Keroko's characters

Well this took longer than I expected. I'll keep using this thread for any further bios I'll cook up, and this post as an index.

Critique on where to improve would be much appreciated.

Name: Rishi
Species: giantess
Age: 35
Sex: Female
Height: 115 feet
Skin colour: Fair
Hair colour: Reddish-Brown
Eye colour: brown
Other characteristics: Often wears armor.
Predation: Reluctant
Food category: Prefers to trade with humans, but makes an exception for “idiots, assholes and thieves.”

Character

Rishi is a giantess who has made her home in the ruins of Ur Sagol, partially because she enjoys the architecture, more because its close proximity to the great portal. Rishi enjoys trading with the travelers and merchants. She often offers merchants and travelers an escort through the jungle for payment in goods. Spices are a favorite, and crafting resources are rarely unneeded. Her prices vary with the size of the caravan, though being a giant it’s common for her to ask an entire cart’s worth of resources. A high price, but many merchants -or at least of those who can be convinced to listen- find the offer of guarded passage through the Felaryan lands a deal worth the cost, particularly if their destination is a more far flung one. Rishi honors a contract once made, and will resist even the greatest hunger as long as the client pays. Smart people with no goods to at hand offer contacts to people who do. She enjoys trading with new people.

Rishi is a joyous person, loud laughter often accompanying a conversation with her. She has a good deal of patience, a trait much needed when trying to convince a group of humans you’re not there to eat them, and will keep smiling through the negotiations. Still, when a situation gets serious all jokes are tossed aside and the smiling face is traded for one of a glaring determination. A good way to gauge the seriousness of a situation is to look at Rishi’s face. The smaller the smile and the bigger the glare, the more trouble is brewing.

Since she guards from and hunts the more dangerous creatures of Felarya, Rishi wears basic armor made from carapaces and bone crafted into shape. It's enough to give her some protection while leaving her with flexibility. She wields a shield made from a giant tonorion carapace and a spear as her main weapon, with the axe she usually uses as a tool tied to her belt as a back-up weapon. As Rishi is a crafter, all of them were made by herself. Where she guards and hunts in the wilds, at home she makes tools and items of convenience out of whatever material she can trade or find. When she hunts for big creatures, part of the reason will usually be because she could use the materials from it. While she is good at her work, Rishi has little knowledge of technology. So while you can expect a high quality in her crafted tools, complicated machinery is beyond her expertise.

As she prefers to trade with humans over eating them, Rishi doesn’t hunt humans (it's bad for business). This is not to say she doesn’t hunt at all though, indeed far from it. A girl has to eat after all, and with the spices she trades the feral creatures she hunts can still be quite tasty. She also hunts the bigger, more dangerous creatures of Felarya, often alongside her scarlet elf friend Kyria. Though where Kyria does it out of religious belief and the glory of the hunt, Rishi mainly does it for the resources. The bigger creatures usually have great fur, claws, bones or carapaces to use in her works.

Also, while she usually doesn’t eat humans, she makes an exception for idiots, assholes and thieves. The definitions are as subjective as they can be, but generally if you’re stupid enough to go attack, trap or lie to her, Rishi considers eating you to simply be doing her part in helping natural selection. The asshole category generally fall in a similar scenario, those humans who make it a point to kill predators for the sole reason of being predators. Well, two can play that game. And Rishi ’s stomach is bigger. Thieves are especially high on her list. It took two decades for Rishi to build up her home, and she’ll be damned if some sneaky little human is going to rob her of her hard work.

Her relations with other predators tends to be a hit-or-miss case. Some like her because of the things she makes, others don’t like her for having been cheated out of a meal. Though since Rishi takes a “first come, first serve” approach to humans (if a predator gets to you before Rishi, tough luck), it hasn’t led to open hostility. Much.

Personally, I see a very well-developed character here. ^.^ I say great job!

Nyaha wrote:

Personally, I see a very well-developed character here. ^.^ I say great job!

I agree, it shows you spent some time and thought working on this, she's thoroughly well developed.
I like what I see... Her bio is nice and short, but it gets all the important points down, good work.
The only thing I wonder at is whether or not the humans could be carrying enough of anything to interest a giantess. Even if they were to give her barrels and barrels of spices, it's hardly a handful for her... Not a big deal at all, but it's there. I guess a band of humans that does regular business with her might come prepared, the protection, as you mention, is quite worth it.
Also, unless she DOES get a lot of returning customers, there isn't a whole lot of reasons not to just take anything a caravan might be carrying, (along with eating the humans ) so you might want to specify why she doesn't simply do that instead. Returning customers? Word of mouth? Some kind of honor code? Just plain being being a nice person? She simply enjoys the act of trading itself?
Aside from that you have all the bases covered, I can't really think of anything else. This is some nice work, and a very promising start...

Thank you, it's always nice to hear your hard work is appreciated.

Which, coincidentally, is also why Rishi doesn't just eat humans and take their stuff. Aside from tools she also makes armor and weapons after all, and predators... aren't the best customers for that. Heck, most of them don't even wear clothes, so all she'll trade with them is armor for the occasional adventurous predator, but mostly just pieces of clothing and the tools she makes.

Humans, on the other hand, are always in need of armor and weapons. So they're pretty much her main customers. It's fiddly work making armor and weapons so small, but as a craftswoman she embraces the challenge. Eating humans would both rob her of her customers and make it harder to get more. It's hard enough for a predator to convince humans you're really not there to eat them as it is without having a reputation as a liar.

And yeah, humans don't carry a lot for a giant, but a cart filled with pepper would be roughly the size of a pepper shaker, so it's worth the trade for her. Metal is hard enough to come by as it is for a predator, not exactly being miners themselves, so being able to trade any amount of refined minerals helps her out a lot. It's kind of a "put enough rocks together and eventually you'll get a mountain" principle.

Thanks for the advice, I've added the edits to the profile.

keroko wrote:

Humans, on the other hand, are always in need of armor and weapons. So they're pretty much her main customers. It's fiddly work making armor and weapons so small,

Fiddly? Try impossible without specialized equipment.
Do you realize just how big the size difference is?

Image:The Difference:

keroko wrote:

but as a craftswoman she embraces the challenge.

I'm interested in where she learned her craft.

Anime-Junkie wrote:

Fiddly? Try impossible without specialized equipment.
Do you realize just how big the size difference is?

Image:The Difference:

I've thought about that. The size difference is would be roughly equal to handling something the size of your average tabletop figure, depending on the game you're playing (The average warhammer figure would even be slightly smaller to handle by comparison). It's challenging, sure. Hard, even. But not impossible. But yes, she does use special tools (things like loupes, files and tweezers) for the detail work.

Anime-Junkie wrote:

keroko wrote:

but as a craftswoman she embraces the challenge.

I'm interested in where she learned her craft.

She learns the basics from a variety of sources, and then keeps practicing and tweaking the method until she masters it. Some of it is self-taught, some of it learned from humans, trading knowledge for protection, and sometimes even the rare predator knows a thing or two.

keroko wrote:

Anime-Junkie wrote:

Fiddly? Try impossible without specialized equipment.
Do you realize just how big the size difference is?

Image:The Difference:

I've thought about that. The size difference is would be roughly equal to handling something the size of your average tabletop figure, depending on the game you're playing (The average warhammer figure would even be slightly smaller to handle by comparison). It's challenging, sure. Hard, even. But not impossible. But yes, she does use special tools (things like loupes, files and tweezers) for the detail work.

You don't have any idea how hard it is to make armor, do you?

Specialized equipment, as for what AJ was talking about is not merely tweezers and stuff, its like, minature robots and mechanized tools.

Not to mention, finding the resources, and a mine, which requires a pickaxe big enough for them to yield, and then a smelting furnace, and the anvil and hammer, which I honestly can't see her using well. here's a video about making just the gauntlets of armor.

...because while I could type out the whole process, I'm far to lazy for that level of work right now. Obviously, he isn't using robots and stuff, but he's not a giant, and this isn't true armor making.



If you want your character to get money, I suggest a profession that'll be easier. Also, why would a giantess need money in the first place?

Honestly, making something tiny sized as a giant would be very difficult no matter what you do. In a dridder's case, you could sell silk, and in large quantities, but that's just a natural advantage dridders would have. I suppose, as a giant if you find a quarry, you could make a wall. Giant walls would be something Negavians might like, and would bring in ridiculous capital, if they decide to buy. If.

While I do find the idea that she could craft armor for beings many times smaller than herself hard to believe I don't see it as a glaring problem. And why not make some money? If she's trading with humans, guess what, humans value money. Someone may come along with something that Rishi wants but they might be unwilling to part with it unless the price is right. I do understand the points made by other posters but I for one don't have much to take issue with here.

Well, money isn't really her motivation. She trades for resources, not money. She just likes to make and trade things. Humans proved an easy way to get things like metal, and a treasure trove of knowledge on how their crafting works.

And yeah, I oversimplified the armor creation process. I kind of went with the "Felarya is not meant as a serious universe" rule for that one and let myself be inspired by Anna, who can repair and create complicated human-sized technology (which if anything is even more complicated).

If it's too big a problem though, I could just scrap the human-sized crafting part. Eating humans would still be bad for her escort business regardless, so the return customers on that one is still a good motivation not to eat them.

If it's just a hobby, I wouldn't suggest something that'd be nearly impossible, something easier then. I mean, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense...I know making armor is cool, and you want it in there badly, but its just not feasible. Leave human sized armor up to someone closer down to their size.

Right, scratched that part then. Perhaps I could reword her crafting a bit more as well, to reflect that she's more a toolmaker who happens to have made her own armor rather than a specialized armorcrafter.

Hmm perhaps she could still be able to craft human armour if she was smaller. Mabey 85 to 50 feet?

Hmm, if given a choice between her size or her ability to craft human armor I'd pick her size though.