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Name: Engrav Setlar


Blood Color: Yellow (#8A820F)


Gender: Male


Symbol: Puzzle Piece


Profile: Engrav is a troll who needs to keep busy. He's only happy when he's solving some sort of mystery. He and his lusus, Morrimom, like to collect as much information on their surroundings as they can, and they tend to be more than a little nosy. To achieve this, Engrav has managed to create a number of sneaky gadgets, ranging from microphones and bugs to electronic surveillance. His hive is a massive network of security redundancies, and even he can’t remember all of the steps to getting in and out all the time. He is mostly indiscriminate on who he spies on, and not always the most subtle when he’s trying to learn something. This kind of thing gets Engrav into trouble more often than not, so he's learned how to slip away when things start getting hot.

Engrav prefers spending time with the lower half of the hemospectrum. They're a little easier to deal with and less likely to try anything violent, and they usually have juicier secrets. Morrimom doesn't like them much but that just means Engrav has more free reign to get information out of them. Highbloods make her nervous on the other hand, and so Engrav gets antsy around them as well. Engrave actually likes the idea of the Hemospectrumand the order it provides, but has trouble fitting himself into it. He just can’t make himself feel like someone who deserves to be less important. Because of this, he has a lot of trouble with social situations, and troll who don't seem to have an agenda really freak him out. He’s always trying to figure out exactly what the motivations of people he meets are so he can take advantage of them, so people who are just genuinely nice frighten him. He doesn’t know what they want, and they’re not playing the same game as him.

Morrimom taught Engrav that in order to survive you need to be clever. Engrav has been putting gadgets together since he was a wiggler. He designs all sorts of contraptions and tests them whenever he can. He also trades secrets for other secrets, and loves to expand his knowledge. Solving a mystery is like putting together the pieces of a puzzle, and he loves it when everything fits nicely together. Engrav sees other trolls as complicated puzzles as well, and tries to keep a few steps ahead by guessing what they will do next. He HATES it when someone acts out of character, because then he can’t predict what they will do.Just like Morrimom, Engrav doesn’t come at problems head-on. He’d rather avoid the spotlight and make sure the mystery just gets solved. If someone else can take the credit (or blame), even better. He’s not above subterfuge and blackmail to get what he wants, and he enjoys the game of using people’s own secrets against them.

Engrave loves tinkering and puzzles to keep himself sharp. He's always doing crosswords and making up riddles, and he looks for new devices to create as often as he can. Morrimom puts together her nest from everything she can get her claws on, and Engrav tries his best to emulate this in his own way. Unlike Morrimom, Engrav is impeccably organized - a file for each subject of notes, painstakingly labeled boxes for gadgets. He used to label his info by type, troll, and time. Morrimom is a terrible slob, and Engrav sometimes has trouble standing it. She, however, thinks he is too exact - what if someone wanted to steal something? They’d know exactly where to look. That thought scares him, so he ends up ciphering all his notes and hiding everything in secret compartments.

Engrav is pretty sure that sopor slime is a drug supplied by the government to keep trolls docile, so he’s convinced he doesn’t need it. He tries to sleep “the natural way” during the day, and fails utterly. Instead, he usually blacks out and ends up with a headache that feels like a rock in his think-pan and pages of notes strewn all around his hive that make no sense at all. A few nights of this, and Engrav usually ends up raving like a lunatic and heading back to the recuperacoon. He’s constantly worried that someone is following him , or that his clothes have been bugged , or that “psychics are listening to his thoughts”. When he wanders around town, he doubles back on himself and takes blind corners quickly so he can tell if he’s being followed. Morrimom thinks this is all very wise, of course, and encourages it whenever she sees it, but it means Engrav hasdifficulty trusting anybody or anything. He jumps at shadows and is suspicious of everybody. Morrimom doesn’t help, as she likes to tell him little lies from time to time to make sure he’s paying attention.

Depending on if he’s had a good day’s sleep in a recuperacoon, he may be more lucid or more unpredictable. When he sleeps well, he can turn himself off a little and just enjoy a moment, and he seems much more relaxed. When he hasn’t slept for a couple days, he’s manic and unpredictable, and prone to sudden fits and ideas. He hasn’t hurt anyone yet, but he’s come close a couple of times. Engrav needs to remind himself sometimes that if someone needs hurting, he shouldn’t be the troll to do it. That doesn’t mean they can’t somehow get in trouble though.

Strengths:

Curious - Morrimom has an insatiable need for information, and a perfect memory. Engrav doesn’t have that, but he’s always looking to learn everything he can, and he hates it when someone tries to hide something from him. He's seen every trick in the book, and as a result, it's very difficult to hide things from him. Engrav likes secrets fine, they should just all be his.

Controlled - Engrav spends a lot of time making sure he follows his own plans to the letter. Morrimom is always watching to chide him for his mistakes, and so he tries to not make any. As a result of this, he’s organized to a frightening degree.

Responsible - Engrav recognizes that sometimes Morrimom isn’t the most trustworthy lusus, and wants to be seen as trustworthy himself. He can't trust other trolls to handle something correctly, and so he has to be the one to take charge sometimes. It's a game he relishes playing.


Flaws:

Nervous - Engrav isn’t sure quite where he fits in. As a yellowblood, he’s pretty low on the spectrum, but Morrimom doesn’t really like trolls lower than him . He’s also pretty terrible at talking to trolls like they’re actually people, so he tends to get yelled at a lot. He doesn’t know how to deal with being bossed around, and doesn't react well to trolls trying to take his precious control away from him.

Self-centered - Other trolls are just puzzles waiting to be solved. Sometimes the keys are hard to find, but they exist. Some trolls take exception with this point of view. He doesn’t pay attention at all to the needs of others, and his plans tend to be one-sided because of this. Socially, he assumes the worst of everyone and is very difficult to befriend. He considers friendship more as a “working acquaintance.”

Paranoid - Everyone wants something. The ones who say they don’t are the ones he needs to watch. There are ears at every door, eyes in every ceiling. That older troll you’ve seen a few times is obviously a plant, and not a very subtle one at that. That flash at the corner of your eye is a camera reporting on you. Engrav doesn’t sleep a whole lot, and he has difficulty holding a conversation or staying still for long because someone might be watching him. He doesn’t trust anyone and doesn’t expect anyone to trust him.


Weapon: Engrav likes to keep a pair of knuckle-dusters in the pockets of his coat. Nice and comfy on the hands, and easy to hide!


Appearance: Engrav wears a heavy gray hoodie, hood down and open in the front. He wears a black shirt underneath with his symbol in yellow, and has longish, unruly hair that he ties back from his face with a bandanna. His horns tend to get caught in it, and are short and doubled on each side of his head. He never looks like he’s had more than two hours of sleep, and doesn’t smile very much. He’s too busy trying to figure out what you’re up to.


Home:Engrav’s hive is located in Chitentown, and is a maze of tricks and surprises. He’s built it specifically to be difficult to navigate if you don’t know where you’re going, and he sometimes even gets lost himself. Every single door is not only alarmed, but has a number of electric AND manual failsafes to tell him if it’s been opened recently. Every single piece of furniture and some of the walls have at least one secret drawer or compartment, and there’s several crawlspaces and secret doors hidden around the maze, just in case he feels the need to sneak from one place to the other. There are several windows on the outside of the house… that are right in front of TV screens showing feeds of empty rooms. That sort of thing. Above all of this are the rafters, where Morrimom makes her home. She doesn’t feel the need to come down that often, but sometimes Engrav joins her up there where it’s dark.


Lusus: Engrav’s Lusus is a roughly horse-sized albino crow with four legs and eight eyes. Her breed of featherbeast is an ambush hunter, using the cover of night to track down and catch prey. Each of her legs ends in a heavy talon, strong enough to hold her weight even upside-down, and she usually sleeps a little bit like a bat in the rafters of Engrav’s hive. They can fly short distances, but aren’t really built for it, and don’t look very dignified doing it. Morrimom has eight eyes in two rows down her face, and a huge scar on her left side where some feathers haven’t grown back correctly.

Morrimom, as Engrav calls her, is both very secretive and very jealous of her baby. She likes to cuddle him in the rafters, up in her nest, but she dislikes and fears other trolls and rarely lets herself be seen. She is obsessed with secrets and lies, and is always trying to find out what other trolls are hiding without revealing herself. She lies to Engrav some times as well, just to make sure he’s paying attention, and he quickly learned not to trust her all the time. At the same time, she’s a little bit lonely, and wishes Engrav would rely on her more. Not necessarily trust her, but rely on her. She finds excuses to dislike others he would meet, whether they’re lower blood and therefore inferior, or higher blood and to be feared, and it makes it difficult for Engrav to meet new people.

Morrimom is convinced she always knows best, and sometimes vetoes Engrav’s choices outright. This can turn into a bit of a fight, and Engrav sometimes digs in his heels if he thinks she’s wrong. They end up not speaking for days, and Morrimom always backs down and apologizes, because she can’t stand to have him mad at her.

While Engrav is absurdly organized, Morrimom is a massive slob. Her rafters are covered in miscellaneous junk and shiny trinkets, and her nest isn’t so much a “nest” as a “pile”. When Engrav brings it up, she claims she doesn’t need to stay organized because her memory is perfect. She sometimes speed-reads books and then goes over them again at night, enjoying every detail. She reads out loud though, which doesn’t help Engrav’s sleeping problems one bit. She refuses to tell him what he gets up to during the day, which he finds infuriating.

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly- I think I've ironed some of the kinks out now. Looking forward to working with everyone! biggrin

Thanks Sypon! I'm gonna probably get another round of edits in sometime this week, but I just wanted to clear something up real quick. I'm intentionally trying to move AWAY from that toolbox tinkerer-- if Engrav doesn't have just the right stuff available, he's not gonna be able to put anything together that a normal troll wouldn't be able to! I noticed a lot of tinkerers play into that toolbox trope, but that's not Engrav. If he doesn't have a plan, he tends to... fall apart a little. If it seems like he's gonna be able to put stuff together from random spare parts, i'm just not writing him correctly redface

still working on this, just wanted to throw a quick update out there!

(runs away and scribbles for a while)

Whoa! Engrav has changed a lot. I really like the new direction but because he’s changed so much I have some notes for you. I do agree that he’s reading much stronger now in terms of concept though, so I can see where you’re going!

One Hivestuck canon thing to keep in mind is that trolls are nocturnal, and daylight is extremely dangerous for trolls! With blinding, burning sun and daywalkers it’s a bad time, so he’d not likely be out in day (though he could be indoors). Also note that if he does sleep in the day (but out of a recuperacoon), there are painful and violent nightmares that occur. This is mentioned in our Info thread so if you are wondering about that check it out!

Does Engrav like to socialize with trolls when he is not trying to piece things together, or is he always “on”? It seems like his relationship with Morrimom has made him incredibly paranoid and yet still appreciative of figuring trolls out (which is a cool direction btw!) but for general RP how does he fair in a regular situation?

Also, what does Engrav think of the hemospectrum? Does he have an opinion on it or of other types of trolls? Currently you’ve written that he’s afraid of psychics and the idea of highbloods being violent/putting him in danger, but as a system does he have thoughts?

His strengths and flaws need a bit of fine tuning. I would suggest first of all moving “underhanded” up to his bio! It’s reading as a good trait right now but more of a hobby that can either benefit or harm him, so I think it’d be best to relocate it.

I would recommend reframing “Self-centered”. At the moment you’re relying on how others might react to his flaw which is very situational – try in general to avoid assuming how other characters react. I think self-centered is a good flaw idea but maybe focus more on a point that he’s not able to empathize or gets distracted by his own goals?

I get where you’re going with Paranoid – I’d just make sure the “flaw” of it is explicit (mentioning how it could make him anxious, lose focus or be unable to trust, etc etc.) because it could manifest in a number of different ways.

I’m not sure about controlling, as it could read similarly to self-centered. You may consider combining the two so that you have a balanced number of strengths and flaws! That was you can focus on how his need for control negatively affects him and is in part due to the focus on himself. Just a thought! If you do keep this flaw, I’d suggest changing the word so you don’t have “controlled” and “controlling” as a flaw and a strength.

I really love Morrimom. A really interesting lusus and a great relationship with Engrav! You did a great job of incorporating her “teachings” into his personality and I’m super excited to see her in shop. Great over all with some tweaks!

Great edits! I'm going to give you the stamp, though I do have a couple more last-minute notes.

First off you have a few of spacebar slips in the application to just clean up through a spellchecker. Example "Engrav hasdifficulty". Easy stuff!

Next, while Morrimom doesn't tend to come down from her rafters or enjoy trolls, make sure she's able to accompany Engrav! Kids need to have their lusii present to protect them, so make sure that's not an obstacle to going out and interacting with others or participating in events.

Finally, welcome to Hivestuck!