[Cosmosdex] The Universal Encyclopedia

[Cosmosdex]

Jaunt Harpdog
     

Party Central / Conductor Startrain

Jaunt Harpdog
“I think you'll find the question you'll be asking is not what is Harpdog, but who.” — Another satisfied Yozora Unlimited passenger, recommending it to a friend

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  • Strength-15
  • Intelligence-6
  • Charisma-9
  • Endurance-12
  • Agility-5
  • Luck-6

Age: 24 years
Size: 53 ft tall, 2500 ft long
Species: Selachim

Job: Chief conductor and pilotshark of the Yozora Unlimited, and occasional aquarium tour guide
Likes: Travel, Exotic fish, Hosting amazing parties
Dislikes: Snobbery, Things which kill a fun mood
Notable contributions: Onwer-operator of the universe's best-known interstellar aquarium slash party train.

Traits
[Storyteller] Neutral trait
This character could spend hours telling stories. These stories range from personal life stories, to myths, to even things like gossip.
[Moneymaker] Positive trait
Characters with this trait tend to be wealthy and successful. They are good with money and will often find ways to make themselves and their allies richer.
[Hot Seat] Positive trait
This character is instinctively adept at the control of any vehicle or ridden creature they attempt to pilot or command, able to make maneuvers even when in stressful situations.
[Commanding] Positive trait
This character is a natural-born leader. Crewmates and strangers alike will feel compelled to follow their command, even if they are otherwise unwilling to work together.
[Goliath] Positive trait
This character is bigger, stronger, and more durable than their peers by a fairly significant amount, due to being a WHOLE DANG TRAIN. Tends to have various size related issues, such as being unable to enter buildings.
[Addicted to Partying] Negative trait
This character is addicted to the buzz of a good party, and loses sanity and morale if they go without it for too long.
[Emergency Conscript] Negative trait
If a non-military emergency is declared nearby by an authority with jurisdiction over an organization this character belongs to, this character will be notified with a call to serve a duty. They can choose to accept or else they may face consequences for failing to serve. This character is primarily called to events several warps' distance away where mass evacuation is necessary, like a star forecast to go supernova.
[Famous] Mystery trait
The one and only!

Original Creator: Schazer


Physical Description

Jaunt is a jocular selachim with a heavily-modified early-gen Thanatos unit for his hull. His face, which is the only part of him visible on the public address screens located in all of the train's carts, features a wide grin, white below the mouth and blue-grey with white spots on the upper part of his body.

His hull is a long, enormous spaceship painted in a matching color scheme to his body, pale below and star-flecked blue-grey above. The frontmost car of the ship has a long, rounded, sloping nose like a bullet train, with a curved pane of one-way glass providing a 270-degree view from the cockpit. This ship interior is described further below.

Personality

Despite usually being very busy driving a spacetrain and managing everything going on inside it, Jaunt always tries to make time to chat with passengers. Having hosted many famous individuals, Jaunt is full of anecdotes and exploits he's seen on board, though always respects the anonymity of his customers. He is particularly fond of giving special guests guided tours through his aquarium, despite having four well-trained and talented guides on his payroll. Jaunt uses a modulator on his voice to inject some of the tone normally missing from selachim speech.

Employees of the aquarium and the Yozora Unlimited in general consider Jaunt a pleasant enough boss to work under; being "a pretty competent pilot and hotelier who also like. Actually listens to advice and complaints?" Jaunt regularly checks in with his staff, but also entrusts much of the day-to-day running of the train to his chief of hospitality, a marmar called Ruffles Falbala.

History

Records on Mare show Jaunt spent his early working years in an Ambassador-class hull, working for noted selachim philanthropist Lady Arbeta Epaulette. It was from this mentor learned much about fundraising, finance, and other monetary matters (and also the fine art of being an aquarist) not normally pursued vocationally by selakind.

Branching out into running his own tour company, news from across a galaxy of his mentor's declining health made Jaunt realize he didn't want to spend the rest of his life living modestly. He sold his business, took his savings, ventured to the edges of lawful space, and emerged four years later with a new hull and a caboose full of exotic fish to show off to the world.

One of his most trusted engineers suggested expanding the mobile attraction business, by adding accommodation and live entertainment. The bizarre combination of aquarium and destination-uncertain-party bus proved a hit, making Jaunt fabulously wealthy.

Special

The Yozora Unlimited: Jaunt's hull is a fully-functional trainlike spacecraft, serving as something of an interstellar party bus. While large groups or disgustingly rich individuals can hire Jaunt to travel to specific destinations, the Yozora Unlimited's usual trajectory is "wherever the partygoers are waiting" (according to Jaunt).

The interior of the Yozora Unlimited is arranged as follows:

Front car: Jaunt's hull, cockpit, and life support system.

Car 1: The Pearl Lounge, a VIP suite for aquatic passengers such as sea angels, nautalids, and inorganic guests who want to see what living on the sea floor might be like.

Cars 2-9: The Lady Epaulette Memorial Aquarium, one of the few traveling aquarium in the universe. The front six cars have a wide glass-roofed tunnel running through their center, allowing guests to see the fauna of hundreds of oceans swimming overhead and around them. The rear three are a touch more traditional, lined with tanks housing species not suited for a tank full of other wildlife.

Cars 10-14: A set of modular cars capable of being turned into separate rooms or a single long one; a nightclub atmosphere is the norm here though like other sections of the Yozora, it can be hired out for private functions. The cheapest tickets to board the Yozora allow access to only this section of the train, which is cleared out at each planetary stop for cleaning.

Car 15 contains three self-contained VIP suites designed for terrestrial guests.

Cars 16 to 20 house the Yozora Unlimited's extensive staff, crew, kitchen and administrative spaces

Cars 21 to 25: sleeper cars for regular guests. Both "capsule hotels" suited for a range of body plans and dormitory-style cabins can be found here.

Car 26 and beyond house cargo, including guests' spacecraft, freight added whenever the Yozora's next destination is planned in advance, and supplies to cater to the guests on board. Approximately 15 cars containing cargo is standard, though 25 is the upper bound that Jaunt can haul.

Trivia

• The aquarium's star resident is an almost-stationary sangoisse by the name of Wailing Betty, whose orchestral tones are piped through to the aquatic VIP suite. The are unsubstantiated rumors that Wailing Betty foiled a terrorist plot when her exhibit was broken open and the perpetrators left injured and calf-deep in the polyp-laced seawater.

• Jaunt donates all entry fees from the aquarium to the many charitable projects spearheaded by Lady Epaulette, and is registered on the Planetary Evacuation Transport Assistance Roll, which obligates him to redirect and assist in the event of planetary-scale emergencies necessitating mass evacuation.

• Jaunt is perhaps the best known "hidoxen", a term for selachim shunned from selachim society due to their non-proprietary hulls. The hidoxen community is divided on how they feel about Jaunt - many feel his wealth insulates him from the issues the majority of hidoxen face; some even speculate he is not a true hidoxen and operates his ship from a sealed cockpit with a Landshark Labs-standard hull. Both Jaunt and the Mare government declined to comment.

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