Dence Lichenlode
mossherd
Faction: Mossburger, Eszit Wune, Rubac planet, Goroth system
Rank: Mossherd
Species: Human
Age: 47 years old
Sex: Male
Height: 1.8 metres
Weight: 82 kilograms
Eyes: Grey-brown
Hair: Grey-flecked russet
Skin: Greenish due to eating mienmoss every day. Without the moss his skin would fade through grey to regular outdoorsy human.
Force Sensitive: No
:ʚ:ɷ:ɞ:
Strengths and Weaknesses:
- A lifetime spent dodging meteorites while herding moss on the planet Rubachttp://starwarsrp.net/topic/76670-rubac/ has made Lichenlode infinitely practical. He can simultaneously move, act, speak and feel in four different directions if the situation demands it.
- He does not trust anyone or any thing if he has a choice. He is constantly making adjustments to minimize the risk from his surroundings: not turning his back on anyone or anything; assuming small threats will become big ones; glancing in all directions, especially upwards; making contingency plans.
- His innate distrust means any unexpected distraction can free him from a mind trick.
- Dence’s focus leaves little time for introspection. He does what he needs to do. He might still mull over the behavior of others until he is distracted again.
- He does not bear grudges. Nature is bad, but it is nature. However he could take excessive measures to minimize a risk he does not fully understand.
- While he typically carries only his moss kit and a gardening fork he is very competent with found objects, including looted blasters and grenades. He can rig a blaster to explode in seconds.
- Which is why he does not trust, or own, technology.
Dence Lichenlode is a bearded farmer with green-tinged skin. He has little use for facial expressions or grooming - what you see is likely what you get. His pants and long overshirt are made of a coarse earthy-brown fabric with fuzzy nubs. He wears a backpack made of the same fabric. His weathered boots are well maintained and possibly ancient, with numerous deep scars in the synthleather that are finely stitched, wax-sealed and polished. His folded-over boots are lined with the usual nubby fabric; the soles are also reinforced with the nubby fabric secured across the top of his feet with fine hemp. Three large, metal, body-sculpted canteens hang from his synthleather belt; two on his right hip and one slung under them and secured to his right thigh.
Close visual inspection of the fabric nubs reveals it is made of moss fibre. It provides excellent blunt damage protection and also insulates, while being treated to prevent swelling when wet. From the right angle one might spot a twisted tine gardening fork, its tines sharpened on one edge, in a holster inside his shirt. Investigation of his pack would reveal many clear plastic sachets, each vacuum pack holding a large, flat, dehydrated sheet of moss. Also included is a dry-press device resembling a waffle iron, used to dry and compress mosses. The canteens each hold enough water to restore volume and motility to two dried mosses. His shirt conceals dehydrated mosses in front and back, each layered with a water balloon to act as an “air bag” during collisions. Also tucked in there is a red laser pointer.
Biography:
Dence Lichenlode was born in a farming village in the lesser crater of a planet called Rubac, orbiting a brown dwarf sun that never set. His childhood was typical of his crater’s willing exiles - herding mosses, breeding new mosses, and running with his mosses to evade meteorite strikes. He shared his tales by radio with a boy he’d never met who lived in the planet’s other crater, and he slept when it rained. His life was perfect until the day the meteorites stopped.
He would have been twenty-nine years old, if his years were not just sixteen hours long, and if anyone had thought to keep track. At first Dence accepted his parents explanation that the absence of death from above was just a statistical anomaly. After twenty rains his parents’ ossifying reality could stretch no further and they confined themselves to their dolmen. Their radio muses compounded their fears with their own tales of the end of meteors from the other side of the planet. Dence fed them mienmoss to keep them green and healthy, but he refused to believe the end was nigh.
After eighty restless but undisturbed sleeps Dence had had enough. Stockpiling the mienmoss by his parents’ bed he bade them good rest and good eating, for he would soon venture beyond the unmarked furlong that allowed for reaching a shelter before a meteorite struck. He walked quickly away from the wailing that issued from the dolmen, striding perpendicular to the bunker-dotted safe path, and across the mossy plains. He had discussed his plans with his muse over the radio in his ear. His friend was taking notes.
He walked for two rains without incident, using his mossherd skills to capture and press strange new mosses that possibly no man had processed before. But he had always slept with a massive lodestone overhead. He still could not bring himself to close his eyes to the bare sky. Scooping up one last moss that jumped in time to his footsteps he turned to go home. At that moment his radio link went completely silent for the first time in his life.
Then the sky lit up with the ablations of an impossible flood of meteorites. Dence forgot his exhaustion at once and ran towards home, a point on the horizon that would be just part way there. As he ran the mosses around him shuddered in confused circles, a silent gallows dance that etched itself darkly into his subconscious. Dence’s unblinking assassins descended faster than the speed of sound, masking the timing of his execution. Then he tripped on the edge of a smooth boulder, sliding splayed across it like a sacrifice. It was so flat. It was too flat.
Dence scrambled to his feet and burrowed frantically into the sand beside the boulder. It was unusually soft, spraying away in violent two-handed shovelfuls. Dence had barely tunneled under the edge of the buried lintel when the first meteors struck.
Shockwaves filled the hole behind him with sand as he broke through into a stale blackness under the boulder. He curled up into a ball as his darkness shook with the impact of dozens of pieces of planet. He had barely remembered to cover his ears when an impact struck the boulder above him. The vibration stung him the roots of his teeth, reminding him he was alive in the ringing silence and darkness that followed.
Dence lay there until it became hard to breathe, then dug airholes on two sides of the lodestone. Then even as the distant rumble of meteorite impacts continued unabated, he slept.
He woke still feeling exhausted but set about excavating the ancient buried home that had saved his life. A lone, unbroken skeleton lying on the decayed remains of a bed attested to a natural death for its last occupant. It was impossible to tell how long it had been there.
:ʚ:ɷ:ɞ:
Dence Lichenlode made it home but it was empty. His government connected to him through his radio, explaining to him that many Rubackers had disappeared at the moment the meteors began falling again. His parents and friend were among them. The government assigned Dence to reconnect with other souls still accessible by radio.
In time it was learned that many Rubackers had found themselves in another place, a Netherworld, from which most eventually returned. Both of Dence’s parents made it back, but not his friend, nor some of the other villagers.
Dence was then equipped as an “exile warden”, destined to travel among the stars in search of lost Rubackers. It was not considered likely he would find any more, but his people were not willing to stop trying. He was just a farmer, but he was a survivor. Considering his luck, there could be others.
Equipment: Dence Lichenlode carries a pack full of dried mosses, three canteens and a gardening fork.
Kills: No PC characters killed yet, so no links to those threads.
Bounties Collected: No bounties yet, so no money collected.
:ʚ:ɷ:ɞ:
Role-plays: Titles with links to come.