The Grand OC! [CONTEST XXX: HALLOWEEEEEEEEEEN]

Username: Solbruizer
Name: Mica
Species: Chitea
Gender: Genderless
Color: Beetle bright

Description: Chitea were one of Solbruin's Twelve Savage Beasts, created before the First Fall. Moulting and growing every five years or so to a maximum hundred feet in height, Mica is a juvenile standing at about eleven feet tall. Chitea are insectoid, sport an armorlike black carapace, and have two legs and four arms. They have a flat, rounded tail reminicent of an ant's abdomen which counterbalances their forward-leaning posture. Their heads are similarly antlike, though the base shape's silhouette is disrupted by enormous mandibles which fold around Mica's face. Their eyes are also obscured under a helmlike protrusion.

Being more like beasts than beings, their intelligence is limited (though Solbruin gave them a memory which can span generations). Mica's default mood is the vaguely-threatening uninterest in you you'd sense from a large, dangerous animal like a hippo or recently-fed lion.

Weapons/Abilities: Mica possesses abilities common to its kind; its hemolymph is acidic, and Mica can forcibly squirt it as a jet from two spines on their tail. Its natural armor is extremely tough. Like other Chitea born after the First Fall, it has a preternatual sense of when those moving toward it harbour ill intent, but Chitea for the most part avoid mortals unless approached. They seem to gain a greater self-awareness and intelligence as intelligent entities communicate with them, meaning messages beamed into its brain by a Grandmaster will kickstart Mica's sense of self.

A Chitea's key ability is to manipulate ambient magic and launch it as a tangible force; it does this by posing its four hands in various "forms". It can augment a physical strike, cause knockback, produce a piercing effect, generate a barrier, or stir up a vortex. The power is proportional to the Chitea's size; adults may fell entire forests and change the course of rivers; Mica could probably turn a human into a sack of meat and bone without too much trouble. Mica's ability to cast forms, however is compromised by its front right arm, which has been cut off just below the shoulder. More complex forms are beyond its abilities, restricting its magical arsenal to the simplest of spellwork.

Other than the magic and acid blood, Mica's pretty proficient at hand-to-hand combat. Being able to tank most hits helps.

Biography: Chitea were created by Solbruin to, and I quote, "add to the landscape." When two Chitea cross paths, they'll unhinge their mandibles, attempt to crush the other's head between them, and locked in this position fight to the death using their form-casting. Two mature adults will reshape much of the land around them in their fight, mating in this process, and the winner (usually mortally wounded, still with its mandibles lodged in its partner's corpse) drags itself to a location where their interlocked bodies form a creche for six to eight offspring (who will also fight to the death if they cross paths within the carapace-crypts). Here they learn the forms necessary to cast the assorted force-spells - instructions and the parents' life story are carved on the inner surfaces of their carapaces by Chiter-beetles (which the developing young eat. The number of offspring which survive to adulthood correlates positively with the size of the parents; any given offspring's chance of survival increases with more Chiter-beetles eaten).

Because they didn't instinctively hate civilisation (but did make a mess of it if a stretch of it lay between two adults who had spotted each other), the Old Races put up with them. Nomadic Catchers even took shelter in long-abandoned carapace-crypts. This arrangement turned to shit when the god Egal gave his chosen race, the Vissel, the power to steer the Chitea into the lands of their foes. War escalated, a couple of gods took more than one fair dip out of the act-jar, and the First Fall and the extinction of all the Old Races eventually played out. A new order of gods drummed up some new mortals to deal with Solbruin's Monsters, to pave the way for civilisation proper. The Chitea, after their encounters with the Vissel, were now warier of mortals and avoided their settlements, and only took a few generations to become actively hostile when approached in response to dedicated culling by a few Heroes.

Mica was one of the last Chitea born in the Disuncharted Lands; Mica and its kin were hunted down by a Hero who tracked their parents' corpses and pursued the offspring. Mica (a name given by the Hero, incidentally) was right in the middle of a fight with said Hero, and had just had their arm sliced off (at least it corroded their sword beyond repair), when the multiverse beckoned and spirited it away.