| Olympia Vale | |
|---|---|
 | |
|
Birth |
January 20, 2536 |
|
Species |
Human |
|
Gender |
Female |
|
Height |
6'9" (in armor) |
|
Weight |
224 lbs (without armor) |
|
Hair color |
Brown |
|
Eye color |
Brown |
|
Relationships |
Usze 'Taham (dating; engaged) |
Spartan Olympia Vale (service number 44482-91201-OV) is a Spartan-IV supersoldier of Fireteam Osiris. Vale is an anthropologist and xenoanthropologist, particularly adept in Sangheili and Forerunner culture, and fluent in Sangheili. Following the Human-Covenant War, Vale served as a professional diplomat for the United Nations Space Command, specializing in interspecies relations. While most Spartan-IVs are recruited from active field duty, Vale is an exception as she was accepted into the program after excelling in training exercises despite minimal field experience.
History[]
[]
Olympia Vale was born on the human Inner Colony of Luyten on January 20, 2536. Vale was a child prodigy who had an innate skill in languages. When she was eleven, her parents divorced. Her mother, a recently promoted captain in UNSC Navy signal intelligence, was reassigned to UNSC High Command in Sydney, Australia on Earth. Along with two other people, Vale and her mother left for the planet aboard a diplomatic shuttle for what was intended to be a six-day trip. While en route to the Sol system, their ship's slipspace drive failed and the trip ultimately took six months to return to inhabited space, dodging Covenant activity along the way. After annoying the others aboard the ship with her endless questions, she was shunted aside and ignored. To pass the time, Vale listened to recordings of the Sangheili's language and compared them to translations performed by artificial intelligences. She eventually taught herself the language and even proved several of the AI translations incorrect, or corrected inaccurate translations. After her arrival on Earth, Vale spent the remainder of her childhood on the relative safety of the planet. Vale attended Sydney University on Earth and, upon graduating, followed in her mother's footsteps and enlisted in the UNSC Navy's Office of Naval Intelligence, specializing in signals intelligence. Following the end of the Human-Covenant War in 2552, Vale found the opportunity to travel to the Sangheili frontier colony of Khael'mothka, where she wandered the planet for months. The world was embroiled in the Sangheili's ongoing civil war, though Vale's well-being was rarely endangered as she learned who to stay away from and many of the planet's inhabitants were both tired of war and curious to see the human.
By 2555, Vale served as a professional diplomat and a Sangheili culture and language expert for the Office of Naval Intelligence. Vale was required to study martial arts at the Green Cloud institution, as a prerequisite for serving as a frontline diplomat for ONI with the Sangheili. Serving as an ONI Special Liaison for the Unified Earth Government, Vale aided with negotiations with the emerging Swords of Sanghelios led by Arbiter Thel 'Vadam. Her fluency in the Sangheili language and knowledge of their society was highly valued by her superiors, though Vale was often busied by endless meetings with Sangheili diplomats.
Joining the SPARTAN-IV Program[]
The communication skills and combat prowess displayed by Vale throughout Operation: FAR STORM did not go unnoticed by the upper echelons of ONI. After the mission, perhaps at Spartan Frank Kodiak's suggestion, Vale considered joining the SPARTAN-IV program. After her experience at Installation 00, Vale found difficulty in returning to her former, often bureaucratic, routine. Seeking new challenges, she entered the UNSC's War Games, an inter-service event for UNSC Armed Forces personnel to practice on combat decks similar to those used for training by Spartans. Her combat training was minimal compared to most competitors, however, Vale managed to place in the top five percent through a combination of innate physical talent and quick-thinking. As a result of this performance, as well as recommendations from the highest levels of the Office of Naval Intelligence, Vale was approached by Spartan Operations seeking to cultivate warriors highly attuned to the complexities of a post-war threat environment.
Undergoing the augmentations program, Vale became a Spartan-IV.
Personality & Traits[]
Olympia Vale is personable and has a professional demeanor. Curious and composed, Vale is known to be very crisp and to the point. She does not care for far-fetched hopes and speculation when dealing with serious matters, instead preferring to deal with situations with logic and realism. However, Vale also values imagination and creativity, believing it to be important to her career as both a scientist and a soldier. She is very observant and quick to analyze situations; during Operation: FAR STORM, Vale was able to quickly determine that the morolaath hunted their prey by their sense of sound rather than sight and she was able to convince her allies to remain silent to avoid conflict with the animals as they passed by. Vale believes that humans, while occasionally inclined to war, always learned from their experiences and deserved the opportunity to amend the mistakes that were made. She was impressed by the progress made between humanity and other sapient species, such as the Sangheili, in terms of peace after nearly thirty years of war.
Being a xenoanthropologist, Vale is deeply interested in anything relating to the Sangheili or the Forerunners, and is proud of her knowledge of both species. Vale is completely fluent in Sangheili. When she interacts with Sangheili, she often speaks in their own language as a gesture of respect. Vale is fascinated by the contradictions and complexities of Sangheili culture, believing their psychology and society to be a difficult puzzle that she can unlock through dedication and study.
Physical description[]
Prior to becoming a Spartan-IV, Olympia Vale was of average size and build for the most part, though she was well-toned due to an exercise regimen she engaged in each morning. Her skin was lightly tanned and she had thick, lengthy brown hair that she typically kept tied back in a ponytail with brown eyes. Doctor Luther Mann noted that she had a curiously curved, rounded face with a pointed chin, reminding him of a classic Valentine heart. Following her Spartan-IV augmentations, Vale stood at 205.7 centimeters (6 feet and 9 inches) with her armor and weighed 101.6 kilograms (224 pounds) without her armor.
