Daksha Chaturvedi
Born on the Ganges in Varanasi, India, Daksha Chaturvedi is the richest and smartest woman in her country, and perhaps the world. From a young age, Daksha read the works of the legendary Visionaries. She was fascinated by her hometown’s railways and power plants, but repulsed at the price paid in danger and pollution for these technical marvels. Why couldn’t India produce the sort of scientific miracles that Atlantis had? While still a schoolgirl, she made significant advances in the efficiency of commercially available solar power, and devoted time and energy to propagating its use.
Chaturvedi received scholarships to study at Oxford and MIT. Her interest in power generation had not waned; the so-called Hyper Solar Process she developed as a graduate student effectively multiplied the energy available by solar power a hundred times. In the mid 90s, after returning to India, she leveraged this invention to found the Starlight Power Company, which was dedicated to bringing clean, plentiful energy to northern India. The Hyper Solar Process was later applied to mass transit in the form of Hyper Solar Rail (which led to lucrative contracts with Indian Railways at home and a number of companies abroad) and the development of the Electric Dirigible. The former has made surface travel cheaper and cleaner, while the latter has served primarily as an expensive toy for the wealthy and secondarily a major moneymaker for Starlight Aero Designs.
Now wealthy beyond her childhood dreams, Chaturvedi looks beyond her borders to the world at large. Despite the great wealth of some, many still suffer needlessly. Famine. Plague. War. Disaster. What the Christians might call the Four Horsemen ran roughshod over a great many people, and extraordinary need demanded extraordinary resources. Hence Chaturvedi founded and funded Shining Star International, a charitable conglomerate of those with unusual gifts who were willing to do what governments and typically NGOs couldn’t or wouldn’t.
Shining Star is going to save the world.
(Think of Chaturvedi as a more charitable, less vice-ridden Tony Stark, and the HSP as a somewhat more realistic Arc Reactor. Plus trains and blimps for all your pulp adventure needs!)
