Infinity Smashed Treehouse Folks
Dec. 21st, 2018 05:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lb_leeInfinity Smashed kinda has a mammoth cast, and the 101 page was getting pretty cluttered so I decided to give the Treehouse populace their own page!
Treehouse is a mountainous, volcanic town on a larger island known as Silver Fern. For whatever reason, Silver Fern has become a dimensional dumping ground, leading to most of its populace having no stable breeding populations or shared mores. Treehouse has chosen to deal with this by becoming as xeno-social as possible and building a communication style based around constantly checking in. (I.e., poking their noses into your business.) If you are a loner or prefer the company of your own species, Treehouse is not the place for you. For some people, it can come off as suffocating. Also, everything takes forever there.
The forms of dominant animal life tend towards looking like reptiles, bugs, or nightmarebeasts. A lot of people are deaf, blind, or both; therefore, sign language is the only one everyone can be counted on to be able to speak in, and everyone speaks in Pidgin Sign (or telepathically, if one of the All-Speakers is around). Since falling into another world tends to be universally traumatic, there's a lot of mental weirdness on top of the biological and cultural differences, and everything is held together with duct tape, bubblegum, and gossip.
Various Treehouse Folks (in alphabetical order)
All-Speakers: Not actually a family or people; it's just a Treehouse term for telepaths. Jelly Legs and Ribbonblack are both All-Speakers.
Bath Master III: Third-generation owner of the bath house. Also one of the pillars of the community, considered a hygiene expert and therefore knowledgable regarding diseases and sanitation. It runs the baths as a free public service, since a clean citizen is a good citizen, and in exchange, the town cares for its needs. (Note that Treehouse social norms means that Bath Master CAN'T charge for its services; to do so would be like trying to charge someone for breathing their air.) It is large, muscley, and orange. Also a grumpy hypochondriac.
The Best Weaver: Her name is her job. She mostly specializes in super-special ritual wear. Professional, attentive, and polite. She came from a fairly stratified society, and Treehouse's lack of hierarchy confuses her, so she talks like every customer is the Pope, just to be safe and satisfy herself. She resembles a large spider and can spin silk from her own body, but she also weaves other stuff, including other bug silk, linen, and plant fibers.
The Dead-Carrier Beetles: Combination garbage disposers, coroners, and undertaker/priests who feed on carrion... at least, as adults. As juveniles, they are terrifingly lively flesh-eating maggots the size of bread loaves. Only in their adult stage (resembling enormous blue palmetto tortoise beetles) can they take part in the long memory and become reasonable. They store cultural memory in intensely complicated pheromone records, which they add to continuously. This gives them an idiosyncratic idea of what it means to be a person, and what it means to die. For a beetle's body to die is no big deal, but to lose the long memory records is disastrous. Dealing with the dead all day has made them very fastidious in getting along with the people around them, and they are very well respected. They are overwhelmingly female, and all go by the names of the roles they play in the long memory: Brood Mother, Elder Sister, Younger Sister, and Brood Father. They are deaf.
Flame Belly (Flame): One of the healers of the day people, and M.D.'s boss along with Scorch. About the size of a turkey buzzard, she resembles a bright red wyvern. Her color, high body temperature, and excitable temperament won her the name. She likes being in charge, and doesn't like being deferred, which suits Scorch's more placid temperament. She's an obligate carnivore, and treats healing as an extension of her prey drive--she LIKES winning!
Jelly Legs: originally in the labor pool, but later became town guards, which is super respected, but also 98% boring. They resemble a large airbound jellyfish, but are actually a bunch of colony organisms all knitted together symbiotically. They navigate the world through telepathy and touch alone, but since they're neither strong nor fast, attempting to move without the wind is exhausting, so part of their role as guards requires any fast community member to grab them and tow them along like a balloon whenever asked. Jelly Legs is full willing to take advantage of this for entertainment's sake; since their job doesn't provide much excitement, they find it through gambling and going along with any fool thing they think would be entertaining. Their venom causes agony and paralysis.
The Record-Keepers: They maintain and keep copies of all community records--employment contracts, labor disputes, any crimes or grievances that reach the legal stage, plus whatever else anyone wants them to transcribe and keep. They are one of the few mammals in town--though the two of them (brothers) mostly resemble large fuzzy moles. They are supremely near-sighted and use textural records, which is common in Treehouse. They are also intense homebodies who hate traveling or having their routines disrupted. Grouchy and perennially distracted, they are nonetheless a huge boon to everyone. With such a malleable population, communal memory can be very spotty or short, and the Record-Keepers have helped simplify things considerably.
Ribbonblack: Senior healer of the night people. Sickly and tired, she relies on a large crew of juniors to keep her practice going. She comes from an artifically created species from a medically advanced world, but times got hard and she has a lot of bad memories, and getting thrown into Treehouse reverted her to a feral, animal-like state, during which she lived as a lone hunter, eating anyone who came close to her. But that was a long time ago; she's doing a lot better now. She can hypnotise and lull beings around her using her telepathy; what originally started as a hunting tactic then became a form of communication and an adjunct to anaesthesia. She resembles a cross between a daddy-long-legs and a squid with many dextrous tentacles; her people normally can change color, but she's old and mostly appears to be very dark, with pulsing veins of blue. Her eyesight is very good, and she can move very quickly when she feels up to it, but mostly she doesn't.
Scorch Unburnt (Scorch): Healers of the day people, along with his mate Flame (who is a separate species). He looks like a cross between a stegosaurus and a crocodile, and his people are scavenging omnivores. He got his name because people joked he could handle Flame's fiery personality. Placid and jovial, he is slower in all things than Flame, but also way more patient; his people can live way longer than hers. Cold-blooded, which makes him miserable and depressive in winter.
Scrap Merchant: Takes other people's junk and finds new uses for it. Also has a massive hoarding problem, which has gotten it into trouble multiple times with the rest of the populace. A skinflint miser, it gives very good financial advice, and is a respected appraiser of stuff, and many people like it... but also feel bad for it. It is a sad creature.
Strong-Legs: Part of the labor pool. Thomas's helpmeet, labor partner, and roommate during his time in Treehouse, it can be mischievous and vain, full of silliness and teasing. It looks like a cross between a velociraptor and an emu, with plumage ranging from cream to brown and light blue, with a crest on its head that it's very proud of. It's large enough to be ridden, but to do so is an extremely intimate act. Its people were migratory clans who ran over savanna, with biological sex changing depending on environmental circumstances. Its people communicate through dancing and booming; despite their birdlike appearance, they do not sing.
Treehouse-Adjacent Folks (they don't live there, but they live AROUND there)
Armor Alone: Not a Treehouse citizen, but a traveling trader who stops by often. It scavenges various dimensional detritus and then sells/barters it to anyone who wants it. Though it is far too asocial and solitary to want to join a town, it is an excellent source of news, and also acts as a de facto mailman. It resembles a cross between a turtle and an anklyosaurus, with a hard shell and a bony mace at the end of its tail, and a stomach of cast-iron. It is very proud of its own toughness, a little standoffish, and quite mercenary. Might eat you.
Slayer: A feral solitary hunter who lives alone in the forest. It has fangs, secretes a black tarlike substance that helps immobilize its prey, and is not to be trifled with. Not social; will DEFINITELY eat you. It's... not exactly FRIENDLY with Armor Alone, but they respect each other as "beings I talk to and can not eat."
Treehouse is a mountainous, volcanic town on a larger island known as Silver Fern. For whatever reason, Silver Fern has become a dimensional dumping ground, leading to most of its populace having no stable breeding populations or shared mores. Treehouse has chosen to deal with this by becoming as xeno-social as possible and building a communication style based around constantly checking in. (I.e., poking their noses into your business.) If you are a loner or prefer the company of your own species, Treehouse is not the place for you. For some people, it can come off as suffocating. Also, everything takes forever there.
The forms of dominant animal life tend towards looking like reptiles, bugs, or nightmarebeasts. A lot of people are deaf, blind, or both; therefore, sign language is the only one everyone can be counted on to be able to speak in, and everyone speaks in Pidgin Sign (or telepathically, if one of the All-Speakers is around). Since falling into another world tends to be universally traumatic, there's a lot of mental weirdness on top of the biological and cultural differences, and everything is held together with duct tape, bubblegum, and gossip.
Various Treehouse Folks (in alphabetical order)
All-Speakers: Not actually a family or people; it's just a Treehouse term for telepaths. Jelly Legs and Ribbonblack are both All-Speakers.
Bath Master III: Third-generation owner of the bath house. Also one of the pillars of the community, considered a hygiene expert and therefore knowledgable regarding diseases and sanitation. It runs the baths as a free public service, since a clean citizen is a good citizen, and in exchange, the town cares for its needs. (Note that Treehouse social norms means that Bath Master CAN'T charge for its services; to do so would be like trying to charge someone for breathing their air.) It is large, muscley, and orange. Also a grumpy hypochondriac.
The Best Weaver: Her name is her job. She mostly specializes in super-special ritual wear. Professional, attentive, and polite. She came from a fairly stratified society, and Treehouse's lack of hierarchy confuses her, so she talks like every customer is the Pope, just to be safe and satisfy herself. She resembles a large spider and can spin silk from her own body, but she also weaves other stuff, including other bug silk, linen, and plant fibers.
The Dead-Carrier Beetles: Combination garbage disposers, coroners, and undertaker/priests who feed on carrion... at least, as adults. As juveniles, they are terrifingly lively flesh-eating maggots the size of bread loaves. Only in their adult stage (resembling enormous blue palmetto tortoise beetles) can they take part in the long memory and become reasonable. They store cultural memory in intensely complicated pheromone records, which they add to continuously. This gives them an idiosyncratic idea of what it means to be a person, and what it means to die. For a beetle's body to die is no big deal, but to lose the long memory records is disastrous. Dealing with the dead all day has made them very fastidious in getting along with the people around them, and they are very well respected. They are overwhelmingly female, and all go by the names of the roles they play in the long memory: Brood Mother, Elder Sister, Younger Sister, and Brood Father. They are deaf.
Flame Belly (Flame): One of the healers of the day people, and M.D.'s boss along with Scorch. About the size of a turkey buzzard, she resembles a bright red wyvern. Her color, high body temperature, and excitable temperament won her the name. She likes being in charge, and doesn't like being deferred, which suits Scorch's more placid temperament. She's an obligate carnivore, and treats healing as an extension of her prey drive--she LIKES winning!
Jelly Legs: originally in the labor pool, but later became town guards, which is super respected, but also 98% boring. They resemble a large airbound jellyfish, but are actually a bunch of colony organisms all knitted together symbiotically. They navigate the world through telepathy and touch alone, but since they're neither strong nor fast, attempting to move without the wind is exhausting, so part of their role as guards requires any fast community member to grab them and tow them along like a balloon whenever asked. Jelly Legs is full willing to take advantage of this for entertainment's sake; since their job doesn't provide much excitement, they find it through gambling and going along with any fool thing they think would be entertaining. Their venom causes agony and paralysis.
The Record-Keepers: They maintain and keep copies of all community records--employment contracts, labor disputes, any crimes or grievances that reach the legal stage, plus whatever else anyone wants them to transcribe and keep. They are one of the few mammals in town--though the two of them (brothers) mostly resemble large fuzzy moles. They are supremely near-sighted and use textural records, which is common in Treehouse. They are also intense homebodies who hate traveling or having their routines disrupted. Grouchy and perennially distracted, they are nonetheless a huge boon to everyone. With such a malleable population, communal memory can be very spotty or short, and the Record-Keepers have helped simplify things considerably.
Ribbonblack: Senior healer of the night people. Sickly and tired, she relies on a large crew of juniors to keep her practice going. She comes from an artifically created species from a medically advanced world, but times got hard and she has a lot of bad memories, and getting thrown into Treehouse reverted her to a feral, animal-like state, during which she lived as a lone hunter, eating anyone who came close to her. But that was a long time ago; she's doing a lot better now. She can hypnotise and lull beings around her using her telepathy; what originally started as a hunting tactic then became a form of communication and an adjunct to anaesthesia. She resembles a cross between a daddy-long-legs and a squid with many dextrous tentacles; her people normally can change color, but she's old and mostly appears to be very dark, with pulsing veins of blue. Her eyesight is very good, and she can move very quickly when she feels up to it, but mostly she doesn't.
Scorch Unburnt (Scorch): Healers of the day people, along with his mate Flame (who is a separate species). He looks like a cross between a stegosaurus and a crocodile, and his people are scavenging omnivores. He got his name because people joked he could handle Flame's fiery personality. Placid and jovial, he is slower in all things than Flame, but also way more patient; his people can live way longer than hers. Cold-blooded, which makes him miserable and depressive in winter.
Scrap Merchant: Takes other people's junk and finds new uses for it. Also has a massive hoarding problem, which has gotten it into trouble multiple times with the rest of the populace. A skinflint miser, it gives very good financial advice, and is a respected appraiser of stuff, and many people like it... but also feel bad for it. It is a sad creature.
Strong-Legs: Part of the labor pool. Thomas's helpmeet, labor partner, and roommate during his time in Treehouse, it can be mischievous and vain, full of silliness and teasing. It looks like a cross between a velociraptor and an emu, with plumage ranging from cream to brown and light blue, with a crest on its head that it's very proud of. It's large enough to be ridden, but to do so is an extremely intimate act. Its people were migratory clans who ran over savanna, with biological sex changing depending on environmental circumstances. Its people communicate through dancing and booming; despite their birdlike appearance, they do not sing.
Treehouse-Adjacent Folks (they don't live there, but they live AROUND there)
Armor Alone: Not a Treehouse citizen, but a traveling trader who stops by often. It scavenges various dimensional detritus and then sells/barters it to anyone who wants it. Though it is far too asocial and solitary to want to join a town, it is an excellent source of news, and also acts as a de facto mailman. It resembles a cross between a turtle and an anklyosaurus, with a hard shell and a bony mace at the end of its tail, and a stomach of cast-iron. It is very proud of its own toughness, a little standoffish, and quite mercenary. Might eat you.
Slayer: A feral solitary hunter who lives alone in the forest. It has fangs, secretes a black tarlike substance that helps immobilize its prey, and is not to be trifled with. Not social; will DEFINITELY eat you. It's... not exactly FRIENDLY with Armor Alone, but they respect each other as "beings I talk to and can not eat."
