Name      :  Sernissa
Gender    : female
Species   : Lamae
Ethnicity : N/A
Age       :  142 (equivalent to early twenties human)
Religion  : Sssithasss (lamae nature worship similar to Terran Shinto)
Sexuality : pansexual
Homeworld : Lusssentha 2
Occupation: Chief Science Officer

Physical Description: Sernissa, from the waist up, is an attractive and buxom humanoid with waist length black hair and a curvy figure.  Her skin is pale, and her ears are pointed, not unlike a Vulcan's, and her eyes are an amber color with vertically slit pupils.  From the waist down Sernissa's hips widen out and become covered in gold scales becoming twenty-eight feet of thick, serpentine, coils tapering into a delicate tip.  Sernissa wears a modified science officers uniform featuring a foot long skirt that clings to her coils and includes a warming apparatus to keep her body warm enough.

Personality: Sernissa is a curious woman who can come across as awkward at times when her lack of cultural understanding becomes obvious.  Sernissa can be quite driven and tends to frown upon being ordered around by men due to the nature of her people's indigenous Matriarchy, though she knows now that males are just as capable as females given the right support.  She is quite promiscuous, enjoying the attention of people irrespective of their gender. race, or anything else for that matter.

Character History:

Sernissa was born sometime before the Cardassians occupied her world and turned it into a pleasure world for their soldiers during the war with the Federation.  Sernissa was raised by her mother, Veshistha, as an only child, like most Lamae children were, and wanted for nothing.  She quickly began to show a keen mind and would have spurred much development in the sciences.  By the time she was considering a higher education though the Cardassian's had arrived.

Sernissa, now at the age of majority, was quickly tapped by the Cardassian military governor Gul Gatin Drok as his personal attaché, secretary, and concubine.  Sernissa was far more eager for her duties than he had expected and, after realizing she was mostly interested in learning, softened towards her just a little.  Under his tutelage Sernissa learned much about computers and physics and eagerly soaked up all she could.

When the Cardassian Federation War was over the Cardassian's withdrew from the Lamae home world leaving much of their old technology behind.  While the Gul knew what they could do with it given all that Sernissa had learned from him he decided to keep quiet given his soft spot for the people he left behind.    With the Cardassians gone and the Federation not moving in like expected that left the world open to the Orion Pirates to move into.

While the Cardassians had been decent overlords the Orions were not.  They were barbarous and treated the native population like chattel even going as far as to execute as many of the inteligencia, such as they were, that they could find.  So it was that Sernissa went into hiding.  Sernissa became instrumental in rebuilding a crashed Dominion cruiser that the Orions were unaware had crashed on the planet intact and when they found the Vorta aboard, who immediately tried to order the Lamae around, Sernissa was the one who Embraced him.

Sernissa spent much of the next year working on the wrecked ship, her knowledge of computers and the Cardassian machinery they manage to smuggle to the crash site were life savers for the work and not only allowed them to get into the computers but even to get the ship space worthy again.  This worked out to allow the Lamae to drive off their Orion Masters by first evacuating the area where the Orions had set up their only city of any Lamae minus a few who volunteered to stay and keep the Orions from realizing something was up.

When the Orion vessels had left the system, the Lamae struck using their captured vessel, the MLSS Serpent's Embrace to bombard the city wiping out the Orions on the surface as well as the Lamae who chose to martyr themselves and become one with the spirits.  The vessel then hid within the shadow of the asteroid belt and awaited the return of the Orions.  When the Pirates returned, they never suspected what had happened and were quickly wiped out by the Serpent's Embrace.

The Lamae were left to mourn their dead and missing while the Serpent's Embrace patrolled the system to keep them safe from retaliation.  It was some years later that another vessel came to the system, a patrol of Klingon Birds of Prey that attacked the Serpent's Embrace on sight.  During the course of the battle, it was a nearby Federation vessel that responded to the distress signal of the unknown species that Sernissa managed to send and was able to convince the Klingons to stand down.

With their second and third meetings with extraterrestrials the Lamae were far cagier, and they were very careful about revealing things until they learned to trust the Federation was not trying to mislead them.  Eventually the Lamae Matriarchy agreed to provisional membership with the Federation and were given special dispensation to join despite lacking their own native warp travel.

As part of this agreement they allowed the required the Serpent's Embrace be turned over to Federation Police force and recommissioned her as a vessel assigned to the Lusssentha system under a mixed crew of Federation and Lamae crew and offered the crew of the vessel entry into Starfleet Academy.  Sernissa chose to join the Academy and was one of the first Lamae to graduate from the Academy to date.  Given her experience aboard the Serpent's Embrace Sernissa was given the rank of lieutenant and assigned to be the Chief Science Officer aboard the U.S.S. Artemis due to her having more experience with Dominion computer systems than nearly anyone else in Starfleet.

Brief Lamae History:

Lamae are a poikilothermic reptilian species that, at some point, developed humanoid features from the waist up.  While they have no record of when this change occurred their traditions say it was a gift from the lonely spirits to uplift her people from their animalistic roots.

There are few male Lamae, only one per thirty or so females which has led to rather open views on romance, companionship, and physical intimacy.  Each female Lamae was allowed only so much time with a male to have offspring and this led to a system that stayed surprisingly uncorrupted where each Lamae female was given only one window every twenty years after adulthood to procreate.

The Lamae population was actually in decline until the Cardassians occupied the planet and found the willing Lamae, eager for male companionship and new hatchlings, made the warm jungle world a prime pleasure world for their troops during their war with the Federation.  Unlike in most situations the Lamae were treated comparatively well by the Cardassians, likely in large part because, other than as a world to give the troops recreation the Lamae home world had no resources worth mining given the industry would have needed to be built from the ground up since the Lamae had yet to reach an industrial revolution and were considered quite primitive.  The troops got relaxation and release and the Lamae, much to their delight, realized they were compatible with more than just their own kind causing something of a baby boom.

When the Cardassian's withdraw at the end of the Federation Cardassian War the Lamae were left largely defenseless since the Federation did not move immediately into the area.  Though they could operate the equipment and technology left behind they still had no spacefaring capability nor any way to create it with the resources available to them and thus the Orion Pirates arrived.

While the Lamae had no real weapons to use against their new masters they were not without recourse and it didn't take long for the pirates to learn not to into the jungles alone, or even at all as those foolish enough were "embraced" by the Lamae and the remains devoured by the jungle.  The Lamae were resigned to their fate when things quickly changed during the Dominion War.

In the later stages of the war the Federation clashed with a Dominion vessel that was fleeing a recent fleet action.  The Orions blacked out the indications of technology on the planet, so the Federation never realized there was intelligent life on the world the damaged Dominion cruiser crashed on which made them blind to the crashing vessel on the far side of the world.  While the Orions were unaware the ship crashed the Lamae were not and they took great effort to keep it that way.

The Lamae repaired the downed Dominion cruiser and rechristened it the MLSS Serpent's Embrace.  Through the willing sacrifice of a group of Lamae to keep the Orion's distracted the rest of their people left and when all the pirate vessels left the city was bombarded and the Pirates exterminated.  The vessel was then used to eliminate the pirate vessels when they returned and thereafter patrolled the system until an encounter with a Klingon patrol that swept through the system.

After a brief fight with the bird's of prey a Federation vessel intervened and called off the Klingons when they received a distress call from an unknown species sent from the Serpent's Embrace.  After a great deal of negotiation, the Lamae Matriarchy agreed to turn over the Dominion cruiser in exchange for provisional membership in the Federation and the vessel being redeployed as a "police cruiser" patrolling the system with a mixed Federation and Lamae crew.  The agreement also gave the crew of the Serpent's Embrace the ability to join Starfleet Academy and count their time in service aboard the Serpent's Embrace towards their post-graduation rank or stay aboard as part of the new crew of the vessel.