Lore:Podperson
 Pod Person |
Denonyms: Pod Person, Pod People |
Pod Persons
The fruit of the commercial product "Replica Pods," Pod People are the synthesis of humanoid blood and postmodern cabbage. Fully sentient, with the Resonance and memories of the blood donor, these Plant People are well-suited to life in the limelight, in a literal sense. While the Replica Pod itself comes from modified cabbage, the end result can superficially resemble a hybrid of almost any bipedal humanoid and any photosynthetic plant. Pod People heal physical injuries when exposed to light, and rapidly wilt in the dark, to a deadly end. One, two paragraph BLUF. If you're only going to read one thing, read this. Expect your readers to read this and nothing else.
History
Pre-FTL (2100AD - 2150AD)
Originally sold as a body replacement solution, Replica Pod people were one of Humanity's first forays into post-mortality. The simplicity of combining a sample of blood into a conventionally-grown plant, alongside the potential to delay the harvest for numerous years, meant that interstellar colonization was neither expensive nor infeasible without Faster Than Light capabilities.
Humanity's Manifest Destiny reflex instigated a brief boom of mass colonization efforts: every corporation or backyard enthusiast who could afford the meager sum to craft a shelter capable of sustaining a plant would rent time on the neighborhood Mass Driver to catapult their personal homestead into the stars. Sloth and Capitalism go hand-in-hand, so the industry turned towards marketing homestead packages: Four Replica Pods of menial workers would be sent in your place inside a standard-issue Seed Vault, stocked with the cheapest finest sampling of Earth plants. With the directive to "Spread Life," these workers would do the hard work of terraforming "your" land into something glorious and habitable. In a century or two, when your family line finally arrives at "your" homestead, deed in hand, they will be settling in the lap of luxury.
As with all human capitalistic ventures, quality is only guaranteed so long as it can be enforced, and quantity is king. Thousands of these Colonial Gardens were launched from Earth during the early 2100s, fired at any moving body astronomers could be bribed to say had gravity and the ability to sustain an atmosphere. As a result, many Seed Vaults actually landed in invalid locations, if they landed at all, and many planets had dozens of competing Seed Vaults land on their surface, Lavaland and Freya included.
As with all commercial booms, as soon as a better product came to market, the original is cast to abscurity. Replica Pod seeds were seen as mostly inferior to later life-extending technologies, including Genemodding, Artificial Engram collection, and the disastrous direct Human-grown Cloning.
Post-FTL (2564AD)
The story of each Colonial Seed Vault is unique, from the body it landed on, to their first contact with the Galactic Community. Some followed the script perfectly: landed on a small planet, turned it into a human paradise, the correct humans landed there and took control over the paradise. Some landed on inhabited worlds and immediately had to contend with locals. Some were tragedies, doomed to a slow death on a planet incompatible with life, and some were comedies, landing next to existing human settlements in Sol. Most stories you want to tell with a Seed Vault can be told.
They don't really do much post-FTL. like their entire existence is waiting for others with FTL to find them. But uh... "Rumors have it of floating fungal pods that have subsumed derelict FTL-capable ships and, through some miracle, fixed them. No galactic presence of Pod People has emerged in any significant capacity, and yet the proliferation of Pod People itself imposes upon the cosmic politicksphere."
Culture
Pod People come from one of three sources, typically:
- An existing person. Typically, a modern spacer dies and chooses to be reborn via a Replica Pod. They contain both the Resonance and memories of that person, and thus likely retain their existing cultural ties and familial relations. The death might not always be accidental, and the rebirth might not always be immediately afterwards. Cautious persons might keep an imprinted Replica Pod seed as a contingency in case other undeath plans fall through.
- Random Chance. Sometimes a growing Replica Pod just happens to catch a stray Resonance engram and enough stray DNA to be able harvest itself into a fully-sapient individual, with no biological or mental ties to any person who came before.
- A Colonial Seed Vault, or descendant thereof. Pod Persons are by default sterile, so the mechanism by which the original four Primal Pod Persons produce additional Pod Persons is left as an exercise for the colonists themselves to resolve. Examples include: the launching company provided a number of blood samples to inject into subsequent harvests of Pod Persons. Mass harvests of Replica Pod plants to "force" random chance. Using the provided Biogenerator to print Monkeys, then mix their blood in ways to capture stray souls. Abnormal insterility, rendering pre-fertilized Replica Pod seeds that require no external blood or soul.
Strictly speaking, only the original four Primal Pod Persons have the compulsion to "Spread Life." How strongly they impose this directive upon their progeny is up to them.
As Pod People come from an impossibly diverse set of circumstances, their shared culture is based strictly off of innate impulses and shared sensations.
- The Calling: Plant People feel an innate compulsion to change their name to some sort of plant reference. Often as minor as tweaking their old Human name. Humans with an strong attachment to their human selves have been known to forego this, though it is seen as abhorrent and disrespectful to the renewed gift of life.
- The Tongue:
Sylvan is spoken natively by anyone made of Nature. The origins of the language are unknown, but as the tongue is instinctual, historians speculate as to a grand cosmic origin of all plant life. - The Light: Stemming from the strict physiological need for light, plant people like light. Plantfolk who work indoors or in space are known to bring their own sources of light. Lanterns, flashlights, glowshrooms, Etheral boyfriend...
Reaction
Roleplay hooks?
| Reasons to Like | Reasons to Hate |
|---|---|
| Been Podded before | Hate human products |
| Family member got podded, turned out OK | Family member got podded involuntarily |
| Shop at Whole Foods unironically | Liked Lavalands the way they were |
| Transhumanist | Hate all synthetic people |
| Lust | Goat. |
| Hate death-dodging "tricks". |
Why would you be a Pod Person?
- Killed on the job, liked the new body
- Transition because of ecological cost-saving collapse
- Descendant from a Primal Pod Person garden
- Grown by a company in-house for cheaper labor
- Tried to attack a Sylvan colony, got gunned down
Another Section
I really don't know what sections are worth having. Plantfolk aren't really both pre AND post-FTL cultures.
Making One
- come up with a plant pun name
- come up with a plant you want it to vaguely be based off of
- Open your character's Loadout, go to Misc, and pick Lantern or Flashlight. You can use the button to rename it if you want. Legally, this is optional.
- Are they from a Colonial Seed Vault? And they remember it? Congrats, either tie yourself to someone else's lore or make your own. Gonna make a separate document guiding you on writing your own. Or a collapsible?
Notable Members
- GreytideSkye (talk) 05:39, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
- The mythical "Mother Nature"
- Poison Ivy, Pamela Isley
- Swamp Thing
- Mushroom, Skate Legend.
Notable Events
- Death Blossom
- a name for the Colonial Seed Vault initiatives
- The Herbellion
Work in Progress: Footer subject to change at a moment's notice. Do not take a red link's presence, struck-through or otherwise, as confirmation (or denial) of their canonicity.
| Nova Sector Lore
| |
| Common Species | Humans, Tiziran, Unathi, Moths, Ethereals, Azulae, Slime Hybrids, Teshari, Synthetic Humanoids (and assorted robots), Pod Persons |
| Other Species | Genemodders (Felinids, Ice Walkers, Dwarf), Ashwalkers, Hemophages, Snailpersons, Ordoht (Formerly Skrell), Plasmamen, Flypeople, Vox (Primalis et al), Tajaran, Vulpkanin, Xenomorphic Hybrid, Rouges (Abductorkin), Miscellaneous Species |
| Nanotrasen | Nanotrasen, Central Command, Emergency Response Corps |
| External Groups | The Syndicate, Interdyne Pharmaceutics, DS-2, Cargo, The Spider Clan |
| Nova | The Nova Sector, Indecipheres, Freyja |
| Concepts | Bluespace, Plasma, Faster Than Light Travel, Resonance ("Souls"), Death |
| SolFed | SolFed, Earth in 2565, |
