Name: A Capivara!
Nature: Follower/Curmudgeon
Allegiance: Adriana
Strength 2; Brawl 2,
Dexterity 3; Athletics 1, Legerdemain 1, Stealth 2,
Stamina 4; Endurance 1, Resistance 1,
Perception 3; Awareness 1,
Intelligence 1; Intrusion 2, Linguistics 1 (Capivara, Portuguese),
Survival 1,
Wits 3;
Appearance 1;
Manipulation 1;
Charisma 1;
Willpower: 3
Psi: 4
Aptitude: Biokinesis
Basic Techniques: Biosense
Modes: None
Auxiliary Modes: Adaptation 1 (Metabolic Efficiency)
Backgrounds: NA
Weapons: tiny harmless claws and a Bite (Dmg 5L)
Armor: Tough Hide (includes Stamina Soak) (4/2)
Other Equipment: stuff, stored in jeep.
'A Capivara'
remembers the one that birthed it. She
was bigger for a while and the others were all smaller, so it would push them
away from the teat until it was full.
Soon she was smaller and would bite at him, so he bit her back until she
left him alone in the burrow. The
smaller ones had all left already by that point as she would bite them or he would
bite them and they would scamper off.
He scavenged nuts
and berries and fallen carcasses, every now and them climbing high into the
trees to get rich eggs or try and get one of the monkeys, but they were always
too fast. One day, while he was scrounging
around, there was a strange sound, a sound like thunder and he snuck forwards
to find a giant dying monkey with a thing having just fallen out of its
hands. It had just picked up the hard
sour-smelling thing when he heard more noise and he fled for the safety of the
treetops in case it was a jaguar. He
fears jaguars! But it was more big
monkeys, making a lot of noise like they weren't afraid of anything. He winced, sure that a jaguar would come if
they kept making noise, but afraid to move and give away his position. The men poked at the other one and it
groaned and they made more noise. They
kicked the fallen one a few times and then raised things that looked exactly
like the thing the fallen man had.
There were more loud claps and the fallen one jumped as if kicked
again. It didn't move again, even
though the standing ones pointed one more time and made the loud noise again.
A Capivara was
very curious, and very scared, the loud noises were very scary and it was
petrified with dread. It pointed the
thing it had picked up at the men and tried to make it do the same thing, but nothing
happened. It took it almost 5 minutes
to figure out the trigger combination and by then the men were crouching
looking for something, so thunder hit the base of a tree instead, causing the
big monkeys to squawk and run for the underbrush, making thundernoises back
behind them and breaking the branch that he was sitting on.
He managed to crawl
away after finding the thunderthing again and went back to rest for a while,
coming back later to find the tall monkey thing gone, but it followed the
direction that the things had come from and found that only a few miles away
from its regular territory was a rich land full of stupid prey it had never
seen before.
Adriana had been
assigned for her introductory mission to a 'Capivara hunt,' which was a game
for children as far as she knew and really an insulting beginning to her career
as a fearsome Norça operative. She gathered
together with a half-dozen gun-wielding farmers to scout the creature out and
managed to find one after two days of exhausting searching. The locals insisted that the creatures were
real, but she hadn't believed them until the cornered rat thing had been
dragged out of its burrow (very dead, it had been shot many times) and she had
laid the 2 foot ratlike creature out and seen it for herself.
Her posse had not
gone unnoticed, and A Capivara was quite surprised to see these tall monkeys
tramping through the jungle like this.
He was even more surprised to see them kill a rival and drag it back out
of the jungle, just as they had the other tall monkey that time. He was apprehensive when they returned the
next day and began scouting around his own burrow, so he left some obvious
droppings and dragged some bits of dead monkey carcass towards another rivals
burrow, leading the hunters and their dogs right to another of the giant
rodents. This one having a mate present
at the time made it somewhat more of a fight and two of the dogs were killed,
one by throating and another by being hit with 'friendly fire' from the trigger
happy farmers.
Over the next two
days convenient trails appeared and Adriana was not fooled, leaving the posse
behind on the 3rd day and travelling alone. She even made a point of losing the obvious trail and was not
surprised to be led back to it by a trail of gnawed fruit rinds. She managed to easily kill the capivara that
she had been led to and turned like lightning to search the area with IR
goggles she had kept hidden until that moment.
She just managed to spot the large rodent and pounced upon it, only to
stop upon seeing the furry thing pull a large handgun in quaking paws and pull
the trigger right in her face.
After months of
being banged about, dropped from trees and dragged through mud and water and
who knows what else, who can blame the gun for misfiring? A Capivara and Adriana were both blown back,
but she recovered just fast enough to pump 20,000 volts into the rodents’ ass with
her Taser Pistol as it scampered up a tree.
She ended up being bowled over trying to catch the thing, as it weighed
a good 20-25 kg!
She then waited
until it awoke, curious herself exactly how smart it was. It awoke suddenly an hour later and rolled
over to find her sitting and eating some fruit. It scurried back into the bushes (barely able to walk erect, it
didn't even try going for the treetops) and watched as she made noises and
tossed it some fruit, reminding it that it had been unable to hunt for the last
3 days, saving all of the food it could find for 'trails.' It ate the fruit and decided to follow her
when she got up and left (not having any idea what any of that weird gesturing
and near-constant noise on her part meant, sounds like, 'hear boy' and such)
it's own curiousity overcoming its’ sense of self-preservation (must have been
all the blows to the head...).
She spent the next
three days hunting other Capivara, with the unbeatable assistance of one who
already knew where they all lived. With
judicious use of her taser pistol, she preserved most of the females alive and
killed the males, dragging the unconscious females back to town, where she had
them boxed and shipped to the nearest Norça research facility, making sure to
make it clear to the local farmers that she was doing this so that the Order
could create tailored toxins or diseases to deal with this problem and showing them
the rather prodigious amount that she had managed to bag once 'unhindered' by
their misguided attempts to help!
Since that time A
Capivara has learned that as long as he tags along, she will keep him safe and
feed him. He hasn't so much as smelt a
jaguar once in the stinking deafening places she tends to frequent and this is
a good thing, too! She has been
teaching him Portuguese, which he is picking up fairly well, having mastered
the phrases;
A Trick! (it's a
trap, he's lying, suspicion, usually accompanied by him scurrying to a safer
vantage point, she has gotten mileage out of convincing yokels that he can
sense a lie and that he has just done so!),
No Pet! (said when
she is trying to dress him up, teach him a trick, make him look or act 'cute'
or otherwise speaking down to him. He usually
then sulks),
Goodfood! (said
while stuffing his face. Seems to mean
'thanks'),
Mine! (hands off,
he bites anyone who takes something he declares 'mine'),
Yes. (usually
sounds sarcastic and impatient, but that has more to do with where he learned
it (from Adriana) than his actual 'personality'),
No. (very
stern. He sometimes stands upright and
wags a finger, too),
What's this? What's this? (sounds like Jack the Pumpkin
King discovering Christmas. Usually
while he is rifling through stuff making a mess, he used to wait for Adriana to
show him every thing, but now he just touches everything, fiddles with it,
tosses it and expects her to remember to tell him what each thing does
later. He sulks if she forgets one),
Come over here...
(said in a childish voice of delight and wonder. He learned this from listening to local children before meeting
Adriana.
Disturbingly, the boy who uttered this phrase vanished in
that region...),
Dr Thiswon'thurt.
(liar. Usually muttered sarcastically,
he seems to have begun using this one after his week with the Norça researchers,
he somewhat cynically says this about almost anyone whom Adriana leaves without
a smile and a bounce in her step, making more (too much in fact) of visual cues
and body language than actual words),
No hike!
(complaint whenever they go up stairs or over 100 yards in a stretch, his
little legs weren't made for long treks),
SCREE! (sound made
whenever explosions occur, large predators appear or startling things
happen. Accompanied by diving for
cover).
He also mutters
repetitions of other things said (parroting), usually over and over until the
task is done and it seems to be a mnemonic aid (like when Adriana gives him a
task), although it sounds like typical sour mutterings ("get this, do
that"), so much so that Adriana has gotten in the habit of asking him to
do something and then saying 'nag, nag, nag' because it is so amusing to see
the meter long ratlike creature ambling about muttering, "Get the disks,
put them in the bag, bring me the bag, nag, nag, nag..."
Meanwhile, the
Norça wonder how he became even marginally sentient, how he developed an
Auxiliary Mode and whether or not he can pass these traits on. At least two of the females captured by
Adriana were his daughters and he has been bred with both of these, their pups
are just weaning now, it remains to be seen if they are smarter than normal or
possess Metabolic Efficiency. Animals
with more advanced modes or other Auxiliary Techniques would no doubt prove
most useful, and even hounds with Biosense would have uses!