#afragileflame

Sort of born into it. Iressa is a twi'lek-human hybrid, and since she looks more twi'lek, one would think she wasn't born in the Sith Empire. However, her (human) father is a Sith, and he raised Iressa as such. Not out of goodness of his heart though - he was planning to send her and her mother away to keep his affair secret, and the only reason it didn't end up happening is Iressa winning the "strong in the Force" lottery. And while she was raised in a Sith household, her existence was a closely guarded secret (her father wasn't about to let everyone know of his bastard child who doesn't even look human), so she didn't even get to experience some privileges of such background.

Fun fact - during several playthroughs of Sith warrior storyline I somehow missed the fact that main character is supposed to be from a privileged background, and that humans or pureblood Sith made more sense in that regard. By the time I realized this I already had multiple characters who did not fit this, and I didn't feel like changing their species, so instead I came up with explanations of how they fit into the story (and maybe ignored overseer Tremel completely).

18. Who is their BFF?

Iressa grew up isolated for aforementioned reasons, so she only had her siblings for friends. In short, they are four children, first is the step-sister with a rocky start (they were at odds with each other for several years after their parents married, but the relationship improved when they grew up), Iressa is the second child, third one is her half-sibling who is laso a best friend to her, and fourth is the youngest brother born too late to be a best friend, but they are still close.

And among SW crew Vette is her best friend. Well, Vette is the only one who befriended her, while everyone else has a more professional dynamic (sort of). She brought a softer side out of Iressa, which is this loyal, protective, even funny and teasing personality that Iressa had in her interactions with siblings, so it makes sense that these two have a nice sisterly dynamic. There is an additional layer of them both being twi'leks but with vastly different experiences. Iressa got to learn quite a bit about her own people from Vette, and that challenged her views on the slavery in the Sith Empire (though she didn't have enough time to fully change her view).

19. Who is their rival? 

Aside from the obvious ones from warrior's story, Iressa had a short-term rivalry with Thana Vesh on Taris, and they might have crossed paths once or twice after that. I want to think that their dynamic is more like rivals/toxic situationship, but we'll see if I commit to that.

Another one I'll mention is Auletta, although that rivalry is one-sided from Auletta. She was kinda jealous of Iressa's close position to Vitiate, being able to do his bidding without the interference of the Dark Council and all that. So when Wrath approached her to ask for help hunting a powerful Jedi, Auletta saw it as an opportunity to get Emperor's attention by undermining his servant. Iressa didn't know about it, thus one-sided rivalry. After Auletta does screw her over, they are more like enemies than rivals.

25. Do they have any deep dark secrets?

She let a Jedi live :D