Skipper

Skipper

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Basic Information
Aliases	Joules Azimuth (full name), Joulie (by close family and friends)
Species	Lepteran
Pronouns	They/them, she/her (by most people); he/him (by some Carcid friends)
Physical Information
Age	Early–mid 20s
Height	4'1"
Birthday	April 29
Date of Death	N/A
Unique Features	Yellow fuzz, stocky build, striped clubbed antennae, markings resembling eyelashes, small bottle of unknown magic
Biographical Information
Homeworld	Chitara
Group Affiliation	None
Status	Alive
Magic/Abilities	Navigation, sailing, cartography, swordfighting, stealth
Relationships
Kin	Nilla Carmine (best friend), other Carcid friends, Lepteran family
Marital	Single
Out-of-Character Information
Minecraft Username	damself1y
Discord Username	wisardry

"The paths laid out before you aren't the only ones. You can carve out your own, tread it bravely, immortalize it in ink. You could even draw in a cool sea monster." — Joules "Skipper" Azimuth

Joules “Skipper” Azimuth is a Lepteran adventurer, sailor, and aspiring pirate of Chitara’s subterranean waters. Prior to being selected for the Pathfinding Initiative, Skipper was seen as simply a rebellious kid who left home to dodge responsibility and live primarily among Carcids. However, after discovering a small, mysterious source of light magic in an underwater cave (and nearly dying in the process), Skipper was elected by her community to become a Pathfinder, in the hopes that she would continue to be drawn to the light. Perhaps she could discover what extinguished Chitara's sun… or find a way to replace it.

Appearance

At only 4'1" tall, Skipper is quite small even for a Lepteran. Their build is round yet stocky, with broad shoulders and a square jaw, and they are strong for their size from years of practicing swordsmanship.

Skipper's body is mostly covered in short, pale yellow fuzz, with the majority around her neck and chest. She keeps her hair buzzed, leaving just a bit of extra fluff on her head. She has two primary eyes (for regular vision), as well as two simple eyes (or ocelli; for sensing light) near the base of her antennae. Both her antennae and eyelash-shaped markings (three above each primary eye) are striped shades of black, brown, yellow, and orange.

Skipper typically wears somewhat impractical clothes which they think look "pirate-y," including loose button-down shirts and blouses, flowy pants and long skirts, and boots. They almost always wear a long, heavy leather coat with a cut resembling lepidopteran wings. Ever since discovering it, they always wear their light magic in a small jar on a leather cord around their neck for safe-keeping (and also because it looks like a cool talisman, although Skipper won't admit that).

Personality

Skipper is typically quiet, aloof, and somewhat serious. She takes charge naturally but is rarely demanding or assertive, and she is comfortable being a reserved team player when necessary. However, she hates taking orders from others without proper reasoning or explanation and can therefore sometimes question others too much.

Despite not sharing their family's scientific inclinations, Skipper always acts as they deem most “logical” and navigates the world according to their own inner rationale, although their actions might not always seem particularly objective or fact-based to outsiders, especially other Lepterans.

Even when Skipper presents herself as gruff and terse, she has a boyish, playful side, which she often tries and fails to disguise. She is extremely enthusiastic and dorky about swashbuckling stories and map-making, and she spends a lot of her free time essentially LARPing as a pirate.

Skipper easily become fixated on and singularly dedicated to the task at hand, but she can stray from it almost as easily, switching to another pressing task without much deliberation. Skipper (not-so-) secretly loves adventuring, taking risks, and having fun, using the vague goal of "discovery" as a justification for sometimes unnecessary exploration and experimentation. Ultimately, though, she is well-intentioned and hardworking yet sometimes irresponsible and headstrong.

History

Early Life

Skipper, born Joules Azimuth, was raised in a lower-middle class area toward what most Chitarans consider the very bottom of Humidus, bordering on Tenebrae. She grew up in a community of primarily Lepterans, most of them working for small science corporations and factories nearby. Her family was quite large, consisting of both biological Azimuths and other local Lepterans who participated more readily in her communal upbringing than higher-class Lepterans might. If asked, Skipper would credit most of her upbringing to her older cousins (namely Hesperia Azimuth) and family friends (namely Ciel Gossamer) as her own biological parents were often too busy to look after her and her siblings.

Despite Skipper's close physical proximity to Carcids while growing up, their family rarely interacted with Carcid locals outside of work or other obligations, still holding onto intergenerational fears about Carcids' size in comparison to their own as very small Lepterans; they often masked this with contempt for intellectual laziness and otherwise didn't speak much about it. Because of this, Skipper grew up feeling amicable yet distant toward Carcids and often approached them with hesitance.

As Skipper grew up, they became somewhat of a black sheep in the family and local community, primarily due to teenage angst and a mischievous streak. They would sneak out on increasingly lengthy excursions around the Hive, returning only to care for (and play with) the younger children. While it was customary in their family for young adults to stay home and support the community, Skipper found it almost impossible to stay chained to her neighborhood and soon decided to set out on her own.

Piracy

Having no specific career prospects or skills, Skipper struggled to find her way into a guild and petulantly refused to take up any cause she didn't wholeheartedly love. As such, she soon found herself following the same path she'd seen play out many times growing up in Humidus: cheating her way to the top.

For several months, Skipper stole to survive, using her small stature and lifelong love of swashbuckling stories to her advantage. She began by pick-pocketing wealthy Chitarans in Lumos and eventually fell in with a small group of Carcid thieves (Marina, Ducky, and Powder) who became like family to her. Eventually, Skipper returned with them to their home in Tenebrae, a small fishing and foraging community carved out along the upper edges of a flooded cave system, where they taught her to sail (as she's not particularly suited to swimming) and rob vacation boats and small merchant vessels (not actual full ships, since they won't fit under most of the Hive's low cavern ceilings).

This is also where Skipper met Nilla Carmine, an older Chitaran woman who soon became their best friend and role model and gave them the nickname "Skipper," as she had also been the one to nickname several of the other local Carcids.

During this time, Skipper occupies much of their time sailing a tiny wooden boat (for which they earned their nickname) around the nearby subterranean lakes and mapping out new pathways through the caverns, searching for uncharted areas where civilization has not yet bored cities and mineshafts through the stone. However, Skipper’s real dream is to sail the seas of Chitara—but without a sun, the Raid has rendered the surface and its waters are uninhabitable and borderline untraversable.

A Strange Light

Just a few weeks prior to the launch of the Pathfinding Initiative, while (ill-advisedly) exploring an uncharted subterranean river too narrow even for Carcids to swim through, a glint caught Skipper’s eye from deep below the surface of the water: a tiny pocket of light trapped beneath the substrate, small but bright enough to hurt their sensitive eyes. As the cave walls narrowed further, even Skipper’s tiny boat could not fit. And although it might not seem particularly rational to an outsider, to Skipper, thinking of their friends and family and freedom, diving into the water was the most logical decision they'd ever made.

The next thing Skipper remembered was waking with severe decompression sickness and a fistful of blinding light. They soon bottled the strange substance, keeping it close to the chest (literally) in a vial around their neck, although they gave a small portion to their Lepteran family, who were initially repelled by the light, for analysis.

Arriving on Locus Astra WIP

Events leading right up to the start of the SMP that explains who they are now and why they are that way.

You can add as many subsections as you want.

Extras WIP

Trivia

• Skipper and all of their NPC/backstory family and friends are based on real arthropod species, many of which are native to Florida.
  • Skipper is primarily based on the Arogos skipper, an endangered lepidopteran most common in central Florida.
  • Hesperia Azimuth is named after a genus of skippers by the same name, Hesperia, also called the banded skippers.
  • Ciel Gossamer is based on the Miami blue, a critically endangered butterfly endemic to Miami, Florida.
  • Nilla Carmine is based on the giant Spanish isopod and named after the cochineal bug.
  • Marina is based on several species of isopod which inhabit the littoral zone.
  • Ducky is based on the rubber ducky isopod, an isopod hobbyist morph.
  • Powder is based on the powder orange isopod, an isopod hobbyist morph.