Hi! I go by Duo, and today I'll be talking about Railkou - The avali on the right in the above picture.
Now, there's two different lores here - Real Life Lore and In-universe Lore. To start with the IRL stuff: Railkou was an accident. There was a very long period of time in which I did know I was a furry, but I had no sona, and honestly- had never felt the need to have one. (...even if I was a bit insecure about it.) I had downloaded a bunch of mods for starbound, including Avali, since I just thought they looked neat.
And then a few days later I realized "...I have a fursona now." That's genuinely how it happened! There was no conscious input. Railkou just kind of slotted in to me perfectly and never left. (You can tell it was accidental because there isn't any green in the design). This happened back in mid-late 2016, so slightly under 8 years now!
Notably Railkou's design has changed over time. Mostly subtly- slightly different marking patterns, for example. I don't believe you can map the patterns to anything in starbound directly, though you certainly can map the clothes. (And, as a note- Railkou uses the "female" preset in the character creator. This is because "all of my characters are girls, also none of them are".)
now, in-universe lore: Railkou is me. It is an ex-human who acquired an avali body, in this case being a highly advanced artifical one. The entire ensemble there is made out of various materials that are adept at mimicking say, organic flesh and feathers, but are not. There's a lot of notes to the inorganic body! for example:
- What appears to be eyes are actually screens, and do not function as eyes. Railkou instead sees through many of the small cameras in it's body; By default, this translates to 360 degree vision centered on the head, but if required, one may see railkou using a hand to see. This also means the "eyes" never blink or change shape in any way.
- It runs off of a very high capacity battery, and can translate any form of energy into something usable - Kinetic, Thermal, Solar, even Caloric. Though, notably, the "stomach" is inert when not in use, and can be used to store things.
- Does not naturally have a libido or any holes past the head; or as I say it, "Isn't horny." Notably, due to having an electronic link to the brain, can simulate feelings and emotions just fine, if wanting to.
- Can change size. Default is 3 feet tall, even, though can go as large as 6 feet tall, as seen above. Visually is "like a transformer, but instead of becoming a car, just gets bigger. Don't ask about where the extra volume is coming from." Also notably, can manipulate it's own weight.
- Generates a skin-height barrier and is covered in cleaning nanobots... or something like that, I've never really hashed that down completely, beyond the net effect: Is essentially completely indestructible, and will not get dirty or anything. Dust just falls off, liquids do not stick, etc.
- The tail is fake. There is a projector at the base which creates it, and can toggle between Off, Intangible, and Tangible. Yes, the gold rings on the tail are part of the projection.
Plus, the starbound stuff is canon to Railkou's abilities, if not the actual lore. Which is to say - the stats of the adminmode spawned equipment that has too many zeroes? having an inventory? Access to specific weapons? all real. And this seques neatly into the fact that while Railkou is my sona, Railkou is also an OC, with the main difference being the timeframe. Railkou the OC is millenia old, and exists within the Unnamed Spacefuture Setting, piloting it's ship around the cosmos and just kind of... messing around. Enjoying life. seeing sights. And occasionally curbstomping some assholes who really need it.
Due to the insane capabilities, Railkou rarely needs more than it's hardlight constructs to fight, forming temporary swords as well as bows and arrows to fire from afar, with them disintegrating shortly after. This is essentially a sidearm for when more effort isn't deserved. A tier up is the Artist's Brush- yes, it's named that- which creates lines out of "ink" in the air which can be used to attack or restrain targets, such as by drawing a cage around them. Above that is Explosion, which is... the spell from Konosuba. and above that is Embistria, Railkou's signature weapon.
Embistria (originally named Skofnung; thank Fire Emblem Heroes for that), pictured right, is an adjustable segmented spear with a number of abilities, many stemming from the ability of it to be used to create and control additional copies of itself. This is the basis of Railkou's Ultimate Attack, Millenium Spear. - in which a veritable army of Embistria clones are created behind railkou, and then launched forward in a vicious onslaught of blades.
Slightly further ahead in canon is the fact that Railkou did just make a child- a Novali, named Comet, after one of Railkou's (that is to say, one of My) closest friends. It turns out you can just make a novali if you're experienced enough!




