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[Accepted] Loco's Lizard License


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BYOND Key: LocoTokyoFunBus

Character Names:  

Joni Mercury - Chef

Stephanie Weisgarber - Xenobotanist

Irvine Pikari - Phoron Researcher

Za'Akaix'Zygr Zo'ra - EMT

Species you are applying to play: Unathi

What color do you plan on making your first alien character: Orange-brown

Have you read our lore section's page on this species?: Yes, and thoroughly enjoyed it!

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 really like their lore! I've been reading it in short bursts, article by article, over the course of about a week now, and I think the Contact War is a really interesting conflict, and how human contact has gone on to shape the Unathi's feudal culture of fiefs, lords, nobles, etc is all really interesting, and full of potential for interesting character backstories, and engaging interactions with other characters

Identify what makes role-playing this species different than role-playing a Human: Mechanically, you eat meat, don't drink alcohol, and talk like thisssss. With regards to role-playing and player-to-player interaction, Unathi express emotions with different physical mannerisms than humans or other xenos do, generally have a distaste for synthetics and augmentation, (provided that they belong to one of the two predominant religions, Sk'akh and Th'akh) and tend to socialize in ways that, relative to other societies, is more formal, owing to the hierarchical nature of Unathi society under the Izweki Hegemony. 

Character Name: Uza Sheresekh - Priest

Please provide a short backstory for this character: 

Uza Sheresekh was born in 2412 in what is now the Wasteland, the son of his father, a merchant, and his mother, a homemaker and "assistant" to a Th'akh shaman, though it was generally an accepted fact in his village that his mother had a connection with the spirit world, and a knowledge of the village's ancestry that paralleled even that of most of the religious men of their city. Though Uza's parents had made plans earlier in their adult lives to groom their child to become a merchant like his father, their plans quickly became frustrated by virtue of the fact that, when Uza was born, he was very clearly blind, and very sickly. Uncertain of their son's future, Uza's father was convinced that he should be drowned. Uza's mother, however, insisted that his blindness was a gift from the ancestors, citing the story of the grandfather of the current Th'akh shaman of their community, born into a similarly poor state of health, but gifted with tremendous insight into the spirit world.

This would be a difficult role for the young Uza to fit into, however, with his gregarious and good-humored personality lending itself more to slacking off and socializing with the other children of his village. He was taught Th'akh religion with much resistance, maintaining an internal, private skepticism of the idea of a spirit world full of the souls of those from generations past, who could exert their control over the mortal world from beyond the pale of physical reality. Nevertheless, in an effort to avoid punishment, he learned much of the rich oral tradition of his local community before being sent to a formal school in the more developed city of Kutah to the north, where he learned Sinta'Unathi, the history of Moghes, and the doctrinal differences between the religion of his parents and Sk'akh, a topic of increasing interest for him.

Uza's friendly nature would serve him well in this environment, with many of his instructors failing to adequately accommodate his disability. He depended on a network of friends to study with to make a passing grade, and only made it through school by the skin of his teeth. While he was by nature a good orator (being 7'1" with a deep voice that could easily carry across a room, people tended to listen when he spoke), he routinely failed written exams when teachers were too busy or simply cared to little to take the examination with him verbally. Eventually, though, he graduated, and to the chagrin of his parents, had decided on becoming a priest of Sk'akh, a faith whose doctrines he believed made more intuitive sense than those of Th'akh. 

His parents, particularly his mother, were outraged at this life decision, and after his return home, and months of subsequent bickering, he eventually would move far away to a monastery of the Moza Order, a group of Sk'akh priests that put particular emphasis on the practices of fasting, and the vow of silence. Uza left home with a distaste for all thing Th'akh, chief among them the use of hallucinogens as a spiritual practice. This made him fit right at home with the Moza, some of whose priests would allegedly go years without speaking to one another. This was a practice Uza would, unfortunately, engage in throughout the entire beginning of the Contact War, which began 7 years after he began his affiliation with the order at 25. By the time he sought out his parents to ensure their safety, his childhood home had already been reduced to rubble. Uza would spend the next two decades of his life struggling to find his place in the world, with his parents now deceased, his order forced to evacuate their monastery due to the consequences of the fallout. He stayed with the order as long as he could until it crumbled after years of harassment from the Maraziite Order in 2455. Uza now lives on Ourea, and maintains a Tau Ceti work visa to provide religious services for Unathi, and secular counseling for non-Unathi, with a certificate in the field.

What do you like about this character? 

Being born in 2412, Uza is 50 years old, which would make him the oldest of any of my characters. World-weariness, regret, wisdom, and humility aren't character qualities I've had the chance to engage with yet, and I think he would be a fun character to roleplay.

How would you rate your role-playing ability?

8/10

Edited by SleepyWolf
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I really like this character! It seems very interesting and would create conflict on station. There are some oddities, though.

You state that Uza stayed with this order of Sk'akh priests but was harassed by the order. Firstly, is it directed only at Uza or is it targeting the group as a whole? It would make more sense if they were targeting Uza as he converted from Th'akh, but still, he converted. That is better than not converting. There is no way the order would harass someone like that. Additionally, why would the Order go about harassing random priests? They have much better things to do. 

I am going to ask some questions about the character.

1. How does Uza feel about the 'abandonment' of his village? Th'akh shamans usually are walking history books, and Uza was obviously taught in the same vein. Shamans stay in the same town with the same knowledge, often continuing for centuries. How did he feel about leaving his village? Did he try to educate another person into being a shaman? Or does he just not care?

2. Did Uza and his Clan support Coalition or the Hegemon? How did the Contact War affect their relations to their own state?

3. What is Uza's opinion on the aliens and the world around him? He is quite old, and he was born in a time where he never knew about aliens or what lay beyond the stars. How has he acclimated to this new world of knowledge? Does working in Tau Ceti amplify this fact?

Overall, this character is quite strong. I'll wait to see the answers, however.

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10 hours ago, DeadLantern said:

You state that Uza stayed with this order of Sk'akh priests but was harassed by the order. Firstly, is it directed only at Uza or is it targeting the group as a whole? It would make more sense if they were targeting Uza as he converted from Th'akh, but still, he converted. That is better than not converting. There is no way the order would harass someone like that. Additionally, why would the Order go about harassing random priests? They have much better things to do. 

The discrimination that Uza faced at his school was on account of his blindness, to a lesser extent his origins of being raised by a female Th'akh shaman, and his struggles in the school were his alone. Given the nature of the Moghean orphanage system, and the Izweki Hegemony's history of kidnapping non-Sinta'Unathi speaking Unathi and raising them in boarding schools where they were abused for speaking their native language, I thought this kind of passive ableism would be appropriate for a society that still observes a feudal, hierarchical distribution of power and oppresses women the way it does. The abuse he suffered during his years of formal schooling wasn't necessarily one of active discrimination, but passive neglect. Rather than these very busy theology instructors going out of their way to accommodate this blind, chatty, backwater village dweller with special after-hours oral tests to replace the occasional piece of written homework required by the curriculum, they just let him pass through the system without any extra help. 

10 hours ago, DeadLantern said:

1. How does Uza feel about the 'abandonment' of his village? Th'akh shamans usually are walking history books, and Uza was obviously taught in the same vein. Shamans stay in the same town with the same knowledge, often continuing for centuries. How did he feel about leaving his village? Did he try to educate another person into being a shaman? Or does he just not care?

Because he didn't find Th'akh doctrines about the spirit world to be true, Uza was perfectly fine, during his intellectually formative years in school, to let what little local history he bothered to remember atrophy away, certain in the fact that some other person would be taken up as the protege to the next shaman to continue the local tradition. With his home now destroyed, his inability to remember anything but the very basic history of his childhood community is a source of internal conflict, and for many years after the events of the Contact War his feelings on the issue would vacillate between indifference and intense personal guilt. Now at 50, he's made his peace with the fact that his village has been unfortunately forgotten, and is working on a small compilation of traditional folk tales to sell and support the remaining members of his old home. 

10 hours ago, DeadLantern said:

2. Did Uza and his Clan support Coalition or the Hegemon? How did the Contact War affect their relations to their own state?

Uza was a part of the Moza order, in the middle of a very long vow of silence during the events that would precipitate the formation of the Traditionalist Coalition.  As well as this, he feels a nostalgia and deep connection to village life, but an equal and opposite appreciation of the improvements in infrastructure, public safety, and theological education brought about by the Izweki. He feels conflicted, and prefers to keep his head down in modern Unathi politics. If pressed, however, he would probably say that he supports the Izweki hegemony.

10 hours ago, DeadLantern said:

3. What is Uza's opinion on the aliens and the world around him? He is quite old, and he was born in a time where he never knew about aliens or what lay beyond the stars. How has he acclimated to this new world of knowledge? Does working in Tau Ceti amplify this fact?

Uza attributes the events of the Contact War to a pre-existing rift in lifestyles between the communities of what is now the Traditionalist Coalition and the Izweki, with alien intervention only catalyzing and escalating what was basically an already tense conflict that would inevitably break out into war. Uza, with his great memory, open mind, and passion for listening to and engaging with the experiences of others has no issues fitting into Ourean society, and views his ability to meet and learn about these new intelligent species as a gift from Sk'akh, and spread her wisdom in a form that is more moderate, and accessible to the uninitiated alien. 

Hope this helps! I'll happily edit anything the lore devs think I should.

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1 hour ago, DeadLantern said:

These answers are good, but in regards with the first contention about discrimination, I wasn't talkimg about school. I was talking about the Order Uza joined and how the Maraziite's harassed them. I didn't talk about school at all.

Woops, my b. I figured an influx of people claiming to be Sk'akh priests with relatively unusual spiritual practices might have seemed suspicious to the local Chapter Master of the Maraziites, especially if they were trying to informally reorganize into something that might look like a cult. The Moza monastery would have been a little known sect of Sk'akh in its time, by virtue of the fact that they were somewhat newly established, and so many of the monks were taking vows of silence, and not talking to very many people about what they were doing. This isn't a crucial element to Uza's character, though, and I take no issue scrapping it and attributing the scattering of the Moza to some other reason.

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Overall I think you really get the species, and you made a really interesting character I'd love to see more of on station.

Great job on the application, and with responding to the questions! And thank you for being patient with me taking a look at this.

Accepted! Enjoy integrating into the culture of Unathi, and if you ever want to join the unathi community discord it's in the main discord's #affiliated_groups channel. Or it can be joined here
https://discord.gg/ZnrqMfG

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