[Cosmosdex] The Universal Encyclopedia
[Cosmosdex]
L-Tariok
Peacekeepers / Vines
L-Tariok
Art by, Atomic
- Strength-3
- Intelligence-4
- Charisma-2
- Endurance-6
- Agility-2
- Luck-2
Common Jobs: Anything that a pack code has been written for; often used for their original purpose in peacekeeping operations. Not reliable for operations of military or private expansion, due to the likelihood they will assist the other side in achieving peace after sensing that your side is causing a conflict.
Likes: Sun, Fixing up old things and concepts, Recycling, Individuality, Finding a niche interest/hobby and obsessing over it
Dislikes: Change, Conflict, New concepts, Standardized behavior, Hearing about others' niche interests/hobbies
Attack Method: Customized to aggressor; only whatever action determined to bring end to hostilities with least overall harm to all involved.
Attributes
Homeplanet: ElltalphaLifespan: 50 years
Size: 6'5 ft tall
Diet: Electricity
Bodytype: Tangle
Type: Plantoid
Social Class: Middle Class
Rarity: Uncommon
Common Traits
This character will be more nervous of suspicious situations, and less willing to take risks. They may put extra effort into making sure everything is safe before feeling comfortable. While this normally makes things safer for them, it can also be a huge time waster.
This character is capable of expanded stat performance, traits, skills and/or abilities through some sort of expansion pack system or through external adaptions. Characters with this trait usually have lower base stats if the system they use gives them a boost in stat points. Only one expansion pack with the specific abilities and stat boosts it gives may be enabled at a time. Changing from one pack to another takes one turn to complete.
What does this trait mean again? With forgetfulness and a short attention span all wrapped up into one unfortunate ball, this character's mind seems all over the place. They're in the middle of one thing, start another, and by then they've completely forgotten about the previous task they were up to. Not a very fun combination for anyone involved, including the character themselves.
Gods
L-Tarioks do not seem to honor any certain god.
Gods: None
Original Creator: Powder Miner
Rewritten by: greatwheatshrike
Physical Description
Genetically engineered plants, the L-Tarioks possess a number of tendrils that they surge forward on when on hard surfaces, although "surging forward" is a rather strong term for the slow movement. On soft surfaces, their tendrils dig through the ground, which moves them much faster. Aboveground, they seem to consist of many vines wrapped together in about a torso shape, with five vines each going off of the sides to work as arms. Their vines can curl and are prehensile.
A large head-like organ serves the purpose of both absorbing energy and communication. Though the body of an L-Tariok is usually green, brown, or red, the head organ can be almost any color. They are around 6-7 feet in height, and are surprisingly hard to damage.
Personality
The L-Tarioks generally try to be friendly, but can be a little batty as far as social norms go. They're not always the quickest on the uptake, and will sometimes continue going with a failed course of action for quite the long time before they realize their error, due to being very single-minded. The L-Tariok are averse to war and rarely experience either it or crime within their homelands- but the tradeoff is that their economy is perpetually in shambles, and they politically suffer fallback after fallback, only slowly making progress. Culturally, few of them are artistic, but those that do are true savants and tend to pass their skill down to their offspring.
The L-Tarioks own very few planets, and instead inhabit a series of space stations. Around every fifty years they need to expand due to the average spawning cycle being that long causing a population boom around every fifty years. The L-Tarioks will leave others alone in every case except for wars near them- they will intrude in even local wars within their reach, frequently getting them into trouble.
L-Tarioks feed off of electricity, and as a consequence many L-Tarioks have great knowledge of electronic engineering. Combat Engineer L-Tarioks were engineered to physically stop people killing people, and as such are generally hard to kill themselves.
L-Tarioks live for about 1 year before they reproduce. This reproduction stage is very important. Sometimes, they will reproduce asexually and let off a single cluster of spores which will grow into almost the same individual as its predecessor, and indeed L-Tarioks believe that it is the same person. After around fifty of these cycles, two L-Tarioks will sexually reproduce using pollen. This not only creates a new individual but gives off around a hundred or so seeds. L-Tarioks will die after this.
History
L-Tarioks were genetically engineered. A few vicious wars made it distressingly clear that some aid was needed, and that aid came in the form of the L-Tarioks, who were created by some unknown genetic engineers. They did their job, stopping a particularly vicious war from tearing a sector apart, and then, unexpectedly, flourished as a civilization. Due to their nature being about stopping violent revolution, they tend to resist change.
Subspecies
L-Tariok Expansion Packs: Expansion packs are a patch and physical upgrade voluntarily undergone by L-Tarioks in order to increase their capabilities, with +7 stat points distributed to various stats. Multiple packs can be installed (up to the point that memory allows). Only one patch with its abilities can be active at a time. It takes one turn to switch to a different patch.
There are two main categories of patches: Military and Civilian. Some patches temporarily give a certain trait or ability; others, by simply having the expansion pack installed, permanently confer a status. All civilian packs permanently confer the [Hardwired Pacifism] trait, and all military packs confer the [Conscriptable] trait.
Roles:
Military roles
These are roles which don't require hardwiring strict pacifism into one's being due to the risky nature of these occupations; however, it doesn't allow access to certain peacetime occupations. You can only have these packs if you are currently in military, are on reserve for being called up, or have been released from military and approved as a private contractor. All Military roles gain the trait [Conscriptable], which is like Emergency Conscript, except the L-Tariok must respond to nearby military situations AND civil emergencies, not just civil emergencies.
Combat diplomat - specialized organizational roles. Can declare military and civil emergencies and assign temporary emergency status to others' roles for organizational purposes, unlike its civilian counterpart. Military counterpoint for (MCpf) Team Player
Combat peaceseeker - soldiering roles, +3 to 5 in strength, +0 to 1 in endurance, +2 to 3 in agility depending on role. Usually, a peaceseeker gains the trait [Content ]. MCpf: Helping Hand
Combat engineering - military engineering roles, boosts intelligence with slight agility boost. MCpf : Civil Technical
Combat reserve - a general use pack for everyday citizens awaiting specific assignment who have non-specialized and non-manual occupations; includes a slight euphoria release unit. Usually, a reserveiok (-iok is a suffix like -man/-person) gains the trait [Content]. MCpf: citizen
Civilian roles
These packs require the oath of hardwired pacifism, but allow access to the knowledge banks of a much larger number of specialized occupations than military packs.
Team Player - Specialized organizational roles. The Team Player Pack is common for many civilian L-Tariok occupations that require a charismatic and persuasive presence, team organization skills, and morale-boosting ability. Some examples are: merchant ship captain, mayor/boss/ringleader, community organizer, mediator, counselor, therapist, bard, chaplain. The Team Player Pack comes with a simple modifier of the head organ. The superficial appearance of the Team Player Pack are customizable, but all function relatively the same.
Many models feature a plantlike structure which sprouts from the top of the head and emits compounds which have calming effects: a slight aroma of spice (works on only species with an olfactory system) and a chemical called 'Di-mint' which can act to suppresses adversarial urges, or produce a slight euphoric feeling, or have a sedative effect (works only on organic creatures - most organic creatures affected). A rare few show no effect. One or two space-faring species have an adverse reaction, and L-Tarioks are unable to deploy the plantstructure around them due to their pacifism. When activated, an L-Tariok temporarily gains the trait [Calming Presence].
Team Players do not make good captains of starships of crews that must engage in combat from time to time due to the Hardwired Pacifism. They, however, can make good co-captains. (For a captain with some allowances for (limited) military commands, one should check out its military counterpart, the Diplomat pack.)
Helping Hand pack - for manual daylaboring tasks, mainly boosts strength, slight boost to agility. Civilian counterpoint for the Peaceseeker.
Citizen pack - a general use pack for everyday citizens who have non-specialized and non-manual occupations. Includes a slight euphoria release unit. Usually, a citizen gains the trait [Content].
Civil Technician pack - A pack which boosts intelligence greatly and agility slightly. It gives its user pinpoint accuracy on small-scale operations, where precision is key. This pack allows access to training programs for specialized technical occupations, like doctor, nurse, engineer, navigator, logistics coordinator, programmer, culinary technician, chemist, researcher, mathematician, architect, city planner and many, many other occupations. It also can open up access to large repertoires of art, philosophy, historiography and/or music entries and theories to be called upon for instant recall, improvisational synthesis and advanced composition, though this is not often done because the sheer amount of input entries to have basic proficiency in these creative fields that matches others is staggering and takes up a LOT of memory which could be used for other things. Overloading one's memory to the point of rupture is a common fate for those who try to clock themselves with too much input information for too many fields. Boosts intelligence +5 and agility +2; gives the trait [Pinpoint Operator], a "rarely misses" trait for certain technical skills.
Emergency Volunteer - a pack that allows a civilian to have a temporary low-class emergency status role - something that should not be abused or the pack can be deactivated upon a negative review. One can activate pack for regular work so long as they do not flag themselves for emergency status. In exchange for this patch, one can be called upon to serve in case of a local civil emergency like a fire or flood.
Includes a unit that releases a slight amount of a adrenaline-like hormone when emergency status is flagged. Boosts: +3 strength, +1 endurance, +2 agility (when emergency status is flagged ONLY - otherwise +1 agility only), +1 luck. Gives the trait [Emergency Conscript].
Extra all-purpose packs, neither Citizen or Military:
Risktaker - a luck-boosting pack. Looks slightly similar to the palm tree model of the Team Player pack, instead of palm leaves drooping out from atop the head, it's a huge thousand-leaf clover. If you try to gamble with this activated, anyone of average intelligence can see the clover and they'll just refuse to allow you to play you dope. Adds +7 to luck.
Mobile - most commonly held pack by L-Tarioks - it allows one to scoot along at a less maddeningly sluggish speed. Little motorized wheels pop up beneath you. You are the scooter! You can scoot! Beep beep. Helmet and front/rear bumpers included for Extra Good Safety. A slight intelligence boost allows one better reaction times and route planning to avoid collisions. Control override involuntarily slows you down and steers you gently out of the way in case any L-Tariok emergency vehicles are approaching.
Special
None.
Trivia
• The identity of the engineers who created Tarioks has been lost to time, likely deliberate on the part of the creators. As a result, many L-Tarioks hold quasi-mythical beliefs about the Nascent Engineers. Different "civil religions" have formed around these beliefs, all with varying holidays, practices, pledges, parades and anthems. These sets of customs differ greatly from L-Tariok region to another. It's most commonly expressed in a mild civic pride; very few L-Tarioks are passionate about it due to L-Tarioks' preference against imposing standardized codes of behavior. Nascent Engineer customs are strongest on Elltalpha, while non-existent in some far-flung clusters of L-Tariok habitation.
• The larger diaspora of places where L-Tarioks live is collectively referred to as "Spaceportlandia", due to a large proportion of all L-Tarioks living on space stations.
• L-Tariok governance is decentralized and usually resembles a kind of social anarchism/libertarianism, with involvement in wider duties being largely participatory (unless one has signed up for some sort of service) due to their social imperative to reduce conflict. The most centralized organization in the L-Tariok sphere is the Code Org (short for both Organization and Organizers); they protect, debug and patch the source code, and update for new security checks. They do much more protecting of the code than writing new code. The Code Org tries to keep its current version of codes as close to the original code as possible, only creating new update patches after desperate situations have arisen, and even then, after lengthy deliberations. Access to the Code Org is highly restricted and difficult, requiring simultaneous action in at least three different remote locations to even start the process which allow editing-enabled mainframes to function.
• The thing most held in most reverence by L-Tariok society is the original source code regarding vital data and expansion packs created by the Nascent Engineers, which allows L-Tarioks to function and adapt to new and challenging situations.
• Individuals have a built-in fear of editing their own code with bootleg custom-made packs, and for good reason, a single mistake can disable an L-Tariok for good. However, it almost always doesn't get that far, anyway, as most bootleg hacks fail to pass physical hardware and software checks. Thanks to a well-known error in the code deemed not important enough to fix, and L-Tarioks' ability to easily make questionable life decisions, some L-Tarioks choose to get an optional pack that does nothing but activate an otherwise-unused emissions node at random. Because of this, some L-Tarioks are reported as "real weird smelling." Not bad, mind you; just odd synthetic smells that... haven't been used by nature yet.
Image Gallery
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