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Toreka
     

Duelists / Circea Slugs

Toreka
“Attention Duelists! Instead of blowing each other up over this strategically critical mine, why don't we pick a winner through a game of Feudmaul Apalaksa?” — Purported first words of greeting by Jorunna Bluedragon, accidental peacebroker of the Battle of Discodoris

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  • Strength-3
  • Intelligence-8
  • Charisma-8
  • Endurance-1
  • Agility-1
  • Luck-5

Common Jobs: Pro gamer, Game designer, Lawyer
Likes: Games of skill, Selene units, Outlandish hair and outfits
Dislikes: Games of luck, Uninspired cheating, Expressionless people

Attack Method: Convinces foes to settle their disagreement through a game instead.

Attributes
Homeplanet: Foyer
Lifespan: 25 years
Size: 4 ft tall
Diet: Plants, Seafood

Bodytype: Bipedal
Type: Mollusk
Social Class: Upper Middle Class
Rarity: Uncommon
Common Traits
[Excitable] Neutral trait
This species gets excited easier than others.
[Skilled At Rulesets] Positive trait
This species is very skilled in understanding rules of games and other systems, and they are better at it than the average Joe.
[Firebrand] Negative trait
Although a character with this trait might be normally friendly, it does not take much to provoke them. If you prod at or question their beliefs, ideas, or otherwise challenge them, be prepared for them to demand your differences be settled over a CHILDREN'S CARD GAME.
Gods

Cults to Rng, the toreka deity of chaos and luck, consider their deity synonymous with the Divided. Some also worship the creator of the Limbo Cards, the Radical, by playing its card game.


Gods: The Radical, Rng, the Divided

Original Creator: Schazer


Physical Description

Toreka are medium-sized sea slugs in almost any imaginable hue, with sharp beaks, eyes and prehensile whiskers at one end and a dazzling diversity of fins, frills, gills and assorted bloomlike structures along their backs and tails. These structures, collectively referred to as a toreka's "crest", may be striped, streaked, tipped, speckled, flecked, and otherwise splashed with a rainbow of colors (usually) complementary to a toreka's base color. The toreka can change these accent colors at will, and also uses this color-changing ability to create facial expressions on its smooth upper back.

The bulk of a toreka's body is a robotic chassis similar to a Circe unit, though toreka limbs do not stretch. Their arms end in a four-digit hand with an opposable thumb on either side.

The headless unit is topped with a ringlike structure resembling a high collar, lined with notail mask-tech screens at the front and otherwise arranged with all the controls to move the robot. The toreka perches upside down in this with their tail and crests raised, and the expression "printed" on their bare back (where a normal Circe unit's face would be) conveying their mood.

Toreka avoid undue focus put on their true faces, and will often wear high-collared or otherwise avant-garde clothing, to distract from the part where their chassis and true body meet.

Personality

Flamboyant and often in-your-face, toreka treat life as one big game, which they will proclaim they want to be the very best at. They are very dramatic with their emotions, expressing blazing fury, deepest sorrow, and exultant joy all in the one sentence. Despite these theatrics, toreka are by and large very carefree and hard to truly anger or offend.

Toreka may struggle to comport themselves in a situation where there's no competitive aspect, like a normal conversation, trying to turn socialization into a game as well. This is seen most often in disagreements, which toreka will insist be settled over an agreed-upon game no matter how major or minor. The recipient of the last doughnut, two shortlisted candidates vying for the same job, a dispute over shoddy ship repairs, even a few wars involving toreka have been resolved bloodlessly through games.

A toreka usually will, however, understand not everyone wants to learn the current meta and mechanics of their favorite asymmetrical card game Tweepersprint and is more than happy to learn the rules for a game their "opponent" is more familiar with. Toreka have a particular knack for picking up the rules of games, no matter how complicated. They are especially keen-eyed at spotting whether a ruleset is fair or not for all players, and will often suggest additional rules to balance a game.

After all, despite their repeated insistence on winning, most toreka not-so-secretly consider all the players having fun more important, and would consider a victory in an imbalanced game (or one which exploits a player's lack of focus/understanding/ability to stay awake for three day straight) to not "count."

A toreka's "rule-sense" can even be extended to social systems with rules or other game-like qualities, if the toreka can see it in such a fashion. This can make them quite effective lawyers, diplomats, and tactical military commanders.

History

Toreka origin stories ascribe their hue-shifting abilities to a primoridal entity known as Rng, a chromatic chaos from which the toreka wrought order and communication through the structure of games.

Whatever their true origins, the toreka lived a peaceful existence on their bountiful planet. Their collective ability to solve disagreements through the proxy of games insulated them from the worst of the universe's strife and discord. It was only when a fleet of downed spacecraft were caught in Foyer's orbit and crashed did torekan technology move beyond simple tool use.

While another species may have engaged in a bloody civil war to determine who would control this new resource, the toreka treated their metal toyboxes as a bunch of fun puzzles to solve together instead. The successful reactivation of a Selene unit on one of the ships, and her subsequent instruction of the toreka, was instrumental in launching torekan society into a high-tech never-ending board game night. The toreka perfected their information-age global internet, hologram-assisted gaming, and ideal bodies (modeled off a Circe unit damaged beyond repair in the crash) several centuries before bothering to let anyone else out in space know what they were up to.

Subspecies

Aglawjia: Aglawjian toreka lack the gills, frills, fins, blooms and tentacles of the standard toreka, their "head" instead taking a smooth black appearance with only a single line of neon wrapping around them. This featureless surface means aglawjians do not emote, nor do they see much need to. Their bodies have a color scheme matching their personal hue, often with bioluminescent tubing added to their black clothes. Aglawjians possess intellect said to be on par with modern computers, and traditionally had the job of designing, balancing, and codifying new games for the populace. Formerly used to consider every permutation of a game for "broken" setups, they are now occasionally employed offworld as analysts.

Special

Jack of all Trading Cards: A toreka never leaves the house without their personal gaming mat,also known as PGM. The PGM is a technological marvel, though quite a sizable one which leaves the majority of toreka with one spare inventory space at best. Due to the sheer versatility contained in even the most basic models, particularly with use of the hardlight holo-imagery, most toreka feel quite comfortable traveling with nothing but their PGM.

Common PGMs will contain the following, with advanced models generally sporting superior connectivity, holo-posts to create gaming arenas much larger than the standard board, or art design and programming tools for game modders.

- hologram-enhanced configurable game board, unfolding out to approximately snooker-table size, loaded with layouts for whichever games the toreka wants to play on the go.

- an inventory specialized for physical gaming accessories like tokens, dice, cards, etc.

- PGM-Runner, a cart-sized motorized transport, which can look like whatever mount the toreka wants thanks, again, to holograms.

- a personal computer with digital vendors that sell and recommend new games, as well as new "skins" for the PGM-Runner and other offerings from modding communities.

Trivia

• The traditional toreka phrases of greeting and farewell are "glhf" and "ggwp" respectively. No linguists, including those among the toreka themselves, can agree on how these phrases are said aloud.

• Toreka society has a strong focus on rivalries, and losers of a game will almost always declare the winner is now their sworn rival and they'll train hard to beat them next time. Rivalries entail a quantity of trash talking about the rival lwhich may surprise those unfamiliar with the concept, however it is a typical torekan theatricality.

To not forge a rivalry is a grave insult to the opponent: a loser who doesn't declare one is implying the game was unfair or the winner beat them through luck instead of skill; a winner who won't acknowledge the rivalry is claiming the loser is below their consideration as a fellow player.

• Toreka contain the most chroma-flexibility in the region most observers would consider their "face", and many like to display abstract symbols vaguely reminiscent of a "big mood" instead of regular facial expressions. Contrary to popular belief, a toreka cannot change its crest markings with the same immediacy it can change the expression on its "face", not can its base color which is primarily determined through genetics and diet before maturity.

Image Gallery

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