Mynah
04-08-14, 03:46 AM
Name: Mynah. ”I like it. It sounds nice.”
Age: ”I’unno. Young.” 16
Sex: Female.
Gender: ”What’s that?”
Race: ”Sure! Where’re we racing to?” Harpy-Human Crossbreed
Hair Color: Blue and Rusty Red-Brown.
Eye Color: Orange. Like a Topaz.
Height: 4’3’’
Weight: 65 lbs.
Occupation: "I uh. I wander. I guess. Is Wandering an occupapulation?"
Appearance:
Mynah is a bit odd looking by human standards. To start, her hair has a strange, back-swept pattern, and mixed in with her soft locks are feathers of white, rusty red, and blue. Her eyes are wide but focused. Her personality is disarming enough, though, if you can get past the long legs and high-set ankles that cause these limbs to be somewhat reminiscent of a bird's. Her frame is slight at most, and her fingers are just a bit longer and more slender than an average human of her age. The apparent color of her skin varies from lightly tanned where it is truly bare, to white, black, rust-red, or slate blue where tiny feathers are rooted - mainly around her shoulders, neck, back, and lower legs. Oh, did I mention she’s got a pair of winglets? Well, there’s that too, and they’re covered in - you could’ve likely guessed - predominantly rust-red and slate blue feathers, and dotted with black and white feathers. [Would you like a pattern (http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/american_kestrel/id)?]
Personality:
Incredibly expressive, talkative, impulsive and curious all make for good descriptors of Mynah’s personality. She might also seem naive, but her primary concern is survival; she knows when she must end a life, and she realizes that mercy can carry the penalty of death. Despite this underlying survival instinct, she finds herself easily distracted by interesting (or shiny) things. She almost always supplements speech with body language, and though she’s outgoing and genuinely good-natured, she often comes off as annoying, provided her looks didn’t scare off the target of conversation in the first place.
Racial Traits:
Bird blood! That means she can fly and sing and fish and do all sorts of crazy bird stuff, right!? No, not exactly, but it does have its merits. Her bones are lighter and her muscles and tissues are springier, but that also means she’s less durable than most humans. Her voice is also amazingly adaptable, and she can almost perfectly mimic a voice she’s heard and practiced enough. There’s also the wings, but they’re not big enough even to allow her to glide. They make a decent parasol against the sun, though.
Abilities:
Agile Frame - She’s built light, making her very fast, but she’s far less durable; she’s likely about half as strong and hardy as a human. She can move very quickly in short bursts - likely twice as fast as most humans - but endurance is not one of her strong points. She can also climb and jump higher and with less effort, provided she's unhindered by equipment. She can run at twice a human's average full sprint for about a minute before she has to slow down, or sprint at three times a human's normal sprinting speed for about thirty seconds before she has to stop and catch her breath. (Sprint at 3x for 30s with full rest, Run at 2x for 1 min with partial rest, Jump Height/Distance 1.5x, Climbing Speed 1.5x, Climbing Endurance = Walking Endurance, Strength 0.5x)
Hawk Sight - Spotting fine detail up close or far away, or noticing something out of place visually is second nature. She's twice as sharp as a human, as far as sight goes. (Sight distance x2)
Dexterity - She has an aptitude for fine detailing work, and her fingers are swift and precise. She's twice as deft as a normal human. (Dexterity x2)
Liabilities:
Metabolism - She has to eat twice as often as a normal human, and many ailments work their course much more quickly. She can endure strenuous activity about half as long as a normal human, and toxins and poisons work twice as fast, but she's able to recover from heavy exertion as long as she is well fed. (Nourishment Stamina 0.5x, Poison Onset Effect 1.5x, Poison Onset Speed 2x, Endurance 0.5x)
Wings - Mynah's wings span out about two and a half feet on either side of her shoulders if she spreads them. Despite this, they are not yet strong enough to allow her to fly or even glide; she's relied on her speed and cunning to survive thus far. This does not stop her from using them in her body language, however. "Wings in cramped spaces can be awkward, 'specially if they've got minds of their own."
Skills:
Mimicry - Mynah’s ability to imitate sounds and voices is incredible, though she often only picks up on sounds she finds interesting or useful. It can take days to perfectly train her voice to mimic just a few words or sentences, unless she's very familiar with the voice and has mimicked it before; noises and animal calls tend to be easier to pick up and learn. (Learned examples include rabbit calls, bird calls, odd accent mimicry, and a few choice phrases from notable people she's met among the sands, as well as the creak of a cart wheel and the drop of a small metal object on a hard surface). This ability greatly decreases with her current health and hydration.
Stitching - Whether it’s a wound, a torn sleeve, or a tanned hide, Mynah can stitch just about anything together. Creating a wearable article from raw materials would require some guidance, however; there isn't exactly much free material to practice with out in the desert.
Herbalism, Desert - Recognizing edible and beneficial flora and fauna and discerning the difference between those and the ones that make you dead is an incredibly good skill to have just about anywhere. Much of this knowledge is from personal experience and testing; the names and terms that a professional herbalist might know are lost to Mynah, and she's only really experienced the desert sands and oases.
Survival, Desert - "Water’s where you’ll find just about everything you need to survive, but don’t hang out too long; something bigger and scarier might show up and decide you’re a meal to go with its beverage. Oh, and if you can, start a fire at night. Keeps bad stuff away, and it'll keep you warm, too."
Pointy End First - The ability to straighten wood into poles and affix arrowheads, spear tips, glass shards, pointy rocks, and many other objects to them has proved vital to Mynah’s survival throughout her travels. Despite her speed, she attacks as quickly as a normal, untrained human.
Dodgy - She's very quick on her toes and can dodge very well, especially if she's fully aware of her assailant. Sneak-attacks are harder to dodge, but her reflexes have saved her more than twice.
Uneducated - ”Lots of little lines’n circles... what’s the use’ve all that? We can speak plainly enough, can't we?” She understands the concept of reading, counting and math and can speak fairly well due to her propensity to mimic, but reading words and numbers isn’t something she can do.
Sneakiness - For some reason, people don’t like it when shinies disappear into her pockets, so she’s found ways to make her “theft,” as they call it, less apparent. Oh, food disappears too. Important stuff, that.
Equipment:
Pretty Knife - A stiletto of little tactical worth, the four-inch, un-edged, dull-tipped iron blade is gilded with a lightly tarnished silver despite a daily polish, and the hilt has a pair of cut, red gemstones set into it. It remains in its sheathe, bundled in with numerous other oddities, most of which have little or no real value to anyone else, save the few coins. ”BUT… when you turn them in the light... look at how they shine!” (cannot be sold.)
The Fix-It Box - A small leather-bound satchel houses a dwindling but diverse thread supply and numerous needles of varying sizes, some of which are of makeshift design.
Handy Knives - Two mismatched iron daggers scavenged from the sands, kept in cutting-shape by the single whetstone an “Opportunist” gave to her. ” ‘Ye can’ever ‘ave too many sharp noyves,’ I remember him sayin’.”
Quiverer and Javaloons! - A handy, tubular device that (kind of) holds three Javelins, their worn, mis-matched tips constantly reattached to new poles. It even has a nifty little hoopy-strap so you can carry it easily! Each Javelin head has it's own name, as well. "Decker is the longest one, at about a finger's length, made out of some antler, I think; Maljinn is the barbed one that looks like it'd hurt a lot - I think it's iron, and then there's Zachod, the smallest... but Zachod's gotten me the most meals, to be sure, I think. If I don't polish it, it starts to turn a little green." (One long, sharp Bone Javelin head, One barbed Iron Javelin head, and One Bronze Arrowhead used as a Javelin head).
The Pouch That Never Has Enough - Just enough emergency rations. Dried meat and nuts, mostly.
Fenley's Flaskley - A small, battered flask, pilfered from a wonderful bandit named "Fenley," filled as often as possible with water. Still tastes a little bit like whiskey, no matter how much it's refilled.
Clothes - A very basic shirt and pants, symmetrically patch-worked back together with remnants of fabric and un-treated leather, long-since tailored to Mynah’s body so that people don’t yell at her for indecency.
History:
”Well, y'see, there's really not that much that I remember! I woke up on that caravan a while ago, and they let me stick with them for a while. A capable bunch, they were. Opportunists, they called themselves. They taught me a lot of things, like how to throw and where to aim a spear, and how to fix stab-wounds and wagon covers. I wasn't dead weight, I swear! I was good with a needle and thread, I could find water easily, and I spotted stuff way far off, like 'Easy Targets' and ‘Other Bandits Cutting In On Our Turf.' I was pretty damn dense, I guess. Quiet then, too, though. Mostly since nothin' felt quite right. Never could really sleep well; always felt like something was missing. Something really important. Something I knew they had no way of knowing about.
“Well, after a while, some other ‘Opportunists’ came around and killed everyone. 'Course I escaped, duh. Had to, y'know! I mean, by that time I kinda had figured out that my opportunists weren't up to anything good. Bandits. Outlaws. I’d been stocking up on supplies, waiting for my chance to get out of there, and the battle proved to be the perfect opportunity. Guess I'm the opportunist now. I hope the few good-hearted folks there managed to keep their lives…
...but I digress; I’m not really one for dwelling on that sort of thing, honest. After that, I suppose I … wandered. A lot. Met interesting people, dodged scary things, learned that big groups of people tend to wave scary, pointy objects at you if you don’t look like them. ‘Monster,’ ‘freak,’ ‘demon bird’... people have lots of words that mean nothing anymore. And Harpies aren't much better, it seems. I know I’m no monster. That’s what matters. Speaking of what matters, I think I just saw something sparkle in those bushes, and I'll probably be right back.
…
Alright, turns out it was nothing. Anyway, I figure getting all hung up on the sad, the scary, the angry stuff is overrated. Friends’re better to have than enemies, too, and you’re way more apt to make friends if you’re happy rather’n sad. ‘Least that’s my experience.”
Adventuring is all Mynah has known since she mysteriously lost track of her prior family. Her dreams and nightmares give her a plethora of puzzle pieces with no edges or guides, but her adopted principle has kept her going: "It's not about who you were or who you've been; it's who you are and who you're going to be."
[Disclaimer: I, the writer, realize that American Kestrels are neither mimics nor desert birds. I also realize that Mynahs are tropical mimics, not desert mimics. S'alright, though! American Kestrels have similar feather coloration to some desert species, and Mynah is a pretty name. Oh, and for those who didn't know those things about birds, you learn somethin' new every day! XD
Disclaimer 2: I thought I posted this already, but it didn't show up, so I'm attempting it again. If it shows up twice, I'm sorry; either way, I did some edits to Mynah's abilities in hopes that they'd be more easily understood by any judges.]
Age: ”I’unno. Young.” 16
Sex: Female.
Gender: ”What’s that?”
Race: ”Sure! Where’re we racing to?” Harpy-Human Crossbreed
Hair Color: Blue and Rusty Red-Brown.
Eye Color: Orange. Like a Topaz.
Height: 4’3’’
Weight: 65 lbs.
Occupation: "I uh. I wander. I guess. Is Wandering an occupapulation?"
Appearance:
Mynah is a bit odd looking by human standards. To start, her hair has a strange, back-swept pattern, and mixed in with her soft locks are feathers of white, rusty red, and blue. Her eyes are wide but focused. Her personality is disarming enough, though, if you can get past the long legs and high-set ankles that cause these limbs to be somewhat reminiscent of a bird's. Her frame is slight at most, and her fingers are just a bit longer and more slender than an average human of her age. The apparent color of her skin varies from lightly tanned where it is truly bare, to white, black, rust-red, or slate blue where tiny feathers are rooted - mainly around her shoulders, neck, back, and lower legs. Oh, did I mention she’s got a pair of winglets? Well, there’s that too, and they’re covered in - you could’ve likely guessed - predominantly rust-red and slate blue feathers, and dotted with black and white feathers. [Would you like a pattern (http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/american_kestrel/id)?]
Personality:
Incredibly expressive, talkative, impulsive and curious all make for good descriptors of Mynah’s personality. She might also seem naive, but her primary concern is survival; she knows when she must end a life, and she realizes that mercy can carry the penalty of death. Despite this underlying survival instinct, she finds herself easily distracted by interesting (or shiny) things. She almost always supplements speech with body language, and though she’s outgoing and genuinely good-natured, she often comes off as annoying, provided her looks didn’t scare off the target of conversation in the first place.
Racial Traits:
Bird blood! That means she can fly and sing and fish and do all sorts of crazy bird stuff, right!? No, not exactly, but it does have its merits. Her bones are lighter and her muscles and tissues are springier, but that also means she’s less durable than most humans. Her voice is also amazingly adaptable, and she can almost perfectly mimic a voice she’s heard and practiced enough. There’s also the wings, but they’re not big enough even to allow her to glide. They make a decent parasol against the sun, though.
Abilities:
Agile Frame - She’s built light, making her very fast, but she’s far less durable; she’s likely about half as strong and hardy as a human. She can move very quickly in short bursts - likely twice as fast as most humans - but endurance is not one of her strong points. She can also climb and jump higher and with less effort, provided she's unhindered by equipment. She can run at twice a human's average full sprint for about a minute before she has to slow down, or sprint at three times a human's normal sprinting speed for about thirty seconds before she has to stop and catch her breath. (Sprint at 3x for 30s with full rest, Run at 2x for 1 min with partial rest, Jump Height/Distance 1.5x, Climbing Speed 1.5x, Climbing Endurance = Walking Endurance, Strength 0.5x)
Hawk Sight - Spotting fine detail up close or far away, or noticing something out of place visually is second nature. She's twice as sharp as a human, as far as sight goes. (Sight distance x2)
Dexterity - She has an aptitude for fine detailing work, and her fingers are swift and precise. She's twice as deft as a normal human. (Dexterity x2)
Liabilities:
Metabolism - She has to eat twice as often as a normal human, and many ailments work their course much more quickly. She can endure strenuous activity about half as long as a normal human, and toxins and poisons work twice as fast, but she's able to recover from heavy exertion as long as she is well fed. (Nourishment Stamina 0.5x, Poison Onset Effect 1.5x, Poison Onset Speed 2x, Endurance 0.5x)
Wings - Mynah's wings span out about two and a half feet on either side of her shoulders if she spreads them. Despite this, they are not yet strong enough to allow her to fly or even glide; she's relied on her speed and cunning to survive thus far. This does not stop her from using them in her body language, however. "Wings in cramped spaces can be awkward, 'specially if they've got minds of their own."
Skills:
Mimicry - Mynah’s ability to imitate sounds and voices is incredible, though she often only picks up on sounds she finds interesting or useful. It can take days to perfectly train her voice to mimic just a few words or sentences, unless she's very familiar with the voice and has mimicked it before; noises and animal calls tend to be easier to pick up and learn. (Learned examples include rabbit calls, bird calls, odd accent mimicry, and a few choice phrases from notable people she's met among the sands, as well as the creak of a cart wheel and the drop of a small metal object on a hard surface). This ability greatly decreases with her current health and hydration.
Stitching - Whether it’s a wound, a torn sleeve, or a tanned hide, Mynah can stitch just about anything together. Creating a wearable article from raw materials would require some guidance, however; there isn't exactly much free material to practice with out in the desert.
Herbalism, Desert - Recognizing edible and beneficial flora and fauna and discerning the difference between those and the ones that make you dead is an incredibly good skill to have just about anywhere. Much of this knowledge is from personal experience and testing; the names and terms that a professional herbalist might know are lost to Mynah, and she's only really experienced the desert sands and oases.
Survival, Desert - "Water’s where you’ll find just about everything you need to survive, but don’t hang out too long; something bigger and scarier might show up and decide you’re a meal to go with its beverage. Oh, and if you can, start a fire at night. Keeps bad stuff away, and it'll keep you warm, too."
Pointy End First - The ability to straighten wood into poles and affix arrowheads, spear tips, glass shards, pointy rocks, and many other objects to them has proved vital to Mynah’s survival throughout her travels. Despite her speed, she attacks as quickly as a normal, untrained human.
Dodgy - She's very quick on her toes and can dodge very well, especially if she's fully aware of her assailant. Sneak-attacks are harder to dodge, but her reflexes have saved her more than twice.
Uneducated - ”Lots of little lines’n circles... what’s the use’ve all that? We can speak plainly enough, can't we?” She understands the concept of reading, counting and math and can speak fairly well due to her propensity to mimic, but reading words and numbers isn’t something she can do.
Sneakiness - For some reason, people don’t like it when shinies disappear into her pockets, so she’s found ways to make her “theft,” as they call it, less apparent. Oh, food disappears too. Important stuff, that.
Equipment:
Pretty Knife - A stiletto of little tactical worth, the four-inch, un-edged, dull-tipped iron blade is gilded with a lightly tarnished silver despite a daily polish, and the hilt has a pair of cut, red gemstones set into it. It remains in its sheathe, bundled in with numerous other oddities, most of which have little or no real value to anyone else, save the few coins. ”BUT… when you turn them in the light... look at how they shine!” (cannot be sold.)
The Fix-It Box - A small leather-bound satchel houses a dwindling but diverse thread supply and numerous needles of varying sizes, some of which are of makeshift design.
Handy Knives - Two mismatched iron daggers scavenged from the sands, kept in cutting-shape by the single whetstone an “Opportunist” gave to her. ” ‘Ye can’ever ‘ave too many sharp noyves,’ I remember him sayin’.”
Quiverer and Javaloons! - A handy, tubular device that (kind of) holds three Javelins, their worn, mis-matched tips constantly reattached to new poles. It even has a nifty little hoopy-strap so you can carry it easily! Each Javelin head has it's own name, as well. "Decker is the longest one, at about a finger's length, made out of some antler, I think; Maljinn is the barbed one that looks like it'd hurt a lot - I think it's iron, and then there's Zachod, the smallest... but Zachod's gotten me the most meals, to be sure, I think. If I don't polish it, it starts to turn a little green." (One long, sharp Bone Javelin head, One barbed Iron Javelin head, and One Bronze Arrowhead used as a Javelin head).
The Pouch That Never Has Enough - Just enough emergency rations. Dried meat and nuts, mostly.
Fenley's Flaskley - A small, battered flask, pilfered from a wonderful bandit named "Fenley," filled as often as possible with water. Still tastes a little bit like whiskey, no matter how much it's refilled.
Clothes - A very basic shirt and pants, symmetrically patch-worked back together with remnants of fabric and un-treated leather, long-since tailored to Mynah’s body so that people don’t yell at her for indecency.
History:
”Well, y'see, there's really not that much that I remember! I woke up on that caravan a while ago, and they let me stick with them for a while. A capable bunch, they were. Opportunists, they called themselves. They taught me a lot of things, like how to throw and where to aim a spear, and how to fix stab-wounds and wagon covers. I wasn't dead weight, I swear! I was good with a needle and thread, I could find water easily, and I spotted stuff way far off, like 'Easy Targets' and ‘Other Bandits Cutting In On Our Turf.' I was pretty damn dense, I guess. Quiet then, too, though. Mostly since nothin' felt quite right. Never could really sleep well; always felt like something was missing. Something really important. Something I knew they had no way of knowing about.
“Well, after a while, some other ‘Opportunists’ came around and killed everyone. 'Course I escaped, duh. Had to, y'know! I mean, by that time I kinda had figured out that my opportunists weren't up to anything good. Bandits. Outlaws. I’d been stocking up on supplies, waiting for my chance to get out of there, and the battle proved to be the perfect opportunity. Guess I'm the opportunist now. I hope the few good-hearted folks there managed to keep their lives…
...but I digress; I’m not really one for dwelling on that sort of thing, honest. After that, I suppose I … wandered. A lot. Met interesting people, dodged scary things, learned that big groups of people tend to wave scary, pointy objects at you if you don’t look like them. ‘Monster,’ ‘freak,’ ‘demon bird’... people have lots of words that mean nothing anymore. And Harpies aren't much better, it seems. I know I’m no monster. That’s what matters. Speaking of what matters, I think I just saw something sparkle in those bushes, and I'll probably be right back.
…
Alright, turns out it was nothing. Anyway, I figure getting all hung up on the sad, the scary, the angry stuff is overrated. Friends’re better to have than enemies, too, and you’re way more apt to make friends if you’re happy rather’n sad. ‘Least that’s my experience.”
Adventuring is all Mynah has known since she mysteriously lost track of her prior family. Her dreams and nightmares give her a plethora of puzzle pieces with no edges or guides, but her adopted principle has kept her going: "It's not about who you were or who you've been; it's who you are and who you're going to be."
[Disclaimer: I, the writer, realize that American Kestrels are neither mimics nor desert birds. I also realize that Mynahs are tropical mimics, not desert mimics. S'alright, though! American Kestrels have similar feather coloration to some desert species, and Mynah is a pretty name. Oh, and for those who didn't know those things about birds, you learn somethin' new every day! XD
Disclaimer 2: I thought I posted this already, but it didn't show up, so I'm attempting it again. If it shows up twice, I'm sorry; either way, I did some edits to Mynah's abilities in hopes that they'd be more easily understood by any judges.]