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 Posted: Sat Sep 17, 2005 2:02 pm
[x] This is Ves's journal, to track the growth, development, and rather inept caretaking of the Amplectobelua symbrachiata child, Meridian. Please do not post to this thread or anything without Ves's permission.
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Posted: Sat Sep 17, 2005 2:14 pm
you are here. 1. Introduction, table of contents 2. Ves's filthy hovel + map 3. Meridian's profile + statistics 4. Ves's profile + statistics 5. Notes on Amplectobelua culture 6. Notes on Amplectobelua biology 7. Friends and family + Meridian's opinions 8. Other pets 9. The story so far 10. Photo album 11. Reserved just in case :V 12. Reserved just in case :V
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Posted: Sat Sep 17, 2005 2:17 pm
the hovel A lovely den of filth and poor housekeeping. Details later.
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Posted: Sat Sep 17, 2005 2:18 pm
the blue guy  Name: Meridian
Species: Amplectobelua symbrachiata
Height: 8'4"
Weight: ... you wanna fit him on a scale?
Personality: About as dramatic as they come, and very vain. Meridian thinks very highly of himself and his intelligence, and isn't afraid to let the world know - he loves being the center of attention. He's been known to perform loud, outrageous acts just to get people to look at him and listen to his loopy, pretentious ramblings. He's highly critical of his peers, especially when they don't see things through his enlightened view of the world. Despite all this, he actually is rather intelligent and contains a wealth of knowledge concerning language arts and even a little bit of the fine arts. While he may seem scary at first, he's actually quite harmless and most people quickly realize that he's just a bag of hot air. And while he may be as pompous and arrogant as they come, he really means well and tries to act as a protector of the Institute, and of his own guardian - he's big and he knows it, and uses his sheer bulk to the advantage of others.
His relationship with Ves: Meridian does not really like Ves. He thinks she is stupid, although he knows he must stay with her for his own safety. They aren't the best of friends, but they seem to have a strange dependence on each other and neither refuses to leave the other's side. They regularly disagree on things, but it's rare that you see one without the other trailing close behind. They behave more like siblings than a parent or child.
Likes: Being in the spotlight, tugging on Ves's tail, the color blue, acting, painting, statues, meat, apples, shouting on his bullhorn.
Dislikes: Music, 'stupid' people, overly bright colors, being ignored.
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Posted: Sat Sep 17, 2005 2:20 pm
the thing behind the curtains  Name: Wilhelmina 'Ves' Rauser
Species: You tell me. (Suspected body modification freak)
Height: 5'5" (not counting horns)
Weight: 130 lbs
Personality: Stubborn as a mule and incredibly selfish, Ves's childish and immature attitude tends to put people off on first meeting. She has a total disregard for manners and seems to have little outward empathy or trust for others. She's rather quirky and reckless, and has a rather infamous love for rummaging through other people's garbage to pick out and scavenge things that she might use one day. She has a tendency to hoard things, and one day aspires to acquire her own scrapyard so she can collect more junk and make things out of it. Needless to say, she's not a very big fan of being clean, and she's rather messy. She also gets into bad habits very easily, most notably her addiction to cigarettes, liquor, and swearing. Beyond all that, though, there's just something about Ves and the way she carries herself that makes her seem rather old and jaded, despite her young looks. She acts like she's seen it all before, and will sometimes even give advice and tell stories of past experiences (whether they're true or not is solely up to her listeners) to the best of her speaking abilities when a situation crops up. With the exception of things she finds in the trash, nothing is really new to her - although she has a fascination with other ativisms aside from Meridian, and enjoys talking with them.
Profile: How Ves became a guardian is all but a mystery to anyone outside of Institute employees. Nobody really knows why she was chosen, because by all means and purposes she really isn't qualified to be a parent or caretaker of anything. It's not that she's abusive or intentionally harmful, she's just... very, very inept. There's not a whole lot she's willing to talk about concering her background, except that she is a native German from a rural village in the Rhineland and that her father was in the military. When asked why she wanted to leave her home for the Institute, she responds with a simple "for the hell of it" answer and leaves it at that. She doesn't understand a lot of English, since she didn't take an interest in learning it until she immigrated to America. Meridian knows the language better than she does. Once in America, she got numerous piercings and a tattoo, and she claims the rest are all body modifications that she got from several trips to a shady parlor in Berlin. She's taken up residence in the Institute, although she makes regular visits to the nearby scrapyard or abandoned buildings with Meridian in tow in search for 'treasure,' much to the Institute's chagrin. A couple years ago she was given a blob of eggs, which in short time grew to become her 'child' (although not much of a child anymore), Meridian.
Likes: Piercings, junkyards, scrap metal, dumpster diving, scavenging, messes, swearing, smoking, drinking, procrastinating, urban exploration.
Dislikes: Bathing, cleanliness, being told what to do, deadlines, "no tresspassing" signs, "no smoking" signs, having to clean up Meridian's feathers after every molt, being called 'Wilhelmina.'
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Posted: Sat Sep 17, 2005 2:22 pm
amplectobelua culture Culturally, the Amplectobeluae are rather tribal and have a lifestyle involving hunting, agriculture, and the importance of the group. There is no such thing as a solitary Amplectobelua, as they all rely on each others and the roles they play in daily life. The hunt is the most important aspect of their culture, as is war. This isn't to say that they're uncivilized brutes - quite the contrary, actually. Many tribes participate in what is considered a friendly declaration of war - when a tribe offers to fight with another, it's considered very poor taste to decline the offer. Most tribes are allied, and fight amongst each other for fun - and once all the battles are over, both sides are still friends and both will still maintain the perfectly neighborly interaction they had prior to the war. It is almost a game to the Amplectobeluae, as well as something that pushes along their technologies - war, after all, inspires creative minds to invent things that will remain useful for years to come. Wars are about the same - and as regular - as football games in the human Earth. The goal of the wars is ultimately fun - almost never are they over territory or conflicts between leaders. Conflicts and territorial disputes are solved in an entirely different way, and usually amongst the individuals who instigated the problem and solved by something that can only be termed as 'theatre battles.'
When they are not involved in the affairs of war, Amplectobeluae are deeply immersed in the arts - with the exception of music. They are not a very musically-inclined people like humans are, and find the sound produced by most music to be very offensive and grating. They have a particular soft spot for theatre, and acting is a powerful skill to have when impressing others of their kind. This, ironically, is where all the real conflicts arise - where war is just fun and games, Amplectobeluae take acting very seriously, as well as the writing that goes into the acting. Although most plays remain civil, plays as a result of conflict tend to degenerate into screaming matches as the people involved with the problem stand on stage and shriek heated prose at each other until one or the other admits defeat. Have I mentioned that these things have ridiculously loud, powerful voices? When a conflict play is staged, people often flock to them merely to watch out of morbid curiosity and to listen to the rather colorful insults flung at each other by the actors on stage.
(OOC: I'll expand on this later.)
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Posted: Sat Sep 17, 2005 2:23 pm
amplectobelua biology Amplectobeluae have three genders - technically, two, and one gender-neutral. There are those that are born male, those that are born gender-neutral, the ilae, the and the females. As a people, they are generally very stocky with four eyes, 'ear'-stalks, two tails, long snouts, and are six-limbed with six digits on their hands, and depending on the gender, anywhere from four to six toes on their plantigrade feet. While being distinctly unbirdlike, many of them have feathers on their body, which molt with the seasons - and born males have a pair of tiny, vestigial feathered winglike appendages, crowned by three small fingers. Ilae and females, instead of having psuedowings, have a smaller, secondary pair of arms instead. Their bodies are very dense, with extremely heavy bones and lots of extra padding in the form of muscle, fat, and sometimes feathers (obviously, they're more land-inclined creatures). They are vaguely mammalian, in the sense that their females and give live birth as well as produce milk for their young, but they do not have hair. Male and ilae bodies, excepting their limbs, are usually covered in downy, waterproof feathers with the exception of the summer molt, where they shed most of their down feathers in order to cool off in the heat. Any exposed skin is wet and slimy to the touch. Amplectobelae tend to inhabit well-forested jungle area, ideally in rainforest-type surroundings, although they are quite adaptable to any type of region excepting overly dry, sparse ones. They prefer warm, wet climates.
They have two tails, long and segmented, that are prehensile and capable of picking up and carrying small objects. Their two pairs of eyes are called the foreeyes and the hindeyes. The foreeyes work similar to human eyes, in that they can see a rather wide spectrum of colors as well as percieve depth, shadows, and light. The hindeyes, while larger than the foreeyes, serve a different purpose - they're mostly for ranged vision, so if one were to suggest that they have eyes in the back of their heads, it would not not far from the truth. Vision in the hindeyes is not as good as that of the foreeyes, but is still capable of seeing things from behind, albeit a bit blurred and distorted by bright, neon colors. The hindeyes are affected by the 'ear'-stalks (called ears only because they resemble ears, but are in fact not hearing organs), which are used for detecting clouds of pheromones given off by other living creatures, which causes the neon color effect in the hindeye's sight. Their hearing organs are actually located in two pits in the back of the skull, and can detect pitches and sounds that the human ear cannot (which might explain why they hate music so much).
Born males are large-bodied, and taller than the rest of their species, standing at roughly eight feet tall. In general, they are rather heavyset and colorful. Their facial markings - particularly around the snout - resemble that of a baboon's, with bright red lips and a bright pink nose. Born males usually come in shades of bright blue with black markings, and have a very bright crest of feathers on their head and down their back. The crown of their wings has three fingerlike digits that are capable of grasping things, but are nowhere near as nimble or useful as the second pair of arms on the females or the ilae. The wings are purely vestigial, and very small. They usually stay a dark blue color, although in spring they go through a particularly bright-colored molt.
Born females are smaller than born males, and rather stout in body shape. Their height ranges from six to seven feet tall. The most notable feature about them is their sabre tusks, and very heavy, powerful jaws, and that they do not have feathers covering their bodies like the other two sexes. They aren't featherless, though, as they have a crest of downy feathers starting at the top of their heads and down their backs to the base of their tails. Compared to males, females are rather dull in color and come in soft, subdued shades of purple, brown, green, or blue. Their markings are usually darker tints of their base color, and commonly come in broad, banded stripes across their muzzle, upper arms, forearms, and thighs. As noted earlier, they have very strong jaws possessing a lot of crushing power capable of snapping a good femur in half. Females are the designated hunters of the race, as their size and jaws lend well to bringing down and killing large prey - although the Amplectobelua on the whole have long since evolved the ability to create tools and weapons, so the sabre fangs remain as a symbol of their past traditions. Amplectobelua women have an estrus cycle, so they are sexually dormant throughout the year until the spring and go into heat. Due to their size, pregnancy lasts about 12 months (OOC note: In the off-chance we get any Amplectobelua breedings, in-game pregnancy will be cut down to a shorter time to keep up the pace of the game).
Ilae are rather nondescript compared to the born males and females, as for the most part they are completely genderless. They combine physical traits of both males and females, although they never appear to be one nor the other. They are usually a uniform blue in color, and very short, standing at an estimated 5'5" tall. Their primary hands have six digits, and their secondary hands are smaller and have four digits. Until they complete adolescence, they are completely gender-neutral - and once they reach adulthood, they are capable of morphing their physical sexual traits for a period of time before reverting back to neutrality. This only occurs in the spring, where they temporarily take on sexual traits and mate. The temporary sexual traits last as long as the hormones dictate, usually: for male changes, roughly a month; for female changes, a month if sie does not concieve, or throughout the pregnancy and nursing period if sie does - and it works just as normally as a born female parent's does. There have been known instances, however, where a pregnant ila will unexpectedly return to neutrality due to freak surges of hormones, resulting in miscarriage. Children parented by an ila can be any of the three genders and will be smaller than children parented by a born-gender couple, and there's also a higher chance of the baby being born an ila. Health-wise, there are no differences between an ila-parented child and a 'regularly'-parented child, and the only difference lies in the size of the offspring. Some cultures look down upon ila-born children with disrespect and treat them as lower-class citizens, regardless of gender; some societies ban ila/born-gender breedings outright.
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Posted: Sat Sep 17, 2005 2:25 pm
friends and family Something will be put here eventually.
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Posted: Sat Sep 17, 2005 2:27 pm
other members of the household As of now, the only other thing Meridian and Ves live with is a comet fish named LeBlanc, after a pink-clad video game character of the same name. Since Meridian doesn't like the fish's color, Ves keeps it in her room where it miraculously has not yet turned upside down and bobbed to the surface.
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Posted: Sat Sep 17, 2005 2:28 pm
the story so far Something will go here.
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Posted: Sat Sep 17, 2005 2:30 pm
photo album A few pretty pictures.
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Posted: Sat Sep 17, 2005 2:34 pm
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Posted: Sat Sep 17, 2005 2:38 pm
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Posted: Wed Oct 05, 2005 5:10 pm
cool stuff This is by Mythee, who is so unspeakably awesome for drawing this. HOMG. <3
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