Mini-Grand Organization Thread

Name: Dan "Digger" Buller
Gender: Male
Font color: #33BBCC
Race: Shill
Weapons/Abilities: Digger's only weapon is a four foot long shovel. The shaft is thick and made of some sort of wood, although Digger's not really sure what kind. The digging end is metal, and although it's had its share of wear and tear it's still perfectly functional. The word "DIGGER" is engraved on the handle.

Description: Digger is humanoid, but it would be hard to mistake him for one. His skin is a bright teal, and he is completely hairless. He stands nearly seven feet tall and has long, stick-like limbs. His hands have seven similarly stick-like fingers, and his feet have seven stubby little toes. Despite his appearance, Digger is anything but weak; Shills are much stronger than they look. Digger's eyes are about an inch larger in diameter than a human's, and the black iris fills most of them. A tiny pupil lies in the middle of each, although it dilates and contracts as needed, giving him impressive night vision. He has flat discs on the sides of his head that serve as ears.

Biography:

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Spoiler

"Shill culture is heavy with superstitions regarding the afterlife, to the point where much of their daily lives are governed by them. Unlike most civilizations, most of these superstitions were not abandoned by the time they achieved faster-than-light space travel and joined the growing intergalactic community. Most Shills still lived in dirt huts at that time; the vast majority of Shills cared little about the discovery lauded as the most important one in their entire history by the few who did. Those few promptly took all of their families and blasted off into the brave new intergalactic world they'd discovered. They quickly found out that it wasn't as amazing as it had first appeared, and most of them went back home and returned to a quiet tribal life in shame, trying to forget that there was anything more than their peaceful little village.

Others, however, were eager to adjust to a new way of life...or had no other option. Shill spaceships are not known for their workmanship; there are, in fact, only four known working models at this point, and three of them are located in museums. The fourth belongs to Dan "Digger" Buller, a gravedigger living on the largely-human planet Polmer, and one of only a few hundred Shills who did not return to their homeworld. While it may seem odd that the spaceship has not been stolen, it should be noted that Shill spaceships are not even collector's items; a full tank of fuel for one is worth more than the ship itself."

-excerpt from the Narrapedia article on Shills

Digger hefted his shovel, surveying the shallow pit he had just finished digging. Unlike humans, who sweat when they're hot, Shills vent the excess heat directly out as steam; therefore, had you laid a hand on Digger's shoulder just then, you would have felt uncomfortably hot air coming off of him. Digger pulled out a low-tech walkie-talkie and hit the talk button. "Digger to chapel, come in."

A reply squawked back at him. "This is the chapel, Digger. Are you done with those graves?"

"Graves done. Anything else, or can I bed?"

"Nothing else, Digger. You may go to bed." The walkie-talkie clicked off and Digger grimaced. His English was still rather shaky, even after two years of work, and the chapel administrator was constantly correcting him in the hopes it would improve. There were only a few hundred Shills not living on the Shill homeworld, and their homeworld had been declared a no-fly zone, at the request of the Shill Science Chief, who was the closest thing to a planetary leader the Shills had available when they entered the intergalactic community. Because of this, there were no mainstream Shill translation programs, and the few privately created ones were only a step above useless anyway. Even with his disjointed sentences, his own English skills were still more reliable than one of them.

Digger strode off to his Shill spaceship that served as his home, in much the same way that a trailer van did for some humans. But not on Polmer, of course; the atmosphere wasn't lethal or anything dangerous like that, but it was much too thin, to the point that if a human stayed out in it for more than about half an hour they'd start to feel increasingly weak and dizzy. Happily, Shill lungs are good at compensating for atmospheric density (or in this case, a lack of it), which allowed Digger to take up odd jobs that were tricky or even impossible for the human colonists to do. Many of these duties were already filled by other aliens that needed work and had the necessary biological, or in some cases mechanical, equipment for it. Fortunately, Digger was able to find work as a gravedigger, a job no one else really wanted, and that was both important enough to need a dedicated worker for but not vital enough to sacrifice digging equipment for. Digger didn't earn much, but the concept of money was novel to him at the time, and he had no way of knowing that he was being paid much too little for his work. Not that he cared; as long as he had food and drink he was satisfied. He did entertain some romantic fantasies of somehow finding a female Shill from time to time, but those of course were free of charge. And in time, he had managed to discard most of his deeply ingrained superstitions about the dead.

Digger carefully pulled open the hatch to what everyone else called the "Shillship." He wasn't really sure what they meant by that, to be honest, not even after the chapel administrator had told him it was a "portmanteau," but he laughed along with everyone else because he didn't want to seem uncool, and didn't want to draw attention to the fact that he couldn't speak English very well, even though everyone in the colony already knew about it. The reason he lived in the Shill spaceship was because it was the living space most suited to a Shill occupant that could be found on the entire colony. Even if it was a terribly-designed spaceship, and even if lifting off in it was like flipping a coin with "LIVE" on one side and "DIE" on the other, it did make for more spacious living quarters than most of the other alien workers got. Racism against non-humans on a primarily human colony was very much a reality, although most of the colonists were used to them. Sadly, the most racist ones were the ones in charge, while most of the civilians and workers who mingled with aliens on a daily basis were on a first-name basis with many of them, or whatever was considered a first-name basis in the differing cultures.

Digger pulled the door hatch closed and dropped the shovel onto the table next to it, then tumbled into the cot on the floor of the ship, drawing the covers over his long figure. Because of the thin atmosphere, Polmer nights were cold, and the days weren't much better. Digger's spaceship had no heating, but one of the colonists, a dark-skinned merchant with graying hair, had been kind enough to sell him a space heater for a reduced price soon after he had gotten his job as a gravedigger. When Digger told him how much he was earning, he had tightened his lips, muttered something Digger still didn't understand, and had taken out a red marker and crossed off the last digit on the price tag. From that point on, the man - whose name was Dyson - had taken Digger under his wing, and made sure Digger consulted with him before spending his little pay on anything, a practice which had saved Digger from making some very bad purchases. Digger had been extremely upset a few months back when Dyson had died of a heart failure, and even moreso when he found himself digging a grave for him. He'd put a coin at the head of Dyson's grave, but it was stolen a few days later. He spent a fruitless day looking for the thief before giving up. Dyson's goods had gone to his daughter, back on Earth, who had decided to auction them off. Digger had picked up the shovel at that sale, deciding it was much nicer than the standard plastic-and-metal one he'd been given to do his job with, and spent a few days' worth of free time carefully carving the word "DIGGER," a nickname he had garnered, into the wooden handle with a sharp piece of metal he had found on the ship.

Digger was just drifting off to sleep when his walkie-talkie squawked at him. "Chapel to Digger, come in."

He rolled over with a groan and picked it up. "This is Digger, chapel. What up?"

"Got another order for you, Digger. Some guy just kicked it due to food poisoning. That's what they're calling it now if you eat alien food and it turns your digestive tract into jelly, apparently. Anyway, I know it's late and it's a rush order, but he's stinking up the place, and they're already setting up the service. Digger? Digger, you there? Darnit, Dan, you didn't just roll over and go back to sleep, did you?"

But Digger had vanished between the words "digestive" and "tract," leaving only a glowing space heater, a cot, and an increasingly annoyed man talking on a walkie-talkie, all inside a defunct spaceship found only in three other places in the universe.