Banga

Stocky and solidly built, Banga wears her hair in a shimada-like style finished with a crown braid at the back, and like all Sumerians she has antennae rising from her head. Two sharp lines mark the left side of her face, one above the brow and one on the cheek, which may be scars or natural markings. Her outfit pairs a dark long-sleeved crop sweater worn beneath a combat suit.

During the later voyage aboard the spaceship, bandages appear on both of her cheeks, with a smaller one set above her right eyebrow.

Hardened and openly cynical, Banga turned against her people's faith after watching the Kur destroy their home. She brands the Sumerians naive and blames their blind trust in divine protection for the ruin that followed, and when no god appeared she stopped believing the old prophecy, though she still prays now and then because skipping it leaves her uneasy. She has little patience for men, dismissing their shows of courage as bluster from cowards who run when things get hard. The collapse of Sumer pushed her into a creed of pure survival, even claiming she would sacrifice others to live.

Her deeds, however, betray her words. For all her talk of self-interest she scooped Bamora off the battlefield and raised her, refusing to let Tome and Aja take over, and Bamora grew to call her mother no matter how she resisted the title. When the pyramid gate could carry only one to Earth, Banga stayed behind and forced the girl through, breaking down to confess how deeply she loved her. Disillusioned as she is, she never fully gave up on her race, rallying the captive men to fight back and begging Bamora to continue the bloodline. From her cooking days she still takes pride in preparing meals people enjoy, insisting that is exactly what she trained for.

Banga spent her early life cooking in a royal palace, where she learned to delight guests with her food and first heard the myth of Idea, the Sumerians' second homeland, and the means of reaching it. When the Kur began their invasion she joined an all-female fighting unit alongside Tome and Aja, and during the war she lifted an abandoned child, Bamora, off the battlefield and kept her safe. She took on the roles of mother, feeding and teaching the girl, even sitting her before a mural of the Sumerian god to pray, all while privately doubting any of it.

As the conflict turned hopeless, an ambush shattered their regiment and the survivors hid wounded in a cave, where Bamora asked to be killed. Remembering the legend of Idea, Banga rallied them toward the pyramid, urging the freeing of the enslaved men fed to the Big Mama to swell their numbers. Gravely hurt shielding Bamora from missiles, she crawled into the god-shaped exosuit, obliterated the Big Mama, and gave a speech that turned the captive men into a rebellion. She activated the warp gate, handed her daughter the suit, and pushed her through alone, pressing her palm to the gate as she declared her love. Moments later the Kur Advance Unit stormed in, vowing to chase Bamora and reclaim the stolen suit, with Hastur threatening Aja unless Banga unlocked the royal slab. She and the others later seized a ship, fought free of Sumer, and set course across the light-years toward Idea to reunite with Bamora.