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-(+he Engineer)
Mar. 11th, 2012 04:38 pmThe Engineer – or, later, the E×ecuted – was the ancestor of Red Dead Virgo’s Equius Zahhak.
His plight was initially similar to his descendant’s; having no psychic ability and zero out of four quadrants filled (as it would stay for practically his entire life – genetic contribution had been an ‘accident’), when the culling drones came around, the Engineer was basically screwed. However, this is where he took his name from; since apiculture networking wasn’t a thing in those days, most yellowbloods were expected to go into mechanics or factory work or some other industrial job. The Engineer took the first option, and quickly found that he took well to it, holding natural talent despite a lack of money and tutorage by other shady trolls, all living in settlements that were developmentally equivalent to the dark side of the Industrial Revolution. Eventually, as a young adult troll, he did get himself a job working for a blueblood named the Inventor.
The Engineer got his formal title at this time, and spent the next several sweeps working for her, designing and building war machines for the Imperial fleet. He soon realized that with the giant supplies he was using, his natural STRENGTH was insufficient, so he developed a mechanical frame that would wrap around basically his entire body, adding extra power so that he could properly handle the giant heaps of metal. No one was ever informed of this, even his owner, and frankly they didn’t care enough to inspect how such a scrawny-looking troll could be so physically powerful; he was a yellowblood, after all, he probably got in street fights when he was younger or something.
Unfortunately, for all of his skill, he was still just a lowly pissblood with far better living conditions than he reasonably should have. His fortune was not to last; an unpleasant incident which shall not be elaborated on left him paralyzed from the neck down, and now that he had lost all use of his arms (and legs as well, to boot), it was only sensible that he be culled. Predictably, at the insistence of his owner, the Engineer was placed on culling row almost immediately; he was given forty-eight hours of hive arrest before the execution was to take place. Because really, where would he possibly go?
At this point, if one was to look through the Alternian royal archives, they would not find any troll from that time period given a title of Engineer (or perhaps, if they did, it would be some brownblood with a silly symbol shaped like a thunderbolt); instead, as a yellowblood with the sign of the bow-and-arrow, they would find him listed as the E×ecuted. Because as far as the archives can be concerned, his forty-eight hours passed calmly and he was killed.
That… wasn’t what happened.
The metal frame, which previously had been supplemental, now had to be redesigned so that it actually moved his body in accordance with signals sent from his brain; he had forty-eight hours to do it. By some miracle, the E×ecuted actually did reconnect himself enough to reformat the suit, but afterwards he had only enough time to perform a very crude and unremovable brain-signal procedure. Two metal spokes were fixed (painfully) into his head – the backs near the nape of his neck, the fronts pointing out of his forehead like a second pair of horns – and were connected to the mainframe on his chest, which would then distribute the brain signals to the appropriate part of the frame. To be certain, it was a hack job and would never be as efficient as a truly working brain and spine, but it was the best he could do if he didn’t want to get himself killed at the hands of his highblood superior.
(And frankly, even by beginning this little project he had already disobeyed the laws of the Empire, so in the E×ecuted’s opinion his highblood superior could go and suck it.)
After getting his ass out of that hive and never going back in, the E×ecuted took smaller jobs until he was able to scavenge enough money to do a small laundry list of things. One: fix up the metal frame, and perform more maintenance on it so that it wasn’t quite so shitty. He could now run away from rowdy trolls fast enough to actually escape, and avoid the complete destruction of the frame. Two: invest in an outfit that would effectively hide his shortcomings – a helmet and bodysuit that made his metal spokes look like part of the design, with a ridiculously dark visor that would hide his eyes enough so that others wouldn’t realize his utter lack of psionics. (It later cracked.) His symbol was affixed on the chestpiece of the metal frame and nowhere else (meaning it was obscured completely by the suit), he cracked both of his own horns off (they’re now jagged stubs – does this remind you of anyone?), and finally, he invested in a traveling cloak that managed to conceal whatever bumps and awkward shapes were left from the metal exoskeleton.
No one wanted to be the troll to tell the Empire that they had somehow let a gutterblood with full-body paralysis escape from their clutches, for obvious reasons. So instead of opening that whole can of worms, his owner simply stated that he had been executed as scheduled, and his body was incinerated like most other victims of private cullings. They had bribed an executor to go along with this story as the one who had been hired to cull him, and in general, the alibi was clean as a whistle. …Or, it was clean enough for the Empire, at least, because even they didn’t give much of a shit about some crippled yellowblooded engineer. As a result, except for those who met him and left their personal records, there is no troll alive who knows that the Engineer didn’t die when he was supposed to.
Had Equius ever found his ancestor’s possession, it would have been the sign-marked chestplate and arm structure of the E×ecuted’s skeleton; the rest was disconnected somehow, and is probably crushed to smithereens. But of course, he would not know why the hell the Engineer had even made it.
His plight was initially similar to his descendant’s; having no psychic ability and zero out of four quadrants filled (as it would stay for practically his entire life – genetic contribution had been an ‘accident’), when the culling drones came around, the Engineer was basically screwed. However, this is where he took his name from; since apiculture networking wasn’t a thing in those days, most yellowbloods were expected to go into mechanics or factory work or some other industrial job. The Engineer took the first option, and quickly found that he took well to it, holding natural talent despite a lack of money and tutorage by other shady trolls, all living in settlements that were developmentally equivalent to the dark side of the Industrial Revolution. Eventually, as a young adult troll, he did get himself a job working for a blueblood named the Inventor.
The Engineer got his formal title at this time, and spent the next several sweeps working for her, designing and building war machines for the Imperial fleet. He soon realized that with the giant supplies he was using, his natural STRENGTH was insufficient, so he developed a mechanical frame that would wrap around basically his entire body, adding extra power so that he could properly handle the giant heaps of metal. No one was ever informed of this, even his owner, and frankly they didn’t care enough to inspect how such a scrawny-looking troll could be so physically powerful; he was a yellowblood, after all, he probably got in street fights when he was younger or something.
Unfortunately, for all of his skill, he was still just a lowly pissblood with far better living conditions than he reasonably should have. His fortune was not to last; an unpleasant incident which shall not be elaborated on left him paralyzed from the neck down, and now that he had lost all use of his arms (and legs as well, to boot), it was only sensible that he be culled. Predictably, at the insistence of his owner, the Engineer was placed on culling row almost immediately; he was given forty-eight hours of hive arrest before the execution was to take place. Because really, where would he possibly go?
At this point, if one was to look through the Alternian royal archives, they would not find any troll from that time period given a title of Engineer (or perhaps, if they did, it would be some brownblood with a silly symbol shaped like a thunderbolt); instead, as a yellowblood with the sign of the bow-and-arrow, they would find him listed as the E×ecuted. Because as far as the archives can be concerned, his forty-eight hours passed calmly and he was killed.
That… wasn’t what happened.
The metal frame, which previously had been supplemental, now had to be redesigned so that it actually moved his body in accordance with signals sent from his brain; he had forty-eight hours to do it. By some miracle, the E×ecuted actually did reconnect himself enough to reformat the suit, but afterwards he had only enough time to perform a very crude and unremovable brain-signal procedure. Two metal spokes were fixed (painfully) into his head – the backs near the nape of his neck, the fronts pointing out of his forehead like a second pair of horns – and were connected to the mainframe on his chest, which would then distribute the brain signals to the appropriate part of the frame. To be certain, it was a hack job and would never be as efficient as a truly working brain and spine, but it was the best he could do if he didn’t want to get himself killed at the hands of his highblood superior.
(And frankly, even by beginning this little project he had already disobeyed the laws of the Empire, so in the E×ecuted’s opinion his highblood superior could go and suck it.)
After getting his ass out of that hive and never going back in, the E×ecuted took smaller jobs until he was able to scavenge enough money to do a small laundry list of things. One: fix up the metal frame, and perform more maintenance on it so that it wasn’t quite so shitty. He could now run away from rowdy trolls fast enough to actually escape, and avoid the complete destruction of the frame. Two: invest in an outfit that would effectively hide his shortcomings – a helmet and bodysuit that made his metal spokes look like part of the design, with a ridiculously dark visor that would hide his eyes enough so that others wouldn’t realize his utter lack of psionics. (It later cracked.) His symbol was affixed on the chestpiece of the metal frame and nowhere else (meaning it was obscured completely by the suit), he cracked both of his own horns off (they’re now jagged stubs – does this remind you of anyone?), and finally, he invested in a traveling cloak that managed to conceal whatever bumps and awkward shapes were left from the metal exoskeleton.
No one wanted to be the troll to tell the Empire that they had somehow let a gutterblood with full-body paralysis escape from their clutches, for obvious reasons. So instead of opening that whole can of worms, his owner simply stated that he had been executed as scheduled, and his body was incinerated like most other victims of private cullings. They had bribed an executor to go along with this story as the one who had been hired to cull him, and in general, the alibi was clean as a whistle. …Or, it was clean enough for the Empire, at least, because even they didn’t give much of a shit about some crippled yellowblooded engineer. As a result, except for those who met him and left their personal records, there is no troll alive who knows that the Engineer didn’t die when he was supposed to.
Had Equius ever found his ancestor’s possession, it would have been the sign-marked chestplate and arm structure of the E×ecuted’s skeleton; the rest was disconnected somehow, and is probably crushed to smithereens. But of course, he would not know why the hell the Engineer had even made it.
