Exchange of Realities

You’ve been hearing me riff on the creation of nonhumans for the last week or so, but I’ve been doing a lot of telling and not too much showing. To make up for this, let me introduce you to my friend Lysha (a larger version can be found here).

Lysha is the very model of a cryptic god of prophecy. It—and yes, I consider Lysha to be an “it”, since you can’t really give a gender to a walking tangle of varicolored threads—walks among its peers, its shape changing with every step as its component threads shift. It is unique; there is and will be only one Lysha. (Given the difficulties they have understanding it as it is, many consider this a blessing.) This does, unfortunately, mean that there are very few individuals who truly understand Lysha, as its “language” is almost completely unique. As a result, those who don’t innately understand but make an effort to try are raised in its esteem, and those who succeed are likely to be befriended.

Lysha was originally designed around a purpose, so everything it does fits thematically with that. This includes such little details as its inability to coexist with the fortunes from fortune cookies (it can eat the cookie, but it involuntarily pulverizes the fortune as soon as the cookie is within reach). As a prophecy god, it is physically incapable of saying much of anything straightforwardly; if it tries, it finds itself knotting up and tangling. The results are questions like “Where is your shadow?” when it wishes to speak to someone’s familiar; having to introduce itself either by a five-line spelling riddle or by playing Twenty Questions with its domain; and in general massive quantities of allusions, hints, and rewordings that make conversations with it quite possibly the slowest but most amusing sorts of communication in my world.

Due to its unique physiology, Lysha cannot utilize standard body language. This does not, however, prevent it from being highly expressive. Sometimes its moods come across by the way in which its threads move; when it is distressed, for instance, they twist and twine together rather like a human wringing her hands. Sometimes it is color; when it is embarrassed, its red and pink threads come to the surface, changing its apparent hue in that direction. The most fun examples are when it does both; it’s been known to blueshift and disengage into a puddle when depressed. And then there was the time when someone said something that sent it into a panic:

Most of Lysha’s smaller strands seem to flatten around and behind its central one, leaving it looking rather more like a wrapped wireframe–or like it just got caught in a very strong wind–and almost all of them go about three shades of their respective colors from white.

Along with this, Lysha has an age-old perspective and a more than decent knowledge of current events, making it a veritable fountain of knowledge…. for those who can understand a word it’s saying. Which can be difficult; I’ve found that even Lysha-riddles that seem easy to me can stymie their audience for hours.

The end result is in no way human, but still comes across as sympathetic, intriguing, and interesting; as a result, Lysha is one of my more popular NPCs.