Sauscony Lahaylia Valdoria Skolia
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| Sauscony Valdoria Skolia | |
|---|---|
| Saga of the Skolian Empire character | |
| First appearance | Primary Inversion |
| Last appearance | The Radiant Seas |
| Created by | Catherine Asaro |
| Information | |
| Nickname(s) | Soz, Soshoni |
| Gender | Female |
| Occupation | Jagernaut Primary, Imperator of Skolia |
| Family | mother Roca Skolia, father Eldrinson Althor Valdoria |
| Spouse(s) | 1) Jato Stormson (divorced), 2) Hypron Luminar (deceased), 3) Jaibriol Qox II (present) |
| Children | sons Jaibriol III, Vitar and del-Kelric, daughter Rocalisa |
| Address | Planet Prism |
Sauscony Lahaylia Valdoria Skolia, also called Soz, is a Jagernaut Primary who later becomes Imperator in the Saga of the Skolian empire, a series of books by Catherine Asaro.
The Skolian Imperialate novels in which Soz is a major character are:
- Primary Inversion covering her early life and later meeting with Jaibriol Qox II;
- the short story "Aurora in Four Voices" where she meets and rescues Jato Stormson;
- The Radiant Seas which covers her escape with Jaibriol, life with children, return to Skolia, and second escape.
Soz is a Jagernaut, a top cybernetic warrior, and has many technical enhancements within her body, including a strengthened skeleton and a computer implant in her spinal column. She is at the same time a Rhon psion, a powerful telepath who can read emotions and thoughts, and a member of the Ruby Dynasty, ruling family of the Skolian Imperialate.
Despite being a psion, she has often problems expressing her feelings. She is not very good with words and prefers action to talking. Though hard-edged, Soz has also a sensitive side, which she doesn't show very often, because she considers it a weakness. She can handle machines better than she handles men, who are sometimes frightened by her blunt manners.
Soz was born on the rustic planet Lyshriol as the sixth of ten children of the local Bard Eldrinson Valdoria and his wife Roca Skolia, a Ruby Dynasty heir. Since early childhood she showed huge interest in modern technology of her mother's people, especially that connected to military. At the age of 16 she took preliminary entrance exams for the Dieshan Military Academy (DMA) to fulfill her dream and become a Jagernaut. After achieving record high scores (perfect in fact) she was granted immediate acceptance into the academy – much to the displeasure of her father, who feared losing his children to war and couldn’t understand why a girl would want to become a warrior, when she should be perfectly happy with finding a husband and running a household with many children.
Soz excelled in all subjects, military strategy and engineering being just a few of them. She graduated from the DMA in only two years and as her later career also proceeded with a rocket-like speed, she gained the rank of a Primary (equivalent to the rank of a Major General or Rear Admiral Upper Half) even before she was forty. She became the leader of Zabo Squadron and her half-brother Kurj, the Imperator of Skolia named her as one of his three possible imperial heirs (the other two being her brothers Althor and Kelric). But she too had to deal with the difficulties of her job, when she due to her empaths mind experienced the deaths of enemies she killed. A capture during an undercover mission, when she was tortured and raped by an Aristo, also scarred her deeply.
Unlike her career, Soz's personal life wasn't very successful. Her first marriage to Jato Stormson ended in divorce after Soz got pregnant but lost the baby after being injured during a space battle. Her second husband, Hypron Luminar, died of an uncurable illness after only a few months of marriage.
Soz met her third husband Jaibriol Qox on the neutral Alied planet Delos. Like Soz, Jaibriol was also a Rhon psion, but he was also a member of the Aristo Highton caste and heir to the enemy of Skolians, the Eubian Concord. In order to come together they first had to overcome many difficulties and finally decided to fake their own deaths in order to go into exile on an isolated planet within Allied (Earth) space, which they named Prism. They lived there a happy life there for 16 years and raised four children.
When Kurj died and Jaibriol was kidnapped by Eubians, Soz returned home to become the new Imperator of the Skolian Imperialate. To rescue her husband and prevent the Eubians from conquering Skolia, she sent a fleet to Eube’s homeworld, Glory, extending a conflict that became known as the Radiance War. At the end of the war, she and Jaibriol faked their deaths again to go back into exile and start a stable colony on Prism together with their children, Soz’s brother Althor and a group of Jagernaut volunteers. Choosing to stay behind, Soz’s oldest son later became the Emperor of Eube as Jaibriol III.
