Miriam also known as Tanya Bern, also known as Paula Barnard, began life on a planet controlled by a repressive dictatorship. Unfortunately for the planet, it wasn't repressive enough. Tanya joined a local group of freedom fighters as a true believer. After two years and seeing first hand her work as a terrorist, she turned herself into the Imperial (not planetary - she's not that stupid) police. The police believed that she would be more useful inside such organizations and recruited her. She served seven years, primarily in deep undercover operations. She reached the rank of Detective. As black faded to gray, and then the shades of gray blurred together, she crossed the line into a totally cynical and self-serving criminal, an assassin actually. She had a criminal reputation of 3. She was recruited for an assassination mission in a war zone. One of the sides in this conflict had hired the mercenary group Satan's Slammers. True to their reputation, they violated the rules of war more often on this planet than they obeyed them. During that mission she was separated from her party and returned to her ship to find that a party of Slammers had gang raped and tortured her pilot (and only ride off this rock) leaving him for dead. She managed to keep the pilot, a devout Moslem, alive long enough for him to fly her off planet. He then begged her help in avenging himself prior to his death. She spent every penny she had renting a ship and hiring a company of Slammers for "an opp"; her friend then cheerfully piloted the entire shipload of Slammers into the nearby sun. Before he died, he gave Miriam his copy of the Koran, his most precious possession. From that day forward, Miriam made a vow to kill as many Slammers as possible, even at the risk of her own life. Miriam converted to Islam, as a Shiite. She prays five times a day, facing either East or toward Terra, depending on the orientation of the planet or ship she's on.She both reads and speak Arabic. Initially, for each Slammer she personally killed (one on one), she tattooed a red hatch mark on her left inner forearm, herself with red ink and a needle. Berserk would not be an overstatement of her actions. Eventually, she had openly killed so many Slammers on Regina, even those authorities were forced to take notice (against their wishes - since it was Slammers after all) and issued warrants for her arrest. Subsequently, Steiner, in a gesture of incredible charity, not only paid for a core job, she bought this good looking body too. On the new body there is a red ink tattoo of the arabic word for "107".