Ripken

"D'you need something?"

Ripken is a dead human miner, using his second chance at life to build outposts for weary travelers to safely rest. Though he can be elusive, his place of stay can be tracked by his absolutely massive pack of animals, consisting of 6 wolves, a donkey, and a horse.

Basic Info

 * Chaotic Good- Ripken basically just does what he wants, for the most part, following his own compass with an active resentment for anyone trying to tell him what to do.
 * Resistant to gifts. Doesn't like feeling pitied or indebted to people. Accepting gifts takes serious effort.
 * Has a rather finely-tuned sense of direction.
 * Ripken is light sensitive, and direct sunlight is painful to him (even with his eyes closed). Because of this, he usually goes around with his eyes closed, opening for brief intervals for navigation.
 * Currently MIA after being infected with sweetrot.

Appearance
The approximate height and width of a 2 block wall, it does not take any imagination to consider Ripken intimidating. He has green skin and pulled-back, mauve-colored hair over the right side of his head.

The left side of his head is mostly exposed skull, as are both his left and right jawline (sparing his chin). His left ear, similarly, is torn up, with only half of it still intact.

He has some notable scars, as well, a large one over his mouth and another large one spanning from his left knee up the side of his thigh that remains hidden beneath his clothing.

He rarely opens his eyes. When he does, however, they're a very dark brown.

Outfits
Ripken only really has one outfit, and that's the clothes he was buried in- a cornflower-blue t-shirt, plain gray workboots, and baggy purple pants (which he's stitched closed over his leg scar).

Despite the scar on his leg being healed and the corresponding slash to his pants being stitched up, he still wears tight bandages wound just above his knee as more of an accessory than anything else.

He's also rarely seen without his backpack or umbrella, both almost always on hand.

Personality
Ripken is, more than anything, unfailingly generous. He's always willing to lend a helping hand or work for the benefit of people in need (even and seemingly especially when they insist against the help).

However...Ripken can't be considered a people person.

He seems to have a very limited amount of energy for conversation by itself, and though his self-sacrificing tendencies can and do extend to people he doesn't like, it's still abundantly clear when there is someone he doesn't like. He very obviously appreciates having quiet time to himself, and can often disappear for weeks at a time working on a new outpost or mining.

Despite appreciating his time alone, however, he's friendly in his own way, and will rarely turn someone away. In fact, he may be prickly, but he's typically very even-tempered, if protective of his pride- he doesn't like to admit when he's wrong or needs help to the point where getting him to talk about a problem he's facing can feel like pulling teeth.

At the most extreme end of this, being reminded of his previous life and the events leading up to and surrounding his death have started a snowballing effect of denial and repression, leaving him scatterbrained and finding it difficult to even recall the names and faces of the people who investigated the area he used to live in with him.

Ripken is currently afflicted with sucrosis. Traits above may be amplified, diminished, or totally wiped. Section pending.

Current State of Life
Though Ripken calls himself a zombie, his current state of existence is closer to that of Frankenstein's monster. He was brought to life by lucky lightning strikes, he needs to eat and breathe and sleep as a living man might, and his body is no longer actively decomposing. Though still compelled to a carrion-eating diet as unawakened zombies are, in the absence of his usual diet the smell of rot doesn't usually hang around him.

Despite being closer to 'un' than 'dead', however, it still can't be said that Ripken is truly alive, and this shows best in the way his body handles wounds. He is capable of surviving and healing from wounds that would otherwise kill a normal human, with the most grievous of them sealed off at their edges and left as sensory dead zones (as can be seen with his exposed skull).

Being struck by lightning again serves as a boost to his energy and mental functions, and in addition to compulsively climbing up high during lightningstorms he's also in times of extreme stress been drawn to crafting lightning rods in preparation.

He is fully aware of these impulses, and tends to embrace them if he realizes he's been following them.

Strengths
Though dormant for quite a long time, Ripken has retained a fair bit of the strength he gained in life via days of swinging a heavy iron pick, and that strength maintains through his long periods of intense hyperfocus.

He's also fairly intelligent, if slow, and is very good at connecting dots and analyzing information given enough time to mull it over.

Being a miner, he is very passionate about mining itself, and can and will go long periods of time excavating tunnel after tunnel for seemingly no reason at all.

He is very good at working mindlessly, and has an ingrained instinct to keep places lit and keep his head on a swivel. Light is life, and in the absence of a mining partner he has to be sure to watch his own back.

Weaknesses
Being dead for a period has left Ripken with a sort of faint yet permanent senility that leaves his memories prone to scattering and his verbal and tonal filters very eroded. He will often pause for long periods of time before speaking to think, making conversations with him slightly nervewracking at best.

He has also almost completely lost his sense of taste, instinct driving him to consume only rotting flesh- it's not a hard and fast rule, he can still eat whatever he wants, but carrion is the only thing that really lets him feel full.

Ripken can't go out in direct sunlight, both because of his light sensitivity and because of his status as undead. He's forced to pretty much always have an umbrella on hand for shade, just in case.

Finally, Ripken has no emotional fluency, and he is stubborn as a mule. This makes social interactions agonizing. This is a weakness because it makes liking him very very very hard.

Backstory
Ripken doesn't remember much of it. In fact, he actively represses most of it, and refuses to dig more- either out of apathy or for fear of what he'll find he lost.

200 years ago, Trip Anholt was a miner living in the flower fields just outside of Ardeley. He had a roommate- Arden Monte -and a pet cat. He was a poet, as well, and despite his abrasiveness quickly became an important part of the town's very soul.

200 years ago, Trip Anholt died in the Ardeley mines after digging into an Ancient City. Arden, his mining partner, was forced to wait out the Warden and drag him out.

His body made it out, but...it was too late. The town was never the same after that, but he wasn't there to see it.

A good time later, lightning struck behind a husk in the flower meadows, dragging a zombie clawing up from its grave. Sword in hand, that zombie wandered, dragging itself mindlessly through what it had no mind with which to consider unfamiliar.

It endured, as some zombies do, managing to avoid the sunlight for long enough to make its way into the shade of the jungle and beyond.

...And there, in the plains by spawn, the zombie was struck again. Wounds sealed over, lungs again filled and emptied, and electricity coursed through a mind that had long since laid dormant.

There, what was once Trip Anholt was brought back to life.

This was, perhaps predictably, very disorienting for him- and so, he set right away to doing what was familiar, beginning to wander and collect and try to make sense of his situation.

From the mangled carvings on his diamond sword, he put together a new name- Ripken.

And, soon as he could manage, he began to write.

Arc 1
[Basic summary of notable events from the roleplay thus far.]

Azalea
Azalea was the first person Ripken really spoke to after regaining consciousness, and he is very protective of him. Ripken cares for him a great deal.

Cedric
Ostensibly, Ripken and Cedric are courting- or, rather, Cedric is attempting to court Ripken, and despite not knowing what to feel about it Ripken is reciprocating.

Ripken's feelings about Cedric are complicated, even without the sweetrot currently affecting his mental state.

He does not have the tools to properly unpack them.

Shrub
Shrub is yet another person that Ripken feels personally protective of, despite the fox's sometimes blunt nature and refusal to refer to Ripken by name. He doesn't let on, of course, but he would do a great deal to help Shrub.

Sinclair
Sinclair is...a shaky subject with Ripken, and outwardly it's very unclear how he feels about them. He does, however, make it a point to provide materials for Sinclair whenever he can, and despite not being a huge fan of organized business has taken it upon himself to organize Sinclair's storage room whenever given the opportunity.

This is, of course, in full spite of the violence that has happened between them in the past.

Haunter
Annoying. So annoying. No hard feelings, though, even if Ripken has no qualms about slugging him when he goes invisible. In his eyes, Haunter is harmless.

Lambert
Ripken has no strong opinions about Lambert. He likes him well enough, enjoys his company, enjoys the ability to just sit in silence with him, but that's about it.

He respects his carpentry.

Pixie-Stick
Pixie-Stick acts like a lost and confused kid in the same breath as it tears holes in stone foundation. It's childlike in a way that is genuinely disarming, and pitiful in a way that would normally tug at Ripken's heartstrings.

There's one catch, though.

Ripken loathes children.

(But Pixie is stubborn. It just needs an in, and it can make him forget he'd ever complained in the first place.)

Trivia

 * Ripken's associated hex code is #877eff.
 * Ripken was originally designed as part of a trio, and was originally much more laidback and sociable than he is now.
 * He loooves fishing. Fishing fanatic. MILF.
 * The measurements I put into Pehkui for Ripken are base 1.06 and width 1.01. This leaves him at just about 2 blocks tall.
 * He has a toyhou.se profile here!