➤ OUTER CITY ; sunshine vagabonds
whew i’m a little rusty with world-building, but these folks play an important role in Dox’s story, so it’s about time i talk about ‘em. this is likely just going to be a ramble of a post.
DESERT NOMADS, these people used to be citizens of the City, but abandoned their home as they didn’t agree with it ( all the tech, polution, laws, & not to mention the caging of low-levelers ).
given the lies the administrators feed the denizens ( that their city is the last remaining hub of human civilization ), the sunshine vagabonds are entirely unaware that there’s LIFE beyond the vast desert, and are content to travel in groups across the harsh environment planes.
they’re SPIRITUAL beings, all bearing matching scars on their left arms that indicate they’ve cut out their Online Drives, & they have a mystic ritual for removing the nanobots ( it takes days from start to finish before the affair is over & all the nanobots are removed---through throwing up, or, y’know. )
---when dox escapes the city, he gets rescued by a pack of the Vagabonds, and in return for food and shelter he offers them some of his healing touch. at first they think to turn him AWAY, because his abilities were HATCHED by the technology in his body, but they claim interest in his DNA, & in his SOUL.
the POTENTIAL for powers live dormant in select few citizens of the city, & wavelengths from the nanobots injected TRIGGER the activation---
so they want to know how it is Dox got HEALING MAGIC.
they end up convincing him to try out a past life regression, done in a dark tent w/ candles and incense and weird scented flowers in bowls of water, crushed plants in a ring around him, some of the eldest vagabonds seated at the edge of the tent in prayer.
he gets a helluva lot of weird visions, feels like he’s on a major Sauce trip, and comes out to find the vagabonds staring at him with both fear, shock, and unbridled AWE. they treat him like a CELEBRITY, honestly, and try to convince him to stay with them, but with the understanding of WHO HE IS, they let him wander on his own when it comes time to leave.
and that’s the story of how dox found out he’s a child of gaia.
