Rasalas

Rasalas is a crippled Freespacer with a love for biology, a dislike of technology, and a questionable moral foundation.

Rasalas is currently a PC played by MarQuid.

Rasalas is an unattractive Freespacer with a frail body and awkwardly long fingers. His features are strongly european, but with a sickly grey-white hue. Over 50% of his body is colonized by excessive diatomic growth, giving him the appearance of being covered by green and orange lichens. His brown-black hair is wildly unkempt, with significant matting and trace amounts of food. His eyes are similar in color to his skin, with a bit more grey and limpidity.

While cheerful and talkative when forced to interact with others, Rasalas vastly prefers to spend his time alone working on his experiments and reading. His optimistic and bright demeanor belies a sharp scientific mind, and further conceals a highly amoral outlook on life and the rights of others. While quite adept at hiding his true emotions, Rasalas nevertheless holds a deep hatred of the technological existence he had been forced into by the inconvenience of his “birth.”

Highly obsessive, Rasalas will place whatever task he is currently involved in above everything else, including his and others’ safety. Suffering from a “The Grass is Always Greener” mentality, Rasalas has elevated his view of the biological world from a mere curiosity to a passion bordering on excessive romanticism and insanity. While far from apparent to the casual observer, Rasalas is a highly unstable individual, who has no scruples against experimenting on sentient life, and will even go out of his way to obtain sapient organisms to perform his ghastly tests upon.

In his interactions with his fellow crew, Rasalas is very honest and observant, and if it wasn’t for his disfigurements, could be considered charming and charismatic. Hiding his hatred of technology, and his prejudice against synthetic intelligences and artificial life of all kinds, Rasalas can normally feign friendship with anyone. While true friendship or romantic interest is rare, Rasalas has been known on occasion to genuinely make attachments, normally to non-sapient lifeforms.

• Likes: Biology, cooking, good food, experimentation, and time alone.
• Dislikes: Prolonged socialization, laws, Technology, synthetic intelligence, religion, and petty morality.
• Goals in Life: Finding a unified basis for all organic life, and finding a way to ‘fix’ his genetic defect and reliance on Freespacer technology.

Conceived on a Freespacer ship halfway through its great circle trajectory between Journey's End and the Chen Nebula, Rasalas began life as a seemingly average type-three Freespacer. Within his first three years of life, however, Rasalas began to exhibit stunted physical development and slight disfiguration. The anomalous traits grew exponentially, until Rasalas could not be safely kept under drug-induced sleep for even a fraction the amount of time the average Freespacer child could. These periods of lonely consciousness without the company of his peers is what first drove Rasalas to his socially isolated tendencies.

Knowledge of his unique genetic condition evolved into a curiosity, easily indulged in his long hours alone. As Rasalas grew, the curiosity extended to all of biology, and his search for answers led him into the related fields of biochemistry and pathology. By the time he fully matured and was sent out into the Freespacer workforce, Rasalas was already certain of his trade and had a significant advantage over his competitors, as he had been studying a very specific topic while they had learned almost evenly. Rasalas quickly became junior assistant to the ship’s master genesplicer, in charge of both selecting the genes of the next generation and maintaining balance between Freespacers and their natural flora.

As time progressed, Rasalas begin to blame the master genesplicer for his own genetic defect, if only in his mind. This mentality quickly grew to encompass all Freespacers on the ship, and further to include all Freespacers everywhere. Technology became his nemesis, the force by which he had been brought into his disfigured life. This irony between his hatred of technology and utter reliance on it for survival gnawed away at Rasalas’ sanity, yet he remained silent and continued his duties under a carefully crafted mask of cheerful optimism. As his ship returns to Journey’s End, to a lush biosphere he had heard so much about but never seen, the nexus of Freespacer society, one can only speculate his future actions.

Expressing an interest in the inner workings of lifeforms from a young age, Rasalas’ took every opportunity to learn more about the ecological balance on Freespacer ships. After maturation, Rasalas gained experience working under a master genesplicer in charge of developing and maintaining efficiency and balance between the Freespacers and their symbiotic flora, as well as the occasional planetfall for research and exploration.

Rasalas’ interest in biology inexorably led him to the discipline of biochemistry, where guidance from his master combined with independent experimentation quickly culminated into a high proficiency level among various biochemical reactions. Further study of naturally evolved photosynthetic and xenophotosynthetic techniques in multiple ecosystems enhanced Rasalas’ already prodigious expertise.

Rasalas’ experience with various stable ecosystems and the impact of both sentience and sapience drove Rasalas to study the complex and compact information storage systems and associative capacity of various organisms. Drawing on personal experience, dissection and experimentation upon animals of all intellectual capacity from sophonts to nematodes, Rasalas developed an intrinsic understanding of both the biochemical and philosophic natures of the mind.

The incredible effect sapience had on independent biospheres throughout the known universe and the highly complex nature of society inspired Rasalas to study the histories of various sophonts throughout the known universe. Reading history more for recreation than profession, Rasalas picked up considerable amounts of mostly useless data about civilizations ranging from primitive stick-wielders to the Yamataian Empire.

Rasalas’ preference for solitary research over social interaction has resulted in an excellent memory even by Freespacer standards, and he has picked up various tidbits from a variety of subjects. A love for the organic and a begrudging apathy for the technological cause Rasalas to have a greater memory for facts about nature than machine, and a very low level of proficiency in the latter.

While unintentional, Rasalas’ extensive knowledge of biology led him to be one of the more qualified Freespacers to research and treat the periodic bacterial infections that plagued those of his kind that had been exposed to more septic conditions (Usually planets or alien spacecraft) for extended periods of time. This experience, combined with the duties he had assisted his master with in his younger days, gave Rasalas a deep respect and appreciation for microorganisms and their effect on more complex lifeforms.

Even the most dedicated of scientists must have some recreational outlet, one that rejuvenates the mind and engages the senses. Rasalas’ obsession with organic life and biochemistry naturally drew him to cooking. The highly sensitive nature of the Freespacer diet did not deter him from attempting to make it taste good! While Rasalas mostly cooks for himself alone and experiments with vastly different recipes, on occasion he has been known to cook for friends or visiting sophonts. Though his food is often…creative, it can usually satisfy a wide range of pallets.

Despite Freespacer technology and ingenuity, there remain rare individuals plagued with genetic defects of unknown origin and/or cause. Suffering from such a disorder, Rasalas musculature is highly entropic, and his bones are brittle and light. Because of this, Rasalas is both physically weak and frail, with his fine motor control barely sufficient to complete his daily tasks. Though Freespacer biomedical technology has prevented Rasalas’ system from failing all together, it can do nothing to improve his substantial disabilities. Furthermore, his flawed genetics have left him rather unattractive, which he is incredibly self-conscious about.

While Rasalas can operate all equipment needed to carry out his research and experimentation, he is utterly helpless in matters beyond the simplest of repairs. Often he forgets to maintain devices in the most elementary ways, such as leaving a device on continuously and draining its power source, or forgetting to check fuel and/or energy levels of vehicles and electronics.

He's a Brain in a Vat. His name is Steve.

Rasalas Currently has 2250 KS.