App for The Next Night

[theimpatientone]

PLAYER INFO

Player Name: Jessie
Player Contact: sunnjessie (at) gmail dot com, zerothlaw
Character(s) In-GPSL: None

CHARACTER INFO

Character Name: Merwen the Impatient One
Age: Fortyish
Canon: A Door Into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski.

World Description: Shora and Valedon are twin worlds, settled millennia ago by a great spacefaring human empire that settled and terraformed many worlds before destroying themselves. A robotic overlord called the Patriarch rules from humanity's homeworld, called Torr in this day and age, periodically sending humanoid robots to keep tabs on the colonies, as no one but robots can survive the hundreds of years of spaceflight. Valedon is a patriarchal and industrial world, rich in mineral wealth, but the moon, Shora, has been isolated and ignored for at least a millennium, until in the last twenty years the people of Valedon gained the ability to cross space to their moon. Shora is a world that is entirely ocean. The people who settled Shora opted not to terraform their world, but rather changed themselves to fit Shora, using their advanced genetic engineering skills (an art retained from the old human empire, lost on other worlds), which they call "lifeshaping." The people of Shora call themselves Sharers, and live on floating islands made of a species of aquatic vegetation they call raft trees.
Sharers are strict pacifists, have no hair on any part of their body, do not wear clothes, and are a female-only race that use lifeshaping to conceive children. They are communalist anarchists, having no leaders and not even having the concept of a ruler. This is reflected in their language as well as their psychology; in Sharer, it is not possible to give someone an order, only suggestions, and verbs are understood to act equally upon both subject and object of a sentence. All Sharer technology is organic; for example they send messages using the songs of the starworms that pull their rafts, or by clickflies, large insects that spin words in their webs. They store their history in the chromosomes of their rafts. Sharer names consist of "sea names" that are given at birth, and "selfnames" that are chosen when they come of age; selfnames describe a fault or weakness that the bearer wishes to grow out of.
HMD: https://theimpatientone.dreamwidth.org/443.html

History: When Merwen was a child, the first travellers from Valedon arrived. The Valans opened up a cautious trade with the women of their moon, as there was great interest in the seasilk the Sharers wove for a number of purposes, as well as their highly advanced medicine, though the Valans mistook the Sharers' biological technology for a lack of technology. Sharer reactions to this were mixed, but Merwen was always cautiously interested in them. She grew up to become a wordweaver, something perhaps analogous to a politician or a judge: in Sharer gatherings that occurred when a course of action for their people needed to be decided, she was known to speak wisely and eloquently, in ways that often moved the hearts of those who listened. She and her lovesharer Usha the Inconsiderate One (the chief lifeshaper, both doctor and scientist, of their raft, Raia-el) had three children: Lystra the Intemperate One, Wellen, and Weia.
When Valan authorities attempted to rule Shora, their efforts were met with confusion and suspicion, as the Sharers did not understand being governed. Merwen, who had learned some degree of the Valan language, even went so far as to travel to Valedon, bringing back a young man named Spinel to learn Sharer ways, and to prove to her sisters that the Valans were, in fact, as human as they were. When the Valan presence on Shora became a hostile occupation, the Valans mistook Shora culture in such a way that they thought Merwen was a leader of her people. It is true that she spoke loudly about the humanity of Valans, encouraging her sisters not to break their cultural pacifism in defense of their world, even as they were slaughtered by Valan soldiers and their children were taken hostage. While some argued for lifeshaping a virus that would kill Valans (whose violence identified them as sick and possibly not human as far as most Sharers were concerned) and leave Sharers unharmed, Merwen led the opposition, pointing out that she had once been gravely injured by a Sharer serial killer who was "sick" and sought to kill her sisters for pleasure, and that this was a sign that the Valans could not be dismissed as inhuman for this alone. She preached compassion and understanding for Valan "sickness," the humanity of Valans, and a policy of non-violence and passive resistance, and ultimately this view won out. Merwen was even taken captive by the Valan governor for her role. Ultimately, their non-violent witnessing of the Valan soldiers won out, and the Valan army ultimately abandoned Shora, demoralized and uneasy in their slaughter of peaceful women and children who refused to fight them. Merwen returned to her home, scarred by her experiences.

Death: Canonically, Merwen dies an old woman. HOWEVER, for the purposes of this game, I'd like to invent an episode maybe a year after she returns to Raia-el and her family where, during her difficulty in coping with what happened to her and her world, she spends a great deal of time in whitetrance (see abilities below). It is possible to simply will oneself to die during whitetrance, an act of suicide that holds no particular taboo for Sharers. They refer to this death as the Final Door, and believe that they will be reincarnated. I'd prefer to be vague about this, but Merwen may certainly have wandered too close to this final door for long enough to count as "dead."

What are your plans for this character in-GPSL? My main interest in games is frequently just letting characters interact and seeing what grows from that organically. I don't make a lot of plans ahead of time for games, since I find I get disappointed if I do.

What aspects of this GPSL and/or its setting are you most interested in having this character engage with? I'm just really into the spookiness and I feel like it's a type of spookiness that will work very well with a devoted pacifist character, although this probably will blow up in her face at least once. Bring it on!

How does your character generally get along with other people? Ultimately Merwen is willing and eager to talk to new and different people, willing to share things about herself but also asking many questions in return. She likes people a lot, though at present she's a little leery of soldiers.

What is your character's mental state upon entering the GPSL? Merwen is tired, recovering from immense trauma, and probably going through a bit of a depressive episode. Her world is shattered and she bore a great deal of the responsibility for the end result. Her optimism has taken a serious blow.

Skills/Abilities: Merwen is, ultimately, an aquatic human. Her webbed hands and feet allow her to swim very far and quickly, third eyelids protect her eyes while underwater, and the purple of her skin reflects the presence of a symbiotic "breath microbe", that stores oxygen. Between the breath microbes and the adaptations of specialized pores in her skin, she is able to stay underwater for close to an hour. Her people also have the ability to pass into a state they call "whitetrance," where their breathing and heartrate slow greatly, which causes their breathmicrobes to give up their oxygen reserves and the skin to blanch white. In whitetrance, they are mostly oblivious to their surroundings, and it's considered dangerous for anyone other than a small child to try to wake them. For Sharers, whitetrance is frequently used as a way to meditate on trauma, to deal with physical or emotional pain, or just as a way to have some privacy (something they have little of living on the rafts).

Flaws/Weaknesses: Merwen's greatest personality flaw is her impatience, which is why she chose "the Impatient One" as her selfname. She's inclined to rush into situations to find quick solutions, which has more than once resulted in disaster, and once (during the aforementioned Sharer serial killer Merwen encountered as a young woman) nearly got her killed. She works hard on being patient because she feels she has to.
Emotionally, mention of her lovesharer Usha or their children is a great weakness. She loves her family deeply and will miss them a lot. In addition, she is very uncomfortable with tools made of stone or metal, even if she's learned recently that there is no concrete reason they are more "dead" than something that came from an animal or plant; the fact that she spent an extended period of time as a prisoner in a metal cell on a Valan ship doesn't help.
Physically, her skin is sensitive to drying out and it's just as well there's no hot sun here.

Personality: Merwen is deeply compassionate, someone who finds it easy to empathize with just about anyone. This extends to an unwillingness to eat flesh, something many other Sharers would see as an affectation, but she is uncertain about the blurriness of the line between "animal that is not self aware" and "human with a soul" and has opted instead to just not eat anything with a face, just in case. The first time she saw a monkey, on Valedon, was a bit of a shock. Even so, she recognises this is an arbitrary stance to take, because even plants and seaweed will take steps to avoid being eaten, and in general life eating life is just kind of a part of how the world works so she doesn't engage in lecturing other people to also be vegetarians; Merwen just can't bring herself to do it. She has an impulsive streak that has historically gotten her in trouble, generally by rushing into danger to help other people, but at this stage of her life she's a little calmer about it. She has high expectations for other people, but she holds herself to at least the same standards; for example, Merwen might disapprove of someone's fit of temper, but she would also feel ashamed if she felt she had provoked that temper in any way. She's quick to forgive and quick to apologise, and has been historically optimistic. Her culture practices "unspeaking," a form of shunning that can be used to gain distance during an argument, to communicate displeasure with an individual or a group of people, or in extreme cases, as punishment for trespasses. Merwen, however, has always hated unspeaking others, and will readily listen to an unspoken sister who is asking for help.
Ultimately, Merwen is willing to consider the humanity of anyone she meets, regardless of actual species, and all humans are her sisters as far as she is concerned. She is deeply spiritual, engaging in a sort of Earth worship, or really Ocean Moon worship in her case, and believes in reincarnation of souls.

Items: Nothing. She has nothing. She has no clothes, she has no items. She's just a naked purple lady from a culture that accepts the impermanence that comes with living on a floating tree.
SAMPLES

Log Sample: Link
Network Sample: Link