Equius Serket (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
poorunfortun8souls) wrote2012-05-28 01:57 am
poorunfortun8souls) wrote2012-05-28 01:57 am
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I: PLAYER INFO
Name (or internet handle): Gnome
Age: 22
Contact: themechanagnome @AIMgnomebody ![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
mechanagnome
Current characters in Road of 'Trode: None
II: CHARACTER INFO
Name: Equius Serket
Dreamwidth Username:8legstothewall
Fandom: Homestuck
Image: Link
Age/Appearance: 8 Alternian Sweeps Or approximately 17 Terran Years || A Visual Aide
He's about 6'2", and thin, made mostly of long, gangly limbs. His skin is gray and leathery, eyes black with a thin ring of cerulean on the outer edge of the iris, and yellow sclera. He has two horns, one shaped like an arrow, the other in the shape of a stinger. There are four robotic limbs attached to his back.
Wiki Links:Equius Zahhak Wiki / Vriska Serket (Since his AU history uses a lot of Vriska's history)
Personality:
Equius is a very Serious, Mature, Refined Gentleman, if only in his own mind. Cerulean/Spider Equius is too, although he takes it far less seriously and regards it more as something to brag about rather than some sort of noble duty he must uphold. His blue colored blood means that he is a member of Alternia's upper class, but how much this means to him is hard to say. While his canon counterpart feels very STRONGLY about, he believes in the necessity of the Hemospectrum as a social construct, however, it means very little to him in the long run, having spent a good portion of his life hunting and killing other trolls, even those higher on the Hemospectrum than himself. Everyone dies the same in the end, so their actual rank means more than their blood color. However, if a highblood tries to assert themselves over him, he will capitulate quickly. At some times, it's almost as if he encourages this, pushing buttons and his luck as far as he can, practically looking forward to being punished and put back in his place. On top of this, he'll say anything he needs to in order get his way. Of course, because of this, not everything he says can be taken at face value; while canon Equius frowns upon the use of facetious insincerity, that's practically all that comes from Spider Equius's mouth. Highbloods are expected to be duplicitous and backstabbing at all times, after all. Even more, Equius is the Hero of the Void aspect, something that refers more to darkness and the unknown, rather than nothing. Void players typically obscure the truth and conceal knowledge, and Spider Equius takes this to an extreme – half the time, he's not even sure whether or not he believes half the things he says. He also has a hard time distinguishing jokes, teasing, or sarcasm from sincerity because of this, a trait he does share with his canon self, although the reason behind it is slightly different. He also doesn't believe swearing is necessary to express oneself, and will frown at others who use it.
Because of his high standing, he is also highly educated, with a fairly impressive vocabulary and a keen interest engineering, similar to canon. Canon Equius builds fighting robots in his spare time, which would require some knowledge of programming in order to make them move and present a challenge to him during his daily cage matches – Spider Equius builds them to house the souls of those he's killed. However, they tend to turn around an attack him anyway, because he has a tendency to vivisect trolls he captured prior to feeding them to his lusus, and they really don't appreciate that. But sacrifices must be made for science, and if he's being honest with himself (which he rarely is), he rather enjoys it. He has also made and installed prosthetic limbs for two of his fellow SGRUB players, much like in canon.
As much as he would like to maintain an air of sanity, he's easily upset and prone to leaping before he looks. He's easily discouraged by failure, criticism, not getting his way, and sometimes even his own strength causing him to fly off into rages. When frustrated, the only things that calm him down are random acts of violence or his moirail, Nepeta. Not only does she frequently fuss over him, but she's one of the few people who are capable of looking past his perversions and eccentricities, although that is not to say that she doesn't recognize them for what they are. When they're together, she keeps him from making too many off-putting comments, or explain his actions in a way that makes them less unsettling to others. When he gets agitated, which happens quite frequently, his moods swinging unstably from one extreme to another, she paps him on the face until he calms down to a more manageable level. Without her, he thoughtlessly runs his mouth, oblivious to any sort of personal boundaries or triggers another person may have. The only time he is particularly recalcitrant is in regards to his own emotions; he may wear them on his sleeve, but getting him to talk about them is nigh impossible (unless your name is Nepeta). This is in part because he simply doesn't understand his own emotions. He's fine with identifying simple ones such as happiness, disappointment, or anger, but when it comes to the more complex ones such as love, guilt, or sadness, he's often hard pressed to describe how he's feeling, let alone understanding their source.
On the contrary, he has no problems with asking others about their own feelings, and is prone to pushing beyond what is comfortable. This results from a combination of not recognizing the signs, an overclocked sense of curiosity, and self-centered disregard for other people. He also tends to be far more physical than his canon counterpart, as he lacks his absurd strength, so he has no problems LITERALLY getting into another's face. He needs to know how everything works, and he enjoys taking things apart or dissecting them in search of the answers. He rarely asks permission for anything, simply assuming the right of way, and when denied, he reacts with indignant confusion. When things don't go his way, he is not above throwing a hissy fit, and will whine, screech, hiss, and throw things until appeased, or his anger runs out.
He's incredibly awkward in social situations, although while canon Equius prefers to keep to himself and observe others interacting, Spider Equius is the exact opposite, running his mouth thoughtless, sometimes to the point of TMI. When he is engaged in conversation, he's highly condescending to those below him, or the biggest brown-noser in existence to those above him. Like canon Equius, he takes a lot of hate in stride, holding his head high and proud even though he knows the others laugh at him behind his back. This isn't just because he believes it's important to be STRONG at all times, but also because he feels that genius is never truly appreciated, and that the only person he can truly rely on is himself. It makes him more than a little paranoid. It does bother him that he is hated and looked down upon, and he's well aware of his faults, but he also doesn't believe they are his fault. Nothing is entirely his fault, in his opinion, he's just a product of his circumstances, and he will shift blame and make excuses until he's blue in the face.
Reason for playing: Mostly, I'm just in love with the setting and the possibilities it provides. I'm a huge fan of robots and cyborgs and body modification, and with this character in this setting the chance to indulge in my fantasies quite readily. Of course, I could do that with canon Equius, however, he tends to be harder to get out and interacting with other characters do to his reclusive nature. Spider Equius is better about that (but not by much).
III. Ark History
Name: Eriq Slepner
Age/Appearance: 22 - The same, only human. So pink skin, black hair, light blue eyes, skinny like a stick and minus all the robotic parts.
History:
Eriq was born to a pair of loving, if slightly distant parents in the better parts of Central City, better meaning practically upper class, in his case. He never wanted for nothing, and he grew up sheltered from the darker, rougher side of humanity. Most would say that he knew not real strife, and that he was a pampered, arrogant rich boy who never knew a day of hard work in his life. Most, including his father.
His father is a tall, strong man, built like a brick who works as a technician for the ark, and has his whole life. He's never really been present in Eriq's life, but he was around often enough and was attentive enough that as a small child, he held an interest in engineering and technology himself. He even expressed the desire to grow up to be an Ark Technician just like his father. he would go around the apartment, fixing things the way his father taught him. As he grew older, however, he began to resent his father's absence and rejected anything to do with him. He gave up his interest in electronics in favor of organics, choosing instead to learn about biology and the natural world. He still fixed things around the apartment, of course, the one in the family with the best practical knowledge, but he saw it more as an annoying chore and grumbled about it whenever he had to. He shouldn't have to do that sort of thing, that's what money and handy men were for. Ultimately, he couldn't deny his mother anything, and deep down, he still loved fixing things. Though he had a keen interest in insects, specifically arachnids, this desire to be useful was what motivated to take up the career of "fixing" people.
His mother, a small, curvaceous, demanding woman, didn't care much for the dissension between men in her life, but she also didn't see anything wrong with Eriq's chosen career path. Doctors were highly paid members of society, after all, even more so than technicians, so why should she oppose it? It also meant that he would be there more for his future-wife (and he WOULD have a wife to produce grandchildren for her) than her husband was, so why not, right? She pushed him hard in his studies for as long as he remained in her home, as she always had, and as she had with his father. Both males were quite firmly under her heel, but neither complained - they both adored her. Even now that Eriq lives on his own, he keeps in close touch with her. Some might call her overbearing, but he just calls her Mama.
Now, he's just about finished the first half of his formal education, the part that covers general education and basic medical practices all those in the field need to know. He hasn't picked a specialization yet, though he'll need to by the end of the summer. Currently torn between being a clinic doctor and working with the public, and becoming a surgeon. Perhaps an incident with the terminals during the final days of the semester will help push him one way or another...
Residence/Job: He is a young medical student attending classes at a college in Central City. He lives in a private dorm on campus. He keeps a pet tarantula named Trollki that is mainly the reason why no one wants to room with him.
Skills/Powers: Eriq attends medical school, yay! So he has all sorts of basic doctory knowledge. He also knows the basics of in home appliance repair, right up to how to build a personal terminal. He's not too good with the programming aspect, he can install and run software, but that's about it.
Resources: He has fairly good resources, partially because of his job and family ties, but also because he's fairly frugal and doesn't spend credits on unnecessary things.
IV. SAMPLE
Arrival:
It started with a tingle in his fingers and his toes. Then his lungs burned and he gasped for air, eyes snapping open to a white, familiar-unfamiliar room, a pink-girl-human-classmate? cupping his face, calling out the name Eriq over and over again. It was wrong, all wrong, this wasn’t how transportalizers worked, they shouldn’t disorient a person this much, his whole body shouldn’t be screaming that something was wrong, but they didn’t exist.
“He’s alive!”
Alive? Was he dead? Was he dead and they tried to revive him by shouting and shaking him? This was not how doctors were supposed to act. Sure, they were still students, technically, limited mainly to simulations and observation, but they should be able to handle emergency situations better than this! He could barely focuse, and he still realized that. Brow furrowing in annoyance, he sat up and brushed the girl away, looking around the room. Around him, people either hovered uncertainly, or merely sat at their terminals, staring dumbly at him, and he felt a sneer tug at his lips. He was in a room full of doctors, and they all just stood there staring when a person died?
Incompetents. Morons. He wasn't normally given to looking down on others, but this was just inexcusable. He almost died.
"Well?" he snapped, shooting a glare around the room. "I'm obviously fine now, no thanks to you!
V. ALTERNATE UNIVERSE CHARACTER SUPPLEMENT
Nature of the AU: Equius Serket is from what Homestuck Fandom calls a bloodswap, a form of alternative universe where characters have their place on the hemospectrum altered. As blood color dictates not only a troll's place in society, but also their lifespan and temperament, raising them or lowering them along the scale can greatly affect who they are and what their role in the story is.This one is called gnomestuck
AU History:
In this bloodswap, Equius has been lowered one level from Royal Blue to Cerulean, placing him in Vriska Serkets position. Consequently, after emerging from his pupa and completing the trials all trolls go through to prove their worth to society, Equius Serket was adopted by a spiderhorse lusus instead of Aurthour, the centaur. His hive was built above a system of caves in the mountains, right next door to a strong, sweaty blue blood named Eridan Zahhak.
From a young age, he had a strong interest in science and learning, often reading or exploring the caves beneath his hive where his lusus resided, the spiderhorse being far too large to fit in the hive proper. His interest in robotics wasn't sparked until he was almost three sweeps (six by human count), when he discovered the lair of his ancestor, the Marquise Doktorturer Torrentulas Mindfang. The lair was filled with the results of his research, ancient equipment and journals. Everything was marked with a Cerulean arrow, much like the one he bore, and though he found most of experiments performed by the doctor were disconcerting, Equius was also drawn to it, especially those pertaining to the construction of artifical lifeforms called “Soulbots.” He spent most of his youth in these caverns, reading as much as he could, and gaining skills in engineering.
It wasn't until his lusus grew too large even for the caverns that Equius took an interest in the spiritual aspect of his ancestor's soulbots. Upon his fifth wriggling day, the spiderhorse began to demand a new kind of sustenance; that of troll flesh. At ten human years of age and in the mindset to preserve life, this change repulsed him; however, he could not let his lusus starve to death either. After balking at the idea for a week, during which the spiderhorse completely refused all of the various musclebeast offerings he brought, Equius gave in and began to search for a way to accumulate bodies without garnering too much negative backlash.
A new extreme ropleplaying game called FLARP proved to be the most practical option. Normally, he would have dismissed such a thing as foolish, having little taste for such nonsense himself, but ExRPGs had a reputation for having a high fatality rate, and FLARP would be no exception. He could put up with such indignities if it meant keeping his lusus happy, and alive, and if he acquired enough corpses, he wouldn't necessarily have to play every day. He wouldn't have to put much thought into his character as an expy of his ancestor would fit the bill right enough. And as luck would have it, a Jadeblood named Nepeta Maryam was advertising her costume-making skills upon the forums. Further investigations brought him to Terezi Megido, a maroon blood who had recently been blinded in hacked gaming session. She sought justice for not only those who had harmed her, but for all of those who would misuse FLARP to prey upon others. An ideal partner, as she did not care what he did with the bodies, as long as they only went after those she dubbed “criminals.”
Their first session went exactly as one can expect: horribly. It was Equius's first time wielding a crossbow, his weapon of choice, and they were playing against a hacked character. It wasn't until his opponent came in close to make the killing blow that Equius was able to make a move, tackling the other player and grappling wildly with them. In a fit of desperation, he grabbed their head and twisted, putting everything he had into it until their neck snapped. In shock at his actions, and with nerves frayed, he absconded from the match, the body in tow.
It wasn't until his lusus was fed and hissing praise in his ear that he finally managed to calm down enough to think. Obviously, such a nigh-disastrous match could occur again, and if he was going to be fighting against those who broke the rules, he'd have to break a few of his own. And so long as Terezi never found out, what would it matter? However, instead of deciding to hack his game, he chose to hack himself. Using venom harvested from his lusus, he altered his crossbow bolts so that they would inject poison upon impact, and designed a false set of fangs for himself, ones that slipped over his own teeth and had a venomsac that rested against his palate. Finally, he constructed a robotic frame that went under his FLARP costume, a long, white billowy labcoat, and enhanced his strength.
His next session went far more smoothly than the last, and he only made improvements over time. It wasn't until he and Terezi had been playing together for a sweep that she began to suspect anything was off about her partner, and began snooping. What she found upset her; one simply couldn't cheat to take out cheaters; that defeated the purpose, and reduced ones integrity! She immediately cut ties with him, and at first Equius was content to let her be. After all, she didn't report him, and he could always find a new partner, right?
But a week passed, he was still having difficulties finding a replacement, and his lusus was beginning to get fussy. Needing to feed him somehow, Equius grabbed a prototype of a device he was working on, a proton based soul-extractor and spirit containment unit, and made his way to her hive. He found her playing with her collection of scalemates inside her treehouse hive, and from his perch on one of the branches, he fired his crossbow upon her, switching over to his soul-extractor the moment her body hit the ground. For a first test, the device worked like a dream, and he absconded with her body and her soul, giddy as a schoolgirl. As soon as he reached his hive, he fed his lusus, and set to work building his first official Soulbot. Caught up in his excitement, he forgot all about his issues with his lusus and his need for a FLARPing partner for another week. But this time it wasn't a fussy lusus that interrupted his work.
A seadweller named Sollux Ampora was looking to make a deal with him.
Equius's luck reached an all time high. He only had a little difficulty with Terezi's soulbot, or rather, with Terezi herself, as she attacked him the moment she was revived. She was easily fended off, however, as he held the controls to her mechanical self in his hands. He and Sollux, while not exactly seeing eye to eye, were able to maintain a professional sort of cordiality with each other during their FLARP sessions, the cerulean blood taking the bodies of the trolls for his lusus, while the seadweller took the bodies of their lusii for his moirail, the abdicated empress to be, Aradia Peixes' lusus. The only real inconvenience that occurred was when Eridan Zahhak burst into their games with a shout of “KILL ALL THE SSEADWELLERSS!” but the pair easily outwitted and dispatched him with little fuss, despite his ludicrous strength. Equius would have killed him after the fifth interruption, but Sollux wanted him alive for some unfathomable reason.
Sweeps passed without much incident, Equius upgrading and adding to his array of body modifcations with Terezi's assistance, until one day, an idigoblood, Karkat Makara, approached him about playing a new game, a better game, exclusive to only twelve players. He originally wasn't going to play, preferring to continue to care for his lusus and hearing sketchy things about Karkat, but as both his FLARPing partner, Sollux, and Nepeta Maryam, who he'd grown close to over the sweeps, were playing, he reluctantly agreed. The game was called SGRUB, and it was commissioned by Princess Aradia, and compiled by a yellowblood named Tavros Captor, a gaming and programming aficionado.
Originally, the game was split into two sessions, a red and blue team. Equius was initially supposed to be on the blue team, but in a Dick Move, Eridan kidnapped Terezibot, and threw him out of his hive, effectively giving him the boot and usurping his position on the team. Karkat immediately contacted him afterwards, offering him a spot on the red team, admitting that he originally wanted Equius on his team anyway. He didn't exactly mind; Nepeta was playing on the red team, and the new order would allow them to quest together.
While at first they intended to simply explore Nepeta's world, the Land of Little Cubes and Tea (as he was stuck with Eridan's world, the Land of Wrath and Angels), and do sidequests, but it quickly became evident Nepeta was needed in the Land of Rays and Frogs, assisting Kanaya Pyrope with her duties in creating frogs. Having nothing better to do, Equius began questing with Karkat (meanwhile, in a twist that surprised exactly no one, Vriska Nitram and Tavros Captor's gaming rivalry spanned the sessions, bridging them in a way that involved copious amounts of hate-makeouts and death). As Equius and Karkat worked together, the cerulean blood to notice that Karkat was just as sketchy as he'd heard, presenting a marvelously charming face while pulling string after string in order to shape the game to his liking. He subtly, and sometimes not so subtly nudged players into perform certain actions, such as giving Eridan the idea to invade Equius's hive, and encouraging Tavros to neglect his duties as leader of the blue team in favor of connecting to Vriska as her server player, leaving Gamzee no choice but to connect to Aradia, the last living troll on Alternia.
Instead of saying anything, however, he simply kept an eye on the indigo blood, jumping in or sabotaging plans that seemed more detrimental to the game than helpful. While Karkat was frustrated at first, he soon figured out just who was thwarting his plans, much to his great amusement. The confrontation that followed was not so much of an altercation as it was a throwing down of the gauntlet, and the pair engaged each other a chess-like battle of wits of exquisite proportions.
In the end, just as the twelve players seemed on the verge of triumph as they took down the Black King, backed by an army of Aradias, an anomaly entered their session. It was a strange black demon, his outline blurred and crackling with green energy, and just as they were set to claim their prize, it attacked. Thinking quickly, the Alpha Aradia shuffled them all onto a nearby transportalizer that should have taken them back to the Veil.
Name (or internet handle): Gnome
Age: 22
Contact: themechanagnome @AIM
gnomebody Current characters in Road of 'Trode: None
II: CHARACTER INFO
Name: Equius Serket
Dreamwidth Username:
8legstothewallFandom: Homestuck
Image: Link
Age/Appearance: 8 Alternian Sweeps Or approximately 17 Terran Years || A Visual Aide
He's about 6'2", and thin, made mostly of long, gangly limbs. His skin is gray and leathery, eyes black with a thin ring of cerulean on the outer edge of the iris, and yellow sclera. He has two horns, one shaped like an arrow, the other in the shape of a stinger. There are four robotic limbs attached to his back.
Wiki Links:Equius Zahhak Wiki / Vriska Serket (Since his AU history uses a lot of Vriska's history)
Personality:
Equius is a very Serious, Mature, Refined Gentleman, if only in his own mind. Cerulean/Spider Equius is too, although he takes it far less seriously and regards it more as something to brag about rather than some sort of noble duty he must uphold. His blue colored blood means that he is a member of Alternia's upper class, but how much this means to him is hard to say. While his canon counterpart feels very STRONGLY about, he believes in the necessity of the Hemospectrum as a social construct, however, it means very little to him in the long run, having spent a good portion of his life hunting and killing other trolls, even those higher on the Hemospectrum than himself. Everyone dies the same in the end, so their actual rank means more than their blood color. However, if a highblood tries to assert themselves over him, he will capitulate quickly. At some times, it's almost as if he encourages this, pushing buttons and his luck as far as he can, practically looking forward to being punished and put back in his place. On top of this, he'll say anything he needs to in order get his way. Of course, because of this, not everything he says can be taken at face value; while canon Equius frowns upon the use of facetious insincerity, that's practically all that comes from Spider Equius's mouth. Highbloods are expected to be duplicitous and backstabbing at all times, after all. Even more, Equius is the Hero of the Void aspect, something that refers more to darkness and the unknown, rather than nothing. Void players typically obscure the truth and conceal knowledge, and Spider Equius takes this to an extreme – half the time, he's not even sure whether or not he believes half the things he says. He also has a hard time distinguishing jokes, teasing, or sarcasm from sincerity because of this, a trait he does share with his canon self, although the reason behind it is slightly different. He also doesn't believe swearing is necessary to express oneself, and will frown at others who use it.
Because of his high standing, he is also highly educated, with a fairly impressive vocabulary and a keen interest engineering, similar to canon. Canon Equius builds fighting robots in his spare time, which would require some knowledge of programming in order to make them move and present a challenge to him during his daily cage matches – Spider Equius builds them to house the souls of those he's killed. However, they tend to turn around an attack him anyway, because he has a tendency to vivisect trolls he captured prior to feeding them to his lusus, and they really don't appreciate that. But sacrifices must be made for science, and if he's being honest with himself (which he rarely is), he rather enjoys it. He has also made and installed prosthetic limbs for two of his fellow SGRUB players, much like in canon.
As much as he would like to maintain an air of sanity, he's easily upset and prone to leaping before he looks. He's easily discouraged by failure, criticism, not getting his way, and sometimes even his own strength causing him to fly off into rages. When frustrated, the only things that calm him down are random acts of violence or his moirail, Nepeta. Not only does she frequently fuss over him, but she's one of the few people who are capable of looking past his perversions and eccentricities, although that is not to say that she doesn't recognize them for what they are. When they're together, she keeps him from making too many off-putting comments, or explain his actions in a way that makes them less unsettling to others. When he gets agitated, which happens quite frequently, his moods swinging unstably from one extreme to another, she paps him on the face until he calms down to a more manageable level. Without her, he thoughtlessly runs his mouth, oblivious to any sort of personal boundaries or triggers another person may have. The only time he is particularly recalcitrant is in regards to his own emotions; he may wear them on his sleeve, but getting him to talk about them is nigh impossible (unless your name is Nepeta). This is in part because he simply doesn't understand his own emotions. He's fine with identifying simple ones such as happiness, disappointment, or anger, but when it comes to the more complex ones such as love, guilt, or sadness, he's often hard pressed to describe how he's feeling, let alone understanding their source.
On the contrary, he has no problems with asking others about their own feelings, and is prone to pushing beyond what is comfortable. This results from a combination of not recognizing the signs, an overclocked sense of curiosity, and self-centered disregard for other people. He also tends to be far more physical than his canon counterpart, as he lacks his absurd strength, so he has no problems LITERALLY getting into another's face. He needs to know how everything works, and he enjoys taking things apart or dissecting them in search of the answers. He rarely asks permission for anything, simply assuming the right of way, and when denied, he reacts with indignant confusion. When things don't go his way, he is not above throwing a hissy fit, and will whine, screech, hiss, and throw things until appeased, or his anger runs out.
He's incredibly awkward in social situations, although while canon Equius prefers to keep to himself and observe others interacting, Spider Equius is the exact opposite, running his mouth thoughtless, sometimes to the point of TMI. When he is engaged in conversation, he's highly condescending to those below him, or the biggest brown-noser in existence to those above him. Like canon Equius, he takes a lot of hate in stride, holding his head high and proud even though he knows the others laugh at him behind his back. This isn't just because he believes it's important to be STRONG at all times, but also because he feels that genius is never truly appreciated, and that the only person he can truly rely on is himself. It makes him more than a little paranoid. It does bother him that he is hated and looked down upon, and he's well aware of his faults, but he also doesn't believe they are his fault. Nothing is entirely his fault, in his opinion, he's just a product of his circumstances, and he will shift blame and make excuses until he's blue in the face.
Reason for playing: Mostly, I'm just in love with the setting and the possibilities it provides. I'm a huge fan of robots and cyborgs and body modification, and with this character in this setting the chance to indulge in my fantasies quite readily. Of course, I could do that with canon Equius, however, he tends to be harder to get out and interacting with other characters do to his reclusive nature. Spider Equius is better about that (but not by much).
III. Ark History
Name: Eriq Slepner
Age/Appearance: 22 - The same, only human. So pink skin, black hair, light blue eyes, skinny like a stick and minus all the robotic parts.
History:
Eriq was born to a pair of loving, if slightly distant parents in the better parts of Central City, better meaning practically upper class, in his case. He never wanted for nothing, and he grew up sheltered from the darker, rougher side of humanity. Most would say that he knew not real strife, and that he was a pampered, arrogant rich boy who never knew a day of hard work in his life. Most, including his father.
His father is a tall, strong man, built like a brick who works as a technician for the ark, and has his whole life. He's never really been present in Eriq's life, but he was around often enough and was attentive enough that as a small child, he held an interest in engineering and technology himself. He even expressed the desire to grow up to be an Ark Technician just like his father. he would go around the apartment, fixing things the way his father taught him. As he grew older, however, he began to resent his father's absence and rejected anything to do with him. He gave up his interest in electronics in favor of organics, choosing instead to learn about biology and the natural world. He still fixed things around the apartment, of course, the one in the family with the best practical knowledge, but he saw it more as an annoying chore and grumbled about it whenever he had to. He shouldn't have to do that sort of thing, that's what money and handy men were for. Ultimately, he couldn't deny his mother anything, and deep down, he still loved fixing things. Though he had a keen interest in insects, specifically arachnids, this desire to be useful was what motivated to take up the career of "fixing" people.
His mother, a small, curvaceous, demanding woman, didn't care much for the dissension between men in her life, but she also didn't see anything wrong with Eriq's chosen career path. Doctors were highly paid members of society, after all, even more so than technicians, so why should she oppose it? It also meant that he would be there more for his future-wife (and he WOULD have a wife to produce grandchildren for her) than her husband was, so why not, right? She pushed him hard in his studies for as long as he remained in her home, as she always had, and as she had with his father. Both males were quite firmly under her heel, but neither complained - they both adored her. Even now that Eriq lives on his own, he keeps in close touch with her. Some might call her overbearing, but he just calls her Mama.
Now, he's just about finished the first half of his formal education, the part that covers general education and basic medical practices all those in the field need to know. He hasn't picked a specialization yet, though he'll need to by the end of the summer. Currently torn between being a clinic doctor and working with the public, and becoming a surgeon. Perhaps an incident with the terminals during the final days of the semester will help push him one way or another...
Residence/Job: He is a young medical student attending classes at a college in Central City. He lives in a private dorm on campus. He keeps a pet tarantula named Trollki that is mainly the reason why no one wants to room with him.
Skills/Powers: Eriq attends medical school, yay! So he has all sorts of basic doctory knowledge. He also knows the basics of in home appliance repair, right up to how to build a personal terminal. He's not too good with the programming aspect, he can install and run software, but that's about it.
Resources: He has fairly good resources, partially because of his job and family ties, but also because he's fairly frugal and doesn't spend credits on unnecessary things.
IV. SAMPLE
Arrival:
It started with a tingle in his fingers and his toes. Then his lungs burned and he gasped for air, eyes snapping open to a white, familiar-unfamiliar room, a pink-girl-human-classmate? cupping his face, calling out the name Eriq over and over again. It was wrong, all wrong, this wasn’t how transportalizers worked, they shouldn’t disorient a person this much, his whole body shouldn’t be screaming that something was wrong, but they didn’t exist.
“He’s alive!”
Alive? Was he dead? Was he dead and they tried to revive him by shouting and shaking him? This was not how doctors were supposed to act. Sure, they were still students, technically, limited mainly to simulations and observation, but they should be able to handle emergency situations better than this! He could barely focuse, and he still realized that. Brow furrowing in annoyance, he sat up and brushed the girl away, looking around the room. Around him, people either hovered uncertainly, or merely sat at their terminals, staring dumbly at him, and he felt a sneer tug at his lips. He was in a room full of doctors, and they all just stood there staring when a person died?
Incompetents. Morons. He wasn't normally given to looking down on others, but this was just inexcusable. He almost died.
"Well?" he snapped, shooting a glare around the room. "I'm obviously fine now, no thanks to you!
V. ALTERNATE UNIVERSE CHARACTER SUPPLEMENT
Nature of the AU: Equius Serket is from what Homestuck Fandom calls a bloodswap, a form of alternative universe where characters have their place on the hemospectrum altered. As blood color dictates not only a troll's place in society, but also their lifespan and temperament, raising them or lowering them along the scale can greatly affect who they are and what their role in the story is.
gnomestuckAU History:
In this bloodswap, Equius has been lowered one level from Royal Blue to Cerulean, placing him in Vriska Serkets position. Consequently, after emerging from his pupa and completing the trials all trolls go through to prove their worth to society, Equius Serket was adopted by a spiderhorse lusus instead of Aurthour, the centaur. His hive was built above a system of caves in the mountains, right next door to a strong, sweaty blue blood named Eridan Zahhak.
From a young age, he had a strong interest in science and learning, often reading or exploring the caves beneath his hive where his lusus resided, the spiderhorse being far too large to fit in the hive proper. His interest in robotics wasn't sparked until he was almost three sweeps (six by human count), when he discovered the lair of his ancestor, the Marquise Doktorturer Torrentulas Mindfang. The lair was filled with the results of his research, ancient equipment and journals. Everything was marked with a Cerulean arrow, much like the one he bore, and though he found most of experiments performed by the doctor were disconcerting, Equius was also drawn to it, especially those pertaining to the construction of artifical lifeforms called “Soulbots.” He spent most of his youth in these caverns, reading as much as he could, and gaining skills in engineering.
It wasn't until his lusus grew too large even for the caverns that Equius took an interest in the spiritual aspect of his ancestor's soulbots. Upon his fifth wriggling day, the spiderhorse began to demand a new kind of sustenance; that of troll flesh. At ten human years of age and in the mindset to preserve life, this change repulsed him; however, he could not let his lusus starve to death either. After balking at the idea for a week, during which the spiderhorse completely refused all of the various musclebeast offerings he brought, Equius gave in and began to search for a way to accumulate bodies without garnering too much negative backlash.
A new extreme ropleplaying game called FLARP proved to be the most practical option. Normally, he would have dismissed such a thing as foolish, having little taste for such nonsense himself, but ExRPGs had a reputation for having a high fatality rate, and FLARP would be no exception. He could put up with such indignities if it meant keeping his lusus happy, and alive, and if he acquired enough corpses, he wouldn't necessarily have to play every day. He wouldn't have to put much thought into his character as an expy of his ancestor would fit the bill right enough. And as luck would have it, a Jadeblood named Nepeta Maryam was advertising her costume-making skills upon the forums. Further investigations brought him to Terezi Megido, a maroon blood who had recently been blinded in hacked gaming session. She sought justice for not only those who had harmed her, but for all of those who would misuse FLARP to prey upon others. An ideal partner, as she did not care what he did with the bodies, as long as they only went after those she dubbed “criminals.”
Their first session went exactly as one can expect: horribly. It was Equius's first time wielding a crossbow, his weapon of choice, and they were playing against a hacked character. It wasn't until his opponent came in close to make the killing blow that Equius was able to make a move, tackling the other player and grappling wildly with them. In a fit of desperation, he grabbed their head and twisted, putting everything he had into it until their neck snapped. In shock at his actions, and with nerves frayed, he absconded from the match, the body in tow.
It wasn't until his lusus was fed and hissing praise in his ear that he finally managed to calm down enough to think. Obviously, such a nigh-disastrous match could occur again, and if he was going to be fighting against those who broke the rules, he'd have to break a few of his own. And so long as Terezi never found out, what would it matter? However, instead of deciding to hack his game, he chose to hack himself. Using venom harvested from his lusus, he altered his crossbow bolts so that they would inject poison upon impact, and designed a false set of fangs for himself, ones that slipped over his own teeth and had a venomsac that rested against his palate. Finally, he constructed a robotic frame that went under his FLARP costume, a long, white billowy labcoat, and enhanced his strength.
His next session went far more smoothly than the last, and he only made improvements over time. It wasn't until he and Terezi had been playing together for a sweep that she began to suspect anything was off about her partner, and began snooping. What she found upset her; one simply couldn't cheat to take out cheaters; that defeated the purpose, and reduced ones integrity! She immediately cut ties with him, and at first Equius was content to let her be. After all, she didn't report him, and he could always find a new partner, right?
But a week passed, he was still having difficulties finding a replacement, and his lusus was beginning to get fussy. Needing to feed him somehow, Equius grabbed a prototype of a device he was working on, a proton based soul-extractor and spirit containment unit, and made his way to her hive. He found her playing with her collection of scalemates inside her treehouse hive, and from his perch on one of the branches, he fired his crossbow upon her, switching over to his soul-extractor the moment her body hit the ground. For a first test, the device worked like a dream, and he absconded with her body and her soul, giddy as a schoolgirl. As soon as he reached his hive, he fed his lusus, and set to work building his first official Soulbot. Caught up in his excitement, he forgot all about his issues with his lusus and his need for a FLARPing partner for another week. But this time it wasn't a fussy lusus that interrupted his work.
A seadweller named Sollux Ampora was looking to make a deal with him.
Equius's luck reached an all time high. He only had a little difficulty with Terezi's soulbot, or rather, with Terezi herself, as she attacked him the moment she was revived. She was easily fended off, however, as he held the controls to her mechanical self in his hands. He and Sollux, while not exactly seeing eye to eye, were able to maintain a professional sort of cordiality with each other during their FLARP sessions, the cerulean blood taking the bodies of the trolls for his lusus, while the seadweller took the bodies of their lusii for his moirail, the abdicated empress to be, Aradia Peixes' lusus. The only real inconvenience that occurred was when Eridan Zahhak burst into their games with a shout of “KILL ALL THE SSEADWELLERSS!” but the pair easily outwitted and dispatched him with little fuss, despite his ludicrous strength. Equius would have killed him after the fifth interruption, but Sollux wanted him alive for some unfathomable reason.
Sweeps passed without much incident, Equius upgrading and adding to his array of body modifcations with Terezi's assistance, until one day, an idigoblood, Karkat Makara, approached him about playing a new game, a better game, exclusive to only twelve players. He originally wasn't going to play, preferring to continue to care for his lusus and hearing sketchy things about Karkat, but as both his FLARPing partner, Sollux, and Nepeta Maryam, who he'd grown close to over the sweeps, were playing, he reluctantly agreed. The game was called SGRUB, and it was commissioned by Princess Aradia, and compiled by a yellowblood named Tavros Captor, a gaming and programming aficionado.
Originally, the game was split into two sessions, a red and blue team. Equius was initially supposed to be on the blue team, but in a Dick Move, Eridan kidnapped Terezibot, and threw him out of his hive, effectively giving him the boot and usurping his position on the team. Karkat immediately contacted him afterwards, offering him a spot on the red team, admitting that he originally wanted Equius on his team anyway. He didn't exactly mind; Nepeta was playing on the red team, and the new order would allow them to quest together.
While at first they intended to simply explore Nepeta's world, the Land of Little Cubes and Tea (as he was stuck with Eridan's world, the Land of Wrath and Angels), and do sidequests, but it quickly became evident Nepeta was needed in the Land of Rays and Frogs, assisting Kanaya Pyrope with her duties in creating frogs. Having nothing better to do, Equius began questing with Karkat (meanwhile, in a twist that surprised exactly no one, Vriska Nitram and Tavros Captor's gaming rivalry spanned the sessions, bridging them in a way that involved copious amounts of hate-makeouts and death). As Equius and Karkat worked together, the cerulean blood to notice that Karkat was just as sketchy as he'd heard, presenting a marvelously charming face while pulling string after string in order to shape the game to his liking. He subtly, and sometimes not so subtly nudged players into perform certain actions, such as giving Eridan the idea to invade Equius's hive, and encouraging Tavros to neglect his duties as leader of the blue team in favor of connecting to Vriska as her server player, leaving Gamzee no choice but to connect to Aradia, the last living troll on Alternia.
Instead of saying anything, however, he simply kept an eye on the indigo blood, jumping in or sabotaging plans that seemed more detrimental to the game than helpful. While Karkat was frustrated at first, he soon figured out just who was thwarting his plans, much to his great amusement. The confrontation that followed was not so much of an altercation as it was a throwing down of the gauntlet, and the pair engaged each other a chess-like battle of wits of exquisite proportions.
In the end, just as the twelve players seemed on the verge of triumph as they took down the Black King, backed by an army of Aradias, an anomaly entered their session. It was a strange black demon, his outline blurred and crackling with green energy, and just as they were set to claim their prize, it attacked. Thinking quickly, the Alpha Aradia shuffled them all onto a nearby transportalizer that should have taken them back to the Veil.