[app] siren's pull!
I'm ever so e%cited gosh dang!
Sorry in advance if the formatting is a little off. LJ is being really goddamn...well, LJ with my coding and I've given up trying to completely correct the mess it made of it.
Player Information
Name: Ash
Age: 19
AIM SN: icarus tripped
email: satyrtoast@gmail.com
Have you played in an LJ based game before? Yes!
Official Reserve Link: >Be the reservation
Character Information
General
Canon Source: Homestuck
Canon Format: Webcomic
Character's Name: Equius Zahhak
Character's Age: Six Alternian solar sweeps, or thirteen years old.
Conditional:
In his culture on the alien planet Alternia, Equius has been raised as a warrior from the moment he hatched. From the vicious tribulations squirming through the grub trials to being self-sufficient at pain of death their entire lives, Alternian trolls are bred to fight. If they’re not in apt physical condition for war, they’re killed without question. So it’s safe to say that the monsters and darkness within Siren’s Port would not unsettle Equius much more than the monsters and darkness so commonplace on his former home.
What form will your character's NV take?
Equius’s sunglasses will serve this function just fine. They run chat clients and the net with ease, displaying them inside the lenses, converting speech and focused thoughts into text. There are also video ports located on the lenses’ front, which can give the person on the other end of the feed a real time stream of things from an Equius-eye view. Or, if they’re not on his face, whatever the shades are pointed at.
Abilities
Character's Canon Abilities:
Freakish Strength ●
The kid is pretty much Hercules, The Hulk, and Superman combined when it comes to straight up physical power. He’s capable of jumping ridiculously high in the sky, punching the head off a gigantic ogre, and exploding half of his castle with a launched attack robot. With minimal effort. Completely on accident even, in the case of the last. Even when he wants to be gentle Equius still ends up bruising people, and it’s impossible for him to weild a bow without breaking it ...complicating his dream of becoming a war archer and putting him in a pissy mood in general. All that strength bizarrely doesn’t manifest itself in hulking muscle mass. Equius is just built like an normal 13 year old boy who happened to hit the biochemical jackpot a few years early.
Obfuscation ●
This one is largely subjective as it’s never been outright stated in canon. However, there have been multiple allusions scattered through out the comic. In essence, Equius seems to be surrounded by a sphere of influence that blocks him (and anyone who happens to be within range, in Vriska’s case with the all knowing cueball hidden by virtue of being his next door neighbor) from supernatural means of location and reading.It was said in Mindfang’s journal that Equius’s ancestor, E%patriate Darkleer, possesses this ability:
Loc8ing his [Doc Scratch’s] so called dark pockets was the only gam8it I had in countering his milktongued dou8lespeak. The expatri8 for indiscerni8le reasons seemed naturally surrounded 8y such a void in the Doctor's awareness, and so was uniquely fit to inherit the or8. The Doctor could not see his treasure, nor I into it.
Other trolls, such as Tavros and Vriska with their animal communing and mind control respectively, share special abilities with their ancestors. I believe it would be safe to assume Equius does also, but in a less powerful form. Darkleer was able to hide from the omnipotent. In Siren's Pull, though, it would manifest as a much toned down passive ability that makes him shrouded from the insights of things like mind reading, scrying, and prognostication.
Weapons:
When you can punch a person in half with only moderate effort, you don’t have much need for a gun or a sword. Equius has held his own on the nasty Alternian mountainsides for sweeps using only his fists and metal-shod feet, so he’ll likely get by in Siren’s Port with them as well.
There’s a little hope in him yet for learning archery, though. He snaps the wooden bow in half every time he tries to draw an arrow, but Equius still keeps the broken halves equipped as a reminder of his failures ...or to club things to death. A little of both.
History/Personality/Plans/etc.
Character History: [x]
Point in Canon: After the events of [S] Equius: Seek the Highblood.
Character Personality:
Equius’s first appearance in canon is an accurate representation of how most people would respond to him:
RUN
HURRY
It’s not hard to see why! He’s introduced as a snarling boy standing in the middle of his room -- a room is scattered with the crushed shells of robots, spattered in black oil, and every wall is plastered by art of gigantically endowed horses and anthro beasts crushing people with their erections. Alarm and disgust seem pretty natural.
Surprisingly, though, there’s a bit more to Equius than the misanthropy and the dark unspoken recesses of the furry fandom.
Equius is devoted to physical power and displays it in every way he can. Hypertrophied muscle animals paper his walls, he constructs technically complex attackrobots for the sole purpose of battle. This obsession seems to stem from his own freakish strength. Due to some sort of genetic folly, Equius's muscular system is overcharged beyond belief. Though he takes pride in it, banging on about how powerful he is and even capitalizing ‘STRONG’ in every sentence, this causes all sorts of problems for him. Simple tasks like holding a cup of milk or patting his butler on the head go terribly wrong, bruising people and shattering glasses. Equius even admits to himself in his introduction that it makes him ‘sort of a freak’.
From this alone some might assume Equius is a mindless brawler, but it's far from the truth. He's a mechanical wunderkind. All those powerful robots with enough AI to put up one hell of a fight? They exist just for him to smash them to bits, if that puts in perspective how much talent Equius has to burn. He also appears to know the workings of Alternian anatomy and physiology, judging from the fact he’s crafted a pair of fully functional cybernetic legs for a paralyzed teammate as well and a ‘soulbot’ complete with pumping heart, blood, and artificial neurons to act as a ghost girl’s corporeal body.
To the polite, Equius could be described as...passionate. A troll who loves and hates gigantically, doing nothing by halves. He’s intellectual, cunning, and has got more drive than a 20 cylinder engine -- if Equius sets on a task, the shit is going to get done and done brilliantly. Yet to the less forgiving (i.e. everyone), he’s just considered really, really creepy. It’s not hard to see why. Virtually everything about Equius, from his shattered teeth and acute perspiration problem to his obsession with being "whipped into a state of contrition" by his "superiors" and proclivity for silently staring at people, backs that up.
Equius possesses dark blue blood, making him an aristocrat and giving him a nice shine of bloodlust. The high status position in troll society also lends itself to being a bit of an uppity, conniving bastard. When Equius makes plans with other bluebloods, he does so lying through his teeth at every opportunity with the assumption they’re doing the same (protip: they are). He’s prim and proper in all ways but appearances. In spite of his perpetually rough-around-the-edges look, Equius uses language that could charm the pants off an English professor and hates vulgar words. We’re talking third grade Sunday school levels of squeaky clean. Instead, Equius prefers to use inoffensive words like ‘fudgesicles’, ‘fiddlesticks’, and the ultimate burn of ‘goshdarn sillyhead’. He’ll berate anyone who doesn’t do the same.
Equius is slavishly devoted to upholding the hemospectrum’s -- caste system's -- honor. He’s slavishly devoted to most anyone who will give him a good shove around, really, especially his superiors. He loves social order and submissiveness, as they give him the opportunity to relinquish control. Rules and roles are precious -- the reasoning behind them is not. This fixation on submission is so strong he even admits to Vriska, a fellow noble, he "might have a problem" when she teases him about submitting to the will of peasants so easily.
Though he does take a strange, guilty pleasure in the idea of being bossed around by the lowclass, that doesn’t mean he won’t try to force his bigoted beliefs down someone’s throat. Any deviation from the norm -- that is, ‘highbloods’ being domineering, intellectual, and proper and ‘lowbloods’ being callous and stupid -- makes Equius very anxious and confused. He sweats profusely, flounders about contradicting himself, and even trembles when faced with people not behaving as his prejudices dictate they should. This is especially exhibited with the juxtaposition between Gamzee, possible heir to the landdwelling throne and Aradia, the lowest possible peasant on the hemospectrum. Gamzee is a foul-mouthed burnout with no sense of decorum, whereas Equius finds Aradia elegant and poised. He despises Gamzee, the superior who’s ground he’s supposed to kiss -- yet he’s quite madly in love with Aradia, the peasant he’s supposed to subjugate. This pretty much sends him into a conniption fit every time he talks to one of them, flip-flopping between spewing hate and pleading for forgiveness within just a few chat messages. In his single conversation with a human castmate he struggled to figure out how humans divide themselves up into social castes, specifically what makes one human innately better than another. This narrow-minded attitude will be out in full force at Siren's Port.
It’s stated that he can be provoked into destructive bouts of anger all too easily, though it’s interesting to note Equius has never threatened violence on anyone (at least not within the time we’re shown in canon), no matter how many times he’s taunted or defied. This is likely due to the influence of his moirail, Nepeta Leijon. A moiraillegance is a type of romance in his culture that’s kind of a symbiotic relationship, where both halves of the moirallegance -- known as moirails -- strive to keep the other out of danger and behaving properly. Some mistake it for being the ‘bffs 4 life quadrant’, but while Equius is obviously very fond of Nepeta, this fondness usually manifests itself in a lot of meddling and hurt feelings. The whole quadrant operates largely on the basis of ‘I know what’s best for you, even if you don’t realize it right now’ and ‘You’ll thank me for this later’. He praises Nepeta on being an excellent moirail and she says that he’s fortunate to have someone looking after him, implying that his extreme strength and violent moodswings would be a far more dangerous combo without her in his life.
The control over his destructive impulses has grown more ironclad with every sweep -- too much so, maybe. If he’s not breaking into explosive rage he’s stiff and stoic as a statue, expression rarely shifting from a grimace.
The thinkpan of an Equius Zahhak is a precise and analytical thing, understanding intricate mechanical engineering with ease but struggling with stuff so simple as ‘feelings’. He cannot fathom why Gamzee, a royal among land dwelling trolls, does not wish to subjugate those below his class. He couldn’t even grasp the idea that, when making a lovely robot to house the formless ghost of a deceased girl he fancied, girls are not very fond of having chips installed in their metal hearts to manipulate their emotions to love him. When Aradia became aware of his ‘adjustments’, she tore the heart out from her chest a burst of blood and snarls.
ARADIABOT: did y0u pr0gram this r0b0t t0 have feelings f0r y0u?
ARADIABOT: R0MANTIC FEELINGS???
EQUIUS: D --> Hrrrk
ARADIABOT: ANSWER ME BLUE BL00D SCUM
EQUIUS: D --> I
EQUIUS: D --> Yes
EQUIUS: D --> Uh
EQUIUS: D --> It's a chip in your heart
EQUIUS: D --> Is that not ok
ARADIABOT: get it 0ut
EQUIUS: D --> Urrk
EQUIUS: D --> I guess I can
EQUIUS: D --> Uninstall it if you would just
ARADIABOT: GET IT 0UT!!!
EQUIUS: D --> Sorry
Scientifically brilliant though he is, Equius isn’t going to make any breakthroughs in the realm of behavioral psychology. However! He's not completely hopeless.
From his conversation with Nepeta, he’s fully capable of having "feelings jams" where they talk about their...well, feelings. Even of expressing himself openly! In a private setting with his closest friend Equius smiles, laughs, whines about his love problems, and bangs on about how lucky he is to have her -- even though she's of lower standing -- all with no hint of embarrassment. It’s not that Equius is an emotionless drone, it’s just that he needs to be in a safe, comfortable environment to express himself freely.
After playing through SGRUB with a team of mixed blood ranging from mutant candy red to Empress Apparent and being trapped in close quarters with those teammates, Equius seems to have lightened up on his blind faith in the hemospectrum (not enough to save his life, but hey! got to give the boy a little credit). He builds robotic legs for Tavros, a brownblood, out of pure philanthropy. He offers to hug Karkat, their leader of unknown bloodline he’s openly condemned earlier in the game. He even admits to Nepeta that he deeply misses Aradia, showing genuine affection for her outside of her more ‘suitable’ blueblood robot form, and that he wishes to see her again. Equius is capable of working and building companionship with people drastically different and socially below him, in his own sheltered, ignorant, bumbling, quasi-insulting way.
Character Plans:
With a kid this driven and stubborn, there’s no chance he’s going to sit back and accept his present fate. Futile though it is, Equius will likely obsess over and study the port’s history within his very limited resources. With such a superiority complex, he won’t believe his race could be trapped by foreign powers unless it’s smacked into him. Words like ‘it’s impossible to escape’, while they do promote a deviously awful feeling of helplessness, won’t be entirely believed without due reprimand and enforcement unless they come from the mouth of The Grand Highblood himself.
That said, once the reality of the situation sets in, his time will be largely devoted to keeping his moirail Nepeta safe in their strange and dangerous new environment. Other than that top tier responsibility, he’ll likely seek out others from his former universe if just for the comfort of familiarity. But, ultimately, Equius is someone who loves conformity and order. His desire to question and escape the Port by his own means will fade out quickly once he gets a sense of the place’s governance. It’s no question that he’ll happily serve under SERO even into its most twisted regions of human experimentation what with all his mechanical brilliance, conservative taste, and...questionable morals.
Appearance/PB:
hero mode; sprite; meowin’ ‘bout feelins [art by kingkaiser@tumblr]
Writing Samples
First Person Sample
T E X T.
-- centaursTesticle [CT] began communications with WIReD Network [WN] --
D --> Let it be said that I have been adequately patient regarding the situation
D --> Whatever lowminded beast has spirited away with my most darling bow
D --> Well
D --> E%-bow
D --> It is presently in two pieces
D --> Is STRONGLY urged to cease this tomf001ery and return it to my hivestem
D --> Er
D --> "Apartment" at once
D --> I w001d suggest doing this in a manner that leaves you anonymous unless you wish to partake in armed combat, as whoever shows themself connected to this petty thievery is assumed to be coa%ing a duel with me in spite of all protestations that might be made otherwise
D --> If it has been placed in a garbage bin I shall be more irate than I am capable of e%pressing in coherent words while maintaining the structural integrity of my keyboard
D --> Also, to all patrons of this memo guilty or otherwise, if you happen to see a young lady dressed in an oversized coat crowned by a deeply silly meowbeast hat
D --> I command that you inform her the the soup is ready and she should report to her moirail's living space as soon as she is bodily able
D --> Nepeta if you yourself are reading this
D --> You will follow all of the aforementioned instru%ions except for the one about informing yourself, as you are presently being informed by me
Third Person Sample
[ tw for blood, surgery, and slight mention of animal abuse? just wanting to be safe here! ]
It was a good day. A normal day. Equius Zahhak pawed out of bed shortly before sunset, fixed himself a blistering cup of coffee, got dressed, messaged his moirail demanding her to not leave the upper class, darkness proofed areas of Central City and for her to have a ‘100vely’ evening, caught the tube downtown, and cut open a living being on a lab table.
There was a (human? yes, human.) heart exposed before Equius. A curious thing, glistening a most reprehensible red, fat and mutli-chambered, twitching beneath the cathode buried in its slippery muscle. His hands sweat in their thick rubber gloves, congealing sticky-warm between each finger, squeaking whenever his hand flexed around the scalpel.
Equius could say with no ego that he was getting much better at this. The oinkbeasts (infinitely smaller, pinker, and dare he say cuter than the ones back home) he’d been given to practice on for the first couple weeks while he trained back his strength suffered countless over-eager slices and squished ribcages. Fleshly things were a lot less resilient than metal ones, he’d found. This incision though, it was clean and just deep enough. Perhaps even perfect.
He was a little offended when the flesh started growing back.
"He -- ah, the subject appears to be taking the tissue from donor 23735 quite well. Excellently, even," Equius piped up to the microphone above the operating table. A gentle tap to check reception triggered an awful squealing reverb and sent the mic swinging dangerously on its wire. Trying to settle it would only crush it so Equius just poised moitionless, sweating profusely and quivering just a bit, until the disturbance ran its course. When it stopped, he cleared his throat.
"My deepest apologies, sirs. And...and ladies."
Someone was watching, recording his progess. Weren’t they? He hoped so. Everything else here seemed closely monitored. He wanted very, very much to meet their expectations. Powerful people lurked at the head of SERO. Commendation from these people would mean safer living and better food for himself and Nepeta, more space to express the full depth of his talents. Most importantly, Equius craved affirmation from his betters much in the way ducks will go scuttling for bread. Snap, ruffle, bite, raise a racket -- most anything, really, just to get a taste.
A stray glance down. Equius’s brows shot up, taking in the subject’s new state. Not only had his chest incision closed up, the regenerative properties from the graft were also steadily erasing his scars and pockmarks. And, judging from the irritated snort, absorbing the powerful sedative in his blood.
"Oh, goodness, well...greetings. I was not expecting you t--"
"Hurry it up, kid," the subject rasped out.
Equius’s ears twitched and flattened against his head. He wiped the scalpel clean of the human’s nasty blood with a huff. "I will," he hissed. A blush hinted at his cheeks and he fiddled with his hair tie before moving back to the slab. "...but not because you told me to. Also -- also I am not kid."
Sorry in advance if the formatting is a little off. LJ is being really goddamn...well, LJ with my coding and I've given up trying to completely correct the mess it made of it.
Player Information
Name: Ash
Age: 19
AIM SN: icarus tripped
email: satyrtoast@gmail.com
Have you played in an LJ based game before? Yes!
Official Reserve Link: >Be the reservation
Character Information
General
Canon Source: Homestuck
Canon Format: Webcomic
Character's Name: Equius Zahhak
Character's Age: Six Alternian solar sweeps, or thirteen years old.
Conditional:
In his culture on the alien planet Alternia, Equius has been raised as a warrior from the moment he hatched. From the vicious tribulations squirming through the grub trials to being self-sufficient at pain of death their entire lives, Alternian trolls are bred to fight. If they’re not in apt physical condition for war, they’re killed without question. So it’s safe to say that the monsters and darkness within Siren’s Port would not unsettle Equius much more than the monsters and darkness so commonplace on his former home.
What form will your character's NV take?
Equius’s sunglasses will serve this function just fine. They run chat clients and the net with ease, displaying them inside the lenses, converting speech and focused thoughts into text. There are also video ports located on the lenses’ front, which can give the person on the other end of the feed a real time stream of things from an Equius-eye view. Or, if they’re not on his face, whatever the shades are pointed at.
Abilities
Character's Canon Abilities:
Freakish Strength ●
The kid is pretty much Hercules, The Hulk, and Superman combined when it comes to straight up physical power. He’s capable of jumping ridiculously high in the sky, punching the head off a gigantic ogre, and exploding half of his castle with a launched attack robot. With minimal effort. Completely on accident even, in the case of the last. Even when he wants to be gentle Equius still ends up bruising people, and it’s impossible for him to weild a bow without breaking it ...complicating his dream of becoming a war archer and putting him in a pissy mood in general. All that strength bizarrely doesn’t manifest itself in hulking muscle mass. Equius is just built like an normal 13 year old boy who happened to hit the biochemical jackpot a few years early.
Obfuscation ●
This one is largely subjective as it’s never been outright stated in canon. However, there have been multiple allusions scattered through out the comic. In essence, Equius seems to be surrounded by a sphere of influence that blocks him (and anyone who happens to be within range, in Vriska’s case with the all knowing cueball hidden by virtue of being his next door neighbor) from supernatural means of location and reading.It was said in Mindfang’s journal that Equius’s ancestor, E%patriate Darkleer, possesses this ability:
Loc8ing his [Doc Scratch’s] so called dark pockets was the only gam8it I had in countering his milktongued dou8lespeak. The expatri8 for indiscerni8le reasons seemed naturally surrounded 8y such a void in the Doctor's awareness, and so was uniquely fit to inherit the or8. The Doctor could not see his treasure, nor I into it.
Other trolls, such as Tavros and Vriska with their animal communing and mind control respectively, share special abilities with their ancestors. I believe it would be safe to assume Equius does also, but in a less powerful form. Darkleer was able to hide from the omnipotent. In Siren's Pull, though, it would manifest as a much toned down passive ability that makes him shrouded from the insights of things like mind reading, scrying, and prognostication.
Weapons:
When you can punch a person in half with only moderate effort, you don’t have much need for a gun or a sword. Equius has held his own on the nasty Alternian mountainsides for sweeps using only his fists and metal-shod feet, so he’ll likely get by in Siren’s Port with them as well.
There’s a little hope in him yet for learning archery, though. He snaps the wooden bow in half every time he tries to draw an arrow, but Equius still keeps the broken halves equipped as a reminder of his failures ...or to club things to death. A little of both.
History/Personality/Plans/etc.
Character History: [x]
Point in Canon: After the events of [S] Equius: Seek the Highblood.
Character Personality:
Equius’s first appearance in canon is an accurate representation of how most people would respond to him:
RUN
HURRY
It’s not hard to see why! He’s introduced as a snarling boy standing in the middle of his room -- a room is scattered with the crushed shells of robots, spattered in black oil, and every wall is plastered by art of gigantically endowed horses and anthro beasts crushing people with their erections. Alarm and disgust seem pretty natural.
Surprisingly, though, there’s a bit more to Equius than the misanthropy and the dark unspoken recesses of the furry fandom.
Equius is devoted to physical power and displays it in every way he can. Hypertrophied muscle animals paper his walls, he constructs technically complex attackrobots for the sole purpose of battle. This obsession seems to stem from his own freakish strength. Due to some sort of genetic folly, Equius's muscular system is overcharged beyond belief. Though he takes pride in it, banging on about how powerful he is and even capitalizing ‘STRONG’ in every sentence, this causes all sorts of problems for him. Simple tasks like holding a cup of milk or patting his butler on the head go terribly wrong, bruising people and shattering glasses. Equius even admits to himself in his introduction that it makes him ‘sort of a freak’.
From this alone some might assume Equius is a mindless brawler, but it's far from the truth. He's a mechanical wunderkind. All those powerful robots with enough AI to put up one hell of a fight? They exist just for him to smash them to bits, if that puts in perspective how much talent Equius has to burn. He also appears to know the workings of Alternian anatomy and physiology, judging from the fact he’s crafted a pair of fully functional cybernetic legs for a paralyzed teammate as well and a ‘soulbot’ complete with pumping heart, blood, and artificial neurons to act as a ghost girl’s corporeal body.
To the polite, Equius could be described as...passionate. A troll who loves and hates gigantically, doing nothing by halves. He’s intellectual, cunning, and has got more drive than a 20 cylinder engine -- if Equius sets on a task, the shit is going to get done and done brilliantly. Yet to the less forgiving (i.e. everyone), he’s just considered really, really creepy. It’s not hard to see why. Virtually everything about Equius, from his shattered teeth and acute perspiration problem to his obsession with being "whipped into a state of contrition" by his "superiors" and proclivity for silently staring at people, backs that up.
Equius possesses dark blue blood, making him an aristocrat and giving him a nice shine of bloodlust. The high status position in troll society also lends itself to being a bit of an uppity, conniving bastard. When Equius makes plans with other bluebloods, he does so lying through his teeth at every opportunity with the assumption they’re doing the same (protip: they are). He’s prim and proper in all ways but appearances. In spite of his perpetually rough-around-the-edges look, Equius uses language that could charm the pants off an English professor and hates vulgar words. We’re talking third grade Sunday school levels of squeaky clean. Instead, Equius prefers to use inoffensive words like ‘fudgesicles’, ‘fiddlesticks’, and the ultimate burn of ‘goshdarn sillyhead’. He’ll berate anyone who doesn’t do the same.
Equius is slavishly devoted to upholding the hemospectrum’s -- caste system's -- honor. He’s slavishly devoted to most anyone who will give him a good shove around, really, especially his superiors. He loves social order and submissiveness, as they give him the opportunity to relinquish control. Rules and roles are precious -- the reasoning behind them is not. This fixation on submission is so strong he even admits to Vriska, a fellow noble, he "might have a problem" when she teases him about submitting to the will of peasants so easily.
Though he does take a strange, guilty pleasure in the idea of being bossed around by the lowclass, that doesn’t mean he won’t try to force his bigoted beliefs down someone’s throat. Any deviation from the norm -- that is, ‘highbloods’ being domineering, intellectual, and proper and ‘lowbloods’ being callous and stupid -- makes Equius very anxious and confused. He sweats profusely, flounders about contradicting himself, and even trembles when faced with people not behaving as his prejudices dictate they should. This is especially exhibited with the juxtaposition between Gamzee, possible heir to the landdwelling throne and Aradia, the lowest possible peasant on the hemospectrum. Gamzee is a foul-mouthed burnout with no sense of decorum, whereas Equius finds Aradia elegant and poised. He despises Gamzee, the superior who’s ground he’s supposed to kiss -- yet he’s quite madly in love with Aradia, the peasant he’s supposed to subjugate. This pretty much sends him into a conniption fit every time he talks to one of them, flip-flopping between spewing hate and pleading for forgiveness within just a few chat messages. In his single conversation with a human castmate he struggled to figure out how humans divide themselves up into social castes, specifically what makes one human innately better than another. This narrow-minded attitude will be out in full force at Siren's Port.
It’s stated that he can be provoked into destructive bouts of anger all too easily, though it’s interesting to note Equius has never threatened violence on anyone (at least not within the time we’re shown in canon), no matter how many times he’s taunted or defied. This is likely due to the influence of his moirail, Nepeta Leijon. A moiraillegance is a type of romance in his culture that’s kind of a symbiotic relationship, where both halves of the moirallegance -- known as moirails -- strive to keep the other out of danger and behaving properly. Some mistake it for being the ‘bffs 4 life quadrant’, but while Equius is obviously very fond of Nepeta, this fondness usually manifests itself in a lot of meddling and hurt feelings. The whole quadrant operates largely on the basis of ‘I know what’s best for you, even if you don’t realize it right now’ and ‘You’ll thank me for this later’. He praises Nepeta on being an excellent moirail and she says that he’s fortunate to have someone looking after him, implying that his extreme strength and violent moodswings would be a far more dangerous combo without her in his life.
The control over his destructive impulses has grown more ironclad with every sweep -- too much so, maybe. If he’s not breaking into explosive rage he’s stiff and stoic as a statue, expression rarely shifting from a grimace.
The thinkpan of an Equius Zahhak is a precise and analytical thing, understanding intricate mechanical engineering with ease but struggling with stuff so simple as ‘feelings’. He cannot fathom why Gamzee, a royal among land dwelling trolls, does not wish to subjugate those below his class. He couldn’t even grasp the idea that, when making a lovely robot to house the formless ghost of a deceased girl he fancied, girls are not very fond of having chips installed in their metal hearts to manipulate their emotions to love him. When Aradia became aware of his ‘adjustments’, she tore the heart out from her chest a burst of blood and snarls.
ARADIABOT: did y0u pr0gram this r0b0t t0 have feelings f0r y0u?
ARADIABOT: R0MANTIC FEELINGS???
EQUIUS: D --> Hrrrk
ARADIABOT: ANSWER ME BLUE BL00D SCUM
EQUIUS: D --> I
EQUIUS: D --> Yes
EQUIUS: D --> Uh
EQUIUS: D --> It's a chip in your heart
EQUIUS: D --> Is that not ok
ARADIABOT: get it 0ut
EQUIUS: D --> Urrk
EQUIUS: D --> I guess I can
EQUIUS: D --> Uninstall it if you would just
ARADIABOT: GET IT 0UT!!!
EQUIUS: D --> Sorry
Scientifically brilliant though he is, Equius isn’t going to make any breakthroughs in the realm of behavioral psychology. However! He's not completely hopeless.
From his conversation with Nepeta, he’s fully capable of having "feelings jams" where they talk about their...well, feelings. Even of expressing himself openly! In a private setting with his closest friend Equius smiles, laughs, whines about his love problems, and bangs on about how lucky he is to have her -- even though she's of lower standing -- all with no hint of embarrassment. It’s not that Equius is an emotionless drone, it’s just that he needs to be in a safe, comfortable environment to express himself freely.
After playing through SGRUB with a team of mixed blood ranging from mutant candy red to Empress Apparent and being trapped in close quarters with those teammates, Equius seems to have lightened up on his blind faith in the hemospectrum (not enough to save his life, but hey! got to give the boy a little credit). He builds robotic legs for Tavros, a brownblood, out of pure philanthropy. He offers to hug Karkat, their leader of unknown bloodline he’s openly condemned earlier in the game. He even admits to Nepeta that he deeply misses Aradia, showing genuine affection for her outside of her more ‘suitable’ blueblood robot form, and that he wishes to see her again. Equius is capable of working and building companionship with people drastically different and socially below him, in his own sheltered, ignorant, bumbling, quasi-insulting way.
Character Plans:
With a kid this driven and stubborn, there’s no chance he’s going to sit back and accept his present fate. Futile though it is, Equius will likely obsess over and study the port’s history within his very limited resources. With such a superiority complex, he won’t believe his race could be trapped by foreign powers unless it’s smacked into him. Words like ‘it’s impossible to escape’, while they do promote a deviously awful feeling of helplessness, won’t be entirely believed without due reprimand and enforcement unless they come from the mouth of The Grand Highblood himself.
That said, once the reality of the situation sets in, his time will be largely devoted to keeping his moirail Nepeta safe in their strange and dangerous new environment. Other than that top tier responsibility, he’ll likely seek out others from his former universe if just for the comfort of familiarity. But, ultimately, Equius is someone who loves conformity and order. His desire to question and escape the Port by his own means will fade out quickly once he gets a sense of the place’s governance. It’s no question that he’ll happily serve under SERO even into its most twisted regions of human experimentation what with all his mechanical brilliance, conservative taste, and...questionable morals.
Appearance/PB:
hero mode; sprite; meowin’ ‘bout feelins [art by kingkaiser@tumblr]
Writing Samples
First Person Sample
T E X T.
-- centaursTesticle [CT] began communications with WIReD Network [WN] --
D --> Let it be said that I have been adequately patient regarding the situation
D --> Whatever lowminded beast has spirited away with my most darling bow
D --> Well
D --> E%-bow
D --> It is presently in two pieces
D --> Is STRONGLY urged to cease this tomf001ery and return it to my hivestem
D --> Er
D --> "Apartment" at once
D --> I w001d suggest doing this in a manner that leaves you anonymous unless you wish to partake in armed combat, as whoever shows themself connected to this petty thievery is assumed to be coa%ing a duel with me in spite of all protestations that might be made otherwise
D --> If it has been placed in a garbage bin I shall be more irate than I am capable of e%pressing in coherent words while maintaining the structural integrity of my keyboard
D --> Also, to all patrons of this memo guilty or otherwise, if you happen to see a young lady dressed in an oversized coat crowned by a deeply silly meowbeast hat
D --> I command that you inform her the the soup is ready and she should report to her moirail's living space as soon as she is bodily able
D --> Nepeta if you yourself are reading this
D --> You will follow all of the aforementioned instru%ions except for the one about informing yourself, as you are presently being informed by me
Third Person Sample
[ tw for blood, surgery, and slight mention of animal abuse? just wanting to be safe here! ]
It was a good day. A normal day. Equius Zahhak pawed out of bed shortly before sunset, fixed himself a blistering cup of coffee, got dressed, messaged his moirail demanding her to not leave the upper class, darkness proofed areas of Central City and for her to have a ‘100vely’ evening, caught the tube downtown, and cut open a living being on a lab table.
There was a (human? yes, human.) heart exposed before Equius. A curious thing, glistening a most reprehensible red, fat and mutli-chambered, twitching beneath the cathode buried in its slippery muscle. His hands sweat in their thick rubber gloves, congealing sticky-warm between each finger, squeaking whenever his hand flexed around the scalpel.
Equius could say with no ego that he was getting much better at this. The oinkbeasts (infinitely smaller, pinker, and dare he say cuter than the ones back home) he’d been given to practice on for the first couple weeks while he trained back his strength suffered countless over-eager slices and squished ribcages. Fleshly things were a lot less resilient than metal ones, he’d found. This incision though, it was clean and just deep enough. Perhaps even perfect.
He was a little offended when the flesh started growing back.
"He -- ah, the subject appears to be taking the tissue from donor 23735 quite well. Excellently, even," Equius piped up to the microphone above the operating table. A gentle tap to check reception triggered an awful squealing reverb and sent the mic swinging dangerously on its wire. Trying to settle it would only crush it so Equius just poised moitionless, sweating profusely and quivering just a bit, until the disturbance ran its course. When it stopped, he cleared his throat.
"My deepest apologies, sirs. And...and ladies."
Someone was watching, recording his progess. Weren’t they? He hoped so. Everything else here seemed closely monitored. He wanted very, very much to meet their expectations. Powerful people lurked at the head of SERO. Commendation from these people would mean safer living and better food for himself and Nepeta, more space to express the full depth of his talents. Most importantly, Equius craved affirmation from his betters much in the way ducks will go scuttling for bread. Snap, ruffle, bite, raise a racket -- most anything, really, just to get a taste.
A stray glance down. Equius’s brows shot up, taking in the subject’s new state. Not only had his chest incision closed up, the regenerative properties from the graft were also steadily erasing his scars and pockmarks. And, judging from the irritated snort, absorbing the powerful sedative in his blood.
"Oh, goodness, well...greetings. I was not expecting you t--"
"Hurry it up, kid," the subject rasped out.
Equius’s ears twitched and flattened against his head. He wiped the scalpel clean of the human’s nasty blood with a huff. "I will," he hissed. A blush hinted at his cheeks and he fiddled with his hair tie before moving back to the slab. "...but not because you told me to. Also -- also I am not kid."