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Description
And so at last, we come to her: the big one. If there is a main character to the Drake Hero universe overall, it is Traysi Davolchi. Traysi was born in the year 4941 on the floating Venusian colony city Cythera, the Solar System's second most precious gem after the homeworld itself. The planet Venus, despite its early reputation as a molten hellscape where robots go to die, turned out to be a closer twin to our homeworld than we'd realize, definitely better than Mars. We just had to look above the surface, into the atmosphere where conditions become nearly identical to Earth in terms of temperature and gravity many kilometers up. The atmosphere is still made of sulfur clouds and burning rain, but it's survivable with the equivalent of an advanced Earth firefighter suit, not an astronaut suit. And even still, they're working to change that. Venus is a playground for developing terraforming technology, and Traysi's own day job is sequestering greenhouse gasses bit by bit out of the sky with artificial photosynthesis in the hopes that, one day, man will be able to set foot on the actual surface of their planet.

But that's a project long in the works and far from completion. Traysi has other things to worry about, like her family life. Traysi is the aunt to a little girl named Anea. Anea's mother is Traysi's sister, Irkalla, who was never any good at raising kids. By which I mean child protective services had to step in. Irkalla currently resides in the Mercurial mining colonies working paycheck to paycheck to feed her vices. Traysi is an inexperienced guardian, but she loves that kid with all her heart, and does her best to undo the trauma left by her mother. Traysi's own parents weren't the greatest on the books, so she feels a responsibility to make up for it with the next generation. Which is unfortunate, because in 4973, something happened… something that would rip her family apart again and threaten every single human being in the Solar System. An ancient and dangerous force arises from its slumber, and it will decimate every great nation and distant tribe everywhere from the Mercurial Dyson project to wartorn Mars. Traysi finds herself smack in the middle of it all, desperate to save her family as this conspiracy threatens to kill us all.

But that's a story for another day…

Design notes, I struggled for the longest time to come up with a design for Traysi. I was extremely picky about it, which sucks because futuristic stuff already isn't my forte. I ended up settling on a sort of sci-fi firefighter vibe, leaning into some statistics I've read on colonizing Venusian skies only requiring firefighter level equipment. I'm still definitely not very satisfied with it. Of all my characters, Traysi is the most due for a redesign. Especially the helmet. I tried basing it off of those inflating airbag bike helmets, but I couldn't quite get the composition to cooperate. I do like the basic silhouette of her outfit, but don't be surprised if I overhaul the specific details some day. I have drawn her full body without the helmet activated and it does make it look better, so I may just need to redesign that element. I do already have a few ideas, but that's for future me to wrestle with. Her face and hair though I'm quite happy with. I remember I took inspiration from a scientific journal article on what the average American would phenotypically look like in 2050 or something like that. The model they produced was very pretty, dark skinned with curly dirty blonde hair (which is honestly just one of my favorite looks. I crush hard on blonde dark-skinned girls, it's such a pretty combo).

The little starfish squid thing on her back is her biomechanical companion whom I've just called "Buddy" as a placeholder in my notes for so long that now that's just his official name. His species are basically like the pigeons of Venus. They're everywhere, they make little derpy noises, and they eat human scraps. He has the personality of a cartoon dog and understands basic human speech, but can only vaguely approximate mimicry of the sounds to communicate. He's basically just a really bad parrot. But he's Traysi's loyal pet that follows her through thick and thin, and they need all the friends they can get. He's got some basic hot wiring capabilities, but he usually just finds his way into crevices and locates a way forwards for the both of them from the inside, as like I said with Arke, all my robots in the future are squishy robots.

That's all I'm willing to elaborate on for now. I realize I've hyped her up to all hell, but hers is the last and most important story in the narrative. It is the conclusion of all the other main characters' storylines, and I simply haven't built my way up to that yet. One day, I will get there, and I will share. But for now, at least now you have the context behind every character I put in that big drawing.

…Almost, but that's a story for a completely different day.

Description
And so at last, we come to her: the big one. If there is a main character to the Drake Hero universe overall, it is Traysi Davolchi. Traysi was born in the year 4941 on the floating Venusian colony city Cythera, the Solar System's second most precious gem after the homeworld itself. The planet Venus, despite its early reputation as a molten hellscape where robots go to die, turned out to be a closer twin to our homeworld than we'd realize, definitely better than Mars. We just had to look above the surface, into the atmosphere where conditions become nearly identical to Earth in terms of temperature and gravity many kilometers up. The atmosphere is still made of sulfur clouds and burning rain, but it's survivable with the equivalent of an advanced Earth firefighter suit, not an astronaut suit. And even still, they're working to change that. Venus is a playground for developing terraforming technology, and Traysi's own day job is sequestering greenhouse gasses bit by bit out of the sky with artificial photosynthesis in the hopes that, one day, man will be able to set foot on the actual surface of their planet.

But that's a project long in the works and far from completion. Traysi has other things to worry about, like her family life. Traysi is the aunt to a little girl named Anea. Anea's mother is Traysi's sister, Irkalla, who was never any good at raising kids. By which I mean child protective services had to step in. Irkalla currently resides in the Mercurial mining colonies working paycheck to paycheck to feed her vices. Traysi is an inexperienced guardian, but she loves that kid with all her heart, and does her best to undo the trauma left by her mother. Traysi's own parents weren't the greatest on the books, so she feels a responsibility to make up for it with the next generation. Which is unfortunate, because in 4973, something happened… something that would rip her family apart again and threaten every single human being in the Solar System. An ancient and dangerous force arises from its slumber, and it will decimate every great nation and distant tribe everywhere from the Mercurial Dyson project to wartorn Mars. Traysi finds herself smack in the middle of it all, desperate to save her family as this conspiracy threatens to kill us all.

But that's a story for another day…

Design notes, I struggled for the longest time to come up with a design for Traysi. I was extremely picky about it, which sucks because futuristic stuff already isn't my forte. I ended up settling on a sort of sci-fi firefighter vibe, leaning into some statistics I've read on colonizing Venusian skies only requiring firefighter level equipment. I'm still definitely not very satisfied with it. Of all my characters, Traysi is the most due for a redesign. Especially the helmet. I tried basing it off of those inflating airbag bike helmets, but I couldn't quite get the composition to cooperate. I do like the basic silhouette of her outfit, but don't be surprised if I overhaul the specific details some day. I have drawn her full body without the helmet activated and it does make it look better, so I may just need to redesign that element. I do already have a few ideas, but that's for future me to wrestle with. Her face and hair though I'm quite happy with. I remember I took inspiration from a scientific journal article on what the average American would phenotypically look like in 2050 or something like that. The model they produced was very pretty, dark skinned with curly dirty blonde hair (which is honestly just one of my favorite looks. I crush hard on blonde dark-skinned girls, it's such a pretty combo).

The little starfish squid thing on her back is her biomechanical companion whom I've just called "Buddy" as a placeholder in my notes for so long that now that's just his official name. His species are basically like the pigeons of Venus. They're everywhere, they make little derpy noises, and they eat human scraps. He has the personality of a cartoon dog and understands basic human speech, but can only vaguely approximate mimicry of the sounds to communicate. He's basically just a really bad parrot. But he's Traysi's loyal pet that follows her through thick and thin, and they need all the friends they can get. He's got some basic hot wiring capabilities, but he usually just finds his way into crevices and locates a way forwards for the both of them from the inside, as like I said with Arke, all my robots in the future are squishy robots.

That's all I'm willing to elaborate on for now. I realize I've hyped her up to all hell, but hers is the last and most important story in the narrative. It is the conclusion of all the other main characters' storylines, and I simply haven't built my way up to that yet. One day, I will get there, and I will share. But for now, at least now you have the context behind every character I put in that big drawing.

…Almost, but that's a story for a completely different day.