Well, I have my story outlined, and my characters (kind of) made, so now... three characters that I believe to be unusual. I see no problems with Paulie, since I've already talked about him with Zoekin, but the rest... do they sound plausible? As in, did I miss any critical rules of Felarya that would negate their being?
1) Paulie. Once a great adventurer, able to survive anything and everything... learned the best tricks, the best ways to hide... the perfect example of caution and competence. He was confident in his abilities, and so let his guard down, for only a short instant, forgetting the most important rule of adventuring: everything can and might kill you. So he was killed by a starkala bug. Death by living blueberry was just too embarrassing to him, however, and through sheer force of will he managed to avoid going to Heaven and instead possessed a set of his old clothes. He now lives as an "invisible man", really a ghost, offering to help any adventurer that should need it. Serves as a "guide" for the cast.
2) Squiggles. He's... well, the closest thing one could relate him to would be a sentient tapeworm/mideclorian lovechild thing. He doesn't come from Felarya, but rather was teleported here along with his current host, a small deer-like critter resembling a duiker in the Miragia forest. Once there, his host was killed, cooked, and eaten by a group of adventurers consisting of two men and the son of the older of the two, the boy being about 8 years old. He was the one who ended up eating the parasite's head segment, and was thus his next host.
The boy named his passenger, who was quite glad to have a sentient host to talk to, Mr. Squiggles. His Father, friend and himself were eaten by silver scorpians in the Swamp a bit later, and Squiggle's new host was a single scorpian, which, in turn, was eaten by a small lizard. As it left its breeding ground and headed into the dryer Tolmeshal forest, it was killed and eaten by our hero, Robin, and he then became the host.
Far from it's lookalike, the tapeworm, his species does not feed off of the host's food reserves, but rather the host's surroundings. The creature melds with the body and spreads throughout the entirity of the host's body, and uses the body as a means of absorbing the ambient life energy around it; this process doesn't harm any involved party, suprisingly enough, and in fact can be quite beneficial. The parasite absorbs this mysterious ambient energy and, as a waste product, produces a fair bit of useable energy for its host, increasing vitality and endurence, with a very slight boost in healing ability. An infected being will need to eat less often and run for signifigantly longer distances. Living off of this strange substance makes even more benefits living in a place as magical as this, and he has discovered the ability to give his host something closely resembling Predator Sense...
There's a couple of drawbacks, of course. Obviously, it's kind of wierd and sometimes annoying to have a living being capable of accessing your thoughts and talking to you all the time inside of you. Also, you die when it dies, as it's integrated itself into you... therefor, since it feeds off of the life energy produced by living beings, the host must be near other living things 24/7 or run the risk of dying on the spot. This means no space travel, and no travelling in the desert... for someone living on a distant planet with no direct means of travel with Felarya, this means he can't go home until he removes it, which is said to be impossible to do.
As for himself, Squiggles is a decent guy... he will give advice freely and enjoys conversing with his host. He's been alive through various bodies, being transferred by ingestion, for about 200 years, so he's quite wise for a tapeworm. He simply adores his new habitat; there's life literally EVERYWHERE. He will try to protect his host (transferral is somewhat painful) and is a real asset to Robin, for now.
3) Rio. Not much to him, I think. Rio is a Tom Thumb. He was adopted by a very well-off human woman in Negav at the age of 6 after a Neko ate his birth parents and siblings, and she raised the little fellow like her own. She was a very kind and gentle person, and one can certainly see that this rubbed off on him. At the age of 18, he was again left mostly alone when she decided to leave him with a friend and go on an expedition to Ur-Sagol with a few other travellers and some trained military personnel for a change of pace. She didn't come back.
Rio was then the heir to her small fortune, and used it quite well. Investing and trading, he built for himself a rather decent business career, which, as time went on, became more and more lucritive, due to his shrewd and calm head. His freinds did most of these transactions for him, pro tempure, as he's a bit difficult to take seriously because of his size. Once he made a forune, he had an agreement made so that if he did not write a will, all his riches would be sent into the Jungle with a caravan to never be seen again (so that assassinations out of greed would be discouraged).
He owns a mansion in Negav city now. It's staff (and size) are quite large for a Tiny to have; he mostly hired his staff out of generosity, people from the street who were down on their luck and could use a steady job. He only hires women, though, as he seems to enjoy female company more than that of males, and will go as far as refusing to speak with a group that does not have at least one female. He allows other Tinies to take refuge here, of course... they generally don't, though, since he does have two or three Neko women on his payroll (only hired if they agreed to stay at least ten feet away from him or any other Tiny in the house at all times).
He is probably the single wealthiest non-magic Tiny people in all of Negav, and is well known for being a big softie. He enters the tale as the group's first benefactor. Despite his interest in the Jungle, he can't go personally because he understands well that he would end up the same way his mother did... so he hires the group to take a few pictures so he can at least see what it's like out there without actually going into the jungle. Why he doesn't buy pictures off the free market, only he knows... probably just wanted to help the guys out and give them a job.
Subject: Three hesitant characters 
Fri Dec 04, 2009 5:22 am
