Moshae Sjefa: Angaran Scholar of the Remnant

Moshae Sjefa was a revered angaran elder and scientist, considered the foremost authority on Remnant technology in the Heleus Cluster. Her many contributions, in that field and beyond, greatly aided angaran civilization in its long struggle against the Scourge that had cast it into a dark age and against the invading kett. When the kett seized her for her knowledge, the Andromeda Initiative's Pathfinder joined the angaran Resistance to win her back, and her expertise afterward proved central to understanding the Remnant.

A life devoted to the Remnant#

The Moshae was born to explorers aboard a research vessel in deep space. Her parents never settled in one place for long, and in time her own travels carried her to every world of the angaran domain. She never married nor had children, choosing instead to devote herself to unlocking the secrets of the Remnant for the benefit of all angara. As her reputation grew, every settled world sought to claim her as its own, but she came to prefer the world of Aya above the rest.

The title Moshae was not strictly a rank but a reference to pre-Scourge myth that others felt Sjefa had earned. She thought it nonsense when she was first called it and told the speaker as much, but the name caught on and she eventually came to recognize its uses. Across her long life she gathered a circle of followers who studied the Remnant alongside her, among them Akksul, regarded as her finest student, and Jaal Ama Darav, who left his studies but kept fond memories of her.

Capture and exaltation#

The Moshae's expertise drew the attention of the Archon, the ruler of the kett in the Heleus Cluster. Her bodyguard, a Resistance commander named Vehn Terev, sold her to the enemy in the belief that surrendering her would end the war. Held aboard the Archon's flagship, she was hung immobile, deprived of sleep, and beaten when she refused to answer his questions, suffering broken limbs and a compromised immune system.

Even in captivity she never stopped gathering intelligence on her captors. When the Archon ordered her exalted, she was sent alone to an exaltation facility on the icy world of Voeld, where she learned what the process meant for angara taken by the kett. Housed among prisoners who described their abductions, she recorded her own reactions to the procedures inflicted on her and compared notes with a transformed kett who had once fought for the Resistance, building a clear picture of the horror before her rescue.

Rescue#

When the Pathfinder came to Aya seeking access to its Remnant vault, they were told only the Moshae could help them, but that the kett had taken her. After the Pathfinder proved their worth to the wary Resistance, its leader authorized a joint rescue of the Moshae from the facility on Voeld. The kett Cardinal, ordered to expedite her final exaltation, tried to flee with her, but was stopped by the Pathfinder's team and Jaal at the shuttle bay.

Regaining consciousness, the Moshae marveled that anyone could return from behind kett walls, and urged that the facility be destroyed on the strength of what she had learned, reasoning that the kett would only fill it again with prisoners. Whether or not the facility was spared, she insisted on covering the team's escape herself, raising a bioelectric field to help her allies recover despite her weakened state and answering concern for her health by declaring the choice hers to make.

The road to Meridian#

Recovering aboard the Pathfinder's ship, the Moshae laughed off suggestions that she was frail and turned to explaining the purpose of exaltation. She then agreed to guide the Pathfinder to Aya's vault, the Archon having taken her precisely for her knowledge of the Remnant. At the vault she interpreted newly revealed holographic data and recognized a sigil matching a relic aboard the Archon's ship, which she identified as Meridian, the control center for all the vaults, and warned that the Archon sought only to activate it.

Furious to learn that the circumstances of her abduction had been kept from her, the Moshae forced the truth of Vehn Terev's betrayal into the open and backed the Pathfinder's effort to track him down. Depending on the choices made, she might thank the Pathfinder for sparing her former bodyguard, or grieve his execution as an injustice; in the former case she persuaded the Resistance to set Vehn to tending Aya's memorial gardens, believing that being among living things might rehabilitate a man surrounded by death.

Later years#

After her rescue and return, the Moshae found herself overwhelmed by the backlog of her own work, musing that she was busy with everything and nothing at once. When the revelations at Khi Tasira disclosed that the angara had been created by the ancient Jardaan, she admitted she should have been shocked yet somehow felt she had always known. During the final battle against the Archon at Meridian, she arrived to fight alongside the Resistance, raising an electromagnetic barrier to shield an ally.

In the aftermath she could be chosen as the angaran ambassador to the Andromeda Initiative, on the belief that the angara, as natives of Heleus, deserved a voice in how the newcomers settled it. She was skeptical of the appointment and warned that it would not win the unanimous approval the Pathfinder hoped for, but resolved to do her best until a more lasting government could be formed. Despite the weight of the role she did not feel unduly burdened, praising the Pathfinder for keeping Meridian out of the Archon's hands and judging it the most beautiful place she had ever seen.