OOC: OC History and Personality

[ratsontheroof]

 
Name: Arator Kokaid
Age: Seven in solar sweeps.
Colour: Olive a la Lady Leijon.
Chumhandle: improvisedCircuit [IC]
Appearance: As is the usual for his species, Arator has gray skin, black hair, yellow sclera, fanglike teeth, and candy-corn-colored horns. His particular horns are on the short side and rather rounded, and his frontmost teeth are a bit longer than his canines, rodent-like. He's physically mature enough that he's grown to be on the tall and bony side, and also has a somewhat long and rounded-off nose.

Clothes-wise, he's predictably a simple dresser, wearing gray pants, black shoes, and a black T-shirt marked with an olive green stylized version of the Chinese character for "rat". The one additional piece of clothing he favors is a gray hoodie. He's a hood-rat!
 
History:
Arator Kokaid has thus far lived just like most any other troll: he hatched in and survived the brooding caverns, was taken in by a lusus of matching blood color, began supporting his lusus as well in return once he was grown and able enough, and up to now has carried on that way awaiting his eventual conscription and shipping off to space.

As for his individual experience growing up, Arator’s particular lusus is a rat king, and one can imagine that the task of keeping every one of its squealing white faces fed was one that kept him rather busy. After taking on some level of a role as a provider, Arator took to spending most of his time out, dashing as far from his hive as he could afford to stray in search of food every night; even after the task became easier for him as he learned his way around, built up his athletic skills, and learned to take advantage of his sense of smell, he continued to spend a load of his time away from home. A job skulking and scouting evolved into a freerunning hobby, his favorite personal obstacle course being the more densely populated zones of Alternia, with hiveblocks to scale, alleys to zip through, and plenty of food for the easy stealin’s.

Not that he couldn’t keep himself entertained at home, although the chaotic squeaking from his lusus’s numerous heads was something he was glad to get a break from on his free runs. He always enjoyed video games as much as the next troll, and made a few friends over Trollian with whom he played – though his short attention span and restlessness kept him from playing with others long in one sitting, cutting off much opportunity for bonding. And what with constant movement, stealing, and trespassing taking up most of his time away from his husktop, he didn’t have many in-person friends, either.

That’s to say, he did have one. A foray to the outskirts of his “neighborhood” took him to a garden or “park” maintained by a particularly docile troll who he learned he could reliably ask for food from if he came up short from time to time, or simply visit to chat with, should he want some face-to-face interaction. They eventually became moirails – the troll happened to know another ‘running enthusiast and introduced the two in case they were interested in buddying up, but as it happened their personalities clashed, the trolls becoming rivals and their runs becoming competitions fueled by a rising black-romantic tension. Arator attempted to act on the attraction with a flirtatious prank that left his ‘running rival dead, and although incidents such incidents oughtn’t exactly be expected to be unusual among trolls, he felt deeply embarrassed – embarrassment at the incident itself compounded by his hesitance to admit to his friend that he accidentally one of his acquaintances, who he’d tried to set him up with as another friend, no less. Needless to say, Arator’s friend found out everything and took pity on him, and Arator ended up having sacrificed a potential kismesis for something very different.

That spot of drama is, at this point, yet the most unusual situation he’s been in.

Personality: Arator is a TROLL OF ACTION. He’s restless, adventurous, and one who thrives on stimulation; a breezy and informal communicator; if not especially tactful, straightforward and honest.

Well, he was a bit less than honest in dealing with the death of his ‘running buddy, considering that complete honesty in such a case would most likely be taking direct responsibility in front of your friend for killing his friend – Arator opted to awkwardly deposit the body somewhere in the garden for him to find. But his self-consciousness was at least as out of character; he makes it a point not to care for others’ opinions, enough to change his behavior, and that he was interested in what another thought of him enough for it to fill him with shame over something he’d done probably marked that he’d found a solid fit for one of his quadrants. Arator doesn’t like censorship or affectation, behaving as naturally as he can help.

His general lack of self-consciousness manifests itself in a few interesting ways, mind you – for example, if asked if he’d been eating out of someone’s garbage in the middle of the night, he’d respond along the lines of “Yeah. There’s food in there”; if someone asked him if he’d seen their keys and he had them in his pocket, he’d pull them out and toss them over. He really isn’t one to rebel against the rules, but is one to turn a blind eye to them if it’s inconvenient. He’s also quietly disdainful of formality and a tad suspicious in talking to others, both in that he tries to look for bends in the truth or double meanings and in that he’s not especially trusting. His insistence on just being himself is in part a not-yet-finished maturation of an earlier-teenage naïve cynicism, if the oxymoron is forgivable, the ol’ “people are faaaaake >(“ mentality – another seed of his moiraillegiance, as he got to be a bit impressed by what was, as far as he could make out, earnest niceness in his gardener/groundskeeper friend.

A good bit about Arator is probably more than a little to do with his upbringing and lack of socialization. Sweeps in the company of a parental figure that takes the form of a ball of rats with a divided personality and consciousness wouldn’t exactly provide a growing wriggler with structure or instill an interest in impressing others or respecting rules – and in for a while, letting the thoughts of others influence him would’ve in fact been a hindrance; he steals things, after all. Those sweeps have added up and taken their toll – at this point, he acknowledges when he gets cravings for company. But he’s a touch picky about said company and is slow to declare solid friendship; the circle he most regularly chats with over Trollian are acquaintances, and those he games with “aren’t, like, really good friends, but they’re still my friends”. Arator is absolutely not unfriendly, but kinship and common interests are important to him in forming bonds with others. He’s actions-over-words – heart-spilling makes him rather uncomfortable and he’s impatient with small talk or being asked how he’d doing on one hand, and on the other he enjoys bonding with others through activities.

The hobbies he wishes he had a few others with whom to share are also a substantial source of pride for him. As much time as Arator has devoted to athletics and acrobatics, as far as he’s concerned, he is a GODDAMN NINJA. He would respect anyone else he meets with talents in his areas of interest, but has a cocky streak himself, with his skills in climbing and jumping giving him a sense of power, that there’s nowhere he can’t go, and that any place he learns his way around is his oyster.
And he’s quite capable of reaching anywhere within physical plausibility, as a strong improviser and quick thinker. An insistent one, even, as he will whine a bit if urged to stick to a plan. There’s another thing he prides himself on – being all-around quick. He’s quick to identify and take shameless advantage of beneficial opportunities (he is quite the opportunist and… advantage-taker in varying ways – even from a good friend he’s the sort who would ask to borrow money and, on being politely given a significantly larger bill than he’d need “just in case” and told he can keep the change, nonchalantly give a "cool"), and quick to pounce on a problem and try to wing his way through it. He isn’t necessarily efficient. In fact, he’s liable to be terribly sloppy. If he can add a flourish to some step he’s taking with something, he’ll add it for the sake of his personal satisfaction, but if he becomes stuck at a corner, he’ll cut it, and if he can justify dropping a task or sub-task he finds tedious as more trouble and time expenditure than it’s worth, he will (for example, the bookshelf is inevitably going to end up de-alphabetized by the end of the week).

For such a supposedly clever guy, he also doesn’t have an especially colorful sense of humor. His idea of a joke is highlighting something that strikes him as funny or absurd already, and he appreciates physical humor, but meanwhile, he doesn’t wield sarcasm well or have much of a head for puns. His creativity with humor is reasonably likely to grow with his fondness for whoever he’s dealing with.

Abilities & physical limitations: Arator is a troll, and therefore has a stronger constitution and thicker skin than a human. His lower-caste blood would also imply some level of psychic ability, at the cost of psychic resistance – he hasn’t tried exploring any active powers, but has some level of clairvoyance. He can get a sense of the presence of objects a reasonable distance around him, say an average city block, and the nature of those objects: whether they’re alive, whether they’re hazardous, their approximate size, etc. This becomes more useful used in cooperation with his INORDINATELY HYPERSENSITIVE NOSE. His sense of smell is very arguably more powerful than his clairvoyance, with a little of a mixed blessing, as certain smells at certain ranges can prove to be TOTALLY OVERPOWERING – shut him in a neglected port-a-potty and he’ll be shocked into paralysis until he can adjust; running spices through a grinder next to him will put him into a slightly pleasant daze, or a sneezing fit, as in the case of pepper. Curiously, he doesn’t seem to respond much to the scent of permanent markers. Do not ask him for an explanation. He isn’t proud of it.

In the area of basic physical skills, Arator is agile, flexible, dexterous, and a fast runner and reactor. He isn’t a strong direct physical fighter – he’s been challenged a few times by trolls who’ve caught him trespassing and more often than not decided that he didn’t have time or interest to stay and brawl. He also doesn’t seem to mind risking injury trying something new or a little different and takes any injuries he does receive in stride, for better or for worse, often worse, as he doesn’t usually think to rest up. Similarly, though it takes quite a bit for his energy levels to fail to hold him up, he tends to find soreness/aches slowing him down a tad and coming on rather hard after he’s done with a bout of exertion – stress fractures and the like.