Characters/Dendriphorax

Description

Dendriphorax is a ten foot beechlike tree deliquescing white feathers from zir upper branches, upper because the expansive root structure is exposed and referred to as "branches" as well. This tree has the demeanor of a falling-over-itself youngster still struggling with gross motor skills. Fully covered in circular barkplates of lavender reflective plastic, a type of face emerges at the base of the upper branches where the barkplates are a brighter lavender and rotate opposite the other barkplates which swirl clockwise. The treeform's branches are smoothly convoluted and move constantly, propelled by a self-generated breeze which causes the feathers and smaller branches to tinkle like icicles in the wind. The creature is aggressively adorable, an impression underscored by the two limpid and gigantic iridescent rimmed with long-lashed eyes and set in the brightened lavender plates at the base of the upper branches in the upper third of the trunk. The creature's tongue, which appears from time to time upon completion of mighty cute intake, is round,lolling and pink. It also tends to hang out of the trunk beneath the eyes when Dendriphorax experiences greater Confusion. The sounds that accompany zir tinkling feathered branches are percolative machine noises not unlike the wheezes canines make while dreaming, emerging from the mechanisms of the rotating barkplates. Dendriphorax will try to be your friend, potentially going as far as to offer you nourishment via smaller branches from zir own Kreme-filled center, at the very least by transmitting telepathic somatic warmth, or Hugs, which are a prominent feature in zir belief system. The gender of the treeform is all or none and sexually, entirely dependent on the preferences of and fit with the creature who desires Orgonic Bounce Chat.

• A white centaur takes a look at this page on the infosphere, and smiles. "I <3 <3 <3 the Dendriphorax," Kalki Avatara says. And yes, the hearts are apparently visible artifacts in the speech.

• Dendriphorax naturally has placed Kalki Avatara aloft in zir concept of Puzzlebox's "High Cute", especially on account of the floating Logos.

Background

Dendriphorax may well have come from another part of Puzzlebox. Or from Somewhere Else. Sie can't tell for sure, despite a fairly rigid social hierarchy and complex cosmology that sie maintains. Part of the confusion stems (pardon the pun) from the fact that the only information sie gets are dream-like transmissions from the branches. Often, these transmissions are Terran antique media, often off-the-beaten path cinema artifacts which Dendriphorax cannot identify only describe. These transmissions occur as an educational measure, a teaching-by-analogy on the part of the branches. There are two concepts that Dendriphorax holds sacred and will in fact compromise safety if sie believes sie is in the presence of either of these: Cute and the Logos. Evidently, Cute is self-defined but has also come to embody wisdom, age, and life-seeking. Decute is how sie defines what is commonly known as madness or degradation, whereas Uncute is Dead or Negating. Sie, for example, is deathly afraid of William, whom sie views as a personification of the intersect between Decute and Uncute. Dendriphorax is probably onjectively pretty old but maintains the idea that sie is a newborn because sie went to sleep somewhere else in order to escape Repurposing by the Uncute. The Logos is the Word of course and Dendriphorax bows down to books, as the ultimate in High Cute. Within zie first visit, sie went to the Library with Eliahn?, Guide-Most Cute (upon whom sie seems to have significantly imprinted). Kalki Avatara impresses zim as well, because of the Floating Signifier trick.

Surprises

Dendriphorax, as Not-Aged as sie conceives zirself, is not completely helpless or vulnerable. For one, sie can create a HugBubble or Empathy-based shield of immunity around zirself or nearby friends which offers full protection against psychic and physical pathogens, including the Strangevirus. Futhermore, despite zir deferrant, imprintive nature, sie has settled in Charm where sie constructed the Frothplex, a recursively expansive Bubble-Igloo apartment complex which serves as public housing to wayward citizens of the mess who would like to settle in Charm. This stems from zir ability to secrete a silver-liquid Gibble from zir barkplates which serves as a binding fluid which Dendriphorax can mix with ground to make sculptures. The sculptures are usually miniature replicas of what sie sees and this process is how zir branches learn about forms first-hand. In the case of the Frothplex, the ground upon which Charmwarp rests has unpredictable emergent properties which allowed zir to make aggregated cells of it into an anfractuous dwelling. Gibble is also the verb by which Dendriphorax refers to this sculpting/building process. The treeform is also a generative entity, which is to say sie can both beget and mother offspring, a fact that has yet to be made known.