Singularity application
Player Information ;
Your Nickname: Michi
OOC Journal: hajimari_desho
Under 18? Nope. 24.
Email/IM: pebbleintheocean@gmail.com
Characters Played at Singularity: None
Character Information ;
Name: Terezi Pyrope
Name of Canon: Homestuck
Other Game CR: A_Facility
Reference: Terezi's Homestuck Wiki, a handful of key points in Terezi's development with her canon cast: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Facility CR.
Canon Point: Canon time goes up to almost the end of Act five, just after she kills Vriska. Her A_facility time spans from Week 83 up to Week 134. (two weeks shy of a year)
Setting:
I. Alternia
a. Alternian Life:
Alternia is the troll homeworld and the raising ground for their young. It is inhabited by two notable species: the trolls and the lusus naturae. These two species form a co-dependent relationship with each particular pair of troll and lusus working out their own mutualistic balance. For the most part, the lusus provides the troll with care and protection, while the troll acts as a zookeeper of sorts. If the lusus should die while in the adolescent troll's care, the troll is typically slain as well. A lusus can have more than troll to watch over in its lifetime, but a troll cannot have more than one lusus.
One of the most important lusii to note is the mothergrub. This lusus provides the troll race with a means of reproducing. Genetic material is supplied to her by drones, who collect it in buckets from adolescent trolls once they reach sexual maturity. The material is then sloshed together in a giant incestuous slurry, and the outcome is most influence by genes from trolls who have strong bonds with each other.
Once the eggs have been laid and hatched, the grubs find a place in the underground breeding caverns to spin a cocoon. They reach the pupa stage and come out of the cocoons with proper limbs. At this point, the troll pupae must undergo a series of horrific and dangerous trials just to survive. If they are successful and a lusus with a matching blood color (Re: section involving the caste system) finds them and recognizes their scent, the pupa may exit from the caverns with the lusus and find a place to build a home. Carpenter drones are left on the surface of the planet to assist with this endeavor and will do all the necessary building, while the troll lays out directions for structure and design. It's at this point that the trolls are finally allowed to live their lives and use their time for their own interests--at least until the imperial drones come to collect genetic material.
Trolls are by and large a conquering species, so once a troll reaches adulthood, he or she is expected to join the vast space quest for Alternian glory. The only adult trolls living on Alternia are the jade-blooded trolls that take care of the mothergrub in the breeding caverns, so the rest of Alternia is left in the hands of the young. Everything about the culture is influenced by these adolescents and the wisdom that their lusii groom them with.
Within the fleet, there are various careers that a troll can pursue based on their specialties. Important to note here are the Legislacerators. This is Terezi's dream profession. They are a group of trolls dedicated to enforcing laws laid down by the Alternian ruler and bringing in criminals that have disobeyed those laws. In olden days, Legislacerators would act as bounty hunters by going after given criminal targets and bringing them back for judgment--dead or alive, however they could get a hold of them. In modern times, they act primarily as prosecutors, arguing their case before His Honorable Tyranny in a courtblock before being allowed to sentence and execute the criminal. Sometimes they are also involved in the suspect investigation itself, but primarily as an overseer and director.
b. Romance:
If a troll fails to provide the two required kinds of genetic material when the drones come to call, he or she is seen as being a weak link in the gene pool and is killed. Thus, adolescent romance is literally a life-or-death ordeal. It is also a lot more complicated than normal human romance, and is split into four distinct kinds of romance called quadrants.
These quadrants are separated on two grounds: positive versus negative and conciliatory versus concupiscent. The positive concupiscent relationship is represented by a red heart and considered the closest thing to human romance. A lover of this kind is called a matesprit. The negative concupiscent relationship, represented by a black spade, is a bond fostered in hate instead of love. A lover of this kind is called a kismesis. Genetic material from mating in these two quadrants make up the requirements the the imperial drones look for.
As for the other two quadrants, the positive conciliatory one is represented by a pink diamond, and the partner here is called a moirail. This is a more platonic kind of love where the two trolls compliment each other and keep either one from being a reckless danger to themselves or others. The negative conciliatory one is represented by a grey club, and the partner is called a auspistice. This quadrant is a little more complicated than the others and involves three people rather than two. The auspistice acts as a referee between a pair of trolls to ensure that their quarrels don't develop into full-blown hatred, which could lead to infidelity against their kismesis.
c. Blood colors/caste system:
Trolls are a peculiar species in that they have a variety of blood colors, and troll society is run by a caste system that revolves around that color. At the very top is the Troll Empress, a sea-dwelling troll with tyrian purple blood. From there, the caste descends through the other purple-blooded sea-dwellers, then through the land-dwelling trolls (blue to green to yellow) and finally ends at the very bottom with red. Each level reinforces its status by imposing its superiority on the colors below it, so even though the red- and yellow-blooded trolls often have psychic abilities, they are kept in oppression by the overwhelming subjugation from the upper classes.
Within each particular caste, there is a particular way of life that is often observed. Lower castes often live in simpler dwellings and have less impressive lusii, while the higher castes can fashion themselves castles to dwell in and typically have very fearsome lusii. Being on the lower cusp of blue-blooded aristocracy, teal bloods (like Terezi) will often have pleasantly-sized forest dwellings and lusii relating to trees, such as birds or koalas. Only two occasions have been noted where a tealblood has had a dragon for a lusus, which was seen by higherbloods to be a flagrant break in tradition.
d. FLARP:
One of the things that troll society developed is an interactive roleplay game (similar to our D&D) with holographic imagery and character stats that both reflect the player's abilities and impact the player's health. It is widely used across the planet, often as a means to hone fighting ability and collect wealth from other players. It is considered a deadly and cutthroat game, for good reason since many players can and do end up dead as a result--often in great numbers when up against one of the deadlier teams in the game. The Scourge Sisters, a team made up of Terezi Pyrope and Vriska Serket, were one such team.
II. SGRUB:
SGRUB (called by other names, depending on the society that uses it) is an interactive reality-warping game where the ultimate goal is to create a new universe. The game is disguised as a video game and operates under this disguise while the homeworld of the players is assaulted by meteors. The players must enter the game proper before meteors completely annihilate them.
The gameworld proper is a completely different realm called the Incipisphere, which exists outside the time and space of the players' world. Each new session of this game creates its own Incipisphere. At the center of this Inicipisphere is a large light blue planet called Skaia, which represents the creativity of the players and eventually becomes the final battlefield for the game. The area around Skaia and before the Veil is called the Medium. When a player enters the game, he is given a title and a planet specially tailored to him. The planet is placed in the Medium and linked to the other players' planets through gates that are reachable as the game progresses. Also located in the Medium and close to Skaia is the planet Prospit, the Light Kingdom. Prospitian work with the players to save Skaia in a war against the Dark Kingdom. Beyond the Medium is the Veil, a collection of asteroids containing laboratories where everything from the game NPCs, the monsters, and even the players themselves were created. Beyond the Veil is the planet Derse, the Dark Kingdom. Dersites are part of the enemy force that works to destroy Skaia and the universe that the players are trying to create.
During the course of the game, players work towards accessing higher gates by building up the towers above their houses. While doing this, they are assaulted by monsters created in the Veil and sent to challenge the players. As more players enter, the monsters upgrade and become more difficult. Upon reaching their final gate, the players are sent to a lair where their Denizen sleeps. The Denizen is the monster that presides over a player's planet and is generally the center-point of the created mythology. If the player chooses to talk to the Denizen, the player receives a choice. If they pick correctly, the Denizen will step aside and consider itself defeated. If those chose wrong, the Denizen will fight to kill them. Some players bypass this step completely by fighting the Denizen and not choosing to talk at all. Once the Denizen is defeated, the player ascends to Skaia to participate in the Final Battle against Derse's Ruler: The Black King.
Once the Black King is defeated and Skaia is saved, the players are then free to claim their reward: the newly created universe.
III. Facility:
There is a space station called Alpha Omega, financed and run by an unknown group of individuals called the Consortium. Subjects are brought to this space station by unknown means to participate in experimental procedures. The purpose of these procedures are also unknown to the inhabitants, but many speculate that they may be designed to break the subjects being experimented on. Subjects arrive with collars fitted around their necks, any existing powers limited, and no recollection of how they got there.
The experiments are overseen by an AI by the name of Val, after the previous group of anonymous doctors was killed for their lack of efficiency and results. Val shows a decent amount of interest in the subjects and while she performs her duties to the Consortium's satisfaction, she also entertains her own side-analysis of the subjects. Sometimes she strikes up conversations with them, most of which are for her own benefit of figuring out how the subjects think. On several occasions, subjects have positively interacted with their warden, and there have been implications made that she is not especially loyal to the Consortium. She does not fear them like the Doctors did.
There are two main locations available to the subjects at any point in time, 'affectionately' referred to as Facility 1 (or 2) and Facility 3.
a. F1/F2:
This is the typical location for the subjects. It consists of forty suites split between two floors. Each suite contains four rooms which can house either one or two people. There is a recreational room for activities, a biodome with trees and a fake sky, and two cafeterias (one for each floor). The rooms are all decorated with white walls, tile floor, and brushed metal furnishings. There are vending machines that dispense unappetizing food bars and water bottles. While most of the things in this location are destructible, the outside walls around it are not. In this location, subjects are limited to half of their power.
Facility 2 is a recreation of Facility 1, but the decorations are more pleasant and the activities are more varied. Subjects have noted that this location is only used when the experiment is unsuitable for a select group of people.
b. F3:
This location is a structural mystery to most of the population. It consists of a large (on the scale of miles) enclosure designed to look like a carbon copy of some other location. Every detail is fabricated so that even a previous resident of the location wouldn't be able to tell that it was fake. Subjects are given back both their weapons and their powers for the duration of the 'trip' and allowed to roam. Generally, the trips last for three weeks with the level of danger and trauma increasing over the duration of the trip.
c. The Experiments:
Experiments begin Sunday morning and conclude Saturday night. The period between experiments has been termed 'Reset', and at that point time is stopped for the subjects. All existence of the previous experiment is wiped away, and the new experiment is set into place. If the subjects are currently residing in F1, any damage located outside of the bedrooms is repaired. For the subjects, this seems to happen in the blink of an eye.
Death is a common theme, sometimes caused by the other residents, but usually caused by the experiment itself. When a subject dies, the body disappears after several minutes. After about a week or so, the subject then reappears with varying degrees of previous injuries, depending on how thorough the interns were feeling while stitching them up. The subject remembers nothing of the procedure from the moment of death until the moment of re-arrival back in the facility. They experience a week of 'rez-sickness' where the collar is gold and powers are limited completely while the subject recovers, then everything returns to normal.
Subjects have also been know to disappear from the facility for a short amount of time for seemingly no reason at all. The subjects are aware that when this happens, the absent person have been removed for more personalized experimentation. Sometimes the subject is returned, sometimes he isn't.
When subjects have run out of usefulness, they are terminated from the program. As far as the subjects know, this involves pulling them from the facility and incinerating the body. The ashes are then spread over the grass in the biodome, and the room number of the subject is added to the termination list.
An almost complete (but general) list of the experiments can be found here.
Personality:
If you had to use one word to describe Terezi Pyrope, that word would be 'justice'. Being the troll associated with Libra, Terezi has a strong sense of right and wrong. She believes in protecting the innocent and in persecuting the guilty, which has led her to take up the future career of being a Legislacerator. There is very little grey area in her world view. In most cases, Terezi will either consider a person responsible for their crimes and therefore worthy of prosecution (meaning death), or they are an innocent bystander and allowed to live.
These views set her apart from most other blue-blooded trolls in that Terezi is not quite as keen on oppressing those lower than her in the caste system. In fact, when it comes to the hemospectrum, she pretty much throws the whole thing out the window. For her, actions merit a person status, rather than blood color; and her relationships with the other trolls vary widely across the range of the hemospectrum. She is good friends with both high and low bloods, and there are quite a few higher-blooded trolls for whom she shows distaste and even open scorn.
However, despite the strictness that she attempts to hold herself to, Terezi is a compassionate person when it comes to her friends. She honestly and deeply cares about them and wants them to be safe, despite her rampant teasing and occasional open mockery of them. Terezi prides herself on being a good friend and will put herself through daunting hardships (like kissing a corpse, ew) in order to help out those she cares about.
This teasing and mockery isn't restricted to just friends, though. Terezi refers to herself as a joker and often engages in snarky banter with the other trolls. She can be both facetious and sarcastic at times, and employs a darker sense of humor with an air of flippancy, sometimes seemingly at a friend's expense. Terezi is the kind of person who would do something "just because it's funny", but never to the extent that it would severely injure another person. She doesn't really care if other people laugh along with her or not. If they can't laugh at themselves, it's their loss.
One of Terezi's favorite pastimes is playing games, especially roleplay ones. She spent quite a long time (I'd estimate at a sweep or so) playing FLARP with Vriska and becoming close friends with her before the 'accident'. She also made lasting friendships with Aradia and Tavros through their FLARP escapades. The enjoyment that Terezi got out of these FLARP sessions was also a means to practice her legislacerator duties, and she liked to envision herself as a vigilante of justice while she was orchestrating the demise of the wicked. After the accident that left her blind, Terezi would engage in rounds of courtblock roleplay with her scalemate plushies to the same effect.
One last notable thing about Terezi's personality is that she is very manipulative. She is an expert at discerning key motivations from someone's words and actions, and she uses this to guide their actions towards her own ends. Usually this involves subtle wordplay, reverse psychology, bluffing, or any other methods of subterfuge in her power. She can tailor her manipulations to fit her target, whichever she feels would work best.
Abilities, Weaknesses, and Power Limitation Suggestions:
It's important to note first and foremost that Terezi is blind. She's not capable of seeing anything. Instead, she was taught by her lusus to develop her own "sight" through a kind of synesthesia. Instead of directly seeing the colors around her, Terezi can smell, hear, and taste them. Thus, she "sees" the world in scent, sound, and flavor. Granted, this ability is nowhere near perfect. The image presented to her is blurry at best, like someone trying to paint a detailed picture with a sponge. However, her sense of taste paints a stronger picture than her sense of smell, so she is able to "see" better when she's capable of licking the object she's trying to observe. Otherwise, details are difficult for her to pick out.
Terezi's fetch modus (her means of storing items in hammerspace as per the norm of the series) is the Scratch N Sniff modus. She uses her troll caegar to scratch her sylladex, which gives her the scent of the object contained within. Her specibus (weapon allocation) is canekind, meaning that she is only proficient with using canes or canelike objects in fights.
As far as fighting ability goes, Terezi is fairly high on the echeladder. From her point in time, the trolls have completed their session and defeated their denizens. Together they also defeated the Black King and almost won their game. Suffice to say, she's no pushover in combat.
The only special ability that Terezi exhibits is the ability to see future outcomes. This isn't the same as just seeing the future, which implies that the future is linear and set in stone. Terezi is capable of seeing the results of choices to be made by both other people and herself, like seeing different diverging paths through a forest. She doesn't see whole scenes, but rather flashes and snippets of these future outcomes which can help her decide which choice to make. It can be assumed that these paths get harder to see, the further away from the present moment they are.
I prefer to assume that this ability is dampened or nonexistent in power-limited settings, mostly because of the difficulty in roleplaying precognition without either seeming godmod-y or having a bunch of permissions and planning.
Inventory:
Clothes on her back, sylladex, dragonwing jetpack, a white dragon cane-sword, a double-headed troll caegar
Appearance:
Terezi is an adolescent Alternian troll, and as such, she shares all the physical features of her race. Her complexion is a light shade of gray and her hair is black, worn down to her shoulders and curled outwards. Sharp teeth and horns are also typical of trolls, but Terezi's teeth are fairly nondescript: short and uniformly even. Her horns are also short and conical, deep orange at the base while fading to a yellow hue at the tips. She wears a pair of vivid red shades, which ironically enough match her eyes exactly. Her deep red, burnt-to-a-crisp eyes.
She has a feminine figure similar to humans, but the details of any sexual characteristics are still a mystery. As far as wardrobe is concerned, trolls have absolutely no concern for fashion. She wears a black T-shirt and black pants. Her T-shirt is plain except for the zodiac symbol of Libra written in teal on the front. Her shoes are the same delicious color of red as her glasses.
Entering the game, Terezi would also be wearing a metal collar from A_Facility closely fitted around her neck. The collar is seamless in design and houses a strong electrical current. If tampered with, the current gives a shock to the wearer strong enough to cause unconsciousness.
Also gathered from her time at A_Facility are some scars worth noting. During one particular experiment, her legs were badly burned, and she still has faint patches of lighter grey skin there. Also, there is a scar on the back of her neck in the shape of the Cancer symbol, which is usually hidden by her hair. Neither of them are visible when she's in her typical attire.
Age: Almost seven sweeps (between 14½ - 15 years)
OC/AU Justification ;
If AU, How is Your Version Different From Canon, and How Will That Come Across?
(Noting that I'm only covering personality changes here and not the extra CR that will obviously carry over. A list of names and general (good, neutral, bad) opinions can be found here.)
This version of Terezi has spent a year involuntarily taking part in a science experiment designed to emotionally break down its subjects. As such, there are a lot of dark and troubling things that she has been forced to endure which have had lasting effects on her personality.
For one, Terezi is a lot more mature at this point than she would have any right to be in canon. She has not only had people she loves die in front of her, but she has killed both enemies and friends--sometimes accidentally and sometimes for the greater good. She has dealt with loss and with heartache and most of all with the futility of having no control and no escape. This comes across in her attitude as being more 'worn down' and not being as prone to acting flippant or facetious about serious issues. She still has the capacity to act like a child and to enjoy games and fun and her darker sense of humor, but she's quicker to put those things aside when they are inappropriate.
This version of Terezi is also in the process of undergoing a shift in her ideology regarding justice. In canon, her justice is her driving force for a lot of the choices she makes, and this is still true after a year in Facility. However, her ideology has been subjected to influences from being around humans (and being canonswapped to having a 'human life' herself for one week, for which she still retains most of the fabricated memories), and she has quietly changed her mind about a few things. For one, she has realized that not all people who do bad things are inherently deceitful or malicious or criminal. Many of her friends and herself included have done things that she would classify as 'bad', and Terezi has done her best to justify these in her own mind. Sometimes these justifications hold water, sometimes they don't. Similarly, some of the people that she has considered irredeemable (most notably Vriska, but also others to a lesser degree) have turned their own attitudes around and proven that their crimes are not the be-all-end-all of their nature. Because of these instances the notions of 'redemption' and 'rehabilitation' have been taking shape in her mind for the past few months.
However, these are all confined to her thoughts and feelings. As far as her actions are concerned, Terezi still does many of the same things that she did when she first arrived in Facility. Because of the strict social norms of Alternia involving the ruthlessness of higher bloods, it is a very dangerous thing to be considered 'weak'. Terezi canonly throws caution to the winds when social norms are involved, but she does show hesitance in regard to not living up to legislacerator values. Because of her development in Facility, this has caused her to become caught up in a personal struggle between what she knows is expected of her and what she thinks is right. The more she tries to imitate her role model's personality--the cold, unfeeling professionalism that Redglare was known for, the more it conflicts with her new ideas and the more uncomfortable she becomes with her ultimate goal. When she can eventually reconcile her idea of what she should be and her idea of what she's comfortable with into one, this will result in a more lenient take on her legislacerator career, but she isn't at that point just yet.
To sum this up, this Terezi is older, more mature, and more open to understanding than what her original canonpoint would suggest. Her black and white world view has been smeared with shades of grey; and she is reaching the point in her life where she stops imitating, starts questioning, and begins forging her own path away from the marked trail that her ancestor laid down.
Samples ;
Log Sample: (Transition from the end of Facility's Zombie week to entering Sacrosanct.)
Just a little longer. Just a few more minutes.
Terezi wasn't sure when that had become her mantra. Somewhere between losing the last of her 'sight' and the pains increasing to steady aches and the ravenous hunger threatening to block out rational thought--somewhere between all that, she had started to count down the hours. When she had gotten down to one hour, that last hour of twenty-seven that she had to endure that day, she started counting down the minutes.
Being sick was torture. Unlike a normal illness, these symptoms came on strong and fast. Only a day ago she was healthy and strong, helping Karkat and Sollux wrangle the infected zombified subjects. Now she was lying on a couch, her body aching, her nose stuffed up, her mind delirious and confused with an alien desire to consume flesh. She couldn't see; she couldn't smell; she couldn't taste. Her whole world was reduced to sound and touch, and that didn't afford her many distractions.
Being sick was torture, but being sick and blind was hell.
A few more minutes. I can make it. Just a few more. Come on. It had to be over soon. She was doing her best to keep track of the time. Reset was coming any minute now, and as soon as the clock turned over, all of this would be gone. That was how it worked. That was how it always worked, and it wouldn't stop working that way just because she was scared. She wasn't going to be forced to hunt down her friends for food. They couldn't make her. Mind over matter was a powerful thing, and if there was one battle Terezi Pyrope knew how to win? It was a battle of the mind.
Just as she was beginning to doubt her assessment of time, Terezi felt it. A strange sensation in the pit of her stomach that didn't match the aches of her body slowly dying from the inside out. She had half a second for relief to hit her before she suddenly hit something else. She was tumbling across metal and ground, rolling to a stop, hissing in pain at newly acquired wounds, and wondering what the hell just happened here.
"Welcome to Sacrosanct. Please watch your step."
Terezi blinked out of habit and frowned in the direction the voice had come. It didn't take long for her to realize she wasn't where she was supposed to be--or rather where she expected to be. The zombie illness was gone, and without that blocking up her nose, she was free to take a sniff of her new surroundings. Most people might have freaked out at the sudden dislocation, but for someone who had lived on Alpha Omega for almost a year... this really wasn't anything new.
Network Sample: [TEXT FUNCTION]
SO WHO W4NTS TO M4K3 4 B3T W1TH M3???
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4ND 1SNT 1T 4 L1TTL3 34RLY TO B3 THROWN 1NTO 4NOTH3R B1Z4RRO F4K3Y F4K3 L4ND?
NOT TH4T 1M COMPL41N1NG!
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TH4T B31NG S41D
WHO 1S UP FOR 4 ROL3 CALL?
TH1S ON3 1S 4N 34SY ON3 SO DONT M3SS 1T UP
1F YOUR3 NOT D34D R41S3 YOUR H4ND
Your Nickname: Michi
OOC Journal: hajimari_desho
Under 18? Nope. 24.
Email/IM: pebbleintheocean@gmail.com
Characters Played at Singularity: None
Character Information ;
Name: Terezi Pyrope
Name of Canon: Homestuck
Other Game CR: A_Facility
Reference: Terezi's Homestuck Wiki, a handful of key points in Terezi's development with her canon cast: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Facility CR.
Canon Point: Canon time goes up to almost the end of Act five, just after she kills Vriska. Her A_facility time spans from Week 83 up to Week 134. (two weeks shy of a year)
Setting:
I. Alternia
a. Alternian Life:
Alternia is the troll homeworld and the raising ground for their young. It is inhabited by two notable species: the trolls and the lusus naturae. These two species form a co-dependent relationship with each particular pair of troll and lusus working out their own mutualistic balance. For the most part, the lusus provides the troll with care and protection, while the troll acts as a zookeeper of sorts. If the lusus should die while in the adolescent troll's care, the troll is typically slain as well. A lusus can have more than troll to watch over in its lifetime, but a troll cannot have more than one lusus.
One of the most important lusii to note is the mothergrub. This lusus provides the troll race with a means of reproducing. Genetic material is supplied to her by drones, who collect it in buckets from adolescent trolls once they reach sexual maturity. The material is then sloshed together in a giant incestuous slurry, and the outcome is most influence by genes from trolls who have strong bonds with each other.
Once the eggs have been laid and hatched, the grubs find a place in the underground breeding caverns to spin a cocoon. They reach the pupa stage and come out of the cocoons with proper limbs. At this point, the troll pupae must undergo a series of horrific and dangerous trials just to survive. If they are successful and a lusus with a matching blood color (Re: section involving the caste system) finds them and recognizes their scent, the pupa may exit from the caverns with the lusus and find a place to build a home. Carpenter drones are left on the surface of the planet to assist with this endeavor and will do all the necessary building, while the troll lays out directions for structure and design. It's at this point that the trolls are finally allowed to live their lives and use their time for their own interests--at least until the imperial drones come to collect genetic material.
Trolls are by and large a conquering species, so once a troll reaches adulthood, he or she is expected to join the vast space quest for Alternian glory. The only adult trolls living on Alternia are the jade-blooded trolls that take care of the mothergrub in the breeding caverns, so the rest of Alternia is left in the hands of the young. Everything about the culture is influenced by these adolescents and the wisdom that their lusii groom them with.
Within the fleet, there are various careers that a troll can pursue based on their specialties. Important to note here are the Legislacerators. This is Terezi's dream profession. They are a group of trolls dedicated to enforcing laws laid down by the Alternian ruler and bringing in criminals that have disobeyed those laws. In olden days, Legislacerators would act as bounty hunters by going after given criminal targets and bringing them back for judgment--dead or alive, however they could get a hold of them. In modern times, they act primarily as prosecutors, arguing their case before His Honorable Tyranny in a courtblock before being allowed to sentence and execute the criminal. Sometimes they are also involved in the suspect investigation itself, but primarily as an overseer and director.
b. Romance:
If a troll fails to provide the two required kinds of genetic material when the drones come to call, he or she is seen as being a weak link in the gene pool and is killed. Thus, adolescent romance is literally a life-or-death ordeal. It is also a lot more complicated than normal human romance, and is split into four distinct kinds of romance called quadrants.
These quadrants are separated on two grounds: positive versus negative and conciliatory versus concupiscent. The positive concupiscent relationship is represented by a red heart and considered the closest thing to human romance. A lover of this kind is called a matesprit. The negative concupiscent relationship, represented by a black spade, is a bond fostered in hate instead of love. A lover of this kind is called a kismesis. Genetic material from mating in these two quadrants make up the requirements the the imperial drones look for.
As for the other two quadrants, the positive conciliatory one is represented by a pink diamond, and the partner here is called a moirail. This is a more platonic kind of love where the two trolls compliment each other and keep either one from being a reckless danger to themselves or others. The negative conciliatory one is represented by a grey club, and the partner is called a auspistice. This quadrant is a little more complicated than the others and involves three people rather than two. The auspistice acts as a referee between a pair of trolls to ensure that their quarrels don't develop into full-blown hatred, which could lead to infidelity against their kismesis.
c. Blood colors/caste system:
Trolls are a peculiar species in that they have a variety of blood colors, and troll society is run by a caste system that revolves around that color. At the very top is the Troll Empress, a sea-dwelling troll with tyrian purple blood. From there, the caste descends through the other purple-blooded sea-dwellers, then through the land-dwelling trolls (blue to green to yellow) and finally ends at the very bottom with red. Each level reinforces its status by imposing its superiority on the colors below it, so even though the red- and yellow-blooded trolls often have psychic abilities, they are kept in oppression by the overwhelming subjugation from the upper classes.
Within each particular caste, there is a particular way of life that is often observed. Lower castes often live in simpler dwellings and have less impressive lusii, while the higher castes can fashion themselves castles to dwell in and typically have very fearsome lusii. Being on the lower cusp of blue-blooded aristocracy, teal bloods (like Terezi) will often have pleasantly-sized forest dwellings and lusii relating to trees, such as birds or koalas. Only two occasions have been noted where a tealblood has had a dragon for a lusus, which was seen by higherbloods to be a flagrant break in tradition.
d. FLARP:
One of the things that troll society developed is an interactive roleplay game (similar to our D&D) with holographic imagery and character stats that both reflect the player's abilities and impact the player's health. It is widely used across the planet, often as a means to hone fighting ability and collect wealth from other players. It is considered a deadly and cutthroat game, for good reason since many players can and do end up dead as a result--often in great numbers when up against one of the deadlier teams in the game. The Scourge Sisters, a team made up of Terezi Pyrope and Vriska Serket, were one such team.
II. SGRUB:
SGRUB (called by other names, depending on the society that uses it) is an interactive reality-warping game where the ultimate goal is to create a new universe. The game is disguised as a video game and operates under this disguise while the homeworld of the players is assaulted by meteors. The players must enter the game proper before meteors completely annihilate them.
The gameworld proper is a completely different realm called the Incipisphere, which exists outside the time and space of the players' world. Each new session of this game creates its own Incipisphere. At the center of this Inicipisphere is a large light blue planet called Skaia, which represents the creativity of the players and eventually becomes the final battlefield for the game. The area around Skaia and before the Veil is called the Medium. When a player enters the game, he is given a title and a planet specially tailored to him. The planet is placed in the Medium and linked to the other players' planets through gates that are reachable as the game progresses. Also located in the Medium and close to Skaia is the planet Prospit, the Light Kingdom. Prospitian work with the players to save Skaia in a war against the Dark Kingdom. Beyond the Medium is the Veil, a collection of asteroids containing laboratories where everything from the game NPCs, the monsters, and even the players themselves were created. Beyond the Veil is the planet Derse, the Dark Kingdom. Dersites are part of the enemy force that works to destroy Skaia and the universe that the players are trying to create.
During the course of the game, players work towards accessing higher gates by building up the towers above their houses. While doing this, they are assaulted by monsters created in the Veil and sent to challenge the players. As more players enter, the monsters upgrade and become more difficult. Upon reaching their final gate, the players are sent to a lair where their Denizen sleeps. The Denizen is the monster that presides over a player's planet and is generally the center-point of the created mythology. If the player chooses to talk to the Denizen, the player receives a choice. If they pick correctly, the Denizen will step aside and consider itself defeated. If those chose wrong, the Denizen will fight to kill them. Some players bypass this step completely by fighting the Denizen and not choosing to talk at all. Once the Denizen is defeated, the player ascends to Skaia to participate in the Final Battle against Derse's Ruler: The Black King.
Once the Black King is defeated and Skaia is saved, the players are then free to claim their reward: the newly created universe.
III. Facility:
There is a space station called Alpha Omega, financed and run by an unknown group of individuals called the Consortium. Subjects are brought to this space station by unknown means to participate in experimental procedures. The purpose of these procedures are also unknown to the inhabitants, but many speculate that they may be designed to break the subjects being experimented on. Subjects arrive with collars fitted around their necks, any existing powers limited, and no recollection of how they got there.
The experiments are overseen by an AI by the name of Val, after the previous group of anonymous doctors was killed for their lack of efficiency and results. Val shows a decent amount of interest in the subjects and while she performs her duties to the Consortium's satisfaction, she also entertains her own side-analysis of the subjects. Sometimes she strikes up conversations with them, most of which are for her own benefit of figuring out how the subjects think. On several occasions, subjects have positively interacted with their warden, and there have been implications made that she is not especially loyal to the Consortium. She does not fear them like the Doctors did.
There are two main locations available to the subjects at any point in time, 'affectionately' referred to as Facility 1 (or 2) and Facility 3.
a. F1/F2:
This is the typical location for the subjects. It consists of forty suites split between two floors. Each suite contains four rooms which can house either one or two people. There is a recreational room for activities, a biodome with trees and a fake sky, and two cafeterias (one for each floor). The rooms are all decorated with white walls, tile floor, and brushed metal furnishings. There are vending machines that dispense unappetizing food bars and water bottles. While most of the things in this location are destructible, the outside walls around it are not. In this location, subjects are limited to half of their power.
Facility 2 is a recreation of Facility 1, but the decorations are more pleasant and the activities are more varied. Subjects have noted that this location is only used when the experiment is unsuitable for a select group of people.
b. F3:
This location is a structural mystery to most of the population. It consists of a large (on the scale of miles) enclosure designed to look like a carbon copy of some other location. Every detail is fabricated so that even a previous resident of the location wouldn't be able to tell that it was fake. Subjects are given back both their weapons and their powers for the duration of the 'trip' and allowed to roam. Generally, the trips last for three weeks with the level of danger and trauma increasing over the duration of the trip.
c. The Experiments:
Experiments begin Sunday morning and conclude Saturday night. The period between experiments has been termed 'Reset', and at that point time is stopped for the subjects. All existence of the previous experiment is wiped away, and the new experiment is set into place. If the subjects are currently residing in F1, any damage located outside of the bedrooms is repaired. For the subjects, this seems to happen in the blink of an eye.
Death is a common theme, sometimes caused by the other residents, but usually caused by the experiment itself. When a subject dies, the body disappears after several minutes. After about a week or so, the subject then reappears with varying degrees of previous injuries, depending on how thorough the interns were feeling while stitching them up. The subject remembers nothing of the procedure from the moment of death until the moment of re-arrival back in the facility. They experience a week of 'rez-sickness' where the collar is gold and powers are limited completely while the subject recovers, then everything returns to normal.
Subjects have also been know to disappear from the facility for a short amount of time for seemingly no reason at all. The subjects are aware that when this happens, the absent person have been removed for more personalized experimentation. Sometimes the subject is returned, sometimes he isn't.
When subjects have run out of usefulness, they are terminated from the program. As far as the subjects know, this involves pulling them from the facility and incinerating the body. The ashes are then spread over the grass in the biodome, and the room number of the subject is added to the termination list.
An almost complete (but general) list of the experiments can be found here.
Personality:
If you had to use one word to describe Terezi Pyrope, that word would be 'justice'. Being the troll associated with Libra, Terezi has a strong sense of right and wrong. She believes in protecting the innocent and in persecuting the guilty, which has led her to take up the future career of being a Legislacerator. There is very little grey area in her world view. In most cases, Terezi will either consider a person responsible for their crimes and therefore worthy of prosecution (meaning death), or they are an innocent bystander and allowed to live.
These views set her apart from most other blue-blooded trolls in that Terezi is not quite as keen on oppressing those lower than her in the caste system. In fact, when it comes to the hemospectrum, she pretty much throws the whole thing out the window. For her, actions merit a person status, rather than blood color; and her relationships with the other trolls vary widely across the range of the hemospectrum. She is good friends with both high and low bloods, and there are quite a few higher-blooded trolls for whom she shows distaste and even open scorn.
However, despite the strictness that she attempts to hold herself to, Terezi is a compassionate person when it comes to her friends. She honestly and deeply cares about them and wants them to be safe, despite her rampant teasing and occasional open mockery of them. Terezi prides herself on being a good friend and will put herself through daunting hardships (like kissing a corpse, ew) in order to help out those she cares about.
This teasing and mockery isn't restricted to just friends, though. Terezi refers to herself as a joker and often engages in snarky banter with the other trolls. She can be both facetious and sarcastic at times, and employs a darker sense of humor with an air of flippancy, sometimes seemingly at a friend's expense. Terezi is the kind of person who would do something "just because it's funny", but never to the extent that it would severely injure another person. She doesn't really care if other people laugh along with her or not. If they can't laugh at themselves, it's their loss.
One of Terezi's favorite pastimes is playing games, especially roleplay ones. She spent quite a long time (I'd estimate at a sweep or so) playing FLARP with Vriska and becoming close friends with her before the 'accident'. She also made lasting friendships with Aradia and Tavros through their FLARP escapades. The enjoyment that Terezi got out of these FLARP sessions was also a means to practice her legislacerator duties, and she liked to envision herself as a vigilante of justice while she was orchestrating the demise of the wicked. After the accident that left her blind, Terezi would engage in rounds of courtblock roleplay with her scalemate plushies to the same effect.
One last notable thing about Terezi's personality is that she is very manipulative. She is an expert at discerning key motivations from someone's words and actions, and she uses this to guide their actions towards her own ends. Usually this involves subtle wordplay, reverse psychology, bluffing, or any other methods of subterfuge in her power. She can tailor her manipulations to fit her target, whichever she feels would work best.
Abilities, Weaknesses, and Power Limitation Suggestions:
It's important to note first and foremost that Terezi is blind. She's not capable of seeing anything. Instead, she was taught by her lusus to develop her own "sight" through a kind of synesthesia. Instead of directly seeing the colors around her, Terezi can smell, hear, and taste them. Thus, she "sees" the world in scent, sound, and flavor. Granted, this ability is nowhere near perfect. The image presented to her is blurry at best, like someone trying to paint a detailed picture with a sponge. However, her sense of taste paints a stronger picture than her sense of smell, so she is able to "see" better when she's capable of licking the object she's trying to observe. Otherwise, details are difficult for her to pick out.
Terezi's fetch modus (her means of storing items in hammerspace as per the norm of the series) is the Scratch N Sniff modus. She uses her troll caegar to scratch her sylladex, which gives her the scent of the object contained within. Her specibus (weapon allocation) is canekind, meaning that she is only proficient with using canes or canelike objects in fights.
As far as fighting ability goes, Terezi is fairly high on the echeladder. From her point in time, the trolls have completed their session and defeated their denizens. Together they also defeated the Black King and almost won their game. Suffice to say, she's no pushover in combat.
The only special ability that Terezi exhibits is the ability to see future outcomes. This isn't the same as just seeing the future, which implies that the future is linear and set in stone. Terezi is capable of seeing the results of choices to be made by both other people and herself, like seeing different diverging paths through a forest. She doesn't see whole scenes, but rather flashes and snippets of these future outcomes which can help her decide which choice to make. It can be assumed that these paths get harder to see, the further away from the present moment they are.
I prefer to assume that this ability is dampened or nonexistent in power-limited settings, mostly because of the difficulty in roleplaying precognition without either seeming godmod-y or having a bunch of permissions and planning.
Inventory:
Clothes on her back, sylladex, dragonwing jetpack, a white dragon cane-sword, a double-headed troll caegar
Appearance:
Terezi is an adolescent Alternian troll, and as such, she shares all the physical features of her race. Her complexion is a light shade of gray and her hair is black, worn down to her shoulders and curled outwards. Sharp teeth and horns are also typical of trolls, but Terezi's teeth are fairly nondescript: short and uniformly even. Her horns are also short and conical, deep orange at the base while fading to a yellow hue at the tips. She wears a pair of vivid red shades, which ironically enough match her eyes exactly. Her deep red, burnt-to-a-crisp eyes.
She has a feminine figure similar to humans, but the details of any sexual characteristics are still a mystery. As far as wardrobe is concerned, trolls have absolutely no concern for fashion. She wears a black T-shirt and black pants. Her T-shirt is plain except for the zodiac symbol of Libra written in teal on the front. Her shoes are the same delicious color of red as her glasses.
Entering the game, Terezi would also be wearing a metal collar from A_Facility closely fitted around her neck. The collar is seamless in design and houses a strong electrical current. If tampered with, the current gives a shock to the wearer strong enough to cause unconsciousness.
Also gathered from her time at A_Facility are some scars worth noting. During one particular experiment, her legs were badly burned, and she still has faint patches of lighter grey skin there. Also, there is a scar on the back of her neck in the shape of the Cancer symbol, which is usually hidden by her hair. Neither of them are visible when she's in her typical attire.
Age: Almost seven sweeps (between 14½ - 15 years)
OC/AU Justification ;
If AU, How is Your Version Different From Canon, and How Will That Come Across?
(Noting that I'm only covering personality changes here and not the extra CR that will obviously carry over. A list of names and general (good, neutral, bad) opinions can be found here.)
This version of Terezi has spent a year involuntarily taking part in a science experiment designed to emotionally break down its subjects. As such, there are a lot of dark and troubling things that she has been forced to endure which have had lasting effects on her personality.
For one, Terezi is a lot more mature at this point than she would have any right to be in canon. She has not only had people she loves die in front of her, but she has killed both enemies and friends--sometimes accidentally and sometimes for the greater good. She has dealt with loss and with heartache and most of all with the futility of having no control and no escape. This comes across in her attitude as being more 'worn down' and not being as prone to acting flippant or facetious about serious issues. She still has the capacity to act like a child and to enjoy games and fun and her darker sense of humor, but she's quicker to put those things aside when they are inappropriate.
This version of Terezi is also in the process of undergoing a shift in her ideology regarding justice. In canon, her justice is her driving force for a lot of the choices she makes, and this is still true after a year in Facility. However, her ideology has been subjected to influences from being around humans (and being canonswapped to having a 'human life' herself for one week, for which she still retains most of the fabricated memories), and she has quietly changed her mind about a few things. For one, she has realized that not all people who do bad things are inherently deceitful or malicious or criminal. Many of her friends and herself included have done things that she would classify as 'bad', and Terezi has done her best to justify these in her own mind. Sometimes these justifications hold water, sometimes they don't. Similarly, some of the people that she has considered irredeemable (most notably Vriska, but also others to a lesser degree) have turned their own attitudes around and proven that their crimes are not the be-all-end-all of their nature. Because of these instances the notions of 'redemption' and 'rehabilitation' have been taking shape in her mind for the past few months.
However, these are all confined to her thoughts and feelings. As far as her actions are concerned, Terezi still does many of the same things that she did when she first arrived in Facility. Because of the strict social norms of Alternia involving the ruthlessness of higher bloods, it is a very dangerous thing to be considered 'weak'. Terezi canonly throws caution to the winds when social norms are involved, but she does show hesitance in regard to not living up to legislacerator values. Because of her development in Facility, this has caused her to become caught up in a personal struggle between what she knows is expected of her and what she thinks is right. The more she tries to imitate her role model's personality--the cold, unfeeling professionalism that Redglare was known for, the more it conflicts with her new ideas and the more uncomfortable she becomes with her ultimate goal. When she can eventually reconcile her idea of what she should be and her idea of what she's comfortable with into one, this will result in a more lenient take on her legislacerator career, but she isn't at that point just yet.
To sum this up, this Terezi is older, more mature, and more open to understanding than what her original canonpoint would suggest. Her black and white world view has been smeared with shades of grey; and she is reaching the point in her life where she stops imitating, starts questioning, and begins forging her own path away from the marked trail that her ancestor laid down.
Samples ;
Log Sample: (Transition from the end of Facility's Zombie week to entering Sacrosanct.)
Just a little longer. Just a few more minutes.
Terezi wasn't sure when that had become her mantra. Somewhere between losing the last of her 'sight' and the pains increasing to steady aches and the ravenous hunger threatening to block out rational thought--somewhere between all that, she had started to count down the hours. When she had gotten down to one hour, that last hour of twenty-seven that she had to endure that day, she started counting down the minutes.
Being sick was torture. Unlike a normal illness, these symptoms came on strong and fast. Only a day ago she was healthy and strong, helping Karkat and Sollux wrangle the infected zombified subjects. Now she was lying on a couch, her body aching, her nose stuffed up, her mind delirious and confused with an alien desire to consume flesh. She couldn't see; she couldn't smell; she couldn't taste. Her whole world was reduced to sound and touch, and that didn't afford her many distractions.
Being sick was torture, but being sick and blind was hell.
A few more minutes. I can make it. Just a few more. Come on. It had to be over soon. She was doing her best to keep track of the time. Reset was coming any minute now, and as soon as the clock turned over, all of this would be gone. That was how it worked. That was how it always worked, and it wouldn't stop working that way just because she was scared. She wasn't going to be forced to hunt down her friends for food. They couldn't make her. Mind over matter was a powerful thing, and if there was one battle Terezi Pyrope knew how to win? It was a battle of the mind.
Just as she was beginning to doubt her assessment of time, Terezi felt it. A strange sensation in the pit of her stomach that didn't match the aches of her body slowly dying from the inside out. She had half a second for relief to hit her before she suddenly hit something else. She was tumbling across metal and ground, rolling to a stop, hissing in pain at newly acquired wounds, and wondering what the hell just happened here.
"Welcome to Sacrosanct. Please watch your step."
Terezi blinked out of habit and frowned in the direction the voice had come. It didn't take long for her to realize she wasn't where she was supposed to be--or rather where she expected to be. The zombie illness was gone, and without that blocking up her nose, she was free to take a sniff of her new surroundings. Most people might have freaked out at the sudden dislocation, but for someone who had lived on Alpha Omega for almost a year... this really wasn't anything new.
Network Sample: [TEXT FUNCTION]
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NOT TH4T 1M COMPL41N1NG!
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TH4T B31NG S41D
WHO 1S UP FOR 4 ROL3 CALL?
TH1S ON3 1S 4N 34SY ON3 SO DONT M3SS 1T UP
1F YOUR3 NOT D34D R41S3 YOUR H4ND