Narja Kostoven
Narja Aswaija Kostoven (16 March 1916 - 6 November 1953), later known as Asalij Kasija Lasven, was a Malaszec biollurgist famous for creating Talzos Lasven, a magically-altered baobab-ent who is currently the president of the heavy machinery company Talzoseija TZe. Narja’s education at the University of Serszec was cut short in 1933, when the civil unrest leading up to the start of the 1934 Communist Revolution led her to flee to the then-Imperial Malaszec Colony of T’annkirne.
She was thought to have disappeared until 2041, when the Asalij Journals had been deciphered, revealing that she had returned to Malaszec under a new name in 1936 due to the independence revolution in T’annkirne. As Asalij Lasven, she worked various jobs before working as a project director for the Malaszec People’s Agricultural Commission (MPAC) to develop fertilizers in response to impending food shortage triggered by the Dwerchus refugee crisis in 1939.
Some years prior, she had undertaken an experiment to create a sentient faerie-sized house by crossing a smuggled T’annkirne ent seed with a Malaszec hollow baobab, which she believed could could revolutionize faerie housing. She named the ent who grew out of the seed Talzos Lasven. Government auditors discovered Narja was embezzling funds for Talzos while she was program director for the MPAC, and she was executed in 1953 following a public corruption hearing.
Asalij Journals
During her lifetime, Narja kept various journals known as the Asalij Journals, which were written in a unique cipher and script. Most of the journals remained undeciphered until 2041, when computational techniques cracked the code for 9 of 12 known journals, revealing the link between Narja Kostoven and Asalij Lasven. The remaining 4 journals are thought to have been lost, but are known to exist due to being referenced in the other nine journals.
The currently deciphered 9 journals have provided a detailed account of daily life in the final years of colonial T’annkirne and early communist Malaszec and have been studied extensively. From their references in the 9 journals, the 4 earlier journals are likely accounts of Narja’s early life leading up to her departure from Imperial Malaszec.
Trivia
- Narja Kostoven was posthumously awarded an honorary degree in biollurgy by the University of Serszec where she attended before she fled to Malaszec T’annkirne in 1933.