[Accepted]MoondancerPony's Tajara Application

[MoondancerPony]

BYOND Key: MoondancerPony

Character Names: ResearchMate 2459, Zahra Abbasi, Hiwozir Akhandi

Species you are applying to play: Zhan-Khazan Tajara

What color do you plan on making your first alien character (Dionaea & IPCs exempt): #000000

Have you read our lore section's page on this species?: Yes.

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Please provide well articulated answers to the following questions in a paragraph format. One paragraph minimum per question

 

Why do you wish to play this specific race:

I've recently gotten involved with some super neat things with Tajara lore, and besides that it interests me a lot. The faction dynamic is super, super unique and not something you get to see often with species lore on any HRP server, especially not done well. The religious and cultural aspects of Tajara interest me a lot, as well; to humans, they may be a bit backwards, while their family, faction, and religious ties are important, sometimes bordering on as important as it is to the Unathi. Also, Tajara lore is by far the most dynamic and frequently updated in terms of lore development; it feels like something that is actually changing and evolving with us, instead of just giving us different angles on a singular moment in time.

 

Identify what makes role-playing this species different than role-playing a Human:

On a mechanical level, Tajara are cold-resistant and sensitive to heat, and this is reflected in their behaviour and clothes. They wear things like cloaks to keep cool, and you wouldn't be likely to see one wearing a thick winter coat on station. They also tend to have strong family and faction ties, and a large part of their identity depends on whether they support the PRA or NKA (or may even be an ALA sympathiser, though I imagine it wouldn't get too overt). Even with those who are unaligned, this can still lead to a good character; missing such a large part of their identity would make a Tajara an outcast in their society.

Tajara also have different grammar when speaking Tau Ceti Basic. One may say "She is at the barrrr,' instead of "I am at the bar." Some Tajara with a heavier dialect may even say "He is coming to the library?", instead of "Are you coming to the library?", replacing the second and first person pronouns with third person.

 

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Character Name: Ruzha Nezhdanova

Please provide a short backstory for this character, approximately 2 paragraphs

Born in 2437 during the height of the People's Republic of Adhomai, Ruzha lived with her parents in their small, though modernising, village during her childhood. As Zhan-Khazan, they were the backbone of their community, performing tasks such as farming, logging, and ranching, which Ruzha was expected to help with from an early age. However, as their village grew and expanded, adapting using modern (human) technology, there was less need for hard labour and more need for skilled labour. To avoid being replaced, they begrudgingly saved up their funds to get her a mediocre education in botany, to the extent that her circumstances could provide. This meant that she could hold her own compared to the other workers, and thus her family was able to save their farm.

 

For a while, at least. They were eventually bought out by the government, who nationalised it and used machines to more efficiently grow food on their land. They were hardly compensated for it, leaving her family nearly destitute. Despite this, they remained in the village; her family seemed content with having to perform the unwanted jobs around the village just to get by. Ruzha, however, made her displeasure with the situation clear to all, which would come back to haunt her. Shortly before the harvest of 2451, the crops developed a severe blight and died, leaving many hungry and the village angry at the loss of their crops. Looking for a reason for this, they connected her complaining, the death of the crops, the assassination of Hadii by a Zhan-Khazan radical, and her dark, shadowy appearance and accused her of being a Raskariim who cursed their crops to die. The young Zhan-Khazan denied it, but was forced to leave the village regardless, eventually ending up in a large city.

 

As a destitute vagabond, she fit the stereotypes of Zhan-Khazan at the time perfectly, making her nearly unemployable except in the most unwanted of jobs. However, she persevered and whether through luck or the interference of something beyond her, she managed to get a job as a cook, often preparing hearty stews and soups for the Republic's soldiers who were stationed in the city. Despite this, she was still heavily in debt, and took to working extra shifts and stealing leftover scraps to make it through tough times. Unfortunately, or perhaps thankfully, the chef who she worked under suffered a tragic accident and died; the only one qualified and competent enough to replace him was her. Only a few years after the assassination of Hadii, the other cooks were still wary of working under a Zhan-Khazan, but she proved to be a good chef, though her demeanour worsened as time went on. She eventually only showed up when desperately needed, instead drinking and gambling in her spare time.

 

Through a combination of luck and labour, she managed to save enough money to secure a flight to the NTCC Odin in Tau Ceti, purchasing a ticket on a whim and leaving her almost penniless when she arrived. Thankfully, her education, while not exceptional, proved adequate for her to pass the certification tests necessary to be a NanoTrasen employee, and she returned to her previous passions of cooking and gardening. However, her debts still weighed heavily on her, and her attempts to drink and gamble it away did nothing but exacerbate it. She's lost and afraid in a strange nation owned by megacorporations and unfamiliar aliens, with her past haunting her in more ways than one.

 

What do you like about this character?

Ruzha is the quintessential self-made woman. She pulled herself up by her bootstraps, so to speak, overcoming the odds to make the most of her situation. However, this also doesn't mean that she's forgotten her past, or that her past has forgotten her. She's still haunted by certain parts of her past. She's certainly affected by the stigma of being a Zhan-Khazan woman in Tajara society, as well as when around Tajara in Tau Ceti. She also lacks a support network of any family, friends, or even a church of the Suns to go to, meaning she's truly alone in this foreign land. She dislikes the PRA for discriminating against her and taking her family's land, but she also doesn't have a place with any of the other factions.

 

How would you rate your role-playing ability? I don't like this question too much, but I've definitely improved since the last time I applied for something- probably around a 7.5/10.

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Notes: Nothing I can think of.

Edited November 24, 2018 by Mofo1995

[Snakebittenn]

I have never known Moondancer to break character, and the characters they make are always of consistent quality and imagination. This character is no less imaginative, and breaks the mold of a typical Zhan. I would be happy to give my +1.

[Adrae]

I love all of Moon's characters. All are unique while still being relatable. This character background looks quite good as well.

+4, because we need more Zhan

-3 because PRA

[dinobubba7]

Moons characters have always been consistent and fairly fun to engage with, they put effort in there RP and for the background of this character, its completely different than more of the cookie-cutter backgrounds.

+1

[Allakai]

Pretty solid app. I enjoy and love MoonDancer's characters when I do get to interact with them time to time.

Though I do have one quick question regarding Ruzha's character, what of their religion? Tajara are serious about their beliefs and how they view other species. How will she approach that?

All in all a very spectacular app. A +1 from me.

[MoondancerPony]

Pretty solid app. I enjoy and love MoonDancer's characters when I do get to interact with them time to time.

Though I do have one quick question regarding Ruzha's character, what of their religion? Tajara are serious about their beliefs and how they view other species. How will she approach that?

All in all a very spectacular app. A +1 from me.

Thank you for the feedback!

While her village did not have a majority Zhan-Khazan population, her family was still strongly devoted to the Snow Gods (specifically Azubarre, as they believed that the God of Fertility would help their crops). This naturally affected her, and she became a loyal follower of the Ma'ta'ke pantheon through her parents. However, after leaving her village, she was unable to continue her worship due to the discrimination against Zhan-Khazan after the assassination of Hadii, and grew distant from her faith, instead choosing to (appear to) practice the worship of S'rrendar and Messa in order to better assimilate into the majority-Hharar society of the cities.

[Itanimulli]

God dammit Moon. Anyhow.

This cat seems to be indeed a cat. You seem to be knowledgeable about cat lore, wich are the point of whitelists.

So +1. Now go help us fix synth lore.

[Mofo1995]

I will be reviewing this tonight.

[Mofo1995]

Some thing in this app are done right but a few are done somewhat wrong. Namely getting blamed for being a Raskariim cursing the crops. While the average tajara is pretty superstitious, the PRA is an atheist government, and communist. Having her company be nationalized was a good touch, and convenient in the sense that I'm working on upcoming lore which would clarify the PRA as a place where all businesses and property ownership are nationalized. Being a Zhan critical of the government is reason enough though to be called not a true comrade or something and to get stung, especially with the second revolution breaking out as the backdrop. How do you think your character is going to act as someone who is unafilliated with any of the factions? If a stranger held a gun to her head and told her to pick a faction which would she choose? What kind of beliefs does she have?

[MoondancerPony]

Some thing in this app are done right but a few are done somewhat wrong. Namely getting blamed for being a Raskariim cursing the crops. While the average tajara is pretty superstitious, the PRA is an atheist government, and communist.

She was accused of being a Raskariim by the people in her town, not by the government. I imagine that at most she got in trouble for supposedly poisoning the crops, or simply left before they could find any way to pin it on her.

Being a Zhan critical of the government is reason enough though to be called not a true comrade or something and to get stung, especially with the second revolution breaking out as the backdrop. How do you think your character is going to act as someone who is unafilliated with any of the factions? If a stranger held a gun to her head and told her to pick a faction which would she choose? What kind of beliefs does she have?

If she had to pick a faction to at least pretend to support, I would say that she would choose the PRA. She's already doing that to an extent; she was at least attempting to assimilate or appear to assimilate into the majority-Hharar society of larger cities by practicing S'rand'marr worship (even if halfheartedly and insincerely) and remaining silent about her dislike for the PRA, though I'm sure she still feels it as strongly as she did when her farm was nationalised. Additionally, supporting (or at least tolerating) the PRA means she's trying to pacify the largest threat to her safety, given the PRA's treatment of Zhan-Khazan. It's not out of any ideological agreement, just out of pragmatism.

Ruzha doesn't have any large-scale political beliefs or align with any particular philosophy very well. More than anything she simply wishes for her (and at one point, her family and their farm) to be left alone. I would say that perhaps she's ideologically closest to the PRA, but not that close; more small-scale collectivist than anything, as she believes her village was doing fine before the intrusion of the government. She doesn't care much for the large scale, instead focusing on herself and her community and what she can do to better them, which is again more pragmatic than ideological.

[Mofo1995]

I'll probably be accepting this when I grt home from work today. Good work! Thank you for your patience.

[Mofo1995]

Application Accepted.