[Accepted]Maltivus Diona Whitelist Application

[Weaselscribe]

BYOND Key: Maltivus
Character Names: 

Rain Chevron

Iskander Fields (Only in one round, probably will drop them due to disinterest)

Makayla Paynter

Ch4r1r (if pAI count)

Species you are applying to play: Diona
What color do you plan on making your first alien character: Very dark greenish-brown

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:

Almost entirely due to interactions with a specific diona player as rain.  Up until then, I largely considered them to be kind of a dull concept for a race that sort of sits around and creaks or something, except when their nymphs run around being pests (which is to say, I knew very little).  Now that I have seen the potential for interesting character concepts, I'm really excited to try the ability to split off nymphs in particular, this has given me a lot of fun ideas for (a) character(s).

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

A whole lot! For a star, they're not an individual creature with a centralized brain, but rather a mass of smaller nymphs that bond together and create something cognitively greater than the individual parts.  They live for an indefinite period of time (possibly forever? bit vague on that, but I suppose if they kept replacing nymphs it'd be a diona of Theseus question) and probably experience time at a different scale than most other sapient species.  Depending on their age, they can be incredibly pacifist due to fear of pain due to the 'echo chamber' effect, or be very slow and unwieldly instead, due to their bark having grown and hardened enough that they have effectively matured.  They can also be a dumb nymph as smart as a child, but people don't really join as a nymph to be that for their character, unless it's split off their main mass.  They can also apparently consume dead creatures and gain some level of their memories, living inside the remains, which is pretty funky. I might at some point poke at the concept of a mourning mass, but that's not currently my interest at the time.

Character Name: Distant Star Branching Into The Void

Please provide a short backstory for this character:

Distant Star Branching Into The Void grew on a nearly barren, unnamed world orbiting a binary star system.  Some many centuries before they descended through the atmosphere of the planet, one of the stars in this system collapsed in on itself and became a neutron star.  Over the following centuries, they consumed mass from their stellar sibling, eventually accruing enough mass to collapse into a black hole. During this time, the unnamed planet began forming the rudimentary elements of early life, but due to the constant powerful radiation emissions of the neutron star (and later black hole) as it devoured it's twin, progress was difficult beyond monocellular life that adapted to weather the cosmic rays.

As such, the rain of diona seeds that fell upon the the planet, drawn into stellar orbit of the black hole, found little in the way of competition beyond moss and bacterial life in this environment that was ideal for their growth.  Bombarded by intense radiation that would have killed unprotected humans, the colony of diona flourished, growing over centuries into a number of scattered gestalt collections across the world - due to the complete lack of competition on the planet and the delicious high energy cosmic rays bombarding their world constantly, their tendency towards gestalt unification was reduced, so as they grew in intelligence and abundance of nymphs, they separated into communities of like minded gestalts that very rarely reached argus size or larger for many centuries

The primary focus of much of their contemplation was the arresting sight of the red giant being slowly swallowed away into a disk by it's more massive twin.  The knowledge that destruction on such a cosmic scale was not only possible but was responsible for feeding their growth eventually developed into an almost religious social consciousness.  Due to their long life spans, they eventually came to the conclusion through observation that the red giant was eventually going to lose enough mass to be consumed entirely by the black hole, and its light would die, and then so, eventually, would the emissions of the black hole.  Lacking the ability to leave the world - or even the concept that space travel was possible - their civilization, too, would wither away, assuming the planet was not consumed by the black hole first.

When the planet was discovered by a deep space exploration vessel that had come to the system to observe the unusual binary system in 2453, the diona communities on the planet had long since come to the fatalistic conclusion that their time existence was limited by the dwindling mass of their red giant, and had become more insular, many of them gravitating together into several large gestalts whose component parts hade decided that it was better to be together to more deeply contemplate the mysteries of the cosmos with what time they had left.

Communication with the human explorers revealed that there was a larger scope to the universe than they previously suspected, but their beliefs had become stratified by many decades of accepting that their lives were finite as they bonded together into increasingly large gestalts on the planet's surface, and there was a heavy ideological resistance to changing course.  The overwhelming sentiment was of disinterest - what could these tiny, soft creatures that could not even bond together or survive outside their radiation shielding teach them that they wouldn't figure out by themselves?

It was only after some determined negotiations between the human scientists (and several visits) and some of the those gestalts remaining who were still small enough to enter a ship that three of the colossi agreed to break off some of their mass into a cyclops form, to gain experience of the rest of the galaxy, then return to bring that information back, at which point they would make a decision on whether to remain on the planet and wither away or migrate elsewhere.

Distant Star Branching Into The Void was one of these gestalt, and it has been nearly ten years since they left their world and the larger mass they were part of.  They chose their name largely in memory of their home and the purpose of their journey.  While they have seen much that has expanded their view in that time, it has been difficult for them to acclimate to the cultures of humans and other races.  Many found their casual acceptance of the inevitability of death and nihilistic viewpoint of the universe to be unsettling, though they have warmed slightly over the years, or at the very least, learned not to say certain things that upset non-diona around them, and they find the behaviors of humans and other races fascinating.  Their mindset has developed into a personality that is completely disinterested in violence (even for self defense) while at the same time unafraid of splitting themselves apart multiple times to maximize their ability to observe their surroundings before rejoining later.

What do you like about this character? 

I've seen a few diona on the station, but most of them seem to be concerned on the whole with the nuances of a specific cultural viewpoint, like being raised by unathi.  As a species that can live in a vacuum and while in radioactive conditions that would kill any other multicellular life, I wanted to explore the idea of a gestalt whose mindset was a bit more alien.  Not wanting to think about the end of your existence is one of the universal constants of almost all sentient life, and having a diona community who had looked it head on and decided 'okay. whatever.' seemed very interesting to me.

Also, I intend to play them as a visitor/passenger rather than a proper crew role, if anyone was curious.  I might change that at some point if they develop an interest an an actual practice, but since they're primarily here to 'observe' it feels weird giving them a job for the outset.

How would you rate your role-playing ability?

Still very good.

Edited June 24, 2023 by Weaselscribe

[killstrike]

In my personal opinion, I think Maltivus could roleplay an alien really well, and in this instance, a Diona. From what I've seen so far, they've been receptive to feedback, a willingness to learn, and have been a pretty great roleplayer so far.

[Yonnimer]

Apologies with the delay, overall the team felt your app was fairly solid without any real questions to ask, so we'll be accepting your app!