Biography - Ensign Havi Teska, M.D.

Name Havi Teska, M.D.
Position Ship's Psychiatrist
Rank Ensign
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Character Information

Gender Male
Species Rigelian
Age 36

Physical Appearance

Height 6'8"
Weight 365 lbs
Hair Color Brown
Eye Color Black
Physical Description Havi has long wavy chocolate brown hair, and an almost golden skin-tone common to those of his species. He has deep black eyes that seem to go on forever, filled with usually endless mirth. However as quickly as Havi is happy, those eyes can storm with the passions of the Rigelian people. Havi has pointed ears and upswept eyebrows, and is outwardly indistinguishable from a Vulcan. Havi is a very relaxed individual. When he is not on-duty he wears civilian clothing. Most of the times on-duty Havi will wear a medical jumpsuit rather than the Starfleet uniform, feeling more comfortable within it. He prefers simple and easy clothing, such as the things Humans wear, but on occasion he can be seen in full Rigelian robes. He has a very passionate nature, and walks silently and with dignity. Havi is very tall and very large, though he is more likened to a gentle giant than to any beast. His hands are steady and strong, and thick veins run through his arms. Despite his height and weight, Havi is rather slim and undefined. Most of his weight comes from his denser skeleton. Deceptively, he is also extremely strong due to his Vulcanoid physique.

Family

Relationship Status
Partner
Children
Father Nerek
Mother Tanna (dec.)
Brother(s) Kirihar
Sister(s)
Other Family

Personality & Traits

General Overview Havi is one of the most whimsical, fantastical beings you will ever meet. He is an old soul, calm and composed to the core. His posture is relaxed and off-guard, and his speaking voice is tainted with a foreign lilt that tends to put others at ease. He seems serious and harsh, but in reality he is very gentle and kind, and quite talkative once you get to know him. He has a natural charm about him that is difficult to put into words. He smiles a lot, something that can be jarring to those who aren't aware that he isn't a Vulcan, but he is very eager to correct any assumptions, which often include tales of Rigelian culture.

Havi loves to tell stories, as a child he was immersed in the local library due to the unique Rigelian way of literature. Havi, however, resists regular written word as it is not the same to him as those of Rigel V. He does keep some traditional books in his quarters and it is an experience to behold to read them, as they use psionic imprinting to literally show the reader what is occurring. Havi has an uncanny sense of direction that is nearly always accurate, and possesses strong nondescript psionic abilities. He cannot read others' thoughts, but in the past he has demonstrated feats of great power, almost always when he was threatened in some way.

Havi is intensely spiritual and superstitious, two things deeply ingrained within Rigelian culture. He is not afraid to look foolish or silly, which differentiates his culture from those of a Romulan or a Vulcan. He is, like most Rigelians, agrarian in his thoughts and beliefs and was a farmer for much of his life before enlisting into Starfleet.

As Rigelian culture is very physical, so too Havi is also extremely physical. A touch on the arm or hand is common with him, and in the past he has been accused of excessive flirtation when in-fact he was only being his natural self. Physicality in Rigelian culture is extremely important. The physical expression of an emotion is often paramount, and in this way, Havi's anger can turn to physical violence as well. Growing up on Rigel V, Havi was always told the best methods of dealing with anger were fighting or sex. Havi, having escaped the idea of a pre-arranged marriage as his family were recluses living on a compound far away from civilization, refuses to engage in that particular tidbit of advice. Nevertheless, at times when Havi becomes angry it is quite easy to see that anger is not all he feels. In those instances, Havi shuts himself away and items often get destroyed. . Fortunately, Havi is rarely one to get angry, as his serene outlook on life has afforded him tranquility and confidence in himself and the things around him.

Havi is a very confident, quirky and humorous man and enjoys the challenges of interaction and exploration. He is dedicated to the medical profession and his bedside manner is charming and zany, often putting his patients at ease in seconds. Havi is very experienced in dealing with violent and angry patients due to his past work serving in a criminal psychiatric ward in San Francisco.
Strengths & Weaknesses Strengths > Whimsical and silly, Havi's quirky charm permeates the room when he enters it. He is calm and attentive, loyal and unfailingly honorable to a set personal standard. Havi is a master of stories, and has a wicked green thumb. He has undefined mental abilities which range in the rather powerful end of the spectrum. He is comfortable with himself and his body, and confidence radiates from his otherwise dignified and composed posture. Havi is not aggressive at all, and rarely gets mad. Havi is good at his job and good with patients in general. His authoritative, but not scary demeanor is often placating to psychiatric patients and his work is a good fit for his personality.

Weaknesses > Havi is a very physical being and enjoys touch and being touched. For most species Havi has found that there is no true platonic way to do this, but it is a habit he has not been able to break. Until one gets used to him, Havi can sometimes make others uncomfortable. Havi however does most of this unconsciously. When he is told, he will immediately back off, and he tries to remember to restrain himself. Havi, as a Vulcanoid ancestor, is sometimes ruled by his passions and impulsiveness. When he does get angry, the results are violent and terrible. Havi is not sarcastic and does not appreciate or enjoy sarcasm, as he finds it highly offensive. Havi does not really understand metaphor or simile all that much, and his own forms of figurative speech are very alien and enigmatic.
Ambitions Havi feels very blessed to be where he is right now, having achieved his life-time goal of being able to work with psychiatric patients, his only real long term goal now is to continue to help as many people as possible and to make as many friends as he can. While Havi has dreams about having a family and settling down, he knows that he is not the kind of man to settle anywhere. He always has to be doing something, and Havi knows he will work till the day he dies. Nevertheless, a family is something he secretly wants as it has been instilled in him since he was a small child to always honor the family, and to always propagate the family line.
Hobbies & Interests Havi loves numerology and mathematics. Despite trying to shed his superstitious roots, he simply can't help it. He finds meaning in very obscure things, such as the rotation of an item, the amount of items near it, the color of an item. These things to everyone else are nearly whimsical, but to Havi they are deep-rooted superstitious beliefs as sincere as that opening an umbrella inside is bad luck. Havi enjoys parises squares, velocity, hoverball and springball and is an avid diver. Havi is certified to dive anywhere on Earth. Havi loves to try new food, and he loves seafood, however he is a very marginal cook.
Languages Rigelian, Federation Basic

Personal History Havi Teska grew up on a small farm outside of a main city on Rigel V, the Rigelian homeworld. He had a fairly uneventful, but fruitful existence pulling his weight for his family to make their living selling fruits and vegetables to the local market. Havi went to school with the rest of the community in one central building. Since the reforms of Rigel V allowing their entrance into the Federation, arranged marriages between children and adults had been abolished though Havi was still up in line to be wed, he had the option of declining and he did so.

Havi spent much of his time in the library at his school, fascinated by the books there. In Rigelian literature, one's hand is placed in an imprint on the cover of the book and a mind-immersion is formed from the last psionic engram of the author. In this way, one experiences the story as if it were an event being shared with them through a mind-meld. Havi loved to read and was absorbed in the history of his people, even so far as to say he wanted to become a historian when he grew older.

When Havi was twelve years old, he came home one day to hospital officials taking his father away to be locked up. Havi could not understand why, but he was eventually told that it was because his father was not fit to be in society due to mental illness. In reality, Nerek had suffered from the frenzy, an affliction where one becomes inconsolably violent until the frenzy is burned out of their blood, when his wife Tanna died two years prior. Nerek never recovered from the fever the frenzy had set upon him and he was admitted to Rigel V's foremost state hospital due to irreversible psychosis. Havi's rearing was left to his brother Kirihar, who became distant and sullen when Nerek was taken away. Havi coped by learning everything he could about mental illness and soon began visiting his father in the psychiatric ward almost every day, and was even given apprentice tasks by the nursing staff when he reached the age of fifteen.

It was at that time, spending so much of his life in the hospital, that Havi knew what he wanted to do with his life. He abandoned his dream of studying history and made a resolute promise to himself to study psychiatry to help people like his father. In order to do that, he knew he had to get off of Rigel V. Not only to help others, but because he wanted to explore the universe and it was not something that could be stifled. He could not bear the echoing emptiness of his house.

With Kirihar gone off to college to study music recording, Havi took a flight transport to Earth and began studying at John's Hopkins university when he was twenty years of age. Six years later, Havi had received his M.D and his specialization courses took another two years. At twenty-eight, Havi was given his first assignment at the San Francisco Mental Rehabilitation Center (SFMRC). He was taken on as a junior youth worker and began helping gang-involved and drug-abusing teenagers and youth deal with their emotional issues. When he was twenty-nine, after a year of working at SFMRC, he was promoted to staff security officer where he helped stop a total of twenty-six violent attacks from occurring. At thirty-two, Havi worked as a full-time psychiatrist in the violent offenders ward.

When Havi was thirty-three, he decided to finally cut his ties with SFMRC and enlist in Starfleet Medical. The four years he took there were tough on him as he had to learn how to live the military style of life, and he had to receive xenobiological space qualifications and general practitioner's qualifications in order to practice medicine aboard a starship. It was grueling and exhaustive work, but Havi enjoyed every minute of it as he was always fond of learning. He made many friends at the Academy, but most of them were assigned to completely different vessels by the time they graduated that Havi never truly spoke to them again.

In Havi's third year, he was invited to a club and attended out of curiosity. Despite living on Earth for so long, Havi was still unsure of many Human customs and had never been to a night club before. Along with a few other cadets, Havi went in and was given a couple of drinks. Immediately he felt dizzy and disoriented, and he collapsed to the floor before he remembered anything else. He woke up tied to a pole and his belongings taken, and immediately identified to himself that he was on board a moving shuttle. Havi wasn't sure what to do, or why these people had taken him, only his past with violent criminals seemed to be a plausible explanation. When Havi was confronted by a man with a knife, instinctively, Havi held his hands up and a great blast of light emitted from them, knocking the man back into the wall and releasing the rope around his wrists. Havi found some of the other cadets he was with in the corner and used the low-orbital sky-diving equipment present in the shuttle to open the launch bay doors and parachute their way to safety.

It was the first taste of real action that Havi had experienced, and he realized that the rush of adrenaline and emotion had him elated, he thought it was fantastic. People called him heroic when he returned but he barely understood why they would say such a thing. He just happened to manifest balls of energy at the right time, but it made Havi feel good about himself. And it reinforced all that he had wanted to achieve in Starfleet. To help others, to get a piece of the action, to explore and figure out puzzles and stick together. Of course, everyone around Havi was devastated and afraid he had been hurt, whereas the young Rigelian just smiled and literally shrugged it off. Such was the cultural difference, while the rest of his friends were traumatized, he was signing up for more classes and ready to do it again.

He did his cadet senior year observatory status on Deep Space Nine, a station famous enough that many people continue to ask him what it was like despite his very minor role as a medical technician.

Havi graduated in the top tenth of his class with the rank of ensign, at the age of thirty-six. Due to his extensive background in psychiatry and criminal security, he was assigned on board the U.S.S Sarek as its primary psychiatrist to assist the counseling department with physical medicine.
Service Record John's Hopkins University - graduate (md)
SFMRC - junior youth worker, staff security officer, psychiatrist (phd)
Starfleet Academy - cadet (cfg, csg, cjg, csrg)
U.S.S Sarek - ship's psychiatrist (ens)