Fat Ryland Grace

Yes, this is a self insert. I am cringe but I am free.

Aaron was one of the lead engineers on the Petrova Task Force, and his main accomplishment was creating the Petrovascope. He insisted on being put onto the Hail Mary, as he felt that was the only way to make his life meaningful. He had the coma gene, who was Stratt to say no to such an insistant volunteer?

His true passion was robotics and the arts, and this can be seen seeping into his work. He had a say in making Armando look the way he did and move with more "human" movements. He generally seems outgoing, but this is partially him being loud and outgoing to compensate for his insecurities. He loves a good joke, and cares deeply for his loved ones, sometimes to his own detriment. He yearns to do something meaningful, hence his reasoning for joining the Hail Mary crew. He has a complicated relationship with his own mortality, and feels that if he isn't being useful, people won't like him.

While sadly, Yao and Ilyukhna passed, when Ryland awoke, Aaron was srill alive. However, the bed drawer that he was in got stuck (yes, i know it was side hangingn bunks in the book shhhhh shhhh don't worry about it). Ryland moved forward with the assumption that he was also dead, as he couldnt get the drawer open. After everything, Rocky (and Simon, if you wanna throw BloodyMary into there, which I do) decided to try and fix it to give him a proper "burial". However, after managnf to just barely wedge the drawer open, they found he was, in fact, still alive. They could access his feeding tubes and IV, but didnt want to try opening the drawer more, as it would rip out all the tubing he was plugged into. So, with medicinal slurry running low, Rocky used some eridian meds (and some of Simons blood, since it healed Simon fast... also the blood is mostly an excuse for aesthetic design choices) to stretch out the slurry as long as possible. Think when you pour water into the milk jug to make it last longer.

This, while keeping Aaron alive long enough for him to be woken up, also caused mutations. These started slow and progressed over time. Here are some notable quirks of his biology (backup info on erid, eridians, and the environment are sourced from Andy Weir's official document on Eridians and Eridani 40 A b):

He can breathe in Erid's atmosphere, but not for very long. His "gills" filter ou t the small amoint of oxygen available in the atmosphere for breathing, but due to the limited amount, it's very uncomfortable and isn't sustainable long-term. It feels like being stuck in a cloed bathroom with a hot shoeer and steam fills the room. Hard to breathe, dense air. The rest of his body is fine with the environment, though it can be uncomfortable for extended periods of time. He usully will wear a respirator when outside of the Biodome.

He can echolocate, however it doesn't go as far. Maximum, he can get about 25 feet in any direction. This is becuase the fat muscle and flesh of his body mutes the returning sound. His little horn acts as sort of an antennae. He also needs to put a good amount of effort into using the echolocation. He can use it with his eyes open, but due to the two overlapping images of different types his brain is receiving and the fact that the echolocation is wider feild of view, it makes him EXTREMLEY nauseous unless he has his eyes closed or it's reasonably dark enough.

He has grown a "tail", which is actually a calcified extension of his tailbone. This grew to mimic the eridian's fifth limb. It is prehensile, and about as long as his arm.

His carpace is mostly located on his back where his shoulder blades are, and trail down his spine to the tail, around his lats to the "gills", and crawl up his neck a bit. There is also scattered carapace on places like his elbows and shins. They started as seperate plates and soon fuse into one big surface. They smaller plates till can move independentaly, but they are now flush with eachother save for the edges and at the gill openings. The ones of his back are where his vocalizations come from, and the air sacs for said sounds make a sort of arrow shape just beflow the carapace. His "eridian voice" sounds like a tenor sax, and his noises of surprise or screams sound like someone blowing super hard into the reeded mouthpiece of a woodwind. The carapace is a smooth, slightly warm texture, and the design is based on Malachite.