Character portrait for one of the later characters in the story, Arden Eryla. Seventy thousand years ago, Arden was born on Ryi, the anaji homeworld, just prior to the anaji's first contact with the tanu virus that was beginning to enroach on this galaxy. For thousands of years the anaji fought against the tanu, but the invaders would not be stopped. Despite the high technology and brave sacrifices of the anaji, the tanu had numbers and raw firepower on their side. Ryi fell, but the anaji warships remained in hiding throughout the galaxy, ready to retake their homeworld as soon as they could. Arden, alongside most of her bretheren, remained in cryo-stasis through most of the time between the fall of Ryi and the seeding of Takisi Garden. However, it was Arden's ship, the Azhas, that was chosen to guard construction of the Mars weapon in the Sol System, so she was apart from the rest of the battlefleet when the tanu found it. Soon after the Mars construction was complete, Arden returned to the core to get into contact with other anaji, but could find none. Alone and without any idea what she alone could do against the hostile virus that had killed off all of her people, Arden hid her ship in a dense nebula and put herself into cryo-stasis to preserve her supply of air and food, hoping that someone would be able to find her someday. It would be much, much longer than she thought. Fifty thousand years later, as the tanu began enroaching on Takisi Garden, a territory they had long ignored, the mixed races who were the progeny of the anaji sent out a ship called the Amrha III. Manned by some of Takisi Garden's most heroic and capable people, this lone ship traversed the distance from Takisi Garden to the galactic core, finding first the broken remains of Ryi, and then finding the Azhas, buried within a tanu neb-sphere. Arden was reawakened by the crew of the Amrha III, and was only too glad to answer their plea for aid in averting the destruction of Takisi Garden, the least she could do for her race's children. Returning to Takisi Garden just in time to save the day at the Battle of Xarsil, Arden took the vanguard of the Takisi Garden/Tokin fleet to retake the Sol System and give the TG races a valuable weapon against the tanu onslaught - Mars. While they were successful, and the Mars weapon demonstrated ferociously the power of the anaji, the tanu slipped past its defenses and destroyed the entire planet, then seeded Earth with viral spores, infecting millions of humans with the tanu virus. Convinced that the only way to save Takisi Garden was to destroy the da'si, the tanu intelligence, Arden hatched a plan to use herself as bait in an attempt to destroy, once and for all, this scourge of galaxies.