Ralf

Ralf Binkins operates the SS mammal zeppelin. He is some sort of porpoise. He's probably 80 years old or even 90 but he maintains a lively bouncy demeanour and doesn't seem to have any physical impairments. He eats, sleeps and works in the operation room, never at all known to left in years. He's well known aboard the S.S. Mammal among even low ranking members. Sometimes captives aboard even hear about him through overhearing conversations which reverberate through the metal pipes which the Mammal is built from.

Ralf has incredible homing skills and sense of direction. Before the S.S. mammal had established its powerful directional geolocational systems, Ralf was the core crew member's go to for directions, routing and planning. He also designed the S.S. mammal's first control room mechanisms, when he was young on the s.s. mammal he would spend his free time on an elaborate blueprint for it, always scribbling and sometimes murmuring to himself about it. He would hand this plan to newer and lower-ranked Mammal workers to construct it for him. This design remained an extremely core part of the S.S. Mammal's functioning for many years, and lasted during many cornerstone S.S. mammal victories and events which are often recited by veterans of them or refrenced by newer crew members. Ralf's control room became pretty legendary. it just seemed to be the perfect design, and ralf grew into it like a warm coat. He became very adept at using it and existing in it, getting to know it like a close friend. He would slowly learn its ins and outs, and discover intricacies even he as the designer never knew existed. Even though he invented it, he was always learning something new about it too, and learning something about his own functioning. He would change little bits here and there, and even once in a blue moon would submit to rennovating it although initially hating the thought of changing anything more than miniscule about it. He always had full control over what happened to it, so he had the final say over any change that did happen. Sometimes he'd need to make it work alongside a newly implemented s s mammal, or accomodate for any wartime damages the ship endured, but he could make it work. The other crew members knew that he knew what was best for it, and even if Ralf did or said anything which seemed strange at first, he always had a plan in mind which would reveal itself eventually. They'd trust the Ralf process. Anyway, Ralf was a loved member aboard the ship. He was amicable, friendly, knew how to joke and was also somewhat of an alcoholic to the same degree as most crewmates. Although he had been trusted with this special role by word from Leviathan, he was always humble and never played it up to be a personality changing big deal. He still celebrated like he was a builder. He also was respected as being one of the founding and original members of the S.S. mammal and people knew he was personally close to the rest of the higherups, although they partied alongside the workers less than Ralf. He had a tendency to be slightly reclusive, mostly because of his work in the control room and his fascination with it. He'd alternate between spending days in the control room and sleeping there to spending nights celebrating at dinners and mealtimes and sharing stories.

There were many years where Ralf was stable and comfortable in his control room. Making adjustments here and there, but he was very lucky to have spend such a long and satisfactory time in the place he knew best. In more recent times, he ruminates heavily over these golden years. However, everything around him was changing. right under his nose, there were complicated mechanisms at play. builders walking past his room carrying steel pillars. marching. Captain Levyathan calls for an urgent plan of action, and Ralf isn't notified. Marching. Discussion among Ralf's old longtime friends, new recruits. And one day, Ralf's whole world shattered.

the S.S. mammal became more technologically advanced and as it got more complicated. and bigger. much bigger. Initial development of the S.S. mammal was slow, making tangiable developments and wholly important ones, but nothing was being constructed at a pace out of the ordinary for a warship. But the S.S. mammal was special in this sense. In this early development phase, directly from Leviathan's Plans (and discovered later, Linda's as well) the workers were unknowingly laying the foundations and mechanisms-brick by brick and pipe by pipe- functioning as the initiation for something which would grow insidiously like a mould, hungering like a mycellic system. The sudden insirgence in the S.S. mammal's size and intricacies forced Ralf to change and rework his control room alongside it, this time to a degree way more than a cosmetic rennovation or new pipe system implementation. This was by command from Leviathan. Leviathan did indeed realise Ralf's deeply personal connection to the control room, and had revised the time he would eventually have to tell Ralf it was all going to have to change if it were to fit with Leviathan's plan. He was reluctant to speak of it. Leviathan was so terrified of what Ralf would do or say or feel from hearing the news that basically his function in the control room would- through the natural process of the vast expasion of the S.S. mammal-become redundant. so he didn't.

Leviathan summoned all thousands of crewmates into the ballroom. He made a speech. This would be the first of many speeches which would be delivered in this urgent tone. The first announced a divergence of plan, and a new ruleset and goal for all workers aboard. The general motif was to build faster than you ever have before, prioritise schedule and health, and a different set of instructions in general which completely changed the trajectory of what was actually being constructed upon the S.S. Mammal. Before this point it was only the soil being set. Now it was time for the real Mammal to live.

The second speech announced the construction of a zeppelin. The zeppelin would serve two main functions: 1, as a way of controlling the higher ground around the S.S. mammal to ensure its safety and protection, having artillery from high up proved very useful for both the ship's defence AND offense. and 2, as a way to keep Ralf completely and wholly isolated from the main body of the S.S. mammal. Just before the point of rapid expansion which Leviathan foresaw, he assigned more and more tasks to Ralf to keep him him silenced and shut in. Ralf would feel stress like never before, and drink and isolate himself in the free time he got from his ship duties. Leviathan had predicted he would do this after knowing Ralf for so long. Ralf talked to his worker friends more. at the end of the workweek he wouldn't be getting drunk at dinner with his friends, he'd be in front of levers and dials and symbols only he could understand, with a bottle in his mitt. Leviathan was so paranoid about Ralf that this second reason was actually his motivation to build this massive zeppelin which cast its ginormous shadow above the s.s. mammal.

-isolating him fromm the rest of the original friends, slowly and never with a single blow, so ralf would 1. not be as affected but mostly 2. not notice it.

-leviathan was hoping to divide ralf slowly from the workers of the crew too, albeit slowly, so that they wouldn't notice either when ralf was gone either, or become suspicious of leviathan himself as if ralf suddenly stopped appearing, he felt the workers would likely suspect it was a command from leviathan telling ralf to focus on work or to stop getting drunk for the reason it was affecting his naviagtional skills etc. leviathan did consider the possibility that the workers would assume Ralf stopped talking to them out of his own volition, but he needed to cover his tracks as much as possible. leviathan was also terrified of insurgence. Leviathan would enact irrationally strict and sometimes deluded rules aboard the S.S. mammal to sooth his mind of the paranoia he felt around the common working crewmate aboard the S.S. mammal. This is also why he eventually implemented the no weapons rule.

e more complicated S.S. mammal forced the control room to mirror it.

the control room was a place where he knew he functioned

Leviathan eventually moved Ralf away into the zeppelin he had built without telling him.

**Appearance**

Ralf wears a pilot's uniform: a cap, a coat, and two stretched out vertical-lensed goggles which are tied extremely tightly to his head. the tightness of his goggles even makes his head squeeze out of shape like a sponge. Ralf himself is very tall. he has a small, short and round snout.

**Personality**

Ralf is a little excentric. He seems to act like the stereotypical mad old man who'll decide on some vague memory from his young days to spout word salad about for three hours. Most people tend to dismiss a lot of what he says as nonsense when he starts talking about his stories and reccolections.

notes:

ralf is based upon my experience with isolation, the desire for safety, control, and paranoia. his reclusion instigated by the comfort he feels when he is in his control room is how I feel when I am writing and drawing and doing the things which truly make me feel human and safe, like the ultimate self sacraficial form of self-medicating. ralf also gets drunk a lot in his room by humself, where other crew members are more social alcoholics than anything (apart from polly maybe, but they use alcohol in a slightly different way for slightly different reasons. polly is way more emotional than ralf and is more people oriented, where polly ties his self-worth and sense of self to his relatonships like turky, gertie and cook and ralf uses alcohol to numb the paranoia and mental overwhelm he feels about the world around him. ralf experiences extreme sensory overload, and this gets worse when hes more paranoid and they feed into eachother. ralf has no physical impairments due to his old age but more physical impairments due to his alcoholism. he has no sleep schedule and wakes up at a different time each day, he drinks whenever he feels a calling for it which temporarily dullens the manic ricocheting signals in his mind and body so he can function better. ralf uses alcohol to just be able to function. polly uses it to numb existential pain in his heart more derived from how hes been treated by others in terms of personal relationships. (me when i was 12) (ralf is me now))

when ralf was tweedlecat, he was obsessed with a famous flukeopod alliance song called the "electronic jive". It was his favourite song and he listened to it all the time, he was close friends with the dolphin barbershop quartet who sang it and was in love with the main singer. It was such a loved song that special devices were manufactured to play it live, and they were distributed all across Bagpipeland. Its revealed that he wrote it too. but since he has become ralf, he has totally separated himself from these memories in the most literal sense- in fact, they are now stored in a different fragment of what was once tweedlecat- they're stored in the quiet janitor of the name Boogie, the humble man who swaps the poop deck and sings to himself. a little snappy and strange, seems to be aggressive for no reason, but the guy doesn't tend to cause problems or instigate anything, he just seems overly grumpy but not capable of doing anything immoral- he just swabs and swabs and swabs. And he's always singing to himself this song. this song that only a few remaining cetaceans recognise or remember. the electronic jive.

in an attempt to completely rid himself of this song in the material plane as well as mental, ralf dissasembled the Jivedevice (the machine that played the song) and told the builder cetaceans for it integrated it into the control room, basically just using it as spare parts. as the control room evolved over time, what remained of the already dissasembled song machine dissolved further and further into the bloodstream of the s s mammal. insiduously, slowly. nobody would notice, or if they did they wouldn't find a reason to care.

but then there's boogie. he wipes and toils and cleans, vents, pipes, floors, doors, lamps, traps. he gets through the whole mammal in a week. He's got a routine, he's been doing this since he became boogie. It is important to know that he would notice a change in the layout of the s s mammal. It's also important to know that he would recognise the pin-pricked punchcard pattern of the music device even if they appeared in a wooden ring. Sometimes he thinks he sees it, sometimes he thinks hes going mad. but when the patterns of the music actually start to appear in the wood and metal of the s s mammal, he knows immediately what has happened.