#sandy ryder

@a-cosmic-elf​

I had more success making Sandy Ryder:

I realized that I never post this here :) Dino’s Ryder family

That’s the one I didn’t get done for MEBB and then got distracted by a shiny thing and should chase up, featuring:

The sensible uber-badass Ryder twin being in a coma, and the kid who’s great at xenobotany, making friends, bizarre neon fashion statements, seducing aliens, and xenobotany having to save the galaxy (fave combat skill: hide behind Cora. Did I mention Cora is already coma-twin’s girlfriend?)

Reyes getting species-swapped into an indigenous Kadaran semi-legal trader, hence the placeholder name. He has a massive ethnic and minor personal feud with Jaal.

Jaal/Ryder. Featuring open relationship and Ryder having some sort of ill-advised but fun fling with angaran!Reyes (Jaal is like “why him, I must question your taste!). 

I’m pretty sure Ryder personally helps assassinate Sloane, and this works out fairly well for Kadara as a whole?

Stuff that did get written, cw gore:

Who knew where they’d come from or why, but they’d arrived and they’d been slaughtered on arrival. It had been a long time since Jaal had been shocked by atrocities, but… surely aliens had a right to remain innocent?

There was a yelp over the comms. Jaal froze.

“I’m OK I’m OK!” Taava stammered. “But… you gotta look at this… I’ve found a body!”

 The body had vanished into a deep drift of fresh snow, only a few brown stains on the surface marking its position, and it took significant shovelling to unearth. It must have been a sapient being, because it was wearing armour decorated with red and yellow geometric shapes, and had green swirls painted on its face, and what looked like ritual scarification along its lower jaw. It was not person-shaped.

It would have been eight feet tall or more, as broad and heavy as a boulder, with stony grey armour covering half its face. Jaal was a big man, but this thing’s arms were as thick as his thighs. Its head was as broad as its shoulders, almost neckless, with a mouth stretching from ear to ear and weirdly wide-set eyes.

There was a hole in its chest that Jaal could have put his arm into, and a bigger hole in its belly, and part of the back of its head was smashed in. There were smaller bullet holes in the sagging leather of its throat. How many shots had it taken to put this thing down? There was kett blood everywhere, pooled and clotted in the snow, and a few kett body parts that looked like they’d been torn right off.

The alien’s eyes were the same deep green as its face paint, pupils blown to black circles, and they were wide open. Taava kneeled to close them.

“We must take it back for dissection,” Jaal said. “We cannot lose an opportunity to understand… this. The little hand too.”

The hand could not be from the same species, not unless they had a truly bizarre larval stage – its structure was entirely different, and Faram’s scanner said the biochemistry didn’t match.

Taava looked sickened, but he didn’t argue.

They needed to investigate the big alien’s weapon, as well – it was a sleek blue-and-white thing made for a much smaller hand. And any computing software or hardware that might still be functioning in the armour. The Resistance needed every edge it could get.

“And after dissection…” Jaal said, “we must give it a decent funeral. If it is person enough to fly a shuttle and paint its armour, it is person enough to give to the jungle – I mean burn.”

Taava looked happier. “I’ll tell the priests to organize a proper warrior’s funeral. Two of them – better a hand than no body at all. We’ll invite all the gods – one of them has to be the right one.”