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Elza Gadar is the title character of the Universe of ELZA.

Childhood on Zirkon

Elza was born into a typical Second Class family on the heavily industrialized Imperial world of Zirkon. Because of the Imperial Responsible Reproduction Act, Elza was her parent’s sole licensed child. With no siblings to absorb excessive love, Elza was treated like a small princess by her mom and dad.

Elza’s father Kai Gadar worked as a chief foreman on the 47th Ship Assembly Plant. Since Elza turned eight years old, it became her duty to bring him dinner every day after her school classes. Instead of going home afterwards, she frequently chose to stay in her father’s small office, do the homework and gaze down on the shipyard’s floor where Kai was managing his subordinates.

Two years later a wave of worker riots swept all over Zirkon. They began with a devastating terrorist attack in the midst of planetary administrative center. This disaster took lives of the Prime Heir Alec Khan and his mother, Sofia Khan who were visiting Zirkon for the celebration of it’s 40th Restoration Anniversary.

While most shipbuilders came out to peacefully advocate for better pay and more humane conditions, Empire’s military retaliation treated everyone as they were hostile insurgents. Thousands of lives were lost in days that followed. After last active protestors were either killed or detained, the Imperial Army have transferred responsibility over Zirkon to ICSB who were tasked to surgically remove all roots of rebellion from the Zirkonian society.

Their strategy was to split the population in two factions – loyalist collaborators and everybody else. This way Zirkon would police itself with minimal external resources needed. Zirkonians who were deemed trustworthy got a proposition to join the Collective of Reliable Citizens – a part-time employment that would require them to spy upon fellow citizens and participate in ICSB raids. The latter were not as effective at crushing hidden rebel cells, but were organized to solidify the divide in Zirkonian society.

Elza’s father was one of the first volunteers to join CRC. Loyalty to the Empire has brought some substantial benefits to their family. After reporting on couple of colleagues and joining few ICSB raids as a witness, Kai got rapidly promoted to a position of an Overseer on his 47th Ship Assembly Plant.

Overseer’s salary made it affordable for Elza’s family to move into a double as big apartment where she even got her own room. Additional food rations that Kai was receiving through CRC meant that Elza have completely forgot about being hungry. Once Kai have even managed to secure a travel permit and took his family to an off-world vacation on sunny Amedna. This was the first time when Elza have experienced sunbathing, or swam in the ocean.

But all these perks came with a steep price. People like Elza’s family were resented by majority of Zirkonians as opportunistic traitors who benefit from the colonial oppression of their brethren. Consequentially Elza lost all of her friends at school, but she was not openly bullied. Other kids were too afraid of her father’s reach. They just called Elza for “cobka” behind her back.

After receiving some letters with death threats Inna, Elza’s mother, began to suffer from paranoia and panic attacks. She started to pick Elza up from school and completely forbid her to spend time outside the house without supervision.

By the age of thirteen, Elza started to feel like she was living in a concrete cage. She still had her very own room with any books or toys she could ask for, every dinner was like a small banquet, and memories of Amednan ocean were still as fresh if she experienced them a day before. But everything else that Elza loved and enjoyed in her past life was gone:

None of her peers wanted to come and play with her anymore, her mother fell into a quiet apathy, and her father was either busy at work or consulting ICSB on their never ending raids. Kai have even forbid Elza from visiting him at 47th Ship Assembly Plant – he deemed that it was not safe for her to be there.

When this quiet misery became a new normal, Elza and her mother were hit with an unexpected revelation – during a family diner Kai have announced that he is leaving to serve in the Imperial Navy. He claimed that it was a necessary step to remove the target from their backs. When Inna objected, Kai reassured her that with his merits just few years of service will earn him the First Class Citizenship. Then Elza’s father promised that then he will come back and take them away from Zirkon for good.

In that moment Elza wanted to believe her dad even though she knew that earned First Class does not transfer to the existing family members. A week later Kai was gone. Elza’s mother got to keep the apartment and continued to receive food rations from Kai’s friends at CRC. Her sole income was still barely enough to keep ends meet.

A year later, Inna was ambushed with a conscription letter. The Great War required new recruits, and as a wife of a loyal collaborator with highly valued medical profession, she was added to the first wave of conscripts. Refusal to comply would mean a criminal sentence with possible consequences for her daughter, so Inna had no other choice but to submit.

After her mother had to leave, Elza became an orphan by the age of fourteen. Elza’s was left completely alone because her grandparents were long dead given, killed early by Zirkonian devastated ecology. Also, since Inna and Kai were the second generation to experience the one-child policy, Elza had no aunts or uncles to lean on. As an unattended minor she was evicted from her home and placed in a foster family.

Assigned guardians were a family of a veteran and his wife that lived of his disability benefits. They have recognized Elza as a collaborator’s daughter and put her in front of a choice: to pay them a rent, or “earn” her place under the roof. Elza considered running away from them, but she knew that surviving Zirkonian streets would be impossible for her. So she chose to pay.

Months before her fifteenth birthday Elza got employed as a junior assembler on her familiar 47th Ship Assembly Plant. Workers there knew her as Kai’s daughter and became openly hostile towards Elza’s presence at first, but were deterred by the new Overseer. He was afraid of possible retaliation from ICSB if a daughter of a prominent CRC member got hurt under his shift. Over time though, thanks to her humility and hard work, Elza has managed to earn some genuine goodwill and respect from other shipbuilders.

After her new reality has set in, Elza decided one thing – she would not wait for her parents to return for her, instead she committed to escape Zirkon and find them on her own. The most obvious opportunity for Elza was to follow her father’s footsteps and apply to the Imperial Navy herself. Unfortunately, her application was rejected because of inferior age.

Imperial Army have shown interest in Elza’s application though, but given that one of her guardians was a legless veteran, she declined the offer and kept applying to the Navy instead. By the age of seventeen Elza finally got accepted for a role of a commercial pilot. She opted for the longest contract because after a decade of active duty it made her eligible for the First Class Citizenship application. Deep inside though, Elza just hoped to be out in the dark for long enough to see her parents once again.

Pilot in the Imperial Navy

Elza’s enrollment to the Imperial Nany began with two years of intensive training that she have finished with distinction. After graduation Elza was assigned to an Iskra-class transporter. By the age of twenty three, for her impeccable service, Elza got a promotion to a senior pilot position and was entrusted with a large Orca-class ship called Agna. Her lead pilot and mission supervisor became Captain Liubov Pyr.

Behind the Scenes

Elza is the first character created in her Universe by ENTIA Comics. Her appearance is inspired by a custom player model from ELITE: DANGEROUS, as well a short story written by pre-ENTIA. It was revolving around a stranded pilot facing isolation. Elza’s personality and backstory draw heavily from ENTIA’s experiences and contain several autobiographical elements in them.

While the name Elza was chosen somewhat randomly and holds no specific hidden meaning, the surname Gadar carries deeper significance. Derived from the Hindi word “gaddaar” ( गद्दार ), meaning “traitor” -it serves as both a thematic reflection of Elza’s fate and a nod to her possible in-universe ancestry. According to canon, her surname may have originated as a punitive designation given to her ancestors for their role in the White Uprising against Unmesh Khan following the Unification Wars on Limmea.

Elza Through the Years

All outfits below are concepts and subject to change.