Editing STA:Maria Artemisia Salvioni (section)

== Background ==

Maria Artemisia Salvioni was born in the year 2352, in the town of Bellinzóna, Switzerland, Earth. The Salvioni family run a mechanical engineering plant, but Maria expected that she would drift into tourism, studying sciences early on, but also taking advantage of her Swiss Italian heritage and developing an affinity with languages. Her own native dialect is Ticinese, a variant of Western Lombard.


Feeling that she would end up in the family business if she didn’t do something about it, Maria applied to Starfleet Academy and was herself surprised to be accepted; she did consider the Sciences, but her emotive personality steered her towards the Command Division. Maria did take advantage of the Academy’s Science Minor curriculum to focus somewhat on Geology, eager to learn more of a field that she’d always had an interest in. 


Cadet Salvioni also turned out to be quite good at poker variants, but later made a conscious decision to let this pastime slide. It was in one of the card schools that became romantically involved with one of her fellow cadets, Claudio Galli and yet was shocked to find herself pregnant. Determined to not wash out, she pushed herself harder. Claudio Galli found it too much and left the Academy, but he stayed with her. They married, but Maria kept her own name; the couple had a daughter, Sofia Galli.


Exiting the academy in 2366, Ensign Salvioni was posted aboard the Galaxy-class USS Venture (NCC-71854). Maria was given the option to have her family join her, but Claudio found it a little too much, with her family visiting during Claudio's periods of leave from Bellinzóna’s Polizia Comunale. Maria did her best to stay in contact with her family, but the advent of the Dominion War and her ship’s active participation that conflict made it difficult.


Serving in the conflict as a Tactical Officer until the war ended in 2375, the now Lieutenant Salvioni eventually took a period of leave, but during it, she and her husband mutually agreed to divorce. Their daughter, Sofia, was to remain on Earth, though through the years Maria saw as much of her she possibly could and was as communicative as she could be.


Still serving on the Venture, by 2385 she was Commander Salvioni, the ship’s Executive Officer. On a deep space exploration mission pushing towards the Gamma Quadrant, the vessel encountered an early warp civilisation calling themselves the Moraega, that vaguely resembled Earth’s brown bear, but with insectoid looking eye clusters. It turned out that their civilisation was suffering from a pathogen that caused blindness, and XO Salvioni spent a lot of time with them in command of the Away Team on Moraega Prime, acting as a liaison as the Medical Team researched a cure.


In 2386, Maria and Claudio’s daughter married, taking the family name of her husband, Bianchi. Sofia Bianchi’s first child was born a year later, her eldest son Enzio. Sofia’s third child in 2391 was a daughter and she named her after mother.


Promoted to Captain in 2393, Captain Salvioni did her first posting as the Captain on the Intrepid-class USS Zealous. After this, she did a stint on Starbase 514 in the Berengaria VI system. It was from here, after a five year posting and some extended leave on Earth, that Captain Salvioni  became the commanding officer of the Sagan-class vessel, USS Horizon in 2408.