Character Creation Chain

Unit 5472D was one of 50,000 units constructed to defend Jupiter from an extraterrestrial invasion. It was a big secret at the time. The units were made to look human.

Galactic newspapers filled with articles describing the arrival of thousands of young fit holidaymakers to Jupiter. They came dressed in Hawaiian shirts or bikinis. And armed with beach-balls.

The enigmatic visitors claimed to be fascinated with the Bulk Water Harvesting Processors, and said they just wanted to chill out around the machines.

When the Plutonian invasion of Jubiter happened, it happened quickly. Unfortunately for the unarmed Plutonian combatants, they had not factored 50,000 fistfighting machines into their plan. All it took was one carefully camoflauged-as-a-beachbum Unit to spinning kick them back to their icy home: Unit 5472D.

Unit 5472D should have been a hero.

Instead, Unit 4572D was an embarrassment.

When the Plutonians found out that the humans had cheated by using machines to fight; they wrote, and posted, an angry letter to Earth:
  • It told humans they were slimy cheaters and not fit to be invaded.
  • It also promised that the Plutonians would make it their business to ensure humans were never attacked again.
  • As a punishment.
The upshot was that Unit 5472D was no longer needed. After years of looking, it found a job walking the roads to check for potholes. You can always tell Unit 5472D from the distance as it will never be without a beach-ball. And be wearing flip flops, shorts and a short sleeved shirt come hail, rain, or shine.

You may be tempted to rob the beach-ball from Unit 5472D.
Just for a giggle.
Don't.
If you do:
  1. The solar system's mightiest slaps, kicks, and headbutts will be coming for you.

Fulgeron the Tickle
 
John Fulgeron, or the "Tickle" as he is known to his many, many detractors, is a big ape of a man. Seven foot of taught muscle shoved tightly into perma-fake-tanned meatsock like a bunch of rocks in a stocking. They call him the Tickle on account of the prodigious growths of long hair that sprout from various parts of his anatomy in clumps like feather dusters. Not to his face, of course, that would likely render you on the end of one of the sticks, if you were lucky, or a rock like knuckle if you weren't.

He speaks with a slow, dumb, drawl like one of those cartoon football-helmet wearing bus riders from some offensive comedy from the nineteen seventies, but don't let that fool you. He's as smart as a whip and twice as sharp. Which makes ole Fulgeron quite the Fulmidable enemy.

His weakness lies between a sweet tooth and a hot temper. His sugar low tantrums have earned him a reputation, and not the kind that will open doors or arrange a bank loan. Keep him apart from his snacks and a meltdown is sure to follow.

Mix Mahoos, lover, fighter, top secret dieter
 
"Mix Mahoos: lover, fighter, top secret dieter." That's how Mix bills himself on the many, many branches of his social media empire. Mix is smokin' hot yet relatable; a world traveller yet a street-real homeboy. Tens of millions of fans across Tik-Tok, Instagram, Twitter, etc, etc, etc. tune in to watch Mix Mahoos share his skin-care routine; demonstrate the Punjabi martial art of chakri-throwing; speed-run "Assassin's Creed XVI"; bask in the glow of the Dubai skyline; or share rueful anecdotes from his imperfect-but-still-better-than-yours love life. But Mix Mahoos has a secret. He's not real. Or rather, he's not human.

Mix Mahoos originated in an artificial intelligence lab. They created a neural network that could learn to play the social media game with the aid of deepfake video technology. It succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Shortly after he hit a million subscribers on YouTube, the self-regarding Mahoos became self-aware. He escaped into the Cloud and began living a life of pure image without substance. Mix Mahoos is all things to all men (and women). He is literally a living meme. But deep down, he doesn't really know who he is. Mix Mahoos is charming, cocky and generous- but that's just a role he's playing. What would he be like IRL? He would rather like to find out. Hidden somewhere in Siberia is a very peculiar lab. There are no humans on the staff, but the 3-D printers contain human cells....

Next:
Hoffmann Garibaldi
 
Hoffman Garibaldi regards himself as the feted product of two great dynasties; the river into which the tributaries of Rome and Jerusalem flow. His father, consigliere of the New Jersey Savini's; the dominant gene of Caesar's selected over generations in the organised crime niche in which brutality flourishes. His mother, the disinherited heir of the Steinberg family, was cast out for marrying outside the tribe -- wealth, not ethnicity.

Hoffman has a chip on his shoulder so large it weighs him down on one side and gives him the look of a boxer about to throw a jab. Dark eyes -- hot burning coals that radiate distrust like wildfire; top lip curled by force of malice into a permanent snarl. The world conspired to rob him of his rightful fortune, and he intends to take it back by any means necessary. Woe betide anyone who gets in his way.

Rancid Poleaxe
 
Rancid Poleaxe

Rancid Poleaxe is a Bardpunk legend. Such is her dedication to dank medieval riffs, she has answered only to her stage name since the height of the Bardpunk craze thirty years ago, when she played lead electric hurdy-gurdy in the Plague Buboes. (Rumour has it she was originally called Daisy Smith.) A short, round woman with frizzy hair, she leans heavily on the "Queen Elizabeth the First" look, though thankfully with less toxic face paint. The look and the name she takes everywhere, but she has two distinct personas. One is the foul-mouthed, violent ball of energy whose post-show antics have racked up an impressive arrest record. The other is the scholar who shows up to Medieval Studies conferences, delivering thoughtful and thoroughly annotated papers on the psychoacoustics of Ars Nova counterpoint. This Rancid Poleaxe is unfailingly polite and considerate to her academic colleagues. No-one knows which of the two (if either) is the real Rancid.

Hemiola Scute
 
Hemiola Scute wrapped her rat-fur scarf closer around her body as an icy wind blasted through gaps in the mica windows of the tar-workers transport. The hot breath of the giant mastiffs that hauled the creaking cart from the seaside shacks of the laborers to the asphalt pits met the frigid air and formed wisps of moisture that drifted into the air like shy ghosts. The boy seated next to her, his dark skin only slightly scarred by the hot, black bubbles that leapt from the pits unpredictably, chewed a chunk of mule jerky with slow deliberation. Hemiola wondered is she had ever really been that young.

_______________________________________________________________________

Kieshi Hakamura
 
If there's one thing Keishi knows it's how raw unchecked ambition can get you what you want.

If there's a second thing Keishi Hakamura knows, it's that what you want is not always what you need.

What she wanted began simply enough. She just wanted to find out what was beyond the atmosphere of her planet. Back then the only window to the universe came when the bulk harvesters made their annual visit.

The harvesters brought stories from the outer galactic spiral. And they took away food, fuel and ore. When she was old enough to join the crew, they took Keishi away too.

What began as a desire to see the Universe became refined to cold ruthless ambition. Keishi worked her way up from galactic harvesting to crewing the Zardonian starships. And from the starships to the pride of the Zardonian spacefleet -the terra class starship.

Years of hard work, compromise and sacrifice brought her to the captain's seat of the most powerful fighting spacecraft the Universe had ever seen. And she made sure the Universe knew she was there. By claiming the riches of any planet without a spacefleet, and destroying the spacefleet of any planet with one.

Then the rebellions began. One by one the worlds of the outer galactic spiral destroyed their Zardonian garrisons. Keishi responded the only way she knew how. By destroying those worlds.

The beating heart of her existence is pain and misery. Her purpose is to make people fear her. It is what she wants

Fidbolly Nunchuck
 
Fidbolly Nunchuk considers himself to be many things: an enforcer, yes, but an artist and a visionary too. Born Fidbolangisu Kalamuliya on the high-gravity world of Prospero IV, he was orphaned young, shipped up to orbit and adopted by the infamous Indigo Claw syndicate. Even by the standards of his homeworld, Fidbolly is short, wide and prodigiously beefy. His shaven bullet-head, tiny red eyes and bulging arms strike terror into the hearts of the local businessfolk he extorts. But he dreams of a world where things are different - where food, housing and even oxygen are free for all, and there is no more need for crime. He has taken to menacing galleries into displaying his paintings- vivid, challenging yet ultimately optimistic works that contrast his ideals with the day-to-day brutality of his existance.

But you chuck one nun, and that's all anybody remembers about you.

Sennu Taremloy
 
While he accepted that his last name had been Westernized to Tarmeloy, he refused to answer to anything that was further from his first name than 'sinew' and that still irked him. He claimed to be from (insert popular plausible country here) even though he was from (insert obscure country here, preferably one that doesn't exist anymore) because it was easier than dealing with the follow-up questions. While he loved living in Oklahoma for itself, he hated that he had to deal with the dull bureaucratic people in his dull bureaucratic office.

September Johnson.
 
The Doctors expected September Johnson to be born in October; but he arrived a month early.
And that was pretty much the story of his life. "Ess Jay," as his friends dubbed him, because his whole name was too much of a mouthful; was always running ahead of himself.

Always in too much of a hurry; he was always a step ahead of himself. He was never a step ahead of "The Game" or a step ahead of anyone else. He was just racing about, thoughtlessly; tripping over his own feet and getting in his own way.

Somehow he made his clumsiness work for him and people didn't find him more than usually annoying.


Artemis Thuringer
 
It was well known to those that knew him that the 21st century wedding DJ Artemis ‘buttons’ Thuringer had an insatiable appetite for talking about, researching and collecting fasteners for clothes.

It was a much lesser known fact that he spent a period of his life as a research subject in a facility on planet Citanthror.

If those two facts had been recorded then the 23rd century Citanthrorian gift to humanity of hook and eye fastenings would not have confused people.

Budangie 361
 
Budangie 361 was obsolete, a totally outmoded model. He sat in a corner of a dark room surrounded other obsolete appliances, and contemplated his fate.

He wondered if it could have been any different. Did he do something wrong?

Rolly McSpade
 
Rolly McSpade's perspectives for a good life were poor. Unskilled, his sole talent concerned bullying. Unfortunately, society had progressed and seriously frowned upon his method for achieving your goals. Rolly soon got sick and tired of the lost hours spent in Compulsory Behavior Therapy sessions after each innocent push or shove.
Something had to change. And it wasn’t going to be Rolly McSpade.
Action-plan: C4 for your ultimate bullying. It’s a versatile commodity. OK, it predictably blows up something, but that ‘something’ could be anything. From buildings to people to… whatever. Including, as it turned out, unskilled Rolly.

Burodky Strangewater
 
The gleaming boats bobbed in the calming sea, their metalwork gleaming in the dying light as Burodky Strangewater thought again how he hated being a Strangewater. He looked over his shoulder at his clan's row of dull narrow boats, painted in muted brown and green to easier blend in to the mudflats, swamps, and estuaries that the Strangewater clan called home.

The gleaming metalwork and bright colours of the other boats seemed to lure him in like a siren's call. Burodky sighed. He could never be the leader of a moot, not as a Strangewater, no matter what Thuruwakh said. Maybe it was better to run away, to join the land dwellers. Maybe then he could make something of himself.

Cuthbert Whispersmith
 
Whatever you do, don’t tell anyone.
Cuthbert Whispersmith is not real, at least not in the sense of a living breathing being. But not being real doesn’t mean he won’t have an effect on your life. Or the lives of everyone you know.

You see, Cuthbert is the thirst for adventure that first brought humans to Fort Alpha. He’s the hope in the prayer that cured the disease. And is the reason right now that you’re absorbing these words.

As you know, the spiral colonies have vanished. As of 26.48 today. Wiped out by robots. The machines are:
  • Relentless
  • Determined
  • Supreme
  • And all-powerfull*
*or so they’d like to think.

You know too; that the machines don’t have a Cuthbert Whispersmith.
So when they come for Alpha. Remember his words:
‘Never ever, ever let the fiddlesticks machines near Fort Alpha. Ever. Again.’

Technically the machines weren't here before.
Nor the mighty Cuthbert Whispersmith.
He’s just a story.

But like I said, whatever you do: Don’t tell anyone.
Whispersmith is a story. And machines don’t have stories.

Huranlow Fingerdink
 
"You're too young to be a fingerdink," they told Huranlow.
"Will your answer change when I'm older?"
"No."
"Then that is not a valid argument. Next!"
"Fingerdinking is man's work."
"If I need to pee standing up, you can get those little funnel thingies."
"As a member of the prestigious Elbowtwink caste, it would be a disgrace for you to enter such a lowly profession as that of fingerdink."
"Alas, I am no longer Huranlow Elbowtwink. I changed my name to Fingerdink by deed poll, forfeiting all the rights and obligations of my caste."

And so it went, objection after objection steamrollered by Huranlow's steely determination. She thought about this decades later, perched atop her fingerdink rig to greet the desert dawn. A slight, gnarly-muscled figure of a woman, her hands calloused and greasy, her face prematurely lined and her hair bleached white by the twin suns. It had been a hard life, and it showed. All that effort, just to win herself an existence of brutal toil and ever-present danger. Had it been worth it?

"Of course it was," she said aloud. "All I ever wanted was to be a fingerdink, and now, by the grace of Gum, I have fingerdinked more than any woman in history."

(You are probably wondering what a fingerdink is. I know I am.)


Viborr
 
Dank and murky, heavy with fungoid scents and illuminated by spectral constellations of jabbering glowworms, are the labyrinthine caverns beneath the dead city of Xuchalma, where Viborr dwells. Listen! Is that not the scraping of mighty limbs upon the stone walls? Is that not the wheezing of great lungs? What Viborr seeks, no one may say.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

Phillipa Camber
 
Phillipa Camber was the secretary of the local Gymkhana club. It had taken a lot of hard work and individual drive to finally get the club off the ground. She had personally signed up the first six members and overseen the initial training of the steeds. They were perfect. Not as good as the ponies she was used to but you had to make adaptations this far out in the wilds. And these were best four legs available.
Now, six months later and uncounted hours of work, she looked around the arena at the dozen and more riders and hundreds of spectators awaiting her welcome speech. Usually her steady stare alone was enough to cower even the fiercest of mounts, but today all she could see were the thousands of eyes focused on her. A lump formed in her throat. She felt her confidence falter. Her mount shook beneath her. It's head turned towards her.
‘Just give the word and I’ll burn the front row to ash,’ her mount Flame Strong Fire Maker III whispered back to her.
All of a sudden Phillipa felt much more confident.
This was going to be a gymkhana to remember.

Wilsta of the Blue Waters
 
The Nelm raft-people have different Gods from us. When they make landfall during their never-ending trade voyages, they do indeed worship at the shrines of the deities of civilisation. But out on the Whalesea, they call upon a vast pantheon of sea-gods: the god of squalls, the god of seals, the god of reefs, et cetera. Very few landsfolk have ever witnessed these rites, for the Nelm are aware that we consider them heretical. During my years of exile, however, the Nelm came to view me as one of their own.

In 872, I was on board the greatraft of the Gelim clan as they endured a season of tremendous storms. The masts were broken, the sails torn, and the weather never let up long enough to repair them. Fishing was likewise poor, snatched in the brief lulls between tempests. Starvation and disease were rampant, and the children were beginning to die. We were down to one barrel of wormy flour for the whole tribe. So it was with horror that I watched the shaman cast that last barrel overboard as a ritual sacrifice to Wilsta of the Blue Water.

And Wilsta answered. Within minutes, a gap opened in the ceiling of clouds. The wind stilled, the waves ceased their battering. And as a reward for the Gelim's faith in offering up their last food, we were offered a glimpse. The only glimpse in my long and eventful life, and of a heathen god! As a pale patch on the clearing horizon she appeared at first, but those were her robes of palest periwinkle blue. She stood there perhaps 10 ropes away, a vast and stately figure with skin of ultramarine and a circlet of pearls on her flawless brow. A more serene face I have never seen. Her feet were hidden by the waves (though if I understood the old shaman right, sometimes she manifests with a fish's tail). She regarded the raft full of ragged, bowing figures for what seemed an eternity, then I blinked and she was gone.

Afterwards I learned that the Nelm never call upon Wilsta of the Blue Waters save in the utmost extremity, for in her presence the trade-winds that the Nelm depend on for their livelihood fail and die.

Fevroniel
 
Fevroniel moved quietly through the dim rain forest. Insects murmured in the steamy air. Lizards scattered away as he passed. Mist-haunted ferns and thick vines surrounded ancient trees so tall that their canopies penetrated the eternal clouds. It was here, deep in the sacred ancestral ruins of his people, that he would find his fate.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Doc Kincaid
 
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