Character art by BattleFerrets

Notes For Commissioned Artists

Attention to detail gets you everywhere with me! <3

• IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS ABOUT THE ANATOMY, PLEASE ASK
• 'exoskeleton' is flexible enough to allow full range of movement (see additional notes for details of the anatomy, or ask)
• proboscis is made of similar structure as the exoskeleton, but is softer everywhere but the tip. Can be made rigid when she pumps fluid into the spongy flesh inside
• Proboscis folds up into a flap in her head when not in use and to allow for speech, the last segment acting as a tongue
• Raptorial limbs come out of the plate on her back that also holds her wings
• Eyes constantly see in all directions, but her current focus is emphasized by the larger, darker spot. She has eyelids.
• Will probably add more to this as common errors become apparent :x

Personality

• If given free reign, Whisper has two modes: work and play. During work mode she is easy to mistake for a sociopath. She is very blunt and rude with a tendency to hurt people, both physically and emotionally, without showing remorse or compassion. She can be highly focused on more than one task at a time. In play mode, there really isn't a drastic difference in her bluntness, but she tends to be slightly more socially acceptable. She loves dancing. She enjoys playing pranks on people, but her pranks can sometimes lead to serious injury or emotional disasters. She is addicted to crack-shipping. She also has a tendency to act unpredictably. Switching between these two modes is seamless and instantaneous.

Loves

1. Working
2. Crack ships
3. Assassination
4. Pranks
5. Cosplay
6. Observing individuals
7. Waiting in ambush
8. Tech
9. Cybergoth attire
10. Dancing
11. Domination
12. Sniper Rifles

Likes

1. Comics, anime, movies
2. Conventions
3. Shipping and fanfics in general
4. Sounding
5. Hacking
6. PvP MMOs and other games
7. Individuals who are easy to manipulate
8. Extortion
9. Kidnapping and torture
10. Night clubs (Specifically Technomercy)
11. One night stands

Dislikes

1. Ants
2. Individuals getting upset with her
3. Shyness
4. Obstinate individuals
5. Having to chase prey
6. Individuals watching her eat
7. Food or individuals that take too long to liquefy
8. Individuals that attempt to control her
9. Praise to gain favor

Hates

1. Canceled kill orders
2. Resolving things peacefully
3. Order
4. Queen ants
5. Targets that get away
6. Having to clean up a job gone bad
7. Having to kill rare or beautiful specimens (but she does so without hesitation)
8. Big ones that don't pay attention to where they are walking
9. Communication errors

Character Information

The following story contains violence, potentially disturbing imagery, and some other stuff. I probably forgot some of the things I meant to put in this story, but there was... lots and lots of pieces I wanted to make sure I touched upon. So I may end up adding some more paragraphs later. :B This character has been in my head a lot longer than many of the current cast of Esoteria, so she's had a lot of build-up...

Whisper is dangerous. One of the few remaining children of the woman that saved Gabriela Rivera, she survived for very good reasons. As a fresh nymph, Whisper was stolen from the pod of eggs that housed her by a colony of antmorphs. Ants are not known to be particularly friendly, nor adoptive, so Whisper's early life was difficult. The queen of the colony was a brutal and merciless dictator that originally purged her own mother and two other established queens in the area. But what did this have to do with Whisper? Nothing really. The queen just got bored and decided to create an arena of sorts for her entertainment. For a few months, Whisper knew only combat and survival. She was pitted against remnants of the other colonies, other larger arthropods she had captured, and even a few of the queen's prized fighters.

She never lost.

The queen ant got bored of the idea of Whisper always winning and decided she needed to be crippled. When they tried, it was the end of the colony. Whisper had become adept at killing, even when the odds were stacked against her. She could spit her venom and digestive acids a good distance, giving her the opportunity to thwart most of her assailants from afar. Whisper's colorations were also perfect for the colony's inner structures, and she blended in without much effort. Before long, the bloated, gigantic queen was writhing as she died, cursing Whisper's name.

With their queen dead and no fertile males or new queens born, the colony collapsed. Most of them had never thought for themselves, so they turned to the only who had. Whisper may not have had the pheromones that the queen did to give her order, but it was executed flawlessly. Looking around at all of them, full of disdain, she tucked her rostrum in her head and spoke one simple order in her strained, whisper of a voice: "kill yourselves."

Whisper watched them obey quietly, only moving to knock flying body parts or stumbling bodies out of the way. They were all gone within a few minutes, save for a few that could think beyond their queen. When the chaos settled, Whisper left. Only four months old and she was already responsible for effective genocide.

Despite her early months being rather traumatic for most, Whisper was unphased. When she emerged from the stinking anthill, she found her original egg nest and followed the chemical trail back to her mother. She was dead, as well as most of her siblings, but Gabriela Rivera, the same one that her mother rescued many years ago, was there to greet her and take her in.

For the first eight months, Gabby spent most of her time with the rapidly growing girl, teaching her as much as she could to make up for the lost months she was with the ants. Much to Gabby's surprise, Whisper not only learned faster than expected, but she was adapting rapidly to a more normal life. She'd never call her polite or a master of etiquette, but most solitary arthropods were no different.

Whisper was fascinated with, and excelled at, all things tech related. Gabby would often come home to find several things in pieces and repurposed or 'upgraded', usually with positive results, though there were a few accidents… She eventually got into the software side of technology as well, though her passion definitely remained with the gear.

Whisper started hacking after getting a taste of the chaos she could create while visiting the private security firm Gabby was working for at the time. She brought her in as a test to see how much progress she had made with social interactions and to let her see some of the tech and software they have. This was strictly against company policy, but Gabby was good friends with several people that turned a blind eye. One of which was a low level infotech that she convinced to show Whisper the ropes. Though when they saw Whisper, and not a young sloth, they seemed a bit confused.

Within two minutes of watching the infotech, Whisper shoved the human out of the way and called him stupid, then proceeded to show him how he could increase his efficiency by fifteen hundred percent. Unfortunately for all three of them, this efficiency increase was accurate, but accessed things that were way above poor Aubrey's paygrade. Whisper broke through several levels of encryption and pulled up the full security log and all footage and unredacted information from a hidden server that only three people in the world were supposed to even know existed.

Gabby knew. She wasn't supposed to but she did, and her little surreptitious experiment bore fruit. She downloaded a few choice files into a secret drive in her ornate bracelet before the alarms went off.

The next few hours were critical to their survival, but Gabby had it all planned out. Whisper would be her scapegoat. Gabby knew that they wouldn't do anything to Whisper other than try to hire her before the government could hook their claws into her. Aubrey was of little consequence, though he would get fired for breaking protocol. And Gabby, as Whisper's legal guardian, would be tolerated so they could exploit Whisper. All went according to plan. Whisper found out later that Gabby had done all of that on purpose and rather than feel used, she gained a lot of respect for her.

While Gabby was helping Aubrey find work in between things, she allowed Whisper to work for the security firm. Whisper figured out what Gabby was planning and did her best to absorb as much knowledge as she could. This would insure the plan was successful. Whisper was given training in all kinds of explosives, firearms, and tech as well, which is when she met her love and best friend, the sniper rifle.

Even though Whisper was already an invaluable asset, she was still a growing girl. Barely past her third moult, she was only twenty-one months old, the equivalent of about a fourteen year old human or mammalian morph, and was sexually mature. She didn't have any issues with hormones, but she was curious about other morphs.

She would spend a lot of her free time going out and watching people in a very stalker-like fashion, but she was simply trying to learn about them and adult ways without them knowing they are being observed. She learned quickly that people put on facades in front of others and she vastly preferred the candor. During one of her stalking episodes, she gained access to a night club, despite not meeting the age and maturity requirements for arthropod morphs, and discovered her love of dancing.

She lost her initial target in the crowd of people because she became so very focused on one of the employed dancers in a cage-like stage in the center of the facility. She wasn't the only one highly focused on her, either. Many of the patrons watched her, captivated by the graceful story she told with her movements, tracing her with their eyes as if charmed or under her spell. Whisper wanted this power for her own. It was a very simple thing to her, but found it was much harder to master than she thought. She also ran into difficulties just due to how different her basic body configuration was compared to most. She envied the more adaptive arthropod morphs like moths for a brief moment.

She practiced dancing for a few weeks before she felt confident enough in her skill to put herself on the dancefloor. When she finally did, she got the results she was looking for. Arthropod morphs are not seen very often in the thick of social interaction, due to most either being solitary or part of a colony or hive, so between her rare appearance and the skill with which she moved, she started turning her own set of heads. It wasn't quite as many as the caprine dancer that inspired her, which she found rather irritating, but at the end of the night, she got what she wanted. She had men, and a few others, wrapped around her little finger. She did a bit of experimenting, but was mostly attracted to men. The biggest ones. Unless they were at least double her size, though that isn't really that hard to achieve for most, she would ignore them completely.

After a while of showing up, drawing men away and taking them home, she started to get recognized by the staff and other regulars. And she started getting a reputation. The men she took home would only ever say that she was 'intense'. Most couldn't handle her, but that was okay with the little bug because she got bored after one night with most of them anyway. She had occasional chats with Obsidia, but their relationship didn't really grow until Silent River was established.

Feeling she had learned everything she could, Whisper went to Gabby and told her it was time. She wasn't subtle about it at all, literally leaving in the middle of a job she was given to go see the sloth. Gabby, though a bit flustered, nodded and then went to go turn in her and Whisper's resignation. They took several other employees with them, too. Whisper knew that the old company would try to silence them, given the knowledge they had and the method of their departure, but she was far too deeply ingrained in their system for anything significant to happen.

While Whisper monitored and controlled the old company, Gabby went off to various people and blackmailed them with the information she had accumulated to get the necessary funds to buy a building and establish Silent River. The company was named by the two of them, using their names as a base, and within a year, they were controlling most of Melodia. They also had deep political ties, both foreign and domestic, and had achieved all their success legitimately. Aside from the initial cost to get the building at least.

Whisper knew what she wanted by then, too. She took her time while she was in Melodia to boost up the security systems and create inventions to help her in her own tasks. She met with some interesting people along the way, including an arms dealer, Jenny McGill, and a very special hacker only known as Emmeline. While Jenny was content to stay separate from the company, Emmeline was integrated with their cyber security team. Whisper had faith in Emmeline's ability, so she took her opportunity to do her own thing and went off to explore other interests.

Among her most favored things to do in her spare time was to watch animated series and movies and read comics and then build her own little world where she would often put two characters that would never be possible or realistic within the canon together. Otherwise known as crack-shipping. She posted her ideas and stories online, much to the chagrin of other fans, who would bash her works. They also tended to admit that her writing style was quite good and, despite the terrible combos, loved to read her stuff.

The sheer amount of people who consistently commented on how much she sucked only fueled her to create more. It wasn't long before she was basically addicted to crack-shipping. Several of her 'fans' expressed an interest in 'meeting' her face to face, and so she agreed to go to a convention. She heard of several that were really good, but had never been to one herself. She also knew that cosplay was a big part of the convention she agreed to attend, so she decided to get into costume herself. There were very few arthropod-based comic series or animated stuff, so she chose to go as a character that she used frequently in her crack-ships.

Whisper nearly got banned from conventions after meeting the eager fans face to face, but nobody claimed to witness what happened and no charges were ever brought forth, so they couldn't do anything. Not that she would have allowed it. Despite that incident, Whisper liked being in costume and many people applauded her subtle alterations to make the outfit and style fit her body. A little stroke to her ego was all she needed to continue the trend. She started to attend conventions more regularly and met a few new people online and in person. Of particular interest to her was one Farai Vaughn, who was a bit shy at first, but she and a few of their other friends convinced them to come out and cosplay again. Along with Mirabella and less frequently, Tulip, she went to many conventions with them. She also managed to get Farai in bed with her, but she treated them a little nicer than most of her other flings, so that she could keep coming back to them.

It wasn't long after meeting all of her cosplay buddies that Silent River started playing more in foreign affairs and Whisper's assassination expertise was needed. It didn't bother her too much, but she did start to miss the free time a bit more over the next two years. Whisper was sent for most missions requiring a quiet approach and also for those of a more diplomatic nature. Though the latter was infrequent and she was typically a heavy hand, rather than a smooth persuader.

Despite Whisper's appearance of a cold, ruthless person incapable of strong attachments, she will fiercely defend those she considers friends and valuable members of the Silent River team and their families. People currently under her protection: Gabby, Farai, Emmeline, Jenny, Elly, Jacob, and Holly.

Other random facts and arthropod anatomy

Arthropods evolved to grow larger:

In various stages of evolution, the exoskeleton was replaced with densely fibrous, pressure-reactive 'plates' that are as effective as kevlar. The increased flexibility and size of arthropods required that their insides evolve along with these changes and a tetrahedral lattice of bone-like structures was evolved to give them the stability their exoskeletons used to. They are also incredibly sensitive to pressure with millions of pressure sensitive receptors underneath them.

The changes to the exoskeleton also allowed them to be much more flexible and have a wider range of movement than their previous iterations.

Speech:

Since most arthropods do not have mouths for creating humanoid speech, many evolved to either have structures for assisting with vocalization or have developed techniques to be able to. In Whisper's and most ambush and assassin bug's cases, they have a very weak vocalization technique that involves them folding their rostrum up into their face and forcing air over the tip, which acts as a tongue. Though it is not the best evolution to assist with speech, it does allow them to speak in strained, whisper-like voices. Most of the more social bugs in the reduviidae family take to purchasing or creating vocal assisting devices so that their voices are not lost in a crowd or other noisy areas. Whisper created her own device and it gives her voice a synthetic quality that is easy to tell it is being assisted. She likes it that way.

Eyelids (and vision):

Arthropods, as they grew larger and their brains developed further, had more room for photoreceptors and increased surface area to absorb light. This expanded their visual acuity even further than it already was, giving them highly adapted sense of sight. These expansions, specifically the increased light absorption, caused some problems over time with cells being damaged by excessive light or flashes of very bright lights or other wavelength not visible to most. To combat this problem, arthropods developed two different methods. One was photochromic lenses that automatically started blocking light when it reached certain brightnesses. This fixed most problems with bright lights, but didn't do much for fast light transitions, so the second evolution came about. Eyelids for arthropods are very similar to others, but they simply filter out most light and wavelengths instead of trying to completely block them. They can still see through their eyelids.

The eyelids became useful for other functions as arthropods continued to evolve, including clearing off debris and dust, or preventing it from accumulating. And, as some species became more involved with other morphs, the important task of emoting.

Hearing:

Arthropods have three main methods of hearing: tympanal organs, Johnston's organs, and setae. All of these methods of hearing are rather basic, though oftentimes powerful, and, as the need to improve their hearing came about, they eventually evolved as well. The three main methods all coalesced into one major organ, but it receives sound data from all over their bodies. The previously mentioned evolution to their exoskeleton. The pressure sensitive cells also translate vibrations to sound, giving them superior directionality where sound is involved.