Welcome to The Harlequin

The Harlequin is a sci-fi fantasy setting I came up with in highschool. I originally wrote it as sort of an edgy, sad story about some sci-fi crew being affected by some sort of disaster, then I figured I'd make it more of an Addams Family deal, and now I don't know what I'm going for. Eh, whatever.

The gist of it is that a spaceship got merged with like, yog sothoth or whatever out in space, and this had all sorts of conequences and everyone on board is presumed dead. This is not the case.

If I ever make up more characters for the crew, I might add them. Until then, this is all you're getting.


The spaceship itself, The Harlequin

It/Its, She/Her

The Harlequin is a spaceship. It's also an eldritch abomination. These things used to be two separate entities, but they're not anymore. I haven't decided why yet. It's also one of the only characters to have a name.

Since it's now also an eldritch creature in addition to being a spaceship, it's got all the cool stuff you get when that happens. I'm talking like,

Yes, all this and more can be found in your very own The Harlequin, of which there is only one, and it already belongs to someone!

Do you think it might have gone by another name before all this?


The Captain

They/Them, She/her

The captain of The Harlequin was actually the least affected by whatever went down here. Probably. She's a no-nonsense, highly-experienced space captain and strategist in their late-40s and also they're an orc.

They're skilled in diplomacy, strategy, leadsership (obviously), and show competence in ship-to-ship combat, but lack skill in hand-to-hand and unarmed combat. They're a little better with, say, ranged combat, but they're just better at fighting with spaceships than with knives and guns.

Personality-wise, the captain comes off as cold, strict, and professional, but never unkind and certainly not cruel. And of course, they have a hidden soft side and genuinely love and care for their crew. That's simply not optional with this kind of character.

In terms of appearance, the captain is a large-framed, green-skinned serious looking fellow. They wear their black hair short, parted slightly to the left. Their face shows some pretty clear signs of age, since they're in their late 40s.1 They "(don't) quite conform to the common beauty standards of today"2 They're most often seen in their official uniform provided by the organization they used to work for. Y'know, used to.

Before this disaster happened.


The Pilot

She/Her, They/Them

The Pilot was completely absorbed by the ship during the original incident. Now, she's returned to being separate from the ship. Physically. In all other respects, she's still part of The Harlequin. Because of this still-existing connection to the ship, the pilot has greater influence over it and the ability to communicate with it, in a sense. This goes both ways, The Harlequin itself influencing her as well.

The Pilot has become otherworldy as a result of her connection to The Harlequin, taking on some of its reality-warping, physics defying properties. Be it teleporting, selective intangibility, or just standing in one place looking creepy.

Speaking of looking, the pilot no longer resembles the person she used to be before the incident. Or really much of a person at all, besides shape. The Pilot is a void shaped like a person. A black, sparking silhouette rarely seen actually moving. When she is seen moving, she's pushing against reality around her, warping it.

It's not currently known how much of her is left, and how much of her is the ship's influence.


The Mechanic

She/Her

She Who Is On The Wing is the ship's mechanic, and technically she isn't a single person. She's a hivemind of little gremlins skittering around the ship. They work to keep The Harlequin in working order to the best of their ability, and also to protect their queen, a big, unmoving, not even remotely humanoid creature who creates the gremlins and is also part of the hivemind. She considers this to be her "main" body, while the gremlins are merely extensions of her. She agreed to join the crew and provide her gremlins as mechanics, in exchange for food, shelter, and protection on The Harlequin.

The gremlins themselves are small, furry creatures with sharp teeth and multiple sets of arms. While it would seem that they are born fully mature, every part of the hivemind except the queen is technically juvenile, with the queen being simply a "matured" gremlin. The juveniles are often with the queen, or in parts of the ship that would be difficult for the rest of the crew to access.

With the recent "changes" to the ship, repairs and upkeep have become more difficult, since the ship by nature no longer completely conforms who known physics. But She Who Is On The Wing manages. There are some parts of the ship she can't quite fix, but those are the parts that usually end up fixing themselves somehow.

It's unclear if the colonies of She Who Is On The Wing's species are typically hiveminds, or if this too is a change caused by The Harlequin's nature as an eldritch being.


The Doctor

Any

What passes for a doctor on The Harlequin is an old Mk. I MediDroid3 created by the company Magic.4

Since it came out, the rate as which new technology is created and old technology is improved has only increased. To keep up, the crew of The Harlequin had made countless modifications and upgrades to both the software and hardware, most parts having been replaced entirely. You probably couldn't pass it off as a Mk. I MediDroid anymore. Depending on your preferred conclusion to the Ship of Theseus thought experiment it might be an entirely different robot at this point. With all the changes in its behavior resulting from the clashing parts and altered programming, it certainly acts like it. Thankfully, it doesn't seem to suffer from any major bugs, and can still do its job just fine.

They've definitely violated its warranty, though.



Footnotes

  1. If this doesn't seem that old to you, that's because I first wrote this in highschool.
  2. Taken verbatim from the original document I made in highschool. I will not elaborate on what this means because I have no idea what the fuck I was going on about
  3. An extremely common brand of automated medic, not cleared to perform much more than first aid.
  4. A massive technology company with a monopoly on just about all consumer-grade sci-fi tech in this world. They're like Apple. This includes all the negatives that come to mind when you think of Apple products.

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