Ecco (Dropped)
Ecco
World: Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future-1Quote: "Everything has a song. Hearing only takes the right-t kind of listening."
Role: Delphine Hero
Voice Actor: Flipper??
Overview
This bright young dolphin is the last hope of Earth, whose timeline was damaged severely by the alien Foe. Now split into two parallel, dystopian timelines, they each represent a different history where humanity never allied with cetaceans. As the only one unaffected, it's up to Ecco to repair the damage and restore the planet if he ever wants to see his loved ones again. As a dolphin, he's generally friendly and amicable, preferring company over solitude. He isn't a wild animal, though; his folk have been integrated into a joint cetacean-human society for generations. His confidence and cheer seem at odds with the enormity of his burdens, but he tries not to let it get him down. He enjoys meeting new people and learning about the strange wonders of the worlds around him. Ecco doesn't enjoy fighting, but when push comes to shove, he's no pushover. In addition to using his body as a battering ram, his sonar is augmented, and he can use it to cripple enemies or affect his environment.
Perks
Acoustician: Ecco has a keen ear and can hear plenty that others might miss.
Ecco's sense of sound is more developed than most creatures. Not only does he have the ear to interpret frequency ranges that are beyond the human ear, he can make a tremendous range of vocalizations that are both above and below human range. Whenever a situation comes up that involves sound, Ecco is one of the first to volunteer himself, knowing that dolphins are just more sound-oriented than the average homo sapiens. He can often make sense of things that might seem unremarkable to an untrained ear, such as finding patterns in white noise, or picking out and following a single thread of sound out of a cacophony.
Cetacean Agility: Ecco is a talented acrobat and a formidable fighter with his body.
Ecco is tremendously agile both in and out of the water. His body is mostly muscle, allowing him to achieve phenomenal physical feats. At a sprint, he can outdistance the fastest human athletes, in air or in water. He's as agile in the air as in the water, able to turn on a dime and outdo the best acrobats. In water, he can achieve spectacular leaps above the surface. When it comes to combat, his entire body becomes a weapon. Ecco moves so agilely that it's easy to forget he weighs several hundred pounds, and when he charges a target and puts his full weight behind the blow, it can still do serious damage.
All-Terrain Dolphin: Ecco's harness lets him swim through air as easily as water.
Ecco's harness, made personally for him by Athena, lets him move in air. With it, he can function in places out of water and interact with humanoid-populated worlds. It works by creating a personal antigravity field whose parameters are designed to match the density of saltwater. This lets him "swim" through the air as though it were the ocean and move around over terrestrial worlds. It also mitigates the effects of gravity against his body, and keeps his skin comfortably wet. It offers him no special benefit underwater, although its reflective straps offer a good visual beacon.
Smarter Than He Looks: Ecco comes from a high-tech society, learned in science, technology, and more.
With his species having spent so much time alongside humanity, Ecco is both mentally and physically different from his wild ancestors. His mind is more adapted to abstract thinking, linear logic, and causal relationships. This allows him to function on a rough approximation of how the human mind works, enough to understand his fellows. He also has a number of minor physical adaptations that make life easier among humanity. As an example, his eyes function above and below water equally well, and he can also "speak" in a frequency range humans can hear and understand.
Sonar< Edge-E >: Ecco can use sound to perceive the world, or as a weapon.
Ecco can produce a burst of high-frequency pulses that reflect off his surroundings, and by listening to the reflected sound waves, he can perceive his environment more accurately than by vision. For inanimate objects he can learn the object's density, mass, and distance. For living things, he can listen to vital statistics. These include blood pressure, heart rate, breathing, and even the physical makeup of the creature, such as gender or the general layout of organs. Targets need to be in his direct line of sight for him to listen. He can also use his sonar as a weapon. By focusing a singular concentrated blast, he can accomplish feats like shattering stone or crippling a great white shark, or maybe even damaging electronics. (Ecco's use of sonar as a ranged space gun death-ray costs a point of Edge per use.)
Complications
Dumber Than He Looks: For all his smarts, Ecco's still a dolphin lacking in human social grace.
Despite having a broad education in a technologically advanced society, Ecco can still be naive in some regards. Dolphin etiquette and human etiquette are still different, and there are some aspects of human behavior and society that Ecco just doesn't understand. His occasional social gaffes and misconceptions usually end in a whole lot of awkward, for him. His cetacean brethren have their own culture and social behavior, separate from humanity, and occasionally the two don't mesh. Lastly, during times of extreme stress, Ecco can inadvertently revert to simpler, more primitive thought; when he finally does reach the point of panic, it can take some serious effort to pull him out of it.
Music Junkie: Ecco is an audiophile and he'll do anything to hear something new.
Since dolphins can hear things that humans can only dream of, it's only natural that Ecco would appreciate music and sound. He has a great fondness for humanity's musical repertoire, and in the World Tree, he's developed a great fondness for other cultures' music. He's so dedicated to the experience of listening to new things that he can be pretty foolishly gullible when the promise of hot new audio is on the line. He can also lose sight of whatever he's in the middle of, potentially dropping everything to ensure he gets to listen. This can, in the right situation, lead to pretty disastrous consequences that he doesn't always think about in his enthusiasm.
Quiet, Please!: Ecco has exceptionally sensitive hearing and can be hurt by very loud noises.
Like many dolphins, Ecco listens to the world around him with more than his ears. He hears sounds through his entire body, especially the tip of his lower jaw, and he can be extremely accurate in painting a picture of his environment with sound. Very loud sounds can be horrific to him to behold. Not only does it scramble his perception of the world around him, it can be physically painful, too. Much like a human deafened by a concert, he can have trouble hearing after being exposed to too many decibels, plagued by the sensation of "ears ringing" on a much bigger and more obnoxious level.
Showoff: As a young bull, Ecco likes to show off a little too much.
In human terms, Ecco is still a teenager. He's still prone to all the emotional pitfalls of adolescence. He has a burning need to prove himself to his betters, and he'll behave recklessly if he thinks the reward can outweigh the risk. This means he's made a lot of bone-stupid mistakes in his years, and he's got the scars to prove it. Sadly, the World Tree hasn't made him any older or wiser, so he still charges straight into trouble with alarming regularity.
Compulsive Sound Machine: Ecco always emits sound, especially when stressed, and can't be stealthy.
Dolphins instinctively emit high-frequency clicks and listen to the choes to perceive their surroundings. Ecco does this frequently and without thought, even when he isn't in the water, because sound gives him an extra layer of information about his environment. Above the water, these clicks are very hard to hear, but in the water, it's like floating next to a perpetual sound machine, cacophonous as a box of nails being spilled. It goes without saying that he can't sneak up on anything above or below the water unless it's deaf. Or dead. He announces his presence at all times without even being consciously aware of it.
Left Behind: Ecco has a crippling fear of being socially isolated.
After the chronology of his native Earth was split into multiple divergent threads, Ecco's pod was displaced from the timeline. Dolphins are very social, so such profound isolation is a major stressor for him. He endures it as he must, but the longer he goes without social contact, the more Ecco starts to unravel, compromising his judgement and abilities both. Forced, traumatic separation from allies, such as by a trap or other means, can cause him to panic far more than the situation warrants.
Recent Scenes
| ID | Title | Date |
|---|---|---|
| 713 | Usagi's Burgin': Help the Hungry Heroine! | Aug 05 2020 |
| 706 | The Crybaby Usagi's Beautiful Transformation | Jul 29 2020 |
| 666 | End of Days | Jun 02 2020 |
| 665 | Alternate Solutions | May 26 2020 |
| 661 | Apprehension | May 12 2020 |
| 658 | Unforseen Consequences | May 05 2020 |
| 486 | Coffee Shop Alternate Universe | May 16 2019 |
| 449 | Amber Waves | Mar 27 2019 |
| 434 | An Unexpected Visitor | Feb 28 2019 |
| 432 | What Has Science Wrought? | Feb 27 2019 |