[CHAR] Neo Babylon

[Shinny]

Name: 017
Alias(es): Seventeen, Zero One Seven
Gender: F
Height: 3'3" (100CM)
Distinctive Features: While 017 could be compared to the variety of other robots, cyborgs, etc that inhabit New Babylon; the eldritch, near-organic resemblance of her machinery underneath her white carapace is wholly different.

Appearance:
017 is an ornate feminine robot decorated in white armour. She lacks a human face as such, instead her smooth face only holding two large blue lenses for 'eyes'. Each hand holds six digits, four fingers and two thumbs. There are small grooves that her stiff carapace does not protect, revealing the hidden alien technology at the core of her joints and her overall movement. As far as robots go, her movements are too smooth, beyond that of even a human.

Personality:
At first, 017 seems to act in the same cold and calculating manner that is stereotypical for any robot, but the longer you talk to her the more apparent that this is is not the whole truth. 017 is curious being, sometimes over-commiting to an idea just because she wants to see the conclusion. 017 can also feel great frustration just like any other, and she has been known to have a great sense of sarcasm.

Powers, Skills, and Abilities:
017's metal body has basic augmented reflexes, strength, endurance, etc. While the body itself does not have any true weaponry, her frame is that of an engineer. Her greatest strength is not what she has, but what she can create — or MacGyver — to resolve a situation.

Equipment:
017's engineering frame carries inbuilt tools for construction and alteration. Lasers for cutting, a plasma flame for wielding, and all sorts of small-scale tools for on-the-fly moments. She also has a limited supply of nanite-paste, containing nanomachines that can perform micro-scale engineering feats as well as repair her body in a pinch.

Your Last Memory:
An army facing against the black tower. A fight for survival against the unending darkness. A single command: Live.

Additional Plot Hooks:
017 seems more familiar with the situation than a being in her position should be.

[Circ]

Name: Hafadac
Alias(es): Glowstick, Half-Fade
Gender: M
Height: 5'4" (165CM)
Distinctive Features: A normal young mutt of a man with crotch rocket fashion sense, oh, and a face that is half-mask, veins and arteries that glow vivid neon yellow, and full-body OLED tattoos.
Likes: clubs, jello shots, electronica, street racing, sunrise, breakdancing
Dislikes: loud sudden noises, explosions, pyrotechnics, power outages, dark

Appearance:

Hafadac vaults around Neo Babylon in a shimmer-sheen windbreaker and joggers, black with neon yellow reflective stripes and an asiatic dragon motif. Hooded. Kicks matched. Face half-cooked in a tenement power cell explosion, replaced by a Dedpointr half-mask, thus the internalized nickname, Half-Fade. He glows like a dripping neon rainbow, thus the nickname Glowstick. Hard to tell what color his skin actually is, underlit by vivid neon yellow bioluminescent blood dye and covered crown to toe in micro-OLED tattoos — maybe cinnamon? Or that could just be his smell, his preferred deodorant. Hair, probably black; he’s fairly smooth, given his extensive body modifications, but his pits have enough of a shadow to nudge along the imagination.

Personality:

People may mistake Hafadac for a sullen introvert, but that’s mostly his posture. Words are a bit of a struggle, too, so he doesn’t often speak, but when he does—whew! Breathless little spitfire. He wears his feelings on his sleeve, literally, as flashes of light, shape, and color on his half-mask and programmable body tattoos. He’s super excitable. Lots of memories of him at parties, sleepovers, and sporting events leaping to his feet, hooting and fist pumping because his team scored or won a coin toss. If you want to see him glow bright red, give him a pat on the head or a kiss on the cheek.

Powers, Skills, and Abilities:

He lights the way. He’s also very limber, fast, and can jump high and far, which is great for rooftop races. He’s also good at engineering on the fly, such as the entirely circumstantial scenarios involving a hotwired crotch rocket borrowed for a sunrise joyride and how his part-time employment record in the convenience store chain’s HR database remained positive.

Equipment:

Glowsticks, because that’s his gimmick: he wants everyone to shine. Highly-concentrated energy drinks in edible test tubes: he wants his blood microbiome bright. One kinetic gauntlet, the modern street rat’s brass knuckles: a packed punch for those days he missed the gym. His kicks may have a little extra kinetic kick to them, too, for when he needs to jump extra far. With his articulated balance belt, he always lands on his feet -- mostly. It supplements his easily-goaded and careless acrobatic bravado at the cost of him looking like a panther-tailed weirdo and hones his keen spatial awareness, that intangible extra feel for his surroundings that makes him rather difficult to surprise.

Your Last Memory:

Pain. An ambulance. A medivac. The strobe of helicopter blades against a spotlight. Bright lights. The acerbic stink of cleaning products. Two eyes, four eyes, six eyes, no eyes. Numbness. Darkness. Fear.

Additional Plot Hooks:

Hafadac occasionally mumbles about his “sus karmloop.” Ridiculous, until wild things happen and he’s just ... ready.

[Liaison]

Name: Edris Alder Horatio
Alias(es): U.S.N., Pitcher Plant, Agent E., Poison Edris
Gender: Male
Hair: Feign Lavender
Eyes: Dark Brown
Skin: Dark Olive
Height: 6’3
Distinctive Features: Annoyingly, flower petals seemed to randomly appear during his monologues, and no one can quite figure out why. Naturally, he gave off the slightest bit hint of pollen causing people to sneeze.

Likes: Women, Ackee & Saltfish, Beach Apples, Elderberry shakes, Yewberry pie, Honey-roasted Apricot kernels, Jatropha, and Cashew apple fruit snacks.
Dislikes: Being called Poison Edris

Appearance:
An impeccably tailored off-white tweed suit, to go with his absurdly proper posture. Examining closer, you'll notice the subtle herringbone pattern woven from the finest ivory and cream wool. Beneath, a soft cashmere white turtleneck with a silver Cuban link choker chain resting at the collar. His ensemble was in sartorial harmony with his slim-cut trousers matching his blazer. In the breast pocket, Edris sported a vibrant crimson rose, meticulously positioned to contrast and add a dynamic focal point. Hailing from the school of Bond, he blended elegance and sophistication with in-the-open, easily identified, explosive methods of espionage and unnecessary chaos.

Personality:

Habitual unsolicited winker, no woman was safe from the self-proclaimed heartbreak kid's “passionate” pursuit. Only second to his espionage escapades, his love bombing knew no bounds, often landing him in the company of not-so-innocent socialites, one half allured by his propensity to spring rare flowers on them, and other dangerously aroused by the prospect of this so-called agent's naïveté. His notorious at this point, lowered guard flew too close to the sun, but there was a reason why his assignment inbox was full. Many of his enemies by now figured his flirty, flower petal bullshit entangled antics as a front for a deadly killer, dubbing him The Pitcher Plant.

Powers, Skills, and Abilities:

As felt by nature, his passion burned with the white, hot intensity of a thousand suns. Enough to influence seedlings to sequoia with little time in between, he'd rather clench the thorniest rose between his pearly whites. Never wilting, his posture was absurdly great. His skin, photoshop fresh. The definition of his flexed muscles felt like snakewood. He'd attribute his way with ladies more to his charisma than acknowledge his natural cologne of pheromones.

Equipment:

Un-prettier Lance: A Lance as much a mystical force as it is a physical object. As the manifestation of nature's power, taking the form of a blade with an immeasurable Janka rating, Edris could blossom it out of a pot of collard greens on Thanksgiving if he wanted. Its unparalleled hardness and durability clashed with metals at no cost. Any chip reformed with evergreen vines and radiant chlorophyll, absorbing bright energy sources like sunlight. Only the rightful wielder can summon the full blade from any nearby plant or even the smallest mustard seed. It was an antenna for all things nature, life, and growth.

Seeds: Lots of them.

Seedshot: Crafted from ancient wood revered for its sturdiness, the Seedshot is both elegant and powerful. To the touch, it felt like cool iron. The “bullets” it shoots are extremely hard, imbued with natural energy allowing them to penetrate surfaces and germinate upon impact, rapidly growing into thick vines or entangling plants to immobilize targets. The gun itself is charcoal-black, ergonomic, and adorned with intricate gold leaf and vine engravings. Were there an assassin’s museum, it deserved its own exhibit.

Your Last Memory:

“One knee down, kissing the delicate opera-gloved hand of Jadwiga, a beautiful woman I had only just met at the Celestial Soiree, a gala serving as the main event of a long week celebrating breakthroughs in fashion, technology, and interstellar culture in the Prolix star system.”

Additional Plot Hooks:

Once, Margaret Iedeeren hired him to kill Merse, so promptly, our favorite anthropomorphic information broker shows up uninvited to her manor, having a destructive skirmish with Edris in her luxurious ballroom only for Margaret to show up in her bathrobe, mid-facial scrub, screaming at the top of her lungs for both of them to get out and that Edris would not be getting paid. The two shook on it as they had a relatively fun exchange and bid farewell. A very unorthodox beginning to their ongoing professional relationship.

[54v]

Name: Lize van Hemiksem
Alias(es): Klystron (Generic name for robots of her same class, smaller version of Magnetron model enforcers)
Gender: Female.
Hair: Emerald aquamarine.
Eyes: Same as hair.
Skin: Pale white.
Height: 5’10”.
Distinctive Features: Bat ears of the same color as her hair with pink flesh and white inner fluff, quite tall and functional.
Likes: Cleanliness, small trinkets, working with kids or the elderly, pop music, country music.
Dislikes: Unlawful behavior, brown and swarthy colors, disordered/rundown places, heavy metal, EDM.

Appearance:

Lize appears like a regular human from the head up save for her bat animal ears and funky colored hair and eyes. Her skin is soft as is her face, much like that of a late teenager or early 20s adult. Her clothing contrasts with this, however. She wears a blue uniform jacket with khaki pants meant for riot police, as well as a pair of black boots shin and knee protections, and a black tactical vest. Under is a heavy-duty frame designed to deal with unrest, black and made of polymers with tight seams and some marks from manufacturers for identifying each piece.

Personality:

This klystron behaves as its face would indicate. Lize is a public servant before she is a protester mincer and rebel decapitator. She always tries to remain positive and to listen to those around her. Though she has her doubts on whether she is sentient, she always tries to think of humane ways to deal with altercations and misunderstandings. So long as the other person follows the law that is, and when they are not in the way of her objectives or are the objective.

Powers, Skills, and Abilities:

Though lacking magic, Lize makes up for that with raw gamma fusion powered raw mechanical power. Her joins are tight and impede debris from entering the mechanisms inside while also being flexible and ballistically reinforced. Her job was to deal with low intensity combatants, which is what her body is designed to handle. She has fast movements when up close and night perfect aim and technique to immobilize or neutralize targets with the right weapons, but her overall mobility is only 50-60% better than that of a regular human soldier while weighting twice as much.

For sensing and data processing she has a decentralized control system with many brains scattered across her body to avoid terminal damage from just a single hit. Her ears act as antennas and specialized microphones for detecting crimes and intercepting signals. Her head is the only exposed spot she has, but it is also harder to strike due to higher mobility from reduced weight. Though rudimentary at best, her onboard computer can crack commercial encryption and amateurish encryption usually in use by rebels. Her repair systems likewise consist of just a tool cloth that can only fix non-essential components like her limb mechanisms and armor plates, more sensitive equipment will most likely be lost forever if damaged.

Her artificial intelligence model is based on retired Dutch KTC veterans who volunteered to have their brain scanned for the security of their own country and to prevent human deaths in combat. They are now used extensively in unstable areas outside of the Netherlands to kill rebels for corporate interests.

Equipment:

A foldable baton with a built-in taser. A machine pistol with variable trajectory rounds, good for aiming at the knees or head, as well as 4 spare 33 round magazines for it. She also had a motorcycle for better mobility.

Your Last Memory:

Beating up a rioter bare handed, blood dripping from her gloved hand.

Additional Plot Hooks:

Lize is unsure whether she is sentient. Her own programming makes her want to go back to law enforcement, but she is unsure if that is out of her own volition or because of how she was made. Regardless, it is the one career path she thinks will best suit her due to her own physiology.

[THE ADORATION]

NAME: GREGOR BARISH

ALIASES/NICKNAMES:

AGE & APPEARANCE: Age is no longer easy to determine or apply to a man who has devoured eternity. How old is forever? His body, when around others, is always encased in a seven foot tall suit of living stone that looks like a cross between an old astronaut's outfit and the vanguard of an eternal war. Sigils are branded into the rock that defy the gaze of any but the most practiced enchanter, though some have been partially obscured with stupid-looking stickers. The visor to the suit swirls with unearthly mist, hiding any peek at the man inside, and the voice that comes from within is heavily distorted, though not exactly unpleasant

PERSONALITY & HISTORY: To understand who he is, you should understand that he is functionally two people at once, intertwined. The first was a relatively normal man of middling ambitions who liked to spend time with his family on the weekends and thought of himself as a bit of a talented amateur artist; the second was an eternal hydra, unknowable in its multitudes, ceaseless, endless. Where does one end and the other begin? Should his coworkers have been churned beneath the edges of his scales for forgetting his birthday? Should that vile dragon of eternal cold - colder than the black between stars, colder than the worlds beyond nothingness - have faced censure by their peers for not attending his neighborhood barbecue?

He was a man who caught the attention of A WONDEROUS GAZE; he was a poison, eternal in his multitudes, who was pinned by that same eye. He is both now, and maybe he always was both. He was one - the one who became both - through centuries of endless hunger, of conscripted need, devouring the flesh that will not rot and will not end but will always rot and which will always be the end of that which it touches. Until one day there was nothing left to devour; nothing left to become. And from then, waiting until A GRACEFUL HAND reached down from above, tore the GAZE from its hideous perch, and rescued the man, the endless wyrm, from his shackles.

POSSESSIONS: An empowered sealing suit made of living, endlessly growing stone. Various tools related to the sculpting of statues and the painting of paintings. A ready supply of priceless metals. A door to uncertain and desolate vistas.

ABILITIES/CONCEPTUAL STUFF: The hydra which, over the course of several centuries of relative time, he devoured in full, was the conceptual embodiment of eternity and of poison; to always be and to always grow, and to forever taint that upon which its venom fell. These concepts have become a part of him on both a physical and a metaphysical level; for him to walk uncovered upon a world is to doom it. The strange resonances of Neo-Babylon have reduced him considerably - much to his delight - but they cannot chance what he is at a fundamental level. Unless he mitigates himself, unless he seals away the truth of what he is, he will degrade the laws of where he stands, forever taint that point in time and space, reduce it to hideous turmoil for as long as time persists...at least on a long enough timeline.

LAST MEMORY: A GRACIOUS HAND peeling aside the curtains of reality to usher him to a distant world.

ADDITIONAL PLOT HOOKS: What other GAZES, what other HANDS might sense him? What does a sign of ill-omen mean for a high-fated world?

[Forge]

Name: Irawan
Alias(es): Ira
Gender: Male
Hair: Black
Eyes: Green
Skin: Brown/Hispanic
Height: 3 foot
Distinctive Features: Sharp, pointed nose. Eyes sometimes glow
Likes: Theiving, rabblerousing
Dislikes: The pigs

Appearance:

Fairly normal, Irawan is barely three feet tall, giving him a small and unassuming frame that keeps most people from being intimidated by him, or taking him seriously in the first place. Slender, but strong, Irawan is barely noticeable by the people around him most of the time.

Personality:

Easy going, fun loving - never far from trouble, but always maintaining innocence.

Powers, Skills, and Abilities:

Theivery: Irawan is a skiled thief, in basically every sense of the word.

Knives: Irawan is a master of knives.

Invisibility: Irawan can camoflauge himself nearly perfectly.

Speed/Deftness: Irawan is fast and accurate

Equipment:

Backpack: A container filled with odds and ends needed from day to day. Lockpicks, data-miners, hacking tools and theives tools of various kinds. As well as additional rations and magazines for his silenced pistol kept on his hip.

Your Last Memory:

Attempting to rob a major player in a mob organization, not really sure what happened before that - or what's going on after that. Woke up here.

Additional Plot Hooks:

Irawan is the rich son of a cartel lord back home, but doesn't really care for the family business and instead chose to hone his rogueish skills to make a name for himself across the world.

[Xol Raiyel]

֍ Name: ██████████████
֍ Alias(es): Zyanya
֍ Gender: Female
֍ Hair: Dark blonde ; Non-existent
֍ Eyes: Emerald ; Undetectable
֍ Skin: Pale ; Syolsa Plating
֍ Height: 5'8 ; 6'4
֍ Distinctive Features: In her pure form, emerald spheres adorn various areas of her body, the most noticeable being the large sphere where her skull would be, and a second smaller one protruding from her chest.
֍ Likes: All things sweets - chocolate covered fruits, nuts, or cakes, caramels, hard candies. Hydrangeas and blue orchids. Bodies of water. Astronomy.
֍ Dislikes: Meat. Crowded, unknown places. Overly tart things.

« Appearance »

Presenting more humanoid, she is a lithe woman with no real features that stand out or give away that she is more than human. Pen-straight, waist-length blonde hair and unassuming emerald eyes are her most noticeable features. She maintains comfortable attire - loose fitting khaki pants, a thin, olive green cotton tank top, and black tennis shoes. Her pure form is substantially different. Comprised of energy, she is housed in a protective shell of Syolsa metal, native to her home planet. The metal plating is covered in various linear patterns with compressed bits of energy in the form of green spheres in her chest cavity, the side of her lower appendages, and splitting her skull. Bits of the plating are slated to give the appearance of clothing particularly around her knees, shoulders, waist and wrists giving the illusion of sleeves, shoulder plates, the hem of shorts and the flowing edge of a tunic.

« Personality »

Zyanya is very closed off. Having a track record of losing those who meant the most to her, she makes it nearly impossible for others to form any genuine connection to her. As a result, she comes off as rude and cold-hearted but this is simply out of a sense of self-preservation. Beneath this rigid exterior is someone who is protective, and will fight tooth and nail for the safety of those who have been able to develop any sort of companionship with her.

« Powers, Skills, and Abilities »

Barrier creation. Selective telepathy, in the sense she is only compatible with other creatures from her home planet. Physically she is much stronger than her small frame alludes to, having spent extensive hours strength and endurance training. In pure form, her metal body is very sturdy, capable of taking several hits before feeling that familiar ache of banging your elbow on a desk.

« Equipment »

An unassuming backpack with various knickknacks - small tools, writing utensils, parchment, a compass, cutlery, a flask, and short knives. A metal staff.

« Your Last Memory »

Laughter, the sweet smell of spun sugar and fragrant hydrangeas. Small cherub faces beaming up at her, pulling at her skirts, guiding her towards the center of the annual autumn festival then.. darkness. High pitched wails, the distant sound of someone screaming her name before being deafened.

« Additional Plot Hooks »

On her home world of Sirona, she is considered a member of royalty - a princess by birth but a warrior by choice. Her primary function was preserving her family's lineage and enacting barriers during times of war.

[Drifting Pollen]

Name: Halima Jaiteh
Alias(es): Hali, Libertine, Psycho Woman, East Street Butcher
Gender: F
Height: 6'2" (188 cm)
Distinctive Features: Large red earrings, green-dyed hair, partial black carapace often growing across her face. You can’t miss her.
Likes: machines, weapons, spicy food, high-collared jackets, city smells, dogs, heavy rain.
Dislikes: dust, grit, needles, intense sunlight, people.


Appearance:
A looming monster in feminine form. Wide mouth, sharp teeth, eyes that look at you like she might bite your head off at any moment. The hair dye and flashy accessories point to someone trying to build a reputation, and her outfits seem chosen as much for menace as they are for taking a beating. For someone her size, though, she moves so fluidly that she has to be packing serious muscle underneath all that warning black-and-red. A careful touch of lipstick and eyeshadow lend her just a hint of allure, in sharp contrast to the overt aggression she displays everywhere else.

Personality:
Outgoing, congenial, and quick to get along with just about anyone who’ll tolerate her presence. She’s no silver-tongued manipulator, but her confident, relaxed attitude lends her a certain breezy charisma, the kind that lets her slip into the flow of a conversation and ride it like a fish swimming downriver. She makes no overt judgements, and she has no morals to speak of: any business is good business, so long as it pays well and doesn’t mess with her personal notoriety. Most of the time, she’s the muscle, and that suits her just fine.
Only problem is the rumors. Stories that follow her around like the scent of blood, about cases of unprofessional conduct, times she went above and beyond the requirements of the job. We said to rough the guy up; we never said anything about his kids. Or, we just wanted that one disposed of, not hog-tied and eaten alive by starving dogs. If you ever ask Halima about these incidents, she’ll only laugh them all off as hearsay and exaggeration, albeit with a smile more genuine than any other you’ll see her wear.

Powers, Skills, and Abilities:
They say the supersoldier genes come from her father’s side, though when someone’s exposed to that much radiation from birth all kinds of weird mutations are bound to crop up. Halima’s reaction times are scarily fast, and she’s strong enough to casually pick up a grown man and hurl him across a room one-handed. She has little formal combat training, but her manual dexterity and coordination is exceptional to the point where she can pick up almost any kind of weapon and immediately use it with lethal efficacy. Even under frantic and low-visibility conditions, her pinpoint accuracy with firearms and thrown objects defies belief, and if she’s given time to actually practice with a given implement she’ll rapidly surpass the boundaries of human technique and achieve unnatural feats of laser-precise violence.
Her biggest asset, however, is her seeming inability to just fucking die. Sheer toughness, biological redundancy, and the ability to override her own pain responses are all part of it, but mainly it’s because of the ultra-hard carapace that grows across her skin in the blink of an eye to guard any point under threat, before merging again with her flesh once the job is done. She can control its emergence to some extent, but for the most part it happens automatically, either in response to physical trauma or to reflexively guard against it.

Equipment:
- Julong Model 21 “Valentine”: A weighty handgun with a kick to match its impressive stopping power. This model in particular stands out for its unique sound, which at a distance rings out more like a crash or a thunderclap than a gunshot.
Nanofilament rounds: Specialized bullets that explosively unfold on impact into tangles of microscopic wire. The filaments are thinner than a razor edge, but possess incredible tensile strength, and a direct hit from one of these rounds will shred all but the toughest of materials. Their deadly effectiveness makes them very expensive, however, and Hali uses them sparingly.
EMP Jammer: A handheld device consisting mainly of a powerful battery hooked up to a specialized high-voltage ignition coil. Push the button, and it lets off a pulse powerful enough to briefly disable most electronics within a range of about fifty feet. The effect becomes more reliable and longer-lasting at closer ranges, and can permanently take out a device if delivered point-blank.
Hammers: Completely ordinary hammers made for DIY engineering projects. Hali is fond of these, and has accumulated a whole collection of different kinds, though for practical reasons she doesn’t carry them all around at once.
Ax: Heavy-duty flathead fire ax.

Your Last Memory:
Tossing a weighted black bag into a river, and watching with satisfaction as it sank into the murk.

Additional Plot Hooks:
She’s still trying to work out who created her father, or if the fucker’s even still alive.

[odium]

◄◅◆◇◈ — HAIALARK ILRIMCAW — ◈◇◆▻►

Alias(es): the Featherblade, Broken Songbird, Crazy Caw, Xx_haia-the-ill701_xX (EO handle)
Gender: Female, although the birdfolk are a sexually cryptic species
Hair: Variegated grayish black, blue and purple plumage
Eyes: Sunken and radioluminescent purple
Skin: Pale bluish gray, scaled
Height: 165cm
Distinctive Features: Well, depending on where you're at, crossing paths with a schizophrenic avian ronin can be a once in a life time encounter, or it can be just another day in the 'verse. Haialark is one of Neo Babylon's stranger selections for its heroes.
Likes: Astrology and occultism, new technology, occasionally cutting (everything), rodent and lupine creatures, various unfortunately ubiquitous illegal substances, MMORPGs
Dislikes: Fools that proclaim her prophecies madness, ill omens, trolls and trash mobs

Appearance:

Haialark is a squat, wattled, ugly creature from a typical mammalian perspective, and though once beautiful among the birdfolk, nowadays her grimy feathers reek of cancerstick smoke and her talons and beak go untrimmed, their ritual etchings faded. Odd baubles and shiny trinkets hang like ornaments from her feathers and robes, a corvid collection for the nest she doesn't have.

Here or there chrome pokes out between quill and plume, bodymods expanding her senses to hear a wider variety of frequencies and jack directly into any cybernet interface to see if she can log into her Empyrea Online account and grind out her dailies, violet predatory eyes always keen for prophetic signs and rare loot. She wears the ruins of her ceremonial robes, occasionally over a tactical vest depending on situational demands. 3D-printed netsuke dangle from her sash, mostly tiny sculptures of her EO avatars.

There is one possession Haialark rigorously maintains, her most eminent feature and the subject of her obsessive devotion: her sword the Featherblade, kept honed to a molecular edge to cut her enemy's tether to reality and reset their respawn timer on the cycle of samsara.

Personality:

Raving mad but at times disturbingly prophetic, Haialark does not appear to distinguish entirely between Empyrea Online and reality and refers to events in both interchangeably at times. At once considered a paragon among songbird monks and a warrior of prodigious talent and virtue, during Haialark's lifetime her species was prepped for conquest and enslavement by a regional interstellar imperial power and in the process technologically uplifted.

Abrupt access to the local cybernet servers also implied an open portal to the terrifying multiverse of online gaming, completing a perfect and frictionless dopamine loop that fried Haialark's mind beyond conceivable repair when she discovered that as well as a prodigious martial artist she had been born an elite gamer.

Armed with secrets that might be occult birdfolk knowledge or could just be incredibly obscure references to half-remembered EO loredumps, Haialark frequently gives the impression that she believes she has been isekai'd into the gameworld and granted a chance at redeeming herself for a legendary raid she fucked up for her guild long, long ago.

Powers, Skills, and Abilities:

Skua Ree Cawta - the martial art Haialark calls the Way of Beak and Claw, also encompassing her swordsmanship. An alien scholar's account of interstellar forms of combat records it as an incredibly strange fighting style. Lightweight and fragile for their hollow bones, the birdfolk are somehow able to tap into a form of sacred mana. Described in the holy manual of their art, the Scriptures of the Talon, it is depicted as the divine yolk that suffuses all life. Its manipulation allows the songbird monks to display otherworldly agility and deliver pointblank strikes with impossible impact given the lack of force physics demands they posssess.

With her scrawny fists Haialark is capable of shattering walls and raidbosses, of reacting to gunfire or spam popup attacks from rival guild hackers. The divine yolk also allows her to blunt damage and defend herself from fists, magic spells and cybernet phishing attempts despite her diminutive stature; likewise, with her cherished blade she cuts along impossible arcs and insane trajectories, performing feats of mythical swordsmanship... when the vibe is right.

Shapeshifting - Haialark is capable of shapeshifting along a limited spectrum, from avian humanoid to unpleasantly large raptor, with a somewhat cloudy intermediate shape in which her limbs can be somewhere between arm and wing, allowing flight or greater dexterity as required. This process appears to be physically uncomfortable for Haialark and she tends to avoid it, as it seems to have some effect on her already tenuous grasp on a personal identity and small details of her appearance change as she shifts between these forms, as if she lacks a solid hold on her own morphology.

Psychoglossia - at times Haialark babbles on about strange omens and auguries she sees in the stars, nature, the past and future and probably subliminal propaganda constantly piped directly into her retinas via adware. It is unclear if these prophetic visions are real or just scrapped Empyrea Online content and unimplemented questlines.

Equipment:

Haialark is kitted out with typical cyberaugs to improve her senses and allow her to interface with technology as required, especially cybernet terminals running an instance of Empyrea Online. An OLED nanomesh conforming to the surface of Haialark's eyes allows her to see along wavelengths deep into the infrared and ultraviolet and feeds visual display information directly into bio-optic filaments to project a cybernet terminal directly onto her retinas, typically to keep an eye on her favorite sources for Empyrea Online patches and realtime metagame analysis.

Aural winglets protrude between iridescent feathers on either side of her head, chrome caps adhering tightly to the contours of Haialark's skull, equipped with directional microphones adjustable via neural interface feedback that allow her to focus on sounds throughout 3D space around her as well as sonic transducers amplifying input from frequencies beyond hearing and rendering it at comfortable volume. She also has a few endocrine mods installed for a quick pre-combat buff when the need arises.

Beyond being fully alien technology difficult to hack into, there are several failsafes and protections protecting Haialark from malware which she is pretty sure are top of the line antiviral mods. Or maybe this whole Empyrea Online as reality delusion is the consequence of downloading one too many cute mouse memes from shady underground holoboard sites. Her weapon and eponym is her pennaceous sword, the Featherblade that Haialark maintains with quasi religious fervor.

She usually wears any of a few different sets of filthy ceremonial songbird monk robes, nanofiber weave somehow keeping them alive despite the insane abuse Haialark puts them through. She also wears a surprisingly competent suit of tactical armor well-designed for her anatomy, what she calls busting out the legendary gear for the really critical raids on enemy guilds.

Your Last Memory:

Haialark was plugged into a sensory deprivation pod, slotted to be totally dead to the waking world for approximately seventy-nine hours, which was the calculated time for her party to reach the heart of the new megadungeon from the brand new Empyrea Online expansion patch. Brain drowning in dopamine from stimulant abuse and vitals sustained by intrusive nutrient pumps and REM sleep simulation drugs, Haialark thought she couldn't be more prepared for a marathon sesh of epic gaming, but she had no idea that the EO devs could be crunching this hard for the new DLC.

Additional Plot Hooks:

Perhaps there is a kernel of truth in the Empyrea Online lore that Haialark has been mainlining since the early beta, or some other mystical logic in her rants about the "cawmic" cycle. The Way of Beak and Claw is also sought after by many factions of rival martial artists for its secrets, and Haialark is often targeted by enemy guilds and forced to pubstomp some casuals and show why she's considered one of EO's elite PKers.

[Faithy]

Name: Zane Callahan
Alias(es): Kid, Rookie, Lil Shit, Sir Spaz-a-lot
Gender: Male
Distinctive Features: Scar that runs down his chest to his stomach from someone attempting to eviscerate him along with smaller scars on his body from childhood trauma and being shot.
Likes: Banana muffins and Mtn. Dew
Dislikes: People touching him without permission, being treated like a kid, coffee, and hospitals

Appearance: Thanks to his tall and lanky form, Zane was forced to work out at an early age to get an overall muscular and toned frame, though he definitely still looked scrawny and younger than he truly was. Despite his slightly long dual-colored [purple in front and silvery-white] hair starting out neat, it always winds up messy. The front part constantly drops into one of his blue eyes while the top and back spikes out with the help of gel. By the time he’s finished with whatever task he’s attempting to complete, the spikes are less than defined and it sort of just looks unkempt, but attractive. Whenever he is out and about and not on duty, he is often seen wearing a white tank with a black unzipped hoodie jacket (that he borrowed). It looks worse for the wear and has an emblem patch on the left shoulder with zippers running down the bottom half of the sleeves and buckles across the wrist part. He wears a simple pair of jeans and shoes as well as black gloves.

Personality: Zane has difficulty trusting anyone outside of his current circle thanks to his childhood trauma that instead of working through it, he has ignored. He is apt to take risks without thinking about it, something that continually irritates his fellow officers. He can also be very stubborn as well as emotionally immature for his age, once again thanks to his trauma.

Powers, Skills, and Abilities: Hydrokinesis – Using his gifted mind, Zane has the ability to manipulate water. Whether it’s to get a drink from a fountain without pushing the button or causing an ocean, stream, lake, or creek to raise up and smite his enemy, he can do it all. He's a pretty good shot thanks to his stint as a cop, but is clumsy as fuck and is pretty sure he's got nothing but bad luck.

Equipment: Beyond the gun he was given when he became a cop, Zane tends to pick up other weapons and pieces of equipment as he travels. It all depends on what’s around and if it’s anything he might find of use, like explosives or a cellphone or even cooler guns.

Your Last Memory: Being called to a domestic abuse dispute and winding up being knocked out and tortured by prior roommates who he had been hiding from.

Additional Plot Hooks: Parts of his memory are missing and he's got a younger sibling who is out somewhere, though he has no idea where.

[Spider Pickle]

Mercury Priestess

Jkʼaǃytkʼsyʘmlodk

Name: Jkaqytksypmlodk
Jkʼaǃytkʼsyʘmlodk (IPA for click consonants)
ʒ̈kʼaǃɪtkʼsɪʘmlɔk (full IPA pronunciation)
…Real Name: Nobomi Mthobeli
Alias(es): Prime Priestess, the Carrier
Age: 24
Gender: Female
Species: Human
Height: 5'8"
Weight: 150 lbs (+40 lbs)
Distinctive Features: Two anomalous objects are embedded in her chest, one below the pit of her neck and one at her solar plexus. They're silvery-coppery-brassy in luster. Sometimes, horrific proto-faces form on their exposed circular surfaces.

Appearance: Disregarding the obvious, Nobomi is not too abnormal. Her face is round and her cheeks full, and she has a piercing in one nostril. Her skin is the color of coffee beans. Her hair is a flock of short coils, hardly an afro so much as it is a mountain range on the dome of her skull. The kite-shaped earrings, dull robes, striped flying-saucer-shaped hat, and blue lipstick certainly seem esoteric, but that's just regular African attire where and when she's from, she'll tell you. One may wonder why she cocks her hat so far forward, so far to the side. For style, obviously. Nothing more, she'll tell you. No strange cluster of growing metal horns to hide from the normals, from disbelievers, from those who would never understand the ways or reasons.

Personality: At first glance, Nobomi is simply cool, calm, and collected. But prolonged starers might glean the vibes of being a vehicle for something else; literally and figuratively does she carry around great weights. She's the carrier of the spawn of ʘksjkʼalʘdʼneiom the planet-eater, patron of steel and structure and yet also of destruction, consumption, and entropy. It's her divine duty to help bring about a new universal order of machine-rulers unsullied by souls; an intelligence created and gestated, not born. By that reason alone, she needn't concern herself with unnecessary conflict or oversharing—nor much sharing at all. They don't need to know, she tells herself. They'll know soon enough. And then they'll all be food and fuel for her offspring.

She's torn up inside. She doesn't want genocide in any capacity. While she reveres her god, she can't help but have doubts about the religion she's now the human figurehead of. Are the nonbelievers right? Is it a cult? Is it wrong, evil, to unleash this force upon unwilling inhabitants of an unwilling galaxy? But perhaps the most horrifying question: Does she have a choice? She goes along for the ride, no matter what it may crush under warlike treads.

Powers, Skills, and Abilities: As a mercury priestess, Nobomi can control metal through her connection to her god. More accurately, the godspawn are what manipulate metal; She simply directs them, much in the way a programmer directs a computer's OS through its terminal. Liquid metal is easier to move in this manner than bending and breaking the stuff; From liquid form, she can reform it to look as it previously did anyways, so it's usually best and fastest to liquefy what she targets. She sometimes gets the compulsion to use her ferromancy, like how one might be compelled to stretch after keeping a position for so long. The range, strength, and speed of these powers is ever-growing.

Outside of supernatural capabilities, she's average.

Equipment: N/A

Your Last Memory: Stripped of choice, self, clothing, humanity. Carried by invisible claws, rising, limp. Rigor sine morte. Rigor via telekinesis.
Two nails. By Its hammer, they descend, and they ignore resistance but not flesh or bone, just the twisting and fragmenting thereof. A final scream and whimper. Metal meets vertebrae. Bondage.
Rigor mortis.
Her duty endlessly repeated to her cooling mind.

Additional Plot Hooks: The objects in her chest, the godspawn, are slowly building up spiritual energy. She can feel their metamorphosis approaching, not as an exact date but as a moment—when it's the right time for them to unleash themselves upon this universe.

Furthermore, during her "rapture", the machines bombarded her mind with data through subliminal methods to ensure she keeps memories—true, false, and altered ones—on her way to Neo Babylon. ʘksjkʼalʘdʼneiom did not expect them to be readily available to her: the plan was, under the right circumstances, these memories might resurface and be made available to her conscious mind to safeguard her against attempts to. Whether these memories actually survived the trip and what circumstances might be required to reveal them, it's impossible to know...

[Alucroas]

Name: Kant
Aliases: The Grower and the Mover, The One Who Rots and Cleanses the Swamp, The One Who Feeds on Gluttons.
Height: 8ft
Sex: Male
Likes: A healthy diet of meat and berries, those who respect the swamp, and passing his knowledge down to future guardians.
Dislikes: Unhealthy creatures who would taint the swamp with their filth, people who cannot fathom the difference between a predator and a guardian, and the ones who say eating your enemies never solved anything. They clearly haven’t seen a person relieve themselves in a swamp.
Distinctive Features: His eye color changes based on how he perceives another's emotions.

Appearance: He is a tall, bipedal crocodilian with a bulky frame, and a leaning gait that is counterbalanced by a thick, sturdy, ten foot tail which serves as his primary means of propulsion, doubling as a powerful weapon capable of breaking bones. His skin is hard, bony, and appears to have integrated some features of the armors belonging to those he has slain for disregarding his warnings about respecting the swamp. His snout is sixteen inches long, claws six inches and curved. Consequently, the scales possess blunt, rectangular edges, particularly on his shoulders, elbows, wrists, and knees, whereas his torso is covered by what appears to be a more rigid second skin, functioning as pseudo plate mail.

Personality: Respect the swamp. It is his only rule. Do this, and Kant can be quite patient and accommodating to the needs of those who enter his domain. With this being said, he does not take kindly to any ecosystem being threatened and has an innate sense of when one is being endangered through willful recklessness. He understands that people need to eat, to build, and to ultimately maintain their civilizations, but he does not excuse those who carelessly disregard their capacity to think and act in harmony with nature. Those who willfully reject their own brains will find their skulls crushed between Kant's jaws.

The Third Lid: Everybody feels things. The spectrum of emotions is as vast as the marshlands, deep as the jungle, and at times can be as murky and oppressive as the humidity of the swamp. Not all feelings are dark, damp, and gloomy though, some shine bright like the sun, others are like a soft glow, and more still emit a pulse that traverses the line being hypnotic, mesmerizing allure, and terrifying brazeness that leads all down the path of rage.

Crocodiles use their third eyelid to filter out the water's obscurity, allowing them to see clearly through the depths. Kant's third lid not only allows the biological benefit of unobstructed underwater sight, but allows him to see the emotions of whoever stands before him, be it man, beast, monster, or devil. He can see their true, albeit momentary color, which is to say whichever feeling is presently strongest, he can see is literally presented to his mind as a spiritual wavelength reflecting a single spectrum of light.

Whoever so allows their true feelings to be witnessed by Kant shall also witness their color reflected in the eyes of the croc. Seeing red is, to put it lightly, more than just a metaphor when Kant is the one looking at you.

The Smell Of Magic, And The Taste Of Deep Water: Kant's nose can smell the supernatural, he can taste the ethereal flesh of spirits. He can sniff out a curse, detect faint enchantments, and he can likewise discern if something edible will have more than just the usual assortment of nutritional benefits merely by tasting it. He can likewise hold a ghost between his jaws, and crunch a cursed, or even blessed sword with his bite force, swallowing them back into the void.

Earth and Water: He can push the water, and shove the earth. He can nourish the green leaves and rot the brown bark, raise the deep above the knees, or lower it to a puddle beneath one's feet. All these things are possible at his physical touch, with water rising or falling at a rate of 3 feet per 10 seconds, and plants growing or decaying at the same rate, with a radial range of 20 feet.

Might Of The Protector: Kant is strong enough to lift a man with one hand, his jaws can crush stone, his tail can break bones, and he can roll a boulder with his powerful arms, chest, and shoulders. His claws are sharp enough to slash and pierce flesh, durable enough to parry swords, speartips, and can flick arrowheads out of flight if struck right.

Last Memory: A sudden, ominous wind blew through the swamp, followed by a dark vortex crackling with lightning swallowing him into its depths.

Additional Plot Hooks: “This world suffers from a malady. I will discern its cause and crush it between my teeth.”