I have a few questions about our boys. How tall are they, who's the strongest, who's the easiest and who's the hardest to fluster? Who's more likely to be gentle with you and who's more likely to manhandle you?
I asked a few questions so I understand if you don't answer all of them😊
Oh anon you want the full breakdown of the boys 🫣 Buckle up, because comparing them is like trying to rank natural disasters.
Tallest?
Zha’kor towers over everyone (8’3 feet/ 2.53 m) He’s built like the Ultimate Yautja blueprint, longer limbs, broader frame, just unfairly massive 🙂↕️ You would have to crane your neck to meet his eyes and he knows it, making sure to loom over you on purpose.
Tarr’kon is next, only a little shorter (8’1 feet/ 2.46 m) but built like a tank, crimson colour, scarred and radiating “touch me and you die” energy.
Kel’Rakur and Keth’raal are the same height, both freshly blooded, still growing into their bulk. They’re “only” like 7’8 feet tall (2.34 m), which is massive but next to the older two, they look almost short.
Strongest?
Tarr’kon takes the crown, no question about it. Raw, brutal power. He’s the one who would punch through a wall to get to you if someone laid a hand on his human (we’ve seen this happening, haven’t we? 😅)
Kel’Rakur is a close second when it comes to pure aggression and hunting. He’s unstoppable once he locks onto prey. Zha’kor’s strength is more refined, terrifying precision and endurance. Keth’raal is no less, he’s fast, clever, but he relies more on speed and smarts than brute force.
Hardest to fluster?
Tarr’kon is almost impossible to fluster. Compliments? Ignored. Seductive looks? He’ll stare until you get nervous. The only thing that might crack that stoic mask is if you did something recklessly brave to protect him. He would freeze, mandibles twitching, staring at you with absolute awe.
Zha’kor is the second hardest. He’s the master of mysterious smirks and low purrs. You tease him? He’ll flip it back on you tenfold 🫣
Kel’Rakur surprisingly comes third, he will show it when flustered, mandibles flaring, a huff, maybe even a stutter, but it takes something very specific to get under his skin. You’ll have to earn that reaction (but if you do, it’s over for him).
Keth’raal is the easiest to crack 🥺. He tries to play cool, but his mandibles click too fast, his purr stutters, and he’ll look away pretending to study something fascinating on the wall. Call him cute or praise his hunting skills and watch him bluescreen (I love him too much guys 😔)
Gentle vs. Manhandle?
All four are Yautja so all four will manhandle you like you’re their favorite trophy, picked up, pinned, carried, praised.
But…
Keth’raal is the gentlest. He’s careful, always checking in, adjusting his grip when he remembers humans are fragile. He trusts you to speak up if it’s too much and he genuinely admires human resilience.
Tarr’kon… he has no clue how strong he is. He’ll grab you with zero awareness and accidentally leave bruises. He’s not trying to hurt you (probably) he just doesn’t feel pain the same way anymore. But the second he realizes? He’ll start being painfully careful, like you’re made of glass (can’t wait for that redemption era)
Zha’kor and Kel’Rakur fall somewhere in the middle, rough when they want to be, but fully capable of dialing it back if you ask nicely (or beg… they love the begging)
Bonus 🤭
Stalker Behavior?
Zha’kor is absolutely the one who watches you sleep. He’ll sit in the shadows, eyes glowing red, just… observing. Memorizing the way you go from fierce and mouthy when awake to soft and vulnerable in sleep. Don’t call him out on it, he’ll deny everything with the smuggest face you’ve ever seen.
Finally got a commission of Kate in her Followers gear from @ziorre 🥰 I love the grain sticking out of her bag and how rough her coat looks! Thank you so much for all your hard work! Just about everything you could ever want to know about Kate is under the cut. Sorry it's so long 😅
Summary
Kate is a botanist in the Followers of the Apocalypse, passionate about finding alternative ways to manufacture medicine without relying on scavenging Old-World resources. To do so, she'll need to breed hardier crops that can survive the Mojave climate, as well as express the chemical compounds necessary to craft them. A USDA Seed Lab located in the Spring Mountains northwest of New Vegas might just offer her the opportunity to do so, but the journey there is treacherous. It isn't until the crops on the farms just outside of the city begin showing signs of disease that Kate, headstrong and determined, sets out on her own to find a way to save the people of New Vegas from a potential famine.
Basic Information
S.P.E.C.I.A.L.
S - 2
P - 5
E - 6
C - 5
I - 9
A - 5
L - 8
Tag Skills
Science
Survival
Sneak
Traits
Good Natured
Small Frame
Inventory
Silenced 10mm Pistol
Hatchet
Broc Flower
Xander Root
Maize
Background
Vault 42
Kate is originally from Vault 42, located in Olympia, Washington. It was an agrarian vault, tasked with growing nearly every fruit and vegetable imaginable, with the hope of reintroducing them to the wasteland on Reclamation Day, or so the dwellers inside were told. For nearly two hundred years, they lived in abundance, never going hungry—until the famine hit. One day, the crops were flourishing. The next, they were diseased and sickly.
Kate's father, the lead botanist, tried to save as many crops as he could, but ultimately, it was in vain. Everything had to be scrapped. The killing blow was the discovery that Vault 42's food rations had been ransacked. Paranoia over hoarding, chaos, and civil unrest broke out. The Overseer initiated a lockdown, ensuring the vault would stay sealed, and kept himself protected in his office by posting guards outside with orders to kill anyone who came near. With their supplies running out and no means to escape, the vault was doomed to starve.
It didn't take long until the dwellers began killing each other—parents and children, brothers and sisters, friends, and lovers—over the last remaining scraps of food, but the atrocities didn't stop there. Those who survived the food riots resorted to cannibalism to satiate their hunger. To protect her, Kate's parents hid her in an access panel and sacrificed their last remaining rations to feed her. Her father had plans to sabotage the reactor to force the Overseer to open the vault, but before he could, the cannibals found him. From the access panel in the reactor room, at ten years old, Kate watched as her parents were murdered, then dragged off to be butchered.
Desperate not to let her parents' deaths be in vain, Kate, herself, sabotaged the reactor to draw both the Overseer and security downstairs, then snuck up to the Overseer's office. She picked the lock on his door and found he had been the one who had ransacked the vault's food stores. Towers of purified water, stacks of Instamash, sugar bombs, and Salisbury steak, crates full of fresh fruit and vegetables lined the walls of his office. Kate was devastated.
While the Overseer attempted to stop the reactor from malfunctioning, Kate accessed his terminal. Though the clock was ticking before both he and security would return, curiosity got the best of her. Searching through his communications, she found evidence suggesting that the vault was merely an experiment to begin once the population had reached a certain threshold. The disease that killed the crops was manufactured by the Overseer himself. The last communication on the terminal was an outgoing message that the experiment had begun.
Infuriated that her parents' deaths, and the deaths of those she had once called friends, had been reduced to nothing more than data points, she chose to wait instead. She hid in a locker within the Overseer's room, then waited for him to return. She watched as he stuffed and gorged himself on the rations, her belly growling and threatening to give her away. Then she waited until he fell asleep and stabbed the Overseer to death in his bed.
As he lay dying, Kate, covered in blood and gore, looked down at her hands in horror. She had become just like everyone else. Shame and guilt overcame her. Quickly, she packed a bag with all the supplies she could carry, overrode the bault door controls, shot and killed both security guards who had been stationed outside the office, and fled the vault, running as fast as she could to put as much distance between her and the cannibals that were sure to follow.
With raiders around every corner, the city of Olympia was too dangerous for her to stay in, so she headed east into the wilderness. Using stealth and sheer luck, she managed to stay alive for about a month on her own, but eventually her supplies ran out. Thanks to her father's botany expertise passed down to her, and through trial and error, she quickly learned what plants were safe to eat and which ones would put her through agony.
For a while, she stole from farmsteads, always retreating into the wilderness in shame before she could be caught. Eventually, she came across a caravan and overheard them talk about the New California Republic. They spoke about politics and the expansion into the Mojave, and how taxes were bound to go up yet again. Recognizing these as signs of a functional civilization, Kate set out to find it, but before she could, winter settled in.
The Watchers
Wearing nothing but her PIP-Boy and a vault suit stained with blood, Kate attempted to trek through the Cascades. The wind was brutal and icy, and the snow relentless. Exhausted, malnourished, scared, and alone, she found a little alcove in the rock just off the trail. In there, she brought her knees to her chest and cried into them, only for her tears to freeze to her cheeks.
But just when she thought her time had come, a man wearing a firefighter's respirator mask and helmet found her. He wrapped her up in a tattered wool blanket and carried her up the mountain to the Lookout, an old fire watch tower, where a group of Forest Rangers provided her with medical care, food, and warmth.
Kate would learn that the Forest Rangers belonged to a group of settlers calling themselves the Watchers—the descendants of tourists and U.S. Forest Service workers who had been on Mount Rainier when the bombs dropped. Relatively isolated and protected by miles of wilderness, they survived for years by living off the land and trading with travelers who passed through the Cascades.
The Forest Rangers were elite woodsmen, trained in firefighting and search and rescue operations, and were responsible for protecting their park and keeping order. The man who had saved her was a Ranger by the name of Mason, who had seen her attempting to hike the trails from his station at the Lookout. Once Kate was well enough to talk, he asked about the blood on her suit and how it got there, but fearing he'd put her in jail—or worse—for killing the Overseer, she kept silent. Mason accepted that the child before him had been through something awful and let it go. Instead, he focused on what he could do, and that was teaching her to survive.
Over the winter, Kate learned that the Watchers, those who lived in and maintained the settlements within the state park, kept farms at the lower-elevation campgrounds, and living quarters, medical care, trading posts, and schools at the lodges and cabins. She saw a functional society, where everyone was compelled to help each other, and felt sadness. It was the future on the surface that the vault dwellers had been promised.
It did not take long for Kate to discover that Mason, the oldest and most experienced of the Rangers, was a man of few words, but when he did speak, everyone listened. He taught Kate that the wasteland could be cruel, but that didn't mean she had to be, and that it was everyone's job to make the world a better place. From him, she learned to fight, hunt, fish, track, farm, cook, and use the land around her to her advantage, while ensuring that the forest they lived in, and all the creatures who lived alongside them, were also treated with respect. Finally feeling like she had a home again, Kate couldn't bring herself to leave when the snow thawed, and Mason, who had always wanted kids but never quite got around to it, adopted her.
In Kate's spare time, she pursued botany, identifying plants and their properties to see if and how they could benefit humanity. In a way, nature became her best friend. Whenever she spoke to her flowers and herbs, they listened, unlike the other children her age.
Though the Watchers had taught her a great deal and had become family to Kate, she still wondered who was at the other end of the communication that the Overseer of Vault 42 had sent. She wanted answers, and staying with the Watchers would mean a lifetime of uncertainty. When she turned 18, she said goodbye to her old friends and began her search for what she'd later learn was the Enclave.
Followers of the Apocalypse
Kate traveled to many vaults and, in her search, found very few details about Project Safehouse. Discouraged, she decided to head south and find the New California Republic, hoping someone there had some answers. The journey was long and dangerous, but since Kate now had the tools and knowledge to protect herself, she felt more comfortable traversing the wasteland than she had when she was a child.
Upon reaching Shady Sands, she couldn't believe her eyes. It was an oasis of civilization, with power, technology, running water, and social order. Kate learned that the Enclave had been all but annihilated some years ago, with their members branded war criminals due to face execution for their crimes against humanity. It didn't sit right with her, though—the timeline was off. If they had been destroyed before her vault executed their experiment, then with whom had the Overseer been communicating? At the behest of a compassionate local, she was encouraged to give up her search and do something she was passionate about instead.
Kate came across a Followers of the Apocalypse outpost, learned about their mission, and felt that their organization most aligned with her values. Upon learning more, she was instructed to travel to the Boneyard, where she was embraced with open arms.
There, she finished her education and studied pharmacology and botany, but her dream was to craft medicine without relying on pre-war manufactured materials. To do so, she focused her research on integrating natural remedies, like the ones she had learned from the Watchers, into western medicine, though she was gently discouraged by others to put her time and energy into proven methods instead.
During her final years in the NCR, Kate began a relationship with a medical doctor, but it ended rather poorly and rather publicly when she caught him cheating on her with his receptionist in the exam room. To get away from him and all the looks of pity others gave her, she transferred to the Mojave Chapter of the Followers. Since then, she has kept her heart locked up to avoid another heartbreak. It also meant fewer distractions, so her focus was solely on her research.
In New Vegas, she helped Tom Anderson get the West Side Co-Op up and running and took on the task of creating a community garden in Freeside, working closely with The Kings to keep it protected and watered. Not long after arriving there, she met Angela Williams, an OSI scientist, and befriended her, despite the tensions between the NCR and the Followers.
Seeing Kate's brilliance, Angela told her about the NCR Agricultural Project, their investigation into Vault 22, and the existence of a USDA Seed Depository and Botany Lab located in the Spring Mountains, in an effort to recruit Kate from the Followers and into the OSI. She then elaborated that while the OSI was able to send contractors into Vault 22, they had no such luck getting into the USDA Lab. What little intel that had made it back to them suggested that it was heavily fortified on the outside, and that the seed vault was protected by Vault-Tec technology, impenetrable without a PIP-Boy to override the door lock—something, Angela pointed out, Kate possessed.
The idea burrowed its way into her brain and stayed there for weeks. With tensions rising between the Legion and the NCR, Kate knew that it was too dangerous to go alone and attempted to convince Beatrix Russell to accompany her on the journey. Beatrix agreed to go only if Kate received Julie Farkas's blessing, knowing it was a mission Julie, in good faith, could not sign off on. Kate attempted to persuade Julie, promising that she could craft medicine and solve their supply crisis, but the attempt failed. It was too risky.
While tending to the garden, Kate vented to Ross, a King's gang member, about her troubles and how she was disappointed with the garden's yield. He asked her if there was anything that could have been done differently, but Kate explained that it was a genetic problem—the species of maize they planted wasn't meant to thrive in desert conditions. If she had the right tools, she could genetically modify the crops to make them hardier, but the tools she needed were in the mountains, and Julie wouldn't sanction such an endeavor. Ross then told her that although The King had final say on Freeside matters, every man was free to live for himself. The way he figured it, she was free to make her own path, too.
Kate took the advice to heart and later that night set out for the lab, launching the events of The Fruits of Our Labor.
Personality
Kate is an intelligent, compassionate, kind, if not stubborn member of the Followers of the Apocalypse. Although she says she has a hard time relating to other people and prefers the company of plants, almost everyone around her has something kind to say. Her hard-headedness does have a tendency to rub people the wrong way, but her intentions are good.
Due to her trauma, she's not always forthcoming with information about her past. When initially questioned about it, she comes off as stand-offish and even rude—the reason being that even though she acknowledges "wasteland justice," the little girl in her still fears that she will be killed or put on trial for killing her Overseer.
When Kate later learns about the Enclave and their role in the vault experiments, she considers it a blessing that they were wiped out. She will comment on their atrocities and though she doesn't advocate for capital punishment, she believes all members of the Enclave should stand trial for their crimes against humanity.
Despite her hatred of the Overseer and the Enclave, she believes all living beings are worthy of respect and dignity—even deathclaws, who she cites play a keystone role in the ecosystem by keeping other predator populations under control.
Harkening back to her Watchers upbringing, she believes in conserving the native ecosystem of the Mojave and is hesitant about introducing non-native crops to the desert. Although she'd prefer to capitalize on existing flora, she is not naive enough to believe that humans won't grow what they can to avoid starvation.
As for her romantic life, Kate admits she doesn't have much experience, and the experiences she does have weren't good. After her last failure of a relationship, she put romance on a hiatus, preferring to focus on her work. When asked what she looks for in a person, she says she looks for someone kind, patient, and not afraid to do the hard stuff. Making her laugh is the quickest way to win her heart.
Overall, Kate is a bright light in what some would consider a hopeless, desolate wasteland. Though she is kind, she is not afraid to defend herself, often taking the route of stealth rather than rushing headfirst into battle.
since I wanted to import my clown ocs back into bigtop burger, I figured I could give them a fresh coat of paint, to fit into the series just a bit more :D
the general premise of "chaotic clown criminal, who uses her powers to do as she pleases, adopts a younger clown who has trouble controlling their magic and almost got banished for it" is the same, with the main changes being:
- overture's more ambiguous backstory (though she's still rivals with munkustrap)
- patches having a passion for CATS, enough to have a dream of becoming a real jellicle actor, despite being constantly rejected because of their unstable clown abilities being seen as too destructive
also, their unstable powers aren't always active, especially when patches is calm, but they're very easy to set off and unpredictable in how they'll manifest. they could just teleport patches around, but they could also set the few nearest stage props on fire...
a quiet bunny but someone who much rather be the voice of reason to mirabelle’s enthusiastic plans. she works as a tutor for the colony’s college, which gives her a slight superiority but she doesn’t let that get to her head as she’s more focused on just doing her job. best friends with Mirabelle has gotten her out of their shell, but she still hides in it out of fear of disobeying the council’s orders.
For clarification, this Shriek isn't the same one from my One Piece aus who got Isekai-ed and needs to find a way back home. In fact, this version of Shriek no longer has a home to return to. It's both less and more ominous than it sounds.
Grade: First year (counts as one student with Grim)
Birthday: October 31st (she doesn't know her actual birthday so she just chose the day she came to Twisted Wonderland)
Age: 6
Height: Approx: 93 cm
Dominant Hand: Forepaws
Homeland: Walpurgatory
Club: Monster Club (started as questioning Shriek about Walpurgatory but slowly turned into a chance for Shriek to gush about horror)
Best Subject: Flying (though Biology is a close second)
Hobbies: Collecting reptile skins, animal bones, and various creepy crawly things
Pet Peeves: Solitude; Repression
Favorite Food: Blot-tainted meat, bugs, and bananas.
Least Favorite Food: Green Peppers
Talent: Phantom Slaying
Appearance:
Shriek is a young, dark-furred humanoid bat demon with black hair slightly below shoulder-length that's a cross between wavy and shaggy. Her eyes are blood-red with vertical pupils and glow in the dark. She has the head of a fruit bat with a pair of tiny fangs and her nose is heart-shaped. Her claws are sharp, with her feet being slightly prehensile to allow her to grasp things and cling to branches. A small pair of leathery wings sprouts from Shriek’s back instead of being connected to her arms like with regular bats.
Her true demon form has a more traditional bat build (which is why Shriek often runs on all fours), longer canines that protrude like a smilidon's, a nose that forms a spike at the top resembling a horn, and a dragon-like tail that ends in a magenta crest.
During her first two years on the surface, Shriek's hair was down to her ankles and even more unkempt with several leaves and sticks caught in it. She wore nothing except a dirty tunic and a mask fashioned out of a ram skull that was cracked during her fight with Leona and Malleus.
Her usual wardrobe consists of her school uniform which has a magenta vest that's always buttoned up in a mismatched way. The jacket sports a number of stitches owing to Shriek being such an active, reckless girl. She wears a dark pair of shorts with black and white pinstriped cuffs that match Grim's ribbons. Shriek wears a variety of bracelets on her left wrist with charms corresponding to each of the seven houses. Around her neck is a red spiked collar that she sometimes switches out for a small black and white striped tie whenever former attire is required. Shriek refuses to wear any type of shoes whatsoever because they interfere with her ability to hang upside-down and she prefers the feeling of the earth beneath her talons.
Her "dorm uniform is whatever she feels like wearing for the day (usually t shirts with skeletons and other monsters) and a purple slightly tattered cloak with a monster face and holes for her ears to poke out of.
Shriek used to carry around an elk femur which she wielded as a club that she could channel her plasma through. After this was destroyed by Leona's King's Roar, Sam gifted her a replacement upon her enrollment in Night Raven in the form of a bone-shaped scepter with intricate demon carvings and topped by a feline-esque skull with pierced ears and a magenta magestone in the left eye socket. Shriek has taken to calling it Mangal, named for the vampiric monster from the Phillipines that flies through the night with only half a body, the Manananggal. While Mangal is supposed to be Shriek's magical pen, she uses it primarily as a melee weapon and has yet to cast any spells with it beyond her Vamp Bolts.
Shriek (she was too young to remember her original name, so she just chose the sound people usually make when they see her) was born to a colony of bat demons in the parallel hellscape to Twisted Wonderland known as Walpurgatory. Ranging from tiny imps to hulking muscular horned monstrosities, demons are savage bloodthirsty creatures who live to spread chaos and fear through a combination of their natural physical prowess and powerful magic that is rivaled only by the fae. And since demons can access their magical abilities from birth, they have plenty of time to hone their wicked craft.
Life was a struggle for Shriek from the beginning as she was born with extremely weak magic by demon standards. She could summon and channel plasma bolts, which she would later name Vamp Bolts, throughout her body, but elemental manipulation is as mundane to demons as breathing. Sensing her daughter's shortcomings, Shriek's birth mother cared enough about her daughter to protect her from being killed by her fellow demon bats but not enough to regret leaving the two year-old on a mountain peak to fend for herself.
Shriek spent her days roaming the cataclysmic magma pools, noxious jungles populated by massive demonic wildlife, and frigid wastelands of Walpurgatory hunting for food and a comfy place to hang. Other demons ignored the little hellbat on good days and outright attacked her the rest of the time. But it wasn't all bad. Every day was a new adventure and she did learn how to speak through mimicking the coarse, curse-laden language of the more humanoid devils.
When she was four years old, Shriek hitched a ride to the surface realm through means of a summoning circle that was abandoned by the would-be spellcaster who thought it botched and wound up in Twisted Wonderland. At the top of, of all places, a mountain. All demons take a more compact humanoid form when entering the surface realm, but Shriek's naturally low magic means her shapeshifting capabilities are extremely limited, hence her resembling a bipedal bat over anything even close to human.
Shriek spent her first year on the surface as basically a feral child in a significantly less deadly wilderness and getting accustomed to civilization. The little wild girl was utterly spellbound by the surface-dwellers so unlike demons and wanted nothing more than to learn about them. Unfortunately, she wasn't having as much luck finding friends as she would like. To make matters worse, humans were so much weaker compared to demons so she couldn't even enjoy a good brawl with anyone. Scaring people and causing trouble were fun and she could easily survive out in the wilderness alone, but the loneliness was near unbearable.
Shortly before turning six, Shriek met Grim who she initially confused for a fellow demon trying to steal her prey, aka the fish she was snatching out of the river when she swooped down and nabbed Grim by accident.. After striking up a fast friendship, Grim mentioned that Night Raven College would be an invaluable opportunity for Grim to become a celebrated mage and that if Shriek helped him infiltrate the school, she would have a place of honor as his second-in-command. Shriek scoffed at the idea of serving anyone, for demons are wild by nature. However, she changes her mind when Grim tells her that Night Raven is where she can find strong opponents to fight to her little batty heart's content.
During the next orientation, Grim literally crashed into ceremony via the window and demanded to be taken in as a student only for his already disruptive efforts to be further undercut by Shriek soaring overhead crying out for challengers. The Vamp Bolts she was firing off rapidly combined with Grim's fire to form a blazing inferno.
While Grim was able to be subdued quickly thanks to the combined efforts of Riddle and Azul, the former of whom sealed both Grim and Shriek's magic, Shriek was a different story. Despite being fairly average physically compared to other demons, by the standards of Twisted Wonderland her brute strength and lightning speed are borderline superhuman. After determining that none of the mages so far were a real challenge, Shriek turned her attention to Leona who was making zero efforts to stop the chaos. Mistaking him for a demon, she said hello her usual way... by leaping upon him with a battle cry and fangs bared as she tried to bash his skull in with a downward swing of her plasma bone.
This proved to be a huge lapse in judgement on Shriek's part as Leona destroyed her bone club with King's Roar, though even without her weapon Shriek wasn't going to go down without a fight. She bit and clawed and even fought Jack in his wolf form at one point. Eventually she tried deafening everyone with her demonic screams, only to be stopped by Malleus using his thorns from afar to ensnare and sedate the young demon, finally putting her temporary reign of terror to an end.
After the two troublemaking furry beasts were subdued, Crowley realized that Grim had some potential as a student. More than that, having a demon like Shriek for an ally would be an invaluable asset to Night Raven. It's so rare that one of them shows their fanged faces in Twisted Wonderland after all. And while demons are still beholden to having a set amount of mana as any other living creature, like the fae their mana reserves are naturally higher compared to humans and other races. This child's mana is not so weak that it couldn't be honed and trained. It certainly seemed to grow stronger when paired with Grim's. Sure, this was an all-boy's school and the little dear is far below the normal entry age but eh, they can probably make an exception in this case. Six year olds and cats are pretty self-sufficient, right?
Having spent those first six years of her life mostly alone outside of picking fights with other demons, Shriek is in full agreement on that. And besides, Ramshackle is the coolest ever!! All the cobwebs and creaky floorboards and ghosts who can send chills through people's hearts when they pass through their bodies (that's not proven but Shriek really wants to know if it's true) and her roommate is her new best friend!
Although the Ramshackle house becomes more of a clubhouse than an actual dorm for the two because the housewardens and other teachers realize "um hell no, you can't just leave a little girl unsupervised in a shitty haunted dormhouse especially not one this freakishly strong and destructive without an ounce of magic"
Hence, custody of Shriek is split between Savanaclaw since they're the only ones who can come close to matching her in physical strength and Diasomnia since they want to see if it's possible for amicable relationships to be established between the fae and demons through Shriek. Ignihyde later takes part in housing Shriek once the connection between Phantoms and demons is discovered.
Shriek is without question the wildest, most impulsive of all the students at Night Raven. She's a fun-loving, brash, and hyperactice little rascal who's never afraid to get her claws dirty, be it from roughing it in the woods or in a fight. Long desensitized to violence due to growing up in Walpurgatory, she'll charge into battle with a sharp-fanged grin and a screeching battlecry like a vampire bat berserker with no regard for whether or not her opponent is bigger, stronger, or has more powerful magic. Shriek will usually begin a fight giggling and teasing her opponents as she flies out of reach. But as soon as Shriek catches the scent of blood, she is overcome with a primal hunger and will continue to attack until she becomes too tired to stay in the air.
But more than just being a little warrior, Shriek is also just as excitable and curious as any other child. She's brimming with desire to learn about everything the surface realm has to offer, often scuttling up on the shoulders of new people she meets or flapping around happily asking questions a mile a minute. True to her background as a feral child, Shriek has an immense love and respect for nature. She loves using her keen sense of sight, smell, and hearing to pinpoint animals or magical creatures hidden from view, chasing down whatever she finds wherever it goes. In fact, she has such a habit of flying off to investigate that she has to be closely supervised by her upper classmen even during short trips away from campus. Rook has had to use I See You to track her down countless times.
Of all the critters she loves to catch, snakes and insects are her favorites. She loves zipping out of the strike range of snakes and wrapping them around her arms, and bugs are not just a source of joy for Shriek but a food source too. She collects animal bones and shedded skin from lizards, likes to hunt for her own food instead of buying it with thaumarks, and enjoys the liberation of rolling in the mud as twigs and leaves and a beetle or two get stuck in her hair. Shriek is constantly bringing her forest treasures and the weird things she finds in Sam's shop to show the boys even if some of them (Ace, Idia, and especially Jamil) don't find them quite as endearing as she does
Shriek is a tomboy and oh so proud of it. She loves action and horror movies, dinosaurs, contact sports like Bead Brawl, Blastcycles, manga, video games, and anything considered macabre and gross. She's obsessed with the kaiju Tyraxadon, and her favorite series is the shonen Devil Girl and Moon Dinosaur, both because the protagonist has devil powers and her partner is a giant dinosaur (who's black and purple like Malleus's dragon form and has a mane similar to Leona's hair). She's also a budding heavy metal enthusiast and it was through her love of blasting said music in Diasomnia for acoustics that it was discovered Silver couldn't oversleep through that cacophony.
All the members of Savanaclaw, Epel, the Leech twins, and Rook mesh the most with Shriek's personality while Riddle, Vil, and Sebek are the most likely to butt heads with her. Grim is somewhere in the middle, appreciative that Shriek matches his equally brash energy but not always understanding her strange interests and mannerisms.
Rough-natured though she may be, Shriek can also be very kind and altruistic, two extremely unusual qualities for a demon. She agreed to become a Night Raven College student not out of any desire to become a renowned mage or even to boost her weak magical prowess, but because she knew it would make Grim happy. She'll happily share with others, certainly more willing to share snacks than Grim, and is eager to help other students in any way she can, even if most of the time her efforts are poorly conceived at best and headache-inducing with a side of property damage at worst. Shriek also has a strong protective streak and will instantly leap to defend people she cares about. This is in large part due to how other demons relentlessly antagonized her, and because there's nothing Shriek hates more than being vulnerable, she doesn't want anyone else to feel that same sense of powerlessness. In fact, she discovers more and more throughout her time at Night Raven how fulfilled it makes her to use her might as a demon to protect her friends. Hell, the fact that Shriek even has friends to protect makes her extremely happy.
What doesn't make her happy is schoolwork. Shriek is quite intelligent, possessing a somewhat advanced if not crude vocabulary for her age (her sarcasm has grown exponentially thanks to Leona's influence), and is an excellent observational learner, especially when it comes to combat. But academically speaking, her grades are barely scraping by at best. The young bat devil is at a major disadvantage since the curriculum is so many years above her developmental level as a six year old who was a feral child until just recently. If not for Crowley banking on her demonic abilities being a boon to Night Raven in the future, Shriek would have flunked out ages ago. To their credit, the teachers do try their best to make age-appropriate material to help Shriek catch up. But even then, her boundless energy and all-consuming desire to play and cause mischief make it difficult for her to engage with the material unless it really interests her. Naturally, the only subjects she excels at are Flying, Biology, and P.E
Twisted Wonderland!Shriek's color fur has a slight blueish-purple tint as a reference to Chernabog and her bat ears are a stand-in for his horns (though she will grow horns of her own when she's a little older). Her eyes are still red instead of Chernabog's yellow and her Vamp Bolts are magenta as opposed to the red Electro of her One Piece counterpart. She's a year younger in this AU bc you know, the number 6 and devils.
Her fun-loving personality and love of all things macabre stem from how Chernabog was mostly just chilling and having his own little night of revelry with the demons he surrounded himself with instead of maliciously scheming like the other Disney villains. Chernabog also has a really strong tonal contrast with the rest of the Disney villain pantheon (comes with the territory of being such a blatant representation of the devil) which is why Shriek sticks out like such a sore thumb among the other Night Raven students in both appearance and personality. Bela Lugosi, Dracula himself, was the initial model for Chernabog hence how Shriek continues to have vampiric roots in this AU, although she is also heavily inspired by oni. Shriek also wraps her wings around herself when she's upset like how Chernabog closes himself up at the end of the Night on Bald Mountain. And nearly every new phase of her life begins on a mountain. There's also a fair bit of irony in her being the youngest Night Raven student despite being twisted from one of the oldest Disney villains after Vil (another reason why they beef so much). Plus there's no force more unstoppable and terrifying as an unhinged little girl.
Walpurgatory (which is apparently different from Hell given that Shriek uses it constantly in her vocabulary) is a reference to Walpurgis Night, which is when the Night on Bald Mountain segment takes place. Knowledge of this realm is scarce even among veteran magical scholars and archaeologists. It's speculated that traces of demonic essence leaking out of Walpurgatory may have played a part in causing the earliest records of blot, but there's no real way of proving this theory as of yet.
In spite of being at the very bottom of the pecking order among her own kind, Shriek loves being a demon. She takes immense pride in her needle-sharp fangs and claws and there's no greater freedom to her than soaring on leather wings in search of fresh prey with even fresher blood. But while other demons look down on surface-dwellers, Shriek is utterly fascinated by them the same way she's fascinated by bats, bugs, snakes and monsters. As curious as she is hyperactive, she wants nothing more than to meet new people and have new experiences. At the same time, she's made it clear that she doesn't want to become a human herself even if it would make interacting with them involve a lot less screaming. In fact, the reason she latches on so much to Leona, Malleus, Idia, and the Octatrio is because they resemble demons the most in both appearance and temperament.
Of course, the combination of Shriek's demonic nature, upbringing, and young age means that she interacts with the world largely through the lens of "who can I fight?" and "I want to be a wild little hellraiser". Since her peers at Night Raven are so much older than her and their problems have more complicated aspects that can't just be bitten/scratched/burnt to a crisp, she has a lot of difficulty grasping why they do the things that they do and the nuances of all their social interactions. But she cares for them all immensely and any Phantom who messes with them is going to become a pile of inky viscera very quickly.
I've heard it said before, especially here on tumblr, that a majority of the Overblots stem from childhood trauma which has shaped the boys into who they are today. They're the result of all that anguish and resentment and misery which has built up throughout their lives. Shriek is a unique case where she's still living through her childhood, and while it's certainly been a rough one, her innocence is still largely intact if not a little warped. And it's hard for the students, especially the housewardens who have been through the wringer a considerable amount, to not want to try and preserve that and give this kid some semblance of the happy childhoods they never got in full or at all. While they still antagonize each other every chance they get, the boys all make attempts clean up their acts a little bit to set a good example for Shriek and also are getting quicker to snap out of their bickering in order to prioritize keeping her from causing chaos.
The part of Walpurgatory were Shriek spent her early years was like a cross between Genndy Tartokovsy's Primal and the Boiling Isles from the Owl House. And she has zero frame of reference for how fucked up it was.
She doesn't know it's not the norm for kids to strike out on their own before they're old enough to speak. Or that eating raw deer and bear meat is considered extremely unsanitary and no, cooking it with plasma is not an improvement. Or that you aren't supposed to casually admit while coloring that you know how to snap someone's neck.
Silver and Sebek are probably the closest to having a similar childhood as Shriek, but there's a big gap between sparring with some mountain climbing on the side before going home to your loving long-lived dad. Versus dodging giant killer bears, horned crocodiles, vultures with a second set of jaws in their beaks, and multi-headed serpents as you fly all by yourself over a sea of blood between two demons who are too busy duking it out to notice you laughing and whooping with delight as you leap into the fray with talons outstretched.
Don't get it twisted though. While Shriek is physically strong, she's very emotionally fragile. She doesn't know how to deal with situations she can't fight her way out of and is terrified of being perceived as a weak helpless little girl. And the last thing she wants is for anybody to see her cry. The only thing that makes her more upset is the possibility of being alone. For a kid who wanders off by herself a lot, Shriek has quite her fair share of abandonment issues.
This version of Shriek takes some inspiration from Chainsaw Man's Bat Devil with elements of Power's history thrown in (especially her friendship with Grim), Prince Loki from One Piece (her focus on strength in battle, her lonely upbringing, and being perceived as a monster) Mebh Óg MacTíre (Wolfwalkers), Anya Forger (Spy x Family), King Clawthorne (The Owl House), Ogerpon and the Cubone line (Pokemon), Marceline Abadeer (Adventure Time) and Louise Belcher (Bob's Burgers). Especially early series Louise given that almost everyone in Night Raven is self-centered in some capacity.
Alias - The Silver Shroud, The Mercenary, Ace of Diamonds
Birthday - May 12th, 2255 (Age 32 in Fallout 4)
Gender/Sexuality - Genderfluid, Bisexual
Karma - Neutral
SPECIAL Stats + Perks -
[ STR ] - 3
[ PER ] - 7
[ END ] - 5
[ INT ] - 8
[ CHR ] - 9
[ AGL ] - 7
[ LCK ] - 9
[ Black Widow ]
[ Sniper ]
[ Bloody Mess ]
[ Claustrophobia]
[ Cherchez La Femme ]
[ Shotgun Surgeon ]
[ Impartial Mediation ]
Biography -
Born to Lucius Burke and Mila Crowe in the Church of Atom, Rose Burke has often been mistaken for a Vault Dweller, or a pre-war popsicle. Her life in Tenpenny Tower and her study of pre-war tapes and media developed her Transatlantic accent and her starlet appearance.
Originally from the Capital Wasteland, her work as a mercenary has taken her all across the country. A contract to kill (and a close call love affair with) Benny in New Vegas earned her the scar on her face. She's a known liar to those not close to her, adopting new personalities and disguises to whatever job she's taken. It isn't until arriving to Boston and becoming The Silver Shroud that she begins returning to who she really is.
Her relationship with Goodneighbor's Mayor, Hancock, begins hot and fast. Two individuals with mirrored storylines and pasts they intend to keep running from lands them into one another.
Rose and Hancock return to the Capital Wasteland to confront her father, Mister Burke, and attempt to save Megaton from destruction.
Passing back through the Commonwealth, Rose and Hancock are advised to Vault 81 for medical care. Weeks of carrying Born-Ghouls lands Rose in Curie's care for a termination. Where Rose begins to truly face what losing her old life means now that her contract is broken.
Atomic guilt, grief, and unanswered questions from the Capita Wasteland pushes her to investigate Far Harbor. To finally put to rest her birth mother, and to hopes to move on from it all and start fresh in Goodneighbor again.
