Name: Sephos Arbola
(Sephos from Persephone, Arbola from Arbol or tree, in keeping with his plant theme)
Blood colour:💥💥💥 #046304, Greenblooded
Gender: Male
Symbol:
A Stylized Depiction of a leaf: A vertical diamond with a stripe down the center forming a tail. Four lines, two on each side, are arranged diagonally next to it.
Personality:
Sephos comes across as a crude, rude, apathetic, perpetually cranky young troll, and for the most part that is true. He is crude – in the sense that his awareness of his place in Troll culture is not very good. He is rude – in that his ability to deal with social mores is stunted by his isolation. He is apathetic – in that he doesn't hold strong opinions one way or another. And he is most certainly cranky... though where actual ill temper ends and snappishness as a defense mechanism begins it can be hard to tell.
He feels uncomfortable expressing emotions beyond discomfort and dissatisfaction, and likes to appear unhappy and disgruntled, even when he actually really isn't. The truth is, he can be satisfied by very little. Give him a home, a lusus, food, water, clothing, and his garden and he is a happy greenblood. He appreciates what he has and what he tries to get, but if he doesn't absolutely need something he is willing to shrug and walk away if the going gets too difficult for his liking. But, he will complain anyway, simply because he enjoys doing so. It keeps people away from him... which isn't precisely what he wants, but he finds it so exasperating to deal with them that it just ends up being better to snip and snap and push them away a little... not too much, of course. That would be too much effort for not enough reward.
Not that Sephos isn't a hard worker: he puts a lot of time, sweat, tears, and sometimes literal blood into his gardening and plant collecting and into his newfound hobby of collecting interesting clothes. He will work as long as it takes and as hard as it takes to feed his passions... but he likes to be efficient and abhors having to work harder than he considers necessary – no meaningless toil or unwarranted extra effort for him – IE: he's not lifting with his body if he could use a pulley to do it. However, he only grudgingly – despite his kvetching – will hand such drudgery off to another troll. He likes to do things on his own – it's just the way he's used to operating.
His passions are one of those few things he will share more or less openly with people; While his lusus' interest in plants is professional and biological, Sephos simply enjoys the art of caring for and breeding plants. He finds deep fulfillment in their growth and care, and is willing to put a great deal of time and effort, even seemingly unnecessary effort, into nurturing his plants and his newer passions, getting a real kick out of doing so.
Sephos does not see troll culture as being worth the sort of extra effort that he gives his passions. In fact, he doesn't think it's worth very much. The conflicts between the castes mean little to him. Having grown up as a hermit, Sephos looks at troll culture and asks 'why bother'? Of course he knows about it: his lusus is a good, long lived, intelligent creature with an ancient memory and a deep appreciation of the value of teaching. Actually being a part of it? Doing all those things and thinking all those thoughts and caring about colors and rank and sides? Sephos just doesn't see the point. As he experiences more of Troll culture, there will be several aspects of it he will enjoy, some of which will capture his attention and become a source of fulfillment and good feeling for him– the buying, collecting, and wearing of ornate clothes has already become one such pastime. Of course, however, for the most part he sees it as an awful lot of work for nothing.
What does matter to him is that he wakes up the next night – that's really about as far as he plans for most things. Although not strictly a survivalist, he will do what he needs to do to survive in the wilderness. Though he has been fortunate in that his isolation prevents him from being attacked by other trolls, there are still dangers in the forest and, ultimately, he comes first – his lusus takes care of itself and his garden needs him to manage it's careful balance. In fact, it is only – at this juncture – for his garden that he plans for in the long term.
His ability to leave yesterdays as yesterday and tomorrow in tomorrow makes him a tricky troll to befriend or otherwise, but an easy friend to keep... so long as they can tolerate his grumping and whining.
Strengths:
Zealous
- Sephos puts on an attitude of not-giving-a-s**t, but what Sephos does get into, he is very into. He devotes most of his time, energy, and money to his hobbies, which obviously involve gardening, plants, and related subjects, but also include more recently acquired interests such as clothes collecting and decoration. He is only just now being exposed to a myriad of new potential interests and to mainstream troll culture, and it can be hard to tell what will rouse his interest. But once roused, Sephos is unlikely to un-rouse, and will eventually become very knowledgeable about whatever it may be. When his hobbies conflict with each other, he is motivated to figure it out, though never to the expense of his gardening.
Indifferent
- Sephos is interested in very specific things – his hobbies – and most things outside of those just don't matter to him. He does what he does for whatever reasons he does them, and his response to other people's ideals is a shrug or a noncommittal nod, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with them. He simply accepts that they are also doing what they are doing doing for whatever reasons they may have, and he does not particularly care about those reasons at all. If it directly effects him, he will respond, but aside from that, he doesn't really care. He may grumble about it, of course, but little inconveniences, arguments, or differences of opinion roll off his back. It's pretty hard to get in an argument with him, or get him violent without interfering with him and his hobbies directly. Anything else just isn't worth troubling himself over.
Content
- Sephos loves to complain and grumble and mutter, so he seems to be perpetually unsatisfied or even ungrateful, but the truth is that Sephos is actually not a hard troll to please. Accustomed to simple living in tune with nature, he is appreciative even of small things and perfectly happy to make do with less - If he's alive, fed, clothed, housed, and amidst his plants, he is actually a very happy troll. Although it won't be obvious to the more blunt or oblivious trolls, savvy trolls might notice that he will change the tone of his complaints, or complain about small things, or mutter and growl about nothing in particular, or even – reluctantly – express some apparently halfhearted positive statement, and recognize them as signs of comfort, happiness, and gratitude.
Flaws:
In the Moment
- Sephos may be a grumpy troll, but he has never been the type to hold a grudge. Sephos' concern is in the moment, and that moment is mostly uninfluenced by other people's past actions. It is as if he has forgiven – or forgotten – what they've done to or for him. It's not forgetting, of course – Sephos is not an amnesiac – he remembers trolls and their past actions, references them in conversation, and even learns from those actions. Sometimes, where warranted, he will change his behavior towards certain people (like putting away certain items or protecting the garden). It isn't forgiving either – forgiving implies that he felt a lasting wrong. In the moment, he will react to the situation, but once the situation and its fallout are dealt with, he simply puts it behind him. No forgiving, no forgetting, no holding it back for blackmail. It's over. Its done. And thats what matters to Sephos. Of course, this works two ways: Neither good nor bad actions are not held against a troll. This is a mixed bag where it concerns other trolls: On the one hand, it means that he is unlikely to chase down and murder anyone over a grudge or a broken pot, which gives the grumpy troll more oppurtunities for positive or negative interactions with that troll. On the other hand, however, it means that both positive and negative lasting or deep relationships are hard to build with him, as their emotional foundations are fundementally reset night by night. It also means that he can be manipulated. Although he's not gullible, he's willing to believe that apparently honest accidents are honest accidents, and can thus be repeatedly abused or messed with, almost with no lasting consequences (almost. Eventually he'll grow savvy-ish and adapt his behavior, but even for this, he might not become angry.)
Grouchy
- Perpetually sour-faced and unhappy-seeming, Sephos isn't always a pleasant troll to talk to. He is rude, moody, sarcastic, huffy, and complains about almost everything, even when he is actually very happy or satisfied. Sephos doesn't know how to show other sets of emotions very well and is wary of doing so. It makes him uncomfortable to admit that he isn't unhappy, and he enjoys complaining so much, that it takes a keen and practiced eye to see through his muttering and grumbling to the actual feelings within. Maku, as his ever-patient lusus, does this with ease. Most trolls do not bother.
Uncultured
- Sephos spent most of his wigglerhood alone in the middle of the forest with his lusus. There were very few (but some) interactions with other trolls because of his isolation, and those interactions were mostly fleeting. Although Maku encouraged those interactions and, in his patient way, has taught Sephos about the hemospectrum, arithmetic, history, fighting, and other important aspects of Trollian culture, there is a big difference between learning it from a giant tree and being a part of it firsthand. Also, the life of a hermit in the wilderness is not conducive to manners or cultural mores. Sephos is aware of manners, sure, but he frequently comes across as rude or, at best, awkward or blunt. He speaks his mind frankly, talks with his mouth full, puts his elbows on the table, treks dirt inside – all sorts of careless habits that he's never had to correct and that never appeared on Maku's radar to correct.
History:
Sephos' life used to be fairly boring: up until the WACKY incident, his nights were spent mainly gardening and keeping to himself in his isolated home. He rarely saw other trolls – let alone talked to them - or did anything much more than interact with his massive lusus and his boring life. Though he was grumpy and sometimes complained about it, that was how he liked it. Boring. Uneventful. Peaceful. He could practice his hobbies in peace and not have to deal with anything more complex than his plants.
His lusus, as a caretaker for the ancient forest ecosystem of Four Fronds and its environs, and also having a personal biological stake in the matter, was very into teaching Sephos how to care for plants. Initially little wiggler Sephos didn't care about his plants – they were just a thing that his Lusus wanted him to do, and it was too much trouble to try to say no.
But then, when winter came around and Maku had Sephos tend to a sick and struggling rare tree (essential for the ecosystem and beautiful besides) in the depths of his hive, Sephos changed his tune. Caring for the tree, attending to it's quite demanding needs, and dealing with its many troubles became more than just another chore. When the warmer season rolled around and the plant – having survived the winter because of Sephos' ministrations – was planted and settled in its new forest home, Sephos found that he looked at his plants and his gardening with new eyes, and found that he loved tending to and growing his plants.
That summer, he built the nursery extensions of his hive, using ancient root-bound tunnels that ran beneath the forest to support them. He began to care for and even breed his plants, enjoying the varieties he could make and the balance and beauty he could achieve by putting certain plants near each other. Thus did gardening and botany become his enduring (and first) passion. No longer were his plant-related putterings merely meaningless chores: the little wiggler began to create a beautiful garden around his hive, taking great enjoyment from his work. He was, in an essential and simple way, happy.
However, the world was working against him. First came WACKY: the insane weather it brought ravaged the forests and though the forest, for the most part, was able to absorb the calamities with it's usual ancient dignity, it was still damaged and – worse - Sephos' delicate garden was completely wrecked. For the first time in his life he was forced to leave the forest and his pleasant hermithood, spending a great deal of his time, beetle supply, and energy trying to purchase the tools and plants to repair and improve his garden, as well as gain supplies to help his Lusus with the rest of their forest territory.
His contact with the rest of Alternia was sparing, but overwhelming nonetheless. The vast and striking changes in scenery, the sudden presence of many other trolls, and the encounters with the weirdness of troll culture was mostly unpleasant for Sephos, and he found himself with even more reasons to complain than he'd had before.
However, a few positive things came to light: clothes, for one. Sephos had never realized that clothes could be more than just what one put on one's body for protection from the elements. He realized that, like flowers, they could be used for display, a concept that fascinated him. So began his second passion, the art of cloth. He started to collect and wear clothing with patterns, and his hive began to accumulate new clothes and even a few cheap tapestries for the walls of the root tunnels, breaking up their twisted masses with bolts of color and artistic pictures. It was the concept of something practical made extraordinary that drew him closer to troll culture, through the mechanisms of clothing, art, and, later, some cooking.
He began to integrate more and more into the outskirts of Alternian society, but only vaguely, discovering that he could make the beetles he needed for clothing by selling plants and assisting with gardening. He remained at a comfortable distance, testing the waters of troll society with his toes and only going into it's shallower edges.
And this worked out well for him... until the spaceship came. Though the forests around the resort – and the resort itself – were the worst hit, the forest fire roared deep into the woods, travelling through the mast and springing up in unexpected places. Of course, the forest ecosystem needed fire to survive, and the forest should have been able to bounce back with ease and even thrive in the ashes. However, due to imbalances caused by WACKY and the leeching chemicals from the spaceship's crash, the forest needed help to achieve that.
Cue Sephos and his lusus. This was what treebeasts had evolved to do – to clean up the forest and manage its repair in the face of the weirdness brought about by the planet's sentient species. Trolls, though intimately connected to the natural world, sometimes screwed it up, and it was up to Treebeasts to help restore the balance. Maku (and other Treebeasts whos territories had been effected) set to work on repairing the forest, and Sephos was 'heavily encouraged' to assist. Sephos' hive and garden had been obliterated at the surface, but the underground portions of his home were safe and intact.
Mourning the now total loss of his garden, and put to work by his lusus, Sephos has found that he has been forced uncomfortably close to Troll civilization, where he now must trade for the materials he needs to heal his home. It is a massive undertaking, he is immensely heartbroken from the loss of his garden, and he really, really, doesn't want to deal with any of it.
Currently:
Sephos has begun to enter the towns and markets of troll civilization with his Lusus to gather new replacement plants and supplies for his garden. This means he has to interact with other trolls more than he ever has before. He is having, almost nightly, new and varied experiences. And they suck.
Weapon:
Sephos's weapon is a gardening hoe made of good, sturdy wood and tipped with a solid metal blade. It is very practical, in very many ways, and dangerous in the right hands.
Appearance:
Sephos is a stocky troll with horns that curve in a very gentle S shape, flattening out into leaflike blades at the edge (pointing up but at an angle). Later, they will grow and curve up more strongly, and will gain a few 'branches,' 'buds' or 'thorns' – either way, they will become slightly more ornate as he grows up.
Horn Reference
He wears an 'emo cut': short, with a long set of bangs over one of his eyes. His mouth is uneven: he has two fangs that stick out from his upper jaw and one on the left that sticks out from his lower jaw.
He wears a dark green beret and a pair of rugged overalls over a black shirt. His overalls, emblazoned with his symbol on the chest, are unusually 'colorful', sporting greyscales and greens in complex patterns, the product of a surprising infatuation with it during a recent foray into a clothing market. He does not wear shoes, and his feet are usually dirty because he is in the dirt all night.
His face is perpetually grumpy and usually registers as unimpressed. He always wears wears dark leather gardening gloves on at least one of his hands at all times. He does take off his gloves, however, when manual dexterity and delicateness is important. When he does this, and if it is something he only needs one hand for (or he needs to keep his glove on his other hand to deal with tools, caustic substances, carnivorous plants, et cetera) he stuffs it in his overalls.
Concept Art 1 (Old)
Concept Art 2 (New)
Pattern Reference
Home:
Four Fronds
Sephos's hive is a cave in a mound with a few simple furnishings in the middle of Four Frond's ancient forest, in one of the more uninhabited parts. Its barely enough to be called one room – tiny and austere. If it was well furnished, it would be a cramped combination of all the necessary blocks. As it is, it only contains a recouparoon, a sink, a few green ornaments, and a functional if rustic kitchen.
Below, however, lies a rootlike complex of naturally formed tunnels that sustain what is essentially an underground greenhouse. In these halls, Sephos grows plants both ornamental and sustaining, sometimes tending these long into the day, safe from the harsh sunlight in the wet, loamy underground of the forest.
Sephos has a garden outside as well, making his hovel/mound/crappy hive into something less awful and crappy and more rustic – its a wonder what flowers can do. These plants are happy in the sun – or at least the sun that filters through the canopy – and are carefully and tenderly cared for.
Currently, however, his garden is a charred ruin, interspersed with weedy plants that serve to keep the charcoal-filled and ashy topsoil in place until he can find more suitable plants.
His Lusus usually stands around contemplatively in a nearby clearing, but often moves around to do... whatever he does.
Lusus:
Sephos is an example of the complexities of the Trollian relationship with their planet. Lusii and trolls have evolved together for millions of years, and as the trolls rely on their lusii to care for them and raise them, so too do some lusii rely on their trolls for basic, integral parts of their biology. This is one such relationship.
Sephos's lusus is an enormous walking treebeast. Treebeasts are clad in bright, white (opaque as if painted) bark and leaves (in contrast to the green and blue green plants around them). They are genderless and humanoid (trolloid?) and made of vibrant living wood (more pearlescent white where the barky armor is not present, as on certain features of the face, their joints, horns, and the palms of the 'hands'), complete with a face, nubby horns, leafy hair and beard, and even hands. They are intelligent and ancient and work to protect and care for the ancient forest of Four Fronds, managing it as if it was their own garden. Sephos's lusus' name is Maku, and it is a huge, slow, gentle being.
It's life cycle requires it to take in a troll and raise it. The troll, even when hidden, attracts its main food - a highly efficient (and dangerous) food that is the reason it has the energy to move around with such ease: the undead daywalkers. It devours the undead swarming the planet in the day, engulfing them with encircling roots and digesting them quickly with powerful enzymes, before absorbing the nutrients from their already decayed magically animate flesh. Maku also gains energy from his sturdy leaves, which photosynthesize from the potent Alternian sun. These leaves, when it sheds them for newer growths, return those nutrients otherwise lost to the undead into the soil.
The energy a treebeast acquires during the day lets it operate effectively in the night. Though it is slow and ponderous, treebeasts make impressive lusii, and are adept at protecting their troll. They are very patient teachers with long memories and will do anything but accompany them into space, or too far from the forests the strange plant creatures protect and manage. In return for their wisdom and protection, their troll does them one last favor before they leave their care (which they are encouraged to do when they are adults)
The treebeast reproduces slowly, about once every trollian lifetime. They produce a single nut each time, well provisioned for the baby plant within. This nut is given to their troll when they are old enough to go off on their own. Their troll then plants it in a suitable spot in the forest and tends it until it is established enough to grow without their constant care - This is how new treebeasts come into the world. They learn about troll culture from their parent's troll and pass this knowledge on to their trolls in turn. Of course, although it takes only a few sweeps to get the new plant established, it can be decades before the new treebeast is ready to become more than just a funny looking tree and find its own troll to care for, so its knowledge of troll culture is often outdated unless it bothers to observe it in action. Sometimes they do observe other trolls and update their knowledge, sometimes they don't bother- this is up to the patient whimsy of the individual treebeast. Usually their troll has enough contact with other trolls to make up the difference, and more experienced treebeasts sometimes watch young trolls and their lusii fondly as they make their way through the forest, remembering their previous charges.
Since they often have little contact with their charges once they grow up, and because a creature that produced one offspring once in its whole life would not be viable at all, these massive moving trees are long lived enough that they have been known to take on more than one troll, usually tens to hundreds of sweeps apart - Rarely do the charges of the same treebeast, or even of other treebeasts, meet each other. In Maku's case, Sephos is its third troll. The first of them, unfortunately, met their end early to the terrible dangers of the deep woods and left Maku all alone for many sweeps. The other long ago planted their seedling, nursed it, and then left the planet for the queen's army. These trolls came into being centuries apart, and Sephos will never meet them, though Maku has not forgotten his other children and may have told his current charge about them.
Experienced in raising trolls – and being necessarily abandoned by those trolls when they grow up – Maku has a very easygoing parenting style. Maku is never hasty, always thinking things through and behaving in a slow and ponderous manner. He is patient and simply happy to simply exist and to be together with his troll. He hopes to instill some of his serenity into Sephos. The other two caught on well enough, and Maku doesn't understand why Sephos isn't taking to his philosophy.
But again, Maku is an easy-to-please parent and at least the boy is gardening. That is good. Maku is content either way, and there is time, after all. Sephos is young yet, not ready to carry on the rest of his symbiotic duty, and perhaps he will understand one day.
During the Four Fronds catastrophe, Maku was caught in the fire. However, he is actually resistant to it. He's lost some of his bark armor, and he has scorch marks and scars, but is otherwise fine.
References:
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Power: For now, none.
