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Wrote this for a Lawful Evil Vesk Biohacker. Just started writing and it kinda got away from me. It went over a few pages so I figure it’s be a shame to put that work into it and never actually share it anywhere. So here it is. Sorry it looks just like a block of text, all the formatting and pictures I used didn’t come through so I’ll post a Drive link here. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LXuuvS43OBK5s4mSTUL8M1GPADKE6Uy4O5pRKNH 8wJg
Hope you like it, I’m not a writer so I don’t take offense if you don’t dig it.
Starfinder
Character Bios: Vraaskmoora Hartzbane
The Taken Girl
Introduction
Vraaskmoora spent her early life on a lush Veskarium planet covered with rich vegetation and wildlife, and she was a happy girl. One day while she was playing in the woods she saw a shooting star in the middle of the day and as she closed her eyes to wish upon it a thunderous roar cracked across the landscape as this "star" made contact with her planet. Scared, she ran back towards her village, towards her parents. As she was nearly to her home a tree fell and pushed her down, pinning her tail. She screamed out for her father to help, but nobody came. She doesn't remember how long she laid there before she woke up, but when she did, she found herself in a metal room, in all white scrubs with a device on her neck with some fluid inside.
Origin Story: The Station
A bulkhead creaks and groans as the young girl awakens in a 12x12 smooth metallic room. While she does not currently fill this space, it is clearly built for a day when she will. The girl groans in pain and reaches towards the source, a strange collar on her neck attached to some sort of container. Catching her reflection in the metal that makes up her cell, she can faintly see a blinking light on the collar.
A Voice begins to speak to her from above, as if it came from the heavens, “Pathetic, where are these feral survival instincts bragged about by the Veskarium war chants?”, a different, softer voice chimes in, “Perhaps we grabbed this one too young, or maybe it’s the runt of the litter.”after a pause the first voice comes back in “well, in that case, why don’t we sent IT back via the airlock and pluck another child from another ‘only unprotected Veskarium colony in the sector’”, a scoff is heard, “No, IT will have to work. Even if we must instill those instincts ourselves, we can not let our employer down, for both of our sakes.” The man’s voice chuckles “I'm actually excited about it, let’s have some fun with IT.”
The voices then left as quickly and mysteriously as they appeared, leaving Vraaskmoora alone in her 12x12 cell with no visible walls or windows. She spent her first few hours fiddling with and trying to remove her collar, she kicked and prodded at the wall hoping to find a crack or some other sort of hope. Spent and beaten, Vraaskmoora laid down for her first sleep in this horrible horrible place.
Metallic clicks and a sliding sound resounded around the room, waking Vraaskmoora from her inadequate sleep, she groaned and stood as a whooshing sound got closer and closer. Confused and scared, Vraaskmoora stood just as gallons upon gallons of water began rushing in from holes high on the wall. The rushing waters caused a vortex, pulling her towards the center, Vraaskmoora’s inability to swim and thus fear of drowning kicked her adrenaline into high gear, and while fighting the current to reach the wall her she heard a long slow *sshhhhccclllliiiink* the sound of her claws extending for the first time “Just as mother promised they would.” she thought to herself. Vraaskmoora reached out and caught a grate with her claw, and she held on as long as she could, but the water kept coming and coming, and eventually it was too much for her to endure, she slipped, falling back and getting pulled into the vortex she panicked, inhaled water, and her vision turned to darkness.
She woke up weak, and shaking. In the corner of her blurred vision she catches the last of the remaining water slither down the drain, and then the floor itself moved to cover the hole. As she tried to stand and regain her constitution a voice came over the speaker. “Hello?, can you hear me?, My name is Doctor Orolokoyo. You are here because we, Doctor Hardigree and myself, need to learn from you. You see, your species is still fairly new to this sector of space, and we’re having a hard time understanding Vesk biology. That first test was to see if your species shares traits with other reptilian species we have information on. Dr Hardigree and I are on a very tight schedule, so please excuse any uncomfortability or side effects that may occur due to our haste.
“Good morning my sweet little girl” a young Vraaskmoora stretches her arms and legs and makes her way to the kitchen, she can already smell that mother has made breakfast, and her favorite at that, Skittersausage! She excitedly runs into the room to greet her mother who is standing in the corner. The pan is still sizzling and the sausage is beginning to burn. “Mom? Mom!? The food is burning! MOM!?”, she zips up to her mother and spins her around only to see a faceless visage screaming muffled by the lack of a mouth. In horror Vraaskmoora is suddenly awakened. The room that only moments ago felt like home melted into the shining 12x12 metal tomb that has become her home.
What felt like an eternity to Vraaskmoora was in reality only a few years. A string of pained cries and screams are projected out, but never responded to. Countless times she has felt herself pass only to be rubber banded back to her corporeal, pain-filled state by the container of fluid being injected into her neck. She did not die every day, but she might as well have.
“Hello Moora, can I call you that? I feel like it would be a cute nickname for you. Moora, so much less abrasive than that barbarous name your brood gave you.” She sighs. ” I can only hope you will come to understand why we are putting you through all of these tests. Our work here is so very important, but I know you’re lonely in there so I’ve put in a request for you to have a friend brought in!” Vraaskmoora isn't listening, while she has picked up most of the words her captures use on her she has lost all interest in translating, they hardly say anyhing helpful anyways… just made up excuses for more torture. She groans as she stands, finds a corner of the room, places her back to it and slides down to the floor. She grabs her knees and begins to hum a song her mother used to sing, Vraaskmoora never learned the words, but it brings her comfort. “This next test is to evaluate your enduran…..” Moora drowns out the voice with her humming as the room grows colder and colder.
Vraaskmoora is awake, but she can’t move. She is cold she thinks, but can't be sure, almost all feeling is gone. She feels a piercing pain as the room is set to defrost, every cell in her body screaming from the cold. The doctors must have assumed she would take longer to recover, because for the first time since she arrived she catches a glimpse of panel sliding away, allowing a small medical drone into the room to take samples and register her life signs, seeing an opportunity Vraaskmoora beings trying to loosen up without being seen. While the drone takes a blood sample from Vraaskmoora’s side she quickly grabs some sort of medical instrument that was sitting on a tray the medical droid had with it.
Over the next few months Vraaskmoora would experiment with the device, eventually learning it was perfect for mixing chemicals and identifying the content of various liquids, also colors, it made really pretty colors. She would continue to steal items off of the medical droid especially those especially vibrant bottles of liquids. She would never know what the effects of any of these concoctions were though, since she was her only test subject and didn’t want to hinder any chances of escape because of a bad potion.
“Get up you filthy beast!” Vraaskmoora stands sheepishly trying to avoid any unnecessary punishments, “Your dearest friend Doctor Orolokoyo thought that your performance would improve if you had one of your peers amongst you, I agreed, and put in a request for your exact equal.” The drawer in the room slides open with a hiss. “Introducing Heloderma Venena Pestis, Also known as the Akitonian Grave Ghila. It is a pest, an invasive species, its only purpose is to irritate and destroy. Sound familiar?” Vraaskmoora moves to pick up the grey, green and brown lizard “hm? It does kinda look like me” she thought to herself as she reached to pick up the creature. “Hmph, I guess I should warn you, the Grave Ghila’s venom is capable of killing a full grown orc in minutes, so I guess it's best you don't irritate it, quite a painful death too… anyways, good luck with that.”
The warning she was given was real, she got that, but there was something about this lizard, looking up at her with deep black eyes that touched her heart. The fact that he was poisonous did nothing to stop Vraaskmoora and the lizard, now named Henry, from becoming fast friends. This was the only friend she had ever known, or could remember at least. She cradled the small creature each night as they went to sleep, and no matter how harsh of treatment Vraaskmoora got, she always made sure that she protected Henry above all else.
It didn't take long for Vraaskmoora to start running Henry's Venom through the chemilyzer, hoping for some kind of chemical miracle to show her the way out of here. She worked tirelessly for weeks trying to concoct some sort of acid from the venom that she could use on metals. When she thought she had everything planned out, she pretended to be sedated as usual while the medical droid entered the room. When the droid got close enough to her to take the sample she jumped up, doused the concoction onto the medical droids operating arm, then tossed the droid into the wall, she ran towards the small hole in the wall that the droid came through to escape, and as she starts squeezing into the 3 foot hole she is stricken with hopelessness as she realizes, like her, the droid was confined to its own room, 3x3 with no passage to the rest of the complex. She pushes her torso back out of the small hole and gathers in a melancholy pile on the ground, Henry walks over to join her as gas begins to fill the room and she loses consciousness.
Henry has fallen ill, vraaskmoora had noticed him moving slower than usual lately, but it wasn't until his dark black eyes began to gloss over with a milky white that she truly took attention. She tried desperately to get the doctors to tend to him but they would never hear her she thought, “even if they did they wouldn’t understand me”. Henry’s once beautiful scales began to dim, leaving scabs and festering wounds, and so she prayed. She prayed and prayed and held out hope as long as she could, until… she couldn’t. Henry was so sick that he couldn’t be bothered to open his eyes anymore, Moora was so distraught she could not eat.
On the night she finally lost hope, she had a dream. She dreamt of a man, unlike any she had seen before. White, sharp facial features with beautiful black strands flowing from his head, as delicate as any thread she has seen before. Each following night when she prayed the face appeared to her, and each night the beautiful visage became more and more twisted.
On one particular night as the decaying face appeared before her, it rambled in excited madness until she finally started hearing patterns and putting together words, as she began to understand the words spoken to her the face starting decaying more and more rapidly until only a skull was left until the night she understood every word. On that night the skull started growing red pulsing chains from its eyes, growing and slithering like a curious serpent, aligning themselves with her eyes before plunging in causing her to scream out in agony, “Pain, suffering, loss, and sickness are life, and life is nothing without them. One can NOT be without the other, YOU can NOT be without the other.”
The morning after the vision she awoke with a new face, her resolve had grown exponentially overnight. She now had an idea of what she had to do, the only thing she felt she had the power to do, die. She looked over to the lizard that had become her friend over her internment, the joy she once felt while holding him long ago gave way to the sorrow of watching him slowly suffer, so she ended it. With a quick snap, Vraaskmoora broke Henry’s neck, she pauses, and a tear almost falls down her cheek, she steadies herself, takes out her chemilyzer and wrings henry’s venom glands into the vial. She extracts some of the white fluid out of the container on her neck and for a moment, consider using the liquid to save Henry, she didn’t. Vraaskmoora mixed the venom from Henry with the fluid on her neck and synthesized a beautiful violet liquid that she wasted no time injecting into the container on her neck. Having completed the first step, now for step two, she pressed her finger up against her windpipe and extended her claws.
Vraaskmoora woke up in a searing, agaonizing pain, lashing out all around her she barely noticed that she was tearing a medical droid apart piece by piece. “I shouldn’t be here, I’m suppossed to be with mom, I’m suppossed to be with dad, has the voice forsaken me??” The wall in front of her slides open and a bipedal creature she's never seen before with a medical shielding on enters the room, “Stupid lizard brain, can’t even die right can you? Our shipment of sedative gas is on backorder, so it looks like I finally get to use this big boy.” He is holding a 2 handed weapon with a clasping end covered in needles, she watches him load some type of fluid into the base of the weapon. “Time for night night little Moora.” he says with a wicked grin. Vraaskmorra stands still waiting for him to lunge, she had never attacked them before, so when she sidestepped the attack and grabbed Dr Hardigree’s arm he was completely caught off-guard. “What the? Get your disgusting claws off of m--- Ah, AHHHHH! AHH F+~$, WHAT THE F!$$ IS THAT?!” he wails as a green bubbling pool spreads across his arm as he screams and drops the weapon he was holding. “Away from me you filthy beast! Away!” he swats at her while trying to stop the burning. His screams only fueling her adrenaline she steps forward and pick him up by the neck, he tries to kick and fight her off, but her grip combined with the toxic substance leaking into his body from her hand was too much, and he collapsed to the floor in a gurgle. She wastes no time in proceeding out of the door and into the hallway.
Moving quickly through the long metallic hallways Moora hardly notices the insistent, constant whispering in the back of her mind, telling her all life exists to end and that pain is as valid as life to any being. She must have passed maybe 20 other cells, but she didn’t stop, she took not one second to even see if they were occupied, she couldn’t waste this opportunity to end it, finally. “Kill them all, end it all, and peace will be mine” she begins mumbling over and over has her pace quickened towards the bridge.
The bridge doors automatically swung open and revealed one solitary inhabitant, a four-armed female creature, a different color than the man she killed just moments ago. Moora approached the woman from behind, towering over her. The woman giggles, Oh Jim, you should know better than to sneak up on a gi--oh no, oh god, I am so so- I mean, Moora I-” The woman is silenced by Vraaskmooras hand clasping around her throat just long enough for the venom to take effect before throwing her into a nearby console. She lands with a thud and a whine.
As the doctor tries to pick through her supplies to stop the venom from spreading Vraaskmoora scans the main console for any words she can recognize, eventually she finds what she thinks she wants, a red switch next to a lense with the word “DANGER” next to it surrounded by a much larger series of words she doesn’t know, but she doesn’t need to, she throws the switch, closes her eyes and prepares for the end.
“Additional authorization required, please submit eye for retinal scan”, frustrated, Vraaskmorra reopens her eyes and lowers her head to the scanner, “Retinal pattern not recognized, please provide an registered retinal pattern to authorize”, Vraaskmoora lets out mighty and thunderous roar, before turning to the doctor, eyes lowered. “Please Moora, No, I’ll help you just D-AGHHHH” The doctors screams as Vraaskmoora pierces the doctors eye with her claws and tears it out. She places the eye up to the scanner.
“Identity confirmed, Thank you Doctor Orolokoyo, station 004 will begin descent immediately.” While not as instant of a death as she would have liked it would have to do. She sat next to the doctor using her new weapon to steady herself as she sat to await her fate. “Please” the doctor croaked and pointed to a blue switch, “the windows, I’d like to die with a view.” Sensing no ill will, she flips the switch.
Veiwscreens and metal shielding peel away to reveal the most beautiful thing Vraaskmoora had ever seen. A vast expanse of black covered in a blanket of pulsing white light, and then in the center and growing ever closer, a massive sphere covered in beautiful hues of blue, green, and brown speckled with beautiful rolling clouds. She was filled with such awe that she almost felt like that girl again, almost. That girl was gone though, she had died the same day she saw that shooting star, and what replaced it was something twisted, bent, and broken.
Vraaskmoora lost consciousness at some point during descent and dreamed. She dreamed it was one of the first nights at the facility, how she clawed at the wall to escape the water, only to fall and drown, just to be brought back again, over and over. That time had come and passed, and the end had come. Or had it?
Vraaskmoora awoke to the sound of waves crashing against a beach. She opened her eyes and looked around, “Water? Sand? TREES?! Am I home??” With no more hesitation she grabbed the weapon she had stolen from the cruel doctor, used it to stand, and journeyed out into the wilderness, a second chance to start anew.
The now newly adult vesk found refuge with a group of xenobiologists on Castrovel who noticed her interest and accelerated success within the field and paid for her education provided she work for the University afterwards. This arrangement has worked out great for Vraaskmoora as she was given a room large enough to conduct all of her work and live in relative peace. Moderate fear of socializing has left her largely unknown to her fellow researchers.
Unfortunately for Vraaskmoora... she got a promotion and will now be in charge of the entire Xenobiology department aboard her ship... she's gonna need to learn to socialize, and quickly.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eExk0n25W8Sr6JQG2E5_JQl5k5R1tfd7zFr4UEf cNlU/edit?usp=sharing