Giant Armoured Serpentid Roleplay Guide

The giant armoured serpentids as a species have a unique mentality that can make roleplaying them a challenge. Presented here is some some theory-crafting about how their mentality and background will affect their behaviour on the SEV Torch.

Crisis Situations and Antagonists

As an Antagonist

• Only roundstart antagonist is Changeling.
• If Changeling, try to act not like a GAS – you might use normal speech instead of GAS's weird speech etc.
• Can be converted to other antagonist like Cultist, Mutineer, Loyalist, etc.
• Remember, your problem solving skills are still terrible as a Cultist, Mutineer, or Loyalist, so lean on your teammates for help knowing what to do.
• As a Cultist, it's reasonable that your deity is telling you ideas and teaching you to do stuff.
• Remember to still roleplay stuff; you're strong but try not to overdo it.
• Anything that changes your mental state or abilities frees you up to do more stuff.

As a Non-Antag

• You'd understand dangerous stuff and be able to respond.
• Talk to leadership for what to do and follow directions.
• You know about the escape pods and how to get to them.
• You know that you're space-proof, but only for a short amount of time before you suffocate.
• Intervening in antagonist situations is okay as long as you have a good IC reason for it (but typically less than a human would intervene).
• Expect to be asked by staff about why you attacked or whatever so make sure you have a good IC reason.
• You should never try to kill someone as a non-antagonist, ever. If you fight, then try to disable your opponent or crush their foot instead of killing.
• Needing to disable someone like that should happen exceedingly rarely, so don't make a habit of it or look for times to do so.
• You can be somewhat preemptive as you know that someone is dangerous and that you can stop the danger to save you or a crewmember or whatever.
• Be reasonable and don't abuse it.

Skills and Knowlege

Job Skills and Knowlege

Job skills are skills that your character knows specifically for the job they do. They should be the skills that are required to do the job and nothing extra. Here's a basic list of stuff they would know and not know but there could be additional things beyond these that they know. Be reasonable with it.

A Level Jobs

Damage Control Technician

• All basic construction skills
• No engine skills
• Basic atmospheric skills (pump to fill voided area etc.)
• Using and constructing APC and Air Alarms
• Area restoration (fixing after an explosion, fixing abandoned brig etc.)

Roboticist

• All exosuit building
• All cyborg hardware
• Ability to fix cyberlimbs (mechanical arms etc)
• Potentially IPC work
• No surgery on humans including limb attachment and brain removal
• Minimal stuff with robotic and AI laws

Chemist

• Ability to make every chemical on the Guide to Medicine page
• Know which basics to make and in what amounts
• All the psyche chemicals like Citalopram
• Replacing chemistry cartridges
• No idea what the chemicals do, just what their names are and how to make them
• If someone says "make something to help with radiation" will not work they have to say the name
• Nothing about bandaging or any other medical anything

Paramedic/EMT

• Bandaging wounds and burns
• Stopping bleeding
• How and when to use auto-injectors
• About the importance of the person consenting to being carried around etc. (if unconscious, you can carry them)
• Entering vented areas safely (inflatables etc.)
• Using splints
• Using emergency medication (Tramadol, Dexalin Plus, Dylovene, etc.)
• When to put someone in cryo
• When to use dialysis or stomach pumping
• Using the handheld medical scanner
• Not the advanced scanner
• Very basic triage in the field (not in the medical bay)
• Using the suit sensors to find people
• Pulling out things pinning them so they can be recovered
• What to tell the real doctors based on the handheld scan (they have radiation and organ failure and I gave Dylovene and... and... and...)

B Level Jobs

Steward

• Ability to make every food on the Guide to Cooking page
• Ability to use the deep fryer and other cookers
• Ability to plant and maintain all of the nutritional plants
• Ability to make all the drinks
• Can do custom drinks
• Taught extra on how to interact with humans

Cargo

• Use the shuttle console
• Move, label, and send crates
• Operate the garbage room and the conveyers

C Level Jobs

Janitor

• Use all cleaning things in the janitor cupboard
• Use the garbage room

General Skills and Knowlege

Everyone

• Use crowbars to open powerless doors
• Know alert levels mean danger
• Using lightswitches
• Planting specifically and exclusively cabbages
• Adding water to hydro trays with the blue light and nutrient from the vendor when the yellow light
• Harvesting all plants
• Going to medical when injured
• Requesting things verbally from cargo
• Using stasis bags

A Level

• Full literacy, messages and PDA and everything

B Level

• Potentially some basic literacy
• At least enough to do the job

C Level

• No literacy
• Can't read or write

Age

GAS learn better when young, so the age of your character will determine their job availability and temperament. The younger they are, the more literate they'll tend to be and they usually work better with humans.

10 - 18 Level

• Potentially all jobs
• Tend towards A level

19 - 27

• Only B or C jobs
• Tend towards B level

28 - 40

• C jobs only

Facility

On their home planet of Tau-Wilo, Xynergy has set up a series of research bases to train and acclimatise GAS, making them ready for work among humans. There is a large main base where the grading is done before each GAS is sent out on contract. The training process happens in one of several satellite facilities spread out from the main facility. Typically, the closer the facility is to the flagship facility, the better temperament the GAS that come out of it. When making your character, consider the facility they came from as a part of their background.

You can make up a facility and what goes on there, as well as the specific strategies used. You can also make up workers that worked with you if you'd like or anything like that. Just be reasonable and keep in mind the distance from the flagship thing, and remember that if the facility wasn't producing GAS that passed grading, it would be revised until it did.

Speech

The speech pattern is one of the most important things to work on. It could take some practice to write in the correct style. Please don't hesitate to message the current maintainer for giant armoured serpentids if you would like someone to see how well you're doing.

When humans communicate, they split thought s and ideas down using commas and periods. Giant armoured serpentids aren't very good at this They will split each thought or piece of information into a small segment, stringing them together using conjunctions like *and* *but* and *or*.

For example, where a human might say: Today I went to store to buy eggs, however, it was closed since it was so hot. I went home empty-handed.

A giant armoured serpentid might say: Today I went to store to buy eggs but it was closed since it was so hot so I went home empty-handed.

They both communicate the same information, but the giant armoured serpentid sounds almost like it's rambling. The sentence structure is technically correct grammatically but stylistically it does poorly.

Emote Ideas

Giant armoured serpentids use several different methods to display emotions and move in strange ways. Try to use these things as emotes frequently and keeping them in mind. If you think of more, feel free to add them to this list. You are expected to emote stuff as a part of playing GAS and it is one of the roleplaying standards for them. Keep this in mind when applying.

• When interested in something they will often flick their antennae forewards to point at whatever has caught their attention
• They can't move their eyes so they turn their heads to look at everything
• No eyelids
• No lungs so no sighing or clearing throat or coughing
• Weird three-fingered hands where their fingers wrap around things in different directions to pick them up, like prehensile tails
• Can't sit on chairs, will coil around them
• Armour makes scraping sound on walls and floor
• Could click or grind mandibles to self while thinking
• Describe the methodical way you do the tasks associated with your job
• Snap jaws in direction of things you want to intimidate
• Glare at things annoying you
• Switch arms as a warning
• Loom over people
• Give detail about your skin changing colour
• Eyeshields flicking up or down
• Trying to clean eyes if flashed or otherwise blinded
• Hissing or buzzing at things that get too close
• Flinching etc. at a lit lighter
• Emote ignoring things too if you're ignoring someone, to show them OOCly you're still engaged and it's an IC ignoring not an OOC one

Sounds

Other than the grinding and clicking sounds they can make with their jaws, giant armoured serpentids have two other main ways of making sounds. The first way is by expelling air out of their spiracles, which produces a hissing sound. The other way that they make sounds is with their wings. They can vibrate them against their body to make both a clicking sound and a droning buzz. This sound clip is longer than the sounds they usually make.

These are sounds they usually use when angry or when trying to get someone or something to leave them alone. They may also buzz when annoyed, nervous, or uncomfortable. They will often direct these sounds, including snapping their jaws, at the thing that's causing the annoyance or discomfort. Doing so towards humans is considered a sign of poor temperament during grading, and humans are encouraged to give them some space in the event it occurs.

Learning and Memory

So, you can learn perfectly by watching alone. That said, there are some hard limits to this. For this next section, when talking about perfect learning etc., this article refers to normal behaviours, not useless behaviours. Those are a whole other ball game.

First, you can only learn from watching your own species. Watching a human do something isn't going to be the least bit helpful. If a human wants to teach you to do something you don't know at all, they're going to have to grab your arms and help move you to the right spot. You don't have the right neurons to learn from watching humans.

Your learning is perfect, but your memory is limited. The behaviours you know, you remember perfectly. There is no "yes I think that I'm able to do this thing". You know it or you don't: binary. After observing a new behaviour you have about an hour to decide if you're going to keep it. Also, if you don't practice your behaviours, you lose them in a couple of days. Since there's only so much time to practice, you know a very specialised skillset. You're not going to know how to set up an engine because you saw someone do it once a week ago.

In the case where you are caught out not knowing something, you're not going to panic or try something out. You lack the intellectual creativity that humans have for problem-solving. There's no "that didn't work, let's think of what to do next". If you, ICly, don't know what to do, go ask someone else for help. You seek leadership and direction from those who are more capable.

Remember too that you have great interpersonal skills. Socially, you remember a great deal and are quite in tune with both your emotions and those of humans. These social connections aren't behaviours and so are processed differently in your brain, and aren't subject to the same restrictions as your memory for behaviours.

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