Player Information

Name: Kathryn
Age: 28
Contact Info: PM this account, or get me at YawningDodo
Other Characters: n/a

Character Information

Name: Ecks / Subject 437
Canon: Original universe created by a group of my friends for a tabletop game.
Age: Two years old
Gender: Female


Inventory:

• Long-sleeved tunic, trousers, scarf, and soft leather boots in a mottled gray suitable for rudimentary camouflage in a rocky and/or urban setting. The clothing includes a multitude of hidden pockets.
• Lightweight leather armor, also in mottled gray.
• A small journal, most of its pages blank; a few pages near the start are populated by a table of contents, a short list of basic ethical concepts, and brief rules regarding murder and theft, all handwritten (the linked page will continue to be updated as Ecks compiles more rules in game).
• A forger's kit containing inks, pens, papers, templates for certificates, and tools for modifying or copying official seals.
• A primitive first aid kit containing bandages and herbs.

World Description:
Once upon a time, a new pantheon of minor gods sought to supplant their elders. The war they waged extended to the mortal plane, and the upstart gods sought advantage by recruiting five extraordinary mortals. Unmatched in their evil and unsurpassed in strength and guile, these mortal men changed the face of the final battle between old gods and new. The war was won, but when the moment came for the emerging gods to take their ill-gained places in Olympus, everything went wrong.

In the maelstrom of uncontrolled divine power that followed the deaths of the old gods, four of the five turned on the new gods and seized godhood for themselves. Those of the gods who had recruited them they did not kill they drove out from the world and into the void, taking absolute control over the mortal plane from which they had arisen, each carving out his own kingdom.

It was then that the four turned on each other. Each was convinced of his own superiority over his former comrades, each sure that he and he alone was the rightful ruler of the world. For a thousand years the mortal realm has served as their battleground and its living things as their pawns. The landscape itself bears the scars of their savage war; the world itself is dying as they continue to fight for mastery over it.

The Archmagus, God of Magic, Weather, and Destruction, rules over the Blasted Lands to the west. The only true citizens of the Blasted Lands--and the only beings suited to live there--are the elementals who wrack its landscape with storms, earthquakes, flash floods, and volcanic eruptions. Nomadic tribes of elves, driven from their homeland by the drow, eke out what an existence they can there.

Neraku, Minotaur God of Law, Strength, and War, rules the Eternal Empire to the east. Though it combines all the worst traits of a theocracy and a fascist state, it is the most hospitable place that remains, and the closest thing the world still has to a functioning mortal society.

The Mind-King, God of Magic, Knowledge, and Community, rules over the Island of Perfect Thought, which houses the portal to a demiplane of his own creation. A psion in his mortal life, the Mind-King surrounds himself with like creatures; any being without psionic ability is considered less than a person by the Island's standards.

Finally, there is Vin, God of Madness, Death, and Trickery. Vin's kingdom is an underground network of spies, assassins, and mad scientists. His followers have spread themselves throughout the world in secret, sowing discord wherever they go. Their one stronghold is the Fleshworks, a literally underground complex hidden beneath the City of the Dead in the Blasted Lands. The City of the Dead was Vin's masterpiece in life, a place of such concentrated evil that even a thousand years later none dare to disturb its legion of vengeful ghosts. The Fleshworks underneath carries on the experiments Vin began as a fleshcrafter, the gnomes that make up most of its population ever striving to perfect new methods and applications for the horrific 'art' of grafting.

The population of the world from which Ecks hails is made up of many familiar fantasy races, but a thousand years under the rule of the Dark Quartet have altered many of them. Pure-blooded humans have long been on the decline, supplanted by the green races (that is, orcs, goblins, and the like) due to the latters' violent natures and better suitability to the altered world. As mentioned, the dark elves, or drow, have come to live on the surface of the world and to push out the surface elves. Dwarves have been all but hunted to extinction by agents of the Mind-King due to an ancient grudge, and halflings have disappeared from the world entirely by means unknown. All four gods have experimented in creating or altering races to suit their purposes with varying degrees of success; the world is awash with warped, unnatural creatures.


Background:
Subject 437 came into being in the Fleshworks, the life's work of a gnome known as Subject 1. She was a unique creation; the gnomes of the Fleshworks typically used their graftwork to make alterations to existing creatures. Though Subject 437 was not the first flesh golem to be made entirely out of the grafted body parts of dead creatures, she was the first flesh golem ever to be imbued with conscious thought (and, as a byproduct, free will). As the first successful prototype she was subjected to a barrage of painful and traumatic tests in an effort to create sufficient documentation to repeat the experiment, up to and including vivisection. Though she was something of a special case due to her unique nature, this general type of treatment was not all that unusual within the Fleshworks; even the natural-born gnomes who made up most of Vin's stable of scientists might well find themselves Subjects of each others' brutal experimentation, to say nothing of the unfortunate beings "harvested" from nearby settlements and camps.

Later, Subject 1 came to look upon Subject 437 almost as a daughter. As he became aware of the extent of her intelligence he made an effort to educate her and to have her trained for field work. It's likely that he felt some actual affection for his creation despite his willingness to be cruel in order to advance his own work; by establishing Subject 437 as a field agent he guaranteed her ongoing usefulness and therefore her livelihood. That assigning her a series of increasingly complex tasks also improved her utility as a case study, however, would not have been mere coincidence.

Field work, in Subject 437's case, meant reconnaissance and assassination. She took to the work like a duck to water; while she lacked the social skills and forgettable face required for actual espionage, her creators found that she was quite adept at moving unseen through hostile territory...and at taking her targets unaware. As far as Subject 437 could tell there was never any rhyme or reason to the observations she was ordered to take, nor any pattern to the targets she was assigned to eliminate. Invariably, the people she killed were perfectly ordinary and seemingly harmless, and invariably one of the requirements of each mission was that she must flay off the victim's face and bring it back to the Fleshworks for some hidden purpose never explained to her.

The lack of logic or reason to her work was what first troubled Subject 437. A creature of logic herself, she struggled to reconcile the orders she was given with some larger purpose, and was unable to identify sound reason for it. That unease and doubt laid the groundwork for a series of epiphanies to follow. Concepts like "other people almost certainly dislike being stabbed as much as I do" initially required significant leaps in logic, but once her mind started down that path it was impossible for her to ignore the thought that her given purpose might not be a worthy one.

She began questioning the purpose of her missions, but no explanations were forthcoming. As far as she could tell she was merely being used as an instrument of random violence, and over the following months she came to decide that she did not like it (the conscious formation of an independent opinion was, in itself, a significant mental leap). She made up her mind that she would cease to participate in the work of the Fleshworks and find another way to live, and secretly gave herself the name Ecks (a meaningless but pleasant mouth-sound) to mark the start of her new life. An opportunity presented itself in the form of a mission to investigate a nomad camp in the Blasted Lands, and Ecks used that opportunity to simply walk away with no particular goal in mind apart from distancing herself from her creator.


Canon Point: Age two / Pre-campaign. Ecks has departed the Fleshworks for what she intends to be the last time, and will be transported to Norfinbury rather than meeting and embarking on a quest with the other player characters from the tabletop rpg version of her story.


Personality:
Though Ecks has rejected her creators' mission to sow chaos and their proclivity for murder without cause, her two years as an experimental prototype and as a servant of a severely deranged evil god have left her with a skewed view of life, the universe, and everything. What she knows of "normal" society (such as it even exists in her world) she learned mainly from biased historical records and from her education in how to stalk and kill members of said "normal" society. She's pragmatic, sometimes to a disturbing degree, particularly in regards to various uses for the dead.

Ecks has a strong philosophical bent and a deep need to understand the world around her and to find some justification for her own actions; had she been educated in ethics and morality from the start she would likely have become a paragon of virtue, if an inflexible one. As it is, she is more or less attempting to reinvent the wheel, starting with a somewhat uneven application of the golden rule and working onward from there. Because of her early experiences following instructions and obeying rules she later decided were unjustified, she distrusts ready-made systems of law and ethics, preferring to continue compiling her own system of personal rules. She has low tolerance for ambiguity; either a thing is right or it is wrong. When faced with a nuanced ethical problem, her solution is generally to attempt to identify all the conditions which would tip the balance in one direction or the other (notably, her book of rules includes a two page flow chart on the topic of theft).

A golem is, by nature, an obedient creature--or rather, construct. While Ecks possesses free will and is fully capable of direct disobedience and of forming her own opinions, she is most at ease when she has clear directions to follow. She's unlikely to obey an order that clearly contradicts one of the rules she's established for herself (at least, not without some fairly convincing justification), but will often obey simple commands unthinkingly and is more open than most people to letting herself be ordered about in general. When faced with two or more conflicting but apparently reasonable orders at once she often finds the demand to choose one to follow overwhelming; under such circumstances she may withdraw and become unresponsive.

Ecks is highly intelligent in terms of analytical skill, and excels at logical thinking and puzzle-solving. On the other hand, she has very poor emotional intelligence; while she does have feelings (and recognizes that other people do as well), her emotions are underdeveloped and poorly expressed. She does not intuitively change her facial expression from its blank default or her voice from a bland, flat tone, though she is capable of mimicking the emotional expressions of others with some effort, and enjoys adding new mannerisms to her repertoire. She's a poor judge of people; while she's aware of what various facial expressions and tones generally mean, she is unlikely to catch the nuances that would indicate that a person is being dishonest with her. She has a poor grasp of sarcasm, and does not understand most humor due to her tendency toward highly literal interpretation of the things she is told. As a result of her inability to gauge the sincerity of others, she can be painfully gullible. However, repeated abuse of her trust will naturally make her cagey around the culprit(s), as she is more than capable of learning from past mistakes.


Flavor Abilities:

• Trained in the use of a rapier and dagger
• Trained in the use and identification of poison
• Trained in stealth and sleight of hand (namely, pickpocketing and concealing items)
• Knowledge of multiple languages from her own world, including Common, Drow Sign Language, Orc, and Goblin

Suitability:
Ecks is accustomed to suffering. Though Norfinbury will present her with a new flavor of suffering, eking out an existence in a harsh world is right up her alley. Like as not she won't particularly understand why other people are so upset to be there at first; while she won't be exactly thrilled about coping with the cold and running from unbeatable monsters, the general setting will not be a big step down in quality of life for her. In some ways, the transition will even represent a twisted sort of freedom due to her complete removal from the influence of her creator and his ilk. The one aspect that's likely to confuse and frighten her is the loss of some of her innate abilities; prior to arriving in Norfinbury Ecks did not require sleep in order to function, and she possessed natural resistance to poison and to the elements.

Depending on how other characters answer her when she asks them about ethical matters (as she inevitably will whenever she witnesses dubious behavior and/or meets anyone who seems particularly convicted about their moral beliefs), Ecks will continue to add new rules to her journal. Sometimes those rules will be broad and sensible and sound almost like the kinds of rules a normal person would live by. Other times, her rules will be so specific and esoteric that they might have no application beyond the situation that first inspired them. Ecks will do her best to live by her own rules, so her interactions with other characters may significantly impact her baseline behavior as the game goes on.


RP Samples:
Sample 1 (Snowblind test drive meme)
Sample 2 (this is an older, more experienced version of Ecks)

If Ecks spends time with lawful good characters she's more likely to start seeking nonviolent solutions to problems. Learning from good characters would make her more altruistic; rather than merely refraining from making the world worse, she would be more inclined to make an active effort to improve the lot of the people around her. In the tabletop version of her story, one member of the party was lawful good and attempted to teach her his code. Ecks did not adopt his entire code because she found certain rules impractical--for example, he was unable to convince her that a "proper burial" was something one should do as a matter of course out of respect for the dead, as she was far too accustomed to thinking of dead bodies as a resource. However, she came to generally trust his judgment over that of the more chaotic members of the party because he had demonstrated that he was justifying his behavior in a way that made sense to her.

Lawful characters in general will tend to have more natural influence over Ecks than chaotic ones, as she prefers predictable people who can provide concrete answers when asked why they display certain behaviors. Blatant disrespect for sapient life would make lawful evil a harder sell than lawful good, but a sufficiently regulated approach could still sway her given enough time. Another tabletop example would be the time the party encountered a serial killer who considered breaches of day to day etiquette ample reason to kill a person and desecrate the corpse. While Ecks was very interested in learning the killer's system of etiquette, she was predisposed to agree with the rest of the party that killing a person for violating it constituted grossly disproportionate retribution. Had she not already been spending time with good-aligned characters, however, she might have been talked round to accepting death as an appropriate punishment for lesser infractions so long as there was a definite system in place for making those judgments.

How much influence a chaotic evil character would have on Ecks's behavior would likely depend on whether that character was deliberately attempting to fool her into adopting rules that would suit their own ends (and on how good they were at making their ideas sound sensible). Ecks made a deliberate choice to distance herself from her chaotic evil creators on the basis that she found no justification in their action and that their unpredictability made them dangerous to her. She's averse to unpredictable behavior in general, and is less likely to take her cues from chaotic characters, particularly those that strike her as potential sources of harm.

Spending time around someone with strong emotional reactions would likely make Ecks more inclined to make an effort to express her own emotions in order to demonstrate her personhood and prevent misunderstandings. Those interactions could also improve her understanding of non-physical pain and cause her to give the emotional impact of her actions on others more weight when crafting rules and making decisions--for instance, she might concede that it's important to treat the dead with respect because it eases the pain of the living.

Conversely, time spent with a very rational, logical person could make Ecks more ruthless toward individuals and their feelings while in pursuit of the greater good. Given that death is largely impermanent in this setting, under the influence of more rational, less emotional minds Ecks might come to use the deaths of other characters as opportunities for experimentation, disregarding the emotional impact on anyone who had to live with the knowledge that she fed their friend's body to a monster, or hacked it into pieces, or whatever else she might do in the name of science. Depending on how far down that slope she went, she might even actively suggest that people allow themselves to be harmed or killed in the name of learning, though she would be unlikely to suggest a course of action she herself would be unwilling to undergo (given her high tolerance for pain, though, that's not much of a limit).