Paige Sullivan was born two days early on the SS Thermopolis, a transport ship that serves as something like a private (non-Starfleet) space taxi between Vulcan and Earth. Had she held out, Paige would have been born on Earth, but as it was she took her first breath somewhere just past Pluto. This event defines her relationship with her mother: tumultuous and a little inconvenient.

Milo Sullivan, Paige's father, washed out of Starfleet -- twice -- having never been that ambitious or too great a thinker. Add his abhorrence of violence and his incomprehension of interstellar affairs, and Starfleet life was far from the adventure he'd imagined in childhood. Eventually, Milo discovered that piloting his small short-range ship was rewarding enough. He is a good man: kind and easy going, and has dedicated himself to caring for his daughter and his ship -- though it is often difficult to decide which ranks first.

Paige's mother Evelyn Harkins (Sullivan) Bowley, however, is the opposite. Having fallen for Milo because of his simple and easy-going approach to life, after six years on a small ship back and forth between systems she quickly fell out of her infatuation. Five years after her daughter's birth, Evelyn and Milo formally divorced and she moved to Mars where she began her own career as a specialty caterer. Two years later, she married Stephen Bowley, an engineer at the Starfleet shipyards.

Because of her parent's divorce, Paige spent her childhood going back and forth between the Thermopolis and Mars in a "shared custody" arrangement she absolutely hated. Having always been daddy's little girl, she grew to resent her mother's decisions and especially the fact that it was decided she would attend school on Mars for "normalcy" (she lived with her father only during breaks).

All things considered, Paige's childhood, particularly her teen years, were normal in the fact that they were mildly tumultuous but never resulted in anything too scandalous. She acted out in little ways, content to exist on the periphery of teenage culture and was known by her peer group for being a "little weird," a conception she encouraged. She has explained her place in the high school social cast as "being popular for not being popular -- I was that weird, independent kid everyone wished they could know or the guts to be."

Paige was in some advanced classes, but she never worked very hard in school; she preferred to coast through academics rather than put in any extra effort and excel. The school counselors called her a "successful underachiever." She was capable of doing far better than she did in practically every aspect of her life, they told her, if she would only put her mind to it. But Paige just didn't really care.

This apathy had two exceptions: the Parrises Squares varsity squad, of which she was a member from her freshman year on -- notable in that it was all but unheard of to have a Frosh on the Varsity squad -- and the Introduction to Starfleet Operations Systems courses she took her junior and senior years. For some reason, Ops grabbed her attention and she found she looked forward not only to going to the class, but to doing the work (for the first time, she even began doing extra credit!).

Paige graduated high school with a respectable B average, a couple of extra curriculars, and no clue what she wanted to do next. She toyed with the idea of disappearing for a while to explore the Universe outside the Sol-to-Vulcan run, but her stepfather, 'Steve', tried to corral her into something more permanent. He set up a conversation with one of his friends in the Operations department at Utopia, and the Lieutenant Commander offered to write her a letter of recommendation to the Academy if she passed the entrance exam. She decided she might as well, and she scored in the middle percentile for acceptance -- not great, but good enough -- and was admitted with only two deficiencies.

Starfleet Academy was exactly what Paige expected it to be: an extension of high school but with more rules and a significant increase in the amount of over-achieving popular kids. It took her a while to find a peer group she could understand, which might not have been in the best interest of a career. She spent the first two and a half years ditching classes, playing pranks, and dating boys based on whether or not her mother would disapprove of them. One, Josiah Woshofsky, almost got her expelled by convincing her to ditch opening convocation which resulted in getting caught by the groundskeeper completely naked (plus some).

At the start of her third year, Paige decided it might be time to get a little more serious. If nothing else, she rationalized, Starfleet would be a good way to explore beyond her comfort zone and maybe figure out who she was and what she wanted to do with her life. She decided to dedicate herself to her training, and though she still simply coasted through the remaining requirements, she applied herself to the courses in her Operations major. She began to make something of her time at the Academy, and began to reinvent herself into someone with a future in the Fleet.

For the first time, Paige began to focus on being something more than a feisty, teenage malcontent. She spent more time in class and participating in "practical applications" exercises than she did out running amuck. Paige began to befriend more "serious" cadets, joined the Parrises Squares Maroon Squad (the second best in the Academy), started playing Velocity, and learned Bajoran springball from her roommate. The marks in other coursework continued to be only slightly above average, but the challenge of Operations intrigued her. It didn't exactly come easily -- she had to work hard to excel -- but for the first time she actually wanted to put in that effort.

With her new found dedication, Paige's standing in the Class of 2384 improved dramatically by the start of her third year's second semester, and she began to attract the notice of professors, especially in the Operations department. Conrad Hanover, a professor of applied computer mechanics (and one of the pioneers of the bio-neural gel-pack technology), took her under his wing and encouraged her to sign up for an array of advanced seminars in the Operations field. Supplementing it with a one-on-one special studies, Paige began to get recognition for her efforts and she improved to the top 20% in her field.

Hanover encouraged her to apply for a fourth year Cadet Cruise, a privilege awarded to only a selected few from each discipline. Because of her other marks (and her struggles in her first two years), Paige doubted she would get the position. Her mentor was adamant and she applied more for him than anything else -- after making him swear he would do nothing more than submit a letter of recommendation. Halfway through the first semester of her fourth year, she received notice that she had been wait-listed for one of the positions; in late December, she was told she had a placement if she wanted it -- but she had to leave within the week.

In early January 2385, Paige Sullivan was officially assigned to the USS Galaxy as a Cadet on Cruise. She came on board shortly thereafter, during the ordered evacuation of the Vared Cluster colonies.

Paige is a relatively average 24th century girl living a relatively average 24th century life. There is little especially unique about her, and in light of the extraordinary people who fill Starfleet, she often wonders if it's the right place for her. She tries to remember her mother's stereotypical words of assurance, that "everyone's special," but she can't help but feel that's a bunch of bull.

In many ways, she's still a teenager trying to figure out who she is and what she wants out of her life. Though she has made many advances in the last year and a half, she still has a tendency to resent authority and be a little abrasive if she's challenged. She likes to do her own thing and while she's perfectly happy to spend hours alone in the Jefferies Tubes working on the systems, she bristles if she's critiqued too harshly about it. She doesn't handle adversity or take criticism particularly well, but she hides that fact behind a mask of sarcasm or complete apathy. Despite, she often is desperate to please, particularly adults that she places in a 'sibling' like role or those who could take a father-figure position. She's more at ease with men than women, and struggles in her relationships with girls her peer groups.

Paige likes to enjoy herself, and often doesn't know when to say no; she is easily swayed by peer pressure and deep down, desperately wants to be liked (despite how she might seem on the outside). Paige's greatest strength is her loyalty, which she doesn't offer easily; she is devoted to those she identifies as friends even if sometimes she shouldn't be.

She is often seen as even more youthful than she is; she has an innocence about her and it's easy to forget she's a budding adult. Paige grew up relatively sheltered and is quite a bit naive. Until the Academy she spent little time outside of her mother's Martian neighborhood or off her father's ship and the reality of this sometimes slips through her iron exterior.

Family --
Father: Milo Sullivan, Captain SS Thermopolis
Mother: Evelyn Harkins (Sullivan) Bowley, Specialty Caterer, Mars
Step-Father: LtCmdr Stephen Bowley, SF Corps of Engineers, Utopia Planetia Ship Yards

Paige is relatively petite in stature, something that contributes to the fact that she is often mistaken for being younger than she is. She has long brown hair that is almost always in disarray and often pulled into a messy braid or ponytail. She has brown eyes and pale skin and freckles across her nose and cheeks.

Though the idea of plain-old exercise bores her, Paige is very athletic and physically active. However, as good as she is at sports, she is horrible when it comes to self defense methods and while she's a good shot with a phaser because of Velocity, once a humanoid figure it placed as a target she freezes up.

She loves music and is almost always seen with her music player on and earbuds fixed in place. Paige wants to learn the guitar, but it horrible at it and doesn't quite have the initiative to get better. Her favorite bands are the Trill "Intergalactic Slugs", Betazoid "The Logicians", and the Martian "Pandemonium", "Seganites", "Herbert Rossoff and the Little Green Men", and "Zefeldt". Beyond them, she'll listen to pretty much anything (within reason).

She likes peanut butter and banana sandwiches, Martian rootbeer, iced Vulcan tea (an abomination to Vulcans, but really quite good), and has a bizarre fondness for Starfleet rations to the point where she often finds herself craving them -- they're particularly good with a lop of peanut butter on top. She dislikes holidays, spiders, know-it-all Engineers, people who were popular in high school, and warp core mechanics (the people, not the theories and practices).

Paige likes to consider herself a 'spacer', but the truth is that she's very much a Martian and is realizing it more and more as she discovers who she really is. She speaks with a very pronounced Martian accent, uses a lot of Martian slang, and is very patriotic toward the colony, even displaying a flag in her quarters much to the chagrin of her roommate.

Although Paige doesn't consider herself a political person, like many Martian young people she is very in tune to the distinct differences in culture between Martian and Terran humans and she's sometimes too keen to extenuate these differences. She knows verbatim the Fundamental Declarations of the Martian Colonies (2103, which incorporated the Marian Colonies into one body), the Statement of Sovereignty (2113, which declared Mars as separate and independent of Earth with its own planetary government), and the Article of Union (2171, in which Mars officially became part of the decade-old Federation). The one holiday she does like and recognize is Sovereignty Day (celebrated only by the Martian Calendar on the 22 of Kellian -- the 11th of Mars' 24 month year). At the Academy, she took a course on the Martian Planetary ('nationalist') movement of the 22nd century, and it's one of the few non-Operations courses where she earned top marks. She objects when Earth-born Terrans refer to Mars as a colony rather than a planet, and a great deal of the music she listens to has an agressive Planetary political lean.