Zee
SWRP Writer
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- May 21, 2015
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The Clueless Prodigy
" You'll dance to the strings of your own luck for the rest of your life."
(‘Ringworld’, Larry Niven)
(‘Ringworld’, Larry Niven)
NAME: Zee Irving
FACTION: New Jedi Order…eventually.
RANK: Padawan, soon-to-be.
SPECIES: Zelosian. Practically human, except for being a plant.
It has been long argued whether the obscure Zelosian species represents the result of an ancient genetic engineering experiment or as astonishing example in the evolution of mimicry. However, the only thing certain remains that these aliens resemble humans more than many near-human races do, while at the same time having a biology that is ridiculously similar to the one of plants. Their blood is green, hemoglobin being replaced by a pigment that closely resembles chlorophyll. Curiously, unlike both plants and humans, they can get drunk on certain types of sugars, such as sucrose. Alcohol has no inebriating effect on them, although it is still toxic, and if consumed in large quantities will lead to hangovers (due to its dehydrating effect).
Many of the few Zelosians found outside Zelos II prefer to take up botanically-minded professions, such as flower shop owners, landscape architects and plant molecular bioscientists. Their low numbers and ability to blend in has protected them from the brunt of non-human persecutions.
AGE: 16 Standard Years
GENDER: Female
HEIGHT: 1.64m
WEIGHT: 40kg
EYES: Glassy green
HAIR: Light brown, of the lightweight texture of corn silk, cut above the shoulders. A consistent feature of her hairstyle is the ‘crown’ sketched by two spun (or braided) hair strands around her head.
SKIN: Pasty white. A careful look would reveal that her veins are dark green, rather than purple. However, this only becomes evident during times of intense physical effort, when Zee’s face turns to an unhealthy (from a human perspective) pale green.
CREDITS: 1000 credits
DISTINGUISHING MARKS: If Zee would remove her gloves (which she not often does), one would notice elegant strings of equations and crumpled scribbles stretching up to her elbow. These are not tattoos, but simply note-to-self-notes.
FORCE SENSITIVE: Yes. Someone will have to break the news to her.
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION:
Zee is not the most easily noticeable girl. Moreover, her perpetual silence and the fact that she’s often studying her datapad render her practically invisible. Her gestures and mimic repertoires are poor, to the point she seems just a doll animated by a pair of hollow eyes intense enough to be white weapons. She has brought avoiding eye contact to a state of art, normally keeping hers fixed on the floor. Framed by the aforementioned brown hair is a round, slightly childish face with a pale complexion, blemished by a few freckles and a self-conscious tendency of scratching them. The slightly upturned pug nose accentuate (for those sentient beings who care about such hmpf!-human details) the impression of youth. Her lips are full, but downplayed by rare and anemic smiles. She has a soft, barely audible voice, whose timid and stuttering attempts at speaking bring to mind a bunch of fluffy blind kittens trying to crawl through a war zone.
As for Zee’s stature, she could be best described as “the quintessential datacardworm”. She has a light built, with bony joints and thin limbs, feet which are made for stumbling rather than walking and hands with long, slender fingers. While she may be a doll regarding looks, related to motion she seems a marionette. Albeit of normal height for a young human female, Zee has the uncertain movements of someone who had grown too tall, too quick. She usually wears comfortable clothing in plain colors that covers her from neck to toe, including a trustworthy pair of lavender gloves. This is not necessarily an aspect of her own culture, but rather the side-effect of living with a Givin and their phobia of ‘undignified’ exposed skin.
Statistics
STRENGTH: Thanks to a life in which she rarely lifted anything heavier than a datapad, Zee’s physical strength is considerably below average.
DEXTERITY: Locked in an empty room, the girl would manage to walk into each wall at least twice. She’s the sort of duck-gaited, two-left-footed clutz that one would expect natural selection to have weeded out by now. One is tempted to wonder whether it was an unconscious Force Sense which prevented her from getting any big injuries, or whether she never needed to learn how to walk properly in the first sense precisely because of this ‘luck’ of not getting hurt. However, put her in front of a keypad, and you’ll see the ugly duckling turn into a swan: Zee’s speed-typing skills are the real thing. She also shows remarkable finesse with fickly work such as cutting plants under a microscope.
CONSTITUTION: Half-regular exercise in the training room of an otherwise small ship has kept the humanoid girl ‘in shape’. However, her shape is considerably less impressive than that of similar-age amateur athletes. While lacking extra fat, she doesn’t have much muscle either, and can barely jog a few kilometers without running out of breath.
INTELLIGENCE: Zee has a frightening memory and logic when it comes to exact sciences. She likes solving difficult math problems for a pastime, in the same way people do rebuses. The fact that she has been tutored by a good teacher only added to her natural talents. Although this is certainly unusual, she is far from being anywhere near the best.
WISDOM: Having been protected (one might say ‘pampered’) for her whole life, Zee can be suicidally ignorant in some aspects. In a galaxy in a complete chaos, she holds the belief that conflict is most often caused by lack of communication, and that wouldn’t it be nice if we all got along together? More worryingly, the way that her Force powers work had pressed into her subconscious the idea that, as long as she doesn’t do anything bad, she won’t get in trouble.
CHARISMA: Most words look excessive and opaque for the girl with her head in clouds of numbers. So do most people. Strangely, she finds it easier to converse with Givin due to their appreciation for mathematics.
FORCE POWERS:
Zee’s powers are an odd bunch, due to her complete lack of any Force training combined with natural talent and denial.
Plant Surge – Possibly connected to similar physiology aspects, Dai has a very basic empathic ability related to plants. She can pick ‘impressions’ from them (it would be too much to call them ‘emotions’) such as: dehydration, heat, cold, light. As for the ability to control them, let’s just say that if she focuses on a plant for long enough time (a few minutes, in average), the respective organism would eventually react.
Ionize – The power to disturb electrical machinery is one that Zee has been unconsciously using for years, one that has earned her the name of ‘bad luck’. Whenever the girl is put under unusual stress, things tend to go wrong around her. The lamps flicker. The datasets block. Bread burns in the toaster. Every doorknob bites her with jolts of static electricity. Then, naturally, she panics more. And things keep going wrong. Interestingly, because the ionization current is spread in time (minutes to hours, as opposed to the milliseconds normally used to disable a battle droid), its intensity can be much weaker and still achieve results. Therefore, unlike the normal attack, it is rarely visible, and even the once-in-a-blue-moon purple flicker could be mistaken for an optical illusion (and no, it cannot be used to disable battle droids in its current form).
Mind trick – Another unconscious talent. Another might’ve mistaken it for luck, or social skills. But Zee’s subconscious has pushed it into one direction, and one direction only: being ignored. The girl seemingly radiates an aura of not being there, which has led to some embarrassing notes of absence at school being written in her presence. Susceptible people may have difficulties in noticing Zee at all, even when she’s right in front of them, only to realize it when she is pointed out to them or when she addresses them directly. Naturally, the effectiveness of this depends on how much she stands out otherwise, and on how many people are involved (eg. she would find it very difficult to gesture for a waiter in a restaurant, but wouldn’t be able to waltz around unnoticed on an Imperial Warship).
Inspiration and concept:
https://youtu.be/thZwQ9Qhbic
*Niche use: Force illusion – While normally understood as a tremendous power requiring incredible skill, unconscious Force user Zee Irving has managed it…on herself, mainly. Twice in her life, she woke up in the darkness and her glow-orb didn’t work. It managed to fully convince her that dirty socks thrown on the floor gather, like her grandmother said, into a Sock Monster that lurks beneath one’s bed, growls fearsomely and eats socks.
In addition, in the Jedi equivalent of stumbling over your own feet, Zee has managed to Mind-trick herself into believing that all the strange events surrounding her are perfectly normal coincidences (or placebos). The result is an extremely feeble Force presence that masks her underlying potential. Of course, this only works against people with not much awareness of the Force…or against skilled people, some distance away.
Force Sense – While she has never had any premonitions of incoming danger (except when seeing her little brother try to cook), it can nevertheless be considered unnatural how the Zelosian girl survived all these years with a clumsy nature that regularly stumbles off sidewalks (even on Coruscant. Yes. Yes indeed).
SKILLS:
Botanical – Like most of her connationals, Zee has an affinity for everything that means plant life. Even without her Jedi powers, she could likely tell whether a plant is getting too much light or water, or not enough – as long as it’s a species reasonably similar to what she is familiar with. She is an enthusiastic beginner in the art of plant grafting (putting together two different plants, let’s say, to get the both of both worlds – for example citrons and lemons).
Mathematical – Did I mention she’s scary?
Linguistic – Zee can speak fluent Zelosian, due to her being a native, as well as Galactic Basic. She is also acquainted with the mathematical terms of several other cultures: Givin, in particular, but also Omwati and to a lesser extent Muun. What all these societies have in common is a fondness for mathematics. This has led to an odd situation where Zee may decipher scientific papers in a language, but not necessarily be capable of asking for basic directions. She can understand conversational Givin, due to her teacher belonging to that race; however, she finds speaking it to be particularly taxing.
‘I prefer Givin algebra, but Omwati geometry. Muun are good with any statistics which have a credit sign attached.’
LIGHTSABER/SWORD FORMS:
Zee could be considered slightly more proficient with a lightsaber than with a vibroblade, for the simple reason that she never injured herself with the former. Having only seen a lightsaber on Holonet, the girl can’t even tell its top from its bottom.
‘Light…saber? You mean those weapons which Sith and Jedi use? They’re dangerous, aren’t they?’
STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES:
Zee has a remarkable affinity to the Force, for someone who is damn near fully unaware of it. The instinctive hiding of her presence has likely made her slip unnoticed through the Sith recruitment net; however, it has also created a mental block that she would have to overcome in order to develop further. And she would have to develop one way or another, in this dangerous world. Her ability with any sort of blade is best emphasized by the fact that she regularly manages to scratch herself with a kitchen knife, even after it’s been purposefully blunted.
GEAR:
A plush Kilit, white on the underside and light brown on the top, is one of Zee’s most prized possessions. Kilits are winged predators native to Zee’s homeworld, Zelos II, and look much like flying manta rays. Its size, about her forearm’s length in wingspan, makes it perfect for hugging as well as folding up in her jacket. Its name is Sky.
‘It feeds on things that go bump in the night. It protects me.’
A glow-orb (a spherical, fit-in-your-palm version of a glowrod, with indentations for easy holding). Due to her species’ lack of low-light vision and her resulting fear of the dark, Zee clings to it like to her dear life. At its lowest luminosity setting, it is a faithful companion that enables her to comfortably fall asleep. However, it is far from immune to the Jedi’s panic-induced electrical power flicker.
‘It keeps the Roc-Crone away.’
Datapad – A medium-sized model, designed for both hands. Despite its sleek exterior, it would frustrate the hell out of most living beings, due to the fact that its interface is a mutt of Zelosian and Givin, while the programming system is Givin alone. While this offers support for complex mathematics not often seen on personal computers, it is not exactly user-friendly. Zee is fond of it, though. Codename: Hex.
An actual notebook made of actual paper, with an ancient graphite pencil, like, what the hell? – Due to the fact that all the datasets she’d tried have a tendency to quit at the critical moment, the girl has gotten used to sketching her equations in this primitive, but strangely pleasant manner.
‘That’s funny, it doesn’t have an edit function’
A small blaster pistol and a 5cm vibroknife are, for now, the only concessions made to a chaotic galaxy. The blaster in particular has much potential for destruction, seeing as the only safe place when Zee fires it would be directly behind her – and even that is not certain. However, it is at least intriguing that the more Zee panics, the more likely it is for an abysmal miss to ricochet off walls and somehow hit the target.
‘Zee? Dear, you’re supposed to hold it the other way round.’
SHIP:
While she will likely not remain there for long, Zee currently travels in a small, budget yacht under the name of Hexacontagon belonging to a Givin preschool teacher. The ship has been modified by adding a pressurization system, but it lacks a navicomputer (Givin can mentally calculate navigation trajectories, as well as survive in a vacuum). It uncomfortably fits two bedrooms, a living room with a kitchenette, a small datacard library and a miniature greenhouse (shared with the broom closet).
PETS:
While most sentient beings would not recognize them as such, Zee treats her (non-sentient) plants as her pets, and even gives them names. Particular examples are Nation (a colony of moss plants in a high-humidity plastic lunchbox) and Logarithm Two (a stone orange tree in a pot, originating from Givin, with branches of lemon and citron). Zee has achieved Logarithm Two through grafting.
PERSONALITY:
Strengths
Caring - When she does notice the surrounding biomass, Zee tends to care deeply about it – maybe a bit too much. This refers to people, animals, plants...pretty much anything living. She’d be the type to step on a spider and then cry her eyes out because of this. However, sometimes her good intentions appear to be rather superficial, as if they are the result of a proper education, but lacking much understanding.
Logical -
Focused -
‘Yes, I was beaten by this 6-year-old Omwasi in a maths contest, but I will try again!’
Positive - Weaknesses
Naïve –
Superstitious - Zelosians lack dark/low-light vision, and this has had far-reaching effects on their mentality and society. They prefer to lock themselves in their homes at night, often while telling stories of the dangers lurking behind the walls. Fantasy, reality and superstition entwine in their lore, and they seem to have a fuzzy concept of the boundary between them. Zee is no exception. While her scientific education had made her feebly question, if not outright doubt, some of the simpler traditions such as reading the weather in the seeds of the karamja fruit, she nevertheless could swear her life on others – such as the indubitable existence of the Sock Monster.
Lost in her own world –Despite her impressive knowledge volume, Zee can barely take care of herself. She is the type of person who would prefer sitting down and analyzing all the types of molecules inside a piece of cake, rather than actually eating it. However, she’s not a full-fledged ‘idiot savant’ by any means, only a bit weirder in comparison with the majority.
Cryababy – To some extent, Zee is a person dancing to the strings of her own Force powers. Having never been badly hurt, and rarely as much as scolded, she can get very emotional when bad things do happen. Like an attack of the Sock Monster. Really, it doesn’t take so much to make her burst into tears. She is rather prone to sinking into guilt, even for small stuff like burning toast.
Lack of empathy – Related to the issue mentioned above. Because she doesn’t understand what it means to suffer, she feels little on issues like the Empire killing and torturing people on faraway planets. Even the fact that the Empire forced many Zelosians to work in the ore mines on Zelos II is, for Zee, more of a ‘sad story’, as opposed to a cause for outrage. It remains to be seen whether world experience will change her or kill her first.
BIOGRAPHY:
When the beautiful Leica Nil started the engine of her atmospheric ship that day, no one could have predicted the hellish storm which would soon ravage the sky, or the strange events which would eventually follow. Flying above the Zelosian sea with almost no visibility for several hours, she was forced to try an emergency landing in one of the uninhabited islands of the South Ocean. It was more of a controlled crash, and the woman thought she had little hope of survival. So did the archaeologist-explorer Rillian Irving, Lord of the Ruins, when he saw that giant mass of steel heading directly towards him. But fate (or chance) is that the two survived their first meeting. And so there followed others, albeit in less extreme circumstances. In five years time, they were married and had a baby. Go figure.
Zee, as they called her, was left in the care of her grandparents, in the city of Lyn. She was a quiet child who rarely bothered anyone and watched the world through big, calf-like eyes. At least, until she learned how to speak (‘why is the sun yellow?’; ‘why are mommy and daddy almost never at home?’ ; ‘look, I got new socks. Wanna see them? I like ice-cream. How do you make cookies?’). Her appetite for knowledge was so insatiable and serious, that her older relatives let out a metaphorical sight of relief when Zee started going to kindergarten, and later to school.
As she grew up, less and less people were able to answer her questions (‘How does dark matter influence the universe?’; ‘What causes gravity?’). She grew up as a loner. The fame of her parents, her silence and the fact that Zee could mentally multiply three-digit numbers as if it was the easiest thing in the world made others made other kids avoid her, and the girl didn’t feel the need to correct the situation. There was something so deep and frightening in the viewed her passions, namely numbers and running, that even bullies had a tendency to stay away from her.
Her talent bordered genius, and Zee was determined enough to get the best of it. Not for fame, neither to prove anything to anyone, but only for pure and solitary enjoyment. However, a normal life just wasn’t to be. One day, when Zee was barely fourteen, a strange ragged man followed her home. He knocked on the door and presented himself to her grandparents as a Jedi Master, although later on he would self-amusedly confess to being nothing more than a charlatan of the Force. ‘Can’t get a proper Jedi training these days’ is what he said. And he said…
He said that Zee was special. That she could make plants move by looking at them – well, of course she could!, Zee said – and that this was not usual. That the fact that people were ignoring her might not be solely due to the fact that she was silent, but that he lacked the ability to tell anything more. That she had a mysterious power, something called ‘The Force’. That she might have a great power. A power that could do great good…or that it may end up controlling her.
He told them about Sith training. Not details, of course – just what everyone else knew. For the Sith, Zee would be just a gear to be twisted or broken in their war machinery. “I am just a humble charlatan of the Force,” he said, “but their recruitment parties are skilled. They will find her.” Zee’s grandparents gratefully thanked the Jedi ‘Master’, bid him goodbye, and sat down in thought. They realized the danger. But in the same time, they did not want the future of their ‘lil’ sapling’ to be tied to the uncertain fate of the Jedi (which, in retrospect, might have been a wise decision).
There was one person that Zee’s family resolved to rely on, in the end. This was an old Givin lady under the name of Gar’phil Isen, who was what one may call a ‘personality’. Despite having never been any more than a humble preschool teacher and travelling accountant, she was remembered fondly on half a dozen planets by the generations she helped form. Former pupils included Rillian Irving and two members of the Body Calculus, the Givin mathemathocracy. By Givin standards, she was mathematically inept (that is, she needed to jot down her equations for the more complex hyperspace vector computations). By Zee’s standards, she was a scary skeleton with a soft voice on a computer screen.
She had retired from teaching, she explained over Holonet. But, after her husband had died, she had re-taken up accountancy. She travelled from planet to planet, checking ledgers too sensitive to be sent over Holonet, or belonging to Outer Rim planets too remote to have a strong Holonet connection, or buried under the most elaborate of fiscal equations of compound interest. She didn’t need to be told what the problem was – she accepted Rillian’s lie of a ‘stalker’ gracefully, and only asked that she had a chat with Zee. The girl…had something interesting to her, Gar’phil thought.
That’s how Zee ended up on board of the Hexacontagon, as the pupil and (in truth, not very helpful) helper of the elderly Givin. Even when she confessed what the real problem was, the alien woman stayed true to her word. So you might be a Jedi, huh, she asked. She’d lived a long life, she said, and she’d seen many things. Zee could join her in her journeys for as long as she wished, as long as she humored an old lady by doing her best to learn. No one would be able to track her if she kept moving. So Zee was thrown head-first into a world where equations were as natural as breathing. Unlike at her previous school, where math teachers have given up on trying to make her pay attention in class due to the risk of having Zee point out their mistakes, now every day was a challenge. And ‘phil laughed when she pointed out her mistakes.
It was, to some extent, the life she had never known she’d wanted.
Over two years, Zee soaked in like a sponge the considerable mathematical knowledge of her teacher, as well as additional information from Holonet. She’d become quite good at accountant tricks of the trade, such as telling from a single gaze whether numbers had obviously been tampered with. Moreover, somehow, sometimes, people didn’t notice that she was present, and spoke things that might not advantage them during negotiations. Nevertheless, there was one thing that Zee never managed to understand, even less to learn from her teacher. Behind the honest-to-god nature, there was a shrewd core in Gal’phil’s mind: a knowledge of the world and the nature of its inhabitants, that saved their lives not only once. In this respect, Zee has remained a child. However, the old Givin is getting even older; soon, Zee will have to choose what to do with her life.
She thinks she’d like to meet a Jedi, if only to get the confirmation that, as she’d suspected, she’s about as gifted in the Force as a rock.
BOUNTIES COLLECTED:
DUELING RING MATCHES:
GRAND TOURNAMENT MATCHES:
ROLE-PLAYS:
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