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The EARTHBOUND Series

Character Biographies

Nykkyo Kyhana
Nykkyo is a young man, a native of Planet Floran. He's 31 Floran years old -- about 25 Earth years. As a child, Nykkyo lived in a luxurious but isolated home on the southern coast of Floran's only continent. He's lived in the shadow of others -- his father was the Floran Food Service Ag Director, and his wife Senta is an important Food Service official as well. Nykkyo was orphaned as a youth. He flunked out of his first college, and then was wed to Senta in a marriage brokered by her stepfather. While clearing out his parents' possessions at his childhood home, Nyk discovered a set of data capsules containing the journal of Koichi Kyhana, his ancestor and one of Floran's founding fathers. Nyk began the effort to learn the ancient Esperanto tongue and began translating the journal, which instilled in him a fascination for Earth. He subsequently studied exobotany at a trade school in Floran City and was accepted into the ExoAgency for his Earth assigment.

Senta Tibran Kyhana
Senta was also orphaned, as an infant, and was raised by her stepfather Veska. She is about two and a half Floran years older than her husband. She is a brilliant microbiologist who was fast-tracked through the most prestigious university. During her research, she uncovered a terrorist plot to poison the planet's food supply by genetically modifying a legueme to produce the deadly boitoxin ricin. Senta was asked to devise a mechanism to prevent such an action in the future. She developed the genetic sequencing labs and was made their head, the youngest full director of a Food Service branch in the planet's history.

Sukiko Kyhana
Suki is a Japanese-American Earth woman, about 27 years old. She had a troubled adolescence involving alcohol and drug use. She may have been sexually molested as a child. Suki turned her life around in college and earned a PhD in Middle-Eastern History from NYU. She was forced into an arranged marriage with the son of one of her father's business associates, who brutalized her. She fled to a small midwestern university where she obtained a post as lecturer of a course in comparative religion.

Andra Ylla Baxa
Andra is an ax'amfin [lit. "purchased companion"], a genetically-engineered young Floran woman of exquisite beauty and great intelligence. The ax'amfinen are placed into special finishing schools and trained in statecraft and protocol, and are usually assigned to be consorts of planetary and colonial high officials. Like all ax'amfinen Andra is a near-albino. Unlike most of her ilk, Andra was assigned to Zander Baxa (rhymes with "cha-cha"), a mid-level ExoService functionary, as his reward for completing a secret project for the ExoAgency.

Zander Baxa
Zander was Nykkyo's closest childhood friend. As a young man, Zander enlisted in the ExoService, quickly rose through the ranks and was given a number of sensitive assignments. One such assignment involved engineering Earth identities for Floran ExoAgents on assignment there. As a reward for his ExoService performance, Zander was assigned the companionship of Andra Ylla, a graduate of the most prestigious of the finishing schools, whom he married.

Yasuko Tanaka Kyhana
Yasuko is Suki's mother. She was born in Hiroshima, Japan in 1943 and sent to live with an aunt in Nagano at the age of one year. The rest of her family perished a year after that in the atomic bombing. As a pre-teen, Yasuko was sent to New York to live with a distant cousin, and her situation was not much better than as an indentured servant. When she was in her twenties, questions about her immigration status arose. She married George Kyhana, the son of a friend of the family, in order to remain in the US.

George Kyhana
George is Suki's father. His family arrived from Japan in the 1890s, at which point the family name was anglicized to Kyhana. George's mother was Thai, and died while he was quite young. His father ran a jewelry business and invented the Kyhana "crest". George never completed college, dropping out after his sophomore year. He took a position as a floor runner in a Wall Street brokerage and became a stock trader. Looking for a housekeeper, he agreed to marry Yasuko Tanaka, who desired an American husband to avoid being deported. Sukiko was born to Yasuko about five years later. About five years after that, George's father went bankrupt and committed hari-kiri. George took it upon himself to repay his father's debts. This wiped him out financially, and he had to start over. Yasuko helped as she could taking odd jobs as a cleaning woman. Eventually, George restablished himself and became a stock analyst and an investment banker. George's brother Jonathan took over what remained of his father's jewelry business and runs a small shop in a retail section of Queens.

Philip Seymor
Seymor is the Earth identity of a man who's been Earthbound so long he almost has forgotten he's really a Floran. Seymor is the ExoAgency's Agent-in-Chief for North American Operations. He operates a shill organization called FloranCo that serves as a front for ExoAgency activities. FloranCo runs a moderately successful plant breeding operation, but the majority of the revenue comes from the sale of Floran diamonds. Rumors abound of Seymor's fondness for the Earth good life. Shrewd investing; or, pilfering the Agency's Earth funds (or, both) have permitted Seymor to afford a Midtown Manhattan penthouse. Seymor's office is in the Tribeca section of Manhattan.