Fav. Food: Changes almost daily; Hitch loves food, period.
Hated Food: Yogurt and lettuce.
Occupation: Deli-clerk
Hobbies:
Travel Research - Hitch doesn't have a lot of money; but he dreams about having it one day, if only to travel. His mother had a lot of travel books, which he has since inherited, and they have gone dog-eared from the years of use. He can tell you exactly what one little place in London has to offer from scenery to restaurants, or what the climate is like in any given region of Japan. When things get rough at work, he often retreats to his idealized version of what it might be like to go to these places in his head.
Drumming - He used to be part of a band, and even if he knows he’ll never make anything of it, he keeps up practicing when he has the spare time. Hitch finds the rhythmic nature of the instrument to be extremely soothing when he’s on edge. As a result, he’ll tap out a beat on whatever surface is close by when he’s nervous, usually a table or his own legs, much to the annoyance of his coworkers.
Cooking - When his mother became sick, he took on the responsibilities in the kitchen -- but Hitch never really expected to enjoy it. He’s been a little too busy to do much beyond the basics lately, but he has more than a few cookbooks thrown around his apartment. He doesn’t usually cook for other people since he doesn’t consider himself skilled. For him, cooking is more about the act than the results. He’s very enamored with Italian cuisine, and in spite of his misgivings, he does make a pretty mean plate of spaghetti and meatballs.
Virtues:
Dutiful - Hitch cannot stand letting people down. Every time he falls short of someone’s expectations, he feels increasingly guilty -- doubly so if it’s someone he cares about -- to the point where he is physically affected by it (IE: paleness, sweat). As a result, it’s no surprise then that he does everything within his power to fulfill his commitments to others. When that isn't enough, he goes above and beyond to try and find some way to make it up to the affected party.
Guardian - Hitch has, in some way or another, lost everyone that mattered to him when he was young. Rather than close himself off, when he comes to care about someone, Hitch becomes intensely protective of them. Not just physically, but also in terms of their goals, aspirations, and general happiness; he will drop anything at a moment’s notice to go and support a friend in need. Sometimes it can be suffocating (IE: intimidating a potential lover or open suspicion of a loved one’s new friend) but he means well.
Detail Oriented - Not only is Hitch a little smarter than he gives himself credit for, but he was raised in a household where attention to details, such as names and dates, were valued very highly. His mother, a nurse when she was healthy enough to work, instilled in him that not only was it important to be aware of the world around him, but that remembering little details about the people he was involved with might make someone’s day. He has taken this to heart, especially since her passing, and goes to great lengths to try and commit what he hears and sees to memory. Sometimes this becomes massively overwhelming to him, and if he ever falters, it leads to massive embarrassment and Hitch removing himself from the situation or person as quickly as possible.
Flaws:
Temperamental - Hitch does what he has to do, but he despises being told how to do it. At work he tries to keep himself in check because he desperately needs the cash, but he's lost more than a few jobs already for losing his cool. It would be one thing if he could limit himself to a few choice words, but Hitch has an exceedingly hard time expressing himself when he’s angry, so most of the time he resorts to lashing out physically. His last job ended when he put his fist through a wall. Even if he treats Destiny City as a fresh start, he doesn’t really know how to change.
Defeatist Mentality - Hitch’s biggest issue is that even if he does try to make something more of himself, nine times out of ten, he’s given up before he’s ever even started. He won’t come out and admit it, but he honestly doesn’t believe he’ll ever amount to anything more than what he is now. Deep down, every failure in his life is vindication of how worthless he is, leading him down an increasingly destructive spiral -- his temper is more volatile than ever, he’s taken up smoking, and he’s becoming increasingly lethargic in his down time. He seems renewed when something good comes along, but Hitch never expects it to last long.
Guarded - It’s all fine and well to take care of other people. But when it comes to himself, Hitch becomes exceedingly defensive. As far as he’s concerned, he doesn’t want or need anyone’s help, much less their pity. No matter how bad things get, he does his best to act as though nothing phases him. When his facade crumbles, which is easier now than ever with the self-inflicted burdens he is clinging to, he would sooner lash out at someone he cares about than accept them “feeling sorry for him”.
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
Eyes: Narrow, dark brown eyes, with thin brows.
Hair: Salt and pepper hair (black with strands of white throughout) due to stress, with traces of auburn at the ends from the last time he bothered to dye it. His hair is long and shaggy, usually hanging down into his eyes unless he actively pushes it aside; it was originally cut to maintain a certain style, but he hasn’t taken care of it in awhile. Has to tie it back when he goes to work at the deli.
Face: Hitch sports a pretty prominent chin, setting the stage for an angular face. His cheeks are riddled with faint freckles and a few acne scars. His lip is pierced. He’s gained a bit of a tan from the amount of time he spends on cigarette breaks at work, but it’s very faint. Maybe just enough to bring out a touch of freckling on his arms. He still spends most of his time indoors, either at work or at home.
Clothes: Worn dark jeans that flare at the ends, t-shirts (a plain dark green shirt), thick black belt, black boots (very scuffed, probably stained with traces of dried out deli meat/cheese bits clinging to them since they double for work), several black wrist-bands. For his job at the deli, he wears a simple black apron that is stained all to hell; outside of work, he favors a ragged green and blue flannel.
Body: Stands at a little under 5'5"; small, but mesomorphic body type, so he's got some decent muscle on him.
Sailor Scout Attack: Salt of the Earth. Eurydike presses his hands together, then spreads them around himself in a circle, producing a ring of white. He then either lowers his hands, bringing the circle down onto himself, or lifts them, willing the circle onto a single other senshi. This protects a single senshi for thirty seconds from youma attack, and might extend hostile first level characters. However, anyone more powerful will have a much easier time breaking the circle; for instance, against a captain, it lasts about seven seconds. Against a general, even less than that. Limit once per battle as a senshi.
Super Sailor Scout Attack: Salt of Man. Eurydike performs the same motion as before, but the white of the ring glows a bit brighter. It can now protect a single senshi for sixty seconds. It may be extended to envelope up to three senshi -- but for each locked within the circle, it divides the time evenly amongst them (two is thirty seconds, three gets twenty seconds). A youma or lower level character may feel some pain if they throw themselves at the circle. Higher leveled characters do not share this sensation, and they can still break through it with relative ease. (Also, in this stage, Salt of the Earth may be used twice.)
Eternal Sailor Attack: Sodom’s Plight Eurydike places his hands together; a brilliant white glow gathers around them, and he spreads them wide. Small pillars of salt erupt from the ground, starting roughly three feet from Eurydike himself and extending about ten feet further in a triangular perimeter. If one of these pillars touches an opponent’s arm, leg, or whatever else it may come into contact with, the salt encircles this portion of their body, inhibiting their movements for ninety seconds. This is very difficult for anyone at a lower level than Eurydike to break prematurely. If no contact is made, the pillars vanish after thirty seconds.
Eurydike was not a place most people would choose to live; it was notoriously difficult to practice any kind of agriculture on a very unwelcoming asteroid, many people incapable of adapting to the massive salt intake in day to day life died early on, and no one envied a life of hard work and toil in the salt mines.
On Eurydike, there are two dominant seasons, lasting for roughly four months each. There is the dry season, where the sun beats down relentlessly and there is no humidity and oceans dwindle down to lakes or ponds at best. During the last few weeks of the dry season, typically, clouds begin to pool in the sky, very heavy, ominous, and progressively darkening until the rainy season kicks in. Likewise, the clouds lighten throughout the course of the rainy season. The lakes and ponds become oceans, and the asteroid essentially floods. When the clouds finally crack and the sun streams in, the rainy season is considered officially over.
To the north and the south, the land is very flat and low; this is where the waters pool during the flood. This is also where the basic plant life Eurydike had developed thrived (think seaweed), although since the oceans were comprised of salt water, the plant life was also very high in salt content and not super desirable for trade. During the dry season, the land was very similar in composition to a desert, only the sand was comprised of loose, coarse salt piled atop a hard, rocky foundation.
In the center, around a ‘belt’ on the asteroid, the landscape is much higher and mountainous in nature. In a tunnel system inside of these mountains, the people of Eurydike dwelled and made use of the planet’s natural salt mines. Inside the mountains, it remains cool in the dry seasons, and dry in the rainy seasons. Here, some basic plant life such as fluorescent moss has managed to thrive, which has been utilized as a low maintenance light source. Another successful plant is a sort of coarse, fibrous vine that acts like a weed and has very little benefit as a food source - although it has been utilized in desperate times.
One of of the only common animals on Eurydike is a small creature that resembles a cross between a scorpion and a rat: it has multiple legs, claws, a rat-like tail with a stinger at the end, an exoskeleton with fur sticking out between the joints, teeth, bulbous, sightless eyes, and long whiskers. They feed exclusively on the vines and salt, are exceedingly resilient, mildly poisonous, reproduce disgustingly quickly, and ultimately despised as pests. However, some high class families were known known to remove their stingers and keep them as pets. (Go figure.)
The People:
Eurydicians, as they were known, were initially very few in number and very nomadic. No one ever willingly colonized it; however, over the course of some several hundreds of years, it came to be used as a colony for former criminals. Although they had been deemed rehabilitated, In most cases their home planets wanted nothing more to do with them - when they needed a place to go, although Eurydike was hardly ideal, it was still a place to call home.
Initially some other civilizations provided support to the people settling on Eurydike, but this was less for the peoples’ interest and more for their own interest in gaining trading rights so they might capitalize on Eurydike’s plentiful salt mines.
Over time, to the surprise of everyone, the population grew and flourished… sort of. The population ended up falling into three basic categories:
Workers: This was the vast majority of the population. They were the people who dedicated their lives to the salt mines, and men and women alike spent hours each day toiling in the tunnels to gather salt for trade or other varied purposes. Some workers were dedicated to other projects, such as construction and labor intensive art projects, but they were considered the lucky ones. During the dry seasons, they were also expected to gather as much of the seaweed like plant life they could get their hands on since it dried well and provided a reliable, if less varied, food source.
Accidents were common, the handicapped and the elderly were often grossly neglected, and if there was a food shortage they were the hardest hit. However, they developed their own forms of entertainment such as singing and craving into the walls of the tunnels (those who were proven to be the most talented were often pushed for artist related positions). In the years leading up to Eurydike’s decimation, due in part to the efforts of their senshi, they were making great strides for equality and fair compensation.
(Note: Some of those from the working class would be taken on as bodyguards by the noble class, often young so they could be trained and manipulated most effectively. However, these people were rarely seen by the general population unless there was an uprising or any kind of attempt at the nobility, and hardly factored into day to day life.)
Monks: The people of Eurydike practiced a religion that is best compared to Earth’s Buddhism - only in place of Buddha and Enlightenment, they turned their attention towards Cosmos and the Cauldron. The founder’s name has been lost to history (or perhaps deliberately omitted since so many of Eurydike’s early immigrants had bad reputations), but it spread like wildfire amongst the people since it offered the possibility of a better life. By reciting the words thought to invoke Cosmos at key points throughout the day, taught by the monks, it was easier for the workers to achieve a state where they could return to the Cauldron - where they had a chance for a better life the next time around - or perhaps ascend beyond the Cauldron and avoid the cycle all together.
Monks were people who took this to the next level; they were at least half comprised of the elderly and the handicapped, but the rest were men and women who took it upon themselves to pursue it. Although only malnourished since they provided no labor and often begged for scraps, they were also accustomed to surviving on less, and spent many of their days in meditation or study. They were also literate and well-learned, arguably more so than some of the noble class, and pursued detachment from the world of suffering. During the dry season, they ascended from the mountains to compose large murals from colored salts. These were consistently washed away during the wet season, but embodied their belief that life was fleeting.
The senshi of Eurydike was expected to spend five years amongst the monks in order to become educated and ensure that their starseed would remain pure enough to be selected by the Cauldron in the next lifetime - according to their beliefs, anyway. As a result of this, Knights of Cosmos were treated like avatars of deities if and when they descended onto Eurydike, and their images have been spotted throughout Eurydike’s various artforms.
Nobility: Unsurprisingly, this is the smallest class on Eurydike, and they wield the most power. They handle all trade (and benefit most from it), commission any and all construction projects and statues, and generally live their lives on the lap of luxury. They were known to be polygamous, taking on multiple husbands or wives, and although they practiced speaking the words of Cosmos and treated her knights as well as anyone else, they were hardly as devout as the rest of the population. They were hardly phased by famine while the rest of the population suffered. Power was inherited, they were all fairly educated, lived comfortably, and were undeniably corrupt. However, they went to some lengths to try and convince surrounding planets that they treated their people fairly so there would be minimal risk of them interfering on the workers’ behalfs.
There was a legal system of sorts of Eurydike, but it was most often upheld within the worker class by others within the worker class, and the nobility commonly believed themselves to be above their law. As a result, they were more than a few b*****d children of nobles floating amongst the workers, and murders of convenience often went unpunished.
The architecture, although it was underground and centralized in the tunnels, was most similar to Greek and Roman architecture. Columns, statues, and carvings were very common, and always comprised of hardened salt and stone. One of the asteroid's other common exports were artwork and statues, and there were instances where other worlds commissioned their labor.
The Senshi - Sailor Eurydike’s past life was a woman, whose civilian name was Zosime. Typically, although the senshi did become educated in the ways of religion for five years, they often went on to live comfortable lives among the nobility, acting as diplomats when the time called for it and rallying or pacifying the people as needed. The only thing that remained to set them apart from the rest of the nobility was they were expected to remain pious and “pure”, never taking a partner in life - that’s not to say that this did not happen, but never openly.
This incarnation, however, was unlike the rest in that she was born amongst the workers during a time of massive civil unrest. Before Zosime was found, she had grown to the age of ten and watched family and friends die as a result of the nobility’s oppression. She was fifteen by the time that she completed her time with the monks, and although Zosime was obligated to live amongst the nobility, she often elected to flee back into the mines to rally the working class into action.
To the nobility’s frustration, she helped lead the workers into non-action, protected those she could from the nobility’s human guard dogs, and refused to make her public appearances unless the nobility afforded the working class additional rights. To make matters worse, Zosime also managed to draw the attention of some neighboring planets to their plight. She was notorious for being harsh and standoffish, not to mention temperamental - but she was loved by the working class for her efforts on their behalf. Her very public relationships with multiple women were another strike against her, and she fought as hard for her own right to pursue happiness as she did for her people.
Ultimately, Zosime was assassinated by persons unknown, though many could guess. The nobility hoped that it would stifle any further uprisings, and for a time it did - but a violent rebellion took place not long before the fall of the Silver Millenium, and in the end it was all for nothing.
Posted: Sat Mar 28, 2015 10:21 am
People:
Tolliver St. James - Don't even know what to ********' say about him - he's all I've got, an' if bein' this costumed freak means I can keep him safe, then I'll ********' give it all I have. My husband to be. Go figure. Still feels surreal sayin' that. Really don't ********' deserve him, but I'll ********' stand by him 'til the end of time if he lets me.
Fritz St. James - Lite-Brite limey mother ********. I don't know how the ******** I feel about this a*****e. We're sorta cool now, I guess, but... I'm tryin' here man. I guess not.
Jarias - Jari. Stop bein' so ********' tall. Keeps callin' me cute, clearly wants to fight me. (******** with her an' I'll ********' kill you.)
Van - Bandmate. Wow that feels weird as ******** to say. But good weird. God I hope this ********' pans out.
Daisy - Cool girl, senshi. Can't hold her ********' liquor for s**t though.
Keiran - Care Bear. We started off rocky, but he was goin' through some s**t. Purified, hope this side treats him better. Helpin' him out any way I can.
Thraen - Butterfly. Real smart guy. Should've ********' listen to him. Would've spared me a world of hurt.
Olga - Weirdo. Dork. But I like her. She was a lot of fun to talk to. Hope she's okay. Well she's apparently a goddamn senshi now. ********' great.
Alice in Chains - Hole Nirvana - All Apologies Nirvana - You Know You're Right Nirvana - Dumb Oasis - Wonderwall [Hitolliver] Nirvana - Pennyroyal Tea Nirvana - Aneurysm Nirvana - Something in the Way Nirvana - Papercuts The Verve - Bittersweet Symphony Nirvana - Oh Me Radiohead - Creep [Hitolliver] Nirvana - Milk It Nirvana - Stain Oasis - Stop Crying Your Heart Out Alice in Chains - Man in the Box Alice in Chains - Hollow Alice in Chains - Your Decision Alice in Chains - Love, Hate, Love [Hitolliver] Celldweller - Heart On [Hitolliver] ONE OK ROCK - The Beginning [Hitolliver] Buck-Tick - Long-Distance Call ONE OK ROCK - Notes'n'Words [Hitolliver] Of Monsters and Men - Black Water [hints of Hitolliver] Of Monsters and Men - I of the Storm [Hitolliver] Of Monsters and Men - Silhouettes [Hitolliver] Kongos - Come with me Now Lee Brice - Hard to Love [Hitolliver] Imagine Dragons - Monster Relient K - I Must Have Done Something Right [Hitolliver] The Wanted - Lightning [Hitolliver]
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