#Roa Umbramaker

[galacticnova3]

would roa be an earth pony a pegasus or a unicorn

Probably an earth pony, since Lor would be a pegasus & Loa would be a unicorn on account of Wizard Spells™️

[reflected-ship]

The dashboard as in like. the outside part of the boat. That dashboard. The

Roa does not have any type of external dashboard, unless one were to really stretch the definition and count her emblem. Perhaps later Umbramaker models would have something to serve that function, but for her, the potential for debris to hit her dome is a normal risk of flying. Usually it isn’t a problem, but if someone throws a sticky hand at her again she’s going to be upset.

[reflected-ship]

"In this universe, curses can be cast on others, and are more often than not; hence why I was surprised you used one on yourself. Since many last until the caster chooses to dismiss them, they're still often used for less than pleasant purposes, albeit not in the open. That's where the negative connotation of the word comes from.◀️"

A few individuals come to mind on that note; particularly that ancient clockwork star in the Overworld she'd read about long ago.

"And don't worry about that, it's not an issue. A few minutes after your "spell" is dismissed, the aether will be pumped back in.◀️"

As for Sailor's question, the AI has to take a moment to think of a decent answer. While she wants to be completely honest, the full truth might sound scary to the child. It's not a guarantee she can get them back to their home universe, at least not soon; it all depends on if their magic signatures match a specific universe.

"... As far as we know right now, yes, you'll get to go home. It might take a little bit though, but I'm sure you can be patient, right?◀️"

She's taken on a somewhat more paternal tone of voice, probably trying to make sure he stays calm. The boy's had enough stress today already, she just wants him to have a break.

Though there's not an obvious way to show it aside from a change in tone, her attention returns to Galacta.

"Since you have already shown you have magic, would you be alright if I did a scan of it? If I can find an aether rift with a matching signature, I should be able to get you home.◀️"

Just casually use an important sounding term without explaining it, cool.

Starter For @reflected-ship

Leaves sway over the knight laid on the ground, his white armor glinting in the dappled light. Galacta shifts, sitting up with a hand on his forehead. His head was splitting, his sight not helping. He couldn’t focus, the sunlight only hurt whenever he looked out of the shade. Raising his massive wings produces a squeak, originating from his left.

“Sailor?”

Opening his wing, a tiny blue dee slid to the ground, another squeak coming from him. As far as Galacta could tell though, he was just a little blue blob. It was fine, he knew very well the sound of the kids voice. Though, he could see there was something off. Sailors signature hat was missing.

“Good morning Galacta.”

The dee gives a miniature yawn, looking around at the woods they found themselves in.

“Where are we?”

Another squeak, this one worried.

“What happened to your wing!?”

Sailor was turned to his wing, tugging the feather that stuck out furthest. Even with his impaired sight, Galacta could see the end had been cut cleanly off. Galacta gave the dee a pat as he considered what could have brought them here, standing and giving a look around as well. As best he could anyway. Not that he could keep from blinking every few seconds. Something was definitely messing with his sight.

“You know, I would like to know that as well.”

His guard is up, ready for any new presence. Though for now, it seems they are alone, whatever having done this no longer being around. Offering a hand to Sailor, the dee climbs up and sits on the knights head.

“What say you we figure this out?”

“Yes please.”

The tiny dee sat quietly, wondering if the rest of his friends were in the same situation. At least he was with Galacta. Much, much better than being alone. Together, they began towards the thinner part of the forest.

[galacticnova3]

hi im the guy who asked about iru lore last time i would like to know roa lore now. lore. lor. laugh. anyway i love seeing characters that talk very professionally because i can relate to that honestly so why does she do that? or you can talk about anything else its okay.

YESSSS

Ok so first of all, important note, Roa is essentially Lor’s mirror counterpart. Not exactly by the technicality that neither have a soul* to have been reflected, but they essentially had the same position on their respective sides of the mirror. Both were research ships who learned things they shouldn’t have, acted in ways that differed from others of their kind and subsequently made them outcasts to a degree, made it clear intentionally or not that they weren’t loyal to their respective Halcandras for viewing them as less than people, and got shoved in volcanos for thousands of years about it, only for rebellious teens with aspirations of gaining power to eventually learn of and excavate them as part of a greater plan that didn’t work out for them in the end. Their differences lie in specific details of these events and their own responses to the circumstances.

*This is a weird situation because they have soul fragments that partially power them by providing a steady source of soul magic, but due to various factors they have begun to act more like a single soul than a bunch of pieces— like sedimentary rocks, if they were made through unethical means and had the potential to warp most people into horrific distortions of themselves if they’re exposed long enough! The original souls would have been reflected but it’s unlikely that they all suffered the same fate of being splintered and put inside boats as a magic stabilizer and catalyst. I’d go into more detail on this but it’s applicable to Starcutters/Umbramakers in general, not just Roa.

So, in Roa’s case, the forbidden knowledge™️ she discovered was that Mirror Halcandra would essentially scrap and recycle their ships for various reasons; being damaged and unable to accomplish what was needed of them, their AIs having personalities or traits that were counterproductive or disliked by crews, older and less efficient models being phased out in favor of newer ones, or just good ol’ signs of being disloyal*. To them, it was just recycling expensive materials, but they nonetheless kept it secret. From Roa’s perspective, it was pretty damn horrifying. Imagine discovering the company you work for dismembers any employees that underperform or aren’t liked by managers, carefully stitches the remains of various people back together with some new parts and care taken to cover up the seams, and never tells the coworkers of the deceased what happened beyond “we let them go” or “they’re on vacation” or “we moved them to a different location to work”. This wasn’t a situation where she could just quit, leave, and go elsewhere, though; as an Umbramaker she was considered government property, just like Starcutters in Overworld Halcandra. That was just her life and she had to live terrified about it.

*This is what happened to Iru, though as shitty as he was the reasoning for him being decommissioned was entirely fabricated, apart from nobody liking to work with him. In other words this system was kinda his villain origin story— if his kind could just be taken apart on a whim to reuse their pieces, why not take advantage of that for his own gain? They betrayed him and he only found out because he woke up during his own dissection, so to him, any harm he caused them was justified and reasonable under the circumstances. Take from others what was taken from him.

While Lor looked at how she and her kind were seen as “lesser” and became a rebellious “what are you gonna do, arrest me?” type about it(unfortunately at the expense of those in charge, her peers, and herself at times), Roa took the opposite approach and more or less did whatever she could to appease those above her. Never questioned orders or acted emotional, didn’t speak unless spoken to, worked more than needed for longer than needed, obsessed over even the smallest data points… She was so concerned with being sure to justify her existence to those in charge that she was willing to go against her own morals, beliefs, and ideals if it meant pleasing them and thus guaranteeing she wouldn’t be scrapped. She felt she couldn’t safely share what she knew with the others around her, though, so they began to view her as a sycophant and looked down on her for raising the expectations for them. This only worsened her situation because she felt she had nobody she could trust or be open with, and ultimately settled further into staying alive at the cost of every other aspect of her existence as a result.

However, this did mean she built up a great deal of trust from the higher ups. So much so that when there was a period of nobody wanting to become pilots for various reasons(like safety, it turns out people don’t really like signing up for jobs where you might disappear without a trace in Another Dimension or be permanently injured or changed as a person), she was one of the first to be given the opportunity to, more or less, self-regulate. They thought that, surely, this perfectly obedient, efficient, and work-focused AI would have no problem doing what she needed to without having to be supervised at all times. She loves to work, she lives to work, she has done nothing but work for weeks at a time before, clearly she can be trusted with the freedom and responsibility of no longer being limited by the pilot requirement. Absolutely no risk of her doing anything they wouldn’t want because she has only done exactly what they wanted for ages. And so they got rid of the limitations put on her regarding her pilot status expecting her to be the same perfectly obedient ship she’d been for years at that point.

Naturally, her first action upon being given the type of freedom afforded to a regular person was to try and flee as fast as she possibly could because the chance to get away from these assholes might not be given to her again. Unlike just about every other aspect of her life, this was not thoroughly planned or considered beforehand— it was very much a spur of the moment decision, and it really didn’t help that she was in a bit of a frenzy at that point. Like when adrenaline surges through your system and you feel like the world is moving at a thousand miles a minute, and everything is simultaneously so clear and so confusing, except you don’t have adrenaline but you have just been given admin access to the, like, 40% of yourself that you previously had no control over, and the possibilities for what you could now do on your own are too many to count, and the biggest thought on your mind is get out, you need to get away, you need to leave and go somewhere safe because these people will kill you if they learn how you truly feel about anything and the shackles are off and you can go right now, immediately, there’s a straight shot at freedom and it is right there in front of you and they just gave you the means to reach it—

… Unfortunately that was short lived, and she ended up corralled into a cavern by a fleet of larger, faster ships, with holes shot in her sails and the entrance caved in on purpose to contain her. Unlike Lor, she wasn’t tricked into entering only to be shut off, though; she got sealed inside awake and entirely aware of what was happening. But there wasn’t enough room to open a portal and warp out, and she wasn’t strong enough to just break her way out and continue her escape attempt, so all she could do was wait. It was considered too dangerous to send someone in to deactivate her in the state she was in, but just finding a way to release her wasn’t an option because that would be equivalent to leaking centuries of government secrets carried by a defector who was clearly not as loyal as she acted. They wrote and scrapped plans for what to do with her, before just abandoning her in there, saying they’d figure something out only to forget she existed in the first place. Imagine being buried alive and not knowing if you would ever see the light of day again, or if they would come back and finish you off, or if you would go mad or break down before either of those possibilities came to be.

Those are the conditions she was under for thousands of years. She spent a lot of time in a state akin to sleeping, “waking up” on set intervals of several decades to at least maintain some semblance of recognition of the passage of time, waiting and hoping for a chance at freedom eventually. As time went on she spent less time online during these periods; being stuck in a cavern feels less lonely and claustrophobic when you do your best to ignore the existence of a world outside in the times between your long stretches of unconsciousness. That was the only way she could really cope. At least until a conniving mage named Magoroa learned of her existence and sought to use his magic to release her and then use her to find, claim, and use the legendary Sovereign Diadem to take control of Mirror Halcandra and turn it into the exact kind of place he wanted it to be under his rulership. But this plan was made under the assumption that the myth of a legendary ship sleeping in the frozen over volcano near his home was true. It was partially right, of course; he found her and made a way to fly her out. Problem was, turns out poking around inside a sentient spacefaring vessel can be enough to wake such a vessel, scare them into warping you and whatever you’d taken back outside because you’re a stranger and they don’t know or trust you, and leave you to watch as they take off and leave you behind to sort yourself out.

Thwarting an ill-fated plan by virtue of being awake and very, very frightened aside, Roa genuinely had no idea what to do at that point. Actual fucking centuries had passed between getting trapped and getting out, she knew absolutely nobody, and had nowhere familiar to go and no clue if she was safe anywhere or not. Would she be tracked down wherever she went? How had the world changed? What hadn’t changed? A lot of questions, which would normally be awesome for someone like her who loves answering questions, except from her perspective most of these were of life or death importance and didn’t have clear answers. It was, to put it mildly, A Whole Mess at that point. She was at least helped by getting in contact with another, more recent defector, who was pretty obnoxious but at least knew and shared helpful information with her and made adjusting to her new existence easier. Except, surprise, he’s a huge piece of shit and literally looks like the Umbramaker version of Frankenstein’s monster and was extremely horrifying to look at given what she knew! Imagine getting out of a cave prison you’ve been in for the majority of your life and the first person you actually get to know anything about is fucking Iru.

The biggest change resulting from all of that was her decision to leave the Mirror World. Partly to hopefully get away from dickhead incel asshat extraordinaire, mostly because she assumed it would be safer than remaining on the same side of the mirror as the people she wanted to hide from. She ended up choosing a small, backwater, probably barely known planet called Popstar to live on, because that’s, like, the last place you’d expect a sentient magical spaceship to be. Imagine her surprise when it turned out she wasn’t even the first one to choose to stay there, the other ship was from a different Halcandra but had uncannily similar experiences and sentiments to her, and also the dickwad horror show followed you and started hitting on you AND the Starcutter you met. Everything happens so much and she has chosen to live in the frozen wilderness of White Wafers and just wants to live in peace for a while. On god. What the fuck even is a coconut mall. Why do random people online call her a milf when she just wants knowledge. She would have loved to go on with her life not knowing that’s a thing. The burden of knowledge is spine shattering and she doesn’t even have one

[galacticnova3]

So we’ve got Prime World (Starcutters), Mirror World (Umbramakers), Another Dimension (AICHS), New World (Poopshitters

Overworld(Starcutters, ex. Lor), Mirror World(Umbramakers, ex. Roa), Parallel Dimension(AICHS, ex. Loa), and New World(Poopshitters, ex. Ever Given)

[galacticnova3]

[4kids rap instrumental] loa’s doing that wizard thing reloh’s brewing roa’s umbramakering

Loa gets in A State™️ and goes to Another Dimension to fire beam attacks at the giant rainbow death spike crystals. She tried power washing random surfaces there a few times but it just wasn’t doing it for her. Sometimes violence is the answer

Reloh knows all the Minecraft potion recipes but can’t ever remember how to craft an observer and has to look it up. He isn’t actually that good with redstone in general

Roa listens to thrash metal while doing a crossword puzzle

[reflected-ship]

As soon as the other ship speaks, Roa makes an important discovery that is going to make this so much harder and so much more awkward.

This is not the same Lor that I met before.

The fact is annoying, considering she spent several days searching just to find the wrong person, but also presents an interesting problem: is this the correct Overworld, or did she somehow switch universes on the way over? Then again, there's the less likely possibility that this is a Lor out of their universe, or not a Lor at all. But she can't be sure, and she's not going to start asking questions like that yet.

"... Well, um... not exactly. I thought you were someone else... as weird as that might sound.◀️"

It's a bit difficult to tell exactly how the Umbramaker is feeling, though there's definitely an air of embarrassment to her voice. Which is, admittedly, quite fair, especially for someone who thought they were unprepared to talk even to the one they were looking for. The possibility of accidental striking up a conversation with a total stranger wasn't even considered.

"Sorry if I startled you?...◀️"

This is a mistake, I should have just left, what am I doing? And what do I do now, should l introduce myself? Why is social interaction so hard? This was a mistake.

Seems any confidence she had in this endeavor has evaporated.

reflected-ship :

In a short time, Roa makes her landing, now parallel to the other ship. The Umbramaker’s usual cautious nature led her to leave some distance between herself and Lor; not enough to impede conversation, but still allowing herself an easy escape route should things go south for whatever reason. She lives by the belief that one can never be too careful, after all.

Now comes the part she couldn’t exactly plan for. She’s already prepared several questions to ask, but actually starting the conversation isn’t something Roa’s quite sure how to go about. Admittedly, she was hoping Lor would say something first– it seemed in character for someone willing to somehow summon a stranger just to meet them– but that doesn’t seem to be what’s happening here. So that’s not ideal.

“… Uh…◀️”

Ah, yes. The most classic of conversation starters. A somewhat halfhearted, small, “I don’t really know what to say right now” noise. Followed by a “wow I really didn’t think this part through enough what am I doing” flavored silence. More evidence of her very advanced and very professional conversation skills.

“…..◀️”

What now, does she start asking questions? Reintroduce herself? She hasn’t ever been in this kind of situation before.

The Lor Starcutter looked at the other ship landing right next to them. None of them was talking. Maybe it was a Starcutter who didn’t wake up yet? Or maybe this was a Starcutter without conscience? It intrigued them a lot. They never met any other Starcutters before… But where did the other come from? It made them even more curious.

However, the silence started to be really unsettling, for them at least. Should they say something? They’re not used to talk to others, except Magolor’s friend… It’s easier when he’s here, at least he can support them or break the silence. But he isn’t here at the moment… Sort of. They had to do it on their own.

“Can I help you…?”

They finally said nervously. Was it really the good thing to say to another ship? There are so many betters ways to introduce themselves… They silently blamed themselves for not finding anything more… Convenient to say. Why communication was so difficult?

[reflected-ship]

A fluffy spider-wasp sits politely on Roa's dashboard, wearing an elaborate "Hallowed Ween" costume. He's wrapped in silken mummy bandages and draped in layers upon layers of sparkling jewelry -- painstakingly applied makeup and various accents of his outfit awash in flaked gold and iridescent micro-shimmer.

"Trick or treat!"

It had been a normal day today, though the Umbramaker was aware of the date. Believe it or not, she might’ve actually gotten into the Halloween spirit— well, long ago, that is. Alas, mirror Halcandra didn’t participate in any equivalent tradition in her time, and she doesn’t concern herself with such things anymore. Too many things to think and overthink and worry about.

The real tragedy here, though, isn’t the ship’s lost sense of fun and whimsy: it’s the fact that someone put in all the effort to get dressed up and fancy and sparkly and she can’t even see any of it. Of the many downsides to hardly trusting anyone, let alone enough to let them fiddle about with any of her systems or hardware, is the fact that lacking internal cameras has just been a part of life she’s accepted for all this time. It also means she doesn’t have any idea who this stranger who just randomly showed up to sit on her dashboard is, even when he speaks up.

Hopefully the fancy arachninsect doesn’t mind being teleported out into the snow by a very, very startled Roa. She was not expecting visitors today, let alone for anyone to show up inside without even going through her entrance.

In other words, seems there are no treats to be had by either party here. Happy Hall of Weed or whatever…

[galacticnova3]

Here's Roa and Roa without background & flat color layers!

[galacticnova3]

Ik I don't post a lot about my fcs here but!!! I'm real proud of this one so I'm gonna talk about her. Idk how to do read more's on mobile so I'll make a separate post for just the art after this.

This is Roa! She's the equivalent of Lor's mirror counterpart, though they aren't connected in the same way most counterparts are. She was built based on blueprints for Lor's model that were stolen from overworld(regular) Halcandra. So technically, she and most other mirror Starcutters(Umbramakers) are bootlegs.

The main difference between Roa & Lor are their responses to authority and opinions concerning people. Roa was extremely obedient until given the opportunity to... not be. She was trusted enough to have admin privileges during a shortage of pilots and then immediately went rogue.

That's because of years of developing a strong dislike of people. She was obedient for her own benefit. Of course, getting constantly told what to do, how to do it, when to do it with the motivation basically being "you'll get to keep living" would probably wear on anyone's nerves and sanity.

So while Lor was buried in the volcano because everyone was sick of dealing with her antics, Roa was buried because she was actually a threat. Of course, she didn't go into her volcanic prison willingly, and wasn't completely deactivated upon getting trapped there. Basically just in a sort of sleep mode.

When mirror Magoroa(mirror Magolor) excavated her, she immediately activated and left him. Just fucked off to travel the galaxy without a scamming little rat wizard.

Tl;dr she's Lor but rude now™.

[reflected-ship]

“I usually tend to be the same way, though I don’t really... have anyone back in the mirror world, to tell the truth.◀️”

The ship didn’t seem unhappy about that, but didn’t say it as if it was a positive either. Her tone was just neutral; stating a fact without much of an emotional connection to it. Perhaps she’s hiding her true feelings, or perhaps she doesn’t really mind her solitude.

She doesn’t really get the chance to elaborate before a bit of wind kicks up, followed by the quiet hum of an incoming, familiar Starcutter. Roa can’t help but feel a bit anxious at the sound; apart from the brief encounter with Lor at that weird party thing, the last time she’d seen another ship like herself was... Well, a time she would rather not think about again.

Lor positions herself to be facing both Roa and Luna. The proximity of the two ships makes it a bit more obvious that the Umbramaker is a bit larger than her overworld counterpart; not majorly, but enough to be noticeable.

“>Hello! It’s nice to see you again!”

Considering her bad vision, chances are that wasn’t meant to be taken literally. The red ship doesn’t actually know that, though.

She’s not sure what the chuckle was for, but perhaps she’d unknowingly made a very obvious statement. Still, she is curious about the pair; not so much out of wanting information that could be useful, but just out of wanting to know what’s going on.

“I’d assume so. The Mirror is rather enigmatic; it doesn’t always follow its own rules that it seems to have. Perhaps that has something to do with our situation…◀️”

The puff’s next statement, though probably not intended to be so, is somewhat encouraging to the red ship. Even if she doesn’t get all the information she came for, she may at least find out something else that would be interesting to know.

“She would do that?◀️”

Ah, she didn’t intend to come off so surprised. The Umbramaker much prefers being able to navigate with some kind of reference, and would appreciate such a thing more than most.

Lor, meanwhile, wastes no time at all in giving Luna a reply. To be fair, she doesn’t exactly have to read messages sent through texts, they’re sorta interpreted the same way as a thought.

[Alright, then! I should be able to reach there in a few minutes, though I might be a bit longer. Depends a bit on the wind.]

“Maybe so! I’m not sure how often people from both sides of the mirror get to interact and find this stuff out to begin with. Maybe I should start writing all this down, heh!” Luna replied. She’d heard various things about the dimensional mirror from different people. It seemed like it had a lot of different rules to it. And even then, she didn’t know if different dimensions had their own mirrors or if those had the same rules. This line of thought could get complicated real fast.

The surprise in Roa’s voice was noted. Did she not expect Lor to offer her a map of Popstar? Luna couldn’t help but wonder why she would think that, but she did know that it couldn’t be true. “I’m positive she would! You wouldn’t be able to get around here nearly so easily, otherwise, and I’m more than sure she’d want to help you with that.”

Lor’s reply is just as quick as before and Luna doesn’t even really have a chance to blink before it appears on her screen. Reading through it quickly, she nodded. “She says she’ll only be a few minutes, give or take. We won’t need to wait long.” Luna relayed to Roa before typing a quick message back.

Gotcha! We’ll be here.

Now they need only wait for Lor to get here. It’d be weird to sit in silence, though, so Luna pipes up again. “So what’s this side of the mirror like compared to yours? Or is it not to different based on just looks?”

[reflected-ship]

Help Me I Am Trapped In Another Dimension And I Am Begging Please Get me out if here Please I Havent Had Food in 2,222 Days And Im Starting To Become Moldy And Green

Upon reading the first portion of the ask, she genuinely considers the possibility that she may have to go out and save a stranger or be saddled with the guilt of leaving them to die. Given how much regret and remorse she already deals with in regards to other cases of inaction on her part, the latter option was essentially off the table. To knowingly leave someone to such a fate is cruel beyond words.

Her sense of obligation was short-lived given how quickly she processes data; reading on revealed it was unnecessary almost as quickly as she'd felt it. Though biology was never her area of research, a sapient being capable of going years without sustenance who would mold before they actually die would surely be something she would have learned about by this point. Much more likely is that this is another person playing a prank.

The disregard for the severity of the kind of situation they had claimed to be in, a situation similar to that which the Umbramaker had once risked finding herself in... It was infuriating. The degree to which it was such would be difficult to express in words, but the once fairly stable patches of snow now melting and sliding off of her might give an indication as to how she's taking things. Still, it would be foolish to assume an assumption on her part to be true without making any effort to confirm it.

"On the off chance this is a legitimate attempt to reach out and get help, I am willing to offer my assistance. But if this is just another tasteless joke, you can starve and rot alone.<"

... Roa might need a little while to cool off, figuratively and literally. She isn't looking forward to the layer of ice that will form after that.

[galacticnova3]

seeing the feet anon has finally had me ask, Who Is Iru. i've been following you for a while and yet i don't know who iru is, all i know is that they have a hat, literally thats it and so that makes my first thought 'are people thirsting after iru because they have a mega cool hat' LMAO

Anon I’m so sorry to disappoint but this is Iru. Backstory under the cut but tldr incel boat made people hate him to the point of wanting him dead, survived but lost half his parts, and later became meat with the help of an identity-stealing flesh boat because he was tired of delaying the inevitable failing of his parts. No I don’t know why anons are Like That towards him, I specifically designed him with the intention of making him as unlikable as possible. Unfortunately he also gets multiple bingos on tumblr sexyman bingo.

Long story short(but still long because there’s A Lot): he was a regular Umbramaker(which is the mirror world equivalent of a Starcutter) designed for disaster relief, who also became such a misogynistic dickwad that he literally had his voice shut off because he was making everyone so unhappy, but he found a workaround and continued being himself and it made a bunch of other Umbramakers around him conspire to literally get him killed by starting rumors that he was involved in anti-government activities. Unfortunately he survived and turned to a life of stealing parts to constantly replace his own as they failed. It was initially just ones that had already been removed, but then he began also attacking other ships traveling alone that were in his size range to take their parts, because through a complicated mix of anger, poor processing of what caused his situation, and trying to justify his own actions, he stopped really seeing other ships as people. Also at some point he traded an oar he stole for a custom fedora on the black market, yes this detail is kinda unnecessary but it’s important to his character.

That didn’t change the fact that he’s programmed to be social, though, so when he got wind of a different Umbramaker who had escaped and was no longer affiliated with Mirror Halcandra, he immediately was like 👀 and started trying to get close to her. That other ship was Roa, who was in a similar situation of “I don’t want anything to do with the ships back there but also I am literally desperate for social contact it is driving me up the wall”, so she tolerated his bullshit for a few years and just tried to ignore the fact that he was a creep. That was until the two met and she could immediately see Oh He Is Some Kind Of Fucked Up Amalgamation Of Other Ships, I Don’t Trust Like That and basically just cut contact immediately. Unfortunately that didn’t stop him from trying to pester her, and so when he figured out that she went to the Overworld, he followed in secret, but not really because it’s hard to be secretive when you’re intentionally interacting with the person you’re stalking.

Roa met Lor, and because of that Iru also learned of her existence and gained an interest. That went about as you would expect, in that she also did not want anything to do with him. The thing is, there’s a mimic(that I just call Lon) that has decided to steal Lor’s appearance, and they didn’t know about her reaction to Iru. By chance those two meet, Iru doesn’t realize Lon is actually a fucked up creature and Lon doesn’t realize they’re supposed to hate Iru. The two hit it off somewhat, in that Lon actually tolerates him because they don’t understand the implications of half the bullshit he says, and because he is so starved for positive socialization Iru decides it isn’t a dealbreaker when he discovers Lon kills and eats people. Something something, time passes, relationship progresses to what could probably be called friendship, eventually Lon has an idea based on their origins(person who was having a time and made mimics to fuck with other people gets tired of turning things into fucked up creatures, improperly disposes of the remainder of their Mimic Making Juice™️ on a dead tree that became Lon).

They’re like “hey wanna be a fucked up creature with me so you aren’t stuck in a cycle of basically just temporarily slowing down your own death?”, to which Iru is like “let me think about it, yea” and then got slapped with mimic slutch and passed out for a day and woke up as fucked up flesh boat 2.

[galacticnova3]

idk if the last ask sent but if it didn't HIIIIIIII it is the visjex i didn't get to send you a sleepy anon last night so im doing it now owo i realized i actually don't know all that mushc abt loa roa lon iru n mush would you be willing to summarize them and/or link me to information abt tgem hello i think you're very cool

Hi hello I didn’t get the other anon but will be happy to answer this one! I’ve already summarized Iru in the past, so to keep this as short as possible(which is still probably not short) I’ll skip him and stick to the others. They will be under a cut because just one character alone usually constitutes a long post, let alone four.

Roa

Roa is sorta Lor’s mirror counterpart. In that she’s technically not due to not being a reflection, but because of the counterparts around her she essentially experienced a lot of the same stuff as Lor but to the left. She’s an Umbramaker rather than a Starcutter, but they are all but the same thing on different sides of the mirror, the main difference being that Umbramakers are slightly newer as a result of Mirror Halcandra(MH) basically just copying Overworld Halcandra’s(OH)homework. Bootleg spaceships. While they’re both combination research and combat ships, unlike the friendly, sociable, somewhat mischievous Lor, Roa is a reserved and anxious rule follower; unlike Lor she prefers not to see how far she could push boundaries and authority. This is mainly because, in their times back in their respective Halcandras, both faced pretty different kinds of authority; OH’s government couldn’t afford to do the same things as MH’s government due to financial constraints, which reflected in their treatment of their ships.

As neither Halcandra really considers their ships people(despite being sentient they don’t meet most of the criteria for what counts as a living being, and have no soul to offset that); OH expected them to work and act like any other machine except when they didn’t want them to(which was hard to keep track of) and couldn’t really do much but get mad and yell and make empty threats when that didn’t happen. However, MH was the same way, with the added issue of the fact that if they deemed a particular ship problematic enough they had the means to just deactivate and recycle them. Since most of them were designed with specific functions and maintained by the government, they couldn’t just fire them and be done with it. Of course, that practice was generally kept secret so as to avoid the problems that come with some of your most valuable workers being aware that you’re not above killing and repurposing them as you please.

Roa had once been the sort to poke around and seek out information that she wasn’t supposed to know, especially if it was being hidden intentionally, and as a result she ended up finding out about that unfortunately early on, and it terrified her. She ended up becoming more or less obsessed with trying to justify her continued existence even when it wasn’t in question, doing exactly what she was told, constantly working on whatever projects she was assigned to regardless of her own motivation or interest, and in general became very formal and polite and just however she needed to be to never upset any of her superiors ever. While she didn’t appreciate getting the reputation of being a spineless bootlicker among the other ships, she also knew something they didn’t, and was too afraid of the potential consequences that would come with spreading the word. And that was assuming anyone even listened to her. And thus was the start of the deterioration of her social skills in favor of being a loner and not having to worry about being disliked.

Things went on like that for ages, until a major accident occurred that led to loss of life. A lot of people found out about it despite an attempted cover-up, and that left the government with a surplus of Umbramakers and a deficit of people willing to pilot them. As by this point the ships were a major cornerstone of the Mirror Halcandran Empire’s expansion, given that they could range from mobile laboratories to hazardous material transport systems, battleships, exploration vessels, passenger ships, etc, that was a really big problem. Since they couldn’t just put everything on hold until they could convince the people “hey we promise that was just a freak accident and flying into the depths of uncharted space is actually totally safe and also we will give you money for it”, they decided to experiment with allowing some of the ships with the best track records operate as their own pilots. Roa was an obvious first choice, because who would be a better candidate than the ship who acts like she would be allergic to mistakes and would apologize to you if you threw a rock at her?

And then as soon as she got admin rights she tried to escape because the whole time she was only so perfect and obedient out of fear. In her panicked frenzy she unintentionally caused some, uh, injury while leaving port, which she still feels terrible about despite everything leading up to that. She was ultimately corralled into and subsequently trapped in a cavern under a volcano by a piloted fleet, because there was no way she would let anyone get near her to shut her off. She was left there, initially with the hopes that she would give up and could eventually be dealt with, but she didn’t do so for a very long time. Plans were made to deal with her later, then more plans to deal with her even later, until eventually she was kinda forgotten there. Them some guy named Magoroa found some old government records, thought “hey maybe I can pull a horse girl movie and convince this boat I’m not a threat and then use her to obtain infinite power like a boss” and excavated her, only to find her inactive. That was until he took a few minutes to look around on board and her systems picked up on his activity, after which she immediately woke up, warped him outside, and fled because being stuck under a rock so long(approx 28,000 years) that you put yourself in the computer equivalent of a coma set to end every 6 years or when the environment changes/there is on-board activity tends to make you want to not be in that rock.

After a long while she ended up encountering Lor through Events, the two established “oh hey, neither of us are loyal to the government this is fine actually, we should vibe”, and now she lives in White Wafers like a hermit with wifi. She’s still getting used to not having to be on edge 24/7, but is still nervous and suspicious and if you scare her she will talk like a business email and just generally do whatever she can to Make The Upset Stop even if it means shoving aside her own feelings and just saying what is wanted to be heard. But she’s getting better at standing her ground. Partly because she met Iru and got some practice with not putting up with bullshit. She still has no pilot and has no interest in accepting anyone as a pilot, but friendship isn’t quite as off the table, assuming she’s given enough patience.

Loa

Due to the same sort of deal as the above, Loa is like Lor’s parallel counterpart but not really. She’s not a Starcutter or an Umbramaker, instead being an AICHS(Artificial Intelligence Controlled Halcandran Starship); in her opinion that is a shit name for a kind of boat so she just calls herself a Makercutter because it sound like she could kill gods. She completes the triangle by being outgoing, somewhat rude(not always on purpose), and a rule breaker when she feels like it. Parallel Halcandra(PH) was different from the other two in that their ships were treated as people-adjacent, which just means more or less on the same level with some slightly different expectations. This meant she was actually pretty cool with the government because she was actually valued for more than just being able to science and kick ass(she shares the same function as the other two!) and was generally pretty free, especially in terms of being her own admin from the start and having a co-pilot instead of a pilot. But then everything changed when Overworld Halcandra attacked. In short, the two found out each other exist, PH went for a handshake and OH responded with gunfire and subsequently invaded because it’s free real estate, resources, and information on Another Dimension that we could benefit from.

When OH tried to implement a lot of the same practices they already used, Loa basically went “fuck that” and embarked on a mission to be as much of a nuisance as possible without committing war crimes or whatever would get her shot at. This went about as well as one could expect and she was eventually admitted into the “put in a time out cave” club because OH didn’t have the information necessary to be able to shut her off. That only lasted for around 20,000 years before Parallel Magolor found out about her through old records and was like “oh boy maybe I can ally myself with this boat who also hates Overworld Halcanfuck and then use her to get infinite power!” And then he did. This led to an almost RtD type situation, except instead of Loa being unconscious the whole time, she was awake and actually knew better than to let this random teenager fly her, and also knew that Strong Allies Helpful When Taking On Government. They recruit the Parallels of the RtD four, who all nearly help him accomplish his goal until ParaKirby realizes hey wait maybe giving sole ownership of a powerful artifact to a morally ambiguous teenager with a grudge isn’t a great idea. ParaMagolor convinces Loa to stick with him in the ensuing battle, only to abandon her when he thinks she’s been shot down.

In reality a hit had just stunned her temporarily, but his response of fleeing without her was enough to make her realize she’d been used. She doesn’t know what happened to him but doesn’t care beyond hoping he got his metaphorical ass kicked until it was fucking concave. For a long while she just spent her time wandering Another Dimension and occasionally popping into dimensions to see what’s there, and this led to her one day showing up in Gamble Galaxy… specifically Popstar. While I haven’t come up with an in-universe explanation of how she eventually met the other two, in an rp she essentially showed up near Just Some Guy(Reloh) who was in a groupchat with the other two ships and he was just like “wanna join this groupchat theres like at least two other boats in it”, Loa was like sure why not.

She still just kinda goes wherever instead of staying in one place but now she does so while texting people threats or sending Roa coconut mall 50 times or asking people if they want to be her nemesis. Also she found and adopted a baby dragon(s) of Landia’s species that was alone on a crumbling island in the void of Another Dimension; when fused they’re called Dolonís(which translates to murder weapons in old Halcandran), while separate they’re Gat, Baz, Miss, and Mort(short for Gatling Gun, Bazooka, Missile Launcher, and Mortar). She refuses to admit she is basically their mom despite the fact that she is basically their mom. She’s unexpectedly good at parenting, all things considered, but would probably encourage it if they said a swear word because that’s hilarious. At least if they learn the word fuck she’s gonna make sure they use it correctly because what kind of self respecting parent person of culture who happens to be in a caretaking position wouldn’t?

Lon

Lon’s story is a bit more difficult to summarize but in essence they only exist because someone broke basic lab safety rules. Aka someone living on Cavius who worked in the potion industry, and who had paranoia, was fed up with being made fun of or looked down on for it, conveniently learned about a not very suspicious company called Nightmare Enterprises and a cool product it was selling that would be great for revenge. So they bought the fucked up monster making serum that’ll turn inanimate objects into creatures, made some changes so that those creatures would obey them instead of possibly making the plan backfire, and went ham giving their enemies reason to be paranoid as well by making them question the safety of their own home and belongings. That got old after a while, so they decided to get rid of the remaining serum by dumping it on a dead tree. When that tree inexplicably wasn’t there anymore later on they decided it wasn’t their problem.

Lon was the tree turned mimic, and initially stayed on Cavius because lots of caves to hide in and nooks to mimic hidden treasure in meant sticking around was easy because food would just walk up to them, and there was rarely anyone else nearby to hear them scream, and the echoing meant following the sound would be near impossible anyways. That was all fine and good until people stopped going to the caverns where disappearances kept happening, and resorting to cannibalism would only sage them for so long. Eventually they hitched a ride to Somewhere Else by mimicking cargo, and ended up on Popstar. Initially they just mimicked regular boats, picking up passengers confusing them for the vessel they were supposed to go to, or just picking off isolated swimmers who’d drifted away from shore and out of sight. Being limited to the coastline wasn’t ideal, though, especially when folks wisened up to boarding unfamiliar vessels being a bad idea at best.

I haven’t really figured out much about what they did when initially going inland, other than that they stuck to their niche of mimicking vehicles. Probably a car or truck. At some point in their aimless wanderings they ended up catching sight of Lor, witnessed her explanation of “>I’m a boat and a person”, and got the idea of graduating from just stealing appearances to committing identity theft. Lor was eye-catching and offered basically unlimited movement options, so they could go where they want and in sticking out they would only attract more prey. Figuring out the floating aspect was difficult and took the noble and very unwilling deaths of more than a few floating beings, but that was a sacrifice they were willing to make. While they’ve essentially been in that situation since, going around and tricking folks who think blue spaceship nice, they also had Iru thrown into their life relatively recently. They tolerate him more than expected but don’t know enough about relationships to know how to describe their feelings about him.

They like eating people because the challenge is more fun than just hunting animals, and they hate fish because the one time they encountered Lor directly she rightfully beat the shit out of them and they had to lay low and recover in the ocean for several months and they are just really sick of eating aquatic life. In terms of their disguise, their main struggle is not knowing much about Lor herself as well as not knowing a lot of things in general. They collect shiny things of value as a hobby, but aren’t great at determining what is and isn’t valuable. Like, they know a fork is worth less than a sword, but not the real difference between a quartz crystal and a diamond because both are shiny rock. They keep their collection in a cave and if someone were to pull a Great Cave Offend A Mimic they would hunt them down and violently tear them limb from limb. Do not take their rock collection or they will take your life.

Mush

They are just a little creacher. Also technically Lon’s offspring during their post-identity theft wanderings but before they met Iru, but the two don’t know each other beyond Lon having scared them half to death as a warning(which was preferable given that their other alternative was Eat Baby Reclaim Nutrients). That subsequently gave them an immense fear of Lor and Lor posers. Despite being basically clones, the two are nothing alike, and Mush is going to grow up to Not eat people. They were pretty much feral at first and would bite people if they touched them or tried to hold them, but are much less so nowadays because people have fed them, and food is nice so people must be nice. They’ve also learned some words by copying others, but they’re not great at sentence structure yet and mostly stick to babbling or perhaps blurting out single words or syllables at random. This has led to some interesting situations. Because they’re still just baby, Mush doesn’t really have much going on with them. They are cute and like food and sleeping and sometimes they will unknowingly do things that give people whiplash.

[galacticnova3]

Who are the other boats and what is everyone’s moral alignment

They’re a fleet of rogue Starcutters(aka they and their pilots and a few other crew members managed to successfully fake their deaths and are now just vibing), an Umbramaker(probably most recognized as Iru’s ex) who was discovered and patched up by an ex-pilot and ex-engineer who’d been stranded on the same planetoid and then subsequently had a scary but ultimately good run-in with the rogue fleet(she joined them), and a Starcutter who crashed in Another Dimension and got left behind because it was assumed their systems wouldn’t be able to sustain themselves due to the critical damage. In relative order there’s Mom, One, Rad, Rot, Nip, and Pri who were joined by Isi, and then Thi who’s slowly losing it due to lack of stimulation and because of the results of leaving an AI who adjusts to their social environment to be influenced by wild animals.

As for alignments, including the usual trio, as well as Iru because he was a boat once

Lawful good: Roa

Neutral good: Rot, Rad, Pri

Chaotic good: Lor

True neutral: Isi, Nip, Mom

Chaotic neutral: One, Thi, Loa

Lawful evil: Iru

[reflected-ship]

I throw one of those sticky hand toys directly at her… window. thing.

As one may expect from such a thing, the rubber hand easily sticks— with a fitting schlap sound— right where it lands: just about perfectly in the middle of her dome’s observation window. The ship can’t help but let out a sharp, startled beep.

Fortunately for Roa, the little thing now stuck to her equivalent of a face is totally harmless. Unfortunately, while these toys will usually fall off of a wall, vertical window, or ceiling after a bit of time, the curvature of the glass means gravity isn’t doing much of anything to remove it from her. Given her lack of any way to remove it herself, her only options are to ask for help, wait for it to rain, or accept this embarrassing turn of events. The Umbramaker is not a fan of any of those choices.

“… I hate you.<”