User:Mahmoth

Reality

 * Mah is Thomas, a recently graduated Masters student of the Dutch Golden Age (yeah, noone's ever heard of it) at University College London, where he also lives. He is a geek of one of the higher orders, enjoys comics, both web and solid (DC/Marvel, Image, Hellboy + occasional obscurities) and is a recovering Warcrack addict. He adores folk, bluegrass and various other forms of music and subsists largely on sandwiches, apple juice and mints, as well as a slow but steady diet of gorgeous arts and internet. He is occasionally thoroughly weird, but this tends to help.

Fiction

 * Mah is Mahmoth (full name unpronounceable without access to subsonics, certain smells and a functioning trunk), a member of the genus Mammuthus Colombi Sapiens, a four meter tall, remarkably hirsute, quadrupedal sentient pachyderm of a wandering bent. He spends the majority of his time in the air, running trades and courier services in craft whose cockpits have been heavily modified to accomodate his bulk and lack of multiple maniple limbs. He comes from a proud tradition of pachyderms, stretching back into the first glimmerings of the world's dawn.


 * It has been theorised that at some point in the past, a more or less conscious choice was made among the elephantine groupings as to whether or not to develop in the direction of two or four-leggedness. The former eventually developed into the lightly incongruous elephant-headed bipeds one occasionally sees in streets, hangers and taverns, whereas the latter stayed as they were, though they retained the spark of awareness. For most of that time, they've lived apart from the rest of the world, generally only called upon in certain occasions to lend themselves to great works of engineering, when their controlled strength bought them demand and adulation. After the Shattering, they were among the hardest workers in the reconstruction, and are still used as manual labour on some islands.


 * Mah himself was, for much of his early life, as much of a worker as the rest of his labyrinthine extended family, either working the great treadmills that pulled bigger planes up from the lower reaches to the airport on the peaks, or hauling goods up and down the ramps to the hangars at the top of Jordan. There, he'd gaze out across the distance to scattered Steppe, Leng, and the distant towers of Cidade. After years of scraping, saving and searching, he was able to find a clapped-out CR-4P and a mechanic mad enough to try to modify one to fit a mammoth. Thus, the Thrown Tusk was born. From then on, he scarcely spent a moment on the ground, only truly happy when floating across the waves, trunk wrapped lazily around the steering column, eyes on the skies. While he rarely regrets his choice of air over soil, it has come at a cost. Mah is one of what is known among his kind as the Skybound; those seen as being quite mad for having quit the safety of soil for the uncertainty of the air and its scentless, deafening traversers. As such, he is effectively banished from his home caverns, unable to truly rejoin the clans of home, though he's still kin to them, or raise young with any grounded. Still, he holds some hope for the future and whatever other Skybound it might bring into his view. Until then, he is content to dream and hold himself aloft.


 * When necessary, however, he does return to ground, for food, drink and company. In these cases, though, he tends to keep quiet, preferring to watch the antics of the miniature bipeds that far outnumber his kind. He is largely stoic, despite a thick streak of cynicism that needs to be forcibly restrained from mocking most of what goes on around him.


 * Mah has, of late, taken up part of the post of bartender for the R&P tavern, which suits him as it allows him to rest and laze while his plane is repaired and checked, while his general neutrality, unwillingness to sit quietly by in disruptions and unlikeliness at getting involved with the (to him) small and uninteresting females that frequent the place have made him somewhat popular in the region.

More recently, Mahmoth has taken up the post of Governor of Kadath, where his meandering presence causes minimal astonishment in a people used to the changes in mood, temperature, weight and other fundamental characteristics of the universe caused by walking under or working with the rings. Either that or they're all stoned out of their minds on 'nip. In the last months before the second Great Storm, Mah was also instrumental in setting up a foundation on Grottopolis, dedicated to collecting, recording, transcribing and preserving the diverse and ancient music of all the different Skylands.

Crafts (Pre-Storm)

 * Thrown Tusk (CR-4P; Bored Out Engine)
 * Stampeding Bull (Kittyhawk; Efficiency modded, small external hold, polished engine, hull streamlined)
 * Zinda (Seahawk; Redesigned wings (2nd Class), guns enlarged to .25, then .50, additional fuel tank (Medium), )
 * Num-Yabisc (Hades; Double refit, first for Trade, then for Performance, guns loaded with explosive, armour-piercing shells, redesigned wings (1st Class), and various minor tweakings and improvements)

Crew (Pre-storm)

 * Alexandra Ivanov ("Zan"), Navigator of the Eighth Ascendant
 * Smooth Sashay ("Smoothie"), Trader, Distilled section
 * Beautiful Cobbler ("Beauty"), Mechanic, First Class, Second Star