Sniblet - Diona Application

[Sniblet]

BYOND Key: Sniblet

Character Names: 

Species you are applying to play: Diona

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

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

Why do you wish to play this specific race:

I can’t really say antag gimmicks for this one. I mean, I could. I’d just have to think about it. Unless it was vampire. But anyway.

I’m learning that I really like the *weird* races in Aurora. Ever since I got my vaurca and IPC apps approved, they’re all I play, and they've been steadily overriding human job-counterparts. All of my most recently-made ten played characters (I still haven’t played Sdati or May, and I'll have to delete Qa'alk soon for a fundamental lore violation) on my list are one of the two.

Dionae are weird. They don’t need protein. They’re OK in space. Their minds are only barely comparable to humans. They have no connection with psionics. So they’re really just like vaurcae, you know?

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

You are not an individual. The form of Diona that we’re permitted to play on Horizon is called a cyclops gestalt, a collection of about five to nine (mechanically, it must be six) different nymph individuals, each with sapient intelligence, voluntarily staying together in some common cause. We must assume that the ones acting as feet are the gestalt’s least favorites.

A gestalt’s biology is, to an extent, designed by its members. This accounts for their alleged pacifism. They don’t have long-evolved systems of hormones and glands that cue them to throw away reason and get down with the rules of nature whenever Half Light decides it’s a good bet. Their emotions and decisions are dictated by a consensus of organisms that are not biologically comparable to anything else we know.

Gestalts tend toward predictable, documented mindtypes that might be viewed as small-scale governments. There are tyrannies, democracies, theocracies, and a good number that break down the government comparison, with some instead being defined by their shared priorities or psychological hangups.

Dionae eat radiation, and also, they drink blood to absorb memories. That’s how they learn best, and they really like learning. It’s similar to IPC datapacks, except it’s a viciously handwaved sci-fi interpretation of genetic memory.

Uniquely, there isn't a lot of pan-dionan culture. They exist in all corners of the spur, and those that interact with societies around them tend to almost completely assimilate on account of bloodlearning. Those that don't interact, don't pick up cultural habits from other dionae either, and so with few exceptions (The Eternal), "diona culture" is wholly represented by local quirks. Since they didn't bloodlearn from the Zo'ra, the pests of Titan Prime are a functional example of a non-interacting diona culture. Their cultural mores are not liking vaurcae and being traumatized, and that's kind of it. Dionae have no ingrained hierarchies, no universal religions - there's only that they all heard the Rueltab Titan's death 80 years ago.

Gestalts (small ones, at least) don’t do well with losing members. It’s like losing a friend, except that friend was also your arm, and also a part of your brain. Catatonia is an expected reaction.

Character Name: Thrill of Momentous Realization (full name)

Please provide a short backstory for this character

Realization is a recently split Learning Lyrics gestalt from Venter’s Cetus. Its name was chosen by its three trainee members, who elected to take advantage of the Horizon’s presence while it was in the area, to which end they recruited three mentors from the Cetus and applied to work in Horizon’s research department. It all happened quite quickly, and with little forethought - not to say that anybody failed to consent to this. The mentors are strangers to the rest, often passively pushed around by the better acquainted trainees, which include the new cyclops’s fast-talking and inconsiderate primary social nymph.

Realization is passionately driven by its trainees’ shared hunger for strange knowledge, while simultaneously coolly knowledgeable about scientific procedure and sparse odd factoids about the galaxy owing to its mentors. When something injures its trainees’ reckless confidence, it may appear to radically change as its eldest step forward to control the situation. Over time, they may develop a more organized cohesion, less reliant on the disparities in the force of its personalities.

I would like to play them as a xenoarchaeologist, but I’m not yet sure if that’s practical due to lighting.

What do you like about this character?

It’s complicated! That’s what I like. A weird and complex and difficult character to play with in my head when I feel awake, or just a brown sprite with handy regen over time when I want to actually xenoarch and thus not interact with anyone at all for two whole hours.

How would you rate your role-playing ability? 10 out of 5. I have never made a single mistake. What’s the point of this question?

I’m here to have fun and I hope others do too. So I try my best and I try to learn. Unfortunately, I’m certain that if I start playing Diona I will start to confuse *chirp and *chitter.

Notes:

How do you fill in age on a Learning Lyric's character sheet?

Edited November 12, 2023 by Sniblet
ok yes there IS the eternal yeah

[Caelphon]

Hi there, apologies for the delay. We will look at this soon!

[Caelphon]

Hi there!

1. You failed to mention which religion your Dionae follows. Which one do they follow, and how does it impact them?

2. How will Learning Lyrics impact your role playing?

3. How does the Biesellite origin impact you?

[Sniblet]

1. Is it mandatory for dionae to follow a religion? I was under the impression that they were much less homogenous than that. If Realization must have one, then its eldest members would have introduced the younger to the Orthodox Eternal. This doesn't particularly affect their behavior so much as justify it: they make it a mission to learn as much as they can and return to the Cetus to share it. Though, they'd likely be less happy with the ongoing efforts to prevent Peaceful Static from becoming a titan.
2. As a Learning Lyrics mindtype, Thrill of Momentous Realization is half comprised of older, well-travelled nymphs with experience in other cyclops and cyclops-adjacent gestalts, and half of young nymphs that had never before left Peaceful Static in Endless Waves and are yet to learn their place in the Spur. These younger nymphs have the first say in what the gestalt does, with the elders there primarily to make sure that the mistakes they must make in order to learn don't come at terrible costs. They're about as naturally curious as should be expected of any young diona, which is very, but they're tempered when necessary by their wiser half.
3. Venter's Cetus, alias Peaceful Static in Endless Waves, is said by the wiki to be in the Venter's system in an unspecified part of the Coalition of Colonies, as it has been since its discovery about 200 years ago. If it has any relationship with Tau Ceti, it doesn't appear to be noted in the wiki. Just in case, I'll answer this twice.
   • Realization's Voidborn Coalition origin would normally mean that it's familiar, at least from hearsay, with the hunting habits of Coalition spacers. Venter's Cetus was never targeted by this. Its history post-contact involved skrell and humans worrying over its size and enabling mass emigration from the Cetus. This would mean that Realization's elder half was probably part of this emigration wave, which I'll assume to have been driven by hunger for knowledge after unknown centuries spent drifting in vacuum. Eternal philosophy would not have influenced this emigration, as the religion is implied to have been founded in 2378. Realization's younger half would be affected in that the only non-dionae they were grown around were those monitors and migration agents. It may have given them a false initial impression about how much interest the rest of the Spur's lifeforms had in dionae, prompting the young social nymph's gregarious and self-interested nature.
   • Realization's Biesellite origin means that it likely spent time in District Eleven, which is another one of Mendell City's limitless supply of designated nonhuman suffering zones. It also has a very strong Eternal presence, which would drive the gestalt's faith to a stronger, more meaningful level than if it had been grown in an unspecified section of the Coalition. They would have been extensively exposed not only to humans and skrell, but also to tajara, vaurcae, and synthetics, and would have ingested (sometimes literally) a lot of corporate propaganda. A Biesellite Realization would see changes primarily in its younger members, who would be less sheltered and probably quite fascinated with NanoTrasen, while its older members might be much more deeply faithful in the Eternal.

Edited November 13, 2023 by Sniblet

[Caelphon]

This application is accepted.