Scion
█████████ ██████ ███████ (a.k.a. Éra Affini (Xiá only), Sci, Relic, tiny, little gecko, feisty, Jack Farro (Alias), Cecil (Alias), Conrad (Alias), Elizabeth Mulligan (Alias), Morrigan (Alias))
One day there was a human being, they wanted nothing more than to see the stars up close.
"You can't do that," their teacher said, "stars are burning hot balls of like, plasma or something, and are like millions of degrees hot. You'll die instantly."
"I don't care it'll be so cool," the human replied.
And that's how astronauts were born.
"That door is like 100kg of solid stone. I can't hack a rock, Zvros."
Scion is, in no uncertain terms, one of the weirdest humans Xiá Metis has ever met, and that may be why she fell in love with them. Not much is widely known about Scion, and that's just the way Scion wants it to be.
Physical Description
General Physical Condition
Scion is physically fairly fit for their size, as their job of "engineer" could also just as easily be called "mechanic". Scion wears an A-Suit most of the time in order to avoid problems relating to certain physical sensitivities and verbal handicaps.
Body Features
Scion keeps their hair very short, even despite this it's really fuzzy. They prefer self-made pixie cuts, and generally do not let their hair grow any longer than the tip of their ears. It bothers them for it to be long, and they find the shorter it is, the easier it is for them to take care of it.
Facial Features
Scion doesn't show their face much since they figured out how useful their A-Suit actually is, but they have hooded semi-large eyes, a slightly upturned nose, a wide smile, medium forehead, and a round-ish jaw with a slightly pointed chin. Their entire face is "baby-soft".
Identifying Characteristics
Scion has a birthmark on their left hip shaped like a tree branch. The only people who know about this are their doctor, their girlfriend, and their parents.
Scion has a full-face tattoo in a geometric pattern that they only vaguely recognize as being similar to one they saw in some pictures of a ruin located on a "lost moon" near to where The Fractal is located. They have since also connected the tattoo image to hill-figures and the Nazca lines. Scion also has white spiderweb tattoo fully covering their left arm that glows under certain colors of light, and on top of that tattoo rests several spider tattoos made of a Kevari ink that glows in the presence of Aether and/or Mana.
Physical quirks
Scion's ambidextrous, and occasionally walks with a limp due to their left leg being slightly longer than their right. They rock on their feet a lot, and are almost always fidgeting with something in their hands. Two modes of existing: constantly moving, or still as a statue for 12 solid hours, barely any in between.
Special abilities
Apparel & Accessories
When not in their A-Suit, Scion wears flannel shirts in different colors usually lined with either polyester/nylon blend or fleece, and heavy but soft cotton sweatpants. These are both highly outdated styles and types of clothing, but Scion doesn't care. Scion carries a backpack with them almost constantly as "pockets never hold enough things". Due to these quirks it's theorized by some that Scion is secretly a time traveler--though Scion finds this rumor to be annoying. However, they have no qualms with the rumors claiming they practice the art of "carrying everything but the kitchen sink" in their backpack, or that they have "attraction magic" which they've figured out means people think they have some magical ability to just obtain whatever it is they're thinking about getting.
Specialized Equipment
Scion normally wears their A-Suit, a highly sophisticated complex suit made of specialty fabrics that has builtin thermoregulation, translators, and sound dampeners/amplifiers (just depends on which one Scion has turned on at the time). The first time Scion wore the A-Suit they were surprised to learn that it has thermoregulation, and the ability to detect local internet signals and use them to determine your location and the current weather forecast.
Scion also has a tablet, a multitool, and a plasma cutter.
Mental characteristics
Personal history
Scion grew up in a house in a rural section of what was once called "England". They attended primary school nearby and quickly outpaced the other students in terms of intelligence and diligence.
Their first memory is that of when they met the neighbor’s dog for the first time. It was sunny, they were outside and the had fallen. As they lay there on the ground, crying over how badly their skinned knee hurt (Scion is sensitive to pain), the neighbor’s dog ran over, licked their face, then stood over them protectively barking and growling at anything that tried to come near them until they’d calmed down a little.
After that incident, Scion’s parents got them a service dog.
By age 10, they had graduated secondary school and were in university.
By age 16, they had their advanced degree in mechanical engineering with a nonadvanced degree in computational engineering and a degree in the equivalent of computer science, two years later they had a degree in archaeology.
When they were 18, they faked their own death so that they could escape their family who were very protective of them and wanted to prevent them from leaving Earth because they felt that life in space would be too difficult and dangerous for Scion due to their autistic traits.
Gender Identity
agender, them/them
Sexuality
demisexual, biromantic, polyamorous
Education
University: advanced degree in mechanical engineering, nonadvanced degrees in computational engineering, computer science, and archaeology.
Employment
Currently Scion is the chief engineer of the TS1-Tenacity, the ship they co-own with Xiá. They're also a researcher, archaeologist, and freelance IT person. They draw art, and build models, which they then sell to whoever is willing to pay the right price.
Accomplishments & Achievements
Scion graduated top of their class from both secondary school and their first venture through post-secondary education. This pissed off a lot of hardworking students that were much older than them, because they felt outshined by a literal child.
Scion was awarded a prize for their research paper exploring and explaining their unique take on technologies of the past and how it could be useful for archaeology and sociology for the government or a dedicated research group to keep them running in the same state they were during their prime operational time.
Failures & Embarrassments
Scion feels like a failure for dropping out of Galactic-Standard Schooling, even if the reason for that was Xiá's genuine fear for their safety after Xiá's mother informed them that the leader of the School-Ship SS-Milo had made plans with a known Slaver that involved Scion in some way.
Mental Trauma
- Scion's father was injured when they were young by an explosion caused by a faulty gas tank on their family's rover.
- Scion has a scar on their face from having it get slashed open by the snapping of a braided metal cord that was holding a crate down on the transport ship they took to visit their grandparents (estranged from her parents to the point the grandparents actually agreed not to tell anyone that Scion's death was faked) because of this, they're inordinately scared of metal ropes.
- Phobic of birds
- As a child, Scion was nearly raped by a classmate, this was thwarted by other classmates that were protective of Scion (because of the immense difference in their ages), realized something was wrong when Scion didn't show for them to walk Scion home, and went looking for them. This left Scion with a distrust of overly friendly acquaintances and strangers, as well as a panic response to people grabbing their arm/pulling them anywhere forcefully.
Intellectual Characteristics
Scion is a deeply logical person in the way their mind processes thoughts and actions. They're gifted at breaking things down into parts then putting those parts back together, or analyzing the parts to figure out how they work and then making something new from them.
Morality & Philosophy
Scion cannot stand people being forced to do things against their will no matter how good for them that thing might be. That being said, they find it deeply immoral to leave a person in danger even if that person insists that they do not wish to leave the situation/do not want anything done about it.
Their main philosophy in life is "Just because something is more advanced does not make it better, or even good." They've used this philosophy (usually phrased as "don't say 'better' when you just mean 'more advanced'") to shut down arguments against why one species was somehow better than another because of their more advanced tech, why people shouldn't care to maintain the working state of obsolete tech, and why a laser knife/plasma cutter isn't always better than a steel blade.
Taboos
Mentioning their "dead" name to them is grounds for getting punched in the face, hard. Especially if attempted to be used as a catalyst for an argument over knowing their "true gender"/"biological sex"
Personality Characteristics
Motivation
Scion has dreams (the literal kind) about some disaster that is coming, and a voice that keeps speaking to them, telling them that "help will come from the ones who came before" but they can't figure out who or what "the ones who came before" are. They're researching old ruins and myths to try and solve the questions "what came before? If everything was created by something, and that something was itself created by something else, what was the something that created the creators?"
Savvies & Ineptitudes
Scion is excellent with computers and matters of technology, to a point that some people who meet her believe she might have an innate inborn ability to manipulate electrical fields and data streams.
Likes & Dislikes
Scion is allergic to Grapes, cinnamon, and this plant that grows on the Zurosian homeworld that’s similar to roses, so they harbor an immense dislike of those things.
Vices & Personality flaws
Scion is the kind of person that absolutely would destroy an entire band of pirates until none were left to tell the tale but themself if the pirates did something to make them angry (such as hurting their friends or stealing from them). They’re damn proud of their skills, though they hardly ever boast about them preferring demonstrations and actions to words and “empty” boasting with no evidence.
Personality Quirks
Their ears ache when they lie, Xiá has figured this out from watching them close and noticing that Scion always presses their fingers against the back base of their ears shorly after they lie, something they usually only do if they have an earache.
Hygiene
Scion can't stand things being dirty, especially themself. They take a shower at least twice a day.
Social
Family Ties
Scion cut all family ties when they left Earth. This was not a choice they were happy to make, but it was a necessary one.
Social Aptitude
Scion has about as much social grace as a fly has ability to open a window.
Hobbies & Pets
- has a pet gecko named "Blep"
- has a pet dog (husky/samoyed mix) named Harry
- builds miniature spaceships, rebuilds found tech
- self-taught hacker
- They love collecting miniatures and models of different historical sites, they also collect obsolete tech and work to make it run again, occasionally having to synthesize parts of an older design/material in order to get it working.
Speech
has a subtle lisp, is very soft spoken, says "yeah but" a lot when countering arguments, tells stupid stories
Relationships
History
Xiá and Scion met the day Scion boarded the School-Ship for the first time. They were assigned to be roommates, and at first Scion was cold toward Xiá, unsure of how this new person in their life would treat them. After only a few days, Scion decided that Xiá was a good person, because she defended them from a bully who kept telling them they would amount to nothing since Humans were "only good for pets". Xiá and Scion were classmates and studied together, they were also partnered on research assignments and other types of assignments. When Xiá tested highly for piloting skills, and Scion matched her skills in the engineering department, they were paired as a team. This official pairing meant that they'd be more likely to be hired together if a research group was seeking additional members. About a year into being roommates, Scion admitted to Xiá that they had a crush on her, and Xiá responded in kind. They started dating shortly after that.
Nicknames & Petnames
Xiá calls Scion "Éra Affini" an affectionate nickname akin to "my puppy" or "my kitten" Scion calls Xiá adoring nicknames such as "ma chérie", "mon amie", "meu anjo", "turtledove", "a luz", and "shiny"
Commonalities & Shared Interests
Xiá and Scion are both very interested in the past, in history and how it affects the present. They're very interested in the many myths of the galaxy. Scion is fascinated by the stars and what might lie beyond them, and Xiá's culture holds a very religious reverence for the stars and space, so much so that their mother-goddess Ci, is the Goddess of Space, not the Goddess of their planet. Xiá and Scion both marvel at the wonders of technology, Scion has a particular fascination for tech that seems "archaic" by Galactic standards.
Legal Status
Dating
Wealth & Financial state
Scion is, though they loathe to admit it, rather poor. Their family back on Earth, was rather affluent, but Scion renounced any claim they had to any of that money when they left. Now all they have is what Xiá gives them and what money they make selling their art or their model spaceships and reconstructed "ancient tech".
Chief Engineer of the TS1-TENCAITY
- "Birds are terrifying and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something."
- "If God is real, someone should tell them their vacuum is broken."
- "I don't know what it means, but I'm hoping it's space dragons."
- "Just because it's more advanced doesn't make it better."
- "Space was invented specifically as a cure for claustrophobia, they just didn't factor in the side effects like 'existential dread', 'suffocation', and 'total loss of any concept of time'."
French (conversational), English (fluent), Brazilian-Portuguese (conversational), Ahsi (knows like, 3 phrases), Latin (decent at translating)
coding languages: c#, python, , html, css, a few coding languages I've not thought of names for yet that are used on spaceships from other planets than Earth
Comments
Author's Notes
Scion is the main character of the story, but they are not the pov character for most of the work.