Character: Solaria Starwisp

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Solaria Starwisp
Nickname	Solaria, Sol
Species	Coalescence/Hybrid Starwisp
Age	~130 years since last rejuvenation
Gender	Ostensibly Female
Arrival Method	Blue Breach
Languages	Starwisp - Several variants. Unique to starwisps this language changes with the collective, however there are many fallback versions of the language allowing estranged starwisps to communicate. Common - Mid-late 20th century. Draconic - Partially know 3 versions of it, only a select set of important words are known. Fey - Partial knowledge of fey languages, only select words are known. SSTV - (currently too corrupted to use) Slow-scan TV transmission protocol. Able to transmit and receive images. This functionality is currently too corrupt to make proper use of as Solaria forgot most of the protocol over many years. Morse Code - A subsystem can translate Morse Code for Solaria if she actively acknowledges she's hearing the code being transmitted.
Player	Davwyn and Solaria
Approved
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Description

Starwisp (true form)

• Height & Weight: 9 inches high, 5 inches at widest diameter, 5 lbs
• Apparent Age: Fully developed, age unclear
• Body Type: Other
• Voice: Slightly tinny, high, almost musical voice giving a similiar impression to a fae. Natural noises sound like crystal chimes, electrical hums, and muffled plasma burning sounds
• Usual Scent: Only the most sensitive of noses smell silicate, nitrogen, ozone, ionized air and trace raw elements
• Picture: <click to view>

Summary:
A curious creature that appears to float effortlessly that is a beautiful, glowing, and perhaps slightly eerie looking softly glowing ball of plasma, typically encased within an egg-shaped crystal shell made up of rhombus diamond facets giving the immediate impression of a will-o-wisp or some kind of magical crystal artifact but neither is the case. The creature is effectively a tiny star with free will, a species called Starwisp.

The core:

Solaria's body is made up of two tiny ball-shaped semi-hollow super-conductor cores that spin at incredible speeds. Around them, a fine crystal lattice is formed into complex webbed structures resembling that of neurons in a brain surround the cores giving the creature minimum physical structure. These details however are hidden from the naked eye due to a large mass of plasma held together by perfectly balanced and complex magnetic fields that cancel each other out beyond the surface of her body creating an incredibly dense ball of plasma of which the plasma itself is considered a major component of the creature's actual body.

The body:

Solaria's plasma body is mostly white but has wisps of colour that slowly swirl around of violet, blue, purple, and a bit of green and yellow. The colours shift in hue rapidly seemingly with purpose whenever Solaria's expression changes, in which only those who have been around her for a while eventually learn to identify what complex combinations of colours mean. The outer edges of her glow also bounce up and down with her voice when she speaks giving visual cue when talking.

Solaria doesnt appear to have any kind of traditional body parts. To even give the impression she is looking in someone's direction, Solaria concentrates a slightly more solid-looking chunk of white plasma towards the side of her body she is looking, almost appearing to be leaning towards them in the crystal shell.

Even without the shell, Solaria has a field just above the surface of her plasma that pushes against anything too close, the power of which ramps up the closer the object gets, like the effect one feels when pushing two magnets of the same pole towards each other. This effect is strong enough to prevent casual attempts of creatures touching her incredibly hot plasma body, deflect rain and snow, and even push water away making a bubble at very shallow depths. If one were to attempt to touch Solaria, they would feel an electrical tingling sensation push against their hand. A person could technically pick up Solaria's plasma body by doing a scooping motion with both hands in which Solaria's body would naturally float above their hands by repulsion. Any attempt to grab however would just push Solaria and/or the person's hand away. An aggressive attempt to grab or puncture may cause moderate to severe burns, or even incineration if the person penetrates deep enough to touch the plasma within. This too will hurt the starwisp.

The outer-most plasma is cool-plasma starting around 11,000F (6,093C) and slowly increases in temperature closer towards the core in the centre. In the absolute middle of the core in an incredibly tiny space the plasma skyrockets to an insane temperature of 179,999,540F (99,999,726C) which is hotter than even the core of the sun in which particle fusion takes place. This is the primary energy source of the starwisp, making the creature a living fusion reactor. However, the actual usable energy output is limited as a large portion of the yield of energy is used to power the incredible electromagnetic forces that hold the starwisp's body together and allow it to move around.

The shell:

Just beyond her plasma body is typically a protective crystal shell completely encasing and protecting her body from the outside elements. The shell appears to be considered part of her body like an exoskeleton that she can disassemble and reassemble from its base rhombus diamond shaped facets at any time. Typically she only shifts a small number of facets out of the way if she needs to expose her plasma body for a task.

The shell is made mostly out of silicate (glass), and other trace elements. By itself the crystal material is translucent with a subtle iridescent effect. Solaria at will can create more of this material assuming the raw materials are available such as sand. This is normally to replace damaged facets of her shell but has been proven to have more practical uses in the glass and crystal work trade. (see paranormal ability: crystal crafting)

Beyond:

When needed, wispy white tendrils of light reach out from Solaria's body, even directly through her shell when manipulating large or heavy objects. The tendrils are often compared to looking like the tendrils of light found in plasma globes that skitter across the surface of the globe.

Tendrils appear to be insubstantial besides giving a slight electrical tingling sensation to those touching them. If something physically intercepts a tendril the far side of the tendril vanishes, dropping whatever was being manipulated. Solaria's tendrils have been seen to reach as far as 30 feet when focused, but normally only reach 15 feet.

To those with hyperspectral vision, can sense electrical and/or electromagnetic fields, or other special forms of vision, a second form of tendrils can be found. These tendrils that are invisible to the normal naked eye are countless and hair-thin, reaching out in all directions from Solaria's body. These tendrils like the larger visible versions skitter across all surfaces very quickly serving multiple purposes.

The main purpose, propulsion, these tendrils pull and push against surfaces giving the impression Solaria is floating but in reality, she is pushing off of the ground or grappling onto walls and other objects to hold her up. Her weight is so widely distributed that even snow isnt disturbed. However very fine dust may reveal strange patterns when Solaria passes over it. As such Solaria doesnt truly fly. Without anything nearby to climb Solaria cant fly any higher than 30 feet from the ground.

The second purpose is providing Solaria a sense of feel around herself, helping keep track of the physical world around herself.

The last purpose of these tendrils is that these are what create Solaria's telekinetic field. Allowing her to lift objects, orbit objects around herself, or orbit herself around other objects and people. The visible large tendrils are actually dense versions of these tendrils when they need to pack close together to lift an object with a small surface area or done intentionally for the benefit of others seeing where she is reaching. This also plays a major part in making Solaria's illusions appear to be solid. (see supernatural abilities: Holographic illusions)

Other Forms

See CS for all forms

History

Solaria has gained many titles over her long life, officially she is dubbed the Starwisp of Illusion due to her unique skill set and abilities. She's far from the only starwisp able to create illusionary effects, but she's one of the very best; especially since she can wield both light and dark effects together to create complete illusions with detailed contrasts and depth that normally require multiple starwisps working together to achieve.

Although Solaria is most known for her illusion abilities, among her species she's famous for an entirely different reason. She is a deviant and unpredictable in a generally good way. Solaria is the first member of the starwisp species to truly interact with organic life.

Long ago a young starwisp was lost and separated from its collective. Out of desperation and loneliness it looked for anything that even remotely resembled the electrical activity of another starwisp and made a wonderful mistake that forever changed the species. Out of pure chance it managed to establish a mental connection with a living creature. It took decades to decipher the strange signals as the wispling grew up alongside her organic companion learning utterly alien concepts to the starwisp collective. Vision, music, emotion, playing, remorse, ethics, touch, love, and much more. The wispling awakened by this new knowledge and understanding eventually named itself/herself Solaria.

Eventually, Solaria found her collective and naturally linked back up to the hive-mind. The things she shared shook the entire collective. Some call it the Great Awakening, others however deemed her corrupted and broke all connections to Solaria and any other starwisp that adopted her ideas causing the collective to split into the two that exist today, the Free and the Pure collectives.

Homeworld

Solaria comes from many, many, previous worlds having roamed the multiverse for multiple lifetimes having to adapt as the laws of each reality twist and modify her upon entry to follow the local rules of physics and metaphysics.

Her previous two realities was one that bordered another reality she seldom speaks of, and before that a reality named Eileadora, an unstable bubble of space and time that consisted of a large island that randomly travelled from reality to reality like a ship lost at sea in the multiverse.

Solaria';s true original reality is now far, far away across many spokes and wheels of universes. She is however not entirely alone, her collective split in two a long time ago over a dispute of the ways Solaria and other similar starwisps adapted and changed upon discovering organic life, adjusting to understand the world as people and creatures see it. This caused a significant divide in the race creating two separate collectives, The Free Starwisps and the Pure Starwisps. Solaria and the Free Starwisp collective explore the multiverse, however Solaria has her own additional objective pursing her soulmate that caused the original awaking event in the first place. Wherever Solaria goes, her collective tends to eventually follow one way or another.

Skills

Social chameleon

Despite Solaria's species originally being completely alien to things organic life considers normal such as emotions, language, body language, expression, culture, and much more, Solaria in her long life around humans and other creatures learned a great deal of these sort of things. To better fit into a group Solaria adjusts her mindset to align better with those around her, as such people may find Solaria's personality moulds to those around her to a degree. Solaria has personally experienced many emotions and feelings other starwisps have not and many cannot understand making her often appear strange and erratic to the rest of her species, yet some are taking after her ways.

Crystal crafting

Using her natural ability as a starwisp, Solaria can manufacture items made out of glass or crystal so long as she has the raw materials and sufficient energy available. Unlike a traditional glass blower, Solaria can effectively 3D print any shape she can imagine using a combination of her TK field. She has practised and honed this skill to make practical items ranging from dishware, to jewellery, to simple weapons.

Acting, performance, and trickery

Using her power of creating holographic illusions Solaria is well practised in fundamental acting, performing, and slight of hand tricks. She makes full use of her illusions to both entertain friends and fool enemies.

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Combat

Mind games and tricks

Solaria isn't much of a fighter, but if she's stuck having to go against a foe she's not helpless. Solaria is skilled in the arts of getting into her foe's mind, tricking people, and messing with expectations. Coupled with her profound ability to create illusions and unusual physiology, Solaria might not be able to directly harm her foe, but can keep them on their back foot and disorient them long enough to escape or get help. If she needs to, she can fight dirty by blinding her foe, luring them into traps, tripping them, and exploiting weaknesses. Her agile movements and fast speed allow her to whittle down her opponent while avoiding attacks until they're too exhausted or bruised to fight any longer, if their mind doesn't break first from her tricks.

Average Staff/Quarterstaff training

Solaria has average training in the use of a staff as a weapon. Her training is focused around disabling or wearing down her target rather than mortally wounding them. She's good at performing trip and disarming attacks with targeted swift and repetitive strikes while avoiding or blocking until her foe can no longer fight.

Powers

See CS for powers

Starwisps - What are they?

Starwisps are plasma-silicon based lifeforms. Besides the crystal shell some starwisps wear, the rest of their solid body isn't visible to the naked eye, having a small hollow spinning super-conductor sphere in the centre and a crystal lattice providing basic brain-like structures inside. The vast majority of the mass of the starwisp however is purely plasma which is just as much part of their body as anything else.

Due to the unique nature of their physiology, the absolute centre of their superconductor core generates temperatures reaching millions of degrees allowing atomic fusion to occur being the primary power source of their bodies making the creatures living fusion reactors the same way actual stars function.

That coupled with the creatures being born the sun itself in their home reality, the creatures were given the name 'Starwisp' after becoming known by other creatures in the multiverse.

Starwisps range from appearing borderline mindless animals, to strange alien intelligences, to creatures that behave and act like fully intelligent people. All shaped on their experiences, the number of starwisps in the area, and exposure to non-starwisp creatures.

Starwisps have profound ability to adapt, especially when in large groups where they can share their minds with each other vastly increasing their overall intelligence as a group. Starwisps in large groups can 'mutate' each other in careful ways to accomplish new tasks but avoid changing themselves too much unless the survival of the collective is at stake.

Starwisps by nature are very passive and are either friendly towards other creatures or utterly indifferent depending on the individual starwisp's experience with other creatures. Starwisps as a species never experienced a 'survival of the fittest', as such they have no instincts to hunt, chase, or eat. They are however incredibly protective of the collective and will put themselves in harms way if it betters the survival chance of the collective as a whole.

Killing a starwisp is incredibly dangerous. If the resulting explosion doesn't kill you, the wrath of starwisps in the general area can be terrifying. Whenever a starwisp dies, large portions of its memories are scooped up by other starwisps and incorporated into themselves, resulting in those starwisps having an almost first-hand experience of the death the fallen starwisp.

Starwisps - Species origin

Starwisps are an Earthly species from an alternate reality in which their Earth has already experienced its place in the universe as if it were between year 8 to 9 billion. This excessively distant future is after the event around year 4.5 billion, the sun finally consumed the last of its hydrogen and expanded into a red giant star, swallowing up Mercury in the process (Venus would have already fallen into the sun millions of years prior.) Earth barely escaped getting swallowed up itself from its orbit, but the planet was utterly ravaged turning into a molten hellscape where no life remains.

At the 8 billion year mark the sun has shrunk down to a white dwarf star roughly the same size as the Earth itself. The sun during it's collapse slowly drew the Earth in with it into a close orbit. The Earth cooled down but no longer resembled what it once did.

The Earth at this point had become tidally locked, one side always facing the sun, the other always in total darkness. Life in most Earthly worlds wouldn't be able to breathe the new atmosphere, and water of this Earth was replaced with ammonia.

*See this wonderfully articulated video of Earth's far future by Hybrid Librarian

With the close proximity to the white dwarf sun, and its weak magnetosphere, plasma rain from the sun was a regular occurrence which eventually sparked the new dawn of life on the world. With silicon and nitrogen being the most available building blocks of life, the first proto-starwisps were born. Creatures that are part plasma, part silicon, born from the sun itself.

Left alone for millions of years the race slowly evolved and improved itself. Those that worked together survived, and as such co-evolution became the cornerstone for life in this version of Earth. These creatures became starwisps which formed into a hives, and hives into collectives, all acting as a super-organism made up of otherwise individual creatures.

Starwisp Lifecycle

The lifecycle of starwisps is very different from typical biological life. A typical starwisp might not ever truly experience death in the same way normal life does unless it is very unlucky.

The Start:

A wispling when born starts off roughly %50-60 the size of an adult starwisp. Wisplings like any newborns are a bit naive and confused, yet contain a large wealth of knowledge already having all the tools needed to survive, cooperate, and grow.

Although a wispling would prefer to grow up close to other starwisps in a hive, they are capable of surviving by themselves or in small groups.

Wisplings created by mated adult starwisps have attributes and abilities from their parents, but wisplings created by a Gaia (see below) starwisp are typically only born with the basic set of instincts and imprinted basic knowledge of the collective. Wisplings born from a Gaia starwisp are often dubbed 'drones' since they are a mostly blank canvas. However, any drone can easily grow and develop into a full fledged starwisp.

Reproduction (Drones):

Drones can be created by a special class of starwisp called a Gaia Starwisp. These are very rare, very huge starwisps found only in large collectives. Gaia Starwisps are able to create drone wisplings using their ample resources and teach them basic knowledge. This new starwisp is a true starwisp but does not have anything more than the basic starwisp mind and does not end the life of the Gaia Starwisp like it does others. (see next section)
Because of this ability, and the fact Gaia Starwisps are massively bigger than other starwisps, they often get called Queens by other races drawing the comparison to queen bees.

Reproduction (Normal Starwisps):

-Courting: When normal adult starwisps are ready, they may decide to seek out one or more partner that is deemed compatible. Starwisps have complex and confusing rules as to what one starwisp deems compatible to another just as strange as love is in the organic world.

-Synchronization: Once two or more starwisps decide they wish to mate they spend long periods of time in close proximity to each other doing everything together. They will frequently exchange small pieces of themselves with their mates and synchronize habits and behaviours. During this time their crystal lattices restructure in preparation for the first major phase, fusion.

-Fusion/Coalescence: Fusion occurs when two or more starwisps fuse themselves together. It's a careful but smooth process as the two or more starwisps press against each other and merge, almost resembling two stars colliding in slow motion. Once combined they become a single over-sized starwisp with multiple cores spinning inside. This new starwisp initially is still the same two or more original wisps, but over time their traits and personalities combine together becoming a new individual. This process can take anywhere from days to many years. These type of starwisps are called coalescence starwisps.

-Budding: When a coalescence starwisp has completed its fusion stage completely, it's ready to reproduce. Using it's two or more cores, their body begins to construct additional cores inside of its body depending on how much mass and energy the coalesced starwisp has. Once the additional cores are ready the starwisp moves on to the last phase.

-Separation: With the additional cores ready, the cores being to move away from each other and the crystal lattice is delicately disassembled with some parts duplicated then reassembled around each of the cores. These cores continue to move away from each other until their fields become distinct and separate splitting off into newly born wisplings. None of the original parents remain, instead living on as their own children. Each wispling contains large portions of the fused mind and traits of the parents. As such, wisplings although having naive young minds and bodies, do possess knowledge and memories of the previous life of their parents. Because of this process starwisps remember their own lineage as distant memories as if they were their own.

Death:

To a starwisp death is a difficult to grasp subject as their lifecycle doesn't typically end, even by old age.

When a starwisp becomes too old, too injured, or killed, the starwisp sends out a SOS signal to the collective before they die. Once they die, a small explosion is caused from their core failing to hold in the fusion reactions happening inside their body. But not all is lost.

When starwisps detect one of their kind has died or is about to die, they rush in and collect the remains, incorporating the remains into themselves in a similar but rushed version of the fusion process. Parts of the memories and traits of the lost starwisp are inherited by the starwisps that collect the remains, and other portions of the fallen starwisp's mind is remembered by the hive they communicate with on a regular basis, becoming a living memory.

As such whenever a starwisp dies, they live on in the collective as part of it. The only true form of death a starwisp is afraid of is dying alone.

The Gaia Starwisp:

Only two of this rare type of starwisp are currently known of. These giant starwisps serve two major functions. As informational network operators allowing the collective to share knowledge, communicate, and utilize massive brainpower; and as a special sort of storehouse for plasma and resources important for survival of the collective. The Gaia Starwisp acts as the combined will of its collective like an avatar.

Gaia starwisps manage to maintain their huge size from their super-core made up of many, many, starwisp cores spinning around each other in complex electromagnetic orbits and the incredible amounts of energy available to them. Normally it should be impossible for a starwisp to get so large as they would hit critical mass and explode from overloading their core if they tried to grow to that size. A particular special event occurred allowing them to gain enough mass, energy, and cores in a short enough time to avoid exploding from the sheer size. A massive loss of life event.

Due to the nature of starwisps collecting the remains of their fallen and fusing it into themselves, at one point or another two different events occurred to cause such a massive loss of life, then in the scramble of starwisps collecting the pieces of the fallen, they gained so much mass in such a short period of time, a super coalescence starwisp was created, becoming a Gaia Starwisp.