Bingelly

Graveyard Orbit

I've been debating whether or not to get involved... Perhaps I'm foolish.

My Character

Character Description

Name: Molybdenum

Species: UFO

(Unidentified Foreign Organism)
Molybdenum is a rare sentient alien. His consciousness is a fragment of his home planet's gaseous boron atmosphere and has been separated away from the main body within a containment suit that houses a fossilised skeleton of a fugitive. If the gas is diffused out of the suit, his localised consciousness will cease to be (death).

Sex: N/A
Age: The resident skeleton is thought to be upwards of 200 years old. But his localised consciousness has only been separate from the main contingent for under 2 years.
Reason for being on the ship: The Kiellar rebel pirate captain known as Lorthrac crash landed on Molybdenum's home planet at an unknown time around the fragmentation of the Kiellar command. He is believed to have died on impact. When official contact was made with the planet, survey drones identified his mostly fossilised skeleton based on dental scans when it was seen moving around seemingly trying to communicate with the automated drones. The Dhasath exploration ship found this very strange but realised they could cash in his bounty. In order to preserve the skeleton's mobility they captured it in a slightly modified brig EVA suit and they shipped him off planet hastily. He was transferred onto the next suitable Mazdhul prison transport ship. The sentience known as Molybdenum only formed sometimes after the Containment Suit was placed around Lorthrac's remains. All he has known so far are the bowels of a prison transport ship. He has some very vague understanding of where he came from.
Appearance: A clunky humanoid spacesuit. The helmet is fused into the sternum plates. The tinted visor is normally black reflective, but in the right light you can make out skull clouded by dark gas. Within the mouthpiece of the visor is an gaslock that houses translator nanites and a Comms system to facilitate his communication.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Skills: The relative pressure within his suit is several atmospheres of Caldera-3 meaning he is capable of lifting massive weights. He doesn't need to eat or drink. His "skin" is as durable as a spacesuit, because that's what it is. He is a very fast learner and highly adaptable because he has had to learn how to survive a completely alien environment for the past 3 years. He is naturally space proof in his current state, and he doesn't need to worry about suffocating or drowning. He also doesn't possess any organs or tissue to be affected by radiation or thermal stress (the main worries of energy weapons, though the kinetic energy may still knock him about, and the massive blast from Ragon weaponry would probably blow a big hole is his suit.)
Weaknesses: Massively susceptible to puncture damage. If his suit seal is broken, he will die within seconds. He spends more than half of his time in a catatonic sleep-like state. He is an alien living in an alien world, his social skills are incredibly basic; he doesn't understand simple concepts like currency or ethics. In fact, he struggles to understand most abstract concepts like pain, death, individuality, empathy, and he is completely unaware of the scale of the universe.

If you aren't looking for this sort of character, I get it. If anyone knows the inspiration, I'll be very impressed with how niche you are.

@JFK

There are some minor issue regarding continuity that we can work out in a bit, but my bigger issue is that the app doesn't quite address what this character's deal is. What's their motivation exactly? What's do you see yourself possibly writing this character as or for? I'm not asking you to solidify on a character arc out of the gate, but I don't see a narrative hook, either personally or with the group.

Graveyard Orbit

How's this?

COS-EVA Wetware Unit "Bandit'

Character Description

Name: Bandit
Species: Android (COS-EVA model)
Sex: Female
Age: 19
Reason for being on the ship: Burglary
Appearance: A headless robot, 5’10” in height, forged of gray-green metal. Her chassis has a notably feminine shape, most obvious around her narrow waist, wide hips, and upper legs (her lower legs are digitigrade). Both her legs and arms are too long proportionally, giving her an odd, gangly shape. Each hand has two fingers and a thumb, and her legs terminate in thrusters that can function as peg-legs. Instead of a head, she just has a large circular port as a neck, somewhat resembling a bomb collar. Inside is a dark void; cold air and squelching sounds come from within. In fact, most of Bandit’s interior has been completely overgrown by her blue tissue, and if enough damage is sustained to her robotic exoskeleton she can bleed cyan blood. She wears a long, tattered light brown cloak in the style of a stereotypical drifter, which can cover her body down to the knees but not disguise her headlessness. Bandit does have an optical sensor in the front of her ‘neck’ which can rotate as needed, but it’s not visually obvious. Her synthesized voice is obviously female, but very off-kilter and loopy-sounding.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Skills:

• Agility - Bandit is light on her feet and very fast. She can run up to 40 mph and jump two stories high. Her grip is strong enough to allow her to climb a variety of surfaces with minimal footholds. This alone allows her to circumvent all kinds of obstacles and defenses, and find creative hiding spots
• Utility - Designed as an extravehicular extraction machine for work in the vacuum of space or within the bowels of the Superorganism, Bandit comes equipped with all kinds of handy doodads, including a clamps, grappling hooks, energy saws, welders for emergency repairs, and so forth. Despite their unremarkable appearance, her forearms are essentially large space-age pocket knives. There are also the thrusters in her lower legs, not strong enough for in-atmosphere flight, but good for jumps and dodges. Of course, using her utilities requires extra energy. She can be quite creative with what she’s got, though
• Sustainability - Bandit was designed to run on the common battery packs used in blasters, which can be found practically everywhere there are people. These sustain her internal life support, self-repair, and weapons systems alike, so if there are plentiful packs she can operate without limits

Weaknesses:

• Weak - Bandit lacks physical strength and stopping power. She can’t lift, carry, or destroy much, and her frame isn’t too sturdy. She has no long-range options and is vulnerable to being shot
• Cowardly - The importance of Bandit’s mission demands that she prioritize her own continued existence at all costs. This has manifested as a strong aversion to combat (and dangerous situations in general) and an inclination to run and hide at the slightest sign of trouble
• Greedy - Bandit is disastrously covetous when it comes to money. After all, if she’s not great at violence and trying to take heads physically offers a lot more trouble than it’s worth, her best bet to finish her mission is to buy a head, and heads cost lots of money. She’s an unrepentant kleptomaniac and will happily steal anything that even looks valuable on the off chance she can sell it, if she thinks she can get away with it. Heists are her favorite thing

Background:

Backstory: Twenty years ago, Kiellar prospectors of the starry frontier struck gold in an unnamed asteroid field in barren, backwater space. Unlike the major discoveries of the wild west eons before, however, this wasn’t black gold, but blue. While sampling asteroids for telltale traces of precious metals, a space drilling crew stumbled upon far stranger within a shell of ancient stone: an alien creature, immense in size and bizarre in biology, adrift in a state of cryptobiotic hibernation. Evolved in space without any need for iron-rich hemoglobin to carry oxygen, the creature’s tissues were radiant blue. The drillers, perturbed by heightened anxiety and unnerving dreams in the days and weeks following their find, were only too happy to sell off the mining rights to their find for some quick cash, never imagining what their discovery was worth.

Deep Space Solutions, a rather unregulated Kiellar organization formed for the research and exploitation of obscure cosmic resources, established a facility on the asteroid and began extraction. Over the course of the next year, they extracted many tons of specialized tissues from the stellar beast that had come to be known as the Tiongedol Belt Superorganism, named after the Kiellar prospector who first found it. The mining teams ventured deep into the unpredictable biology of the creature itself, careful (at first) to never dig so greedily that they might disturb and awaken the Superorganism. Most of the harvested material, such as meat and bone, would be sold to a variety of cosmic buyers, but DSS had their own designs for the rare and exotic neural tissue painstakingly extracted from deep within the Superorganism. Establishing a partnership with Autonomica Unlimited, a robotics manufacturer, led to the Neural Tissue Automata project and the creation of several different models of ‘wetware’ androids with literal bleeding edge supercomputer technology that made use of the Superorganism’s live brain matter to function on the level of human beings. Of these, the Calderan Orbit Superorganism Extra-Vehicular Automaton model, or COS-EVA, was designed to serve at the DSS facility to support ever faster and more efficient operations.

Unfortunately for the companies and people involved, it wasn’t long before the NTA project resulted in unintended consequences. The wetware androids were developing like living beings, very much to the alarm of the AI-wary Kiellar populace. As they developed their own personalities, these androids nursed a universal fascination with the Superorganism (despite most never laying optics on it). They tended to consider it their mother, and themselves its daughters, and over time their interest turned into an obsession. As their Kiellar masters took more drastic measures to suppress the androids, they became increasingly rebellious, and many of those not returned for disposal or scrapped became violent. The Wetware Scare permeated far enough through space to warrant intervention from Mazdhul authorities. Wetware was declared illegal, the androids were marked for extermination.

In a desperate attempt to survive the target put on their backs, DSS enacted their own purge. The heads of all androids were removed before their ejection into space, and the Superorganism facility was abandoned, the creature itself left to continue its solitary slumber in the cosmos for eternity.

Since then, the whole matter (poorly documented and very vulnerable to exaggeration in retelling) has faded from the public consciousness. Few wetware androids remained, but Bandit was one of them. She drifted in space for years before getting picked up by scavengers, and since then she’s been causing low-level trouble in the system nonstop. Without her head, she’s been oblivious to practically all of her past. She knows only her raison d'etre: find a head, and everything else will follow. At all times, she is subject to an inexplicable pull toward a point in space she cannot quite identify, and certainly not reach. Recently, she was captured in the midst of petty theft, and for the first time in years someone recognized Bandit as a Wetware android. Once word got out, a call quickly came in from an interested party that claimed they would decommission her properly. As such, arrangements were made to transport her alongside a number of prisoners to a designated rendezvous point, only for Bandit to end up dumped on a no-account planet: Caldera-3.

@Lugubrious

We appreciate the edits. Consider this accepted!

Graveyard Orbit

This looks right up my alley.
It seems like the Kiellar are very politically unstable compared to how long they live for. I'm guessing there are still plenty of (elder) Kiellar alive that lived through the Ragon war??

@JFK

Many of them would actually still be in fighting ages. Kiellar age isn't directly linear to human aging (this is to give them the steotypical affectations of a long-lived elf without making them exceptionally long-lived).

The political upheaval is as a result of the death of a factionalized military government with instituionalized slavery that ruled over diverse space slowly breaking (and later quite violently shattering) under the strain following a very close existential war.

My version of the events only has the full blown warlord period going on for 30 to 40 years at IC start (if not less) unless, of course, DB would like to countermand me here.

I wouldn't say Kiellar themselves are especially fractious with each other, but the legacy of the All-Kiellar Republic and later the Command is certainly one of violence. The culture is usually of a militant bend, but not always expansionist in character.

Paradise Lost

Vitiafa of Endiohon

Vitiafa slowly moved through the galley, side-eying her companion from hydroponics in a minor spat with a pair of doctors as she worked across between the tables and across the room the drink dispenser. She squinted slightly as she worked the buttons, clearly not quite adjusted to the harsh-light this morning.

Between helping choose and nurture the fresh food the crew would depend on, and providing nursing services to the recovering evacuees still lingering in the beds, the priestess was a familiar sight to both parties in the routine of her work aboard the ship. Neutrality remained her approach as she grabbed her nominally fresh tea, there was little harm in minor verbal spats over attire and food to be worth compromising any one person's willingness to approach her.

"I believe there is a a recreation room somewhere aboard, Reenneesuash, and I'd expect there to be a gym aboard as well. Though I cannot say what might be stocked in the former." she called out as she turned away from the machine with her tea in hand. "It might be worth finding it, unless someone else braved the halls of this ship."

Vitaifa moved to the singular Dhasath, and sat opposite of her.

"I see I'm not the only one having a liquid breakfast, Officer Larci," she said after a sip of the tea. "I would hope that isn't typical. Are you doing well, given the circumstances we find ourselves in?"

Paradise Lost

Vitaifa of Endiohon

"Concerning the pirate issues," Vitaifa spoke up. Her milky eye had twitched slightly at each mention of the possibility, but her tone remained neutral. "I imagine the anarchists and gangs hiding out on asteroids along the Eden's colonial trading routes have the same big problems to worry about that we survived. Gods willing, we shall be likely safe from undue harm while we remain in Eden's space."

She stifled a dark chuckle before continuing, "Unless the Metacer have deduced how to fly ships instead of merely stowing away on them."

Vitaifa moved to a chair next to an unmanned station on the bridge and swiveled, now opting to sit out of a concern of length of the meeting given the tangents rapidly propping up. "It would appear that most of us are not opposed to the idea of venturing on the route towards Old Terra. For the sake of transparency, we also know the route to an inhabited cluster but local government there is dangerous and there is a strong possibility of war breaking out. For those afraid of well-armed pirates and for the sake of those frozen below, I would advise against this."

She gestured to Mister Lockman with a wave of her hand, "Nor should we simply jet towards Sol."

"As Miss Sokolova mentioned," The older Kiel cracked a faint smile, "there are inhabitable worlds believed to be on the route. We scout them, as Mister Lopez suggested, while continuing to to the galactic crossroad. If there are any issues we find at Sol, we will simply double back to the most suitable world we found along the way."

However Mister Lockman," her neutral tone turned slightly frigid as she turned her attention directly to the human. "Separating the chaff is not an option. Out of those not frozen, there are far too few of us. "Dumping" some of us off on a wildcat colony, if we can find one, is not a guarantee of long-term survival for those who go and those who remain."

She paused for a moment, mentally tallying the room around her. "Now, I believe we had already established a quorum concerning Sol. So, unless there are any sudden changes of heart or other immediate concerns, I suggest we let Miss Fihlyn or Mister Lockman prepare a jump while the rest of us get to work."

Paradise Lost

Virginia "Ginny" Sokolova & Vitiafa of Endiohon
Cowritten by Pragia12 and Bingelly

---

Ginny was waiting in her berth, a fairly-tight quartered bunk near engineering. The maintenance closet next to it was doubling as her personal stowage. The Vodka bottle she had taken was empty now, sitting on a shelf across from her bunk. The senior Kiellar was natural for her to seek out to discuss their predicament, especially as a captain was not forthcoming among the crew. She was sitting in her bunk, legs planted on the floor and holo-sphere being fidgeted with in her hands.

"So," Vitiafa's voice broke the relative silence as she stepped through bulkhead. Her eye paused on the shelved bottle for a moment, then to the flush in Ginny's cheeks, then finally to holo-sphere in the human's hands. "I assume this is about a possible new home for us all, or at least a safe harbor before we move on to further stars?"

The ranger nodded, wincing with her leg when she rises with the priestess's arrival. Ginny wasn't military, but formal structures came naturally to her. "Something like that. I'm not from around here. Even if I were I'm not leadership material." she started "And it seems like that's in short supply around here, but you seemed like the best person to go to."

Vitiafa remained silent for a moment as she studied the ranger. She was still unsure what to make of the woman, her way of speaking stuck Vitiafa as off in a way she could not place. "Well," she sighed, "the Gods urge hospitality towards strangers, though I cannot speak for the present company. But surely there's someone else from your colony you could have approached before resorting to an priest? I must say I know nothing of operating a space-craft."

Virginia nodded her head “The Gods also smile upon prudence, and the counsel of their chosen.” She said with a strange casualness, for a human. “You don’t need to know how the ship works to tell right from wrong. Mark seems like a good man, and I’ve worked on my share of starships.” She explained. “Nobody here is from my colony, but I can at least point us all in a good direction.” She raised her hand to chest level, palm open up, and, with a press of a button, a map projected with a faint glow. “I was digging through the archives and found something that might be considered a gift from whoever’s up there.”

Vitiafa smiled faintly in response, though it faded quickly as she looked over the map. "An intact chart is a blessing for us all right now. But why keep this a secret? Is there something wrong with the data?"

The kiel paused briefly. She turned to look and listen through the bulkhead behind her. Satisfied after a moment, Vitiafa stepped closer to the human. She was careful to still shield the map from view

"Did you steal this, child?" Her voice was low. Her tone a bit stern, but the question carried no accusation.

Ginny's head drooped to left slightly, "Copied from Edenite Archives. If they would consider it stolen, then the people who would care are long gone." She asserted "It's charting from one of the early colony ships." She would click along the sphere, zooming in on Eden's position and the surrounding systems.

"I came here, from a sector a ways away, looking for a map to Earth." She said firmly, assenting to Viatafa's assumption nobody was listening "This is the best shot I've ever seen at finding it, and it might be the best shot you all have to find a new home."

"A sector far from here?" Vitiafa cocked an eyebrow, "Others survived the machines and the metacer? It must be easier to settle with them than to find earth, and that's to say nothing of the dangers of a voyage to Earth with a skeleton crew.

The texarkanan shook her head "Could if you wanted to, but I think there's a better shot in here than anything." She hummed, looking down below the stars projected between them "The parts I'm from are in the middle of a bit of a dust up. Lot of fighting between human supremacists and religious fanatics. New colonies are liable to be raided, and I wouldn't want to drag you all along on false hope for that." She shakes her head

"Do you have proof that Earth is still habitable after the collapse?" Vitiafa's features tightened as she pondered the route. "Or are we few choosing between war and banditry and the unknown for the souls in the hold?"

Ginny slouched, her shoulder lowering. "Nope, but I do think we're likely to pass by some candidates that a colony ship would have been looking for. Might not be Eden, but could be liveable." she offers with a shrug "I'm no miracle worker here, but I think its better than wandering aimlessly."

"You are likely right," the Kiellar nodded rapidly. "It is something tangible to work towards at the very least, and something to unify us. It is your people's homeworld, many Dhasath see Mars as religiously important, and the wormhole could still be open..." She paused for a moment, clearly lost in her own thought "And from there, may the gods guide us home."

Her gaze returned to the chart in Ginny's hand, and she tried to follow through a probable route to take. "We can suggest it to the bridge crew together or I can deliver the chart if you would prefer to avoid the attention."

The ranger gave a solemn nod in agreement with those words; the potential was endless, but the risk was great. "I'll get the chart loaded, hopefully our navigator can take us from there. But these people need someone to rally behind."

"They do, Ms. Sokolova, but we need to have faith in them as well," Vitiafa answered, "I will provide guidance when needed, do not doubt that, but I hope task and purpose will be unity enough for the moment."

---

ESS 3822-01 Vents

---

The drones' expedition through the vents, though necessary, was primarily a boring affair as they whirled through seemingly endless amounts of tubing and duct-work. Thankfully for the crew, it appeared as though the various seals and decontamination processes the Edenites had employed prior to the catastrophe had held. There were no traces of various forms of pest aboard. No droppings, no nests, and no skeletons.

Until one of the drones had reached one of the fans a little bit away from the cargo-hold. In front of the hovering drone and the spinning fan blade was a small metacer form that had managed to get aboard, likely before the evacuation. As the drone moved closer, it was rapidly apparent that it had lost a limb to the fan blade, likely when the ship had powered up, and very quickly bled out from the trauma.

The crew, it seemed, was safe from any insectoid incursion for now.

---

Vitiafa of Endiohon
Bridge

---

"Ms. Numosath, Mr. Lockman" Vitiafa said to announce her presence she walked into the bridge with Ginny not far behind her."Ms. Sokolova has a star chart with her. Could either of you see if you can upload it into the navigational systems?"

Taking a seat in the bridge as she waited for Ginny to catch-up, Vitiafa put on a headset, and dialed into the ship's intercom. "Could all available hands report to the bridge for an all-crew meeting? We shall decided our course here."

She muted herself and chuckled, "It's best to be democratic at first, yes?"

Empire of the Clouds

@Thayr

Accepted

Paradise Lost

Vitiafa of Endiohon

Vitaifa watched in painful silence on the bridge as the ship drifted away from the station. Physically, her leg burned from the exertion, making its complaint known as the limb begged for rest.

Her mind was on the unfortunates, however few, who were still aboard the station. They were doomed, and, with any luck, it would hopefully be quick. The crew had done what they could, that would have to serve as solace enough for the time being. Still, she wiped the few trailing tears as she muttered a prayer for them.

The arrival of Lockman broke the silence that hung over the two women, and Vitaifa quickly turned her attention to the pilot claiming his station. There was a slight nagging to find a space of her own, but she couldn't bring herself to leave the bridge quite yet.

"We don't have a destination, Mister Lockman," Vitiafa answered with a sniffle from her own claimed chair in the bridge. "I suppose that's a conversation to have once we have gained our new bearings. I can't imagine Miss Larci was thinking this far ahead when she brought us aboard."

Vitiafa's features darked slightly as she stole a glance up at a vent before she continued, "And we should probably have someone search the vents for any metacer stowing away. for the safety of all the souls now aboard."

Paradise Lost

Vitiafa of Endiohon

---

The priestess had just managed to make it back into the boarding tunnel to hear the heavy, rapid footfalls echo off the floor and down the boarding tunnel which seemed to stretch for a kilometer in a moment. Within a few breaths, the first panicked souls had already made the turn into the metal corridor.

The horror was clear on their contorted grimaces and bug-eyes as they ran, some well past the point of normal exhaustion. She knew their pain well.

Vitiafa's eyes widened in turn when she realized that no force would calm or rally this particular crowd. She did her best about-face, much to the disagreement of her leg, and all but threw herself into the safety of the craft's cockpit. She tumbled to the floor with a grunt and without an ounce of grace. She wasted no time before painfully and awkwardly climbing up off the floor, and just as quickly claimed one of the open seats. The kiel sighed in relief as she activated her communications unit again.

“Lopez, send some more robots to the passenger boarding corridor as fast as you can. Ease the pressure on the crowd.” she ordered. "And we need more hands to guide those coming aboard."

She paused for a moment, clicking off her own communicator and taking a deep breath. She turned her head to face the quessir at the helm. “Keep that tunnel open until we need to crush a bug with it.”

Empire of the Clouds

"Temperance is a virtue, so the scripture says." Mitunbaal replied as she noticed Carter dismiss himself from the ball room. A quick scan of the room also proved that the private Robertson had departed from the festivities, and that the pair of officers had returned from wherever they had slipped from. The young man, she reckoned, must have simply been overwhelmed.

She clearly returned her attention to bar around her and the elgan across from her in the bar before continuing. "Though, I must confess that the idea of being on solid ground is comforting, doubly so within the safety of an allied power.

Erinia's offer brought a polite smile to Mitunbaal's face in turn. The academic had read numerous such accounts, even several first hand ones from the literate among the Shariq's early reclamation efforts and the novelty had long since worn off. History, however, demanded that she accept the offer.

"I would be quite honored to read the account of our reclamation efforts," Mitunbaal softly replied after a slightly too long silence. "Sarenki is such a beautiful city these days, and I can only imagine what it was like before the fall. But the Blight was unleashed a long time ago, and even the most ancient Elgan would be hard pressed to recall it."