In 2330, Damhnait Nerttlinge was born, on Betazed, as the first child of a Psychology professor father and an Altstamma singer mother. Damhnait was calm and quiet as an infant, which made it something of a shock when she became fussier as she grew older. Even before she could speak, it quickly became clear that Damhnait was learning to use expression of emotion to get what she wanted. As she aged, and just started to gain words and reason, she more forcefully began to demand that events proceed in her way. Her way didn't always selfishly benefit herself, though, it was simply the way that she perceived things to be right.

Despite local customs, Damhnait was not betrothed for marriage as a child, even though her mother's best friend gave birth to a son the same year as Damhnait. Once she was old enough to speak, it was obvious that Damhnait was in possession of an outgoing social nature, and that she would find lovers for herself, regardless of any decision her parents might make in her youth.

Most of Damhnait's younger siblings favoured skill sets either similar to their mother's or their father's, and Damhnait always had a love of performing, despite the fact that her ability to sing on key was lacking. All the while, Damhnait's teachers were always informing her parents that she had the potential for a brilliant scientific mind. With that potential, and as the eldest child, her parents formed high hopes that Damhnait would join her father in the field of Psychology, either practicing or as a professor. Not wanting to force anything upon her, they kept this expectation hidden from Damhnait for as long as they could, which became difficult as her telepathy started to develop at puberty. In regards to her education, her parents were clearly grooming her for a career in Psychology, sending her to an educational institute, on the other side of the country, for an adolescent education specializing in pre-med studies. At the same time, they encouraged Damhnait to continue her singing, even if the resulting sounds weren't as melodious as one would expect, considering all of her practice.

When it became time for Damhnait to decide what education she would choose to embark upon to prepare for her career, she refused to study Psychology. She knew she wanted to continue studying medicine - to learn to help people seemed the most important thing a person could do - but she didn't care for the abstract aspects of Psychology. Completely unafraid that it might show an immature aspect of her personality, she declared to her parents that she needed to practice instant medicine. She wanted to have the ability to heal people and see instant results - if the results were poor, at least she would know to change her healing methods.

Damhnait chose to attend a University on the opposite side of Betazed to learn to be a Physician. Having been sent to challenging schools all of her life, she easily adapted to University life, and found a balance between succeeding as a student and enjoying time with her friends and boyfriends. As she neared graduation, her boyfriend, at the time, was planning to join Starfleet, and Damhnait found herself enamoured by the ideals of Starfleet, as well as by the idea of spending four years at Starfleet Academy with her then boyfriend. When Damhnait applied to Starfleet Academy, she was accepted; her boyfriend was not. When he suggested that she defer her acceptance for a year, she broke up with him and caught the first transport to the Sol System.

Damhnait's parents weren't particularly pleased by her decision to join Starfleet. It wasn't at all what they'd hoped for her, and she would be the first member of their family to choose an off-world career. While Damhnait certainly wasn't a pioneer of Betazoids in Starfleet, the numbers were fairly few, then, when Starfleet still didn't seem to have its current emphasis on pure exploration and was filled with more militaristic trappings. Damhnait's family completely supported her decision, of course, and insisted that she benefit in every way she could, from Starfleet, to better live the life that she wanted.

At Starfleet Academy, Damhnait academically and socially thrived in the Officer Candidate School. While she never hid it, Damhnait wasn't always forthcoming, with new friends, about her Betazoid heritage, because the mostly human student body would have likely been paranoid about her mind-reading abilities. Because of her physical similarity to a Terran's, most cadets simply thought she was intuitive. After that first year, though, she vowed never to hold herself back even that much. Starfleet's physical requirements, self-defense in particular, gave Damhnait pause, but she managed to meet them in a style befitting of a pacifist Betazoid medical officer.

Damhnait took a brief holiday on Risa, where she met Betazoid chef Fortu Sefton, and took an immediate appreciation for his culinary skills, quirky sense of humour, unique sense of style and all-around physical attributes. They had sex the first night they met, and Damhnait hasn't made love to any other man since that day. Fortu moved to Earth with her, when she started training at Starfleet Medical. In the break between third and fourth year, while she was assigned to a remote outpost, her commanding officer married Damhnait and Fortu in a modest Starfleet ceremony. Once she graduated Starfleet Medical, Damhnait and Fortu held a proper Betazoid ceremony on Betazed with all of their family and friends. Damhnait, and all the guests, were of course nude at the wedding, which is how Damhnait let her entire family know that she was pregnant.

Only a few months into her first assignment, the USS Trillium, Damhnait took a six month maternity leave after giving birth to her son, Cristobel Sefton. The Sefton family lived a simple life, for a time; Fortu waited tables for only a handful of hours per week, Damhnait only reported to Sickbay during the most dire emergencies, and together they raised Cristobel. When Damhnait and Fortu each returned to work full-time, they truly joined the community of the Trillium. Damhnait got to personally know her patients in Sickbay, and Fortu charmed all of the patrons in the lounge - the senior staff in particular. It was these friendships that allowed Damhnait and Fortu to serve on the Trillium for such a long tour of duty, because they wanted Cristobel to have a sense of stability in his young life. They raised Cris in the Betazoid ways of total honesty, pacifism, and feeling one's emotions to the extreme, to enable one to take every benefit from those emotions. Over the years, Starfleet beliefs and methodologies seeped into what Damhnait and Fortu taught Cris, because that was the environment they had chosen to live in.

When Damhnait's second child, Andraia Sefton, was born, she simply seemed to be a much fussier baby than Cristobel had been. Before Andraia was a year old, though, Fortu and Damhnait began to suspect that Andraia's telepathy might have been active at birth, a dangerous condition for any Betazoid. Damhnait managed to be transferred to Starbase G-6, near Betazed, to be able to continue her career, while regularly bringing Andraia to Betazed for extensive testing. Once it became clear that Andraia was suffering from uncontrollably hearing thoughts and vocal sounds at the same intensity, she was admitted to the orbital platform of the Cataria Institute, away from the majority of the Institute's doctors and patients.

At that time, Damhnait took a leave of absence from Starfleet, and enrolled at the University where her father taught her to major in the science of telepathy, while minoring in Betazoid psychology. This allowed her to always be close to Andraia, and to further understand what was wrong with her. Meanwhile, Fortu and Cris remained on Starbase G-6. Fortu was managing one of the base's small lounges, and Damhnait wanted Cris to continue his Starfleet childhood education for the sake of consistency. As well, she and Fortu didn't think Cris would adapt well to a Betazoid school, since he refused to listen to his parents speaking telepathically for several years after learning of Andraia's condition.

Damhnait had expected to return to Starfleet, and continue her education by correspondence, sooner than she actually did. It wasn't until a full four years that the doctors made a final decision, regarding Andraia, and permanently admitted her into the Cataria Institute's planetside location. It became clear that, even with her new knowledge, Damhnait couldn't help her daughter, and Andraia would likely not be leaving the Institute in the near future. Knowing that she had to continue her life with the rest of her family, Damhnait accepted an assignment with the USS Proxima. During her time there, she completely devoted herself to projects. On the family side, she and Fortu worked on helping Cristobel adapt to his developing telepathy, and in the medical lab she worked on slightly improving the potency of the UFP's relatively-unpredictable telepathy-suppressing medication. During her regular on-duty time, she cured newfound diseases, personally attended to the health of many Admirals who were sick or injured on board, and volunteered to heal the most challenging injuries, with great success. Her unwavering devotion to her patients, as well as her ability to remain sensible, while applying cutting edge (or often bleeding edge) new medical techniques and technology eventually earned her a Commendation for Original Thinking and the Assistant Chief Medical Officer's position on the Proxima.

Prior to most of her notable successes on the Proxima, Damhnait suffered a brief patch of marital problems with Fortu in 2367. While she has managed to remain completely professional when serving in Sickbay for the majority of her career, she received several reprimands during this time because, in her heightened emotional states, she misdiagnosed two patents, and was considerably rude to several others. While she had never hesitated to give orders to junior officers earlier in her career, it was on the Proxima that she started giving orders to anyone, including her superiors. Damhnait finally felt completely confident in her abilities, and refused to let propriety and egos get in the way of her healing people the right way. Unfortunately, she received another reprimand when she brazenly questioned her Chief Medical Officer's practices on Stardate 45208.2, and Damhnait had been mistaken in both the content and delivery of her accusation.

During the Dominion War, Damhnait served as the Assistant CMO and then the Chief Medical Officer of the hospital ship USS Ezell. She couldn't simply abandon Starfleet during its horrifying time of war, but she used all of her influence to keep herself and her family away from the front lines of battle. At the start of the war, prior to Betazed's occupation, Fortu and Damhnait encouraged Cristobel to return to Betazoid to enrich his education, but Cristobel was becoming interested in joining Starfleet, trusting that the war would soon be over and the 'fleet would return to its exploratory ways. Not wanting to alienate or block him, Damhnait helped Cris prepare, mentally and physically, for the challenges Starfleet Academy would offer him. At the same time, Damhnait worked tireless hours in Sickbay; Fortu even began to offer his services in the 'bay - stocking equipment, assisting report writing, performing any non-medical tasks required - to be able to make up for dwindling officers, and to spend more time with Damhnait.

Including the Dominion War, Damhnait Sefton never fired - and hardly ever touched - a single phaser in her Starfleet career. Intent on keeping her patients safe, she began stocking every medical kit on the ship with portable shield generators, and ordered the chief engineer to build shield generators, with backup separate generators, in every medical ward.

After the Dominion War, Damhnait and Fortu spent a year on Betazed during the rebuilding process. They acquired a lot of land near the Cataria Institute and lived in a quaint cottage, where Andraia was occasionally allowed to visit on daytrips. Cristobel eventually joined them, after suffering from a medical accident at the Academy, and was helped greatly in his healing process by the presence of his parents. After Cris returned to the Academy, the sovereign-class USS Oberon was commissioned, and Starfleet Medical requested Damhnait to be the Chief Medical Officer, because of her distinguished service during the war and her dedicated career prior to it.

Damhnait served as the Oberon's CMO, while Fortu managed the ship's main lounge, until 2379, when her children began growing more distant because of forces beyond any of their control. Andraia's hold on lucidity and awareness of reality lessened dramatically, and Cristobel, who had become a Starfleet nurse, was assigned to a deep-space mission in the Gamma Quadrant. After what was probably much less consideration than a decision of such magnitude deserved, Fortu moved to Betazed to be closer to Andraia, and Damhnait called on every single favour owed to her in Starfleet to be reassigned as the Chief Medical Officer of the ship Cristobel was serving on, the USS Sulu.

When on-duty in Sickbay, Doctor Sefton is abrasive, impatient, fearless and demanding. She unapologetically does not allow incompetence anywhere near her patients. While her fellow officers take the majority of her tactless tirades, patients that are foolishly responsible for their own injuries have been known to receive a chilly bedside manner from Sefton as well. She has little regard for Starfleet's ranking system, and once she gets to know her staff, will often divide responsibilities according to skill and knowledge, instead of rank and job title.

When off-duty, Damhnait's Betazoid upbringing becomes more apparent. She is soft, inviting, extremely empathetic, and will often attempt to make up for her on-duty bitchery with off-duty drinks and laughter. While still friendly and extremely open-minded, she doesn't lose her aggressive nature, and will still, gently, argue with anyone who speaks or behaves in manners she doesn't feel are considerate of others.

Damhnait is not afraid to use her telepathy and suffer the poor reactions from non-telepaths, who don't like their thoughts being told to them. Even when she's off-duty and laid back, she will still call people on lying or on inconsistencies between thought and action (both of which she abhors), but as long as there's not a patient's life at stake, she will likely tell the person off gently.