Character Creation Chain

[Mon0Zer0]

Ded Ned

Ded Ned was one h'yuk short of the full hillbilly. Six foot five of concentrated roadkill and raw moonshine, he had the uncanny knack of fixing his good eye dead on you whilst the other one rambled aimlessly nearby. Rambling was good. If it stopped rambling then you knew it was only seconds before that monstrous arm of his would suddenly jerk and his big ole shooter would pick off some nearby game, BLAM!

Don't get me wrong, Deddy weren't trying to intimidate, these were just his little tics. Because of this his ma used to send him off into the woods to hunt for dinner. He'd come back with a deer or some such so full of shot Ma would just cook up something from the freezer without him knowing and make a big show so as not to let on. Deddy's feelings weren't the kind you could risk hurting.

Yup, weren't no nuance to the guy, which was comforting in the same way knowing when an earthquake's gonna hit is comforting. But least you always knew where you stood with him: downwind and as far away from the business end of Lil Ned as possible.

Ragonivash Pump

 

[Fiberglass Cyborg]

Ragonivash Pump

Ragonivash Pump owns a bar on Okapi 15, a mining station in the asteroid belt. He's descended from a hereditary line of hydraulic engineers, hence the surname. He is short, burly and completely bald, with extensive facial tattooing and an artificial left hand- the latter is pretty commonplace on Okapi 15. Basically cheerful and down-to-earth in disposition, Ragonivash is not exactly articulate or quick-witted, but he has a certain shrewdness that has done him well in a competitive environment. Ragonivash is a devotee of the Church of Rama, a syncretic faith with major Hindu influences. Unmarried with no regular partner, he enjoys short-term liasons with passing miners of both sexes.

Hoopoe Bellamy

 

[AnRoinnUltra]

Hoopoe Bellamy

Of the inhabitants of the town of Zetlank, Hoopoe is the only one able to remember a universe without the Collective. This is because she used to live on a free world. She carries her memories of that world everywhere -thay are inscribed into tiny messages and woven into her dreadlocked hair.
Hoopoe is tall for Zetlank, but when she moves, she does it slowly. To the poeple she meets her actions look like sad resignation -they know her history, and where she came from. To Hopope it is steely determination, as her mind turns thoughts of revenge.
Zetlank is on a small moon, and surrounded by rock and dust, yet Hoopoe walks the dust fields for hours at a time. Her face is old, wrinkled, and constantly framed in a blank expression. She is always wearing spotless clothing from her home-world, and also keeps with her a hatred for the Collective.

Splanter

 

[Betok_Haney]

Splanter would rather toil in the dark with his tools, oily gadgets, rusty valves, and metal fittings than talk to another being. Diminutive, he can fit in tight spaces, squeezing into just the right position to repair the engines, service fuel lines, replace broken coolant columns, or to just...hide. His large yellow eyes are adjusted to the dark, that after so many years aboard the freighter, he can see without the use of his headlamp. Living off a sustenance of vermin such as fessik and scuttlefunt, Splanter is happiest when he picks up the subtle sound of a damaged pump with his large, conical ears, or feels the purr of a repaired starjump motor beneath his padded paws.

It has been months since the crew has seen Splanter, let alone talk to him, and he is completely fine with this reality. They know that he is alive, because their ship is alive, and that is enough for all of them.

Sin

 

[DanielOwen]

Sin

Sin has what you need, and has it for sale. To some an angel of deliverance from pain, loneliness, memory; curses that have haunted us since the beginning. To others another scavenger picking at the bones of the underhives. Neon-lit and slender, Sin carries it all wrapped tight in lace-up shiny black synskin, showing off just enough to say what's on offer, concealing just enough to poke imagination. Exposed flesh splattered with tattoos, mostly pornographic cartoons and lines of poetry. When Sin smiles, there is a flash of steel. When Sin bends over, there are hints of knives and scars. When Sin laughs that deep, throaty laugh and pops open that case of pills, everyone forgets their troubles a while.

Harper Cross

 

[CupofJoe]

Harper Cross

Small, even for her age, Harper Cross lent around the corner of the bike shed and looked for a teacher. She came back and reached into her satchel. She found what she searched in a moment. She stared at small white cylinder as she held it in front of her, a smile growing on her face. If she took it, she would miss Maths and probably History too. Who was she kidding? She would be missing the rest of the day, and maybe the evening as well.
But… but it was just too tempting.
She had been in her current form for nearly six months and now had a chance to go home for a few hours. She looked around again. The coast was clear. She stuffed her satchel under the bike shed where no-one would see it and looked and the cylinder again. With a nervous haste she unscrewed one end and gasped as a few sparkles escaped. One quick mouthful and the cylinder was empty. The sweetness took her breath away. It was delicious. It took only a few seconds to act and with an almost comic poof of smoke, Harper Cross was gone and Trainee Fairy Harperenia Crossiananti flittered and fluttered around the bikes. Just another Bumble Bee if you didn’t look close and see the sparkling wings or hear the sweet singing. She knew it was part of a Tooth Fairy’s apprenticeship but being a human child was hard. And Harperenia still had six months to go.

Leeter of the Windward Massive

 

[Fiberglass Cyborg]

Leeter is one of the oldest and wisest people left in Drowntown. This thought scares her, as Leeter is also (as she’d be the first to admit) just a twenty-nine-year-old thug. A tall, olive-skinned woman with pale green eyes and a prominent beak of a nose, Leeter is famine-victim skinny, but corded all over with lean muscle. She walks with a swagger from days spent on war canoes and exploration rafts. Her cheek bears the zigzag scarification of the Windward Massive. The Massives, Windward and Leeward, started out as criminal gangs. But they survived and protected their own when the rest of civil society broke down, so now they are effectively rival governments. Leeter was a big part of that: as a Windward ranker she got sick of beating up other starving kids for their meagre possessions, and set out to turn the gang into a force for good. Now, as First Lieutenant, she’s turned her attention to the Leeward Massive. They need to end this war. Conquest or peace, she doesn’t care which. The water isn’t getting any lower, and the half-submerged towers of Drowntown won’t stand forever.

Rs. Akhioka Moragundhu IV.

 

[DanielOwen]

Rs. Akhioka Moragundhu IV

The Rs. Akhioka Moragundhu Fourth-So-Named does not fit in with the rest of his profession. Where a Resurrectionist is typically a forbidding presence, Akhioka insists that his friends call him Aki, and extends the title of 'friend' to anybody he shakes hands with, which is everybody he meets. He is short, wiry and wears thick-rimmed spectacles, refusing to have his eyesight corrected or even to use some more modest frames. His Resurrectionist robes are frayed at the hem and often speckled with food stains, cuffs turned up his scrawny forearms, and he sports a broad-brim hat with a ludicrous purple feather in it. He has terrible breath due to his habit of chewing raw garlic, a seemingly chronic cough and constantly picks at his fingernails. Still, he has won more souls back in games against Death than any other Resurrectionist ever known.

Alyxis Three Moons

 

[AnRoinnUltra]

If you're new to the moon you can be forgiven for mixing Alyxis up with her two identical sisters. Having said that, Alyxis Three Moons (or 'Cube', as she's known locally), won't forget your mistake and will hum angrily every time she is near you -which can get irritating. She's as skinny as they come, and is permanently dressed in a raggedy teatowel/ loincloth. Nobody knows for sure how the three sisters arrived, or where they came from, but they definitely arrived because they're here now. They exist in a sort of trance, and can be found floating about two feet from the ground anywhere inside the lunar colony. Don't be surprised if you find Cube floating in a corner of your accommodation, and if you do, just ignore her -she's pretty harmless but takes offence at being disturbed from her trance, and can kick up a bit of a fuss about it.

Blunk Fanglejet

 

[CupofJoe]

Blunk Fanglejet
Blunk Fanglejet, or just "Jet" to his few friends was a journeyman boxer. Never higher than third on the card, Jet was who you brought in when you wanted "the next big thing" to shine. Blunk could take a punch and look good doing it and he pose enough of a threat to keep the new fighters honest. But he knew his place. Take the money. Take the punches. And then take the canvas. He hated his nickname. He had been going somewhere fast once. He had been TNBT but that was long ago. Now he just waited for the last minute call to fill in or a day or two of sparing before someone else's title fight. Jet had flamed out.

Fisherton de la Mere

 

[Fiberglass Cyborg]

Fisherton de la Mere:

As you roam the quaint country lanes of south-east Angleland, you may encounter a most curious character. A great, gaunt scarecrow of a man with blond hair and beard hacked short as if by a knife, he is habited both rain and shine in a ragged frock-coat and a morning suit that has seen better days, nay, decades. Like many such "Gentlemen of the Road," it is impossible to judge his age. He is amiable enough, and will introduce himself as "Lord de la Mere. Of the Fisherton del la Meres, don'tcha know." Hence, the rude natives of these parts call him "Fisherton de la Mere." He does not beg, but is politely grateful for small "gifts" of food or money. He speaks with a strange, soft, unidentifiable accent and has an air of melancholy bewilderment about him. If pressed, he will express his longing to return to the court of "King Edward the VIIIth." Of where? you might enquire. "Why, of Angleland of course!" At which point the cautious traveller, wary of tolerating treason against the Emperor in Potsdam, will bid him adieu.

Ms. Lalithi Esterhazy.

 

[Mon0Zer0]

Ms. Lalithi Esterhazy. Spinster and proud. She lives alone, save for a family of scraggy Martian moggs, in an old, creaky homestead surrounded by dead trees and swamp gas. Her only form of transport a decrepit dirigible, tied with a worn tow rope to an old lightning pole at the front of her property.

Were you ever to meet Ms. Esterhazy, you might feel you had met some kind of would notice spidery limbs, preying mantis arms and a buzzard face atop a long neck; straw hair, as white as the polar snows; eyes that fixed you with the intensity of a tiger on its prey. You might also be struck with the incongruity of her voice as sweet and melodious as a nightingale. She would greet you with a close appraisal, then welcome you in to her tumbling shack of a home as warmly as if you were family.

Lalithi's collection of rare and dangerous curios is legendary, and she shows each and every one of them as if they were her own children. Many of them macabre parts of forgotten Martian history or rare and precious artefacts from before the fall. But, before you think of taking back a souvenir of your travels, remember this: the old bird may look frail, but she can hit a swerve beetle on the wing from a hundred and fifty yards with that blunderbuss of hers.

Malachi Millions

 

[AnRoinnUltra]

Malachi Millions

Malachi Millions, or Malachi 'nobody wants to know ya' as he used to be known, is what Space Force once called cannon fodder. General Munchtol would've happily shipped him to an outer galactic spiral conflict. Fortunately for the colonists of Ansta 4, the terraforming division got hold of Malachi first.
His actual purpose on Ansta 4 was to see if prolonged exposure to the upper atmospheric gas mix on the planet is toxic. He thinks he is managing the colony's first mountain fortress. It is a thing he does with pride.
At the end of every lunar cycle Malachi takes a hover car down to the spaceport. Nobody misses the fact he has arrived. Within a few short hours supply depot number three comes alive with the sound of laughter. It never takes long for the joking to spread, and it is often days before colonial life returns to normal.
Until his next visit.
Malachi 'could ya give us the loan of a fiver' is what he is now known as. He begs, borrows and scavanges relentlessly, as if it is the most natural thing in the cosmos for a millionaire to be at. Nobody really minds, because there is always a story to be had, and because proper waste disposal is compulsory and expensive.
In his own mind Malachi is the fountain of all knowledge. He has no problem starting a conversation with 'What General Munchtol needs to do is withdraw the troops, I told him that last week but ya know, ya can lead a horse to water...'. This is despite the fact that Munchtol has been dead for twenty years.

Life has a way of finding a use for things. Living in a colony on the farthest habitable planet known to humanity is tough. There is precious little to smile about. It is for this reason that Malachai 'Millions', the wealthy pauper of Ansta 4, is possibly the most important human living there.
If you meet him, and you'll know when you have (he'll be the one loudly telling you how he became wealthy), be sure to listen to his advice -it'll have you sniggering for days.

Prunty Zantlebolg

 

[Betok_Haney]

It is not easy, being an oracle. If you have the time (most do when they come to see her), Prunty will inform you that as a 75th generation Zantlebolg, she was always expected to be an oracle. She wished she had a choice, but always knowing your fate and the fate of others puts a damper on hopes and dreams. It is so boring, sitting in a dark, cold cave on top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere, waiting for hopeless people to make the arduous journey to find you and ask benign questions about marriage or babies or money or fame or success or whatever. This was no way to live as a young teen, when other kids her age get to have friends, have parties, talk about love, cram for exams, worry about the boy that has been staring at you in class, eat amazing food…it was all so unfair.

So, she sat, alone in her cave, waiting for the next visitor to whine about his problems, and advise him if he should look for another job. She sighed, as she looked at her reflection in the “dream pool” next to her. She knew that she was pretty (Thank the gods she did not have her aunt Frunty’s nose!), as she looked at her dark wavy hair tumbling over her shoulders, and her bright green eyes gleaming back at her in the pools’ reflection. She thought that most who visited her were surprised to see how young and pretty she was, expecting an old frumpy woman, with warts and a dry cackle (thank you again for this image, aunt Frunty). It’s no wonder that people expected this, since all she could do was sit in her cold cave, wait for visitors, and eat.

Prunty rolled her eyes and sighed again as she gathered the necessary ingredients to sprinkle into the dream pool and ready for her long day of prognostication. As she scattered the dried herbs and powder into the water, she lazily watched as they whirled and dissolved, forming the picture of what the day will bring. However, as the image formed, her eyes widened in wonder and disbelief. She bolted upright and stared deep into the future, her future, as she realized that today was not going to be like any other day. For today, she would meet her first, and best, friend.

Captain Diedre Coldwater

 

[Deke]

Nervous recruits flinched as another flaming ballista bolt cracked overhead, smashing into the tightly packed ranks not twenty paces away. Captain Diedre Coldwater sneered as they did so, but refused to slow her pace as she inspected the men. She paused in front of one pox faced recruit, a sniveling weasel of a man holding his spear and wicker shield with shaking hands. Her dark iron armor gleamed in the morning sun, the green gauntlet fist of Horfalk painted proudly on her right pauldron.

“This the best your hamlet could give us? Pimple faced boys playing soldier?”

She backhanded the conscript hard across the face with a mailed hand, the man next in line wincing as specks of blood spattered his padded armor.

“Don’t think for a second those holy men in their robes will show you any mercy. Perhaps once they walked your streets and tended the sick in your piss pot of a village but you are in the Sidon army now.” She spat, her one remaining eye roving the packed ranks of frightened men. “They will put a crossbow bolt in your guts quicker than you can blink and smile as you die. Get up those ladders and to the gate house, get those gates open so the infantry can get in and maybe… maybe we will let you live out the night.”

The Captain turned, facing the walls of Fort New Haven as the archers loosed volleys of shafts over her head. It was a lie of course, once the gates were open and the heavy infantry smashed their way through and sacked the castle, the conscripts would be sacrificed in the silent hours of the night to the dark god Horfalk, and his glory would shine all the brighter.

A thin, hard smile touched Coldwater’s lips. “What a day to be alive.” She thought.

Radrik “Seadog” Adrilon

 

[Fiberglass Cyborg]

Radrik “Seadog” Adrilon

The Seadog, the Bloodhound of the Waves, the Sea Beagle- Radrik Adrilon has many nicknames, but they all share a certain theme. He comes, they say, from one of the lost tribes of the Encelades, the islands hidden in the most remote heart of the Worldsea. Certainly, his appearance is strange to a land-dweller: no-one from the Continent has that rich, deep reddish-brown skin, or hair of a ghastly shade that might almost be described as /yellow/. When I met him, he was already an old man, though as round-faced as a child and as sleekly muscled as a bull walrus. He seldom speaks except to make some wry little jest, and with his blandly expressionless face it is hard to tell whether it is meant in good humour or as an insult. He does not hurry, does not raise his voice. And yet there is a sense of some remorseless strength just below the surface.

It could be just his reputation, for Seadog Adrilon is known as the greatest bounty hunter in all the Seventy Seas. In remote seas where the islands are sparser, the sailors know strange tricks of reading the waves and weather. This is well-established. But Seadog Adrilon is said to be able to read the passage of a small boat more than a week earlier; to understand the language of the albatross and the stormy petrel; and most bizarrely to /smell/ his fleeing targets across miles of ocean. Whatever the truth of it, he gets results. What is he like far from port, when he comes face to face with his quarry? No-one has lived to tell.

Dr. Kendrika Elmquist.

 

[Mon0Zer0]

Dr. Kendrika Elmquist never asked to be a Mary Sue, but everywhere she went people couldn't help but admire her. When she spoke people hung on every word. When she left the room she was all anyone could talk about.

She excelled at everything. A double masters in psychology and art, she also had three PhD's from Harvard, Oxford and Yale in Biochemistry, Medicine and Feminist Studies. When not hard at work solving complicated math puzzles, saving lives or winning BJJ tournaments, she was the face of her generation, working as a high fashion model.

With her long, lissom limbs, slim waist, deep, soulful eyes, full lips and perfect skin, teeth and hair she couldn't help but attract the cream of male attention. Once, she'd met the handsome star of a TV series she liked, Rex Wreckerson and he had instantly fallen in love, which made things difficult for his co-star Hans McHandersome who was so jealous he ruined a take by starting a fight.

This kind of thing happened all the time. In fact it happened so frequently that Kendrika was worried it might affect her future presidential bid.

Slowly, over the years, having an easy life became hard. Not hard work, everything she did was easy. More than anything she longed to be turned down, to be ignored; to have a bad hair day; to not be the centre of attention when she entered a room.

One day, she made her face up with lipstick smeared all over her face, but this merely started a new fashion craze. Another day she said something so outrageous and hateful on social media she was sure the crowd would turn on her. Instead, they hailed her for her bold stance and congratulated her for bringing attention to this topic. To top it all, she started to purposefully state things she knew not to be true, only to find out they were true. Pluto WAS a planet. Duck bills DID cure cancer. Giraffes WERE highly evolved humans.

Then one day she wrote a book. A moving tale about an average, lonely girl who was never asked out, and who spent most of her time nerding out on the internet. Always afraid to say the wrong thing, often feeling awkward and ignored. This book made Kendrika extremely happy. For the first time she could live out her dreams of being average and unpopular.

The books were a roaring smash, of course, and she secured the highest book deal in history. The anti-sue series was the biggest film opening in history, although Kendrika was unable to attend on account of being on a vital mission to the ISS.

Her tale of an unpopular and unremarkable young lady, no older than herself made Kendrika's extraordinary life bearable again. As she single-handedly defeated the alien menace her thoughts turned to the run down part of a dead end town, split ends and acne and she was happy.

Captain Eleanor Rampart

 

[Fiberglass Cyborg]

Captain Eleanor Rampart is an odd one. First off, human tongues cannot pronounce her real name- she joined us from the allied world of Z'Bllg!chht#mmmPP via the Officer Exchange Program. So she made up a name for us to call her by. The "Rampart" bit is clearly trying to project a certain image, as is the voice of her speech synthesiser. She has it set to "retired brigadier from British sitcom," what-what. It gets tiresome.

To look at, well, she's a Z'Bllg!chht#Plgwehh, or "Zubbly" as we say it. Seven feet tall and with trilateral symmetry: an upright scaly sausage with three stumpy legs at the bottom, three stumpy arms at the top, and three much longer arms in the middle. No visible head- their sense organs are on their knees and elbows, and they eat through the upper hands. They don't wear clothes so she has her insignia of rank on an armband. Captain Rampart is on the stout side for a Zubbly, and she has a distinguishing pattern of violet scales spiralling though a chequerboard of burnt umber and yellow ochre. You learn to recognise these things.

She's a good officer when the chips are down. I served under her during the Nine Weeks War with Gepetto IV. Charismatic and brilliant: even with a green crew and a half-refitted ship, we were still able to get the drop on the Guppies at the relief of Andraxes Station. But she's trouble in peacetime. It's like everything has to be a big holodrama with her. The orders, the punishments, the praise, they're all technically within the bounds of common sense. It's the theatricality: the tone of wounded disappointment when she hands out latrine duty. Audibly choking back tears of pride when everyone's made up their bunks properly. Making jump drill sound like a desperate life-and-death gamble with the fate of worlds on the line. It's hard to tell if she really feels like that, or if it's all just an act to enliven the time spent amoung us boring apes.

Ghatolomew Tetchtli.

 

[AnRoinnUltra]

Ghatolomew Tetchtli

'Tetchy tall tale' is what Ghatolomew used to be known as.
And, in a way, it used to be true. At one stage he had 59687 followers on the Friendlyface social media platform, and the same amount on Spongle.

At that time a day on Earth consisted of twenty four hours -Tetchy tall tale was spending twenty of those hours on Friendlyface.

59686 of his followers were there to mock and ridicule him. The management of Friendlyface went to great length to facilitate this, and it became a very lucrative thing. So much so that the owner was able to buy another house (leaving him with 142 spare, should the need arise).

The 'tall tale' nickname came from the habit Ghatolomew had of exaggerating. There was no subject that he wasn't an expert on. And the more outlandish it was, the more he knew about it.
Take alien abduction. Not only had Ghatolomew been abducted multiple times, but he had also apparently single handedly defeated several extraterrestrial invasions. Using his bare fists.

Social media gave him an opportunity to broadcast these feats to a wide audience. And the wide audience reciprocated. Mostly by mocking his appearance or intelligence. Some of the more creative reciprocaters felt compelled to advise him to kill himself.

It got to the point that the management of Friendlyface decided to intervene, and made a pledge to stop the insults.
Nobody was quite sure what the pledge looked like.
Or where they stored it.
But, in the case of Ghatolomew, it was never needed.

As it happened, one of the followers of his tales of derring do was a recruiter for the Zardonian army. Ghatolomew's antics were just what they needed.

Ghatolomew Tetchtli is now a member of the Zardonian ghost battalion. There is a saying on Zardonia; 'if you know anything more than the name ghost battalion, then you are already dead.'

This may or may not be true.
But.
If you ever find yourself on Zardonia, don't mention Ghatolomew -just to be on the safe side.

Spuddadaw Winklefoot

 

[Fiberglass Cyborg]

Spuddadaw Winklefoot:
I made Spuddadaw Winklefoot when I was just eight years old, and it shows. My parents had forbidden me to use the Art until I was much older, so I used to experiment in secret on stray odds and ends. For Spuddadaw, I took a wrinkled old baking potato, stuck two spiral shells from Cromlech Beach on the bottom, and gave the whole thing a low-slung hat made from a cocktail umbrella. I'd just learned that the gross sprouty bits on a spud were called "eyes", and thought it hilarious that Spuddadaw literally had eyes in the back of her head. All the better to watch me with, as it turned out.

When I breathed life into Mrs. Winklefoot, she stood up, cast a beady eye around my little desk cluttered with the components of her unfinished brothers and sisters, and told me to damn well tidy the place up. She ended up being a second mother to me, both stricter and more attentive than the first. My school work improved beyond all recognition, and my garret room became the neatest place in the whole ramshackle old house. It wasn’t all bossiness, though- Spuddadaw was warm hearted, shrewd and liked to laugh. (Many of her jests I did not understand until I hit puberty.) I learned more common sense from her than from the distracted, unworldly adults in my life.

I don’t see Mrs. Winklefoot much nowadays, though we still write to each other. She and the other creations of my childhood set up home in a hollow tree on the borders of Elfland, where they can go out to the shops without people staring at them.

Next:
Unit 5472D.