S051 - Polaris, Iliya "Liya" [DECEASED]

#1

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Name: Iliya “Liya” Polaris
Gender: Female
Age: 17
Grade: 12
School: John Endecott Memorial Academy
Hobbies and Interests: Witchcraft and occultism, transhumanism, social justice and politics, lacrosse, punk and rock music, bass guitar, chicken rearing

Appearance: Iliya stands fairly tall at 5’11” and weighs 160 lbs. She has pale skin, an oval-shaped face with acne marks across it, dark blue eyes, a turned-up nose, and thin lips with a beauty mark to the lower left of her mouth. Her hair is wavy, black, and is cut at the shoulders. It is usually kept in a loose ponytail.

Iliya typically dresses rather casually, with a preference for oversized clothes and more masculine attire. A typical outfit for her consists of baggy t-shirts and distressed jeans with sneakers, and (unless it’s a hot day) either her worn, somewhat oversized leather jacket or one of her sweaters. She sometimes wears accessories like a fabric choker, red or purple ribbon hair ties, and black bead bracelets with rose charms.

On the day of the abduction, Iliya wore an oversized, black graphic t-shirt with a stylized purple rose pattern on it, navy blue bootcut jeans, black boots, and a black winter jacket over top. She wore a violet fabric choker necklace and black driving gloves as well.

Biography: Iliya was born on the 13th of September, 2004 to Andrey and Sofiya Polaris. The two had met when Sofiya’s older sister, Hanna, recommended Andrey’s services as an astrologer to her, but they only started dating years later. When Sofiya unexpectedly got pregnant with their first child, Andrey decided to marry her. About five years later they had Iliya, their second daughter. As their first daughter was named after Sofiya’s aunt, Aisha, they planned to name her second child after her uncle - which they decided to stick with even after learning their child’s sex.

Iliya’s lives with, in addition to her parents, her maternal grandparents and aunt Hanna on a chicken farm just outside of Salem, which Hanna took over from her late uncle, Iliya Sr. Iliya had another aunt, Klara, who lived in the city with her husband but would frequently visit her sisters and parents. Iliya’s grandparents - as well as Andrey, Sofiya, and Hanna - are practicing Wiccans, and Iliya grew up familiar with and an occasional participant in the religion, particularly its sabbats and esbats. Iliya’s parents would like her to share their religion when she comes of age but are willing to support her regardless. Sofiya worked odd jobs throughout Iliya's early childhood, while Andrey continued to work as an astrologer.

When Iliya was about five years old, her grandfather Peter was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. A year later, when his condition progressed to its middle stages, Sofiya quit working in order to help Hanna care for Peter. Though she was young at the time and her parents struggled to explain the situation to her, Iliya understood that her grandfather wasn’t doing or feeling well. It worried her greatly, and she felt like her parents were hiding something from her about it, which caused her even more stress.

Iliya faced issues in school in the second grade. Even beforehand, Iliya was known by her teachers to be withdrawn and moody at times, but in second grade she became far less co-operative and communicative with her teachers and would semi-regularly get into confrontations with other children. Even though she typically wasn’t the instigator, she had a tendency to escalate conflict due to her unwillingness to back down or attempt to compromise, which landed her in trouble. Sofiya and Andrey were distressed by this as they hadn’t really encountered these issues at home and felt that it might have been because a public school environment was putting Iliya under a lot of extra stress.

This led to Sofiya’s decision to homeschool Iliya starting in the third grade, which they continued to do until the end of fifth grade. Iliya fared better in a homeschool environment, both education-wise, and emotionally. She still had social troubles with other children in the local homeschooling network but with her mother’s help and mediation, those were also eased in comparison to her time in second grade.

During Iliya’s time being homeschooled, Hanna would give her and Aisha simple chores around the house or the chicken farm in their free time, both to keep them occupied and to teach her responsibility and a respect for animals. When aunt Klara visited, she brought her own daughter Anna, who was a year younger than Iliya. Anna would also join Iliya and Aisha during their farm chores when she visited. This time together made Iliya, Aisha, and Anna close friends, and Iliya has a friendly relationship with her older sister to this day.

After three years of homeschooling, Sofiya felt that Iliya was ready to re-enter public school, which she did in sixth grade. She was still rather introverted, but she stayed out of trouble and got fair grades, which both she and her parents were satisfied with. Early into sixth grade, Andrey would give Iliya a bass guitar as a gift. Playing the bass was a hobby of Andrey’s that he started during his own youth, and he wished to share it with Iliya. She practiced the bass guitar throughout middle school, but was reluctant to play for an audience during that time.

During middle school, Iliya started spending a significant amount of time online, at first to keep up with the friends she met in the homeschooling network. Through the internet, Iliya was introduced to world news, politics, and social justice. She found reading about these topics uncomfortable at times but also intriguing and felt it was important to keep up to date on them. In particular, this was how Iliya learned of the specifics of Survival of The Fittest. While she never tried to look for actual footage, she felt a need to find out more about it, due to its impact on the world, and its proximity to her, as a student in the United States of America.

Iliya’s introduction to transhumanism came during a forum discussion. It caught her interest, which led her to look for more information on the topic. Though she was drawn to the ideas, and specifically the idea of overcoming humanity’s fundamental limitations with technology, she wouldn’t consider herself a transhumanist until years later.

In the summer before Iliya entered high school during a family get-together Anna told Iliya in private that her mother often shouted at her over things from minor infractions to things Anna didn’t actually do and would often threaten to deny her food as well. This shocked Iliya, who felt that this had to be stopped immediately. After the get-together, she relayed this information to her own parents, expecting them to intervene. Instead, Andrey and Sofiya expressed skepticism, not believing that Klara would do such things and suggested that Anna was simply exaggerating because she was upset with her mother. In turn, Iliya refused to believe that Anna was exaggerating, but her parents were unconvinced. When Klara and her family next visited, Sofiya mentioned the conversation to Klara’s husband. After that, Klara no longer brought Anna on her visits, and Iliya suspects that Anna was forbidden from trying to communicate with her, as she hadn't reached out to her afterwards. However, Anna was later able to get into contact with Iliya online at the start of the current school year, and the two have been communicating since then. Anna wants to get away from her mother and Iliya wants to help, but neither of them are sure how to go about that yet.

This incident damaged Iliya’s faith in her parents and her relationship with them. She felt she could no longer trust them with vital information, or trust them to keep their wards out of harm. Iliya’s relationship with her parents has been strained ever since. Though her parents do wish to repair it, neither they nor Iliya are sure how. It also soured her attitude towards teachers and other adult authorities going into high school, believing she couldn’t trust them to resolve serious problems either.

For high school, Iliya enrolled in John Endecott Memorial Academy. This was when Iliya began identifying as pansexual and had a desire to present in a more masculine manner (though she still considers herself female).

Alongside this, Iliya began to critically question her family’s own beliefs, and Wicca in general, concluding that it wasn’t the path for her. The biggest reason Iliya began questioning Wicca as a religion was because of its concepts of divine feminine and masculine, which she grew to dislike, seeing it as a reductive and conservative view of gender, especially in connection to her own experiences as a queer person. She also felt Wicca clashed with her growing interest in transhumanism. Through her time online, especially in political spaces, Iliya developed the belief that the human condition, both in mind and body, was inherently flawed and limiting. She felt that many of society’s problems can only be permanently ended by changing or transcending it, with technology being the best route to that, and feels this is at odds with the Wiccan reverence for nature and the human body as it is. However, Iliya does still consider herself pagan and retains an interest in witchcraft. She enjoys learning about the history and theory of occultism in her free time and does still perform folk magic spells and rites on occasion.

Also in her first year of high school, Iliya joined the school’s lacrosse team. Iliya wanted to pick up a sport when she was in high school, but only decided on lacrosse when tryouts for the team started. While the pandemic interrupted her participation in the game, she was quick to take it up again when she returned to school following the lockdown. Iliya likes having a team sport to play, as she finds them a good outlet and a source of camaraderie. She plays as a forward, and is considered a moderately good player.

In sophomore year, Iliya joined fellow student Amaryllis Peszek-Byrne’s band, playing bass guitar. Similarly, in sophomore year she started spending more time on music in general, both playing music as well as listening to and discussing music with in-person friends and online. Her taste in music tends towards rock and punk in terms of genre, though she also enjoys electronic dance music. She remained a part of the band through the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown and is still an active member to this day.

Iliya’s anti-authoritarianism grew through her continued involvement in online social justice spaces during her high school years, particularly from sophomore year onwards. Events such as the re-emergence of SOTF, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the protests against police brutality strengthened Iliya’s belief that current authorities could not be trusted to help those who depend on them in times of crisis. When Iliya got her driving license, she was able to participate in protests in the city as well.

In school, Iliya is academically adept at most of her subjects, particularly the humanities and sciences. However, she mainly gets middling grades as she tends to miss assignments. Iliya dislikes school and does not want to pursue a post-secondary education but feels she may have to in order to get a job in the future. If she does, she will likely pursue mechanical engineering or computer science.

Iliya does still help around the chicken farm, particularly since Aisha moved away to live with her fiance in the last month. While caring for chickens isn’t always an enjoyable task for her, she does find it fulfilling, and takes it rather seriously.

Iliya is known for being rather abrasive, stubborn, strongly opinionated, and somewhat confrontational among her peers. She has a few close friends among them, who she is more laid back around, and some former friends who have been driven away by Iliya’s general attitude. Her own opinion on the latter is that those who can’t handle her headstrong nature don’t understand her and would have made boring friends anyway. Of her current friends, she is protective and does try to avoid starting arguments with, though she isn’t always successful in this. She considers having a strong sense of morals and justice the most important thing about her, and tries to act on it whenever she has the power to - she's willing to help people she personally doesn't like, or call out her friends, if it means doing what she feels is right.

Advantages: Iliya is fairly physically fit, by virtue of spending a lot of time active and outdoors, and from playing lacrosse. She is fairly determined, and her strong sense of justice can help rally people to her side.
Disadvantages: Iliya can quickly turn potential allies away with her abrasiveness, and is generally considered by most to be difficult to work with. Her stubborn nature and distaste for authority can lead her into trouble when in groups.

Designated Number: Student No. 051

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Designated Weapon: Billhook

Conclusion: Stubborn, abrasive, armed with a deadly weapon...wait a sec...her parents are Wiccans? Shit. we're doing her a favor, getting her away from those freaks - Josie Knight

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