The Blood Hound
- Intent: To create a species to add a potentially interesting layer depth to RP's revolving around ships.
- Image Credit:
- From left to right in the header image
- All category headers made by
Scherezade deWinter
- Canon: n/a
- Permissions: n/a
- Links:
- Name: Ship Maidens
- Designation: Sentient
- Origins: Glitz'n'Glamour building of Whimsy
- Average Lifespan: The Ship Maiden's lifespan is not measured by standard galactic years. Their life, from beginning to end, depends on the ship that bears their crystal. A Ship Maiden will come to life the first time a ship takes flight (this can be a planetary flight or a space flight), and will exist until either the ship is destroyed, or until the crystal is removed from it. Once a crystal is removed, it will not work again, so this will permanently get rid of a specific Ship Maiden.
- Estimated Population: Scattered. Though there are many Ship Maidens, and their popularity is spread across the galaxy, one might be in an area where most of the ships present have them, but on the whole, they don't even scratch the surface of existing ships in terms of overall numbers.
- Description: Any sufficiently experienced pilot will tell you that the ship they're flying has its own personality, its own wills and whims, and moods. The Ship Maidens are the very personification of that claim, brought into existence through Sith Alchemy worked on specific crystals to be used as a power source for ships (see: Maiden Power Crystal). Those who do not know who the Ship Maidens are, or who exactly is a ship's specific Maiden (or Maidens) are, would easily confuse these for human women, as that is precisely what they look like at a first and second glance. It takes a slightly deeper look to realize the bone structure is just a tiny bit off, the eyes holding a gaze that is a mere touch inhuman. The Ship Maiden's personalities and facial expressions are as varied as they can be, and where one would appear to be a sweetly talking petite brunette, another one could be a gruffier amazonian looking tough woman.
- Breathes: Ship Maidens do not require oxygen, their existence is sustained by the crystals they are attached to.
- Average Height of Adults: 1m67
- Average Length of Adults: n/a
- Skin color: Ship Maidens have the same variety of skin color as typical humans do, from incredibly pale to a dark chocolatey brown, and anything and everything in between.
- Hair color: Ship Maidens have the same variety of hair color as typical humans do, ranging from platinum blonde to coal black.
- Distinctions:
- There are no male Ship Maidens.
- Ship Maidens cannot breed. They have the external appearance of human women, but their insides are hollow. They do not bleed when they are cut, they do not suffer from regular organic necessities such as the need for bathroom breaks or showers, they do not visible age.
- Only those few with extreme perception skills will notice that these aren't actually human woman without being told. The bone structure of the Ship Maidens is ever so slightly off from humans, with their angles a little anglier, their curves a little curvier, their eyes a little bit hollower, etc.
- Ship Maidens do not breathe and do not blink.
- Races: n/a
- Force Sensitivity: Non-Sensitive
- A Ship Maiden can take control of her ship and use its systems, be it piloting, air support, firing weapons, or anything else of the various things that can be decided on from a cockpit. An experienced pilot with a little bit of slicing experience will be able to keep a Ship Maiden from taking over against his will.
- If a Ship Maiden's body is destroyed while her crystal is still intact, it will take at least a couple of weeks for her body to re-form. Non-fatal injuries will also take time to regenerate.
- If a Ship Maiden's crystal is harmed or destroyed, the Ship Maiden will cease to exist. Crystals are extremely fragile and are often installed with many layers of protection for that reason.
- A Ship Maiden's territory is limited. They can get outside of their ship, but at a radius of about 15% of the ship's size. Beyond that the Ship Maidens will feel an invisible wall which they cannot pass through.
- EXAMPLE - If a ship is 50 meters long, the Ship Maiden will be able to walk up to a distance of about 7.5 meters from the ship.
- Diet: Ship Maidens are able to put food in their bodies, but it does not sustain them in any way so they do not rely on it. Their choice of cuisine would alter and change based on the ship's leadership and crew. The food inside their bodies will remain there until they choose to release it. Because it tends to irk people to see chewed up food like that, most Ship Maidens learn early on that it's best to do so in private. Ship Maidens' test buds are nonexistent, so they don't experience pleasure from eating. As long as their crystal is operational, Ship Maidens are nourished.
- Communication: Ship Maidens communicate with other people via speech. The languages they know depend on the kits installed on the ship, to which they have direct access to. Naturally, most Ship Maidens speak Basic, but when their crystal is utilized by races that don't really use it, they won't automatically know it either. The Ship Maidens can also communicate directly with the ship itself, read diagnostics, and send commands.
- Technology level: A Ship Maiden's tech level cap depends on the ship she is attached to.
- Religion/Beliefs: The Ship Maidens do not have a religion or specific set of beliefs of their own, but a few have been seen adopting the religion of the ship's captain and crew when these were highly religious people.
- General behavior: After a Maiden Crystal is installed on a ship, the Ship Maiden will come to life when the ship is started. A Ship Maiden's first words are always "Hello, my name is [insert name her], and I am the Ship Maiden of [insert ship name here]." A few of the crystal's creators have theorized that this might not happen and in that case have offered several doomsday theories about rogue Maidens, but so far none of the Ship Maidens have been seen not going through that specific step. Ship Maidens being as inquisitive creatures, eager to learn of the people that are on the ship, often reaching out of form bonds and connections. A Ship Maiden's primary concern is the ship itself, and she will regularly run diagnosis, working directly with the ship's crew to get help for it when it's needed. After all, if anything happens to the ship and the Maiden dies, it is forever. There is no online and offline.
- On the Subject of Having a Corporal Form: Ship Maidens can physically touch, feel, hold, be pulled, and so on. A Ship Maiden can become ghost-like and be unable to do any of that, but that form requires concentration on the Ship Maiden's part as well as available power from the ship. For example, a ship in the middle of battle will most likely not have a Ship Maiden going ghost-like on board, because all the power would be used for the battle and in the hopes that there will be enough to go back home.
The Ship Maidens were a side result of the Sith Alchemists of Whimsy's work on the Maiden Power Crystal. One among the R&D team had read copious amounts of prose and YA books, with a focus on a series called A Court of Beeps and Tricks, where such a creature was present. The expectations weren't too high at the beginning, but when he had a prototype to show, the rest of the team was convinced.
The prototype's crystal had been attached to the Scientist's personal ship, and the first Ship Maiden was not barred by a distance that they knew of. Her name was Feyre, and she spent entire days by the scientists, trying to learn what they knew so that she could help them get her more sisters. Regina had many limitations though; often, her form would begin to randomly shift, and remaining tangible was not something that she could control at any point, being able to hold a datapad one moment, and it sliding through her body the next.
Feyre was not a happy Ship Maiden. For one, while she had a crystal, which was installed in a ship, she did not get to actually take care of her ship. Being grounded was torture to her, and it was obvious as the days went by that Regina herself was fading away in control and focus as well. Slowly, the Sith Alchemists began to turn away from her, and focus more on working on a new generation of the crystals.
The days went by and Feyre's mood did not improve. Her body was corporal most of the time, which meant that she had to rely on others to scroll her screens or type on her holokeyboard, and eventually she simply became a wallflower - standing in one place, not blinking, not breathing, just staring forward and doing nothing, not even moving.
But Feyra, while appearing idle, was anything but. She watched the Scientists, absorbing all their information, learning and putting plans together by the second. It is theorized that she was somehow exposed to information she never should have been, because after a few weeks of this, she lashed out. It was only by luck that she chose the middle of the night time to do it, leaving one two scientists and the maintenance crew dead. The remaining Sith Alchemists uninstalled the crystal from her ship looking to try to search for what was wrong with it, which was how they discovered that they had actually undone her. More experiments gave them a deeper view into what had come of their experiment.
The next generation of Ship Maidens came into existence days later, after the Sith Alchemists worked their knowledge on the crystals to alter many of their parts. The bodies of the Ship Maidens were limited, first unable to collect power in the way that Feyra had done, and then by the third and final generation which was released to the market, there was nothing they could do with power. For all intents and purposes, the exterior of their bodies functioned like those of regular humans, though they were anything but.
The next few months consisted of the second generation of Ship Maidens, and trying to fix in advance the things that the Sith Alchemists foresaw as potentially dangerous, harmful, or just plain annoying. But there was one thing that they couldn't manage to "fix" - the Ship Maidens were meant to mostly be entertainment to their wills and needs, but they could never manage to get that to happen. Whatever generation and wherever they tried to take it, the Ship Maidens had a will and a mind of their own that they could not remove without scrapping the entire project and beginning anew.
They nearly did. It was a large order from a customer in the Core who knew about the project that made them decide to keep it as it was. Final tweaks were made, and the Ship Maidens as we know them now were the third and last generation to be created, with currently no plans for an upgrade for a fourth generation.
The crystals were sold, and Ship Maidens began to pop into existence.
The earliest ones, for natural reasons, were seen around the Scintilla (as the labs they were created in are situated there) and a few non-central areas within the Core thanks to the private client.
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