The Blood Hound
- Intent: To create a cool new species for RP purposes with a focus on story lines with Agents of Chaos' Silencers division.
- Image Credit:
- Doctor Who Wiki - Ood
- Category headers made by
Scherezade deWinter
- Canon: n/a
- Permissions: n/a
- Links:
- Name: The Quiet Ones
- Designation: Sentient
- Origins: Somewhere in the Unknown Regions.
- Average Lifespan: 200 standard years
- Estimated Population: Semi-Unique
- Description: The Quiet Ones, at a glance, look like a cross between a human and an octopus' face. They stand tall, averaging out at about two meters (6"7), and have very stiff body motions. While their limbs' stretch limits are very flexible and they can indeed be made to literally bend over backwards or touch their toes, but it will take time, for their movements are slow enough to look cumbersome to others who are accustomed to more speed. The Quiet Ones have narrow reddish-yellowish eyes surrounded by poofy eye-sockets, which gives most humanoids an uncomfortable feeling when peering at them for too long. Their eyes are not very sharp compared to those of humans, and they don't see well into the distance at all. Additionally, their eyes give them only a 100 degree vision (opposed to 120 degrees regular humans have) so they their sight is also narrower as well.
From the center of the face and downwards in an inverted V shape, the Quiet Ones have flesh noodles coming out of their heads, anywhere from short to medium in their length. These fleshy noodles are sometimes used as extra hands, but mostly for eating and self-defense. They can also be used to hold the Orb for a short amount of time, as they lack the muscle strength for something longer than that. These are the only part of the Quiet Ones that can move quickly and react swiftly.
Every Quiet One has an Orb in his hand, which is connected through an umbilical cord that has an external portion and an inner one. The orb is connected directly to the Quiet One's minds and is what they use to communicate, both with themselves and others. However, the Orb presents more than that to the Quiet Ones, who believe that their brains are inside their heads, but the Orbs, directly connected, hold their souls. A Quiet One whose Orb has been smashed will still have a physical body, can still be made to eat, pushed into sitting or lying down, or pulled up into standing, but it is otherwise an empty shell that just stands there and waits to deteriorate into nothing and cannot even fulfill simple requests.
The Quiet Ones are not particular about any sort of fashion choices though they have a preference to strong sharp lines rather than anything with frill. Their taste in decoration is extreme Spartan as well. A Quiet One might choose to own little to nothing, but every piece that they do have, will always be one that carries a lot of significance with it, either symbolically or culturally.
- Breathes: Type I
- Average Height of Adults: 2 meters / 6"7
- Average Length of Adults: n/a
- Skin Color: Chalky white
- Hair Color: n/a
- Distinctions:
- Their skin isn't just white, it's out right chalky, and unpleasant for most species with human-like touch feedback to touch.
- Fleshy Noodles coming out of their faces.
- They're always holding a ball of light (their Orb), which is connected directly to their brains via an umbilical cord.
- Races: n/a
- Force Sensitivity: Non-Sensitive
- Perfect accountants and bureaucrats. When you put your ledgers and other paperwork in the hands of a Quiet One, you know that they will be taken down perfectly.
- Their telepathic abilities do not rely on the Force at all, which means they can be used in any hostile environment as long as no damage is being done to their brains or their orb.
- Their facial tentacles can be used for self-defense – if the tentacles manage to latch onto an opponent's face or insufficiently protected head, they will pierce through bones and eyes or make it in through the mouth or nose, and suck the brains out. This is also how they eat.
- The Light - The Quiet ones have an uncanny ability to destroy... Themselves. If a Quiet One believes that all hope is lost and that there is no chance of success, they can perform a short yet brutal ritual that will end up with them combusting, and taking out a radius worth of territory with them. Visually, this looks like white flames coming down from the very heavens to burn the away, and it's very likely to burn any other living or flammable thing within a 10 meter radius with it. Quiet Ones cannot survive their own Light, and neither can they survive in the Light made by others of their kind, but they can come together to make a bigger Light (which, in turn, will kill all of them who participate or are caught in it). The Light is not to be taken lightly by any measures. A Quiet One using the Light means that they believed that hope was forever gone. With how hard it is for the species to breed and raise their young, the Light carries much meaning with it, and those who die through it are mourned in much greater volumes than other forms of death. It has been over five centuries since the last Quiet One died by the Light.
- The Orb - when a Quiet One is awake (as in, not sleeping or otherwise unconscious for any reason), they can use their Orb to view their surroundings in a 360 angle (their eyes, like human eyes in range, are limited to 120 degrees). The orb's 360 degrees serve as another way to see, but that is all they do. They cannot look through objects or peer into shadows, only sort of add an additional viewing option.
- These are not combatants. While they have a limited ways with which they can defend themselves in close quarters, this species moves much too slow to even press a red button in times of need.
- Incredibly slow breeders, capable of laying an egg only once every two years. For centuries now, very few of these eggs get to mature and result in an offspring.
- If their Orb breaks, whether on purpose or by accident, it is referred to as though the Quiet One has died. While their bodies will remain functional and can be carefully nudged into certain positions (standing, lying down, sitting), it is nothing but an empty shell, and cannot be filled or be made into a person again. Killing the body so that it may join the soul is considered an act of mercy.
- The Light's damage cannot be controlled by the Quiet Ones. Once one of them decides to die that way, the Light will spread out from them and attempt to burn anything within the radius, without regard to friend or foe.
- The Light's ritual is not perfectly remembered. Some claim that the ability to perform the ritual is an inherent biological feature of the species, whereas others claim that too much of the knowledge has been lost in order to perform it and that the Quiet Ones will never go into the Light again.
- The Orb - using the Orb to view the surroundings in 360 is something that greatly taxes the Quiet Ones' energies. They can easily hold the view for a handful of seconds, but once seconds turn into minutes, the sapping is felt more and more tangibly, with the limit being at around thirty minutes before the Quiet One will pass out exhausted and remain asleep and defenseless for at least 12 hours.
- Diet: The Quiet Ones eat brains of various animals. Generally speaking, the heavier the brain is in weight, the better. At times, when food is scarce, they will also eat eyes. While other small items of food may pass through their systems, they have yet to find a single type that will not cause harm as it does so. Additionally, the Quiet Ones cannot digest any beverages aside for water.
- Communication: The Quiet Ones are polygots who understand a plethora of languages, and have their own one as well. They can read and write in a numerous amount of languages, but prefer face to face communications, for which they have two main types:
- With each other, they communicate through the Orb which is attached to their bodies through a vein that goes straight into their own brain. The various glows of the Orb indicates concepts, ideas, and emotions being broadcasted to those who are within eyesight distance, but they can also communicate in the same manner using the heat of their Orbs and having another of their kind touch it, so that the route of the information can happen both through sight and through touch. The language of the Quiet Ones is not one that can be broken down into vowels, syllables, grammar. Rather, they communicate on an abstract level, which they believe leads them to deeper and truer understanding of each other and the galaxy around them compared to the more primitive species who still rely on spelling bees.
- With others, they communicate via telepathy. A link must be first established; this can happen by either looking or touching a Quiet One's orb, and permits a one-way communication direction via thoughts, from the minds of the Quiet Ones to those that have been imprinted on their orb. The other person still needs to speak. While the Quiet One speaks with them, their Orb will change the strength of its glow and light. This ability only gives the Quiet Ones a means through which to communicate - they have absolutely no ability to use their telepathy to affect one's mind beyond the limitations of a regular debate.
- Technology Level: Modern. While the Quiet Ones are no inventors by any stretch of imagination, they are fairly adept at adopting new concepts and methods of using technology made by others.
- Religion/Beliefs: The Quiet Ones have long ago lost their religious belief. They remember tales of old gods and powerful creatures and know that they once worshiped, but that belief is no longer present beyond the very rare kernel of folklore that they still possess.
- General Behavior:
- Raising the Young – The Quiet Ones typically give their younglings most of the information they will need. During the first months after the youngling hatches from its egg, various Quiet Ones will touch their Orb and send forward knowledge and information. The adult Quiet Ones can choose which information to roll on and which not to, which means that the information is never perfectly preserved from generation to generation, and many thing to tend to get muddled up or forgotten, especially since the Quiet Ones are subject to personal and emotional interpretation as you would expect in most sentient species. Giving their young the knowledge in this manner does not directly influence their wants or choices, but only gives them extra memories to hold. Interpretation and behavior is always up to the individual Quiet One.
- Breeding – The Quiet Ones are a hermaphrodite species, which means that they can all both lay eggs and fertilize it. However, a Quiet One will never successfully fertilize their own egg. A Quiet One can only lay one egg every two years. The egg must then be fertilized within three days or it dries out, after which it cannot be used for food either. A fertilized egg will take 13 standard months to mature, during which it will grow from a mug-sized egg to an egg that is three to four feet tall. The eggs are extremely fragile, and even something as simple as being knocked aside can cause it to break and the Quiet One within, to die. Many eggs receive too much damage before they have matured, causing the breeding within the species to be extremely slow, and as of recent times, insufficient for the species' survival.
- Romance – The Quiet Ones are a completely a-romantic and a-sexual species. Some say that they do not understand the emotion of romantic love, and are limited to platonic love alone. Others say that they know it very well, but are generally disinterested.
- The Memory - Though the Quiet Ones do not hold themselves to any religion or higher power, there are several times per year during which they will shed their clothes and perform a ritualistic dance that may take hours before completion. The known days of the celebration have been noted down, but so far non-Quiet Ones have been unable to decipher their schedule, and the Quiet Ones refuse to give the details of how they know, merely repeating that they know. This has been confirmed on several occasions when Quiet Ones who have had absolute no contact with their peers, will begin the celebration roughly at the same time, wherever they may be. More than once, Quiet Ones have spoken of something called The Memory, that they share, and it is believed that the ritual dancing is part of it. Until one the Quiet Ones breaks their silence, modern researchers will only be able to keep on guessing.
It has already been established that although the Memory lets the Silent Ones know when the ritual begins, they are not forced to participate in it. During times of war, danger, or a very few things that are more important than it, the Quiet One will not stop everything just to dance, but rather continue as expected, or stop in the middle to do the more important task. This does seem to put a damper on their mood for several weeks after the ritual, but no actual damage has been noted as a result of this. - Living Together - The Quiet Ones require little to no personal space, and have never shown objection to being crammed plenty in a single room, providing that they could each sleep without touching the other. The Quiet Ones sleep with their Orb upon their chest, and do not generally move until it's time to wake up. The species requires about four hours of sleep per cycle for best efficiency.
- The Light - The Quiet Ones do not speak of the Light's ritual to those who are not other Quiet Ones. The precise details of what the ritual entails are shrouded, though it is theorized tat the Quiet Ones have lost the Light, for too many things were omitted from the heredacy of information. However, they know that once the ritual begins there is no way to stop it, and as such, the subject has never been put to the test. The Quiet Ones hope that they will never need to find out, for the cultural repercussions (and ability to survive) of performing this are massive.
- Titles - these are some of the titles used to describe the Quiet Ones. The only one that they use themselves is the first one.
- The Guardians
- The Quiet Ones
- Keepers of the Eggs
- Defenders of the Money
The Quiet Ones remember home. They remember hills of green, and lakes teeming with fish that their Gods had created just for them, with heads so large that a single one could feet you for the entire day. They had lived in huts and sang songs, and their eggs proved strong, allowing many younglings to be created. The Quiet Ones had a different name in those days, but the name had been erased from the Memory, and they can no longer remember what it was. Spaceships had landed on their home, and the Quiet Ones were revealed to the galaxy at large. They proved to be natural at anything paperwork related, becoming sought after by other species that loved handling the credits, but enjoyed the accounting aspect of it slightly less. So widespread were they, that the planets on which you could not find them, barely existed. The Quiet Ones believed that they were thriving, and enjoying their freedom as well as respect from other species for a period of time that seemed to last forever.
And then they died.
The Gulag plague swept over the stars, breaking many populations, but the Quiet Ones exceptionally vulnerable to it for unknown reasons. All the Quiet Ones in the Core had died to the disease, and their numbers in other places were thinning out quickly as well. Many place saw the survival of perhaps one or two Quiet Ones; one was never enough to breed and increase the population forward, and in the case of two, they proved to be too weak to produce eggs that could be fertilized anyway. No cases of three or more reminding on a planet during that time has been recorded, and the current assumption is that such cases simply did not happen.
There was one exception – Home. By the end of the virus' reign, no Quiet Ones could be found anywhere at all, and only a small percentage was still alive on their home planet. Every few years, the Quiet Ones would send one of them into space, to search for news that safety had arrived. For over five centuries, none of them returned. And then at last came the day where the virus had been confirmed to have been eradicated, and the Quiet Ones once again rejoiced in their ancestral freedom.
But the joy was not to last. As the plague no longer tormented the galaxy, various planets and empires had the time to do instead. The Quiet Ones' home planet saw war after war, and often saw the Quiet Ones on the losing side. Beaten, defeated, the final war saw them losing for the final times as their lakes filled with poisons, their skies with toxic fumes, and their home could no longer sustain them, for to remain there would have been to die.
In pain, the remaining Quiet Ones, less than a hundred that had not yet been killed or enslaved, boarded the final ship, and left. The Quiet Ones punished themselves, neglecting to mention the name of their home to those that were born after them, giving them only the memories of the place, and the knowledge that it was no longer, because they could not defend it, and thus, did not deserve to have it.
Over the years they would attempt to find other planets to be on. Yet with so little stability, many of their eggs broke far too early, and without the ability to create more, combined with them slowly beginning to die of old age, surely spelled their death on the horizon.
Eventually, only twelve remained, all living within the territory of the Empire of Rannon. While they lived freely, they were not satisfied with their positions, and kept an eye on galactic-wide events that happened around them. Mid-working on improving the finances of Zoscha, the Quiet Ones took notice of the Agents of Chaos, who had come to liberate the planet from the clutches of Rannon. The Quiet Ones decided that they liked this, and that people who had the power to do that combined with the willingness to do so in such an unimportant place such as Soscha, deserved their attention.
Having arrived at the Scintilla before HOPE was constructed, the Quiet Ones had the freedom of the city of Eve, and had come to the conclusion that they liked it there indeed. They quickly joined the financial management of the city, and were praised for their work almost immediately. It was during their time off, as a whole group, that the Quiet Ones ventured deeper and deeper into the caverns beneath the city. Something about the cool and collected sensation they felt there that the enjoyed very much, and it became their favorite spot within the sphere.
During one one of those outings, the oldest remaining member among them passed an egg. The Quiet Ones were impressed, and decided the place in which it had happened held significance. A small shrine was erected where it happened, and the Quiet Ones began to refer to themselves as the Guardians - now that they had the chance and were in a place in which they could not only survive, but potentially thrive and bring their entire species back, was a place that had to be guarded and cared for.
Calling for a meeting with the Firsts and Discordia (this was early enough in the Agents of Chaos days that such a thing was still relatively easily possible), the Quiet Ones discussed what had happened and how they wished to go forward with it. The location had turned out to be where where construction for the AoC's Silencers was to begin. Discordia touched all of the Quiet Ones' Orbs, lowering her head and closing her eyes. Whatever was communicated in those moments, it remains between her and them. At the end of the meeting, it was agreed that the Quiet Ones would be free to live together with the Silencers in Mikdash ha'Sheketh, and a small portion of that temple would be dedicated to caves and rooms for their eggs, which would be guarded.
In return, for as long as the Quiet Ones wished to enjoy the protection and real estate given to them by the Agents of Chaos, would continue to work as the bookkeepers. They were made privy to more top secret matters, which in turn caused the to change their place of work from the Tower to the temple, believing it was better secured. This business relationship would last under those conditions until the Quiet Ones numbered two hundred individuals, at which point they would re-negotiate the terms. The current estimations are that this number ought to be reached during 902ABY at the earliest, but will likely take at least a few years more than that.
The Quiet Ones dwell at Mikdash ha'Sheketh at all times, and while they have the freedom to venture out and go into other parts of the Scintilla or even off-station for vacation, rarely do they ever make the attempt. They are content to live safely and securely next to their eggs while they handle the paperwork, both of it and of other parts across the Scintilla, opting to use long distance comms or personal meetings nearby the tunnels in which Mikdash ha'Sheketh is situated. Food, at present, is being imported for them, but the researches of the Garden of Death are already working on getting the correct type of fish and other small animals so that the Scintilla could provide for them without relying on external sources.
For months, the old Quiet One's egg was the only one there. But very recently, two more Quiet Ones laid an egg, and now there are three, all set up in warm nests within the safe rooms of the Quiet Ones. Even during the busiest of days, every Quiet One will find at least three oppertunities to pass by that room and make sure the eggs are still there, are still healthy, and are still growing.
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