Thimb has been adjusted to Eden and Casio is added to the character page.
Thanks for having me, I'm looking forward to cooking up a complicated web of intrigue and deceit with you guys, I'm always down to collab if anyone wants to have a history with The Florist!
Best known by his pseudonym, The Florist stands at a little under six feet, carrying what appears a fairly nondescript, average build. At a glance he would scarcely stand out amongst a crowd of degenerates. But with a carefully trained eye one might glean that he is no commoner. Even beneath an unruly tousle of graying hair and a face covered in unkempt scruff he cannot fully mask the sculpted bone structure of Earth’s highborn society. Were you to catch his eyes in a certain light, you might notice the circuitry hidden within the soft blue iris, or the faded scars which seem to carefully line his musculature. Most obvious clue of his augmentation is the Neural Nub above his left ear.
Casio isn’t flashy, he wears whatever allows him to blend easiest, generally favoring whatever would draw the least amount of attention in a particular situation; usually that means long sleeves and a hat, but he is just as comfortable in a three-piece suit, lab coat or a stolen delivery uniform.
One doesn't spend their life lurking amongst the criminal elite, the insanely wealthy, their hired killers, corporate goons and an ocean of hopeless junkies without learning how people tick. Casio understands people, and his body language drips with an apathetic confidence, casually drifting through any number of social situations with ease.
Born into a world of gratuitous luxury, self indulgence and backstabbing, Casio learned very quickly how to avoid conflict and play people against one another. His father, Desmond Flores, a politician and gun manufacturer had become one of the wealthiest men on Earth from capitalizing on various global conflicts and selling to both sides. While this placed his family in a tenuous position among the old-money of high society, money is still money and as a boy it would grant him all kinds of opportunities and the best education it could buy. He quickly showed an aptitude for engineering and chemistry, a gift only enhanced by the expensive litany of bio-implants he received as he grew. Chasing his father’s promising political career, the family relocated to the growing colony of Mars in 2066; leaving their native planet in favor of the sprawling metropolis of Eden, the older, larger, sister city to Arcadia.
After attending a number of prestigious academies across Mars, Casio found himself working for NuBio Ltd. One of the largest corporations on Mars which competes at the cutting edge of pharmaceutical and augmentation technologies. His naturally affinity towards machinery and chemistry was quickly honed to a razor’s edge while working on the highest grade experimental cybernetics and performance enhancers the UEA had to offer. By the time of his 30th birthday, he was more machine than man, virtually every facet of his body enhanced or otherwise altered to further his research.
In the coming years he would push the envelope on both fronts, being placed onto the board of NuBio’s R&D branch. His relentless pursuit in the name of science would catapult NuBio’s stock values and help solidify them as one of the most powerful subsidiaries of the UEA; eventually leading he and his team to develop a drug that would change life on Mars forever : Transdermal Reduction and Neural Consciousness Enhancer or Trance
The drug’s use would quickly spin out of control, government and corporate oversight ratcheting down heavily on any bold or foolish enough to continue pursuing its applications. Flores was one such casualty, refusing to abandon his brainchild for what he believed to be nominal side effects.
NuBio would waste no time in cutting ties with their golden goose, landing Flores promptly out on his golden ass with very little to show for it. His assets were seized, his credit accounts frozen for “redistribution” as he was scapegoated for being the sole originator of what was now considered a societal bane. The blacklisting extended to his family, now as sitting Chancellor of Economy in Eden, Desmond Flores would disown his “delinquent son” to save his own image.
Try as they might, no power in human history has been able to snuff out the desire to change consciousness and the damage was already done. Demand for the drug in subsequent years has only grown, and with what is arguably the most intimate knowledge of the drug’s development available, whoever deals with Flores has access to some of the purest form of Trance and with it a constant flow of capital.
As a man in high demand, Flores has used his one of kind knowledge as a shield. Now free of oversight committees and nursing a grudge against the corporate oligarchy, he has busied himself cozying up to whichever underhanded organizations or well-connected gangs would grant him use of their facilities. The Black Brethren, Iron Salamanders, even The Machine Cult of Vir’tsung have contracted with The Florist, receiving his signature bright blue ultra-refined Trance, or his advanced knowledge of augmentation and implants, which he can use to enhance, replace or repair.
The Florist has been quietly orchestrating and encouraging a coordinated attack on the Os-Net Server Hubs, in an attempt to expand the influence of The Warp. News of the Golden Disk changes things, with access to the legendary item, he could crash the entire grid, cutting off Mars and granting him a direct say in how the red planet would be rebuilt.
- Casio is master chemist. Give him the products under your sink, he'll give you a bomb. Give him access to a janitor's closet, he'll give you a liquid that can melt straight through augmented flesh. Give him a lab? There's virtually nothing he couldn't create. Steroids to the modern equivalent of a healing potion.
- The Florist is augmented, but not for combat. While he's a little bit quicker & noticeably stronger than an average man his age, and the optical enhancements & hand/eye sync programs technically provide a mild benefit when using a firearm, they are far more suited for careful, dexterous work like cybernetic repair. A skin integrated bioweave, standard issue for high-level R&D experts due to the dangerous nature of working with robotics monitors organ function & blood circulation and makes him slightly more resilient to chemical, burn and blunt trauma. An experimental and highly illegal Neural Lace allows him to interact, reset or undermine certain security precautions or checkpoints, typically with little to no register on the firewall systems of Os-Net.
- To say Flores is generally the smartest person in the room would be a gross underestimation. In a world inundated by technology, he is a man who has had his practiced hand firmly gripped on the blade creating the bleeding edge of it's capabilities for longer than an average life-span. This lifelong involvement in all things augmented and cybernetic mean he has a encyclopedian knowledge of their capabilities, hidden or otherwise, allows him to do more with less when acting as a benevolent creator; and when the situation arises, grants him an intimate familiarity with their most glaring weaknesses. Weaknesses he is all too happy to exploit. Coupled with the illegal Neural Lace he designed, he is a formidable opponent, quite literally capable of taking one apart, piece by piece.
Best known by his pseudonym, The Florist stands at a little under six feet, carrying what appears a fairly nondescript, average build. At a glance he would scarcely stand out amongst a crowd of degenerates. But with a carefully trained eye one might glean that he is no commoner. Even beneath an unruly tousle of graying hair and a face covered in unkempt scruff he cannot fully mask the sculpted bone structure of Earth’s highborn society. Were you to catch his eyes in a certain light, you might notice the circuitry hidden within the soft blue iris, or the faded scars which seem to carefully line his musculature. Most obvious clue of his augmentation is the Neural Nub above his left ear.
Casio isn’t flashy, he wears whatever allows him to blend easiest, generally favoring whatever would draw the least amount of attention in a particular situation; usually that means long sleeves and a hat, but he is just as comfortable in a three-piece suit, lab coat or a stolen delivery uniform.
One doesn't spend their life lurking amongst the criminal elite, the insanely wealthy, their hired killers, corporate goons and an ocean of hopeless junkies without learning how people tick. Casio understands people, and his body language drips with an apathetic confidence, casually drifting through any number of social situations with ease.
Born into a world of gratuitous luxury, self indulgence and backstabbing, Casio learned very quickly how to avoid conflict and play people against one another. His father, Desmond Flores, a politician and gun manufacturer had become one of the wealthiest men on Earth from capitalizing on various global conflicts and selling to both sides. While this placed his family in a tenuous position among the old-money of high society, money is still money and as a boy it would grant him all kinds of opportunities and the best education it could buy. He quickly showed an aptitude for engineering and chemistry, a gift only enhanced by the expensive litany of bio-implants he received as he grew. Chasing his father’s promising political career, the family relocated to the growing colony of Mars in 2066; leaving their native planet in favor of the sprawling metropolis of Eden, the older, larger, sister city to Arcadia.
After attending a number of prestigious academies across Mars, Casio found himself working for NuBio Ltd. One of the largest corporations on Mars which competes at the cutting edge of pharmaceutical and augmentation technologies. His naturally affinity towards machinery and chemistry was quickly honed to a razor’s edge while working on the highest grade experimental cybernetics and performance enhancers the UEA had to offer. By the time of his 30th birthday, he was more machine than man, virtually every facet of his body enhanced or otherwise altered to further his research.
In the coming years he would push the envelope on both fronts, being placed onto the board of NuBio’s R&D branch. His relentless pursuit in the name of science would catapult NuBio’s stock values and help solidify them as one of the most powerful subsidiaries of the UEA; eventually leading he and his team to develop a drug that would change life on Mars forever : Transdermal Reduction and Neural Consciousness Enhancer or Trance
The drug’s use would quickly spin out of control, government and corporate oversight ratcheting down heavily on any bold or foolish enough to continue pursuing its applications. Flores was one such casualty, refusing to abandon his brainchild for what he believed to be nominal side effects.
NuBio would waste no time in cutting ties with their golden goose, landing Flores promptly out on his golden ass with very little to show for it. His assets were seized, his credit accounts frozen for “redistribution” as he was scapegoated for being the sole originator of what was now considered a societal bane. The blacklisting extended to his family, now as sitting Chancellor of Economy in Eden, Desmond Flores would disown his “delinquent son” to save his own image.
Try as they might, no power in human history has been able to snuff out the desire to change consciousness and the damage was already done. Demand for the drug in subsequent years has only grown, and with what is arguably the most intimate knowledge of the drug’s development available, whoever deals with Flores has access to some of the purest form of Trance and with it a constant flow of capital.
As a man in high demand, Flores has used his one of kind knowledge as a shield. Now free of oversight committees and nursing a grudge against the corporate oligarchy, he has busied himself cozying up to whichever underhanded organizations or well-connected gangs would grant him use of their facilities. The Black Brethren, Iron Salamanders, even The Machine Cult of Vir’tsung have contracted with The Florist, receiving his signature bright blue ultra-refined Trance, or his advanced knowledge of augmentation and implants, which he can use to enhance, replace or repair.
The Florist has been quietly orchestrating and encouraging a coordinated attack on the Os-Net Server Hubs, in an attempt to expand the influence of The Warp. News of the Golden Disk changes things, with access to the legendary item, he could crash the entire grid, cutting off Mars and granting him a direct say in how the red planet would be rebuilt.
- Casio is master chemist. Give him the products under your sink, he'll give you a bomb. Give him access to a janitor's closet, he'll give you a liquid that can melt straight through augmented flesh. Give him a lab? There's virtually nothing he couldn't create. Steroids to the modern equivalent of a healing potion.
- The Florist is augmented, but not for combat. While he's a little bit quicker & noticeably stronger than an average man his age, and the optical enhancements & hand/eye sync programs technically provide a mild benefit when using a firearm, they are far more suited for careful, dexterous work like cybernetic repair. A skin integrated bioweave, standard issue for high-level R&D experts due to the dangerous nature of working with robotics monitors organ function & blood circulation and makes him slightly more resilient to chemical, burn and blunt trauma. An experimental and highly illegal Neural Lace allows him to interact, reset or undermine certain security precautions or checkpoints, typically with little to no register on the firewall systems of Os-Net.
Hey all! I'm going a bit of a weird direction with my character, so if it’s too silly or out there, I'm happy to tweak and edit, or completely scrap it as necessary!
@Naril I took a few liberties, in that my host is a former PHI Agent, so I have a history with the agency, & I used Sol in my background scene, but if that was an overstep I can totally change it around. Hopefully I captured his personality okay. The Dr. Yomoto character was just some throwaway side character within the organization, I'm imagining is in R&D or working on a cure for Alexandra or some such thing.
I tried to leave enough leeway to allow people to influence the history they might have with Alexandra Smalls and whatnot. I'm totally open to conspiring with the rest of you on who gets along or hates my character, or any other kinds of crazy twists and turns regarding my arc, assuming it's accepted. Thanks for your consideration!
Name:
Entity "Husk" S.L.F.(Sentient Life Form)-XJ7L : Currently Inhabiting the Body of PHI Agent Dr. Alexandra Smalls.
Gender:
N/A - Current Human Host is Female
Race/Species:
Sentient Fungus
Age:
SLF-XJ7L is of indeterminate age. Safely regarded as ancient, the sealed cavern tomb where life-form evolved in isolation pre-dates Sumerian culture and even the last Ice Age by thousands of years. (Estimated c. 10,000-13,000 BC)
Age of Verifiable Sentient Consciousness - 3 Years
Age of Host at time of Assimilation - 31 Years
Appearance:
SLF-XJ7L is a singular colony of Coral Fungi that aggressively colonizes in a distinct fuzzy webbed pattern. It emits a soft white bioluminescent glow when stimulated by touch, currently known to be centralized to a cavern tomb located in modern day Borneo. The cavern of it's origin has been sealed and under strict surveillance since the incident involving agent Smalls.
Prior to said incident, Alexandra Smalls appearance was relatively unremarkable, rather typical in a girl-next-door kind of way. Soft blonde hair kept wrapped smartly back in a tight bun, light hazel eyes perched behind thin glass frames of a strong prescription, with a gaunt, hawk-like face, sun-kissed by a handful of freckles. A body built by her habits, very little muscle definition or curves to speak of, though typically any to be found were kept hidden under a lab coat or hazard suit. Her sylphlike shoulders held a slight slouch from too many hours in a lab or at a computer, often with bags under her eyes to accompany it.
Despite the internal changes, XJ7L has altered very little about Alex's outward appearance, though to a careful observer you would notice that she seems to be aging in a slow, but distinct reverse pattern in the 3 years since the incident. From beneath what borders on uncomfortably taught skin, her veins let off a scarcely noticeable glow, seeming to bulge and pulse with energy and life. Reminiscent of the fungal growth itself, this light will increase in intensity when stimulated, struck or otherwise injured, as the entity engages it's healing ability. Blood no longer flows from open wounds, instead a thick syrupy substance resembling luminous Elmer glue oozes out and hardens as the cells regrow.
Those closest to Alex would quickly catch on that the slouch is gone. Along with once necessary glasses, so too has most of the pigment in her eyes disappeared. They gradually transition between levels of a misty opaque hue which would lead most to believe she has gone blind. The blonde hair has been cropped back to a short buzz, which the entity sites as a decision made for 'utility.'
Personality:
After emerging from a weeks long catatonic state, PHI found the young operator Alexandra Smalls had been replaced something altogether alien. Unsettling to those that once knew her best, the entity has found a shaky, if ultimately cooperative alliance within the PHI organization over the last 3 years. Still, there is a largely unspoken tension, as most in the organization are still waiting on R&D to synthesize a cure for Alexandra Smalls, while the entity for its own part has stayed less than forthright about what, if any, it’s true intentions long term.
While interacting with the world at large, SLF-XJ7L is equal parts curious and cunning. Though initially the entity struggled with motor function this period was short lived, the measured cognitive function and reaction times quickly progressing from what was little more than a toddler in an adult's body, to executing advanced & intricate techniques ranging from watch-making to rock climbing, ballet to free diving.
Any physical tasks seem to come relatively naturally to the entity, though even after several years it still struggles to relate and interact with humanity at large, particularly in the fields of empathy and emotion.
Often described as aloof, there is seemingly nothing one can do to rattle Husk's cage, so to speak. Largely because it simply isn't operating within the confines of a human consciousness anymore. There is no fear, no love, no anger. While it attempts to understand the motivations behind these urges, it thus far seems to lack any capacity to experience them first hand. This is most apparent when it comes to magics and technologies geared to affect humanoids and their biochemistry.
Powers, Traits, and Abilities:
SLF-XJ7L's main power comes from the natural properties of the fungus which inhabits the host. Cells mutated by XJ7L replicate at a grossly accelerated rate, allowing a perceivable healing rate to any trauma. This ability to rapidly repair the host body's structure grants it a virtually unparalleled level of endurance, and though not superhuman, certainly capable of feats of strength and speed well past what the body's frame would indicate.
Similarly visual and motor function has improved dramatically past human limits, allowing Husk to aim and throw objects with scary accurate precision, and as such, is very little fun to play skee-ball with.
Worth repeating and of special note : the widespread and unique transformation has resulted in the entity's biochemistry being immune and remaining unaltered by any conventional or supernatural means. Drugs, poisons, the power of suggestion, blood magic, succubi : all find their abilities wanting, the fungus able to adapt and overcome before the entire system is affected. Few produce results and those that do are underwhelming at best, as each fungal cell is able to compensate for any nearby that become afflicted.
Overall Husk is considered a top-flight agent on paper, and has the skills to back it up, but the disconnect between XJ7L and many of the other operatives is considered a liability.
Background:
"I don't know what to tell you, Sol. It is absolutely fascinating, I've never seen an organism that can assimilate a host with such rapid efficiency. There are other fungi that can create zombie like effects in ants, but this… The entire circulatory system is flooded with XJ7L spores, cognitive and motor functions are operating normally despite the sedative we administered." Dr. Yomoto juggled the transparent scans across the back-lit monitor, his eyes wide.
"To hell with your fascination. That's a human being in there, doctor." The tower of a man leaned heavily against the glass, staring in at the woman seated stiffly in the interrogation room, handcuffed to table and wearing only a hospital gown. "Alex was a good agent, and a friend. We already lost two today. How do we save her?"
"I... I don't know that we can."
"What exactly are you trying to tell me?"
"In my professional opinion, that is no longer Alexandra Smalls, sir."
"You're telling me, that mold erased her?"
"With respect, Sol, the scans speak for themselves. Whole body lit up like a damn Christmas tree, she's a walking colony. Look at the difference in these brain images! This one on the left is Alex when she joined.... On the right, I mean..." The doctor squawked out an awkward, disbelieving laugh. "It doesn't even look human in there. Whatever aspects of the brain that made her Alex before she went into that cave, we can't find anything that resembles it now. I can't even begin to speculate if we went in with surgery."
"Out of the question." Sol replied, eyeing the Japanese doctor critically. "What are our options?"
Yomoto sighed heavily, rubbing a hand against the back of his neck as he peered at his shoes, trying to avoid the burden of telling Sol they might as well have lost three agents in a single incident.
A sudden pounding on the two way mirror shook both of their attention back to the room. A glowing smear of brilliant white seeped from the degloved hand which was planted against the glass, as the skin slowly crawled back up the wrist to encase the exposed musculature and bone.
The entity that had formerly been their friend uncannily followed their gaze back to the cuffs hanging uselessly from the table in the center of the room, expressionless. “This one wishes to speak to Ada.”
Fading Memory
That background scene is dynamite! Seriously, Bravo.