RE: The Sleeping Orange (Signups Open!)
02-05-2013, 02:47 AM
Name: Aenanwellwyn Alianorwynaan-Wyrnaanglyth
Race: Elf
The elves of Glaerneth Rindellonna are said to live much closer to nature than any of the other mortal races. Indeed, their legends say that after Mazgek Dz’Dun carved his dwarves from stone, and Megolus shaped his men from clay, and Titania wove her fey from clouds, and Fythoggr wrought his giants from ice, and K-bz-K-Dk forged its kobolds from magma, Tyrwyllenelsin saw that nothing she could craft could ever hope to match the beauty the fertile earth made itself, and so she breathed a shred of her spirit into a willow tree and called it Elf.
While the other races may not believe the elfin legends, they would certainly find it hard to deny the ancestral resemblance those legends claim: elves are tall, long-lived, and tranquil, their limbs unnaturally thin and flexible and their bark-color skin fading into the forest when they will it. Indeed, they deviate so much from the other comparatively-stocky races that they would likely be considered unsettling or even repulsive were it not for their glamer: mortal magic is unknown in Glaerneth Rindellonna and so the glamer is as mundane as the elves themselves; elves simply unconsciously exude a cocktail of scents and pheromones that alters the perceptions of any near them. The glamer changes with their mood, so while their influence mostly makes them seem appealing or pleasant, it makes a furious elf a truly terrifying thing to behold. Only the rocky, literal dwarves are immune, and remain greatly distrustful of a people that lies by its very presence.
Lastly, while there is no literal truth to the widely-held (among the other races, at least) belief that elves can talk to plants, they are certainly blessed with a great empathy for all things that grow. While no plant has the capability to speak or the complexity to have anything to say, an elf can intuitively tell how healthy and happy it is, and the most perceptive can even piece together a bit of its history. The greatest of trackers are all of elven stock; no amount of stealth and care will make grass forget it’s been trodden on or a shrub not notice its branches bent, and a cunning leaftender will never miss the signs.
Gender: Male
Color: A nourishing shade of decay
Biography: Elwyenlanden shivered involuntarily as she shouldered the door open, reminding herself it was just the chill and damp of the basement that caused her shudder. Not anything else, not anything about the mycologist that practically lived in it. As she waited for her eyes to adjust to the pale, greenish light that floated down from the stringy mold colonies on the ceiling, she reflected that she was very lucky to have a master as undemanding as he. And as kind. And progressive, too. Long gone were the days when it was considered blasphemous to study nature too closely, so a naturalist was a perfectly fine profession to be, and there should be no shame being associated with one. And even though most elves chose to share their empathy with and find their focus in slightly greener and less squishy things, mushrooms and mildew were just as worthy of veneration as the most majestic oaks and noble reeds. It was the same litany she repeated every time she brought her master his meals and on those rare occasions she encountered him outside his workshops. It never got any easier to believe it. She took a deep breath, careful to focus on the scents of her cooking rather than the smell of rot and slime that was palpable in the air, and began cautiously sidling across the slick loam.
She found him near the rear of the chamber bent over a raised box, a globular and luminescent fruiting body of some carefully-bred morel perched on his shoulder. Clustered at his fingertips were a number of little somethings, presumably one of his much-beloved mushroom projects. They were frilly and, as near as she could tell in the fungal glow, orange. He turned and straightened as he heard her approach, then smiled.
“Ah, child. You have brought me a meal. Good, yes, many thanks. Your timing is excellent, as always.”
She proffered the plate, and he gleefully popped a handful of wine-and-honey-soaked grains into his mouth. Chewing noisily, he watching her with the unsettling cheer he always seemed to carry, obviously waiting for her to ask something. As usual, she obliged; it didn’t do to displease one’s master, even if this one didn’t seem capable of displeasure.
“What are those.” It didn’t sound like a question and it betrayed no hint of actual interest, but the words were there and that was enough.
“Ah, these! These are the latest generation in one of my most engaging studies.”
He beckoned her closer and she bent in to look at the apparently-engaging fungi. They were frilly. They were indeed orange. There didn’t seem to be much else to them. She never could tell what–
Before she could follow that thought to its conclusion, he reached out a spidery finger and delicately thumped a cap. The little orange mushroom began vibrating slightly and a wavering note rang out; it sustained for several seconds before going flat and fading.
“I call them… cantorelles!”
She considered this for a few moments. “Because they sing. I see. That’s very clever.”
It had sounded like a dwarf with a head cold.
“I thought so, I thought so.”
The comparison became even more apt when he plucked several stipes at once and a chord rang out in not-quite-harmony. She tried not to grimace.
“It all started when I noticed that the ridges of certain species are morphologically fairly similar to the sound-producing structures of some creatures and even some instruments,” he said, inverting a still-silent cap and pointing to the fluted ridges underneath. “And I thought, well, some species already have simple motor functions, and what’s simpler than vibrating? All it took is the right system of crossbreeding and encouragement, and here we are.”
He grimaced briefly. “Of course, it took several generations to dial in ‘motor functions’ from ‘explode’ to ‘vibrate’. But they composted well.”
He obviously wasn’t finished, but it was also obvious that he expected prompting. “So, that’s the end of this project then?”
“Haha! No, not even close, not really. No, I think I should be able to breed them to fruit in scales or proper chords instead of randomly. And maybe by fine-tuning their shape I can get different “instruments”, too. Why, in a few months, I bet I could have whole little symphonies of cantorelles!”
Months ahead of her of dwarfsong and exploding notes and probably him trying to arrange her namesong for mold and mildew out of some misguided show of kindness. Fantastic. Still, at least it wouldn’t be as bad as when those damned humans had put ideas in his head of things with acid and things that bit. Probably.
He’d turned back to his boxes, picking and poking and taking notes, apparently oblivious to any signs she showed of her musings; Elwyenlanden took this as her cue to leave. She’d fetch the plate later, once he’d finished with it and hopefully once he’d wandered off to one of the other workshops so she wouldn’t get another demonstration. She was halfway to the door, mind already off her master and planning the rest of her free evening, when she heard the bang. It wasn’t quite an explosion, and it certainly wasn’t the clatter of something heavy being dropped. She doubted it was just one of his ill-bred cantorelles going off; it was more like a tiny thunderclap.
“Master?”
Quite a lot like a small thunderclap, actually.
“Are you alright?”
Like the sound, for instance, of air rushing in where there had once been something the size of, for instance, an adult elf.
“Aenanwellwyn?”
There was no sign of him.
Weapons and Abilities: Aenanwellwyn’s deep empathy with funguskind has combined with his idiosyncratically-scientific curiosity and talent for breeding and cultivation to produce a staggering variety of variably-whimsical new mushrooms, molds, and mildews. Most of these aren’t weaponizable per se, and the ones that are were generally accidental. Those that are dangerous are largely relegated to small samples in his less-used workshops, so it’s not as though he has them on him now. Still, it’s a dangerous world out there, so for those occasions when he has to go into the wilderness to collect new samples, he keeps a handful of his less-unpredictable mistakes on his person; chief among these are puffball “grenades” with spores that range from choking to hallucinogenic to toxic.
Additionally, the various species he plays host to have, part by chance and part by design, entered into a largely-symbiotic relationship with his immune system; cuts and scrapes tend to crust over in minutes and heal in hours instead of days, while larger injuries mend themselves the best they can. He is also remarkably resistant to poison and disease, largely because any newcomer infection is quickly muscled out by the huge variety of frankly parasitic infestations that have already settled in.
While he is a remarkably talented naturalist and grower, there is nothing supernatural about his abilities. He can induce fungal growth in just about any sufficiently-nutritious substrate and shows preternatural awareness of airborne spores, but he cannot make things grow any faster or bigger than can be achieved through breeding and he commands no special control over his creations.
Description: Like most elves, Aenanwellwyn is more likely to introduce himself by his job than by his given name; humans tend to joke that this is because elven names are so bloated that even elves get tired of their flowery and impractical language, but in truth it’s simply because use of a name implies closeness and trust. As such, he tends to think of himself as Mycologist. Most others would probably guess as much, if they didn’t first guess Beggar or Composter or Shambling Horror.
He is, in a word, disgusting. His flowing elven locks are matted with mycelia and sprout intermittently with fragrant, rot-sweet mushrooms. What skin isn’t covered by his linen-and-leather protective garments is slick and occasionally pulsates; the fact that he’s carrying his workshop-lamp on his shoulder, giving him a corpselight-green cast, certainly doesn’t help. Even his glamer is enough only to calm the revulsion in most observers; no amount of elfscent can make Mycologist attractive to anything but flies and slugs.
Behind the moldering façade would be an otherwise fairly-ordinary elf. He’s about nine feet tall but wouldn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds stripped of his garments and specimens; he is composed entirely of angles and spindles and china-delicate bones, and his face seems to be built backwards from the nose. Only his eyes are unmarred by his passions and experiments, and they still glitter with a bright emerald green. It’s quite incongruous with the yellows and browns and general unpleasantness of the rest of him.
Mycologist is cheerful and inquisitive to a fault; he has long since cast off any interest in what other people think of him, but still has what would be considered a pleasant personality if he were less monomaniacal. Nothing drives him more than to create and discover and study new things in the small world of fungus; his life has for decades revolved around little else. He is also a bit of a homebody: there have been a few occasions where he ventured out past the forests and caves he grew up near, and even a few times he attached himself to an adventurers’ party in pursuit of some legendary strain of fungus or other, but for the most part he prefers to stay in and stick to what he knows. Despite his age, he is still rather naïve and frankly a bit clueless outside his sphere of experience.
Race: Elf
The elves of Glaerneth Rindellonna are said to live much closer to nature than any of the other mortal races. Indeed, their legends say that after Mazgek Dz’Dun carved his dwarves from stone, and Megolus shaped his men from clay, and Titania wove her fey from clouds, and Fythoggr wrought his giants from ice, and K-bz-K-Dk forged its kobolds from magma, Tyrwyllenelsin saw that nothing she could craft could ever hope to match the beauty the fertile earth made itself, and so she breathed a shred of her spirit into a willow tree and called it Elf.
While the other races may not believe the elfin legends, they would certainly find it hard to deny the ancestral resemblance those legends claim: elves are tall, long-lived, and tranquil, their limbs unnaturally thin and flexible and their bark-color skin fading into the forest when they will it. Indeed, they deviate so much from the other comparatively-stocky races that they would likely be considered unsettling or even repulsive were it not for their glamer: mortal magic is unknown in Glaerneth Rindellonna and so the glamer is as mundane as the elves themselves; elves simply unconsciously exude a cocktail of scents and pheromones that alters the perceptions of any near them. The glamer changes with their mood, so while their influence mostly makes them seem appealing or pleasant, it makes a furious elf a truly terrifying thing to behold. Only the rocky, literal dwarves are immune, and remain greatly distrustful of a people that lies by its very presence.
Lastly, while there is no literal truth to the widely-held (among the other races, at least) belief that elves can talk to plants, they are certainly blessed with a great empathy for all things that grow. While no plant has the capability to speak or the complexity to have anything to say, an elf can intuitively tell how healthy and happy it is, and the most perceptive can even piece together a bit of its history. The greatest of trackers are all of elven stock; no amount of stealth and care will make grass forget it’s been trodden on or a shrub not notice its branches bent, and a cunning leaftender will never miss the signs.
Gender: Male
Color: A nourishing shade of decay
Biography: Elwyenlanden shivered involuntarily as she shouldered the door open, reminding herself it was just the chill and damp of the basement that caused her shudder. Not anything else, not anything about the mycologist that practically lived in it. As she waited for her eyes to adjust to the pale, greenish light that floated down from the stringy mold colonies on the ceiling, she reflected that she was very lucky to have a master as undemanding as he. And as kind. And progressive, too. Long gone were the days when it was considered blasphemous to study nature too closely, so a naturalist was a perfectly fine profession to be, and there should be no shame being associated with one. And even though most elves chose to share their empathy with and find their focus in slightly greener and less squishy things, mushrooms and mildew were just as worthy of veneration as the most majestic oaks and noble reeds. It was the same litany she repeated every time she brought her master his meals and on those rare occasions she encountered him outside his workshops. It never got any easier to believe it. She took a deep breath, careful to focus on the scents of her cooking rather than the smell of rot and slime that was palpable in the air, and began cautiously sidling across the slick loam.
She found him near the rear of the chamber bent over a raised box, a globular and luminescent fruiting body of some carefully-bred morel perched on his shoulder. Clustered at his fingertips were a number of little somethings, presumably one of his much-beloved mushroom projects. They were frilly and, as near as she could tell in the fungal glow, orange. He turned and straightened as he heard her approach, then smiled.
“Ah, child. You have brought me a meal. Good, yes, many thanks. Your timing is excellent, as always.”
She proffered the plate, and he gleefully popped a handful of wine-and-honey-soaked grains into his mouth. Chewing noisily, he watching her with the unsettling cheer he always seemed to carry, obviously waiting for her to ask something. As usual, she obliged; it didn’t do to displease one’s master, even if this one didn’t seem capable of displeasure.
“What are those.” It didn’t sound like a question and it betrayed no hint of actual interest, but the words were there and that was enough.
“Ah, these! These are the latest generation in one of my most engaging studies.”
He beckoned her closer and she bent in to look at the apparently-engaging fungi. They were frilly. They were indeed orange. There didn’t seem to be much else to them. She never could tell what–
Before she could follow that thought to its conclusion, he reached out a spidery finger and delicately thumped a cap. The little orange mushroom began vibrating slightly and a wavering note rang out; it sustained for several seconds before going flat and fading.
“I call them… cantorelles!”
She considered this for a few moments. “Because they sing. I see. That’s very clever.”
It had sounded like a dwarf with a head cold.
“I thought so, I thought so.”
The comparison became even more apt when he plucked several stipes at once and a chord rang out in not-quite-harmony. She tried not to grimace.
“It all started when I noticed that the ridges of certain species are morphologically fairly similar to the sound-producing structures of some creatures and even some instruments,” he said, inverting a still-silent cap and pointing to the fluted ridges underneath. “And I thought, well, some species already have simple motor functions, and what’s simpler than vibrating? All it took is the right system of crossbreeding and encouragement, and here we are.”
He grimaced briefly. “Of course, it took several generations to dial in ‘motor functions’ from ‘explode’ to ‘vibrate’. But they composted well.”
He obviously wasn’t finished, but it was also obvious that he expected prompting. “So, that’s the end of this project then?”
“Haha! No, not even close, not really. No, I think I should be able to breed them to fruit in scales or proper chords instead of randomly. And maybe by fine-tuning their shape I can get different “instruments”, too. Why, in a few months, I bet I could have whole little symphonies of cantorelles!”
Months ahead of her of dwarfsong and exploding notes and probably him trying to arrange her namesong for mold and mildew out of some misguided show of kindness. Fantastic. Still, at least it wouldn’t be as bad as when those damned humans had put ideas in his head of things with acid and things that bit. Probably.
He’d turned back to his boxes, picking and poking and taking notes, apparently oblivious to any signs she showed of her musings; Elwyenlanden took this as her cue to leave. She’d fetch the plate later, once he’d finished with it and hopefully once he’d wandered off to one of the other workshops so she wouldn’t get another demonstration. She was halfway to the door, mind already off her master and planning the rest of her free evening, when she heard the bang. It wasn’t quite an explosion, and it certainly wasn’t the clatter of something heavy being dropped. She doubted it was just one of his ill-bred cantorelles going off; it was more like a tiny thunderclap.
“Master?”
Quite a lot like a small thunderclap, actually.
“Are you alright?”
Like the sound, for instance, of air rushing in where there had once been something the size of, for instance, an adult elf.
“Aenanwellwyn?”
There was no sign of him.
Weapons and Abilities: Aenanwellwyn’s deep empathy with funguskind has combined with his idiosyncratically-scientific curiosity and talent for breeding and cultivation to produce a staggering variety of variably-whimsical new mushrooms, molds, and mildews. Most of these aren’t weaponizable per se, and the ones that are were generally accidental. Those that are dangerous are largely relegated to small samples in his less-used workshops, so it’s not as though he has them on him now. Still, it’s a dangerous world out there, so for those occasions when he has to go into the wilderness to collect new samples, he keeps a handful of his less-unpredictable mistakes on his person; chief among these are puffball “grenades” with spores that range from choking to hallucinogenic to toxic.
Additionally, the various species he plays host to have, part by chance and part by design, entered into a largely-symbiotic relationship with his immune system; cuts and scrapes tend to crust over in minutes and heal in hours instead of days, while larger injuries mend themselves the best they can. He is also remarkably resistant to poison and disease, largely because any newcomer infection is quickly muscled out by the huge variety of frankly parasitic infestations that have already settled in.
While he is a remarkably talented naturalist and grower, there is nothing supernatural about his abilities. He can induce fungal growth in just about any sufficiently-nutritious substrate and shows preternatural awareness of airborne spores, but he cannot make things grow any faster or bigger than can be achieved through breeding and he commands no special control over his creations.
Description: Like most elves, Aenanwellwyn is more likely to introduce himself by his job than by his given name; humans tend to joke that this is because elven names are so bloated that even elves get tired of their flowery and impractical language, but in truth it’s simply because use of a name implies closeness and trust. As such, he tends to think of himself as Mycologist. Most others would probably guess as much, if they didn’t first guess Beggar or Composter or Shambling Horror.
He is, in a word, disgusting. His flowing elven locks are matted with mycelia and sprout intermittently with fragrant, rot-sweet mushrooms. What skin isn’t covered by his linen-and-leather protective garments is slick and occasionally pulsates; the fact that he’s carrying his workshop-lamp on his shoulder, giving him a corpselight-green cast, certainly doesn’t help. Even his glamer is enough only to calm the revulsion in most observers; no amount of elfscent can make Mycologist attractive to anything but flies and slugs.
Behind the moldering façade would be an otherwise fairly-ordinary elf. He’s about nine feet tall but wouldn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds stripped of his garments and specimens; he is composed entirely of angles and spindles and china-delicate bones, and his face seems to be built backwards from the nose. Only his eyes are unmarred by his passions and experiments, and they still glitter with a bright emerald green. It’s quite incongruous with the yellows and browns and general unpleasantness of the rest of him.
Mycologist is cheerful and inquisitive to a fault; he has long since cast off any interest in what other people think of him, but still has what would be considered a pleasant personality if he were less monomaniacal. Nothing drives him more than to create and discover and study new things in the small world of fungus; his life has for decades revolved around little else. He is also a bit of a homebody: there have been a few occasions where he ventured out past the forests and caves he grew up near, and even a few times he attached himself to an adventurers’ party in pursuit of some legendary strain of fungus or other, but for the most part he prefers to stay in and stick to what he knows. Despite his age, he is still rather naïve and frankly a bit clueless outside his sphere of experience.