Aster (RBU)

Aster is a long-time activist for the rights of shape-shifters living in the Tanari Confederation, and former member of the resistance against Edward Allman.

Early life
Aster was born on Yari III, a Tanari colony with a very large Shifter population. Six years prior to the events of BZPB Reborn, she became the parliamentary assistant of David Robert Jones, a nominally conservative Tanari senator nevertheless known for his vocal and avant-garde support of Shifters' rights. Presumably around the same time, she became friends with Richard Branley, another Shifter working for Jones.

Investigating Klak
After Edward Allman took over the Tanari Confederation, Aster was forced to flee the planet with Jones and Richard to avoid being murdered by the new dictatorship. They took refuge in an abandoned church on Malchior IV, which Aster and Richard used as a base of operations for stalking a Malchiorian police officer named Klak, who Jones had somehow identified as potentially useful to stopping Allman's plans. Just as she returned from one of these outings, Jones was shot by Robert "Barricade" Clinton, an assassin sent by Allman. Even though the injury should have been fatal, Jones recovered thanks to a powerful healing serum he'd been given by a friendly scientist as an insurance policy against assassination attempts by Allman. As Jones hadn't told Aster about this, fearing the information could somehow get back to Allman who would adapt his tactics accordingly, she was quite angry about it.

Aster and Richard followed Klak, Nadle and Bob on their excursion to the Bangalore Plains to find a temple containing the Craft of Laigula, and jumped into action when the three were attacked by Figlio di Armechio, who wanted the Craft for himself and his father Uteriach. When Figlio proceeded to accidentally awaken Caiaphus from his slumber, Richard tried to convince him to attack the Dachori, a plan Aster thought was crazy, and was proven right, as having injured Figlio, Caiaphus immediately went after Klak. Figlio then pretended to have a plan to kill Caiaphus with explosives he claimed to have hidden on his person and needed one of the others to distract him, and, though Aster protested vehemently, Richard went along with it and yelled abuse at the eldritch being while Figlio set up the explosives. While Richard's abuse did anger Caiaphus, this just allowed Figlio enough time to make off with the Craft. Aster, at this point furious with Richard's repeated miscalculations, laid down her own smoke screen, allowing the group to get out of the temple just as Figlio escaped in the Craft, Coro belatedly turned up to berate Aster and Richard for not deciphering the message he had left, in the form of runes on Jones' bed, warning them to keep away from the temple, and Klak accused them of intending to free Caiaphus all along. All this, especially Coro's unwillingness to communicate clearly, made Aster very angry again, and Richard had to calm her down and agree to help the others locate Figlio and the Craft.

Aster and Richard went with the rest of the group to Klak's house, where Klak's mother, Norma Vell, took her aside to gauge how much she had already figured out about Klak's powers. Aster revealed that she knew Klak was 'no ordinary Malchiorian', both in terms of his physical abilities and his character, in the process accidentally letting it slip that part of her mission was to find out more. Norma made Aster promise not to tell anyone about Klak's abilities, as she believed that the revelation could cause a war and doom Malchior, though Aster had no intention of keeping the promise, as the conversation had only further convinced her that Klak could be used as a weapon against Allman.

Birth of the Resistance
On their return to the church, Aster and Richard found Jones already on his way out flanked by a suspicious machine, which Jones claimed was a messenger taking him to see someone also opposed to Allman. That person turned out to be Aria Nashton, daughter of prominent progressive senator Anthony Nashton, who had made it out of the Confederation (unlike her father ) and was now running an anti-Allman spy network and had constructed a small army of robots, as well as planted an agent, Azrael, within Allman's inner circle. Aria proposed an alliance to Jones, arguing he would serve as a perfect symbol for an uprising against Allman. Jones agreed, and Aster and Richard echoed his agreement even though nobody was really asking them, because they were feeling left out during the conversation.

Return to Tanari Prime
At some later point, she, Jones and Richard returned to Tanari Prime to join the resistance against Allman directly. This required them to, at least for a time, hide out in an abandoned holiday resort. Little is known about Aster's activities during this period, other than that they required her to kill people and that she was aware of the existence of at least one secret cache of heavy weapons.

The defeat and death of Allman and the subsequent return of democracy allowed Shifters to organise openly in order to fight for their rights, which led to the creation of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF), with Aster becoming its de facto leader. Aided by new Confederation President Silver Eachan's acquiescence to some of their demands out of a desire to be seen as a post-Allman reformist, the MRF scored many initial victories, including the ending of compulsory military service and the closure of the detention camps Allman had set up for Shifters, but Eachan's government was unwilling to go much further on crucial topics, which frustrated many Shifters and led them to conclude that the Tanari state could not be reformed to accommodate them and had to be opposed. While Aster strongly disagreed, Richard didn't, which led him to distance himself from the MRF and effectively destroyed their friendship.

Blackout's Machinations
One day, Richard turned up at Aster's office at MRF headquarters and revealed that he and his associates had broken the mercenaries Ashton Carney, Amanda Warren, and Pes out of a secret Tanari military prison, as well as replaced General Ernest Van Smoot with a Shifter spy, as part of a convoluted plan to undermine the stability of the Tanari Confederation by revealing that Silver Eachan's administration was involved in shady activities. While Aster was unwilling to, as she saw it, put the Shifters in danger by unambiguously identifying them with opposition to the Tanari state, Richard hoped that, by making her aware of his plan, Aster would be unable to deny responsibility and the MRF would have no choice but to continue along his preferred path. At first, Aster believed he had succeeded in putting her and her party in an impossible position, until Blackout suddenly arrived and, for reasons he refused to divulge, informed her that Richard and his associates were using the same abandoned resort they had previously used during their time in the anti-Allman resistance as their base of operations. Armed with this new information, she rounded up a number of volunteers from the private security force the MRF sometimes used to defend their events from attacks by extremists and travelled to the resort to free Richard's prisoners before the government located them. As their arrival coincided with the prisoners' own attempt to escape, they were able to ambush Richard. However, he refused to go quietly and tried to steal a weapon to fight his way out, forcing Aster to shoot him - which left her in a state of mild shock.

After sending the mercs off, Aster surprised Silver Eachan at his official residence by bringing back Van Smoot (and forcing the Shifter impersonating him to flee), and then informing him that she'd dealt with the Richard situation easily while the Tanari government hadn't had any idea where to start. As her price for keeping the entire incident a secret, she demanded Eachan tell her everything the government knew about Blackout. The truth - that Blackout was the only known survivor of a race called the Voids, who had possibly helped manipulate Allman into launching the Tanari-Takemikazuchi war and must have manipulated her into (as she believed) killing Richard for his own purposes, and that Jones had known about his existence but kept it a secret - again shocked her and left her not knowing if there was anyone left she could fully trust.

Trivia

 * The image of Aster previously used on this page is actually of the version of Aster DRJ uses in D&D, which is why she carries so many blades in it.