After the bombs were disarmed, Akksul appeared and tried to rally his followers, and Jaal answered him by pointing to all the Pathfinder had done for the angara, from restoring worlds to rescuing the Moshae. Akksul raised a gun to Jaal's face and named him a traitor. How the standoff ended turned on the Pathfinder's restraint: striking Akksul down would only embolden the Roekaar, while letting the moment pass led Akksul to scar Jaal's cheek and his followers to disband in disillusionment.

Loyalty and legacy#

Jaal carried a modified Lanat sniper rifle that he had named Darav, after his own house. Through his service alongside the Pathfinder he moved from a guarded observer to a fully committed member of the crew, one who came to regard the Tempest's company as something close to family. For a Pathfinder who returned his affection he opened his life completely, bringing them to meet Sahuna and the crowded household where he had grown up, and showing them the small sanctuary of his childhood room and the keepsakes he had never shared with anyone. Whether such a bond formed depended on the path the Pathfinder walked, but in every account Jaal Ama Darav stood as proof that the angara and the newcomers from another galaxy could fight, and belong, side by side.