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player information.
name: Hats
are you over 18?: Yep.
personal dw: i_id
email/msn/aim/plurk/etc: AIM: LadyRHolmes, Plurk: TheHats
characters in abax: Nobody yet.
in character information.
name: Some ovMennet
age: 11
sex: Other
race: Grue
weight: 178lbs
height: 5'4" (Sized down from 7'5". Quadriped. Overall length sized down to 7'9" from 11'3" so he fits in the locker.)
[OPTIONAL] cause of death: Rockslide. River-Eaten Caverns. February 18, 2012, 11:43pm.
canon point: After he ran away from his family.
previous cr: n/a
physical appearance:
Grues are hunters, designed for climbing and running and living in the lightless depths of the earth. Some is small for a grue, even before being shrunk down to be brought into Abax. He's a delicate little monster, four long, gangly legs and four spindly arms, and a body like a centaur patterned after a large hound, rather than a horse. The chest of his lower body is deep-sprung and narrow, and his upper body is willowy, proportionally narrower than a human's torso. The two pairs of arms are just one above the other, with the lower pair just slightly smaller. His hands and feet are all long and thin, with six digits including opposable thumbs.
He's furred, smooth, fine black hair over dark gray skin.
Like all grues, he has two mouths, seperated by a narrow, levered jaw, and eight eyes, on a roughly level line back from where a human's would be. There's not much of a nose, and his ears are small. He has a fur crest running over the peak of his skull and down to peter out at the nape of his neck.
His back is scarificated with a simple line design that goes from neck to waist.
Reference one.
Reference two.
world information:
If Grues wrote history books, that would be the first chapter of every one.
Actually, they are the product of alien tinkering with human genetics, a semi-failed culling project that was abandoned on Earth five hundred years ago. But to a grue, a stone knife is the height of technology, and stories told around the cavern are the only history they know.
Grues are a man-eating species living in the caves and deep, dark places of Earth, in a parasitic relation with the humans on the surface. They were created to be dependent on human flesh, though can live on other intelligent or near-intelligent species if absolutely necessary.
Though his Earth is current with IRL history, the humans do not know about the grues except as the roots of a series of myths and fairy tales. (In his world, for instance, Little Red Riding Hood is not eaten by a wolf, but by a Darkling, a Scandinavian boogie monster based on Grues.)
Grues are photophobic, extremely sensitive to light. They have eight eyes, all of them very sensitive to one spectrum or another, allowing them to see in the lightless depths of the caves. The eyes have a defensive enzyme reaction, a catalyst that is released into the vitreous humor to make it opaque under the assault of bright or sudden light, protecting the optic nerve behind. This slowly fades, over a period that can last hours or days, restoring the sight.
Grues have five biological sexes: male, female, ur-male, ur-female, and un-male. Societies vary across the world, but in Some's locale, society is a meritocracy, with the fiercest fighters in control regardless of of sex. Un-males, being the smallest sex on average, are very rarely the leaders, typically falling into the fifth-position in any family unit. They are, however, the traditional magic users, the Somes. Not all un-males become Somes, but all Somes are un-males.
A Some is the emergency exit for a cave-dwelling tribe. In the event of an emergency (and most emergencies below ground involve falling rocks), they can rapidly remove their tribe-mates to a safe location. For this reason, they are bound to remain close, in reach. An apprenticeship system ensures that they know the way to safe locales without having to go far in search of them. Thirty-odd years ago (two generations, by grue standards), Mount Saint Helens erupted, caving in many of the local caverns and killing many whole tribes. Before that eruption, there was inter-tribe raiding and occasional wars. Paranoia hasn't yet faded, though the cease-fire has lasted.
Magic aside, their technology level is relatively stone-age. Once in a while, human technology (woven rope, for instance, and wood- and stone-working) filters in, but on their own, grue technology progresses quite slowly. Their 'written' language is currently in the process of moving from being an intricate tally-work of knots in twine to rudimentary carved hieroglyphs. They have not, yet, found a reason to invent or borrow the wheel. They see no value in paper or things written on it. (Some will not, obviously, be able to read his toe tag.)
They have a strong sense of art, almost entirely tactile. Music is sporadic and entirely ritual, dedicated to one of their five gods (Earth, Water, Air, Light, Void). No use for visual arts in the lightless caves. Scarification is common, but never casual.
history: Some is the third child of five intermarried parents. He is an un-male, the fifth of the grues' five biological sexes, and the only un-male among his eight siblings. He grew up in the River-Eaten Pits, deep inside the cave-nation of All-Falls-In under what the humans call the Northern Cascades. His extended family, some thirty members in all, forms the Climbs-Shaking-Walls Tribe. They are not the most powerful tribe in All-Falls-In, but they pay tribute to no one.
Some himself was apprentice to his fifth-parent, Some ovKeppim. Some (which is an approximate transliteration for human tongues and languages), is as much title as name, a holy word that allows the bearer, consecrated at a young age and marked with it, to use the twists of language to twist his place in reality. To teleport.
Being a Some is a powerful responsibility. Somes are expected to be loyal all their lives to their own tribe, and never to stray from their caves. Unable to leave even to hunt, they have to depend on their families for everything, every bite they eat. And that never sat well with Some. A dutiful child and then a dutiful young adult, he chafed but remained as his siblings left home one by one, wedding into other tribes or bringing their new spouses home, waiting for his own (arranged) marriage. It was unthinkable for him to leave.
But then his approaching marriage fell apart. The would-be fourth-spouse, a female from the next-higher tribe and a famous hunter, was killed in a sky-bearing-rockfall, and the first-spouse, an ur-male from the Cave-Mouth tribe, the highest tribe in All-Falls-In, refused to enter the marriage with three nobodies and no prize. Some watched the future he'd waited for for all his life fall to chaste dust, while his siblings already had children of their own.
When ovKeppim took a second apprentice, Some's oldest brother's fourth child, a bright little un-male named, newly, Some ovBorrit, Some found himself at a loss. Purposeless - His role still stood around him like a cloak, but no emergencies had struck the cave in so long. The mountain roots had ceased to shake a generation ago, and the deepquakes came but rarely. He was never to be a spouse, never a parent.
It was time to leave. Unthinkable. Undeniable. And so one moment he was home, sitting on his ledge, ovBorrit crawling across his lap and off towards half-blind ovKeppim, the new markings proud ridges across his spiky-furred narrow shoulders. And the next, Some was somewhere else. He would be hurt to know it took his family a full day to notice that he was no longer anywhere in River-Eaten.
But he never would. Three weeks out (as we measure time, for Grues measure it in nothing smaller than seasons), he was passing through a cave perilously close to the surface, well away from the places he knew. It was a noisy cave, as some surface caves were, for it passed close to one of the human roads at the surface. The constant rumbling kept him nervous, but it also kept him from hearing the beginnings of the rock collapse until it was too late. The ceiling shattered, and he meant to teleport away, but half of the equation of a teleport is knowing where you are to start with, and he had been distracted for days. The hesitation was his undoing: Sunlight streamed in, along with a roaring machine with two white-hot eyes that were the last things Some saw before he died.
personality: Some has just abandoned a lifetime of conditioning, loyalty, and family. He's sullen and angry for the moment, mostly at himself, but his base-line personality is easy-going, friendly, eager-to-please. Since he can't go home, he's unconsciously looking for a replacement family. His natural urge is to acquire people. Unfortunately for him, in this lonely state, he's a natural minion.
There are three driving factors in Some's current working personality. At the base is the way he was raised - A middle child in a boisterous, affectionate family. He's met fewer people outside his own family than he has fingers, which leaves him prone to overestimate a person's esteem for him. He's physically affectionate, likes to touch and hug at the slightest provocation. Simultaneously, his name/role set him apart inside that family, made him different, made him at once both more (in that he has a specific Purpose) and less (in that he can't prove himself alongside any of them, particularly the hunters). In game, he's suddenly outside his role, his family, his caves - in essence, everything he has known as important and secure. He'll look for roles he can fill, ways he can feel important to someone or some group. He'll try to integrate, but not mind if he doesn't so long as they treat him well.
Second is his species. He's going to have more empathy for nonhumans than for humans. He knows academically that humans are intelligent, technologically more advanced than his people, but he regards them as inferior on a moral scale because he was raised that way. They deserve to be hunted and eaten because Grues deserve to eat them. He's not a philosopher. The extent of his self-examination in this area, prior to the city, was limited; Humans were created to feed Grues, and therefore Grues eat humans. It's fair, because any adult human has already lived a long life, as long or longer as any Grue's. Human children are a gray area - Some chooses to abstain.
Third is his loss - Some believes in loyalty above all else at heart, but right now, he's in rebellion against it, seeing it as a trap because of the failure of his betrothal. He wasn't in love with any of the other members of his would-be-marriage, had only met two of them, but he was dedicated to the match, emotionally invested in it so deeply that its dissolution was a huge personal betrayal. That's his recent past, within the last month, and his ability to trust is still wounded. This is transitory - he wants trust, and will come around eventually. He'll even learn to trust humans, so long as they retain the majority.
A first impression would depend on how one meets Some. On a casual meeting, he's cautiously friendly, smiling and shaking hands but keeping escape an option. If no threat is offered, he's quick to assume acquaintance for friendship, with visits and favors offered and asked. This will be true among humans and nonhumans alike; living apart from his own kind and desperate for company, there will have to be a shift from seeing humans as prey to humans as companions and the prey as exceptions. In other games, he's created justifications for himself based on how many obvious connections any potential prey has.
If introductions are made by a friend, the caution is much less, almost recklessly trusting. He likes to ask about families; any two Grues meeting each other would have some link of relations, however convoluted.
There's a less common way to meet him, though, when he needs to fill that hunger; a dark night, a narrow alley or an abandoned building, and he creeps up on a victim, lurking in wait luring with all-too-human cries for help. He will learn to strangle victims, those long hands ideal. But if no one can die, a knife will work to steal his pound of flesh.
abilities/powers: Some can teleport himself, so long as he can see. The ability is tied to his name and comes from the marks on his back. He can take up to four times his own weight (approximately 500lbs) with him easily, up to six times (approximately 750lbs) with strain, to the point of passing out. If he's blind or passes out mid-transport, he can't control the destination. He can't teleport through gold, or if he is wearing it himself.
His senses of scent/taste and hearing are on a par with most large cats, sharper than a human's, particularly for distinguishing location, suitability, and health of potential prey. His jaws are significantly stronger than a human's, and his teeth are sharp and grow back quickly.
In normal indoor light, his visual acuity is on effectively on par with a human's. He can see a short way into the IR and UV spectrums, giving him heat vision, and his eyes are attuned to follow movement more than shape. He is effectively colorblind, except for very strong reds. The brighter the light, the less detail he can see.
He is vulnerable to bright or sudden lights, and especially to fire and sunlight. He himself is quite flammable.
first person sample: Some asking about souls.
third person sample: Some making up with someone he's wronged.
case no: 08-08-48
name: Hats
are you over 18?: Yep.
personal dw: i_id
email/msn/aim/plurk/etc: AIM: LadyRHolmes, Plurk: TheHats
characters in abax: Nobody yet.
in character information.
name: Some ovMennet
age: 11
sex: Other
race: Grue
weight: 178lbs
height: 5'4" (Sized down from 7'5". Quadriped. Overall length sized down to 7'9" from 11'3" so he fits in the locker.)
[OPTIONAL] cause of death: Rockslide. River-Eaten Caverns. February 18, 2012, 11:43pm.
canon point: After he ran away from his family.
previous cr: n/a
physical appearance:
Grues are hunters, designed for climbing and running and living in the lightless depths of the earth. Some is small for a grue, even before being shrunk down to be brought into Abax. He's a delicate little monster, four long, gangly legs and four spindly arms, and a body like a centaur patterned after a large hound, rather than a horse. The chest of his lower body is deep-sprung and narrow, and his upper body is willowy, proportionally narrower than a human's torso. The two pairs of arms are just one above the other, with the lower pair just slightly smaller. His hands and feet are all long and thin, with six digits including opposable thumbs.
He's furred, smooth, fine black hair over dark gray skin.
Like all grues, he has two mouths, seperated by a narrow, levered jaw, and eight eyes, on a roughly level line back from where a human's would be. There's not much of a nose, and his ears are small. He has a fur crest running over the peak of his skull and down to peter out at the nape of his neck.
His back is scarificated with a simple line design that goes from neck to waist.
Reference one.
Reference two.
world information:
Children, gather close, link hands, and listen to the stories the stones tell us.
Before the families were the gods. Water, Earth, Light, Air, and Void were married, and they were happy together. But they wanted children, and had none. They tried to make children, each putting their essences into this vessel or that and creating life in that manner, but the new creatures were animals, thoughtless and wordless, and not children. They tried and tried. They created the crawlers and creepers and fliers, the swimmers and the tunnelers. But none of them were children. One by one, the gods ceased to be willing to try, until only Earth and Light still strove together.
Together, they created the great shifters, the enormous worms that roll beneath her surface, and make it tremble and move. And she cried out at the pain of their birth, because they too were mindless, and flung Light away so he ran to seek comfort from Air. And Earth retreated into herself, deep into the chasms and folds of her body, into the great black of her heart.
Everywhere she went inside herself, she found grief. It riddled her with cracks, filled her with holes, tied the cords of her heart into knots. And she followed those cracks and those knots with her fingers, and read them, and read aloud the word there, a word she had never known before, the name of the first Grue. And so Crux was born into her arms, from the place where six cracks met in the heart of Earth, and she finally had the child she needed so very much.
When she came back to the surface of herself, holding her daughter, the other gods all crowded around, each wanting to hold her, to dote on her as parents. But Earth remembered all those failures, remembered the way they had, one by one, stopped sharing her bed and left her to the pain of childlessness alone, and she shielded her daughter from them, sending them away with excuses and errands again and again, keeping Crux in her own arms and hers alone.
Only Light noticed how angrily she watched them all, how jealously she guarded the infant. And so he went to her, late in the night, to remind her of how he had tried to help her until she had driven him away. Still, she spurned him, and he left in a rage that towered high, and as she had, he fled deep into his own body. It was anger, not grief, that made him search for names in his own bones until he found them. Fire, he read, and his temper flared to life as its own soul, greedy and forever furious, and Spite, he read, and humans were born from the places where his body invaded hers, seeking and grasping and many.
And that is how Grues and humans came into the world, my children, before the families. But do not be afraid. Because Earth gave us teeth like obsidian, and gemstones for eyes, and hunger of our own. And Void gave us the Somes, so that the great shifters shouldn't kill us, because they are part of Light as well. Be wary the humans, for they ally with Fire and live in Light's protection, but they are soft and blind. And they are ours to eat, for when they are all gone, Earth will forgive Light for their creation, and all the gods will be happy again.
If Grues wrote history books, that would be the first chapter of every one.
Actually, they are the product of alien tinkering with human genetics, a semi-failed culling project that was abandoned on Earth five hundred years ago. But to a grue, a stone knife is the height of technology, and stories told around the cavern are the only history they know.
Grues are a man-eating species living in the caves and deep, dark places of Earth, in a parasitic relation with the humans on the surface. They were created to be dependent on human flesh, though can live on other intelligent or near-intelligent species if absolutely necessary.
Though his Earth is current with IRL history, the humans do not know about the grues except as the roots of a series of myths and fairy tales. (In his world, for instance, Little Red Riding Hood is not eaten by a wolf, but by a Darkling, a Scandinavian boogie monster based on Grues.)
Grues are photophobic, extremely sensitive to light. They have eight eyes, all of them very sensitive to one spectrum or another, allowing them to see in the lightless depths of the caves. The eyes have a defensive enzyme reaction, a catalyst that is released into the vitreous humor to make it opaque under the assault of bright or sudden light, protecting the optic nerve behind. This slowly fades, over a period that can last hours or days, restoring the sight.
Grues have five biological sexes: male, female, ur-male, ur-female, and un-male. Societies vary across the world, but in Some's locale, society is a meritocracy, with the fiercest fighters in control regardless of of sex. Un-males, being the smallest sex on average, are very rarely the leaders, typically falling into the fifth-position in any family unit. They are, however, the traditional magic users, the Somes. Not all un-males become Somes, but all Somes are un-males.
A Some is the emergency exit for a cave-dwelling tribe. In the event of an emergency (and most emergencies below ground involve falling rocks), they can rapidly remove their tribe-mates to a safe location. For this reason, they are bound to remain close, in reach. An apprenticeship system ensures that they know the way to safe locales without having to go far in search of them. Thirty-odd years ago (two generations, by grue standards), Mount Saint Helens erupted, caving in many of the local caverns and killing many whole tribes. Before that eruption, there was inter-tribe raiding and occasional wars. Paranoia hasn't yet faded, though the cease-fire has lasted.
Magic aside, their technology level is relatively stone-age. Once in a while, human technology (woven rope, for instance, and wood- and stone-working) filters in, but on their own, grue technology progresses quite slowly. Their 'written' language is currently in the process of moving from being an intricate tally-work of knots in twine to rudimentary carved hieroglyphs. They have not, yet, found a reason to invent or borrow the wheel. They see no value in paper or things written on it. (Some will not, obviously, be able to read his toe tag.)
They have a strong sense of art, almost entirely tactile. Music is sporadic and entirely ritual, dedicated to one of their five gods (Earth, Water, Air, Light, Void). No use for visual arts in the lightless caves. Scarification is common, but never casual.
history: Some is the third child of five intermarried parents. He is an un-male, the fifth of the grues' five biological sexes, and the only un-male among his eight siblings. He grew up in the River-Eaten Pits, deep inside the cave-nation of All-Falls-In under what the humans call the Northern Cascades. His extended family, some thirty members in all, forms the Climbs-Shaking-Walls Tribe. They are not the most powerful tribe in All-Falls-In, but they pay tribute to no one.
Some himself was apprentice to his fifth-parent, Some ovKeppim. Some (which is an approximate transliteration for human tongues and languages), is as much title as name, a holy word that allows the bearer, consecrated at a young age and marked with it, to use the twists of language to twist his place in reality. To teleport.
Being a Some is a powerful responsibility. Somes are expected to be loyal all their lives to their own tribe, and never to stray from their caves. Unable to leave even to hunt, they have to depend on their families for everything, every bite they eat. And that never sat well with Some. A dutiful child and then a dutiful young adult, he chafed but remained as his siblings left home one by one, wedding into other tribes or bringing their new spouses home, waiting for his own (arranged) marriage. It was unthinkable for him to leave.
But then his approaching marriage fell apart. The would-be fourth-spouse, a female from the next-higher tribe and a famous hunter, was killed in a sky-bearing-rockfall, and the first-spouse, an ur-male from the Cave-Mouth tribe, the highest tribe in All-Falls-In, refused to enter the marriage with three nobodies and no prize. Some watched the future he'd waited for for all his life fall to chaste dust, while his siblings already had children of their own.
When ovKeppim took a second apprentice, Some's oldest brother's fourth child, a bright little un-male named, newly, Some ovBorrit, Some found himself at a loss. Purposeless - His role still stood around him like a cloak, but no emergencies had struck the cave in so long. The mountain roots had ceased to shake a generation ago, and the deepquakes came but rarely. He was never to be a spouse, never a parent.
It was time to leave. Unthinkable. Undeniable. And so one moment he was home, sitting on his ledge, ovBorrit crawling across his lap and off towards half-blind ovKeppim, the new markings proud ridges across his spiky-furred narrow shoulders. And the next, Some was somewhere else. He would be hurt to know it took his family a full day to notice that he was no longer anywhere in River-Eaten.
But he never would. Three weeks out (as we measure time, for Grues measure it in nothing smaller than seasons), he was passing through a cave perilously close to the surface, well away from the places he knew. It was a noisy cave, as some surface caves were, for it passed close to one of the human roads at the surface. The constant rumbling kept him nervous, but it also kept him from hearing the beginnings of the rock collapse until it was too late. The ceiling shattered, and he meant to teleport away, but half of the equation of a teleport is knowing where you are to start with, and he had been distracted for days. The hesitation was his undoing: Sunlight streamed in, along with a roaring machine with two white-hot eyes that were the last things Some saw before he died.
personality: Some has just abandoned a lifetime of conditioning, loyalty, and family. He's sullen and angry for the moment, mostly at himself, but his base-line personality is easy-going, friendly, eager-to-please. Since he can't go home, he's unconsciously looking for a replacement family. His natural urge is to acquire people. Unfortunately for him, in this lonely state, he's a natural minion.
There are three driving factors in Some's current working personality. At the base is the way he was raised - A middle child in a boisterous, affectionate family. He's met fewer people outside his own family than he has fingers, which leaves him prone to overestimate a person's esteem for him. He's physically affectionate, likes to touch and hug at the slightest provocation. Simultaneously, his name/role set him apart inside that family, made him different, made him at once both more (in that he has a specific Purpose) and less (in that he can't prove himself alongside any of them, particularly the hunters). In game, he's suddenly outside his role, his family, his caves - in essence, everything he has known as important and secure. He'll look for roles he can fill, ways he can feel important to someone or some group. He'll try to integrate, but not mind if he doesn't so long as they treat him well.
Second is his species. He's going to have more empathy for nonhumans than for humans. He knows academically that humans are intelligent, technologically more advanced than his people, but he regards them as inferior on a moral scale because he was raised that way. They deserve to be hunted and eaten because Grues deserve to eat them. He's not a philosopher. The extent of his self-examination in this area, prior to the city, was limited; Humans were created to feed Grues, and therefore Grues eat humans. It's fair, because any adult human has already lived a long life, as long or longer as any Grue's. Human children are a gray area - Some chooses to abstain.
Third is his loss - Some believes in loyalty above all else at heart, but right now, he's in rebellion against it, seeing it as a trap because of the failure of his betrothal. He wasn't in love with any of the other members of his would-be-marriage, had only met two of them, but he was dedicated to the match, emotionally invested in it so deeply that its dissolution was a huge personal betrayal. That's his recent past, within the last month, and his ability to trust is still wounded. This is transitory - he wants trust, and will come around eventually. He'll even learn to trust humans, so long as they retain the majority.
A first impression would depend on how one meets Some. On a casual meeting, he's cautiously friendly, smiling and shaking hands but keeping escape an option. If no threat is offered, he's quick to assume acquaintance for friendship, with visits and favors offered and asked. This will be true among humans and nonhumans alike; living apart from his own kind and desperate for company, there will have to be a shift from seeing humans as prey to humans as companions and the prey as exceptions. In other games, he's created justifications for himself based on how many obvious connections any potential prey has.
If introductions are made by a friend, the caution is much less, almost recklessly trusting. He likes to ask about families; any two Grues meeting each other would have some link of relations, however convoluted.
There's a less common way to meet him, though, when he needs to fill that hunger; a dark night, a narrow alley or an abandoned building, and he creeps up on a victim, lurking in wait luring with all-too-human cries for help. He will learn to strangle victims, those long hands ideal. But if no one can die, a knife will work to steal his pound of flesh.
abilities/powers: Some can teleport himself, so long as he can see. The ability is tied to his name and comes from the marks on his back. He can take up to four times his own weight (approximately 500lbs) with him easily, up to six times (approximately 750lbs) with strain, to the point of passing out. If he's blind or passes out mid-transport, he can't control the destination. He can't teleport through gold, or if he is wearing it himself.
His senses of scent/taste and hearing are on a par with most large cats, sharper than a human's, particularly for distinguishing location, suitability, and health of potential prey. His jaws are significantly stronger than a human's, and his teeth are sharp and grow back quickly.
In normal indoor light, his visual acuity is on effectively on par with a human's. He can see a short way into the IR and UV spectrums, giving him heat vision, and his eyes are attuned to follow movement more than shape. He is effectively colorblind, except for very strong reds. The brighter the light, the less detail he can see.
He is vulnerable to bright or sudden lights, and especially to fire and sunlight. He himself is quite flammable.
first person sample: Some asking about souls.
third person sample: Some making up with someone he's wronged.
case no: 08-08-48
