[Accepted]Rotharia's Dionae Application

[Rotharia]

BYOND Key: Rotharia

Character Names: Victrix, PLEX, Clayton Burton, Bose

Species you are applying to play: Dionae

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

Why do you wish to play this specific race: Aside from having options available to me for variety's sake, I'm interested in the decision-making that comes along with being a Dionae. More specifically, I'm interested in eventually exploring many different mind-types and clusters and "theory crafting" how these would play together. In addition, I think Dionae's in-game mechanics put a lot of emphasis on seeking out the roleplay rather than being mechanically tied down by it. That is, if I am not forced to eat food and drink or stay in oxygenated areas, I'm free to move about the station as I please and interact with whatever I may find interesting. It's a race that allows you to engage in almost any situation and I appreciate the freedom that offers.

Identify what makes role-playing this species different than role-playing a Human: The inclusion of mind-types is massive, deciding how your gestalt's mind works and the unique events that led to it's creation is a large portion of the character building process. Dionae also are unique in that they have no centralized culture, they can piggyback on nearly any belief or idea, taking part in it but never truly belonging to it. They exist on the outskirts of traditional society and only truly fit in amongst other Dionae despite their best efforts to integrate.

Character Name: Floating Among Stars Without Number

Please provide a short backstory for this character: The gestalt that would become Floating Among Stars Without Number formed in The Narrows cluster in response to a need for more cyclops amongst the working force. This particular gestalt was composed of older nymphs shed from a single Argus. It would spend the next year of it's life working as an engineer for the Narrows, usually being delegated to tasks on the exterior of the facility. During this time, the gestalt truly came into it's own and formed a Competence Choir mind-type. Once the immediate need for more specialized workers was gone, the gestalt turned it's eye on the rest of the galaxy. Desiring to bring back knowledge of engineering from all across the spur, it set out in 2458. Often using it's skills as an engineer to afford passage across various ships, the gestalt spent the next year of it's life living aboard these ships. Often after finishing EVA repairs the gestalt took time to engage in artem while among the stars. It is during this pivotal moment of it's life the gestalt chose it's name. While aboard ships, the Dionae often requested to drink the blood of other Engineers. Though many were asked, only a handful gave permission, leading to most of the Dionae's knowledge to be self-gained. Finally, while in Mendell city, the gestalt recognized the great diversity that Mendell and Biesel offered and decided to seek citizenship and employment. Seeking out The Biesellian Choir for advice, the gestalt was put on the trail of Nanotrasen. Nanotrasen agreed to sponsor his citizenship as well as offer him a position, the gestalt itself requested to be placed aboard the NSS Aurora due to the similarities it shares with it's home cluster. This is where the gestalt works today as an Engineer by trade, and a janitor when time permits.

What do you like about this character?: I like the concept of obtaining information about other species' engineering feats and bringing that back to a cluster who's focused on repairing and maintaining a prison facility. I also like that they're a particularly "tame" Dionae, they lack any real racial biases of any kind given their spacer lifestyle so interacting with other Dionae who may hold such biases should be interesting.

How would you rate your role-playing ability?: 7/10

Notes: I'm well aware that the backstory is fairly lackluster. I have a solid concept for the character but I struggled to put into words how it is that they came to be. So PLEASE ask questions.

[Lmwevil]

G'day Roth. 

Has Floating Among Stars ever drank blood (obviously yes given your backstory)? If so, what was the formative experiences that they took from it? What is their current stance on drinking blood? Are they specific species they prefer drinking blood from if it is still something they do actively?

Of the cultures that Floating Among Stars has interacted with, have they adopted any habits or things they appreciate from them? 

What does Floating think of beings that cannot give them blood?

Has Floating split from any of their original nymphs that constituted their cyclops form over their lifespan? 

 

[Rotharia]

Drinking blood has shown Floating that not everyone has had the luxury of being so far removed from the turmoil of life in the spur. The narrows is fairly isolated and their cluster at large is in contact with The Biesellian Choir to keep updated on happenings in the spur, but having access to blood and gaining that first-hand perspective of the hard lives that people have lived has been eye-opening. A sense of curiosity has arisen from it that drives Floating to continue collecting these stories so that he can bring their first hand accounts back to his isolated cluster. To this end he finds non-humans blood particularly interesting but human's have stories to tell as well so he wouldn't shy away from that.

Floating hasn't adopted any specific habits from other cultures, but he does appreciate a few notable things that he tends to include in his sessions of Artem. These things include, the Unathi code of honor, the Tajara's fondness for snow (which they hope to see one day), and the Skrell's ability to mimic their environment's coloration.

When it comes to synthetics, Floating is fine with their inability to provide him blood. Being from the narrows, it's unlikely that the cluster had frequent opportunity to imbibe in blood so knowledge gained through practical means and blood are valued equally to them. They believe they can learn much from these beings and have no reason to believe why they aren't as sentient as any other race.

Given that this gestalt is fairly young, I would say no, or if yes only for a short while. Given that I've chosen competence choir as the mind-type, it seems foolish that a nymph would choose to leave the collective unless replaced with a Diona of equal knowledge.

As an aside from your questions, there is a fair bit that I took the reader to ASSUME in my backstory but I feel I should address some of the things that may be questions later.

All of the nymphs are chipped and registered within Biesel and Sol.

I don't know the specifics of how Nanotrasen hires Dionae given that they have no need to attend formal education centers for degrees, but they would have gone through whatever paperwork or competency tests are necessary before beginning work on the Aurora.

The gestalt is follower of The Eternal.

Their coloring is likely somewhere between green and default but for mechanics sake I will be choosing default.

They have no cognitive obstacles at this time.

Edited May 16, 2021 by Rotharia
Added clarification

[Lmwevil]

Fantastic, onto my final questions. 

Where do you think Dionae lore is strongest right now? 
Where do you think Dionae lore is weakest and could be improved upon?
How do you interpret the Dionae conditional pacifism they abide by?

[Rotharia]

Dionae lore is absolutely strongest in it's description of clusters, and how it REALLY is the experience that matters. Different clusters and how their specific events led to how they operate and the things they believe was fascinating to read about and gave me a great starting place for the character. The other strong part is the biology, and how that plays into their stories.

Questions that I had while reading through the lore were few, but I felt they were important ones like the hiring process I mentioned above.

Specifically for The Narrows, it states that they have strong ties to Hephaestus but that isn't demonstrated anywhere other than in saying that Hephaestus still owns them. Does the company use it as a personal breeding ground of excellent engineers and handpick the best ones and are otherwise uninvolved? Or is it an on-going collaboration between the Dionae and Hephaestus to restore the prison to full working order. Just to what extent are they involved.

How does NT handle a creature that has no need for formal education? Are they given a competency test? Put on trials? In-person demonstrations?

Further, I felt that there could be some added clarity between the effects of a diona WILLINGLY splitting from a gestalt and a forced split, I personally would assign them two different words because they have two VERY different implications and it was sometimes difficult to determine which one was being referred to.

The pacifism can be explained as saying that they'll only act in self-defense or if they believe that it's "for the greater good." They aren't antagonistic so you'll never see them starting fights, but if they are in danger they'll still defend themselves.

Finally, I was offered this page to assist with creating this application and it is a CRYING shame it's not linked on the wiki. It needs to be brought up-to-date a bit but it was seriously invaluable to tackling a backstory for this completely alien race. https://wiki.aurorastation.org/index.php?title=Dionae_Out-Of-Character

Edited May 16, 2021 by Rotharia
FURTHER clarification, and because I forgot the last question :(

[Yonnimer]

After some discussion, we've decided to accept your app.