Rowan

Social Connections

Goddard - childhood best friend. misses him but would never admit it
Henri & his scrappers - reliable traders, tolerable
Hinata & Diesel - nuisance children and painful reminders he never wanted to meet

Species - Aeronauts

Aeronauts are a small, secluded "race" of airplane-inspired cyborgs designed to ease the strain on a new generation rebuilding itself after the apocalypse (although they're unaware of most of this). They run by a strict code and are forbidden from leaving their world above the clouds while they sweep the skies. Aeronaut culture is fairly divergent from most humans' focus on creativity and discovery, and is instead rooted in work ethic and individual purpose serving a whole.

The 'nauts are easily 75% mechanical over a human core, modified near-immediately after birth with fairly unique cybernetics based upon their own genetic code. Like any human, no one is exactly the same and they express a wide variance that doesn't fit neatly into categories, though they are sorted into Stunt, Jet, and Carrier classes for convenience. Their overall design is consistent, however, and most notably they all have retractable wings & tails and "gauntlets" on their arms that allow them to filter pollutants out of the air and metabolize them.

World Context

The world ended around 300 years ago, give or take, depending on where you'd like to calculate the end of the end to be. Civilization slowly crumbled under a brutal barrage of seemingly every possible apocalypse (natural disasters, polluted resources, world war,) over the course of fifty-some-odd years and now it's a lawless wasteland like the good ole days. No human culture is truly back on its feet, but the wasteland is coming back to life: nature is rebounding en force and many established settlements and factions are doing well for themselves. Plenty of people still roam as survivor crews living off the land, but overall, the memory of the apocalypse itself has passed and a new norm has settled in.

This isn't to say everything is perfect - remnants of war efforts and catastrophic pollution have still left their calling cards, among other things. Rogue robots wander and kill at their leisure and the sky is blanketed in thick, permanent cloud cover. Assholes run rampant in the form of bandits, militia, and dystopian cityfolk continuing the old ways - it's still called "the wasteland" for a reason. But the world and humanity are healing, slowly but surely.

The primary narrative of Ash & Dust happens out in the wasteland with a misfit band of "scrappers:" folks that scavenge technological scrap and will hunt robots, drones, and even cyborgs to break them down for parts. They're not self-sustaining and trade their catches with local settlements on the regular. Like any rogueish wasteland bands, they value their freedom and members often come and go as they please while finding their calling.

Stats
> Tall, but normally so. six foot? slightly under?

Miscellany
> the tip of his braid is naturally colored; his hair is long enough it's gone silver growing out

Abilities
> none of note yet

||  Favorite Art  ||  Primary Ref  ||

Primary Notes
> fuzzy old man eyebrows
> facial scar cuts through his face panels as if it glanced off

> realistically, tries to stay covered up; but like. yknow. do what you want for the drama

Other Stuff
> tall but lean; doesn't cut an imposing figure anymore
> gauntlets are optional for story reasons
> colors are due to change

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