Gender/Pronoun: ……What’s that? Is it edible? Don’t talk to Heibing if it isn’t edible. (Disinterested/ambivalent. He/they.)
Age: Did he give you the impression that gives a ********? (He’s about 1,037 1,038, but his people aged more slowly than humans, and functionally, he’s in his mid-twenties.)
Birthday: Does this really matter when you’re over a thousand years old……? (The math would put his birthday on October 23rd, 986, if he felt like doing it.)
Sign: His people used an entirely different system of organizing the constellations, and he’d probably need a good hour to explain it to you, at least. (October 23rd puts him on the Libra/Scorpio cusp. By the Eastern zodiac, he’s a Fire Dog.)
Gemstone: He doesn’t care much for gemstones. That said, he has some respect for diamonds; their hardness would make them useful weapons if they weren’t so rare. (October birthstones are opal and pink tourmaline.)
Blood Type: It’s warm and it’s inside him, which are the truly important things.
Fav. Food: The kind that he stole from someone else or otherwise obtained unethically. Look, food tastes better when you steal it, this is just science, probably. (That said: he loves fish, aquatic crustaceans, and seafood in general. Give it to him raw and he’ll love you forever, or at least until he next gets hungry. Also, these Terran chicken nuggets are wonderful. Heibing would like all the chicken nuggets you have, please.)
Hated Food: The kind that someone says he can’t have.
School: His planet didn’t have formalized education like that. Local or intra-tribal experts taught children in loose, class-adjacent settings, parents handled teaching you how to read and write, and that was that.
Occupation: Heibing doesn’t think he likes your tone right now. (He may or may not attempt to become gainfully employed as a civilian, I don’t know yet.)
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION Eyes:#FFED6D. Big and a bit wide, with a slight bulge.
Hair: Black. Long (about hip/a**-length), largely straight but untamed.
Face: Gaunt. Pointy. High cheekbones.
Skin Tone:#FCF7EF. Pale, sort of ivory-toned.
Body Type: 6’2”. Gaunt and pointy. Gangly limbs. A long and nasty, but faded, burn scar across his stomach, under his navel and around the path of his hips. Similar burn scars on the insides of his arms (down to his elbow) and thighs (ending slightly above his knees).
Clothes: Many layers, lots of black. Heibing has just learned of these Terran “fleece legging” inventions and thank you, he’ll take all of them.
Posted: Fri Sep 20, 2024 3:45 pm
Hobbies: with all your cheap words about hearts and accidents, who are you kidding? (Lying): Heibing isn’t particularly dishonest in normal situations—no more or less than anyone else is, at least—but he has fun by messing with people. This often takes the form of making up a tragic backstory that never happened and presenting it as an unvarnished truth, but that’s not the only kind of lie he’ll tell. As long as whatever he’s saying is objectively false, Heibing will say it just to watch how people react to it. In the moment, when Heibing is messing with someone, he mentally inhabits whatever role he’s made up for himself. People react to whatever he’s telling them, and he enjoys seeing where any particular nonsense leads.
This pastime basically exists at a particular intersection of method acting and Internet trolling. The biggest differences between the latter and Heibing taking people for a ride are: 1. he does this to people’s faces and wouldn’t understand the appeal of doing it online; and 2. he isn’t exclusively trying to inspire rage but enjoys all kinds of potential reactions to his stories. Please, surprise him. Don’t be boring. Few things earn Heibing’s disdain quite as much as people being boring.
yeah, it’s always cloudy except for when you look into the past (Journaling): Forgetting anything, no matter how inane it might seem, could easily get you into trouble, so Heibing works to avoid that. He is almost never without a journal and pen, jotting down notes throughout his daily comings and goings about everything, even (or perhaps especially) the trivialities. If anyone tries to trick him later, claiming that things he distinctly recalls never happened, he values having a written record to prove them wrong. Wherever possible, he also likes to hoard things like receipts, letters or notes from other people, etc. that might supplement his own writing. Anything to make sure that his records of his own experiences are complete, and that no one can question him about them. (He thinks this may also be valuable practice for learning his way around twenty-first century English, but even when he learns English, Heibing’s journals will likely be written primarily in Thalassan.)
well-read and poised, we’re the best boys (Reading/Research): It’s unfortunate that life on Heibing’s home-world didn’t allow them to create a more formalized education system, because Heibing would genuinely do well in academia. He strongly values knowledge, both appreciating and respecting the efforts made by those who came before him to find answers to various questions in the universe and record them for future generations. Digging around in libraries is nothing new to him (though he is going to need to learn how to read 21st century English and learn his way around how Earthling libraries are organized).
Once he has a better idea of where he’s going and how to read the things he finds, though, he will easily spend entire days losing himself in the stacks. Doing similar searches on the Internet will have a likewise powerful hold on him, as soon as he learns what it is and some of the basics of how to navigate it. And in the cases of questions or topics about which there hasn’t been much written already, Heibing will gladly come up with ways of trying to find it himself. He will always consult previous work first, but if he digs around and comes up with nothing, he’ll be ready to come up with some kind of experiment or other means of finding out what he wants to know.
maul the world like a carnival bear set free (Martial Arts): In the past, Heibing picked up this hobby for two reasons: 1., his people never wanted to give up in a fight if possible, so they prepared to fight without weapons; and 2., Heibing and his old friends regularly got into scraps with various opponents during their adventures, heists, etc., and he wanted to stay on his game. In the present, Heibing has found that the techniques he remembers from back then are not going to work for him as well as they once did. For the past thousand years, his world has kept him from aging while he fought the Chaos that infected it, but his current physique (tall, gaunt, gangly) is greatly changed from what he used to have (tall, yes, but think similar to a seal or sea-lion: fat to protect from cold, but strong and full of raw power). In light of that, Heibing is trying to learn new techniques. Getting him to attend classes might take some effort, but he’s still going to work on teaching himself (as soon as he learns about youtube, he’ll be looking up martial arts tutorial videos to practice with) and anyone who impresses him with their individual style can expect him to ask questions, request demonstrations, and otherwise try to learn whatever they’re willing to teach.
the gentle pull of a tide that rolls over and over again (Swimming): Coming from a functionally amphibious people, Heibing has spent much of his life in the water. Yes, his world had an arctic climate until the Chaos infection that killed his people, but Heibing and his people were built for things like swimming in frozen waters and pushing their way through pack-ice. As much as he can and will accept that most things in life will happen on dry land, and even though he can only breathe the waters of his own homeworld, Heibing strongly prefers being in the water. His best idea of a compromise is that he will either make time to go swimming at least a few times a week, or everyone else can deal with him being especially tetchy and irritable.
Unfortunately for him, the practical execution of this compromise may be more complicated than he wants it to be: Heibing is sensitive to the chlorine used to sterilize Terran swimming pools, and he will need to adjust to it over time rather than plunging head in. Swimming in the Destiny City reservoir is generally not advised for several reasons, and several of the lakes, ponds, and rivers in or near town don’t allow swimming. If he somehow finds access to an enormous, swimming pool-size bathtub, it may help somewhat but it won’t be the same. One of his best bets is likely going to be getting on decent enough terms with other Order senshi or Knights who have easy access to relatively clean water up in outer space, then visiting their worlds and/or Wonders in order to swim there……but that is going to require making friends, something that Heibing has always struggled with. He’s going to make an effort, though, because to Heibing, not being able to swim is by far the worse option.
Virtues: i’m sifting through sand, looking for pieces of a broken hourglass (Patient): Heibing doesn’t mind waiting for things to come to fruition. Sometimes, one must have a larger view of the things laid out before one and be willing to put in work over a longer period of time. He isn’t going to fuss about an idea requiring preparatory work, or taking time to unfold, and will gladly try to calm others down by reminding them that the end result will be worth waiting for. He is not always quite as good at staying patient when he has to deal with people rather than situations. People can find his raw nerves more easily than situations can, but regardless, Heibing knows the value of allowing someone’s growth to unfold without trying to force it.
His interpersonal patience is often more not wanting to be bothered than genuinely giving someone grace, but either way, he’ll allow their growth to unfold however it needs to.
i’m in the deep details with the devil (Thorough): Getting Heibing interested in something—whether a hobby, a research topic, a groovy mystery, an elaborate heist plot, a household task like cleaning the kitchen, or whatever—is a good way to ensure that no stone will be left unturned. As long as he can find said stone, Heibing will kick it over and check what’s under it for anything he hasn’t already learned or considered. Yes, it can be incredibly time-consuming, but so is making proper, cooked food. In his mind, there is no such thing as being over-prepared and he requests that you please trust his process while he digs up minutiae that most people wouldn’t think to check. Better, Heibing thinks, to check all the potential sources and learn nothing new than fail to seek out new information and/or perspectives that somehow become important later. Better to have more backup plans than you need than to get caught on the back-foot in the middle of a heist. Better to get into the nitty gritty, granular details, searching for the one little fragment of a shard of broken glass than to only find out because the shard-fragment in question wriggles its way into your foot. Hey, you never know what might turn into some horrible, toxic mold-growth if left alone, so it’s probably best to clean everything, even if it looks like it doesn’t need it.
my words are my faith, to hell with our good names (Follows Through): When Heibing says that something will be done, consider it done. When Heibing decides on his own that he’s going to do something, then you should also consider it done. His people and their culture highly valued the keeping of one’s promises, so he generally avoids making promises (or, in a similar vein, threats) unless he intends to make good on them. If you do not specify a due date with him in advance, him making good on things may not happen on the timescale you’re expecting—especially with threats; letting you know exactly when he’s coming for you doesn’t sound like any fun—but he will still get things done. Yes, he still remembers that promise he made you a thousand-and-five years ago. He didn’t forget, now shut up and let him make good on it.
i’m yours ‘til the earth starts to crumble and the heavens roll away (Loyal): “Ride or die” is some strange Earthling colloquialism that Heibing has only recently learned about, but he thinks he likes the sentiment quite a lot. He chooses people to attach himself to very rarely, but once he does choose someone, they’re his and very few things could make him sever that tie. Once upon a time, actions that greatly harmed his people might have caused Heibing to break off a friendship or alliance, but obviously, that’s no longer an issue. These days, he doesn’t even feel that someone he cared for reincarnating is good reason to stop being loyal to them (though he may sometimes express said loyalty very roughly or in ways the someone deems “unideal”).
Flaws: my conscience called in sick again / this is the road to ruin and we’re starting at the end (Amoral): While Heibing’s home-world had a complex society, ultimately everyone knew that there were only two options before them: death, and survival. Even when people tried to band together to survive (which they did both easily and regularly), the severity of the climate and life on their world meant that most choices you could make to ensure survival for yourself and your own people might very easily damn someone else to death. Growing up like this has left Heibing feeling like he cannot be bothered with such nonsense as “morality.” Most things that others consider “complex moral and/or ethical quandaries” seem, to Heibing, incredibly silly and overly relative at best, and outright hypocritical at worst. Sure, you might save a random teenager from a youma, but maybe that teenager is a rancid, gossipy little jackass who’s spent the past six months bullying a classmate without mercy. Better, in his mind, not to think about these issues and to just do what you want, what most helps you pursue your own goals and your own happiness, and what does right by the people you value personally.
when it all goes to hell, will you be able to tell me “sorry” with a straight face (Blunt): Heibing can mince words. Heibing can be diplomatic. Heibing can speak in ways that consider other people’s feelings before he starts talking. He is perfectly capable of doing all these things, but more often than not, Heibing chooses not to. Pretty words and empty promises seem, to him, like massive wastes of effort in 999,999 situations out of a million. Instead, he will tell you to your face exactly how stupid your idea is or how little regard he has for you. If he has a use for you, he might temper his negativity somewhat, but frankly, even his best friends have to deal with Heibing looking them dead in the face and telling them that there are quicker and more efficacious ways of killing themselves than whatever rubbish idea they just suggested, which is, without question, the dumbest idea they have ever had this week.
i want these words to make things right, but it’s the wrongs that make the words come to life (Vindictive): Grudges are not things that Heibing lets go of easily, and he very quickly loses any sense of scale about handling them. If he feels that he has been slighted or wronged in some way, then his instinct is to pay that back at least in kind, and probably several degrees worse than the original injury. He might let the grudge go before managing to pay it back, but you’d have a better chance of getting a hurricane to renew your driver’s license. This impulse also includes anyone Heibing considers family or a close friend, but the fact that he’ll go seek revenge for slights against his friends is extremely “Cool motive, still murder”—and if he isn’t held back, the “murder” part of that phrase might be literal. No, Heibing doesn’t think that he’s “overreacting” or “being unreasonable” for trying to arrange things so he kills his enemy and it looks like an accident. They insulted his late mother, okay? He wants their head on a spike.
say my name and his in the same breath, i dare you to say they taste the same (Haughty): There are a lot of things in the universe that Heibing simply considers himself above dealing with, and he will let you know. When he considers someone beneath him, he blows them off and refuses to speak to them. If they try to press the matter about getting his attention, he will give it to them……for as long as it takes to push them off a roof or to just tell them that they are unqualified to speak to him. Yes, he does think that he has the correct approach to surviving in this universe and yes, he knows that he and his people are better than you and yours. No, he doesn’t think your counterarguments are worth hearing. Do not try to put yourself on his level unless you can very conclusively, objectively back it up (which he won’t appreciate, but will at least begrudgingly respect), or you desperately want him to develop a grudge against you for the unforgivable crime of annoying him.
Attacks: Sailor Scout Attack: “Weary Flop.” Thalassa selects one target within a ten-foot radius and points at them, glaring intently. The target is immediately hit with a feeling of mild exhaustion, as if they have spent several hours working hard without a break. Physically, targets feel tired and drained but not completely empty; they may feel slightly dizzy or develop a mild headache. Emotionally, targets may feel any combination of worn down, irritable, detached, or confused. They may experience an increased sense of self-doubt or more difficulty making decisions. While not completely overwhelming, these feelings may make targets struggle to keep fighting. This magic lasts thirty seconds, with any lingering effects at player discretion. Thalassa may use this attack three times per battle.
Super Sailor Scout Attack: “Enervating Wreck.” Thalassa selects targets (maximum: three) within a fifteen-foot radius and points at them, glaring intently. Affected targets feel waves of exhaustion crash down on them, as if they have been working all day without rest or food, after not sleeping well last night. Physically, affected targets feel very tired and drained; they can try to keep fighting, but the more work they put into this, the more taxing it feels; they may also feel dizzy or a distracting, throbbing headache. Emotionally, targets may feel worn down, irritable, detached, or confused. They may feel more uncertain of their power, their choices, or their ability to keep going. These feelings may make continuing to fight feel incredibly difficult (but probably not impossible). This magic lasts for thirty-five seconds, with any lingering effects at player discretion. Thalassa may use this attack two times per battle.
Eternal Sailor Attack: “Exhaust and Ruin.” Scowling, Thalassa reaches out and grasps at the air before him, then jerks his hand down. Enemies within twenty feet of Thalassa feel intense exhaustion crash down on them, as if they have spent the past week running on little to no sleep. Physically, affected targets feel extremely tired and worn down, on the verge of collapse; they may experience dizziness or a distracting, throbbing headache. They might space out, as if falling into a microsleep. Emotionally, targets may feel irritable, detached, confused, or uncertain. They may struggle to make decisions or control their emotions. Targets may also experience fleeting hallucinations around the edges of their vision, similar to those caused by sleep deprivation (some common shapes include skittering rats, swooping birds, and moving shadows). While these hallucinations may be unsettling, they cause no damage.
This magic lasts for forty-five seconds, with any lingering effects at player discretion. Thalassa may use this attack once per battle.
Deep Space Physical Features: Elf ears with finned protrusions decorating their edges. Common Thalassan skin-tones were varying shades of grays, blues, and bone white/off-white. Webbed fingers and toes. Eyes have black sclera and a slight bulge to them. Naturally, Thalassan incisors were sharp enough to count as fangs, but Heibing’s have dulled with time to be no more effective than a human’s incisors. Thalassans are fully amphibious on their home-world (however, they don’t have gills, so while they remain strong swimmers, trying to breathe the water of any other planet will go very badly for them).
POWERED PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
Eyes: Black sclera with pale yellow irises (#FFED6D). Big and a bit too wide. A slight bulge to them, like fish-eyes.
Hair: Long (about hip/a**-length), largely straight but untamed. Black with an iridescent sheen that resembles galaxy pattern about halfway down to the tips.
Face: Gaunt. Pointy. High cheekbones. Pointy elf ears with finned protrusions (they attach to the cheeks and cover his ears). Once upon a time, his incisors were sharp enough to count as fangs, but time has dulled them to about the same efficacy as a human’s.
Skin Tone: Vaguely corpse-y looking. Heibing is definitely alive, but his skin has a very pale tone (a mix of white, grays, and pale blues) that would not look out-of-place on a vampire.
Body Type: 6’3”. Gaunt and pointy. Gangly limbs. Webbed fingers and toes, in his natural state. A long and nasty, but faded, burn scar across his stomach, under his navel and around the path of his hips. Similar burn scars on the insides of his arms (down to his elbow) and thighs (ending slightly above his knees).
On being “gaunt”: There’s a certain grace to Heibing’s physique, in the same way that a starving wolf might look graceful while it’s on the prowl. But in his natural state, he is skinny and rawboned enough to be somewhat frightening. His human glamour helps a bit, making him look thin but much less like the unfriendly neighborhood avatar of [Death God Of Your Choice Here].
In both his natural form and his human glamour, though, being so thin is somewhat awkward for Heibing. Powered down, he dresses to conceal his body as much as possible (these hooded sweatshirt things are amazing, please and thank you). Outside of the water or a fight, he often moves and carries himself as though he’s used to physically taking up more space (e.g., giving other people a wider berth than necessary when walking past them; hunching in on himself while sitting, then acting like he isn’t doing this; etc).
Posted: Fri Sep 20, 2024 3:50 pm
Backstory/History: The Neptunian moon of Thalassa was a rough place to live. Frigid in the extreme, Thalassa had a harsh, bitter climate, full of ice and storms. Even in summer, some places remained so deeply buried in snow and ice that nobody in living memory had seen what the ground looked like. The wildlife was equally intense: ice dragons, wolf-seals, wolf-bears, and tundra leviathans were something most Thalassans had a great deal of experience with.
Heibing Morningstar and his older brother, Yuanhan, were born to parents from effectively noble families among the Thalassan tribes. While some of the more nomadic Thalassans looked down on their family’s stronghold and its surrounding city, House Morningstar still commanded great respect for their generations of work to better conditions for all Thalassans. Heibing learned about his duties to his people even before Awakening as Sailor Thalassa.
When he did Awaken, Heibing’s duties shifted from those of a diplomat and mediator (like Yuanhan) to defending the best interests of their people and homeworld. As a young senshi, Heibing took his duties seriously. He studied hard with his various tutors. He did the work they asked him to do with the people and got to know how different Thalassans lived. He consistently tried to be the senshi his people deserved.
But Heibing struggled with these ideas as he came into his adolescence. He didn’t see how “duty” justified some of the practices his elders cited it to explain. He got no joy from presiding over marriage ceremonies between people whose parents got more out of the union than the participants did. He hated telling people what a glorious honor it was to die for the good of one’s tribe. Aligning himself with these pretenses while harboring such intense doubts made Heibing feel like the worst kind of liar.
Instead, he found joy in adventuring off-world with some fellow senshi he’d befriended. The disconnect between how Heibing felt while performing his “duty” (run-down, miserable, exhausted) vs. how he felt while running a heist with his boys (vibrant, eager and excited, alive) led to Heibing wondering if anything he’d learned about duty really mattered. He got careless his own life, meeting risks head-on with an attitude like “live fast, die young, who gives a ********> Did it really matter if he died? His people would get another senshi.
Yuanhan took the change in his brother’s behavior worse than anyone, blaming it pretty squarely on “those awful friends.” He also felt personally wronged by Heibing choosing his friends over his own brother. Yuanhan sacrificed everything else he had for others without question, but he really didn’t want to share his brother. This made Heibing feel smothered. Whenever Yuanhan clung hard, Heibing pushed back harder, sometimes viciously.
Those recurring fights between the brothers led to two big incidents that changed everything. First, Heibing almost died during the parties after a successful heist. Yuanhan had nearly ruined everything, inserting himself into the heist with a mind to sell out Heibing’s friends. Motivated by spite, Heibing pushed himself well beyond the point of partying when he should’ve stopped. The near-death experience was a cold shock to the nihilism at the heart of the wild, party boy behaviors Heibing had fallen into.
Second, Yuanhan took the object of the heist—the blade of an ancient guandao—into his own possession. His original intent was to return it to the people Heibing and his friends had stolen it from, but unbeknownst to Yuanhan, the artifact carried a seed of Chaos. It worked on him first, preying on his desire to protect his brother and get him away from “those awful friends.” Had anyone asked, he couldn’t have explained how introducing more people to the artifact was supposed to accomplish this, but Yuanhan shared it with others anyway. Thus, the Chaos spread to more victims.
The first sign of the Chaos infection came after an ill-conceived adventure killed one of Heibing’s friends. Ostensibly, it was a plague of exhaustion. As the Chaos spread, draining victims’ energy, people grew too weary to do anything. Eventually, many just laid down and died. As the Chaos grew stronger, the climate on Thalassa changed, growing increasingly tropical when it had always been arctic. This led to more deaths as Thalassans succumbed to heat-related illnesses, many of them exacerbated by the Chaos draining their energy. Heibing worked tirelessly to save his people, but he struggled, only knowing that Chaos had come to his world but not knowing how to stop it.
He only learned how it had come when he and Yuanhan were the only ones left. Breaking down, Yuanhan confessed about the artifact and how he’d never meant for any of this to happen. Without forgiving him—because how could Heibing do that when their world was in ruins and their people had been annihilated?—Heibing tried to put his outrage aside, to focus on taking down the Chaos. But it proved too strong for him to destroy. Soon enough, Yuanhan succumbed as well, drained of his energy and dead.
Heibing doesn’t entirely understand how his world sustained him for the past thousand years. But regardless of what the Chaos threw at him, he managed to stay alive. Then, after so many endless years, Heibing felt something calling him elsewhere, off-world.
[this is where i usually put civilian family, but. y’know. dss.]
Posted: Fri Sep 20, 2024 3:52 pm
[what does one do with a reserved spot for past-life shenanigans when it is unnecessary]
The Thirteen Tribes of Thalassa-That-Was:
Black Dragons. Blackwater Shijing.
Heibing’s tribal group. Extremely pleased with themselves in his day because both the senshi and one of their world’s preeminent diplomats (Heibing’s older brother, Yuanhan) had come from this tribe.
Shijing, on Thalassa-That-Was, very strongly resembled narwhals. Not exactly the same, but that’s the closest currently living comparison among Terran animals. Their name would loosely translate into English (from High Thalassan) as “one-horned slaughterer that lurks among the depths.”
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