Application
Player Name: Callie
Player Contact: callistodementia@gmail.com/FyreflyzBlaze on AIM
Universe details: Lyn's session (known as Mindbent) is mostly the same as canon Alternia, though for the purposes of his session none of the canon characters or guardians existed in the same forms as in canon. (For instance, there is a First Guardian of Alternia, but it's not Scratch; there was a troll who started a lowblood rebellion, but it wasn't the Sufferer; there was/is an Imperial Condescension who issued an imperial decree that dictated the exile of adult trolls off-planet, but it's not Feferi's ancestor. This was done mostly to avoid any conflicts with canon/any situations where our characters or their ancestors could have come into contact with the canon characters - especially since Mindbent is heavily ancestor-themed.) Also, the exiles of their session are based on Clue as opposed to other games. (Examples: Madam Rouge, Senor Verde.)
Consorts and Imps: Lyn's consorts are troll-sized, surly cockroaches who hide in the dark cliff crevices and ruined structures of his land - anywhere there's darkness, of which there really isn't much. Lyn's land is practically an endless desert, with a grueling sun beating down on it that never sets. The quest of his land is to Bring The Night - to extinguish the brutal daylight his land is cursed with and usher in an endless night of cockroach partying. Needless to say, Lyn will need to go god tier before he can accomplish this, and was nowhere even close at the time he was pulled from his session. He hadn't even met any of his consorts yet.
Lyn's imps (of which he'd encountered all of perhaps two before pulled from his session) should have been completely unremarkable, as he had lost track of his kernelsprite before prototyping anything into it. Yet, for some reason, his imps tend to have cloaks, and one even demonstrated the ability to turn invisible...
Character name: Lyndis Nivali
Trollian/Pesterchum/other Handle: artfulTransgressor
Age: 8 sweeps (nearly 9)
Blood Color: Cream/khaki - essentially a very washed-out orange/brown color. In terms of the hemospectrum, he'd probably be considered on the same tier as Tavros or, at best, somewhere between him and Sollux. Code: #C3B091
Psychic/Magic/Other Abilities: As a lowblood, Lyn has the ability to psionically reflect light to camouflage himself (along with, occasionally, things that are nearby or that he's touching) for a brief period of time; the less he's concealing and the more he's concentrating, the longer he can make the camouflage last. This effectively allows him to render himself temporarily invisible.
Speech Quirk: lyn doesnt haVe much of a quirk really but what he does haVe is Very similar to that of daVe strider
basically he tends to type like hes in too much of a hurry or just cant be fucking bothered to use caps or punctuation or any distinctiVe quirks
which is a completely accurate assessment
he also swears pretty goddamn profusely and talks highly informally since hes a crass little thing
THOUGH HE OCCASIONALLY LAPSES INTO ANGRY ALL CAPS WHEN HES EXCEPTIONALLY PISSED because sometimes lowercase just doesnt haVe enough fucking emphasis
oh but he does tend to capitalize all his Vs to more closely match his symbol
and occasionally he will use punctuation but only when hes typing something that would just be prohibitiVely confusing without them
like who're is not a conjunction you want to skimp the punctuation on, it can change a whole fucking sentence
Fetch Modus: Lyn's fetch modus is the Klepto modus. Much like its user, the Klepto modus will automatically captchalogue anything he's within arm's reach of that isn't actively nailed to the floor - which often saves Lyn the trouble of having to manually snag and captchalogue something. However, it comes with a significant drawback when actually retrieving something from within the modus - all the items are sorted in chronological order of when they were captchalogued, and only the top card is accessible. This works on exactly the same principle as if Lyn were just tossing all his shit into a pile - he can only access things on the very top, and he has to dig down through everything in his modus to get at the stuff on the bottom. And since neither he nor his modus are terribly selective in what either grabs, there tends to be a lot of things in his modus pile.
As for the things he's brought with him, Lyn doesn't have much of significance. He has a ton of odds and ends - food and water, a pile of blankets(which he uses for bedding), a couple books, various other stolen knickknacks of no particular value - as well as his lockpicks, his husktop, and a headset computer he alchemized. He also captchalogued the bones of his lusus, at the mysterious instruction of his server troll(she'd probably intended to have him prototype them with his kernelsprite). He also, of course, has his strife specibus and the chain-flail within it.
Strife Specibus: Chainkind. Lyn uses a chain with weights on both ends, much like a flail in its use of weight, momentum, and reach(though the reach on his chain is extremely long compared to any traditional flail). This is pretty hard to describe in text, but I can provide an example of someone using a weapon very similar to what I've given him if necessary!
Sburb Title (and derived powers): Rogue of Dusk. Lyn has (or will have) the power to control shadows - to create darkness and/or give it form. Actually making solid shadows takes a great deal of power, though, and unless he goes god tier he probably won't be doing much of that except under desperate circumstances.
Derse or Prospit? Derse.
Preferred drop-in point: Land of Iron and Shrouds
Personality: The very first thing you need to know about Lyndis is to call him Lyn. He hates his full name; to him it sounds weak and girly(not that being associated with something 'girly' necessarily has as many negative connotations for a male troll on Alternia as it might on Earth, but he's overly sensitive to anything that might reflect poorly on him). How he wound up with a name he dislikes so much as something of a mystery. (We'll blame the text entry boxes.) But the fact is that, if Lyn has to instruct you to call him by his nickname, then a critical failure has already occurred along the line somewhere because you shouldn't know his full name to begin with.
Lyn has two major defining personality traits that, more often than not, are directly in conflict with each other. The first is that he is a perpetual coward. Having been orphaned early in life and forced to look out for himself - in terms of general survival as well as hiding from the culling most orphaned trolls have to look forward to - he's spent most of his sweeps hyper-aware of his own weakness and vulnerability, knowing he could be culled by almost any troll or imperial drone on a whim. As a lowblood with purely defensive psionic powers, and no possessions beyond what he can scavenge and steal - without even a proper hive, or a recuperacoon(and the blood-soaked racial dreams he has undoubtedly don't help his nerves) - he's all too conscious of his weak standing in troll society, and he even manages to undersell what abilities he does have as often as not in fits of fatalistic pessimism. As a result, he's developed a deep and unshakable paranoia, convinced (and not entirely incorrectly) that the world is, if not out to get him specifically - because that would imply he's important enough to give special notice - at the very least engineered to kill him. He's twitchy and neurotic, always looking over his shoulders, keeping his back to any convenient wall, and half-crouched in preparation to bolt at all times.
The other aspect of his personality - and constantly in conflict with his cowardice - is his pride. One of the things that sweeps of socializing on the internet taught Lyn is that talking big is sometimes all that matters. He quickly learned to be loud, egotistical, and talk himself up as a purely defensive measure, and to fiercely protect his inflated credibility. He rarely believes anything he brags about in regards to himself; he's merely invested in making other people believe he's stronger and better and more deserving of respect than he necessarily is, if only to keep them off his back. It's really the only self-defense he has aside from hiding. The conflicts come in when he has to defend his credibility in the face of risks that he'd never run for any other reason; sometimes it's a tug-of-war between preserving his credibility to keep greater dangers off his back, and deciding whether the cure is actually worse than the disease.
Whether you consider Lyn an insufferable prick or a pretty decent guy entirely depends on how well he knows you, and how much he likes you. To people he doesn't give a damn about - which is almost everyone - Lyn is cynical, pessimistic, sarcastic, paranoid, and preemptively defensive, looking out for himself first and the rest of the world coming in a distant second. He has a surprising capacity for loyalty - even altruism - if he actually becomes attached to someone else, but it's not easy to become close enough to him for him to ever be attached to you, or you to him. And he's not going to even begin to stick his neck out for a stranger unless he feels it serves his own purposes in some way.
Lyn doesn't bear any particular angst or resentment over the unpleasant circumstances in which he grew up; the way he sees it, that's just how life goes on Alternia. In fact, he takes some measure of pride in being able to live through circumstances that rightfully should have gotten him culled, and his ability to dodge even the drones. But that doesn't change the fact that he lost his lusus at an early age, or that he's had to watch his back all his life, knowing he could be killed at any time by anything. As such, he's developed a fear of death - not just his own death, but death as a very concept - practically to the point of phobia. Not only does he fear dying himself, he doesn't like it when anyone dies, from his closest friends to some of his worst enemies. This makes him a bit of a freak among trolls, who are understandably expected to be quite comfortable with the idea of culling. It might almost suggest compassion, if it wasn't entirely fueled by cowardice - but it does mean that, despite his short temper and constant tough talk, and regardless of how much he hates you, Lyn is very unlikely to kill you or anyone else. This might be considered a positive trait in other races, but for a troll it's a critical handicap.
Socially, Lyn's a bit strange. Having barely interacted with other trolls in person - only over chat clients like Trollian - he's not particularly experienced in how to handle any kind of genuine social situation. He never developed the habit of deferring to highbloods, or being polite to anyone in general, because it wasn't like anyone could get at him through his husktop...so he speaks his mind at all times, and objects to the very idea of changing his behavior as being an entitled demand. These habits persisted even after his session began, when he started talking to trolls within arm's reach, which was alternately (and incorrectly) interpreted as his either being brave or having a death wish. However, he has zero interest in any sort of strife that isn't purely verbal; though he didn't actually come to blows with any other trolls in his session(at least not by the time he was pulled from it into this one), he would have simply bolted if someone tried to aggress him physically. (And this strategy will follow him to the doomed session as well. Whoever said 'discretion is the better part of valor' was wasting valuable running time flapping their jaw.)
This isn't to say Lyn doesn't have a pleasant side. If people don't give him trouble, he can actually be quite agreeable, even friendly. He's surprisingly easygoing once you get past the prickly exterior, and very protective of the few people that matter to him - protective enough to actually tap into some reserves of bravery for their sake, if it's required. The only thing that makes him hard to get along with is the fact that he treats no one with any respect or consideration until they've actually done something to earn it from him.
Lyn's opinion on the hemospectrum are that no one has the inherent right to tell him who he should respect or how much he's worth. This is relatively unsurprising, as he's lived a very independent life far from other trolls who could bring the hemospectrum home to him in any way; as a result, he has no ingrained respect for hemospectrum or highbloods, and had enough distance and anonymity to be able to flaunt his disrespect without repercussions. He tends to think of all highbloods as prissy, self-righteous, entitled, bugfuck-crazy tightasses...though, since he's very rarely had anything whatsoever to do with highbloods, this is an opinion based largely on both posturing and word of mouth.
Also of interest are Lyn's opinions of trollmance and quadrants. They can be summed up in two words: fuck it. Lyn has understandably had no romantic prospects in his life, nor any education on the matter beyond what he's seen in troll pop culture, and as far as he's concerned, it all looks like a big, life-complicating waste of time. (And, as someone who's already spent most of his life hiding from the imperial drones, avoiding culling for not filling the filial pails is not much of a concern for him. To him, that's Tuesday.) He considers everything to do with trollmance stupid and, with all the maturity of a 3-sweep-old, has declared he will never get involved in that nonsense. This is only one of many topics where he acts as immature as a troll far younger than he is, but it's one of the worst and most visible. How long this mindset will hold out in the presence of other trolls is up for debate.
History: Lyn has always been something of a runt troll - remarkably small and weak for his size, inferior even when compared to others in his lowblood caste. That he made it through his trials alive was something of a miracle and, he privately believes, probably a fluke. But the fact is that he did make it through, and was thus picked up by a lusus. However, he suspects that natural selection was at work here as well, because he ended up with a lusus that matched him perfectly - small, weak, and entirely unimpressive, dwarfed by other lusii and Alternian fauna alike. Not that Lyn cared; his weasel lusus was quite loyal and protective, and highly playful, and they formed a strong bond almost immediately.
Lyn's lusus recognized quickly that his charge was vulnerable and would need quite a bit of time before he would come into any strength or skills with which to defend himself. Therefore, he made certain to take his charge out into the wilderness, miles away from any other trolls, intending to have their hive built in safe isolation. Lyn and his lusus holed up in a well-concealed cliffside cave (one with its own generator, even) as the carpenter drones began work on a hive nearby - a hive nestled into the cliffside itself and commanding an excellent view of the wilderness around them. An easily defensible bastion of solitude. While they waited on its construction, Lyn's lusus helped him learn to read - among other basic things - played with him, and gave him as good a start in life as any troll could have asked for. Lyn even began to develop the (somewhat ambitious) desire to become a survicerator - a member of the fleet's mysterious group of scouts, charged with reconnaissance and sabotage ahead of the main force of the troll armies...along with the all-important task of keeping themselves alive long enough to report back. Despite being a runt in a species all too ready to cull the weak, Lyn's future looked relatively bright.
Then everything went down the load gaper.
Alternia is a dangerous world by any standards, and Lyn's lusus always made sure to leave their cave first in the evenings to ensure the coast was clear. So it was that one night - before work on Lyn's hive was even half-finished - Lyn's lusus exited their cave, perhaps a bit less cautiously than usual, and was pounced on by a passing scalebeast before Lyn could lift a finger. A horrified Lyn retreated deep into his cave, not daring to leave it for days - and when hunger and thirst finally forced him out again, he was greeted by his own lusus' corpse and an unfinished hive, the carpenter droids having processed that Lyn was now no longer viable to survive to adulthood and thus not worth wasting further work on.
There wasn't much else for Lyn to do at this point but either accept his inevitable culling, or to try and scrape along as best he could. He opted for the latter - as much to honor his lusus' efforts to keep him alive as anything else. He carefully buried what remained of his lusus and began the extremely difficult task of getting by on his own. Necessity drove him to thievery - which was inadvertently made far more difficult by the fact that it was at least ten miles to the nearest troll city, and the commute required every time he needed anything. He quickly learned to grab anything and everything he could, because there was so little he could get and so much he might need. As there was nothing keeping him from living closer to the city for his own convenience, it might have been easier to move there...but his own fear of anything and everything, compounded by his desire to hold onto what memories of his lusus he could, kept him living alone in the cave they had started off in together, talking to his weaseldad's grave in lieu of having anyone else to converse with.
Without his psionic camouflage, it's doubtful that Lyn would have had any degree of success - either in hiding from culling or stealing from other trolls. But he managed to limp along at first, and he learned the basics quickly - never steal too much from one place, never take anything too obviously valuable, don't take more than you can carry, never do anything high-profile, always have an escape route. As he aged and learned, he became more successful, more able to strategize and plan, better able to pick good targets, more easily able to make the trek and more fit to get around. He began to build up stores, piles of things - all the more so once he acquired his modus. So long as he stole more in a day than he could consume, he was coming out ahead, and gradually he wound up having (packaged, of course) food supplies set by. He started being able to steal things he wanted, not just what he needed. He managed to get his hands on a husktop. As he became a more proficient thief, Lyn achieved a sort of affluence - at least as far as being an orphan street squeakbeast was concerned. He wasn't really living day to day anymore, which was enough of a life improvement to make him relatively content.
Lyn was forced to teach himself quite a few skills beyond basic stealth and thievery, of course; for one thing, he wound up becoming something of a self-taught mechanic, nursing along the increasingly outdated generator in his cave. He taught himself how to pick locks, how to climb and navigate the cliffs around his cave, how to use a sylladex and strife specibus, how to use the weapon his strife specibus allows him(which, in fact, he uses more often as a climbing aid than a weapon), and eventually how to use a husktop. This last was a critical skill, because it allowed him - for the first time in his life - to have direct contact with other trolls, not to mention putting information he'd never otherwise have had access to at his fingertips. Almost all of his exposure to troll culture came to him through that husktop, and it quickly became one of his most important possessions. He was able to read new books(he'd been something of a bookworm while his lusus was still alive, confined to their cave with little else to do), learn basic skills like simple math, watch movies, play games(a personal favorite), and visit online forums full of other trolls to talk to regarding his favorite games.
Imagine, if you will, a troll gaming forum.
Internet trolling was one of the first forms of socialization that Lyn was ever introduced to, and - like every other skill Lyn realized he needed to acquire in his life - he picked it up fast. He rapidly became one of the premiere fuckasses of any board he visited, having plenty of time between city runs to be as vocal and insulting as anyone. He didn't even have a lusus to feed; he could argue people hoarse all damn night if he felt like it. He made virtually no friends this way, and it taught him all the wrong things about getting along with other trolls(except, perhaps, if he's looking to inspire kismessitude), but it was still more than he'd ever had before.
Cue a few more sweeps passing, and Lyn first heard mention of a game called sGrub. It was going to be big, it was going to be popular, everyone was going to be playing it - Lyn decided he wanted in. He promptly went out and stole copies of the game - both server and client - and found someone on an sGrub forum who needed a partner to connect with. From there, he quickly (and entirely inadvertently) wound up in the Medium, in the Land of Cliffs and Concrete, confused as hell and left to the whims of some troll he barely knew.
Some uncertain coordination began to take place between Lyn and the other trolls in his game chain, and eventually Lyn received instructions to bring someone else into the game. He'd only just finished doing so - and was actually still very early into his own session - when he was ripped out of his and dumped into this new one.
Understandably, he has even less idea of what's going on now than he did before, and is getting kind of pissed about it.
Samples
Memo: CAT: ugh why is the c necessary
CAT: couldnt we just fucking leaVe it off and assume that if theres no P or F that its the current fucking moment that were talking in
CAT: but fine whateVer
CAT: trollian and its time bullshit is pretty much the lowest thing on the list of things i desperately need to Vent about right now
CAT: its a long goddamn list
CAT: so fucking strap yourselVes in
CAT: let me get my bitching glasses on
CAT: okay so
CAT: item fucking one
CAT: where the fuck am i right now
CAT: i was under the impression that i was stuck in my land of horrible and hoofbeastshit until i built up to my gate
CAT: but id barely eVen gotten Vertical yet and suddenly im here
CAT: in what appears to be the land of darkness and dickery
CAT: if this is what happens when you connect to a client player then i think i deserVed some fucking forewarning
CAT: and if its not then someone has some fucking explaining to do cause i didnt do shit to cause this then
CAT: so who is the fuckass whos responsible for hauling my nook here
CAT: lets call that question item two
CAT: item three
CAT: and this is fairly high fucking priority here
CAT: WHY ARE THERE CROWS
CAT: and why are they so FUCKING intent on separating me from my ocular spheres
CAT: item f
CAT: okay this thing is saying theres other memos open
CAT: how the fuck do i reach those i haVent been using trollian that long
CAT: is this i
CAT closed memo.
Action log:==> Be the angry troll.
There are a lot of angry trolls. Can you be more specific?
==> The really surly one who has no idea what's going on.
You are now LYNDIS NIVALI.
You're a PRETTY LAME TROLL who's also kind of a RUNT. Despite being low on the HEMOSPECTRUM, your psychic powers are PRETTY MUCH CRAP and are really only good for helping you HIDE LIKE A BITCH. Thus, you specialize mostly in HIDING and STEALING SHIT because your WEAKASS LUSUS DIED when you were still a little wriggler and you have to LOOK AFTER YOURSELF. If you weren't so good at hiding, you'd probably have been CULLED SWEEPS AGO.
You're kind of a FOUL-MOUTHED JACKASS, which totally hasn't been done before. You also TALK TOUGH A LOT, which is kind of like a PURRBEAST FLUFFING UP ITS FUR TO APPEAR LARGER in that it's all a bluff and honestly KIND OF PATHETIC. No one is allowed to call you LYNDIS because it's A PRETTY GIRLY NAME, so you make everyone call you LYN.
Your VARIETY OF INTERESTS mostly boil down to NOT DYING and stealing ALL THE THINGS. All of them. But you do enjoy CLIMBING and being GENERALLY ACROBATIC, and keep pretty up to date on TROLL POP CULTURE using a husktop you STOLE FROM SOMEBODY. You were also really into VIDEO GAMES, at least until recently. Certain events are making you RECONSIDER.
==> Reconsider being the angry troll.
Oh, it's too late now, fuckass. We're in this thing together. We're in it for the long fucking haul.
Besides, you have so much anger right now. You cannot possibly be anything but angry!
Well. You can be confused. Actually you're doing a really good job of that. But that's what's causing the anger. It's a cause-effect relationship, really.
==> Read the game manual.
That would be a great idea, if not for the fact that you took your sGrub discs out of their cases a long time ago, and the cases are back in your cave. Which is very clearly nowhere around here.
Besides, what kind of unbelievable loser reads game manuals? Here's a hint: not you.
Of course, even if you were some kind of huge tool, you doubt a game that destroyed your entire planet really had much in the way of detailed instructions. sGrub is clearly intent on kicking you in the bonebulge until you can taste your own shame globes, they're not going to hand you a fucking cup first.
==> Hoot like a featherbeast and try to fly.
Oh god, no. Not again. The memories still haven't faded. Poor Jorges was never the same after that. And his lusus...all he could do was watch.
...yeah, that was sarcasm. Well, except for the part where you're not fucking doing that at all. That part was legit as hell.
==> Be a complete fuckass.
You are way ahead of yourself here! Man, you have almost completely filled today's quota.
Player Contact: callistodementia@gmail.com/FyreflyzBlaze on AIM
Universe details: Lyn's session (known as Mindbent) is mostly the same as canon Alternia, though for the purposes of his session none of the canon characters or guardians existed in the same forms as in canon. (For instance, there is a First Guardian of Alternia, but it's not Scratch; there was a troll who started a lowblood rebellion, but it wasn't the Sufferer; there was/is an Imperial Condescension who issued an imperial decree that dictated the exile of adult trolls off-planet, but it's not Feferi's ancestor. This was done mostly to avoid any conflicts with canon/any situations where our characters or their ancestors could have come into contact with the canon characters - especially since Mindbent is heavily ancestor-themed.) Also, the exiles of their session are based on Clue as opposed to other games. (Examples: Madam Rouge, Senor Verde.)
Consorts and Imps: Lyn's consorts are troll-sized, surly cockroaches who hide in the dark cliff crevices and ruined structures of his land - anywhere there's darkness, of which there really isn't much. Lyn's land is practically an endless desert, with a grueling sun beating down on it that never sets. The quest of his land is to Bring The Night - to extinguish the brutal daylight his land is cursed with and usher in an endless night of cockroach partying. Needless to say, Lyn will need to go god tier before he can accomplish this, and was nowhere even close at the time he was pulled from his session. He hadn't even met any of his consorts yet.
Lyn's imps (of which he'd encountered all of perhaps two before pulled from his session) should have been completely unremarkable, as he had lost track of his kernelsprite before prototyping anything into it. Yet, for some reason, his imps tend to have cloaks, and one even demonstrated the ability to turn invisible...
Character name: Lyndis Nivali
Trollian/Pesterchum/other Handle: artfulTransgressor
Age: 8 sweeps (nearly 9)
Blood Color: Cream/khaki - essentially a very washed-out orange/brown color. In terms of the hemospectrum, he'd probably be considered on the same tier as Tavros or, at best, somewhere between him and Sollux. Code: #C3B091
Psychic/Magic/Other Abilities: As a lowblood, Lyn has the ability to psionically reflect light to camouflage himself (along with, occasionally, things that are nearby or that he's touching) for a brief period of time; the less he's concealing and the more he's concentrating, the longer he can make the camouflage last. This effectively allows him to render himself temporarily invisible.
Speech Quirk: lyn doesnt haVe much of a quirk really but what he does haVe is Very similar to that of daVe strider
basically he tends to type like hes in too much of a hurry or just cant be fucking bothered to use caps or punctuation or any distinctiVe quirks
which is a completely accurate assessment
he also swears pretty goddamn profusely and talks highly informally since hes a crass little thing
THOUGH HE OCCASIONALLY LAPSES INTO ANGRY ALL CAPS WHEN HES EXCEPTIONALLY PISSED because sometimes lowercase just doesnt haVe enough fucking emphasis
oh but he does tend to capitalize all his Vs to more closely match his symbol
and occasionally he will use punctuation but only when hes typing something that would just be prohibitiVely confusing without them
like who're is not a conjunction you want to skimp the punctuation on, it can change a whole fucking sentence
Fetch Modus: Lyn's fetch modus is the Klepto modus. Much like its user, the Klepto modus will automatically captchalogue anything he's within arm's reach of that isn't actively nailed to the floor - which often saves Lyn the trouble of having to manually snag and captchalogue something. However, it comes with a significant drawback when actually retrieving something from within the modus - all the items are sorted in chronological order of when they were captchalogued, and only the top card is accessible. This works on exactly the same principle as if Lyn were just tossing all his shit into a pile - he can only access things on the very top, and he has to dig down through everything in his modus to get at the stuff on the bottom. And since neither he nor his modus are terribly selective in what either grabs, there tends to be a lot of things in his modus pile.
As for the things he's brought with him, Lyn doesn't have much of significance. He has a ton of odds and ends - food and water, a pile of blankets(which he uses for bedding), a couple books, various other stolen knickknacks of no particular value - as well as his lockpicks, his husktop, and a headset computer he alchemized. He also captchalogued the bones of his lusus, at the mysterious instruction of his server troll(she'd probably intended to have him prototype them with his kernelsprite). He also, of course, has his strife specibus and the chain-flail within it.
Strife Specibus: Chainkind. Lyn uses a chain with weights on both ends, much like a flail in its use of weight, momentum, and reach(though the reach on his chain is extremely long compared to any traditional flail). This is pretty hard to describe in text, but I can provide an example of someone using a weapon very similar to what I've given him if necessary!
Sburb Title (and derived powers): Rogue of Dusk. Lyn has (or will have) the power to control shadows - to create darkness and/or give it form. Actually making solid shadows takes a great deal of power, though, and unless he goes god tier he probably won't be doing much of that except under desperate circumstances.
Derse or Prospit? Derse.
Preferred drop-in point: Land of Iron and Shrouds
Personality: The very first thing you need to know about Lyndis is to call him Lyn. He hates his full name; to him it sounds weak and girly(not that being associated with something 'girly' necessarily has as many negative connotations for a male troll on Alternia as it might on Earth, but he's overly sensitive to anything that might reflect poorly on him). How he wound up with a name he dislikes so much as something of a mystery. (We'll blame the text entry boxes.) But the fact is that, if Lyn has to instruct you to call him by his nickname, then a critical failure has already occurred along the line somewhere because you shouldn't know his full name to begin with.
Lyn has two major defining personality traits that, more often than not, are directly in conflict with each other. The first is that he is a perpetual coward. Having been orphaned early in life and forced to look out for himself - in terms of general survival as well as hiding from the culling most orphaned trolls have to look forward to - he's spent most of his sweeps hyper-aware of his own weakness and vulnerability, knowing he could be culled by almost any troll or imperial drone on a whim. As a lowblood with purely defensive psionic powers, and no possessions beyond what he can scavenge and steal - without even a proper hive, or a recuperacoon(and the blood-soaked racial dreams he has undoubtedly don't help his nerves) - he's all too conscious of his weak standing in troll society, and he even manages to undersell what abilities he does have as often as not in fits of fatalistic pessimism. As a result, he's developed a deep and unshakable paranoia, convinced (and not entirely incorrectly) that the world is, if not out to get him specifically - because that would imply he's important enough to give special notice - at the very least engineered to kill him. He's twitchy and neurotic, always looking over his shoulders, keeping his back to any convenient wall, and half-crouched in preparation to bolt at all times.
The other aspect of his personality - and constantly in conflict with his cowardice - is his pride. One of the things that sweeps of socializing on the internet taught Lyn is that talking big is sometimes all that matters. He quickly learned to be loud, egotistical, and talk himself up as a purely defensive measure, and to fiercely protect his inflated credibility. He rarely believes anything he brags about in regards to himself; he's merely invested in making other people believe he's stronger and better and more deserving of respect than he necessarily is, if only to keep them off his back. It's really the only self-defense he has aside from hiding. The conflicts come in when he has to defend his credibility in the face of risks that he'd never run for any other reason; sometimes it's a tug-of-war between preserving his credibility to keep greater dangers off his back, and deciding whether the cure is actually worse than the disease.
Whether you consider Lyn an insufferable prick or a pretty decent guy entirely depends on how well he knows you, and how much he likes you. To people he doesn't give a damn about - which is almost everyone - Lyn is cynical, pessimistic, sarcastic, paranoid, and preemptively defensive, looking out for himself first and the rest of the world coming in a distant second. He has a surprising capacity for loyalty - even altruism - if he actually becomes attached to someone else, but it's not easy to become close enough to him for him to ever be attached to you, or you to him. And he's not going to even begin to stick his neck out for a stranger unless he feels it serves his own purposes in some way.
Lyn doesn't bear any particular angst or resentment over the unpleasant circumstances in which he grew up; the way he sees it, that's just how life goes on Alternia. In fact, he takes some measure of pride in being able to live through circumstances that rightfully should have gotten him culled, and his ability to dodge even the drones. But that doesn't change the fact that he lost his lusus at an early age, or that he's had to watch his back all his life, knowing he could be killed at any time by anything. As such, he's developed a fear of death - not just his own death, but death as a very concept - practically to the point of phobia. Not only does he fear dying himself, he doesn't like it when anyone dies, from his closest friends to some of his worst enemies. This makes him a bit of a freak among trolls, who are understandably expected to be quite comfortable with the idea of culling. It might almost suggest compassion, if it wasn't entirely fueled by cowardice - but it does mean that, despite his short temper and constant tough talk, and regardless of how much he hates you, Lyn is very unlikely to kill you or anyone else. This might be considered a positive trait in other races, but for a troll it's a critical handicap.
Socially, Lyn's a bit strange. Having barely interacted with other trolls in person - only over chat clients like Trollian - he's not particularly experienced in how to handle any kind of genuine social situation. He never developed the habit of deferring to highbloods, or being polite to anyone in general, because it wasn't like anyone could get at him through his husktop...so he speaks his mind at all times, and objects to the very idea of changing his behavior as being an entitled demand. These habits persisted even after his session began, when he started talking to trolls within arm's reach, which was alternately (and incorrectly) interpreted as his either being brave or having a death wish. However, he has zero interest in any sort of strife that isn't purely verbal; though he didn't actually come to blows with any other trolls in his session(at least not by the time he was pulled from it into this one), he would have simply bolted if someone tried to aggress him physically. (And this strategy will follow him to the doomed session as well. Whoever said 'discretion is the better part of valor' was wasting valuable running time flapping their jaw.)
This isn't to say Lyn doesn't have a pleasant side. If people don't give him trouble, he can actually be quite agreeable, even friendly. He's surprisingly easygoing once you get past the prickly exterior, and very protective of the few people that matter to him - protective enough to actually tap into some reserves of bravery for their sake, if it's required. The only thing that makes him hard to get along with is the fact that he treats no one with any respect or consideration until they've actually done something to earn it from him.
Lyn's opinion on the hemospectrum are that no one has the inherent right to tell him who he should respect or how much he's worth. This is relatively unsurprising, as he's lived a very independent life far from other trolls who could bring the hemospectrum home to him in any way; as a result, he has no ingrained respect for hemospectrum or highbloods, and had enough distance and anonymity to be able to flaunt his disrespect without repercussions. He tends to think of all highbloods as prissy, self-righteous, entitled, bugfuck-crazy tightasses...though, since he's very rarely had anything whatsoever to do with highbloods, this is an opinion based largely on both posturing and word of mouth.
Also of interest are Lyn's opinions of trollmance and quadrants. They can be summed up in two words: fuck it. Lyn has understandably had no romantic prospects in his life, nor any education on the matter beyond what he's seen in troll pop culture, and as far as he's concerned, it all looks like a big, life-complicating waste of time. (And, as someone who's already spent most of his life hiding from the imperial drones, avoiding culling for not filling the filial pails is not much of a concern for him. To him, that's Tuesday.) He considers everything to do with trollmance stupid and, with all the maturity of a 3-sweep-old, has declared he will never get involved in that nonsense. This is only one of many topics where he acts as immature as a troll far younger than he is, but it's one of the worst and most visible. How long this mindset will hold out in the presence of other trolls is up for debate.
History: Lyn has always been something of a runt troll - remarkably small and weak for his size, inferior even when compared to others in his lowblood caste. That he made it through his trials alive was something of a miracle and, he privately believes, probably a fluke. But the fact is that he did make it through, and was thus picked up by a lusus. However, he suspects that natural selection was at work here as well, because he ended up with a lusus that matched him perfectly - small, weak, and entirely unimpressive, dwarfed by other lusii and Alternian fauna alike. Not that Lyn cared; his weasel lusus was quite loyal and protective, and highly playful, and they formed a strong bond almost immediately.
Lyn's lusus recognized quickly that his charge was vulnerable and would need quite a bit of time before he would come into any strength or skills with which to defend himself. Therefore, he made certain to take his charge out into the wilderness, miles away from any other trolls, intending to have their hive built in safe isolation. Lyn and his lusus holed up in a well-concealed cliffside cave (one with its own generator, even) as the carpenter drones began work on a hive nearby - a hive nestled into the cliffside itself and commanding an excellent view of the wilderness around them. An easily defensible bastion of solitude. While they waited on its construction, Lyn's lusus helped him learn to read - among other basic things - played with him, and gave him as good a start in life as any troll could have asked for. Lyn even began to develop the (somewhat ambitious) desire to become a survicerator - a member of the fleet's mysterious group of scouts, charged with reconnaissance and sabotage ahead of the main force of the troll armies...along with the all-important task of keeping themselves alive long enough to report back. Despite being a runt in a species all too ready to cull the weak, Lyn's future looked relatively bright.
Then everything went down the load gaper.
Alternia is a dangerous world by any standards, and Lyn's lusus always made sure to leave their cave first in the evenings to ensure the coast was clear. So it was that one night - before work on Lyn's hive was even half-finished - Lyn's lusus exited their cave, perhaps a bit less cautiously than usual, and was pounced on by a passing scalebeast before Lyn could lift a finger. A horrified Lyn retreated deep into his cave, not daring to leave it for days - and when hunger and thirst finally forced him out again, he was greeted by his own lusus' corpse and an unfinished hive, the carpenter droids having processed that Lyn was now no longer viable to survive to adulthood and thus not worth wasting further work on.
There wasn't much else for Lyn to do at this point but either accept his inevitable culling, or to try and scrape along as best he could. He opted for the latter - as much to honor his lusus' efforts to keep him alive as anything else. He carefully buried what remained of his lusus and began the extremely difficult task of getting by on his own. Necessity drove him to thievery - which was inadvertently made far more difficult by the fact that it was at least ten miles to the nearest troll city, and the commute required every time he needed anything. He quickly learned to grab anything and everything he could, because there was so little he could get and so much he might need. As there was nothing keeping him from living closer to the city for his own convenience, it might have been easier to move there...but his own fear of anything and everything, compounded by his desire to hold onto what memories of his lusus he could, kept him living alone in the cave they had started off in together, talking to his weaseldad's grave in lieu of having anyone else to converse with.
Without his psionic camouflage, it's doubtful that Lyn would have had any degree of success - either in hiding from culling or stealing from other trolls. But he managed to limp along at first, and he learned the basics quickly - never steal too much from one place, never take anything too obviously valuable, don't take more than you can carry, never do anything high-profile, always have an escape route. As he aged and learned, he became more successful, more able to strategize and plan, better able to pick good targets, more easily able to make the trek and more fit to get around. He began to build up stores, piles of things - all the more so once he acquired his modus. So long as he stole more in a day than he could consume, he was coming out ahead, and gradually he wound up having (packaged, of course) food supplies set by. He started being able to steal things he wanted, not just what he needed. He managed to get his hands on a husktop. As he became a more proficient thief, Lyn achieved a sort of affluence - at least as far as being an orphan street squeakbeast was concerned. He wasn't really living day to day anymore, which was enough of a life improvement to make him relatively content.
Lyn was forced to teach himself quite a few skills beyond basic stealth and thievery, of course; for one thing, he wound up becoming something of a self-taught mechanic, nursing along the increasingly outdated generator in his cave. He taught himself how to pick locks, how to climb and navigate the cliffs around his cave, how to use a sylladex and strife specibus, how to use the weapon his strife specibus allows him(which, in fact, he uses more often as a climbing aid than a weapon), and eventually how to use a husktop. This last was a critical skill, because it allowed him - for the first time in his life - to have direct contact with other trolls, not to mention putting information he'd never otherwise have had access to at his fingertips. Almost all of his exposure to troll culture came to him through that husktop, and it quickly became one of his most important possessions. He was able to read new books(he'd been something of a bookworm while his lusus was still alive, confined to their cave with little else to do), learn basic skills like simple math, watch movies, play games(a personal favorite), and visit online forums full of other trolls to talk to regarding his favorite games.
Imagine, if you will, a troll gaming forum.
Internet trolling was one of the first forms of socialization that Lyn was ever introduced to, and - like every other skill Lyn realized he needed to acquire in his life - he picked it up fast. He rapidly became one of the premiere fuckasses of any board he visited, having plenty of time between city runs to be as vocal and insulting as anyone. He didn't even have a lusus to feed; he could argue people hoarse all damn night if he felt like it. He made virtually no friends this way, and it taught him all the wrong things about getting along with other trolls(except, perhaps, if he's looking to inspire kismessitude), but it was still more than he'd ever had before.
Cue a few more sweeps passing, and Lyn first heard mention of a game called sGrub. It was going to be big, it was going to be popular, everyone was going to be playing it - Lyn decided he wanted in. He promptly went out and stole copies of the game - both server and client - and found someone on an sGrub forum who needed a partner to connect with. From there, he quickly (and entirely inadvertently) wound up in the Medium, in the Land of Cliffs and Concrete, confused as hell and left to the whims of some troll he barely knew.
Some uncertain coordination began to take place between Lyn and the other trolls in his game chain, and eventually Lyn received instructions to bring someone else into the game. He'd only just finished doing so - and was actually still very early into his own session - when he was ripped out of his and dumped into this new one.
Understandably, he has even less idea of what's going on now than he did before, and is getting kind of pissed about it.
Samples
Memo: CAT: ugh why is the c necessary
CAT: couldnt we just fucking leaVe it off and assume that if theres no P or F that its the current fucking moment that were talking in
CAT: but fine whateVer
CAT: trollian and its time bullshit is pretty much the lowest thing on the list of things i desperately need to Vent about right now
CAT: its a long goddamn list
CAT: so fucking strap yourselVes in
CAT: let me get my bitching glasses on
CAT: okay so
CAT: item fucking one
CAT: where the fuck am i right now
CAT: i was under the impression that i was stuck in my land of horrible and hoofbeastshit until i built up to my gate
CAT: but id barely eVen gotten Vertical yet and suddenly im here
CAT: in what appears to be the land of darkness and dickery
CAT: if this is what happens when you connect to a client player then i think i deserVed some fucking forewarning
CAT: and if its not then someone has some fucking explaining to do cause i didnt do shit to cause this then
CAT: so who is the fuckass whos responsible for hauling my nook here
CAT: lets call that question item two
CAT: item three
CAT: and this is fairly high fucking priority here
CAT: WHY ARE THERE CROWS
CAT: and why are they so FUCKING intent on separating me from my ocular spheres
CAT: item f
CAT: okay this thing is saying theres other memos open
CAT: how the fuck do i reach those i haVent been using trollian that long
CAT: is this i
CAT closed memo.
Action log:==> Be the angry troll.
There are a lot of angry trolls. Can you be more specific?
==> The really surly one who has no idea what's going on.
You are now LYNDIS NIVALI.
You're a PRETTY LAME TROLL who's also kind of a RUNT. Despite being low on the HEMOSPECTRUM, your psychic powers are PRETTY MUCH CRAP and are really only good for helping you HIDE LIKE A BITCH. Thus, you specialize mostly in HIDING and STEALING SHIT because your WEAKASS LUSUS DIED when you were still a little wriggler and you have to LOOK AFTER YOURSELF. If you weren't so good at hiding, you'd probably have been CULLED SWEEPS AGO.
You're kind of a FOUL-MOUTHED JACKASS, which totally hasn't been done before. You also TALK TOUGH A LOT, which is kind of like a PURRBEAST FLUFFING UP ITS FUR TO APPEAR LARGER in that it's all a bluff and honestly KIND OF PATHETIC. No one is allowed to call you LYNDIS because it's A PRETTY GIRLY NAME, so you make everyone call you LYN.
Your VARIETY OF INTERESTS mostly boil down to NOT DYING and stealing ALL THE THINGS. All of them. But you do enjoy CLIMBING and being GENERALLY ACROBATIC, and keep pretty up to date on TROLL POP CULTURE using a husktop you STOLE FROM SOMEBODY. You were also really into VIDEO GAMES, at least until recently. Certain events are making you RECONSIDER.
==> Reconsider being the angry troll.
Oh, it's too late now, fuckass. We're in this thing together. We're in it for the long fucking haul.
Besides, you have so much anger right now. You cannot possibly be anything but angry!
Well. You can be confused. Actually you're doing a really good job of that. But that's what's causing the anger. It's a cause-effect relationship, really.
==> Read the game manual.
That would be a great idea, if not for the fact that you took your sGrub discs out of their cases a long time ago, and the cases are back in your cave. Which is very clearly nowhere around here.
Besides, what kind of unbelievable loser reads game manuals? Here's a hint: not you.
Of course, even if you were some kind of huge tool, you doubt a game that destroyed your entire planet really had much in the way of detailed instructions. sGrub is clearly intent on kicking you in the bonebulge until you can taste your own shame globes, they're not going to hand you a fucking cup first.
==> Hoot like a featherbeast and try to fly.
Oh god, no. Not again. The memories still haven't faded. Poor Jorges was never the same after that. And his lusus...all he could do was watch.
...yeah, that was sarcasm. Well, except for the part where you're not fucking doing that at all. That part was legit as hell.
==> Be a complete fuckass.
You are way ahead of yourself here! Man, you have almost completely filled today's quota.