Ekrith

Ekrith is a character in The Glorious Championship. They were introduced to the battle at the beginning of round seven.

Species
An individual Afu is actually not an individual; any given Afu is a collection of tiny lifeforms, connected by a hive mind and led by a queen: the vaguely-hominid bodies seen by most are actually something of a living hive, a biological construct operated by the tiny beings inside it. Their "body" can be best described as being a roughly-cylindrical tripedal mound of matter of a consistency between flesh and wood. Their legs are stiltlike and awkward, their arms are stumpy and end in claws, and their head and face are both nonexistent; instead, about five sixths of the way up their body, there is a red, glassy plate of chitin embedded into their flesh. This plate contains the queen, who in addition to producing drones to sustain the colony has a number of sensory organs that her subjects lack or have stunted versions of; she communicates this information and directs the colony's movements and activities. Even the queen herself, however, is largely unintelligent: any Afu component on its own acts solely on instinct and is largely helpless; only when they are together and communicate do emergent intelligences become apparent.

Due to their unusual neural structure, which is actually composed of thousands of Afu drones specialized for data storage and communication, Afu have a natural knack for psionics. Even an untrained Afu will probably have a power or two. Their many-in-one nature also gives them unparalleled reflexes and speed of thought, but requires much more food and air than a normal being of their size (an average hive stands between five and six feet tall).

Weapons/Abilities
Afus in general, which means Ekrith in patricular, breathe a heavy atmosphere of primarily-carbon-dioxide laced with a number of larger organic molecules. To most species, it is extremely toxic; to Ekrith, a "normal" nitrox environment would be near-instantly lethal. A quirk of the transition – whether it was through Crumb's desire to perpetuate the battle for causality's sake, Gaurinn unconsciously providing for the need, or Ekrith's own psionic or now temporal abilities – has surrounded them constantly with a bubble of self-replenishing Zharusian atmosphere. It extends about a foot away from them in every direction; what would happen if they were submerged or buried remains to be seen.

More saliently, or at least more intentionally, Ekrith is a telepath. It's an ability that comes naturally to them, but not one they ever studied or developed. Indeed, they are inexpert and their mental powers are generally out of their control. They can hear others' surface thoughts if they try, and even project messages with some effort; it's theoretically possible that they could attempt more dramatic things like psyche-scrambling or mind control, in the same way that it is theoretically possible someone with functioning legs could attempt to walk a tightrope. They are more likely to hurt themself than anything else. They become stressed and overwhelmed in large groups, literally having a hard time hearing themselves think; they tend to view their telepathy as a handicap more than a skill, although it does have its uses.

Their job is as an automation engineer. They have experience with a lot of technology, especially of the mechanical persuasion, and are from the spacefuture. Their education and employment gives them significant aptitude towards physics and engineering, as well as a working knowledge of workplace safety and a head for problem-solving. How they will leverage this in a battle to the death would be of great interest to a grandmaster who had actually selected them for the battle. They are also carrying the tools of their trade, largely by coincidence.

Description
Ekrith is fairly typical as Afus go. Look at the picture, imagine some clothes on it, you're close enough. They were on shift at the shipyard when they were taken for the battle, and are thus dressed in a heavy canvas jumpsuit with a toolbelt, a toolbox, and protective gloves and mask-helmet. To a human (or most species), they are extremely bizarre-looking, and actively disgusting up close (few sapient beings like being around someone whose skin literally crawls); to another Afu, they are very plain.

They preferred solitude from a young age, having never developed the psychic shielding most telepaths maintain naturally and thus finding company to be stressful and disquieting. This gave them a tendency to run towards shy and withdrawn, and rather forced them to become good at things that don't require much interaction with living things. They like the small creature comforts of life, they like to curl up in a hot bath and a book after a long shift, and they like the company of other telepaths since they're usually polite enough to keep their thoughts to themselves. If Ekrith were a human, they would probably be a librarian and have cats and do crossword puzzles and just generally be the sort of little old person one thinks of as sweet and feels vaguely sorry for without quite knowing why.

Biography
Ekrith grew up, went to school, got a job, developed modestly successful new processes and tools for various manufacturing fields, and settled into their life of quietude and machines. They have never been off their home planet of Zharu and never had any desire to be; they have only rarely seen any alien species, since few can survive without environmental protection and even fewer have any particular reason to go to Zharu or interact with its inhabitants. Ekrith is mildly xenophobic, having heard all their life that most aliens look down on Afu as primitive or unpleasant or just plain weird. Little of real note happened in their life until fate or something more powerful than it decided they were to become a time traveler and fight to the death far removed from their life and home. It is a frightening time to be Ekrith.

And they were just about to go on break, too.