Maddox Blackford

First Born Mad Dox Blackford (a.k.a. Opal Opener)

Artifacts

400 Spines

45 out of the 400 quill-like protrusions found on Maddox's corpse were inscribed with tellings of his journey.
Its recovery acted as a guide to future exploration in Manidweepa, insight into its nature and as a referenced source in other advance research.

Physical Description

General Physical Condition

Transdimensional Polymorphy

Blackford's body would be warped several times over during his journey due the as-of-yet understood reality waves that propagate seasonally. Maddox spent an unknown amount of his life as various alternate species and only close to its end, did he come to vaguely understand why.

I enjoyed being some 15 different aliens in my time; only reverting to human twice. I realized how fortunate it was that every one of them were sapient so I could retain my own awareness of self.

— extract from the Blackford Spines

He would, however, eventually die as some segmented insectoid thing with a human head. I is not believed that this is a creature that actually exist, but an amalgamation of the retain qualities of his many previous transformation.

Facial Features

Third Eye

Sometime during his chronological 33rd year, Maddox would receive a grievous wound to his forehead that later transmuted into a sunken eye. It possessed some rudimentary light detecting powers, but was more useful as a deterrent during hostile situations.

Identifying Characteristics

Mutations

Being born in the manidweepa, Maddox would endure a number of random metamorphosises.

Elongation

After many years looking up to the rest of the eurydice crew, Maddox willed himself to reach their height.
It is not certain if this meant he literally stretched out his prepubescent body or if he aged up.

Extra Limbs

Maddox, curiously, never mentioned the multiple functional appendages attached to the body he died with.
They may have been a recent enough change that he simply didn't have time to record it.

Spines

Maddox apparently chose to grow quills on his back to be used as a medium of recording his experiences.

Special abilities

Dignitas

Maddox, insofar as we know, never had any awareness of dignitas.

— Zanetti

It is unthinkable that Maddox, through his lonely travels never became conscious of his own power.

— Nikit Mathur

Apparel & Accessories

Polymer Cloak

Maddox left Eurydice wearing a loose fitting tunic and a small cape patched together from polymer sheets taken from the ship seats.

Specialized Equipment

Dox

The dox ship is named after Maddox.
It is the simplest vessel constructed for long term travel by individual humans and is more often utilized as an escape pod for larger crafts. Doxes are spherical without need for engines, landing struts or fuel.

Mental characteristics

Education

Ship Schooling

Maddox spent his first 8 to 12 years confined to the main shell of the pathfinder. Other crew members rotate responsibilities in teaching human centric skills.

Realm Exploration

It is often said that the best teacher is experience. In this way, Maddox fearlessly dived further and further from his pathfinder home to experience things contrary to his formal education.

Accomplishments & Achievements

Temporal Logistics

Temporal logistics is a subfield of temporal study. It is the logistics of tracking time movement, whenever in time someone or something is.

Almost incidentally; Maddox leaned by trail and error, on how to organize his collection of accumulated stuff and being at a particular moment to travel a great distance.

Mental Trauma

Multi-Spatial Chronicle

During Maddox's many famous journeys, he would have encountered a great many mind scattering phenomenon and concepts. He definitely changed physically.
His spines are the only records of his thoughts at this time, but they pointedly only mention his actual travels. And not much on his opinions.

Morality & Philosophy

Perceptions

This is only a guess: but the overexposure to alternate realities, the dissociation from having to refamiliarize his own bodies and the mind altering effects in interacting with native cultures.

It is difficult to assess how Maddox perceived everything around him at the time of his dead. There can never be any certainty. But it is accepted that if he really transformed into a variety of unknown species with unique sensory capabilities that would colour anyone's view of reality.

Taboos

True Humanity

Given that Maddox only had four examples of human behaviours in the crew; one of them being a computer program. Therefore, it would make more sense he more closely associated the values of the avians, the dinos, the hippókampoi and the caudata; rather than humanity.

Personality Characteristics

Motivation

Through his life, Maddox has heard his family bemoan the loss of their familiar space. But Maddox always expressed puzzlement at the apparent restrictiveness inherent in the place they came from and had trouble understanding how that was a better place.
Nonetheless, he tried to accept their paradigm but could not quite imagine it. Which was good because it would allow him to notice the flexible nature of the realm that escaped his parents.

Social

Contacts & Relations

Ethereals

Zanetti is credited with making contact with the Laplwyds by riding the Timeline.

The Eurydice ship was stranded in an area of Perron Barren that was faraway from the boarding station, so would not have had so easy a time. Regardless of likely not resembling a human most of the time, he would become the first interaction humanity would have with the many transdimensional beings who inhabit Manidweepa.

Family Ties

Eurydice Crew

Mouhery Blackford

Maddox's mother, and the crew's copilot, was the first human to die in Manidweepa while her son was away.

Mozeath Blackford

Maddox's father, and the crew's lead pilot, would die just after reuniting with his son after his first bout of crossing the realm.

Menzig

The pathfinder's captain and systems officer who is currently preserved in Hieregard's Mouseion.

Mondant Cosmere

The pathfinder's lead engineer and communications specialists who survived the entirety of his stranding to retire into the present day.

Social Aptitude

Extended Childhood

There seems to be some confusion as to the time span wherein Maddox's body simply refused to grow older.

Menzig confirms that Maddox continued to have the statue of his 14 year old self for thirty years.

Hobbies & Pets

Long-Term Excursions

Maddox adopted a number of traveling hobbies to entertain himself between destinations. Journaling on his quill-like spines, for one. He may as well have recorded images he'd seen and musics he'd heard.

Ethnicity

Alphi

Honorary & Occupational Titles

• Pilot
• Engineer
• Explorer
• Haggler

Age

Undefined

Circumstances of Birth

First to be born in the Manidweepa

Circumstances of Death

Thrown through the Opal Portal

Birthplace

Born on the stranded Pathfinder Eurydice

Place of Death

Opal World

Family

Eurydice Crew

Gender

Male

Eyes

Brown

Hair

Short and Curly

Skin Tone/Pigmentation

Light Brown

Known Languages

• Balmein
• Quroar
• Espli