scarsolderthanyou (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
scarsolderthanyou) wrote2018-06-21 11:36 am
scarsolderthanyou) wrote2018-06-21 11:36 am
Save Our Earth: Application
OOC INFORMATION
Name: Gail
Are you over 15? Oh yeah
Contact: cacopheny @ plurk
Current characters in the game: NA
IC INFORMATION
PREINCARNATION
Name: Stone of Indigo Cloud
Canon: Books of the Raksura
Age: Around 500 actual (he’s forgotten exactly), and a spry mid-seventies in SoE
Species: Raksura (aerial shapeshifting predator)
Appearance:
The big one is Stone. Normally he’s obscured a little around the edges by a blurring effect, some artifact of his age combining with his power and the peculiar nature of Raksura shapeshifting. He has wings, protective scales and ridges along his body, a lot of spines and long, soft scales called “frills” in a mane down his back, and he is comfortable moving both on two legs (making him very tall) or on all fours (making him only slightly less tall). He can’t talk in this form, but he can make a variety of rumbling noises and communicate some non-verbally with his spines. He’s lighter than he looks, with nearly hollow bones like a bird, and his wings in canon are sixty “paces” from tip to tip, which might translate into anywhere between 70 and 80 feet. Also, his tail is semi-prehensile and he could, if he found anything big enough, hang upside-down from it.
In groundling form, Stone looks basically human, aside from the fact that his skin is dull gray, like his shaggy hair, and he looks a little more stretched out than most humans. His canine teeth and the teeth right next to them and some of his molars are sharper than a human’s would be, meant for tearing meat off of bones, and his tongue is longer and thinner than a human’s tongue. He’s tall and lean, weathered and lined as much by travel as by age, and one blue eye is clouded over and partially blind.
Played by: Jeremy Irons
History:
Stone was born to a Raksuran court in the sprawling forest of giant “mountain-trees” known to his people as the Reaches, in the vast planet known as the Three Worlds (Ground, Sea, and Sky). The Raksura lived there in a tree as large as a small town, towering thousands of feet into the sky and supporting whole ecosystems in their branches and along their trunks. His court, the small Umber Shadow court, had dwelled in their carved and magically sculpted tree-home for generations. Stone was a well-cared-for consort caste Aeriat, one of the winged Raksura. Consorts are the fertile males who can breed with the ruling female queens to continue the royal lines and produce sterile warriors, or with the wingless Arbora castes to produce magic-wielding mentors.
It was uncertain at first whether Stone would ever actually be chosen by a queen, because he was born, as he calls it, “imperfect”, with his right eye half blind and clouded over, and the Raksura breed for conformation and specific traits. It didn’t help his generally grumpy tendencies when for many years, in the Reaches and beyond, he was passed over-- but in the end, it was a needless worry. His queen, Azure, choose him from among the rest of the court’s consorts and from among the neighboring courts’ offerings, and he went on to produce a number of strong clutches, none of them with his distinctive disability. One line of his offspring went on to eventually rule the court, in his great-granddaughter Pearl.
The Reaches were getting too populous, though, and smaller courts were having more and more trouble keeping their territory. When the current reigning queen Cerise died and passed leadership on to her daughter Indigo, the court decided to take off for new grounds, renaming itself Indigo Cloud after the new ruling pair. Stone was still young, and considered the trek an adventure, learning to hunt while they traveled, and developing stronger and more wild than sheltered consorts in the Reaches ever got to be. The court explored for two generations, something like sixty to eighty “turns” or years, and eventually found an old ruined pyramid structure in the east beyond the forests of the rest of their kind. Stone never really felt comfortable there, by that time tired of the “adventure” and missing home, but that was where Azure chose him, and he stayed where she did to raise their clutches.
The court lived away from their ancestral grounds for about eight generations, or almost four hundred turns. Raksuran consorts live to perhaps a hundred and twenty turns or a little less, with the exception of “line-grandfathers”, or consorts who live many times a Raksura’s standard lifespan and grow well past their standard size, as Raksura don’t ever stop growing over their lives. As the turns passed, it became clear that Stone was to become one of those, as first Stone’s queen Azure and then his children began to fade and die-- Raksura show their age by losing their coloring, fading to gray and then white-- while he remained strong and healthy, and only grew larger and stronger as time went by.
After he outlived the last of his earlier clutches, and with no queen to keep him settled in the court, Stone began to range further and further from the court, exploring the lands around them. He met groundlings-- intelligent life forms, usually bipedal, who lived on the surface of the Three Worlds-- and sealings-- like groundlings, only who live in rivers and oceans-- and even flew with skylings-- often very different from either of the others, those who lived most of their lives in the clouds. He fought stray Fell, the Raksura’s more violent sibling race, learned the customs of various peoples across the Three Worlds, visited their allies, and checked on their old mountain-tree in the Reaches. He enjoyed his freedom, but it was lonely, so he did always return to visit whichever generation of his family lived in the court’s new grounds, bringing stories of his travels.
Still, it was hard watching fledgings he had seen born and helped raise grow gray, fade, and die, so the intervals grew more and more lengthy, until one year he returned to find the number of his home court much reduced. There had been sickness, he’d been told. And a hunting accident. And there had been more stillbirths and fewer of the flighted, sterile warriors to protect the court born in recent years. All of the other consorts had died, or been sent away by the moody queen Pearl, grieving for her favored consort, and only she and her daughter Jade remained of the fertile Aeriat.
Stone was alarmed, and after conferring with the Arbora and the queens, left again to speak with their allies in a nearby court, to bargain for consorts and warriors to help protect their court-- and help them move, as he was urging that they return to their original home in the Reaches. None of the mentors could auger the cause of their decline, but all of them agreed that something had to be wrong, and sent him in the direction that they thought had the most chance of Stone returning with help.
The allied court, however, had no one to spare, and no real desire to risk themselves by offering to help a struggling court. Stone returned empty-handed… until he stopped to rest on one of the floating island ruins dotting the skies and all but ran into a solitary, courtless consort living among a local groundling tribe. Moon had no idea what he was, or what Stone was, but Stone managed to talk him into coming with him after the groundling tribe left Moon out to die because they mistook his scaled form for a Fell. Moon was suspicious and untrusting and largely unsocialized, but also lonely and curious and obviously aching for a little acceptance. Stone found himself rather attached to the little brat even before he got him all the way home. Moon’s grouchiness and independence reminded him of his own, and the plight of a lost and confused Raksura who didn’t even know what he was pulled at his old, parental heart.
With Moon’s help, Stone and his queens discovered the source of their court’s decline: the direct magical attentions of a Fell flight, including a Fell/Raksura crossbreed mentor with magical powers. Together they destroyed the flight, and finally made their way back west towards the Reaches with the help of some groundlings and their flying boats. It took various adventures, including meeting up and allying with Moon’s original court Opal Night and dealing with yet more Fell/Raksura hybrids, before everything started to settle down and the court could start breeding again-- Jade and Moon producing a clutch of five great-great-great grandchildren for Stone-- at least until the next adventure sent them investigating cities supposedly made by the forerunner race a few years later.
The result of that fateful trip was a half-Fell flight taking up residence in the Reaches in Moon’s birthcourt’s territory, Stone taking up with a misplaced sealing named Rorra for a while (at least as long as she deigned to stay near Indigo Cloud’s home tree), and the destruction of half or more of the population of the Fell by a forerunner weapon that nearly destroyed the Raksura and a large swath of groundling races, in the process. It was only through Moon and Jade’s efforts that the combined courts of Indigo Cloud and Opal Night stopped the weapon before it could complete its horrible task. Stone helped, of course.
REINCARNATION
Name: Samuel (Sam) Stone
Age: 77
Appearance:
The biggest change, of course, is that Sam is not gray-- he’s a sort of faded tan, instead. He’s still tall and gangly, he’s still weathered by time and travel, and he’s still got one bad eye and a handful of scars, though the eye came later than it did in his original life. His hair is still gray and his eyes are still blue, good and bad. Obviously, he also doesn’t have a snake-like tongue or overly sharp teeth. He does tend to dress a little nicer, a holdover from being an officer in the American airforce.
History:
Sam Stone was an only child, growing up a little wild in rural New York state in America. His parents were poor, and the only way to get into college was on grants from the military-- he had the aptitude for flying and got entrance into the air force as a pilot. Rather than dropping out and going to college, instead he wound up spending most of his life in the American military, rising through the ranks of the airforce until the rank of Colonel, earning himself a few medals, including the purple heart for being injured in combat, half-blinding one eye. He retired in his late 40s, when he finally got to settle down with his long-time sweetheart Amy and their two children.
About seventeen years ago, once both kids were out of the house in college, Sam and Amy moved to England to be closer to her family, since by then he didn’t have any left in New York. Sam gave flying lessons in his personal plane to help pay the bills until he formally retired when Amy died, six years ago. He needed the time to grieve, and has only started coming back to having a real social life in the past year or so. He still has his little personal plane, and occasionally takes it out for a flight.
First Echo:
Sam’s first echo was a bracelet, red-gold and intricate and shaped like winged dragon-like creatures entwined with their wings and tails forming the band. He found it going through some of the last of his wife's things, which would have been something Stone would have done after his queen Azure died. It was his first consort bracelet, given to him by Azure when she first chose him centuries ago. He doesn’t know why it makes him sad, as it's obviously not Amy's (it wouldn't have remotely fit her wrist), but he wears it most of the time now.
PERSONALITY
Pre-Incarnation Personality:
Consorts, as one of the most valuable breeding Raksura, are typically delicate, sheltered, and gentle, maybe even a little flighty. They’re fond of children and good at sussing out the motivations and feelings of others, are often shy and moody, and are considered some of the more graceful and polite of the Aeriat, and of the Raksura as a whole. Stone, however, is so old and well-traveled that the only two of those that still apply are his parental nature and his ability to see to the heart of things, though “shy” and “flighty” never even applied to him as a fledgling. Instead, these days, he is grumpy and snide, showing affection more through light cuffs and casual insults (“idiot” is his favorite) than the smiles and kind words of a younger consort-- though even now, he’s more ready with a hug and a comforting lap to sit in than any human would be if someone seems to need it. The Arbora, in particular, are very demonstrative with their affection and often find him a safe target for it, so he’s very used to being clung to and climbed on.
Most consorts only leave their homes if they are being traded to another court to share out their bloodline or for a tame diplomatic mission to forge an alliance, but even then young Stone’s experiences were different, given the court’s travel while they looked for a new home. After the loss of his queen and his first clutches due to their old age and his unexpectedly long lifetime, Stone has spent more time away from his court than within it. He’s talked to a lot of non-Raksura, killed a number of non-Raksura, and even had sexual relations with a handful non-Raksura-- the latter of which scandalizes his court a little bit when they think about it, even though the Raksura are generally very open-minded and straight-forward about sex. Stone knows enough to be suspicious of strangers, particularly those who smell off or who seem shifty to him, but it doesn’t stop him from engaging with them. Instead, he has a quiet sort of curiosity for new things, enjoying traveling through the various groundling territories and learning about their history-- and especially their food.
It helps that he is also very confident in himself. He grew up protected and valued, allowed to express himself and put himself forward as he wished, and that plus his age and experience have bolstered his confidence and given him a strong base to interact with the rest of the world. He’s used to being deferred to, respected, and obeyed the way a stern but affectionate father would be, and it shows in nearly all of his interactions with others, familiar or otherwise. Even in unfamiliar or difficult situations, it helps him keep steady that he knows his own worth and the exact extent of his own abilities. He might growl about it, but he keeps his head, accepting that any trouble that comes up will be dealt with. The only time he’s ever really shown as losing his self-control in panic is when his whole species is at risk of being wiped out.
Some of Stone’s confidence also comes from competence. Stone has had a long lifetime to learn new skills, and discover the best ways to do things, so usually when he sets his mind to something, he does it well. It also comes from quite literally being a parent many times over, of several clutches of five bitty Raksura each, watching them grow and assume responsibility and make him grandbabies. Because of his age, he’s related to a sizeable portion of both the Aeriat and Arbora, so he sees the rest of the extended court as his responsibility, as well. He has never actually met anyone as old as he is, so he’s used to being the most experienced one in the room. Potentially meeting new people his age or older in panfandom rp will be an eye-opening experience for him, and will likely change his worldview a bit.
Over the course of his long life, Stone has lost a lot of people he’s cared about. It’s admittedly part of what makes him grumpy-- though most of that is just that he’s lost patience with trivial things and is dismissive with what he considers to be stupidity, and some of that has always been there even as a young consort-- but it’s also part of what makes him protective of those he has currently. While many things annoy him, the only thing that really makes him lose his temper is a threat to people he cares for. He’ll lose them soon enough, by his standards, but he doesn’t want to lose them sooner than he has to. Loss doesn’t keep him from loving; it has made him, instead, love more fiercely and with more wisdom.
Any differences?:
Sam Stone is a little more formal than Stone the Raksura was, holding himself more erect and being more likely to stride than to amble. This is a holdover from almost thirty years spent in the military. While Stone technically could count as “military” in his court, it was a much more rough and tumble affair. Also stemming from his time in the military, he's not really a fan of explosions, fireworks, or people randomly firing guns (not as much an issue in the UK as opposed to the US, but still).
Unsurprisingly, Sam is much more comfortable with modern technology than any Raksura would be, as they come from an early agricultural/late hunter-gatherer type society. He’s also much more of a reader than Stone cared to be, more able to sit still and do something non-active. (They both do share the tendency to want to nap in the sun, though.)
Sam has had a whole lot fewer children than Stone did, and didn’t really have a hand in raising his own until they were in their teens, so he isn’t as comfortable with them, particularly at the younger ages. He still loves them, but he’s more likely to mess up and upset one than he otherwise would have been, and doesn’t always understand them. He’s got too much dignity to really get down and play with them, now.
Also, Stone the Raksura was much more likely to resort to growls and swats when annoyed than Sam the human, given humans don’t in fact growl, and swatting is really pretty frowned upon in human society.
Abilities:
; Shapeshifting: Stone has a human-like “groundling” form, and a dragon-like winged form. The shapeshift itself looks like disappearing in a cloud of dark mist.
; Blurring effect: In his winged form, Stone is a little hard to see clearly. There’s some sort of mental power he exudes without conscious control, blurring his face, claws, and the edges of his form. He can stop it if he really focuses, and it stops when he’s too injured to hold it up or asleep, but mostly it’s an automatic power, related to his age and how the Raksura shift.
; Shapeshift stowing: Due to the nature of shapeshifting in his species-- though they don’t understand it, the series creator has stated they exist in both forms at once, only swapping the dimension each form is in-- when shifting from groundling to winged form, Stone takes his clothes with him, into some nether space, as well as anything he was carrying with him. They return exactly the way he left them when he shifts back to groundling. He can in fact hold onto an object and shift with it, hiding it wherever his clothes go it until he shifts back into groundling form. The object can’t really be very big, but it can be anything not alive.
; Magical mass: Again due to the odd nature of Raksuran shifting, in groundling form, Stone can be as immovable as if he were still dragon-sized, though if weighed he wouldn’t have the same weight as his winged form; it’s a magical effect rather than a physical one. Also, when he growls in groundling form, it can reverberate as if it were coming from a much larger body.
; Quick healing: Compared to most groundlings on their world, Raksura heal at an accelerated rate. Stone recovered from a slash to the throat in about a week, and Moon recovered from having half his ribs broken in about two.
; Slow aging: No one’s entirely sure exactly how old Stone is, not even Stone. He’s at least several centuries old at this point, several times over the typical lifespan of a Raksura, and has only in the past couple of decades started showing signs of aging: the graying out of his hair and skin in groundling form, and the fading of the black of his scales in winged form.
; Sharp senses: Raksura are predators, and rather more animalistic than humans whose development hinged less on ambush hunting and more on tools and persistence, and as such their senses are stronger than your average human’s senses. As Raksura get older, they get more powerful, and that applies to their senses as well, so Stone’s hearing, sense of smell (more through his tongue, like a lizard, than through his nose), and distance vision are very powerful. His vision is hampered on his right side by partial blindness in that eye, though, which results in him turning his head more often than he otherwise might, to get a clearer view. His different forms also have different sensory abilities-- touch and taste are stronger as a groundling, while vision, hearing, and smell are stronger in his winged form.
; Directional Sense: Raksura always feel which direction south is, on their world. This may or may not translate to knowing where south is on other planets. Related to this, Raksura can sense the position of the sun even when indoors or underground, so they know generally what time it is at all times.
; Fighting: More mundanely, he’s big, he’s scaled, he’s fast, and he’s surprisingly hard to see-- plus he has claws and teeth that are even sharper than they look. After several lifetimes of wandering and killing the Fell, he’s learned more than a few things about defending himself and others. Even in groundling form, he’s a lot stronger and faster than he looks.
; Politics: Politics are everywhere, including in Raksuran courts. Politics is what keeps a race of haughty predators from killing each other over every little insult. Consorts, in particular, are raised to be closely aware of the political situation in a court, and to manipulate it as needed for the good of the court. Stone may be a century or two removed from when he had to really use his consort role in such a fashion, but he’s been well-trained, and he has a good eye for things of that nature.
; Pilot: Courtesy of a lifetime spent in the American airforce, Sam (not Stone) is a very good airplane pilot. He can manage a small variety of models, mostly smaller units, but he has some training for larger planes as well.
ROLEPLAY SAMPLES
Third person prose.
First person network
ANYTHING ELSE? Nada :)
Name: Gail
Are you over 15? Oh yeah
Contact: cacopheny @ plurk
Current characters in the game: NA
IC INFORMATION
PREINCARNATION
Name: Stone of Indigo Cloud
Canon: Books of the Raksura
Age: Around 500 actual (he’s forgotten exactly), and a spry mid-seventies in SoE
Species: Raksura (aerial shapeshifting predator)
Appearance:
The big one is Stone. Normally he’s obscured a little around the edges by a blurring effect, some artifact of his age combining with his power and the peculiar nature of Raksura shapeshifting. He has wings, protective scales and ridges along his body, a lot of spines and long, soft scales called “frills” in a mane down his back, and he is comfortable moving both on two legs (making him very tall) or on all fours (making him only slightly less tall). He can’t talk in this form, but he can make a variety of rumbling noises and communicate some non-verbally with his spines. He’s lighter than he looks, with nearly hollow bones like a bird, and his wings in canon are sixty “paces” from tip to tip, which might translate into anywhere between 70 and 80 feet. Also, his tail is semi-prehensile and he could, if he found anything big enough, hang upside-down from it.
In groundling form, Stone looks basically human, aside from the fact that his skin is dull gray, like his shaggy hair, and he looks a little more stretched out than most humans. His canine teeth and the teeth right next to them and some of his molars are sharper than a human’s would be, meant for tearing meat off of bones, and his tongue is longer and thinner than a human’s tongue. He’s tall and lean, weathered and lined as much by travel as by age, and one blue eye is clouded over and partially blind.
Played by: Jeremy Irons
History:
Stone was born to a Raksuran court in the sprawling forest of giant “mountain-trees” known to his people as the Reaches, in the vast planet known as the Three Worlds (Ground, Sea, and Sky). The Raksura lived there in a tree as large as a small town, towering thousands of feet into the sky and supporting whole ecosystems in their branches and along their trunks. His court, the small Umber Shadow court, had dwelled in their carved and magically sculpted tree-home for generations. Stone was a well-cared-for consort caste Aeriat, one of the winged Raksura. Consorts are the fertile males who can breed with the ruling female queens to continue the royal lines and produce sterile warriors, or with the wingless Arbora castes to produce magic-wielding mentors.
It was uncertain at first whether Stone would ever actually be chosen by a queen, because he was born, as he calls it, “imperfect”, with his right eye half blind and clouded over, and the Raksura breed for conformation and specific traits. It didn’t help his generally grumpy tendencies when for many years, in the Reaches and beyond, he was passed over-- but in the end, it was a needless worry. His queen, Azure, choose him from among the rest of the court’s consorts and from among the neighboring courts’ offerings, and he went on to produce a number of strong clutches, none of them with his distinctive disability. One line of his offspring went on to eventually rule the court, in his great-granddaughter Pearl.
The Reaches were getting too populous, though, and smaller courts were having more and more trouble keeping their territory. When the current reigning queen Cerise died and passed leadership on to her daughter Indigo, the court decided to take off for new grounds, renaming itself Indigo Cloud after the new ruling pair. Stone was still young, and considered the trek an adventure, learning to hunt while they traveled, and developing stronger and more wild than sheltered consorts in the Reaches ever got to be. The court explored for two generations, something like sixty to eighty “turns” or years, and eventually found an old ruined pyramid structure in the east beyond the forests of the rest of their kind. Stone never really felt comfortable there, by that time tired of the “adventure” and missing home, but that was where Azure chose him, and he stayed where she did to raise their clutches.
The court lived away from their ancestral grounds for about eight generations, or almost four hundred turns. Raksuran consorts live to perhaps a hundred and twenty turns or a little less, with the exception of “line-grandfathers”, or consorts who live many times a Raksura’s standard lifespan and grow well past their standard size, as Raksura don’t ever stop growing over their lives. As the turns passed, it became clear that Stone was to become one of those, as first Stone’s queen Azure and then his children began to fade and die-- Raksura show their age by losing their coloring, fading to gray and then white-- while he remained strong and healthy, and only grew larger and stronger as time went by.
After he outlived the last of his earlier clutches, and with no queen to keep him settled in the court, Stone began to range further and further from the court, exploring the lands around them. He met groundlings-- intelligent life forms, usually bipedal, who lived on the surface of the Three Worlds-- and sealings-- like groundlings, only who live in rivers and oceans-- and even flew with skylings-- often very different from either of the others, those who lived most of their lives in the clouds. He fought stray Fell, the Raksura’s more violent sibling race, learned the customs of various peoples across the Three Worlds, visited their allies, and checked on their old mountain-tree in the Reaches. He enjoyed his freedom, but it was lonely, so he did always return to visit whichever generation of his family lived in the court’s new grounds, bringing stories of his travels.
Still, it was hard watching fledgings he had seen born and helped raise grow gray, fade, and die, so the intervals grew more and more lengthy, until one year he returned to find the number of his home court much reduced. There had been sickness, he’d been told. And a hunting accident. And there had been more stillbirths and fewer of the flighted, sterile warriors to protect the court born in recent years. All of the other consorts had died, or been sent away by the moody queen Pearl, grieving for her favored consort, and only she and her daughter Jade remained of the fertile Aeriat.
Stone was alarmed, and after conferring with the Arbora and the queens, left again to speak with their allies in a nearby court, to bargain for consorts and warriors to help protect their court-- and help them move, as he was urging that they return to their original home in the Reaches. None of the mentors could auger the cause of their decline, but all of them agreed that something had to be wrong, and sent him in the direction that they thought had the most chance of Stone returning with help.
The allied court, however, had no one to spare, and no real desire to risk themselves by offering to help a struggling court. Stone returned empty-handed… until he stopped to rest on one of the floating island ruins dotting the skies and all but ran into a solitary, courtless consort living among a local groundling tribe. Moon had no idea what he was, or what Stone was, but Stone managed to talk him into coming with him after the groundling tribe left Moon out to die because they mistook his scaled form for a Fell. Moon was suspicious and untrusting and largely unsocialized, but also lonely and curious and obviously aching for a little acceptance. Stone found himself rather attached to the little brat even before he got him all the way home. Moon’s grouchiness and independence reminded him of his own, and the plight of a lost and confused Raksura who didn’t even know what he was pulled at his old, parental heart.
With Moon’s help, Stone and his queens discovered the source of their court’s decline: the direct magical attentions of a Fell flight, including a Fell/Raksura crossbreed mentor with magical powers. Together they destroyed the flight, and finally made their way back west towards the Reaches with the help of some groundlings and their flying boats. It took various adventures, including meeting up and allying with Moon’s original court Opal Night and dealing with yet more Fell/Raksura hybrids, before everything started to settle down and the court could start breeding again-- Jade and Moon producing a clutch of five great-great-great grandchildren for Stone-- at least until the next adventure sent them investigating cities supposedly made by the forerunner race a few years later.
The result of that fateful trip was a half-Fell flight taking up residence in the Reaches in Moon’s birthcourt’s territory, Stone taking up with a misplaced sealing named Rorra for a while (at least as long as she deigned to stay near Indigo Cloud’s home tree), and the destruction of half or more of the population of the Fell by a forerunner weapon that nearly destroyed the Raksura and a large swath of groundling races, in the process. It was only through Moon and Jade’s efforts that the combined courts of Indigo Cloud and Opal Night stopped the weapon before it could complete its horrible task. Stone helped, of course.
REINCARNATION
Name: Samuel (Sam) Stone
Age: 77
Appearance:
The biggest change, of course, is that Sam is not gray-- he’s a sort of faded tan, instead. He’s still tall and gangly, he’s still weathered by time and travel, and he’s still got one bad eye and a handful of scars, though the eye came later than it did in his original life. His hair is still gray and his eyes are still blue, good and bad. Obviously, he also doesn’t have a snake-like tongue or overly sharp teeth. He does tend to dress a little nicer, a holdover from being an officer in the American airforce.
History:
Sam Stone was an only child, growing up a little wild in rural New York state in America. His parents were poor, and the only way to get into college was on grants from the military-- he had the aptitude for flying and got entrance into the air force as a pilot. Rather than dropping out and going to college, instead he wound up spending most of his life in the American military, rising through the ranks of the airforce until the rank of Colonel, earning himself a few medals, including the purple heart for being injured in combat, half-blinding one eye. He retired in his late 40s, when he finally got to settle down with his long-time sweetheart Amy and their two children.
About seventeen years ago, once both kids were out of the house in college, Sam and Amy moved to England to be closer to her family, since by then he didn’t have any left in New York. Sam gave flying lessons in his personal plane to help pay the bills until he formally retired when Amy died, six years ago. He needed the time to grieve, and has only started coming back to having a real social life in the past year or so. He still has his little personal plane, and occasionally takes it out for a flight.
First Echo:
Sam’s first echo was a bracelet, red-gold and intricate and shaped like winged dragon-like creatures entwined with their wings and tails forming the band. He found it going through some of the last of his wife's things, which would have been something Stone would have done after his queen Azure died. It was his first consort bracelet, given to him by Azure when she first chose him centuries ago. He doesn’t know why it makes him sad, as it's obviously not Amy's (it wouldn't have remotely fit her wrist), but he wears it most of the time now.
PERSONALITY
Pre-Incarnation Personality:
Consorts, as one of the most valuable breeding Raksura, are typically delicate, sheltered, and gentle, maybe even a little flighty. They’re fond of children and good at sussing out the motivations and feelings of others, are often shy and moody, and are considered some of the more graceful and polite of the Aeriat, and of the Raksura as a whole. Stone, however, is so old and well-traveled that the only two of those that still apply are his parental nature and his ability to see to the heart of things, though “shy” and “flighty” never even applied to him as a fledgling. Instead, these days, he is grumpy and snide, showing affection more through light cuffs and casual insults (“idiot” is his favorite) than the smiles and kind words of a younger consort-- though even now, he’s more ready with a hug and a comforting lap to sit in than any human would be if someone seems to need it. The Arbora, in particular, are very demonstrative with their affection and often find him a safe target for it, so he’s very used to being clung to and climbed on.
Most consorts only leave their homes if they are being traded to another court to share out their bloodline or for a tame diplomatic mission to forge an alliance, but even then young Stone’s experiences were different, given the court’s travel while they looked for a new home. After the loss of his queen and his first clutches due to their old age and his unexpectedly long lifetime, Stone has spent more time away from his court than within it. He’s talked to a lot of non-Raksura, killed a number of non-Raksura, and even had sexual relations with a handful non-Raksura-- the latter of which scandalizes his court a little bit when they think about it, even though the Raksura are generally very open-minded and straight-forward about sex. Stone knows enough to be suspicious of strangers, particularly those who smell off or who seem shifty to him, but it doesn’t stop him from engaging with them. Instead, he has a quiet sort of curiosity for new things, enjoying traveling through the various groundling territories and learning about their history-- and especially their food.
It helps that he is also very confident in himself. He grew up protected and valued, allowed to express himself and put himself forward as he wished, and that plus his age and experience have bolstered his confidence and given him a strong base to interact with the rest of the world. He’s used to being deferred to, respected, and obeyed the way a stern but affectionate father would be, and it shows in nearly all of his interactions with others, familiar or otherwise. Even in unfamiliar or difficult situations, it helps him keep steady that he knows his own worth and the exact extent of his own abilities. He might growl about it, but he keeps his head, accepting that any trouble that comes up will be dealt with. The only time he’s ever really shown as losing his self-control in panic is when his whole species is at risk of being wiped out.
Some of Stone’s confidence also comes from competence. Stone has had a long lifetime to learn new skills, and discover the best ways to do things, so usually when he sets his mind to something, he does it well. It also comes from quite literally being a parent many times over, of several clutches of five bitty Raksura each, watching them grow and assume responsibility and make him grandbabies. Because of his age, he’s related to a sizeable portion of both the Aeriat and Arbora, so he sees the rest of the extended court as his responsibility, as well. He has never actually met anyone as old as he is, so he’s used to being the most experienced one in the room. Potentially meeting new people his age or older in panfandom rp will be an eye-opening experience for him, and will likely change his worldview a bit.
Over the course of his long life, Stone has lost a lot of people he’s cared about. It’s admittedly part of what makes him grumpy-- though most of that is just that he’s lost patience with trivial things and is dismissive with what he considers to be stupidity, and some of that has always been there even as a young consort-- but it’s also part of what makes him protective of those he has currently. While many things annoy him, the only thing that really makes him lose his temper is a threat to people he cares for. He’ll lose them soon enough, by his standards, but he doesn’t want to lose them sooner than he has to. Loss doesn’t keep him from loving; it has made him, instead, love more fiercely and with more wisdom.
Any differences?:
Sam Stone is a little more formal than Stone the Raksura was, holding himself more erect and being more likely to stride than to amble. This is a holdover from almost thirty years spent in the military. While Stone technically could count as “military” in his court, it was a much more rough and tumble affair. Also stemming from his time in the military, he's not really a fan of explosions, fireworks, or people randomly firing guns (not as much an issue in the UK as opposed to the US, but still).
Unsurprisingly, Sam is much more comfortable with modern technology than any Raksura would be, as they come from an early agricultural/late hunter-gatherer type society. He’s also much more of a reader than Stone cared to be, more able to sit still and do something non-active. (They both do share the tendency to want to nap in the sun, though.)
Sam has had a whole lot fewer children than Stone did, and didn’t really have a hand in raising his own until they were in their teens, so he isn’t as comfortable with them, particularly at the younger ages. He still loves them, but he’s more likely to mess up and upset one than he otherwise would have been, and doesn’t always understand them. He’s got too much dignity to really get down and play with them, now.
Also, Stone the Raksura was much more likely to resort to growls and swats when annoyed than Sam the human, given humans don’t in fact growl, and swatting is really pretty frowned upon in human society.
Abilities:
; Shapeshifting: Stone has a human-like “groundling” form, and a dragon-like winged form. The shapeshift itself looks like disappearing in a cloud of dark mist.
; Blurring effect: In his winged form, Stone is a little hard to see clearly. There’s some sort of mental power he exudes without conscious control, blurring his face, claws, and the edges of his form. He can stop it if he really focuses, and it stops when he’s too injured to hold it up or asleep, but mostly it’s an automatic power, related to his age and how the Raksura shift.
; Shapeshift stowing: Due to the nature of shapeshifting in his species-- though they don’t understand it, the series creator has stated they exist in both forms at once, only swapping the dimension each form is in-- when shifting from groundling to winged form, Stone takes his clothes with him, into some nether space, as well as anything he was carrying with him. They return exactly the way he left them when he shifts back to groundling. He can in fact hold onto an object and shift with it, hiding it wherever his clothes go it until he shifts back into groundling form. The object can’t really be very big, but it can be anything not alive.
; Magical mass: Again due to the odd nature of Raksuran shifting, in groundling form, Stone can be as immovable as if he were still dragon-sized, though if weighed he wouldn’t have the same weight as his winged form; it’s a magical effect rather than a physical one. Also, when he growls in groundling form, it can reverberate as if it were coming from a much larger body.
; Quick healing: Compared to most groundlings on their world, Raksura heal at an accelerated rate. Stone recovered from a slash to the throat in about a week, and Moon recovered from having half his ribs broken in about two.
; Slow aging: No one’s entirely sure exactly how old Stone is, not even Stone. He’s at least several centuries old at this point, several times over the typical lifespan of a Raksura, and has only in the past couple of decades started showing signs of aging: the graying out of his hair and skin in groundling form, and the fading of the black of his scales in winged form.
; Sharp senses: Raksura are predators, and rather more animalistic than humans whose development hinged less on ambush hunting and more on tools and persistence, and as such their senses are stronger than your average human’s senses. As Raksura get older, they get more powerful, and that applies to their senses as well, so Stone’s hearing, sense of smell (more through his tongue, like a lizard, than through his nose), and distance vision are very powerful. His vision is hampered on his right side by partial blindness in that eye, though, which results in him turning his head more often than he otherwise might, to get a clearer view. His different forms also have different sensory abilities-- touch and taste are stronger as a groundling, while vision, hearing, and smell are stronger in his winged form.
; Directional Sense: Raksura always feel which direction south is, on their world. This may or may not translate to knowing where south is on other planets. Related to this, Raksura can sense the position of the sun even when indoors or underground, so they know generally what time it is at all times.
; Fighting: More mundanely, he’s big, he’s scaled, he’s fast, and he’s surprisingly hard to see-- plus he has claws and teeth that are even sharper than they look. After several lifetimes of wandering and killing the Fell, he’s learned more than a few things about defending himself and others. Even in groundling form, he’s a lot stronger and faster than he looks.
; Politics: Politics are everywhere, including in Raksuran courts. Politics is what keeps a race of haughty predators from killing each other over every little insult. Consorts, in particular, are raised to be closely aware of the political situation in a court, and to manipulate it as needed for the good of the court. Stone may be a century or two removed from when he had to really use his consort role in such a fashion, but he’s been well-trained, and he has a good eye for things of that nature.
; Pilot: Courtesy of a lifetime spent in the American airforce, Sam (not Stone) is a very good airplane pilot. He can manage a small variety of models, mostly smaller units, but he has some training for larger planes as well.
ROLEPLAY SAMPLES
Third person prose.
First person network
ANYTHING ELSE? Nada :)