Armin Den-Skradare

Name (& pronunciation): Armin Den-Skadare/ Armin the Tailor (Ar men Dean Skay dar aie)

Date of Birth (& age): 22

Place of Birth: Varvaren

Gender:Male

Species/Racial Origin: Varvare (Spiderkin/Weaver)

Social Class/Community Status: Upper middle/Tailor

Language: Vavare, Galactic common

Family/Friends/Pets/Etc: Berit (Bay rit) and Trygve (Trig vee) Den-Skadare – Coworkers/companions/sister and cousin.

Height: 5'9”

Weight: ??

Hair: Purple, curly, half shaved.

Eyes: Black.

Limb Dexterity: Naturally ambidextrous, Varare don't tend to have a hand preference.

Detailed Physical Description: Armin is a green skinned Vavare. Like all his race, he's a spidertaur, with a large spider body from the waist down and a humanoid upper torso. He has 2 arms and 6 vestigial limbs, 2 of which end in pincers. His spider body has 8 long legs. His skin is a pale green colour with dark spots along his limbs and red at the very ends of each leg and each horn.

His face is heart shaped, with 6 large black eyes, a sharp humanoid nose and full lips. Lower fangs jut from his mouth like small tusks, the upper fangs visible when he speaks. He doesn't have any other teeth, instead like most of his species, he has ridges running along his jaw instead. His ears are pointed and serrated along the lobes. He wears medium sized gauges in each ear lobe and has “spiderbite” piercings under his lip.
He has white and darker green markings across his face in a sort of tribal “mask” pattern. Similar markings on his chin and a vividly red oval shaped marking in the middle of his forehead. Two long horns come from his temples, they're the same colour as the rest of his exoskeleton, a pale green with red tips.
His hair is coarse and vividly purple, falling in tight curls down one side of his head and shaved short on the other.

Like all Vavare, Armin requires a high concentration of oxygen to breathe. This presents a problem offworld in places where other alien races live together. Breathing apparatus are required, a mask that covers the mouth and nose and oxygen tanks worn on their back. There are speakers and translators installed into their masks so they can still communicate verbally.

Typical Clothing/Equipment: Vavare wear spidersilk clothing, though their own attire is usually a lot simpler and less ostentatious than much of the items they create for others. Armin in no exception, he dresses smartly, but not overtly richly. Like all of his race, he opts for long tunic-like garments that cover his pedipalps and will often wear a sort of draped fabric over his spider-like abdomen as well. Sometimes he will wear jewellery, usually simple bracelets but generally Armin's attire is semi-formal and beautifully tailored.

Personality/Attitude: Armin is polite and professional. He loves to talk to people, mostly about themselves and is a brilliant listener. He's a little bit too extroverted, he'll happily talk someone's ear off and forget he's supposed to be selling them stuff. He also loves making people happy, and hasn't got great business sense. His eagerness to please means he's the sort of guy who'll cut you crazy deals just to see the smile on your face. His generosity is a source of constant frustration to his far more business minded cousin Trygve.

Like most Varvare, he's patient and usually fairly calm, slow to anger and not fond of conflict. He finds people's fear of him bemusing and slightly frustrating more than anything else, it's difficult to offend a Varvare.  Like most of his race, he's eager to learn all he can about the culture and expectations of other races to better his interactions with them. He finds etiquette fascinating, particularly how differently the various races of the universe regard things like biological functions and natural processes.
He will always try to adjust his behaviors to all he knows of the culture that surrounds him.

Skills/Talents: Sewing, weaving, tailoring, drawing (Armin designs clothes as well as makes them, so he has to be able to draw up ideas)

Strengths:

Hard exoskeleton – this gives him a degree of natural armor, though it's not impenetrable and in fact puncturing it would be extremely bad for him.

Regeneration – Spiderkin like real spiders can regenerate lost limbs but only by molting, and it can take several molts before the limb is fully functional again.

Weaknesses: Without his breathing apparatus, he can't breathe. There's not enough oxygen in the air of most ships/stations/planets, so he'll rapidly collapse and probably die if his oxygen tanks are damaged, depleted or his mask is removed for whatever reason.

Fears: Fire, vavare have a natural fear of fire. It's extremely volatile in their high oxygen home environment. Slavers. Birds, particularly large hawks and large lizards. Guns, bullets puncture... it makes a terrible mess and very rapid death.

Hobbies/Interests: Sewing, weaving, designing clothing... though this is more his actual job so... yeah.

Philosophy of Life: Life is good, I want to continue living.

Attitude Toward Death: Death is bad. I don't want to die.

Religion/Beliefs: Like most Vavare, Armin believes in a great weaver. Wherever he goes, he carries a small symbol of her to pray to.

Fetishes/Strange Behaviors: Because Armin is used to being in an environment where he needs to have a mask over his face, he's gotten into the habit of exaggerated body language in place of the facial expressions that are concealed. He bows his head a lot.
He also refers to people in gender neutral terms whenever he can, opting for “friend” rather than “sir” or “miss” purely because most of the time he's not actually totally sure of the gender of the person he's talking to. He also can have trouble telling members of the same race apart, though he's too polite to admit this. He remembers names, he's just not so good at assigning those names to a specific face. All humanoids kinda look the same to his eye, it's confusing.

Most Instructive/Painful/Memorable Experience: Being captured by slavers and sold to a plantation.

Sexual Preference/Experience/Values: Vavare are always bisexual, they mate for procreation but do engage in sexual acts for pleasure as well. These two things are considered quite different acts though, one is recreation, the other is reproduction. The process is slightly different due to their biology (they're spiders, not mammals so they don't have the same parts) They have polygamous relationships with multiple males and females, sex is used to strengthen bonds and pass time and there's no real stigma about same sex intercourse or sleeping with your relatives, so long as you don't procreate with them it's all fine. Vavare enjoy sex, but in a different way to most other species. The males lack the ability to climax, so while it's enjoyable, it's about on par with a really nice head massage or something. It's considered an intimate act of trust and affection, but their attitudes toward the process is rather alien to other races. They don't really discuss it with non vavare unless directly asked, Armin is no exception. It's generally not considered polite or appropriate to discuss openly in most cultures. He finds other races' prudishness baffling and a little amusing, but he's too polite to go against what's considered appropriate in their culture to force his own openness on them.

Education/Special Training: He's a trained tailor and weaver. Most Vavare can weave, but only a few learn to sew with that woven material.

Place/Type of Residence:

Occupation: Tailor

Place of Work:

Work-related Skills: Tailor and weaver stuff.

Past Occupations: None

Memberships: Weavers guild

Berit and Trygve

Notes:

Armin and the other tailors/weavers were captured by slavers 9 years ago when Armin was around 13. They were there for 3 years before they were freed.
He lost a leg in the escape.

He, Berit and Trygve remained on Defiant for 6 years before leaving.

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Armin worked on a factory ship during his apprenticeship, he was already an accomplished tailor before he came of age.
The factory ships run on trade missions, sewing and weaving while they travel to save time. They were on a trade route that should have only taken them away for 6 months.
Slavers had other ideas.

Armin's younger siblings weren't with them when they were captured, they were on the homeworld being cared for by family.
their father Haluard was also back on the homeworld.

Orjan and Arendt were on the ship and ended up on the plantation. Orjan was killed because he struggled to make quota and couldn't work fast enough.

Fia, her older children and all three of her males were also captured. the younger children were, like Majken's, being cared for at home.