Award Winner – Is’Kah Xiron, Chin’toka (Xalor Clan Xifilis Award)

[StarBase 118 Staff]

Join us for another in a series of interviews with winners of awards from our 2401 / 2024 Awards Ceremony last June. Our goal is to give you insight into how our fleet’s best simmers write, and imagine their characters as well as their out of character contributions and achievements.

This month we’re interviewing the writer behind Lieutenant JG Is’Kah Xiron playing a Trill/Vulcan hybrid Engineering Officer assigned to the USS Chin’toka.  She won the Xalor Clan Xifilis Award: “Awarded to simmers who overcome a disadvantage throughout simming. This award was initially known as the “Rachel Garett Pendant,” but was renamed for the 2000 event to commemorate a valued StarBase 118 PBEM RPG simmer who died that year.”

Harford: Thanks for taking the time to be here, Is’Kah. Would you start by telling us a little bit about yourself, the writer. What part of the world do you call home and what do you do outside of SB 118?

Is’Kah: Thank you for interviewing your rival over at the FNS. I was homeschooled in Vancouver, Washington, USA. While growing up in the 90s, in the very early days of the internet, my e-mail client had dial-up to download my e-mail, giving me my first taste of this game style with a now-defunct rival fleet, and it hooked me on role-playing since. 

I eventually joined the United States Navy for 9 years. I loved my tours of duty, seeing a wide range of the world. After a ship tour of duty in Corpus Christie, Texas, USA, I was stationed in Washington DC metro area in 2002, doing two tours there. I lived there for 17 years before moving to Colorado Springs, Colorado. It wasn’t long after moving that I finally had my egg crack and realized that I am a Trans Woman. 

The award you won last June was for overcoming a personal disadvantage. Do you mind telling us a little about that? How did you maintain your focus and overcome the challenges you were facing OOC to continue simming? Did any of that struggle come across in canon for Is’Kah?

I learned in 2022 that I have porphyria, which means I am allergic to the Sun. I have all the weaknesses, except for garlic, of Vampires. My illness is the base for the myths, but thanks to modern medicine and technology, I can manage my health. Even if this means I rarely leave the house, as being out in the sun causes many issues, despite wearing UV Blocking clothes that cover me head to toe. 

When I am outside during daylight hours, I develop blisters on the tops of my feet, severe nerve pain as the nerve roots in both legs light up, often extending across other nerves, brain fog, and, the worst part, irrationality. The second worst is the brain fog, which has caused me to read sims and forget that I was tagged in them by the next day.

I also have PTSD from my time in the Navy, something that took me years to learn how to manage. I’ve used some of these feelings with Is’Kah after she developed it from watching a crewman get killed and feeling responsible for all the death and carnage left behind by an old foe of Commander Raga. 

You write a rather unique and chaotic character, how did Is’Kah develop? Walk us through your process for character development.

I made Is’Kah a Vulcan/Trill hybrid because I wanted to explore a Vulcan trying to learn how to balance her emotions. She also had to have things to overcome because perfect characters are bland in this type of game. It’s partly why she has a poor relationship with her Vulcan family. As for another one of her shortcomings, Is’Kah is short at 145 cm (4’9”) simply because I am barely under 2 meters (6’5). The in-universe reason is due to a birth defect. 

A significant portion of the chaos Is’Kah causes is related to my porphyria and how it affects my thought patterns. When I have a nasty flair, things that seem great at the moment translate into uncontrolled chaos thanks to the irrationality that it causes. I’ve been working on recognizing when Is’Kah becomes a chaos goblin, which has kept her wild nature down. 

Her feral nature has become a character flaw that she has been working on with her ship counselors to come to terms with her PTSD and having the emotional maturity of a 12-year-old, partly as that’s when she turned to the coldness of Vulcan logic. 

Part of collaborative writing is taking into account the stories and characters of your fellow writers as well as incorporating feedback. What is your approach to keeping your writing collaborative and supporting the plot points of others?

I imagine myself as both characters and their points of view, and I ask questions in character, helping Is’Kah and me understand what my scene partners are developing. If I am unsure where they are going, I message them and discuss the scene to get a rough idea of their thoughts. 

During shore leave, I speak with my crewmates about scenes we’d like to do, from mental health checks to developing new body armor and everything in between. Recently, Sylvie Doucet’s writer and I continued a plot point she created from a random question she had in Discord before the launch of the Chin’toka. 

Now Is’Kah is married to Ghee’looth Xiron IC, an Andorian in her same department. How has that relationship developed and how much does it influence what you write for your character?

While attending the academy, I talked to Ghee’looth’s writer on Discord. The night between graduating and being officially assigned to the Ronin, we ended up doing some RP where the two characters met. A few weeks later, we were talking, which resulted in developing the story around the idea that they were soul-bonded because they drank several bottles of Vulcan brandy, got the bright idea that a mind meld would be fun, and she messed it up. 

Is’Kah knows Andorian, something she never learned. She has also instinctively used a few Andorian Imperial Guard physical combat moves because her partner knew them before the meld. Ghee also knows Vulcan because Is’Kah knows how to speak it. 

When Is’Kah had a bad PTSD attack that resulted in bodily harm just before the Chin’toka launched, Ghee’looth was able to reach across space and time from Denali to the Ronin and helped Is’Kah escape from being trapped in that moment. 

After they were stationed together, Is’Kah started thinking more and more like an Andorian, adding Zha/Zhen pronouns to her record a few weeks ago. Before the pair were bonded, Is’Kah did not want children yet; now, she wants to have them with Ghee, but that’s well in the future. 

Finally, what advice have you received since joining the community that you wish you’d had at the beginning? How has that advice molded you as a writer or changed your writing process?

The fleet’s format is entirely different from what I was used to, and it took me a while to get used to it. I struggled at first with adding tags at the end, as I didn’t want to power-sim. My mentor helped me understand it was a “yes, and” situation. Since then, when writing my dialogue, I have considered my scene partner’s perspective and what I know of their character. 

Another thing my mentor suggested was to write only dialog when pushing a scene. Once the other writers have responded, I add Is’Kah’s actions and responses to what they wrote. If I had known that perspective earlier, I could have avoided a few missteps here and there. 

Thanks for your time, Lieutenant JG Is’Kah!

You can read more about Lieutenant Junior Grade Is’Kah Xiron on the wiki, here!

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