Amelia Solarsis

A Fire Ant from the colony of the Great Plains, Amelia set out on her (and our) journey to explore all of MantaLand.

### History

Prior to travelling, Amelia (and her many siblings) grew up during a conflicting time in her colony's life: initially raised to be the royalty line set out to found new colonies, the colony soon found themselves in the amidst of a severe famine and, as a result, those (infants/larvae) who were meant to originally be raised into royalty were fed much less in the hopes that some part of them would be wired to become a worker instead. This resulted in a relatively large generation of Fire Ants that had both worker and royalty characteristics, both perfectly functionable for the starting of a new colony and also to go out and find resources.

During these times of foraging in areas outside her colony, Amelia got around to sightseeing and appreciating the world around her, however as she never got far beyond a small segment of the Plains she never really knew much about the world beyond that, what society for other creatures were like, nor what kind of other creatures would be out there. This made her want to explore more, and after realising that part of her birth was to become a colony-raiser she resented and rejected the idea, wanting to break the mold and become an explorer instead. However, when suggesting this idea to anyone outside of her own siblings, they all were against or overlooked her wants, seeing it as either something she'll get over or something that'll never happen.

This never let her down, and in fact led to her deciding she would try and escape her colony to achieve her dream. With the help of her siblings, early in the morning shortly before the date of the Colony Dance Ceremony (as most workers would be pre-occupied preparing everything for the event), she snuck out of her colony and fled towards the forest, beginning a journey to explore all of MantaLand.

### Personality

Amelia is very exciteable and curious, always wanting to know more about what is around her, and the how and why of anything and everything. She eventually grows particular interest in history and culture, finding herself fascinated with the past and the different interpretations of cultural things heavily valued by society. She is also very rebellious and headstrong, loving a good challenge and will fight to see it end until the very last of her breath.

Amelia also shows empathy from time to time with other insects and arthropods, and is always willing to give someone a second chance as long as she sees that they truly want it. However, that means she isn't afraid to speak her mind at all either, and if something needs to be called out for what it is she won't back down from saying it.

Her lack of exposure to enough of the outer world leads her to being rather naive at times, and can lead her into accidental trouble. Her headstrong nature can sometimes be too strong, leading to her becoming reckless in the moment and potentially dangering her life as a result. She can also be very stubborn and heavily root herself into her decisions (e.g. being absolutely dead set into one path and refusing to go to another one), and eventually has to learn a lesson or two if it ends up costing her.

Being a eusocial insect, she is highly extraverted and cannot go for a long while without having some form of company around.

### Abilities

As a Fire Ant, Amelia has the ability to sting with her stinger in relative succession. In small doses it can paralyse the opponent just slightly. Also being a Fire Ant, her body and system are naturally resistant to many different types of conditions, often being able to bare colder conditions and also have the ability to be reselient to water. Amelia also has the ability to naturally form a water bubble on her abdomen (the 'tail' where the lungs are stored), which allows her to briefly go underwater.

### Relations

#### Main Cast

##### Isaac Dermapaedia

As Amelia's first companion in her journey, Amelia is fairly friendly to Isaac as he is to her. She appreciates his knowledge of the outside world and is always willing to learn more from him. Seeing as he is rather shy and nervous to new activities and scenarios, she enjoys ecouraging him to come out his shell more as long as he is comfortable with it.

Through him, she learns about not pushing someone to do something if they ultimately don't want to: initially, she's more pushy on him being included in situations that he ultimately doesn't enjoy despite not showing it. Her intentions are good but she unknowingly executes it wrong, and in the end when he admits to telling her she realises that its not good to push someone to do something, to push them way out of their comfort zones and instead allow them to come out on their own accord and comfortability, and eventually always asks him twice if he wants to do something to find out if he truly wants to do it.

##### Marcus Cocotus

Pre-redemption phase Amelia is tolerant of Marcus, but as he starts to bully and insult the others tagging along with her at the time (Einar and Isaac), as well as taking most accredation for the work that they put in and he didn't, boasting about it to anyone he comes across, her temper eventually heightens to a point where she tells him off and exposes his problematic actions for what they are, prompting him to temporarily leave the group.

When he returns, she is highly tensive and aggressive towards him until he reveals that he genuinely wants to change, she loosens her guard just slightly but still remains tensive towards him. After a while of him actually trying to better himself and contributing alongside others does she start being nice to him and the two of them eventually end up becoming relatively close friends, enjoying getting up to harmless mischief and being rather chaotic in nature.

##### Einar Dynaves

Amelia is fairly friendly towards Einar but sometimes is a bit afraid to talk to her because of her very serious and direct way of speaking, but eventually learns to accept this as part of who she is and adapts to how she speaks accordingly. The two of them are great fighters together, often successfully coordinating attacks even with little verbal communication, and the two love to train to better their skills together. The two of them also share a lack of proper knowledge of the arthropod/insect world outside their own homes and hence both somewhat bond over it, although Einar seems to posses a better sense of judgement than Amelia does. When the two of them are paired together in a social situation, Amelia is the one to initiate in conversation whilst Einar makes observations of the ones she is conversating with, finding out if there is anything suspicious about the situation at hand.

##### Vanesspa Maria

Amelia and Vanesspa both share their eusocial background, although Vanesspa has been around a lot more and experienced a lot more than Amelia, and so the former is eager to learn more through the latter. They are both fairly close and enjoy sticking together because of the eusocial characterstic of often preferring company with others, enjoying participating in activities together. Amelia is deeply sympathetic of Vanesspa's situation and is always willing to lend an ear should Vanesspa feel the need to vent out some frustrations to her.

##### Julian Artace

Amelia and Julian are also fairly friendly with each other, and have an older-brother, younger-sister friendship. As Julian was previously a bit of a pacifist, not really knowing combat, Amelia is the most eager to show him how to properly fight and trains him on the occasion to fend for himself. Although originally showing him how she usually tends to fight, she later observes that he struggles to do the same things she can, and since tries to find out ways that he can fight using his own style. Amelia additionally likes his mature nature and occasionally finds herself unintentionally imitating some of his ways of handling things.

#### Other Characters

##### Colony Siblings

Throughout her development in her colony she had an incredibly close relationship to all of her siblings that were born during her time. They are all very supportive of each other and heavily encouraged her to follow her ambitions when she mentioned it to them. They are all also very open with other and share secrets and rumours on the regular in their chambers. This has led to her having some points of interest she wants to explore more when it comse to The Great Plains, but chooses to do so long after she has left so that the mass majority of her other colony members don't recognise her completely when she returns.

She misses and reminisces about her siblings a lot, and considering she left before the Colony Dance Ceremony it could be assumed that they have all flown off and potentially started their own colonies, or may have perished along the way, so the chance of ever getting to see them again is fairly low and she is aware of such a thing.

##### Other Colony Members

During the early years in her development, she grew up admiring the other colony members and her life inside said colony. However, after exploring the outside more and more and getting repeatedly denied of her ambitions to explore rather than start a colony, she starts resenting them, eventually leading to her quietly leaving the colony to follow her ambitions.

Throughout her journey she reflects her life in the colony and does come to the realisation that she misses them no matter how much she attempts to deny it. She also realises that she could never go back if she tried, as from the amount of time she has been away from the colony if she returned a grand majority of them wouldn't even be able to recognise her and she would be treated as an outsider. This information she frequently isn't very sure how to handle properly, just learning to accept that that's how it is now and it's best to try and move forward, but often finds herself thinking about it from time to time on the occasion.

### Design Development Gallery

Amelia (Top middle) Design 1, July 2020Amelia (Right) alongside original lore for her, 24th July 2020Amelia (Top Middle) Design 2, July 2020Amelia (Bottom Middle) Original Colour Palette, 26th July 2020Amelia (Top Middle) Soft Shaded attempt 1, 29th July 2020Amelia (Top Right) Soft Shading Attempt 2, October 11th 2020Old reference sheet for Amelia, November 5th 2020Amelia (Middle Left) Redesign 1, Jan 10th 2021Amelia (Top) Redesign 2, June 23rd 2021