our flower children

OH MY GOD okay so (( tw: body horror, death mention, violence and shit oh also swearing )) my most recent one was Noctiluca. She’s a leper living in the dark ages and makes ends meat by working as a sell-sword with her best friend Ophiuchus ( i’ll talk about him later ). She’s a bit of a masochist and does not fear death bc she knows that in her current condition as a Leper it’d be less painful to just die already. She’s extremely positive in the most negative ways (( i.e. “Look on the bright side… we /could/ die !” )) and she can be kind of mischievous. I adapted her character from the game called Darkest Dungeon, an unforgiving rogue-like Dungeon Crawler, but ended up liking her ( and ophiuchus’ ) characters so much that I ended up making them into actual ocs.

Her name comes from the species of bioluminescent alga that lives deep in ocean and uses light to scare off its predators. At first, this behavior shocked marine biologists bc the algae are already near transparent and hardly a millimeter in diameter. So why use light to ward of predators when it only brings more attention to itself? after adapting to the harmless light, its predators SHOULD have habituated, and yet it still remained abundant in population and efficient in survival. how is this possible? well marine biologists later discovered that the Noctiluca Alga’s main predator was a form of transparent tiny Mollusks ( about 4 millimeters in diameter. ), and because of its transparency, the mollusks avoid eating luminescent things because it would make itself a beacon for its own predators. I related this to my Character, because when she fights, she opens her arms to injury, due to the contagiousness of leprosy ( which, if you don’t know, is a flesh-melting disease that is spread through bodily fluid in open sores ), quite literally throwing herself on the enemy’s blade. It seems to be a counter-intuitive process, but in the end, is very effective.

Ophiuchus is an antisocial ( in the neuro-divergent sense of the word ) who has no qualms about killing others. especially if it is to save himself, or for a couple quick bucks. Nearly the opposite of Noctiluca. Despite this, he still cares greatly for Noctiluca. Though Noctiluca often protects Ophiuchus recklessly and haphazardly, Ophiuchus, in his own, less outward way, protects Noctiluca. He is willing to change her bandages ( which, doctors of that time avoided the “walking corpse” ) despite the risk of infection. Ophiuchus holds no sympathy for anyone other than himself and Noctiluca. ( Ophiuchus also plays the lute. )

Jasper