Foster

Splintered / Reflections

<Snipped quote by Foster>

Are you asking if that's good for yours, or that I should add it to Kerris, for her wanton thieving ways?

@FalloutJack

So now there's two of them?

Splintered / Reflections

<Snipped quote by Foster>

I vote 'Sunshine'.

BTW: Yes, I am making profiles. They should be done sometime soon.

@FalloutJack

How about "Magpie"?

Splintered / Reflections

<Snipped quote by Rhona W>

Well, now that you mention it...

No, not really.

@FalloutJack

I'm sure I'll find a window of opportunity for mayhem.
-Rhona, when they see this.

Splintered / Reflections

Felix, 5th edition, so you know it's good

Name: Felix || Nickname: Felix / "Four foot hate" / "Sun-Shorty" / "Bucket" || Age: 22

Species: Anhur (officially), but she tends to leave it ambiguous/will usually not correct anyone if they assume wrong.

Appearance

She's 4'8" ball of hate

Personality: Despite being generally an outsider to nearly every community she's been 'in' by pretending to be almost every race other than her own, she has longed to find a group that accepted her as herself and as a result gets rather defensive of any perceived threats to her SPEAR team-mates. Tends to venture out of her MAS during long missions due to low stamina, allegedly hiding it "under a rock or something" and doing most of her reconnoitering on foot as she feels she's harder to detect that way.

History: According to Felix, she is the result of anhur attempts at genetic modification to combine the best traits of multiple races, but largely inherited none of the positive traits aside from being the black-fur covered swan of the batch. That and being nearly wingless. Whether that story is true or not is another matter, but it's the one she consistantly sticks to when questioned on it.

Assuming this is true, Felix was born well after the war had claimed her homeworld, and as she bore little resemblance to the other anhur -even the most disfigured ones of the plague- was almost immediately ostracized -you'd think it'd involve more ostriches- but thankfully the Dranfel took her in despite the beak and obvious lack of scales. However, life among them was hard; she had to fight even harder just to prove she wasn't a burden to their society. Contact with humans was almost a relief as the non-discerning human just figured she was 'just another highly-skilled alien' on their side, and she promptly joined the SPEAR units just before the assault on the Florida Monolith.

Key Skills & Abilities: As a fighting-style, she tends to favor setting herself up in a well-hidden position from which she usually strikes with a vicious surprise-attack; typically in close-quarters and a confusing flurry of movement and a well-practiced economy-of-motion. Although she has opted to take the sneaky snipey approach when harassing the enemy or simply trying to shape the battlefield to her advantage.

Skill-wise, apart from standard levels of marksmanship and being a concealed close-quarters brawler; she's able to mimic voices/noises with some degree of precision to help create a distraction.

Special Abilities: Her larger than normal ears provide exceptional hearing in addition to some rather keen eyesight, this combined with her innate spatial-awareness and excellent memory tends to make her an exemplary scout despite her personal preference for conducting raids.

What should have been wings on her back ended up developing as arm-blades. Due to being pretty much engineered and raised with the intent of having the best of every race's abilities she has had practice using technology and augments to mimic several abilities she otherwise would not have, but seldom well enough to fool anyone for more than a few seconds.

Her strength was augmented at some point with additional synthetic muscle fibers and dermal-plates, allegedly in an attempt either to keep-pace with the dranfel, or just to 'fit in' with them better, this coupled with her tendency to shave her fur off has resulted in her sculpted proportions and appearance.

Personal Weapons: Suppressed FAMAS, KS-23 shotgun, and either an MG-3 or some anti-material rifle
Personal Equipment: Aside from default MAS pilot-suit, her camo-kit and survival/web-gear (SERE-kit), she usually has a spare change of fatigues and a pair of 'pebbles'.

Splintered / Reflections

-double-post-

May as well use it for the revised CS

Felix, 5th edition

Name: Felix || Nickname: Felix / "Four foot hate" / "Sun-Shorty" / "Bucket" || Age: 22

Species: Anhur (officially), but she tends to leave it ambiguous/will usually not correct anyone if they assume wrong.

Appearance

She's 4'8" ball of hate

Personality: Despite being generally an outsider to nearly every community she's been 'in' by pretending to be almost every race other than her own, she has longed to find a group that accepted her as herself and as a result gets rather defensive of any perceived threats to her SPEAR team-mates. Tends to venture out of her MAS during long missions due to low stamina, allegedly hiding it "under a rock or something" and doing most of her reconnoitering on foot as she feels she's harder to detect that way.

History: According to Felix, she is the result of anhur attempts at genetic modification to combine the best traits of multiple races, but largely inherited none of the positive traits aside from being the black-fur covered swan of the batch. That and being nearly wingless. Whether that story is true or not is another matter, but it's the one she consistantly sticks to when questioned on it.

Assuming this is true, Felix was born well after the war had claimed her homeworld, and as she bore little resemblance to the other anhur -even the most disfigured ones of the plague- was almost immediately ostracized -you'd think it'd involve more ostriches- but thankfully the Dranfel took her in despite the beak and obvious lack of scales. However, life among them was hard; she had to fight even harder just to prove she wasn't a burden to their society. Contact with humans was almost a relief as the non-discerning human just figured she was 'just another highly-skilled alien' on their side, and she promptly joined the SPEAR units just before the assault on the Florida Monolith.

Key Skills & Abilities: As a fighting-style, she tends to favor setting herself up in a well-hidden position from which she usually strikes with a vicious surprise-attack; typically in close-quarters and a confusing flurry of movement and a well-practiced economy-of-motion. Although she has opted to take the sneaky snipey approach when harassing the enemy or simply trying to shape the battlefield to her advantage.

Skill-wise, apart from standard levels of marksmanship and being a concealed close-quarters brawler; she's able to mimic voices/noises with some degree of precision to help create a distraction.

Special Abilities: Her larger than normal ears provide exceptional hearing in addition to some rather keen eyesight, this combined with her innate spatial-awareness and excellent memory tends to make her an exemplary scout despite her personal preference for conducting raids.

What should have been wings on her back ended up developing as arm-blades. Due to being pretty much engineered and raised with the intent of having the best of every race's abilities she has had practice using technology and augments to mimic several abilities she otherwise would not have, but seldom well enough to fool anyone for more than a few seconds.

Her strength was augmented at some point with additional synthetic muscle fibers and dermal-plates, allegedly in an attempt either to keep-pace with the dranfel, or just to 'fit in' with them better, this coupled with her tendency to shave her fur off has resulted in her sculpted proportions and appearance.

Personal Weapons: Suppressed FAMAS, KS-23 shotgun, and either an MG-3 or some anti-material rifle
Personal Equipment: Aside from default MAS pilot-suit, her camo-kit and survival/web-gear (SERE-kit), she usually has a spare change of fatigues and a pair of 'pebbles'.

Splintered / Reflections

Those appear to be safe-ish assumptions. Since in the int-check it's noted that most of the alien homeworlds have been virtually destroyed or rendered nearly uninhabitable/currently occupied by the totality. So any refugees with the means would probably flee to wherever it looked safer.

Although on the first point, dark elves can bend light around themselves.
And:

increased healing, faster reflexes, higher ranges of sight or sound, increases in bone density and muscle mass. Some have opted for more direct changes, incorporating cybernetics into their bodies either as a result of war wounds, or from illness, sickness, or just to remain competitive

/highly unofficial, Rhona be afk for the weekend.

Splintered / Reflections

<Snipped quote by Foster>

I hadn't really thought about the fungus being altered or mutated... but now I am, and that's a fun hook for an adventure at some point that I'm squirrelling away for long enough that you've forgotten about it, and I can develop it suitably so it's not obvious.
Interesting thought about it surviving in a hybrid - maybe one of the goals of the hybrid project was to reduce or remove the dependence on the symbiotic relationship altogether, so that the Anhur would be more able to survive on a wider variety of worlds. It seems like a logical reason to undertake such a project, or at least, one reason.

@Rhona W

Well, the problem with squirreling it until I forget about it, is that I'd have to stop roleplaying it after 20+ years, first. Or I politely don't pull an eye of sauron moment the plot appears.

That said, it'd be a complicated headache and my thought process on the subject had already jumped the shark about a decade ago.

The whole original reclusiveness-thing was largely because it was a partial-failure to ween Felix from the fungus, and again, mostly just made her resistant to living a full-on LSD trip at all times [Cue bri'ish Operation Moneybags video where they gave soldiers LSD and rocket-launchers] being a bit impulsive would've been getting off light. And there'd be fear of it becoming cross-contagious, which'd result in a heavy handed "kill everyone, leave no witnesses" zombie-eradication squad style response since developing a normal means of containment/immunity would not work.

So, yeah... I'll agree that we probably should not have the story head in that direction at this time. So we're giving the anhur as a race a bit of plot-armor so they aren't living on borrowed-time mid-apocolypse.

<Snipped quote by Rhona W>

I'm thinking navy blue color with crimson highlights, myself.

@FalloutJack

Probably something like a happy little AH-1G, myself.

Splintered / Reflections

Edit, neat, we have an elf.

Skittish elf, meet a weaponized jump-scare.

I'm sure they'll get along great.

<Snipped quote by Foster>

I did consider giving the MAS Suits active camouflage, but eventually decided against it - they've got too much going on already, and I figured it'd be something for progression in the story. So, maybe not the camo cloak yet, but it might be something that gets discovered or invented over the course of the narrative and gameplay.
KS-23 is fine, given the kind of threats that are around it's not unreasonable that they may have become more common in production and wider usage. Synths being what they are, and the same for aggressive alien fauna. Although, hopefully, bailing out of your MAS Suit won't be something you have to deal with all too often, and even if you do have to deal with it, hopefully the rest of the squad will still be around to help.
Owls are good, I like owls. Both real ones and anthro ones.

you could say, they're a hoot.

youtu.be/BxDmrzuPsYk?si=J8XfFMT6k97LwJby

@Rhona W

>Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaah!

And in a real twist of Tenet-ception, I had the write-up for how the Fungi would impact the character living rent-free in my head for pretty much the past 20 years to the day. Which is why I figured I'd ask to what extent it was corrupted by the plague... pretty sure we don't want a "Last of Us" sort of background-shenanigans kicking off just as the war ends (Felix came about much later, largely to be resistant to its more debilitating affects).

And yeah, I know; it can't exist outside of anhur genetics, probably something about a slightly more chilled body-temperature... but what if it could exist in a hybrid? Granted, the likelyhood of such a thing ever being a problem is about unlikely as me going off on a trip with my own toe-fungus... Still, it's a thing that can keep a mycologist up some nights.

We'll probably get the special cloaks out to the troops most likely to need it, or volunteers willing to trial them. In the meantime, Felix will just have to make-do with her gundam-cosplay.

Splintered / Reflections

<Snipped quote by Foster>

I vote 'Sunshine'.

BTW: Yes, I am making profiles. They should be done sometime soon.

@FalloutJack

Yeah, I kinda walked into that one, I guess her name is "Bucket" now.
-Edit, yep that playthrough. Yep, a link to a 14 minute video to explain a 30 second joke.
-There's a stealth joke regarding that DM's name... They're not allowed to roll dice anymore (joking, of course).

Splintered / Reflections

'sounds fair, since I was describing her via several ill-fitting cliches that kept getting piled on top of each other. I'll dial it back a bit, especially the impulsiveness causing/used-to-rationalize at least half those statblock shenanigans.

... Kinda still want to keep a large shotgun though (the KS-23, not some MAS-type). Mostly because if a pilot does need to bail-out chances are there's still going to be a MAS-sized threat they'll have to deal with and a combat-knife probably won't be able to cut it. But I suppose a demolition-charge could work in its place.

I'm also hoping the survival-cloak could become standard-issue, actually. As a means to aid pilots in SERE should they need to bail. It also has alternative uses of it for running recon, sniping, and taking naps. I figure such a piece of kit may be genuinely useful for anyone and everyone.

Most of the rework is working on phrasing. Personality may take awhile, brain is stuck on "owl".