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horkbajirPlayer Information
Name: Joysweeper
Age: 29
Contact: joysweeper at plurk
Other Characters: n/a
Character Information
Name: Toby Hamee
Canon: Animorphs
Canon Point: Shortly before book 34, before the last Arn arrives.
Age: About a year and a half old, but her species has short childhoods and short lifespans and she's a special case even among them.
History: In the nebulous past, aliens called the Arn designed skyscraper-trees to keep their homeworld habitable, and caretakers to live in these trees and keep them healthy. These caretakers were Hork-Bajir, and they were engineered to be fairly dim by human standards. Still, a rare few were born 'different' and called Seers, capable of much greater insight and innovation.
Alien Andalites came to study the planet and were soon followed and killed by another alien race, the Yeerks. The Yeerks looked at the Hork-Bajir and saw shock troops, so they began to conquer and infest them - to creep into their brains and control their bodies. Under the direction of the seer Dak Hamee, helped by the stranded Andalite Aldrea, the Hork-Bajir resisted in a losing battle. Other Andalites came and worked with the Arn to create a virus that would kill the Hork-Bajir, denying their bodies to the Yeerks. Aldrea rejected her people and became a Hork-Bajir herself, but could not prevent the release of the virus. Before they died Dak and Aldrea had a son, Seerow, who was taken by Yeerk forces.
The only Hork-Bajir who survived were those salvaged by the Yeerks, and their children born into captivity. Over twenty years later the Yeerks came to Earth to put humanity through a slow 'soft' invasion. Seerow's child Jara Hamee escaped into a hidden valley with his wife Ket Halpak and the help of the human resistance, particularly the Animorph Tobias. They named Toby, the first free child in generations, after him. Like her great-grandfather, Toby was a Seer. She was visited from time to time by Tobias, who taught her about the world.
Jara, Ket, and a growing core of others conducted raids on Yeerk facilities, abducting their people and starving the Yeerks out of them, growing their colony. Toby paid attention and started making suggestions, modifying their plans and coming up with plans of her own before she was large and old enough to participate in raids herself. Believing that the Yeerks would lose in the end, she thought ahead to how Hork-Bajir would be regarded by humanity and realized how wrong things could go, and started to encourage her people to be more daring. A small child wandered out of the valley and was captured, and Toby called on the Animorphs to help. When they went to spring a trap she waited with some warriors and went in with them as the battle turned sour, salvaging the situation and saving Tobias.
Toby organized ways to spy on the Yeerks, formulated new tactics, helped develop ways to use spears and pit traps, and grew bigger and stronger. When the last of the Arn stopped by the colony requesting DNA samples so he could grow new Hork-Bajir on the homeworld, Toby asked the Animorphs for advice. The Arn called on a kind of shade of Aldrea, which possessed one of the Animorphs. Toby traveled with them to the homeworld and saw it for herself. She felt it was her duty to stay and help raise and lead the new Hork-Bajir, but Aldrea's shade wanted her to live with her family and have some chance of a life that wasn't all war, and before fading saw to it that Toby would return to Earth.
As she got older Toby took more and more responsibility and leadership in the colony. She rarely called on the Animorphs for anything. During the last months of the war, as things began to intensify she allowed the Animorphs' families, and then the Animorphs themselves, to take refuge among her people. When the Yeerks found the valley she insisted on fighting because there were too many to slip cleanly away, and retreated only after driving off the first force. She was part of the council of war that strategized and made plans, and went on joint missions. In the endgame she led sixty Hork-Bajir warriors to blend with Yeerk forces and seize a ship from the inside and force the enemy to surrender and talk terms. In the process her father was killed.
In the years after the war the freed Hork-Bajir, now numbering in the hundreds, were allowed to live in Yellowstone National Park. Toby became Governor Hamee, the liason between her people and all aliens, and was a nonvoting observer-member in the House of Representatives. She still saw Tobias now and again, and helped deliver the message that had him leave Earth.
Personality: Hork-Bajir were designed to be unintelligent by human standards - they have good memories and storytelling acumen, they're emotionally intelligent, they're very good with plants, but their language, reasoning, and innovation abilities are meant to top out at a low enough level that human characters often compare them to small children. As one of the rare Seers, Toby has all her peoples' strengths but has also known since a very early age that she was different and would have to be their leader in these difficult times. And that the time would come where she would have to be their liason with humans and other aliens.
Consequently she's dutiful to a fault. If duty means leaving her family for the forseeable future to fight a side front in the war, she's willing to do it. Toby is levelheaded and responsible, with a great reserve of patience and calm. She's more inclined to holding back and listening than to speaking until she's formulated her thoughts, and in conversation is careful and thoughtful, usually coming off as reserved. Toby is always trying to understand allies and enemies and how they think, and always looking ahead to consider the future and the big picture. She tends to ignore silliness.
She has only ever known the war and people consumed by it. Every time a Yeerk is killed in combat, its slave is killed with it, and even the allies of the Hork-Bajir don't think much about the innocents they slaughter regularly. Just one free Hork-Bajir being reinfested with a Yeerk would give away everything. They consider being under Yeerk control as worse than death. Consequently she's very hard and pragmatic about sacrifices and coallateral damage. People, even people she loves, are expendable. If a mission to rescue someone, even a child, goes sour she believes it can be necessary to kill the child. That keeps them from infestation, keeps the rest of her people safe, and sends the message that the enemy can't use hostages against her people. Socially she'll often deflect or shrug instead of arguing unless the topic is really important to her, but she also doesn't like to sugar-coat a situation.
Toby's aware that the Andalites tried to commit genocide on her people and can't be trusted, that her human allies see her people as stupid, that humanity as a whole is dangerous. If pushed she decides if it's something to shrug off or push back on, and she usually hides resentment when she feels it - but that doesn't mean it's not there. She believes in self-determination, in taking freedom rather than asking for it or hoping allies will provide it. Toby understands how important the appearance of strength is to morale.
Even with that cynicism there's a degree of naivete to Toby - smart as she is, her experiences are just limited by her age and circumstances. She's only had so much contact with people who are intellectually on her level and may be taken aback, though she's a quick study. In very dark circumstances she maintains hope for the future, insisting that humans and Hork-Bajir do share things in common and humans can come to understand that. Toby can lose her usual composure and laugh for joy while swinging and running through big trees. She enjoys listening to stories, learning new things, connecting with family, and discovery.
There is kindness to her, too. Mostly this is something she shows her family and her people, comforting and commending them after upsetting things happen, explaining things with great patience. Her people are the most important thing, and she works to shore up their strength. But it's not that she doesn't care about anyone else. She and her people had to do a lot to help keep the Animorphs alive as refugees, and Toby encouraged some mingling. In the aftermath of the last major battle, the leader of the Animorphs was shaken by losing family members, and Toby both empathized and needed him to focus on new developments. She's also loyal and has great respect for people who've helped her and her people.
Abilities & Skills:
As a Hork-Bajir Toby was designed to help maintain huge trees. She can climb like a squirrel, brachiate like an orangutan, make huge leaps, and hang from her feet or tail like a spider monkey. Her grasp is strong and helped with sturdy claws. Curved blades on her forehead, wrists, elbows, knees, ankles, and tail can help anchor her or carve away bark and twigs. Or cleave flesh and bone. She's six feet tall and growing, in a year or so will hit her adult height of seven feet, and she's fast and stronger than a human either size would be. Her pain tolerance is high, she's sturdy, and she heals rapidly.
Hork-Bajir healing may need nerfing. It's supposed to be biological, the product of genetic engineering, but a six-inch-deep cut or gash that's held shut scabs over within a minute and becomes a scar within a day, and that may be too much. A wolf going for her throat could still kill her.
The downsides are that she's too dense to float or learn to swim, she's a bit clumsy on the ground, her hands aren't as nimble as a human's, and her lifespan isn't much over thirty years.
In one book she has poorly defined powers of insight that let her know plot-convenient things, but normally she's just smart.
Inventory/Companions:
n/a
Choice: Witch
Reason: Toby's already a monster (alien) girl so just on an aesthetics level she's already set! More seriously, Toby runs support in canon a lot and does a lot of taking care of people. Her people already see her as having strange powers, and she likes to learn. She's at a canon point where her people aren't totally dependent on her yet, but she'd still be more at ease if she felt she was becoming stronger and more versatile.
Sample:
Thread with Steven Universe
Thread with Lyr Tuttle
Name: Joysweeper
Age: 29
Contact: joysweeper at plurk
Other Characters: n/a
Character Information
Name: Toby Hamee
Canon: Animorphs
Canon Point: Shortly before book 34, before the last Arn arrives.
Age: About a year and a half old, but her species has short childhoods and short lifespans and she's a special case even among them.
History: In the nebulous past, aliens called the Arn designed skyscraper-trees to keep their homeworld habitable, and caretakers to live in these trees and keep them healthy. These caretakers were Hork-Bajir, and they were engineered to be fairly dim by human standards. Still, a rare few were born 'different' and called Seers, capable of much greater insight and innovation.
Alien Andalites came to study the planet and were soon followed and killed by another alien race, the Yeerks. The Yeerks looked at the Hork-Bajir and saw shock troops, so they began to conquer and infest them - to creep into their brains and control their bodies. Under the direction of the seer Dak Hamee, helped by the stranded Andalite Aldrea, the Hork-Bajir resisted in a losing battle. Other Andalites came and worked with the Arn to create a virus that would kill the Hork-Bajir, denying their bodies to the Yeerks. Aldrea rejected her people and became a Hork-Bajir herself, but could not prevent the release of the virus. Before they died Dak and Aldrea had a son, Seerow, who was taken by Yeerk forces.
The only Hork-Bajir who survived were those salvaged by the Yeerks, and their children born into captivity. Over twenty years later the Yeerks came to Earth to put humanity through a slow 'soft' invasion. Seerow's child Jara Hamee escaped into a hidden valley with his wife Ket Halpak and the help of the human resistance, particularly the Animorph Tobias. They named Toby, the first free child in generations, after him. Like her great-grandfather, Toby was a Seer. She was visited from time to time by Tobias, who taught her about the world.
Jara, Ket, and a growing core of others conducted raids on Yeerk facilities, abducting their people and starving the Yeerks out of them, growing their colony. Toby paid attention and started making suggestions, modifying their plans and coming up with plans of her own before she was large and old enough to participate in raids herself. Believing that the Yeerks would lose in the end, she thought ahead to how Hork-Bajir would be regarded by humanity and realized how wrong things could go, and started to encourage her people to be more daring. A small child wandered out of the valley and was captured, and Toby called on the Animorphs to help. When they went to spring a trap she waited with some warriors and went in with them as the battle turned sour, salvaging the situation and saving Tobias.
Toby organized ways to spy on the Yeerks, formulated new tactics, helped develop ways to use spears and pit traps, and grew bigger and stronger. When the last of the Arn stopped by the colony requesting DNA samples so he could grow new Hork-Bajir on the homeworld, Toby asked the Animorphs for advice. The Arn called on a kind of shade of Aldrea, which possessed one of the Animorphs. Toby traveled with them to the homeworld and saw it for herself. She felt it was her duty to stay and help raise and lead the new Hork-Bajir, but Aldrea's shade wanted her to live with her family and have some chance of a life that wasn't all war, and before fading saw to it that Toby would return to Earth.
As she got older Toby took more and more responsibility and leadership in the colony. She rarely called on the Animorphs for anything. During the last months of the war, as things began to intensify she allowed the Animorphs' families, and then the Animorphs themselves, to take refuge among her people. When the Yeerks found the valley she insisted on fighting because there were too many to slip cleanly away, and retreated only after driving off the first force. She was part of the council of war that strategized and made plans, and went on joint missions. In the endgame she led sixty Hork-Bajir warriors to blend with Yeerk forces and seize a ship from the inside and force the enemy to surrender and talk terms. In the process her father was killed.
In the years after the war the freed Hork-Bajir, now numbering in the hundreds, were allowed to live in Yellowstone National Park. Toby became Governor Hamee, the liason between her people and all aliens, and was a nonvoting observer-member in the House of Representatives. She still saw Tobias now and again, and helped deliver the message that had him leave Earth.
Personality: Hork-Bajir were designed to be unintelligent by human standards - they have good memories and storytelling acumen, they're emotionally intelligent, they're very good with plants, but their language, reasoning, and innovation abilities are meant to top out at a low enough level that human characters often compare them to small children. As one of the rare Seers, Toby has all her peoples' strengths but has also known since a very early age that she was different and would have to be their leader in these difficult times. And that the time would come where she would have to be their liason with humans and other aliens.
Consequently she's dutiful to a fault. If duty means leaving her family for the forseeable future to fight a side front in the war, she's willing to do it. Toby is levelheaded and responsible, with a great reserve of patience and calm. She's more inclined to holding back and listening than to speaking until she's formulated her thoughts, and in conversation is careful and thoughtful, usually coming off as reserved. Toby is always trying to understand allies and enemies and how they think, and always looking ahead to consider the future and the big picture. She tends to ignore silliness.
She has only ever known the war and people consumed by it. Every time a Yeerk is killed in combat, its slave is killed with it, and even the allies of the Hork-Bajir don't think much about the innocents they slaughter regularly. Just one free Hork-Bajir being reinfested with a Yeerk would give away everything. They consider being under Yeerk control as worse than death. Consequently she's very hard and pragmatic about sacrifices and coallateral damage. People, even people she loves, are expendable. If a mission to rescue someone, even a child, goes sour she believes it can be necessary to kill the child. That keeps them from infestation, keeps the rest of her people safe, and sends the message that the enemy can't use hostages against her people. Socially she'll often deflect or shrug instead of arguing unless the topic is really important to her, but she also doesn't like to sugar-coat a situation.
Toby's aware that the Andalites tried to commit genocide on her people and can't be trusted, that her human allies see her people as stupid, that humanity as a whole is dangerous. If pushed she decides if it's something to shrug off or push back on, and she usually hides resentment when she feels it - but that doesn't mean it's not there. She believes in self-determination, in taking freedom rather than asking for it or hoping allies will provide it. Toby understands how important the appearance of strength is to morale.
Even with that cynicism there's a degree of naivete to Toby - smart as she is, her experiences are just limited by her age and circumstances. She's only had so much contact with people who are intellectually on her level and may be taken aback, though she's a quick study. In very dark circumstances she maintains hope for the future, insisting that humans and Hork-Bajir do share things in common and humans can come to understand that. Toby can lose her usual composure and laugh for joy while swinging and running through big trees. She enjoys listening to stories, learning new things, connecting with family, and discovery.
There is kindness to her, too. Mostly this is something she shows her family and her people, comforting and commending them after upsetting things happen, explaining things with great patience. Her people are the most important thing, and she works to shore up their strength. But it's not that she doesn't care about anyone else. She and her people had to do a lot to help keep the Animorphs alive as refugees, and Toby encouraged some mingling. In the aftermath of the last major battle, the leader of the Animorphs was shaken by losing family members, and Toby both empathized and needed him to focus on new developments. She's also loyal and has great respect for people who've helped her and her people.
Abilities & Skills:
As a Hork-Bajir Toby was designed to help maintain huge trees. She can climb like a squirrel, brachiate like an orangutan, make huge leaps, and hang from her feet or tail like a spider monkey. Her grasp is strong and helped with sturdy claws. Curved blades on her forehead, wrists, elbows, knees, ankles, and tail can help anchor her or carve away bark and twigs. Or cleave flesh and bone. She's six feet tall and growing, in a year or so will hit her adult height of seven feet, and she's fast and stronger than a human either size would be. Her pain tolerance is high, she's sturdy, and she heals rapidly.
Hork-Bajir healing may need nerfing. It's supposed to be biological, the product of genetic engineering, but a six-inch-deep cut or gash that's held shut scabs over within a minute and becomes a scar within a day, and that may be too much. A wolf going for her throat could still kill her.
The downsides are that she's too dense to float or learn to swim, she's a bit clumsy on the ground, her hands aren't as nimble as a human's, and her lifespan isn't much over thirty years.
In one book she has poorly defined powers of insight that let her know plot-convenient things, but normally she's just smart.
Inventory/Companions:
n/a
Choice: Witch
Reason: Toby's already a monster (alien) girl so just on an aesthetics level she's already set! More seriously, Toby runs support in canon a lot and does a lot of taking care of people. Her people already see her as having strange powers, and she likes to learn. She's at a canon point where her people aren't totally dependent on her yet, but she'd still be more at ease if she felt she was becoming stronger and more versatile.
Sample:
Thread with Steven Universe
Thread with Lyr Tuttle
