Maltivus Unathi Whitelist Application

[Weaselscribe]

BYOND Key: Maltivus
Character Names: 

Rain Chevron

Iskander Fields (Recently made, so added to this application)

Species you are applying to play: Unathi
What color do you plan on making your first alien character: Green

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

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 always found unathi to be one of the most interesting of the races available on this server.  Not only are they a sort of mingling of the Klingon sort of alien race that is all about honor and combat, but they also are in the unique position of being both a cautionary tale about carelessly sharing advanced technology with a lower tech race that isn't ready to handle it.  Normally in fiction this results in their extinction by some sort of global thermonuclear war, but unathi only destroyed part of their world, so they had the chance at least improve going forwards.  And, I guess I'm also a sucker or the whole knightly/shinobi honor motif and shinto-esque ancestor worship.

Identify what makes role-playing this species different than role-playing a Human: Well, on a mechanical level unathi are slower, tougher, and stronger than humans, aside from their ability to sprint real fast for short periods.  But it depends on which of the origins of Unathi people they come from.  For a Moghes Hegemony unathi, you will tend to come from a honorbound, feudalistic society with defined gender roles and maybe a little bit of latent xenophobia coloring your behavior.  Ouerean unathi have a less conservative mindset because they live within a representitive democracy, but I expect they'd still hold onto their spiritualism and gender roles, with less xenophobia in general.  I'm not entirely sure what a wastelands unathi would be like if they managed to arrive on the Horizon, but I imagine the extremely stressful life they had to live on an irradiated wasteland would color their perceptions about things like free access to food and water. Dominian unathi probably are used to dressing much warmer and it seems that they have had some cultural pushback against their gender roles, so they might not consider that to be very important.  Dominion unathi also seem to be less likely to follow the traditional unathi faiths that originally formed on Moghes, due to living in human communities.

Character Name: Sithar Zass'ra 

Please provide a short backstory for this character:

Sithar was born (hatched?) in a small township at the edge of the mountain bordering the wastelands southeast of Baandr in 2640, shortly after the beginning of the Contact War.  While he was technically born to the the larger and more well respected Zass'kar clan, his parents were part of a schism that occurred within the Zass'kar clan a few months after his birth.  The new branch, renaming themselves the Zass'ra clan, had increasingly little to do with their parent clan as he grew up.  Sithar met his grandfather, whom he shared his name with, only once before he and much of the rest of the Zass'kar clan were annihilated at the end of the Contact War by one of many nuclear strikes in what is now part of the Wasteland.

He developed into his adolescence watching the formation and ascent of the Izweski Hegemony, but his clan maintained a political distance with the Hegemony for many years largely on the principle that they disagreed with establishment of the Sh'akh church as a state religion.  Having been raised as a devout Th'akh follower by their clan's shaman and insulated by their distance from the capital, Sithar had little reason to doubt that pledging fealty to S'kresti was not an option.

Following S'kresti Izweski's coma and the turmoil that followed when Not'zar assumed regency and was then almost deposed by the his father when he reawoke and converted to the Si'akh faith - and was subsequently assassinated - his clan had a change of heart about Not'zar's value as a leader.  While they did not precisely agree with the Sh'akh church, at least it was not openly heretical like like 'those wasteland Si'akh savages'.  The fact that the Sh'akh church was on the decline now also helped with the change of opinion.

As a result, his father, Sasslar, entered into service Zo’saa when Sithar was in his 20's.  His father's ability as a warrior was only barely above mediocre, and he often struggled to maintain the conduct expected of a Karaphract, though he persevered for two years, determined to honor the rest of his clan with his appointment to such a prestigious order.  Sithar attended the final trial of his father to be appointed as a full Kataphract, fully intending to enter Zo'saa service after his father succeeded in the trail of combat.  He had even submitted the formal request and had been accepted into the next season's recruitment batch.

Instead, he and the rest of his clan were shamed when it was discovered in the middle of the trial that Sasslar, afraid that he might fail this final test, had secretly poisoned his weapon in an attempt to gain an edge over his opponent.  The disgraceful conduct resulted in his immediate expulsion from his status as a Hopeful, and it was only through his clan calling in every political favor that they had that Sasslar narrowly avoided being branded guwan.  Nevertheless, their reputation and standing suffered greatly, and it would take years for their clan to recover.

Disillusioned by his father's behavior, Sithar retracted his request to join as a Hopeful, and grew distant with his clan, attempting to find some form of acceptance with other unathi his age from other clans that were less dishonored.  He met with little success in this venture, as the brand of shame was too recent of a scandal, and eventually he made arrangements to depart from Moghes, finding his way eventually to human space, where there were less of his people who knew about his clan's status, and ended up on the Horizon.

What do you like about this character? 

I don't see many people that utilize much of Moghes contemporary culture on the station, and I wanted to do someone with that.

How would you rate your role-playing ability?

Very good.

Edited June 12, 2023 by Weaselscribe

[Ricky_the_banshee]

Hey there! I saw this application pass by in OOC chat a couple of times, and noticed no one responded yet! I'll try to give my insights based off the character backstory as well as my experiences with one of your characters (most noticeably Rain Chevron) both ICly and OOCly.

On 10/06/2023 at 09:50, Weaselscribe said:

Sithar was born (hatched?) in a small township at the edge of the mountain bordering the wastelands southeast of Baandr in 2640, shortly after the beginning of the Contact War.  While he was technically born to the the larger and more well respected Zass'kar clan, his parents were part of a schism that occurred within the Zass'kar clan a few months after his birth.  The new branch, renaming themselves the Zass'ra clan, had increasingly little to do with their parent clan as he grew up.  Sithar met his grandfather, whom he shared his name with, only once before he and much of the rest of the Zass'kar clan were annihilated at the end of the Contact War by one of many nuclear strikes in what is now part of the Wasteland.

He developed into his adolescence watching the formation and ascent of the Izweski Hegemony, but his clan maintained a political distance with the Hegemony for many years largely on the principle that they disagreed with establishment of the Sh'akh church as a state religion.  Having been raised as a devout Th'akh follower by their clan's shaman and insulated by their distance from the capital, Sithar had little reason to doubt that pledging fealty to S'kresti was not an option.

Following S'kresti Izweski's coma and the turmoil that followed when Not'zar assumed regency and was then almost deposed by the his father when he reawoke and converted to the Si'akh faith - and was subsequently assassinated - his clan had a change of heart about Not'zar's value as a leader.  While they did not precisely agree with the Sh'akh church, at least it was not openly heretical like like 'those wasteland Si'akh savages'.  The fact that the Sh'akh church was on the decline now also helped with the change of opinion.

As a result, his father, Sasslar, entered into service Zo’saa when Sithar was in his 20's.  His father's ability as a warrior was only barely above mediocre, and he often struggled to maintain the conduct expected of a Karaphract, though he persevered for two years, determined to honor the rest of his clan with his appointment to such a prestigious order.  Sithar attended the final trial of his father to be appointed as a full Kataphract, fully intending to enter Zo'saa service after his father succeeded in the trail of combat.  He had even submitted the formal request and had been accepted into the next season's recruitment batch.

Instead, he and the rest of his clan were shamed when it was discovered in the middle of the trial that Sasslar, afraid that he might fail this final test, had secretly poisoned his weapon in an attempt to gain an edge over his opponent.  The disgraceful conduct resulted in his immediate expulsion from his status as a Hopeful, and it was only through his clan calling in every political favor that they had that Sasslar narrowly avoided being branded guwan.  Nevertheless, their reputation and standing suffered greatly, and it would take years for their clan to recover.

Disillusioned by his father's behavior, Sithar retracted his request to join as a Hopeful, and grew distant with his clan, attempting to find some form of acceptance with other unathi his age from other clans that were less dishonored.  He met with little success in this venture, as the brand of shame was too recent of a scandal, and eventually he made arrangements to depart from Moghes, finding his way eventually to human space, where there were less of his people who knew about his clan's status, and ended up on the Horizon.

You've definitely demonstrated your understanding of Unathi lore here, and personally I like what I read! It shows a fine combination of intricrate Clan politics from the secession. I am curious how this near-heretical cultural and spiritual values might interplay and interact with the other Unathi who do strictly follow the mainstream church's beliefs.  You also seem to understand the process for Unathi to join the Kataphracts, and rightfully implement the iniation procedures as well as proper ranks at that too! This is definitely looking promising.

Here are some questions I have about Sithar:

1. Considering that your character is also dealing with the immense burden of being the member of an ostracized group of people, how would you imagine his interactions will be on the Horizon and your desire to introduce more of Moghes 'contemporary culture" on the Horizon?

2. Is it the intend to portray him of a victim of this clan and honour's system immensily pressuring enviroment trying to adjust to a more complacent new culture? Or do you intend to portray them moreso as a honourbound, overcompensating fresh-of-the-boat Unathi who tries to uphold his clan and home's cultural values to earn the respect of other Unathi on the Hoirzon, and deflect any potential doubts of his convictions, beliefs and honour? I'd love to hear more!

3. I also imagine that their attempts to become a Kataphract, and following the footsteps of their father, means that they will become a member of security? If not, is there any particulair department or job you intend to pick for this character?

 

On 10/06/2023 at 09:50, Weaselscribe said:

Rain Chevron

Right, so now comes the part where I speak of my experience interacting with you, and admittedly I am a little conflicted about this app when it comes to this part. 

One the one hand, I've seen you interact with people when it comes to you as an antagonist.  You try to make it interesting, and I can recount a few rounds, one most notably being a changeling round, where you definitely try to amp up the creep factor with body horror emote antics to bizzare behaviour you'd expect some freaky predatory lifeform walking around in a skinsuit. Props for that!

 

However, this is also where my problems come. So far, most of my interactions with Rain Chevron thus far, and that I have witnessed outside of it, have mostly been in antagonistic roles. I'm taking into consideration that your other character you've mentioned is fairly new, and to me they are pretty much an unknown, but this also goes for Rain Chevron. If I were to be asked to describe this character as an individual, I could not think of anything unfortunately. I've personally wondered at times if you simply used the character as a vehicle for antagonist roles, and while the concept of the "antagmain" is one that doesn't have to be negative AT ALL, it can definitely hamper people's impression of a character when all they know about them is that they are just some faceless individual until they have the special role. It's come to the point where I had become skeptical because whenever Rain is not an antag (and sometimes to me even when he is), he feels quite non-existent with limited interactions even over the security radio (when playing as an officer), only to reemerge later either doing their antags or simply feeling like a quiet shell.

 

So I can't really +1 this one just yet, but I also don't think this is a -1 either. Like I said, you've shown your understanding of the lore, and understanding typically comes with passion and you have it. I just think that we first need to see more of what you are capable of outside of that. Either with a new character, or perhaps by having Rain interact with people more often as a non-antag. I am absolutely sure that this would get you alot of feedback coming your way that can either confirm your readiness to play a non-human species, or help improve your playstyle on the server which in turn will contribute favourably to your post as well.

 

tl;dr Good Unathi backstory, needs more exposure with existing characters for people have a better idea of how you character RP.  Neutral so no -1 nor +1 unless I see more.

[Weaselscribe]

1 hour ago, Ricky_the_banshee said:

Hey there! I saw this application pass by in OOC chat a couple of times, and noticed no one responded yet! I'll try to give my insights based off the character backstory as well as my experiences with one of your characters (most noticeably Rain Chevron) both ICly and OOCly.

You've definitely demonstrated your understanding of Unathi lore here, and personally I like what I read! It shows a fine combination of intricrate Clan politics from the secession. You also seem to understand the process for Unathi to join the Kataphracts, and rightfully implement the iniation procedures as well as proper ranks at that too! This is definitely looking promising.

Here are some questions I have about Sithar:

1. Considering that your character is also dealing with the immense burden of being the member of an ostracized group of people, how would you imagine his interactions will be on the Horizon and your desire to introduce more of Moghes 'contemporary culture" on the Horizon?

2. Is it the intend to portray him of a victim of this clan and honour's system immensily pressuring enviroment trying to adjust to a more complacent new culture? Or do you intend to portray them moreso as a honourbound, overcompensating fresh-of-the-boat Unathi who tries to uphold his clan and home's cultural values to earn the respect of other Unathi on the Hoirzon, and deflect any potential doubts of his convictions, beliefs and honour? I'd love to hear more!

3. I also imagine that their attempts to become a Kataphract, and following the footsteps of their father, means that they will become a member of security? If not, is there any particular department or job you intend to pick for this character?

 

So I can't really +1 this one just yet, but I also don't think this is a -1 either. Like I said, you've shown your understanding of the lore, and understanding typically comes with passion and you have it. I just think that we first need to see more of what you are capable of outside of that. Either with a new character, or perhaps by having Rain interact with people more often as a non-antag. I am absolutely sure that this would get you alot of feedback coming your way that can either confirm your readiness to play a non-human species, or help improve your playstyle on the server which in turn will contribute favourably to your post as well.

 

tl;dr Good Unathi backstory, needs more exposure with existing characters for people have a better idea of how you character RP.  Neutral so no -1 nor +1 unless I see more.

1) Well, for the most part I kind of want to play him as a 'fish out of water', confused and somewhat frustrated with the social behavior on a human station.  However, I also never imagined him to be super aggressive about it - he's kind of learned in the time of being part of persona non grata clan in unathi society that his opinions on matters aren't highly valued.  His culture viewpoint will be more of a quiet struggle that only comes up during extreme duress or someone befriending him. Which brings us to:

2) I never imagined him joining the horizon to find a more complacent society so much seeing it as a way to get far away from his extremely embarrassing clan situation and his father, who probably spends a lot of time sulking and drinking butanol wine in dark rooms because every time he goes outside unathi do whatever the equivalent is of spitting on him.  To me, the only reason his father is not guwan at this point is because it would be marginally less shameful for the clan for everyone to just hate him for a while than be permanently branded as an exile. This is one point that I think humans and unathi can probably both agree on - even if a member of your family did something terrible, you'd rather see them free and repentant than living in a crime filled ghetto with no future prospects.

So, Slithar came to human space because he didn't want to have to deal with the repercussions of what his father did, but he's also not here to overcompensate and prove to everyone what a righteous and honorable and strong lizard boy he is - his father did that for 2 years, and then it turned out it as all just a bullshit front.  I think from Slithar's point of view, he would view anyone who is a little too loud and open about how they follow the Warrior's code with suspicion - what are they hiding? Why do they need to tell everyone how honorable they are if they're not pretending? A real warrior shouldn't have to constantly remind everyone of their courage and loyalty or whatever. (Or the whole thing is a sham entirely and no unathi actually follows the code but if he starts thinking like that he ends up in dark rooms, drinking wine like his father)

3) I actually wasn't thinking of putting him in security, at least at first.  For the moment, at least, I think he has internalized the idea that he doesn't deserve to be a knight or culturally adjacent knight analogue until he's figured his shit out and how to be a better person than his father.  My first thought was Operations, a position that is out of the way and doesn't put at spotlight on him because they don't tend to do anything important.  Depending on how things develop for him on the Horizon, he may move to another department, though that would be something I roleplay out.

 

Quote

Right, so now comes the part where I speak of my experience interacting with you, and admittedly I am a little conflicted about this app when it comes to this part. 

One the one hand, I've seen you interact with people when it comes to you as an antagonist.  You try to make it interesting, and I can recount a few rounds, one most notably being a changeling round, where you definitely try to amp up the creep factor with body horror emote antics to bizzare behaviour you'd expect some freaky predatory lifeform walking around in a skinsuit. Props for that!

 

However, this is also where my problems come. So far, most of my interactions with Rain Chevron thus far, and that I have witnessed outside of it, have mostly been in antagonistic roles. I'm taking into consideration that your other character you've mentioned is fairly new, and to me they are pretty much an unknown, but this also goes for Rain Chevron. If I were to be asked to describe this character as an individual, I could not think of anything unfortunately. I've personally wondered at times if you simply used the character as a vehicle for antagonist roles, and while the concept of the "antagmain" is one that doesn't have to be negative AT ALL, it can definitely hamper people's impression of a character when all they know about them is that they are just some faceless individual until they have the special role. It's come to the point where I had become skeptical because whenever Rain is not an antag (and sometimes to me even when he is), he feels quite non-existent with limited interactions even over the security radio (when playing as an officer), only to reemerge later either doing their antags or simply feeling like a quiet shell.

This is unfortunately seems to be a problem with enabling antagonist roles on this specific server - it seems that this server in particularly has a very small pool of people who opt into every antag role (except for rev/loyalit, because I don't like that one much) so this ends with me becoming an antagonist in at least 75% of every round I join.  I am well aware of how I seem to always be the bad guy as Rain Chevron, but this was not my intention when I made the character.  I think that with Slithar (and Rain if need be), I'm going to be reducing the antag roles I opt into to only my favorites, so that this doesn't keep happening.  I'm actually getting bored of being an antagonist, something I didn't think was possible.

I will make another confession, though.  I made Rain Chevron almost entirely because I needed to play someone on the server to demonstrate my ability to string sentences together and roleplay in the setting in order to get to, what were for me, the more fun things, like playing unathi or skrell (though I'm taking this one app at a time).   The idea of playing a nonhuman has always been the most interesting part of scifi or fantasy roleplay for me.  So, unlike with situations like Slithar here, where I go in with careful consideration about the character's backstory and motivation, Rain Chevron, as a first character, was just kind of a wing it sort of character. 

Even now I've been developing a personality based on vibes from interactions I have with other crew members. I made him largely PMCG because I didn't want to be part of the SCC, and I had a very interesting interaction recently with a very snooty Idris rep that made me come up with the idea that he joined the PMCG because of a lack of options after Idris denied him a business loan.  That wasn't there when I made the character, but it's a thing that I decided was part of his lore now. 

That sort of interaction is mostly how Rain Chevron has been forming as a character.  So if he feels kind of like a blank slate when I'm not antagging, it's kinda because... he is, to some extent?  He's the first character I've made beyond some generic unmemorable borg personas.  Surely not everyone who joins your server makes their first character with an entire backstory prefabricated from mountains of wiki lore. 

And one other thing...
 

Quote

I am curious how this near-heretical cultural and spiritual values might interplay and interact with the other Unathi who do strictly follow the mainstream church's beliefs. 

What do you mean?  The 'mainstream' church with their nonsense about a three faced god are the heretics  

Our ancestors don't merge into one entity, preposterous...

Edited June 13, 2023 by Weaselscribe

[CatsinHD]

Before I go into my comment on this application, I should specify that I have yet to interact with Weaselscribe's characters

 

Having read through both your application, the concerns brought up by Ricky, and your response to those, I feel confident in giving my +1 to this application. The backstory is succinct and, as Ricky mentioned, shows a good understanding of the lore. I personally think seeing Sithar on the ship would be a nice addition assuming I get a chance to interact with him (med and sec life be hard on that interaction with ops).

The issue with current characters seeming bland is a tricky one. Aurora does have a shortage of antags, and a shortage of extendobros, which leaves those taking the mantel of antag with either burnout or going all in which tends to hurt the characters during non-antag rounds. Your response, however, shows to me that you're both willing to change and able to see where and how you need to adjust things to be a better player.

TLDR; Good application, good understanding of lore, shows the positive signs of a player who can learn and grow. If only it was another aut'akh character...

+1

[Triogenix]

Hey! Sorry this took a bit, I’m out if the country currently and my service is kinda spotty for doing more than just typing on discord.

As of now, the unathi team has already received a complaint regarding your behavior in OOC, and the behavior of some of your characters. Due to this, I do not feel comfortable trusting you with a whitelist currently. My fear is that I will grant it to you, then have to manage warning and or stripping it from you due to your behavior.

 

application denied, you are free to reapply after 2 weeks.