Lieutenant JG Bellona Juventus
Name Bellona Aurelia Juventus
Position Deputy Security Officer
Rank Lieutenant JG
Character Information
Gender | Female | |
Species | Magna Roman | |
Age | 35 | |
Date of Birth | 25 April 2356 | |
Place of Birth | Aesculapius General Hospital, Rome, Magna Roma |
Character Type
Category | Primary Character (PC) |
Starfleet ID
Serial Number | PA-927-2113 | |
Rank Class | Junior Officer | |
Security Clearance | Level 5 | |
Duty Watch | Team 3 |
Physical Appearance
Height | 6’2” | |
Weight | 157 lbs | |
Hair Color | Red | |
Eye Color | Grey | |
Physical Description | Bellona has been compared to the Roman goddess of war for whom she is named many times due to her athletic figure, regal presence and long red hair. She rebuts these claims always, often quite forcefully, saying that it would anger the goddess herself for a mortal to call herself her equal. She is somewhat more muscular in her arms. She is rarely seen out of uniform, though of late she has been taking the rare trip out in comfortable clothes to indulge herself. |
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Body Art | None |
Family
Spouse | None, and Bellona would presently rather be killed in the line of duty than marry. | |
Children | None. |
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Father | Marcus Selon Iaponius (Century Commander, 12th Intelligence Legion , Magna Roman Army, MIA) | |
Mother | Senator Fulvia Octavia Juventus | |
Brother(s) | None that Bellona knows of. |
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Sister(s) | None that Bellona knows of. |
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Other Family | An aunt living in England with her husband, with whom she lived before enlisting into Starfleet Academy. Bellona was lucky to come to know of her; her mother was very careful to make sure that she received only as much contact with the outside world as she thought was necessary (which is, honestly, very little). |
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Pets | None, and Bellona has no intentions of getting any anytime soon. |
Personality & Traits
General Overview | Bellona pushes herself very, very hard indeed to maintain the standards she staunchly believes a Starfleet officer should uphold: top physical fitness, the very highest standards of discipline and integrity in all that one does and operational excellence at all times. A handful of her peers (and even superiors) have described her (self-imposed) standards as either painful or suffocating. Some have used both words in the same sentence. Some have wondered if she is in fact drowning in her own stifling standards. That being said, no one has ever disputed that her operational standard and conduct is beyond reproach. Whether it lasts is a totally different ball game. Speaking of her peers and superiors, Bellona extends the very same standards she holds herself to to them as well; in her own words, “if you genuinely want to be here, act like it.” Bellona has zero tolerance for inefficiency, grousing or incompetence and has on multiple occasions taken colleagues of all ranks and appointments to task (respectfully though firmly, where needed) without hesitation when she sees that they aren’t doing their jobs properly. At least one person has cried during these scathing talks. If she has to drag someone who’s lost all morale to the finishing line by their ankles, she will, and has done so on many occasions. Strangely, this attitude of hers has so far not evolved into a ‘holier than thou’ mentality. Through this attitude of hers, she has made a handful enemies within the ranks of her old assignments. That’s fine by her - Bellona has equally little interest in making friends or forming close relationships of any sort, or the Gods forbid being popular, beyond being an efficient team member. She believes firmly that such attachments will only hamper her ability to perform her duties when it comes to making decisions that involve those around her - especially the unpopular decisions that will be beneficial but not well liked. So far, her approach has worked. Whether it’s sustainable is an entirely different question. |
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Strengths | * Bellona is hardly the best combatant in the universe, but her time in the gladiatorial arena and cross training with the Klingons have done much to hone her prowess in combat. She is proficient with at least four traditional arena weapons as well as in hand to hand combat in addition to the basic skills Starfleet personnel are taught. She has also learned to use a bat’leth and dk’tahg, albeit mostly for survival purposes. She maintains these skills religiously, training on the holodeck whenever possible. * Bellona has, after many, many hours of training and remediation where need be, mastered many of the skills she needs to have as a security and tactical officer, including combat casualty aid and close quarters combat. She has used this proficiency to help design training programmes for cadets in Starfleet Academy. Thus far, two of her training plans have been implemented with success on the Earth campus. The most recent additions to her skillset, being the harsh environment tactics she acquired training with the Klingon Defense Force, has played a big role in this as well. * Bellona’s sharp mind, honed through years of mental discipline training and fights in the arena (both holographic and real, you’d better think fast if your life is at stake!) has so far lent itself extensively to her work. She’s used it so far to preemptively develop and propose security countermeasures she feels are most efficient to implement and effective. * The excruciatingly high standards of conduct to which Bellona constantly holds herself have done much to hone her mental discipline and temper - arguably to such an extent that she’s rather repressed. She has rarely been seen angry in the traditional sense; no matter the circumstances, she seems to maintain composure and clarity of thought with little effort. You’ll definitely know when she’s angry, though. * Bellona has proven herself over and over again to have an exceptionally cool and clear head under great stress in combat, and for exceptional decisiveness under the very same. It’s likely that she had to learn to do this fighting in her old trainer’s to-the-death underground matches. |
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Weaknesses | * Bellona’s dedication to her job is in equal parts her greatest strength and greatest weakness. Nothing else in her arguably already spartan life matters more - not even her own wujelfare and personal needs. She has forced herself to push through burnout, loneliness and self-doubt many, many times, arguably far more often than is healthy for one person, and will likely continue to do so to her own detriment one day. * The people she works with sometimes choke on the high standards she expects them to live up to and demonstrate. Sometimes this is because they simply can’t, for various (valid) reasons. Bellona knows this, yet unapologetically holds little sympathy for such people. In her mind, if you can’t demonstrate the values or conduct she feels a member of Starfleet should possess, you don’t belong in the organisation, period. * Bellona struggles like a fish out of water when put into scenarios that don’t need her to be at least partially on the job, such as required social events where rank is left at the door. She’s brought work with her into such events or left early to complete it when people aren’t looking, for example. * Bellona’s been told a handful of times that she needs to be a bit less isolated when it comes to her relations with others. While she initially scoffed at the idea, she’s since had a handful of experiences that have proven her wrong. She’s since tried, on and off again, to crack the shell she’s built up around herself, and found that she simply isn’t at all good at it, and this comes after begrudgingly speaking with counsellors and colleagues about it and trying the tips they’ve given her. She hasn’t quite thrown in the towel at getting better at not being so stony yet, but her work and the standards she forces herself to conform to often eclipse this priority (mostly because she lets them). * Bellona did not do well in the basic engineering Academy modules required of all cadets, even despite extensive remediation and help from her peers, and it hurts her to admit to such even now. It’s not terribly likely that she’ll be brushing up on those skills in the imminent future, though. |
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Ambitions | - Bellona would love to end the illegal gladiator matches that she knows continue to take place out of the public eye. She’s sadly aware that achieving this is an uphill battle at best, though, and so she continues to plan how she might go about doing this when she can afford to. - She would love to command her own Starfleet training institute one day. She certainly seems to be on that path at present, with her exchange training and background as an instructor so far. - Despite her tough exterior, Bellona would not mind making a friend. Just one. Possibly more. Despite this, she can’t quite reconcile this part of her and the part of her that wants to stay professional at all times, no matter the cost. |
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Hobbies & Interests | As a girl, Bellona used to paint and solve puzzles, at her mother’s insistence, and got quite good at it, too. Then she was shipped off to Gaius, and there was no more time to carry on with those hobbies. She has never really been able to rediscover the talent or spark for it since, mostly of her own doing. These days, her ‘hobbies’ consist mostly of training, usually alone, or maintaining her personal fitness. She can be found jogging or using the holodecks to swim on occasion, though this is moreso to maintain the water confidence she was taught by the Klingon Defense Force. |
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Vernacular | Stern. Some would describe her as icy, at best. She sounds quite American in terms of her accent. |
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Orientation | Pansexual | |
Language(s) Spoken | Federation Standard, Klingon, Magna Romani |
Personal History | Bellona was born and bred to compete in the gladiatorial arena. She lived a lavish but restrictive lifestyle at the swanky home of her mother, a member of the Magna Roman senate. Young Bellona never really caught on to the fact that her mother seemed to go to extraordinary lengths to keep her from unnecessary contact with the outside world; as soon as school was over, she would be swiftly spirited back home by one of the several private tutors or caretakers her mother hired. She was not allowed to make any friends that weren’t deemed to be beneficial to her in any way, for another. Under the hawklike supervision of her mother and tutors, Bellona spent the vast majority of her day studying or training in combat fitness or other soft skills such as oratorical speaking, with the rest of the day spent on her meals and all-important sleep. There was no such thing as freedom. An outsider would’ve called her lifestyle regimented. Her mother called it the life of the honorable Magna Roman. Possibly due in huge part to her aggressively restrictive lifestyle, Bellona graduated second from the top of her cohort in school. Bellona’s father was rarely around. As a Century Commander in the military, his work took him away from his family very often, to distant parts of Magna Roma and beyond, even. Whenever he was home, Bellona remembers him as being stern but kind and supportive, though he did little to ease the tightness of her mother’s regime. One fine day, though, he simply stopped coming home, having been sent on deployment with his legionaries just one week before by his superiors, and the letters he would send weekly simply stopped coming. Questioning this earned Bellona admonishment from her mother and tutors, who were eager for her to not be distracted in her development. Young and naïve, she never questioned it. Bellona was handed over to Gaius, a local gladiatorial trainer, aged seventeen, to complete formal training as a gladiatrix. Gaius was a stern, unforgiving mentor, imposing stifling discipline and harsh training upon all his trainees, a group of fifteen young Magna Romans. Their daily routine consisted mostly of training, with a sparse few carefully controlled meals. There was little leisure time if at all. The young trainees weren’t safe even after lights out - Gaius and his fellow trainers would sometimes wake them at odd hours, brandishing weapons of various kinds, under the guise of teaching each trainee to have their wits about them at all times, even when at rest, so as to keep them alert in the arena. It was a stressful life, to say the least. Bellona took to her training eagerly. Train up a child in the way that she should go, and she shall not depart from it - that phrase held alarmingly true for her. Bellona pushed herself to outperform her fellow trainees, accepting nothing less than only performance delivered at the very peak of her potential from herself, scaring even a few of the seniors with her zeal. She debuted in the arena aged 18 and a half years old as a samnite styled gladiatrix, wielding a holographic gladius and heavy shield against her much taller, stronger male opponent. In that fight, Bellona defeated him soundly by cracking three of his ribs, and she would have shattered his jaw too had the referee not stepped in to intervene. That was only the beginning of her impressive gladiatorial career. While Bellona did not possess a perfect track record by any means, she began to win often and consistently enough for fans to start rumors that she was in fact a blessed champion of the goddess for whom she was named. Bellona rebuffed these claims without hesitation always. No one ever realised that there was a far darker side to why nearly all of Gaius’ trainees had impressive records in the arena. Trainees who lost their matches would be forced to fight in what Gaius cruelly called repechage matches - fights against angered dangerous wild animals or, in some cases, other losing trainees. This time, though, there was no such thing as holotechnology safeties to safeguard them from injury. Matches were fought with real weapons, and only ended at Gaius’ whim, with the winning trainee being made to scrub the arena clean of blood by themself. Several trainees died this way. Despite her distinguished record in the arena, Bellona herself still fought seven of these cruel fights, and won them all - she had to, if she wanted to live. Bellona knew from her first ever repechage match that what she was being forced to do was wrong. It went against everything she’d been taught as a child. There was, however, no space for her to speak out against it - Gaius used these illegal fights to punish the more outspoken amongst them too. She would need to wait. Wait she did, biding her time until one day, Gaius took on a younger, wealthier and more sympathetic trainer named Thelonius under his tutelage. Bellona saw this as an opportunity for her to escape, assuming Thelonius was willing to divulge from his master’s teachings. He was. It took her months of doing what she could to get closer to him in order to convince him to help her leave. This he did, paying for a civilian freighter to take her to Earth. Bellona left alone in the dead of night, dressed plainly and with a hood over her head. She did not look back. Through word of mouth and the wonders of modern technology she came to know of her aunt Agrippina, who lived in England with her human husband. Bellona travelled there after arriving on Earth and was warmly and tearfully welcomed by both. At first, she did not settle well into life that was ‘free’; she would wake to the imagined sounds of Gaius’ reveille drum or have recurrent dreams of one of several repechage matches with her peers. She occupied her time (and mind) by trying to go back to painting, and above all trying to see what else she could possibly do to advance herself (with help, of course), sometimes with great difficulty. That was where Starfleet came into her life. While out on a walk in her neighbourhood one day, she stumbled upon a career convention taking place at the town hall. None of the jobs she enquired about particularly interested her - until she came upon the Starfleet recruitment booth, where she found herself enamored by the benefits offered by enlisting. She spoke at length with the recruitment officer there, where she found that she’d need to acquire a letter of recommendation from a ranking officer. Bellona saw this opportunity to better herself, serve a greater noble purpose than she had ever known and above all, atone, as Gods sent. She was aware of the amount of work she would need to put in to prove herself, of course. She would spend the next two months earnestly brushing up on her academics and personal fitness before finally acquiring said letter from the recruitment center’s commanding officer. Bellon used the time between then and the entrance exam to thoroughly brush up on her academics at a local library, using whatever textbooks and resources she could find, often into the wee hours of the morning. If the Gods themselves had seen fit to bestow this opportunity upon her, they would accept nothing less than performance worthy of them. When she finally sat for the entrance exam, Bellona was pleased to see her efforts culminate in a pass by a handsome margin, and acceptance into the next enlisting cohort of cadets. |
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Starfleet History | Bellona worked hard to achieve performance she believed was worthy of the Gods themselves. She was not the strongest, fastest or smartest in her cohort by any stretch of the imagination, but she worked her ass off to try and get there, or as close to there as possible. What she did not understand or lacked in, she would work at and unapologetically request remediation for until she became adept. Her unquenchable willingness to improve and sterling discipline was what earned her her appointment as cadet wing commander in her third year of study. She served honorably in this capacity (if in a somewhat hard-nosed fashion) before relinquishing it the following year before graduation. She graduated handsomely with her aunt and her husband in attendance. When she was finally shipped out to the Oberth-class research vessel, the USS Bencoolen, Bellona was shocked by how relaxed the culture there was. Nobody seemed bothered at all that the ship was not well armed and couldn’t defend itself well from threats in spite of how often the Bencoolen seemed to encounter danger in the course of its research journey. Her next few years would be spent as a vocal advocate for a different attitude towards preparedness and urgency. Bellona trained alone often despite suggestions to just relax and smell the roses, determined to set an example to everyone around her even if she couldn’t do more than that in her position. Change finally came in 2384, when four of her colleagues were killed in a boarding. Bellona was then more than happy to help contribute to better security measures and readiness drills along with whoever remained of her department before being posted out in 2385. Bellona’s next tour of duty was as an instructor at Starfleet Academy on Earth, teaching ship defense techniques for cadets on the security officer’s track. She became known as a sharp-tongued disciplinarian who had little tolerance for whining or complaints, quick to sternly remind her charges of the gravity of their jobs and the importance of maintaining professionalism and a sense of urgency at all times if she saw the need, and also for her often extremely realistic but also extremely tough but still progressive training. There is a sole instance of her coming to the defence of one of her trainees from bullying, however, though no reports have been officially confirmed. Bellona was one of seven Starfleet personnel selected to undergo joint training with the Klingon Defence Force at the end of her third year as an instructor. This training, a harsh environment tactics and survival skills course held on the unforgiving Klingon military colony known as Ro-45A, would take place over a period of six months. During that period, five of the seven chosen personnel were kicked out of the course, leaving Bellona and one other to carry on till the end. The rest of her syndicate (incidentally, mostly Klingons) expected her to go with - but she proved them wrong by surviving till the very end of the course’s summary exercise. Just a few kilometres from the finish line, the group of five was attacked by a group of sandworms; without hesitation Bellona ordered her syndicate mates to carry on to the finish line without her while she did her best to buy them time. Bellona managed to do so for a few seconds before being tossed through the air and landing in a sand dune. She wound up needing to be carried on a stretcher to the finish line, with genuine respect from her Klingon comrades. Bellona graduated along with her fellow Starfleet coursemate in the end, though. Bellona would have loved to use the skills she’d acquired immediately - but evidently someone at Starfleet Headquarters reckoned that she needed a break from the high-octane training she’d just gone through (and to heal from the injuries she’d sustained), because her next assignment was at Starfleet Headquarters as a plans officer, where her duties consisted mostly of deskbound work. Bellona despised the job, but she stuck it out for the next two years, during which she attended advanced command training in preparation to lead her own department one day before her next assignment. She was pleased to finally be able to put her skills to use in her next assignment, which was back at Starfleet Academy as deputy head of the away missions training branch. She spent two years helping to plan training curricula for aspiring security and tactical officers, incorporating bits and pieces of what she’d learned from the Klingons. She stayed long enough to see one of the training programmes she’d co-authored implemented experimentally with some success before being posted out at last. |
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Medical History | Bellona enlisted with several healed wounds of various kinds, caused by various types of real weapons in the arena, such as scars on her legs and wrists caused by bladed weapons. All of said wounds have been given proper professional medical attention and since closed without residual scarring. She has since gone on to suffer her fair share of cuts, scrapes, bruises, a total of three joint dislocations and one concussion in her career as a security officer. |
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Service Record | 2378-2382: Cadet, Starfleet Academy 2381: Appointed Cadet Wing Commander, Kirk wing 2382-2385: Security officer, USS Bencoolen 2385-2388: Instructor, Away Missions Training Branch, Starfleet Academy Earth campus 2388: Completes harsh environment skills training conducted by the Klingon Defense Force (lasting a duration of 6 months) 2388-2390: Staff officer, Starfleet Headquarters 2390: Completes advanced command courses (4 months) 2390-2392: Deputy Head, Away Missions Training Branch, Starfleet Academy Earth campus |
Character Progression System
CPS Option | DISABLED |