User:Taikahn
| This Page has been marked as a Character Profile. |
| This page describes a character who is dead or retired from Hollow. |
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
"What exactly are you wearing?"
"It's a suit. I wear a suit now. Suits are cool."
~Juliette and Taikahn, about his new choice of garment
"You are an interesting person, Taikahn."
"Thank you. I do try sometimes."
~Arciere and Taikahn
"And here I thought you had a plan."
"Since when have I needed a plan, Teira?"
~Teira and Taikahn
"I should know by now that there's no such thing as fiction with you, Taikahn."
~Teira
"Ruins? Ruins? Show me something ruined, and I'll show you something that can be fixed."
~Taik
"My definition of boring is 'an undesirable state of mind and occupation in which there are no challenges and negligible amounts of stimuli'."
"Doesn't sound too bad to me. It's a lot better than some of the alternatives out there."
"I'd honestly rather be chased through a burning building by knife-throwing dwarves than be bored. But I suppose that's just me."
~Taikahn and Cora
Fast Facts
- Race: Preklek
- Gender: Male
- Height: 7' 4"
- Age: Recently turned sixty-four.
- Weight: 320ish (It's mostly muscle)
- Preferred weapon: Repeating Crossbow, his own design
- Self-described as: Adventurer, Exile, Inventor, Friend
- Family: Bonni'ae, his daughter, and Teira, adopted sister; has others he considers close enough but none besides them are official
- Man on the street says: "That guy's just nuts. Plain and simple. What kind of preklek won't fight? And who in their right mind dresses like that?"
- Favorite dessert: Sugar cookies
- Status: Is -quite- taken with a certain individual.
Appearance
To put it simply, Taikahn is a fashion victim. He's done this on purpose--he figures that if people see his outfit first and not his race, they'll assume that he's eccentric (to put it lightly) and not attack him randomly. To this end, he typically wears a sequined leisure suit, bowtie, slippers and a gigantic hat. It's like Jack Sparrow's hat only one and a half times as big. And it has a feather in it that probably came off of an albatross or something else with massive feathers. Oh yeah, and it's sequined too. The hat -and- the feather. Visible? Yes. Mad? Quite possibly. Fun to wear? Of course it is, it's disco!
Of course, he still has to be prepared. That's why underneath all the shiny he wears a thin layer of strong chainmail armor. It's not visible, but it's typically there.
And also, he's got one earring currently hooked into the hat. It's got a dark purple jewel in it. He's had that jewel his whole life, but doesn't know why.
Personality
Taikahn is... a complicated individual. He's extremely passionate about several things, chief of which is the preservation of life. Second to that is the pursuit and preservation of happiness. Not necessarily his happiness, but that of others. Some--not he himself--would say he's kind and generous to a fault. He doesn't fight anyone or anything unless there's no alternative option, and even then he won't ever kill on purpose.
Friendships are a thing Taikahn doesn't do halfway. If he's even the slightest bit familiar with you, he'll stand up for you and protect you from anything that comes your way, be it personal struggles, foes, natural disasters, you name it. He'll be there for you, no matter who you are.
...well, that's not wholly true. He's a little prejudiced against undead. But that's because of one specific individual.
Also, he's a very tactile person. So if he randomly gives you a hug, it's not necessarily personal--it's just one of the ways he says hi.
Further also: He appears to have gotten over his problems from before, and has discovered that he's fallen in love with someone. He's very happy with life, at the moment.
Weapons
- Wit: When provoked, Taikahn can unleash a scathing blast of Sarcasm that will rip your face off.
- Knowledge: He has this cool attack called Confusion in which he rambles for like thirty seconds about prekky things while you stand there with your mouth hanging open not having any clue what he's talking about.
- Silliness: Do not underestimate his ability to make you laugh. Because he can.
- Spring-loaded repeating-crossbow: Exactly what it says on the tin. It shoots crossbow bolts really fast.
Biography
I awake in a cell.
It is dark—not that I didn't expect it to be otherwise. Why waste energy on providing a cadet guilty of treason with light?
The locks and bars are reinforced with kisponium. Not even an nuclear disruption blast will cut me out of this. I won't be escaping my fate. They mean for me to die a dishonorable death of exile.
“He must die,” they said.
“He's a weakling and must be purged,” they said.
“We must be careful about it,” they said, “or his parents might become angry. His father is due for a promotion to this council soon.”
Thus, here I am. A single-man prison ship, autopiloted, heading directly for the Scarlet Barrens, the planet whose sun is its moon. No ship has ever escaped its gravity well and density storms, no pilot has ever survived there for more than a day. I am going to die a traitor's death.
I begin to ponder the choices I made in the few months or so I hatched. (Yes, I was hatched naturally. Not cloned.) Did I do what was right? Not to them, no. I was “soft”. I was “weak”. I was “irresponsible, absentminded, unwilling and downright blasphemous at times” to them. I would not kill. I would not take prisoners. I would barely even fight, and only to save my own skin.
They thought I'd do well at science. They were right. But all they asked me to do was build weapons for new conquests. I didn't want to aid them. I ran away. But they found me, and forced me back into service.
Finally, they could stand me no more. I was put on trial.
It was short, brutal, and to the point. I was convicted and sentenced within three minutes, and loaded into my prison ship directly after. How my case must have driven propaganda.
And yet, somehow I don't regret any of my decisions. That incident in the burning town. The test-field brouhaha. The arms shipment delays. Small things add up, and I'd cumulatively slowed expansion of the preklek empire by a good thirty percent. Now that I was out of their way, however, things would certainly speed up again.
The world is approaching by now—I can tell from the screaming of the hull. If I'm lucky, my ship will shake itself apart as it flies down into the dense atmosphere of the Scarlet Barrens and I'll be painlessly and instantly incinerated. If I'm unlucky, my ship won't fully shake itself apart and I'll be painfully crushed and incinerated slowly on the way down. If I'm extra unlucky, the ship will survive and land normally, allowing me to exit and move about on the lifeless surface, slowly starving to death, being gradually destroyed by radiation and immense gravity.
It doesn't seem to be my lucky day, because my ship lands perfectly on the surface. I can't even stand upright anymore from the pressure and I am allowed to crawl out. I wonder whether or not to stay in the ship as it too succumbs to gravity's immense pull, but I decide that would be more painful and I pull myself outside.
The sky is black and crackles with lightning. The ground is a flat, crystalline red. No life, no water. They don't call it Barren for nothing. Soon I'll be little more than dust.
Despite my terrible situation, I decide to go ahead and look around. I don't have anything to lose except my life, and even then...
I wander for -hours-. Dragging myself along with my arms, pushing forward with what little traction I have. I can still see the ship I landed in, despite the time I've spent moving in one direction. I sigh to myself, and I feel my lungs deflate under me. It takes several moments to inhale again.
Still I press onwards. I might as well just give up and lie still, but something tells me to keep going. Just a little farther. I don't know what, or why, but it's there. So I continue to crawl.
Suddenly, I fall. The ground opens up beneath me, and I hit the bottom of a pit hard. I groan in pain—I think I may have sprained something. That's when it hits me—the pressure around my body is gone!
I sit up. Yes, my left arm is definitely sprained. It hurts. I use my good hand to make a sling for it out of my shirt.
As I look around at the pit, it strikes me how many small irregularities line its surface. I reach out and feel one. At my touch, the anomaly expands and sinks into the wall of the pit, becoming a tunnel.
Gasping, I test another small chink in the uniform surface, and again it creates a tunnel. I begin to wonder if there are any of these same oddities in the tunnels, and I go to investigate, crawling into the first one. There are, though not as many, and all on the far end. I lightly tap one, and a side tunnel extends out. I laugh to myself. This was fascinating!
Suddenly the air blurs and I feel tingly; I retreat back to the main pit. There is a small disturbance in the air in the curve of the tunnel, as if it was heated. But I know this is not the case. Rather, I hypothesize that something in the crystal is affecting the very atoms of the air, something that could generate a lot of power.
A glimmer of hope hits me. Perhaps I can escape this place after all...
I scavenge parts from the ship over a period of several days and assemble them. Since below the surface of the crystal has a lower gravity than above, I am able to rest myself. I am not, as previously thought, killed off within a day.
Finally, my device is complete. It should be able to punch a hole through space-time large enough for me to get through, to escape into another universe perhaps, or at least a different planet. I understand the risks—if I don't appear on a habitable world, I will die in the depths of deep space, or get vaporised in the heart of a star, or even be lost in the void between universes. But again, what do I have to lose?
I begin digging tunnels for power. They slowly accumulate—over a couple of days, the buzzing and humming of the air becomes audible. If I was anything but a preklek, I would be dead by radiation poisoning many times over by now. Eventually, I believe myself ready.
I close the circuit... and everything goes black.
Oddly enough, I wake up again, staring at blue sky and beautiful green grass, strange lifeforms and wonderful new opportunities. There is a new galaxy at my fingertips, free from the evils of the preklek empire—I can just feel it.
So has begun a sixty-year journey that hasn't stopped since. I would tell you more, but there is far too much to relate; perhaps you'll have to find out my history on your own.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Weaknesses
- Combat of any kind
- Mind-affecting magic
- Social skills
- Failure
- Self-doubt
- Occasionally reckless
Strengths
- Intelligence
- Knowledge
- Analytical thinking
- Immune to most poisons and diseases due to preklekness
- Naturally heals much faster than most
- Makes friends easily
- Plays well with others
- Can MacGyver things
Likes and Dislikes
Likes:
- MacGyvering things
- Inventing new things
- Making friends
- Seeing new sights
- Touching things
- Sequins
- Cookies
- Helping out
- Science!
Dislikes:
- Undead
- Fighting
- Killing
- Sadness
- Pain
- Despair
- Bad landings
- Nihilistic worldviews and pessimism
Lyrics
Rick Astley, Never Gonna Give You Up.
Random and Funny
Background info: Diiroehn was pretty much being his undead, seriously creepy self.
Cerinii gave 1 lacey pink-gown to Diiroehn.
Cerinii gave 1 gem-encrusted slippers to Diiroehn.
Cerinii said to Diiroehn, "Now, you're pretty."
Trey said OOC, "You need to wear something to show us it's you. Like, a silly hat."
Jacklin said OOC, "I'll wear a hat with a monkey on it for you."
You said OOC, "Will the monkey be wearing a hat with a miniature you on it?"
Jacklin said OOC, "It will. We'll have twin hats."
You said OOC, "Awesome."
You told Jacklin, "ooc: For further ridiculousness, the miniature you on the monkey's hat could have a monkey hat, which is wearing a you hat, ad infinitum."
Jacklin told you, "ooc: It could go on forever."
Trey said OOC, "Okay, we'll keep an eye out for that hat. This is going to be so fun!"
You told Jacklin, "ooc: Or at least until you hit the atomic level. I'm not sure how much further you can go once the monkey on your hat is represented by a single atom of hydrogen. =P"
Jacklin told you, "ooc: True...I may have to rethink this."
You told Jacklin, "ooc: You could try folding the recursion into the fifth dimension but we don't want to accidentally summon any Great Old Ones..."
Jacklin told you, "ooc: You're right...I'm not wanting to disturb anything."
You said OOC, "I suddenly feel the urge to put on some dance music."
Jacklin said to you, "ooc: No dancing in this town."
You told Jacklin, "ooc: Aww."
Jacklin told you, "ooc: It upsets the beasties."
You told Jacklin, "ooc: I'm confused. I thought music soothes the savage beasts...?"
Jacklin told you, "ooc: Usually. Though these beasts have very sensitive hearing. Like a dog."
You told Jacklin, "ooc: Oh, okay. Are there specified dancing areas?"
Jacklin told you, "ooc: The graveyard in Vailkrin and the Watering Hole. "
You told Jacklin, "ooc: ...dancing in a graveyard? Doesn't that get the spirits mad or something?"
Jacklin told you, "ooc: Nope. They, unlike the beasties, find that dancing is beautiful. It makes them feel better about their butt-ugly selves."
You told Jacklin, "ooc: I see. Hmm... *getting ideas*"
You told Letha, "ooc: Methinks Cricket will be here for a while."
Cricket sniffs, "Don't tell me what to do," before giving Grimblekin a scratch on the back of the neck and as though nothing at all had just happened, climbing back up the hill and towards Cenril.
Cricket exits south.
Shoutouts
- Sammi: You need to get back here. Seriously. Taik misses you, and so do I.
- Arciere: Made. Of. Win. Seriously~. What else can I say?
- Lenobia: Compressed awesomeness. Yay for incredibly adorable RP. <3
- Ymheshphilun: *points to his bio page's shoutouts* All of those people, for all the reasons he listed.
- Jacklin: Because she said I succeed "perfectly and then some" at not being boring. And because she's awesome in her own right.
- And everyone else that deserves a shoutout from me: Y'all are amazing people. Thanks so much for giving me the opportunity to play with you~