fifty frenchmen can't be wrong (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
some_stars) wrote2020-02-27 01:49 pm
some_stars) wrote2020-02-27 01:49 pm
(no subject)
so i'm struggling through writing some witcher fic rn but that is not what i'm here to post today. instead i am here to post some backstory (in actual story form) of my starfinder character, who is this guy and whom i adore. if you don’t know the starfinder setting it may not make much sense but basically, the skittermander homeworld was occupied by the vesk, who tried to just plain conquer it but were confused when the skittermanders just sort of started cooperating with them, which is the situation to this day. the starfinder book doesn’t give a ton of details so obviously i have been developing various anti-imperialist headcanons for our particular campaign and this is……part of that.
*
When he gets word that he's been given the position he applied for on the local freighter, his aunts and uncles are terribly proud of him.
"You'll get to travel, finally!" says Anzi. "You've been such a pest about it all these years."
"It's not like it's a cruise ship," Gazigaz points out, but secretly he's been thinking the same thing. It was the main reason he applied, after all.
"Still," Anzi says, "it'll get you out of the Veskarium. Surely they'll let you off the ship sometimes."
"And just think of all the people you'll meet," adds Kotok, with a fond ruffle of his hair. He's excited about that too--the homeworld isn't small, exactly, but there's hardly anybody here but other skittermanders, especially outside the capital cities.
They fuss over him all through dinner, which ends with the expected presentation of little gifts to a young adult about to leave home for good. Not everyone does, after all. He gets a book, an opera, a hand-whittled little statuette of himself as a child, some lightweight collapsible styling tools, and a variety of other things. Each gift makes his upcoming departure feel more real.
It's not until most of the aunts and uncles have left that Anzi gives him her gift. He looks at it quizzically.
"It's...a gun?" He's never held one before, but he's seen them in vids, of course. Usually bigger than this one, which fits nicely in his hands.
Anzi sits down next to him. "It's a very great honor to work for the Veskarium," she says, just like everyone has been saying for the past week. "They've been very good to us, given us opportunities we could never have dreamed of, before. Look at you, you're going out to roam around the galaxy! All on their dime."
He's not entirely sure how this relates to her giving him a gun, but he nods politely.
"We should all be very grateful to the Vesk," Anzi continues, "but we should also be...prepared."
"Prepared for what?"
"Oh, anything. Whatever might happen." She smiles at him. "Work hard, Gazigaz. Do your job well. Earn their respect. But be prepared."
He doesn't understand at all, but it's rude to question an aunt. "I will," he says dutifully.
Later that night, as he finishes packing, he tucks the gun into his suitcase, next to the statuette. He's not entirely sure if he's allowed to bring it onto the freighter, but, well. Can't get in trouble if no one knows about it, right?
Sure enough, when he boards the ship the next day there's not even a second glance given to his bags. He leaves the gun in the pocket of the empty suitcase and stows it in the back of the narrow closet in his cramped quarters, and for a year, he forgets all about it.
*
The Vesk on the freighter are different from the few Vesk who live on the homeworld. (He quickly gets used to calling it "Vesk 3" in conversation, but it never sticks in his thoughts.) The Vesk at home have lived there for years, and though they're a touch surly, he's basically always thought of them as large, arm-deficient skittermanders. That's what they act like, anyway.
Here in their own territory, the Vesk captain and first officer are brusque to the point of what would be rudeness, back home. They bark orders, snarl criticism, and are generally unpleasant grumps. Gazigaz doesn't take it personally, of course, but it is rather fascinating to see how different they are. Just because they were raised somewhere else! What a difference culture makes, he thinks, delighted at this discovery.
And after all, it's not like everyone on the ship is rude to him. There's another pilot--the main pilot; Gazigaz's chief duty is piloting during ship's night, plus odd jobs here and there. The other pilot, Caysha, loves to tell jokes, although it takes Gazigaz a few weeks to be able to distinguish between her jokes and her regular conversation. (Vesk humor is dry.) And the cook positively takes Gazigaz under his wing after the first time Gazigaz comes back from a day's leave in port with pockets full of spices in bottles that he'd gotten a very good deal for.
They become fond of him, as far as he can tell, and he becomes rather fond of them. Even the captain starts to relax and call him by name instead of "the skittermander." Gazigaz decorates his tiny quarters the best he can, collects book after book and photo after photo on his comm unit, writes home once a week, and doesn't think about the gun in his suitcase at all.
*
The fire starts midway through ship's morning, which means Gazigaz is asleep. He wakes to a pounding on his door and Caysha's muffled yelling.
"Get to the escape pods!" she shouts, and keeps pounding until he yells back in the affirmative. He dresses in under a minute but there's no time, of course, to pack. All his savings are on his comm unit, so everything is replaceable, though he flinches at the thought of leaving what can't be replaced--his paper sketchbook, the little statuette from Kotok. But there's no time.
Despite that fact, he remembers the gun. And, well--who knows where he'll end up after this? It could be months before he can catch a ride back home, and they're not in the friendliest sector at the moment. Be prepared, he hears Anzi saying.
He grabs the gun and hightails it for the escape pods. It's not too far from his quarters; when he gets there Caysha is the only other person there. She's scowling--not an angry look, but a frightened one. On a Vesk, they look much the same.
"What's the matter?"
She glances up at him. "Some of the pods are broken. Ortyk was supposed to have them fixed two ports ago, that cheap bastard--"
It means there won't be enough. Vesk ships run lean; Gazigaz has heard that it's only in the last couple decades they even started carrying a full complement of escape pods. "Then we should hurry," he says, and starts for one of the functioning pods.
Caysha grabs his arm, stopping him. "We can't! We have to wait for the captain!"
For what seems like, but possibly isn't, the first time since he arrived, Gazigaz feels angry. No, not anger--contempt. Caysha is brave, and smart, and brilliantly funny. The captain still calls him "skittermander" when he's in a bad mood. Given the choice of which one to save, it's no choice at all. But apparently not for Caysha.
He's no match against her strength, and he can't bring himself to pull the gun on her. So they wait. It's only a minute more before more people arrive--the cook, Shigarh the security officer, one more, two more. No Ortyk, at least; he's on leave, which has worked out very conveniently for him.
The first officer stumbles through the door, clutching her badly burned left arm. And that's it. That's all they have room for.
They stare at each other as this fact sinks in. Then Caysha says, "Sir, we should begin the escape protocol," and the first officer nods sharply, her face a mask of repressed pain. The burns look very bad.
She gets into a pod, runs the quick test sequence. The lights turn blue--all OK--and she seals herself in. Next is Shigarh, and so on down, until it's just him and Caysha left. The captain still hasn't arrived. Caysha turns to him, and he can see that she doesn't like it, her face set in tight miserable lines.
"Goodbye, Gazigaz," she says, and lets him go to step into a pod.
The second her pod seals shut Gazigaz dashes for the last one, and it's at that exact moment that the captain stumbles heavily through the door and snarls, "Don't you dare, skittermander--"
It's fantastically easy to shoot him. It doesn't take him down--the gun's not that big--but Gazigaz aims for his good leg and throws him off balance, and that's enough time to scramble into the pod. He doesn't bother with the test sequence, just slams the button to close the hatch. The last thing he sees is the captain's rage-distorted face bearing down on him, his huge hands reaching out. And then he's sealed in.
There's maybe five seconds between sealing the pod and launch. The captain pounds heavily on the closed hatch, shaking it a little. Then he's gone.
There are no windows, just a screen with his current location. It'll alert him when someone picks up his distress beacon, and certainly someone will. They'll probably want money, but he has money. And, of course, he has a gun.
Be prepared, he thinks. Well. He certainly is now.
*
When he gets word that he's been given the position he applied for on the local freighter, his aunts and uncles are terribly proud of him.
"You'll get to travel, finally!" says Anzi. "You've been such a pest about it all these years."
"It's not like it's a cruise ship," Gazigaz points out, but secretly he's been thinking the same thing. It was the main reason he applied, after all.
"Still," Anzi says, "it'll get you out of the Veskarium. Surely they'll let you off the ship sometimes."
"And just think of all the people you'll meet," adds Kotok, with a fond ruffle of his hair. He's excited about that too--the homeworld isn't small, exactly, but there's hardly anybody here but other skittermanders, especially outside the capital cities.
They fuss over him all through dinner, which ends with the expected presentation of little gifts to a young adult about to leave home for good. Not everyone does, after all. He gets a book, an opera, a hand-whittled little statuette of himself as a child, some lightweight collapsible styling tools, and a variety of other things. Each gift makes his upcoming departure feel more real.
It's not until most of the aunts and uncles have left that Anzi gives him her gift. He looks at it quizzically.
"It's...a gun?" He's never held one before, but he's seen them in vids, of course. Usually bigger than this one, which fits nicely in his hands.
Anzi sits down next to him. "It's a very great honor to work for the Veskarium," she says, just like everyone has been saying for the past week. "They've been very good to us, given us opportunities we could never have dreamed of, before. Look at you, you're going out to roam around the galaxy! All on their dime."
He's not entirely sure how this relates to her giving him a gun, but he nods politely.
"We should all be very grateful to the Vesk," Anzi continues, "but we should also be...prepared."
"Prepared for what?"
"Oh, anything. Whatever might happen." She smiles at him. "Work hard, Gazigaz. Do your job well. Earn their respect. But be prepared."
He doesn't understand at all, but it's rude to question an aunt. "I will," he says dutifully.
Later that night, as he finishes packing, he tucks the gun into his suitcase, next to the statuette. He's not entirely sure if he's allowed to bring it onto the freighter, but, well. Can't get in trouble if no one knows about it, right?
Sure enough, when he boards the ship the next day there's not even a second glance given to his bags. He leaves the gun in the pocket of the empty suitcase and stows it in the back of the narrow closet in his cramped quarters, and for a year, he forgets all about it.
*
The Vesk on the freighter are different from the few Vesk who live on the homeworld. (He quickly gets used to calling it "Vesk 3" in conversation, but it never sticks in his thoughts.) The Vesk at home have lived there for years, and though they're a touch surly, he's basically always thought of them as large, arm-deficient skittermanders. That's what they act like, anyway.
Here in their own territory, the Vesk captain and first officer are brusque to the point of what would be rudeness, back home. They bark orders, snarl criticism, and are generally unpleasant grumps. Gazigaz doesn't take it personally, of course, but it is rather fascinating to see how different they are. Just because they were raised somewhere else! What a difference culture makes, he thinks, delighted at this discovery.
And after all, it's not like everyone on the ship is rude to him. There's another pilot--the main pilot; Gazigaz's chief duty is piloting during ship's night, plus odd jobs here and there. The other pilot, Caysha, loves to tell jokes, although it takes Gazigaz a few weeks to be able to distinguish between her jokes and her regular conversation. (Vesk humor is dry.) And the cook positively takes Gazigaz under his wing after the first time Gazigaz comes back from a day's leave in port with pockets full of spices in bottles that he'd gotten a very good deal for.
They become fond of him, as far as he can tell, and he becomes rather fond of them. Even the captain starts to relax and call him by name instead of "the skittermander." Gazigaz decorates his tiny quarters the best he can, collects book after book and photo after photo on his comm unit, writes home once a week, and doesn't think about the gun in his suitcase at all.
*
The fire starts midway through ship's morning, which means Gazigaz is asleep. He wakes to a pounding on his door and Caysha's muffled yelling.
"Get to the escape pods!" she shouts, and keeps pounding until he yells back in the affirmative. He dresses in under a minute but there's no time, of course, to pack. All his savings are on his comm unit, so everything is replaceable, though he flinches at the thought of leaving what can't be replaced--his paper sketchbook, the little statuette from Kotok. But there's no time.
Despite that fact, he remembers the gun. And, well--who knows where he'll end up after this? It could be months before he can catch a ride back home, and they're not in the friendliest sector at the moment. Be prepared, he hears Anzi saying.
He grabs the gun and hightails it for the escape pods. It's not too far from his quarters; when he gets there Caysha is the only other person there. She's scowling--not an angry look, but a frightened one. On a Vesk, they look much the same.
"What's the matter?"
She glances up at him. "Some of the pods are broken. Ortyk was supposed to have them fixed two ports ago, that cheap bastard--"
It means there won't be enough. Vesk ships run lean; Gazigaz has heard that it's only in the last couple decades they even started carrying a full complement of escape pods. "Then we should hurry," he says, and starts for one of the functioning pods.
Caysha grabs his arm, stopping him. "We can't! We have to wait for the captain!"
For what seems like, but possibly isn't, the first time since he arrived, Gazigaz feels angry. No, not anger--contempt. Caysha is brave, and smart, and brilliantly funny. The captain still calls him "skittermander" when he's in a bad mood. Given the choice of which one to save, it's no choice at all. But apparently not for Caysha.
He's no match against her strength, and he can't bring himself to pull the gun on her. So they wait. It's only a minute more before more people arrive--the cook, Shigarh the security officer, one more, two more. No Ortyk, at least; he's on leave, which has worked out very conveniently for him.
The first officer stumbles through the door, clutching her badly burned left arm. And that's it. That's all they have room for.
They stare at each other as this fact sinks in. Then Caysha says, "Sir, we should begin the escape protocol," and the first officer nods sharply, her face a mask of repressed pain. The burns look very bad.
She gets into a pod, runs the quick test sequence. The lights turn blue--all OK--and she seals herself in. Next is Shigarh, and so on down, until it's just him and Caysha left. The captain still hasn't arrived. Caysha turns to him, and he can see that she doesn't like it, her face set in tight miserable lines.
"Goodbye, Gazigaz," she says, and lets him go to step into a pod.
The second her pod seals shut Gazigaz dashes for the last one, and it's at that exact moment that the captain stumbles heavily through the door and snarls, "Don't you dare, skittermander--"
It's fantastically easy to shoot him. It doesn't take him down--the gun's not that big--but Gazigaz aims for his good leg and throws him off balance, and that's enough time to scramble into the pod. He doesn't bother with the test sequence, just slams the button to close the hatch. The last thing he sees is the captain's rage-distorted face bearing down on him, his huge hands reaching out. And then he's sealed in.
There's maybe five seconds between sealing the pod and launch. The captain pounds heavily on the closed hatch, shaking it a little. Then he's gone.
There are no windows, just a screen with his current location. It'll alert him when someone picks up his distress beacon, and certainly someone will. They'll probably want money, but he has money. And, of course, he has a gun.
Be prepared, he thinks. Well. He certainly is now.
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