Pollen

> "Not multiple bees in a suit."
>
>

A simple farmer living by the coast, Pollen spends his time caring for his plants and meeting new people. He loves making friends and is always looking for more.

## Characteristics

### Appearance

Pollen has a humanoid shaped body. His head mimics the shape and design of a bee with antennae and tall blue and black eyes. He has triangular black stripes on his forehead and cheeks. Pollen wears a white poet shirt with poofy sleeves and blue overalls with an embroidered bee motif. As all of Pollen's clothes are handmade they are a bit scruffy with some rips and tears.

### Personality

The best way to describe Pollen is happy. Pollen is always ready to help and buzzing with excitement. He shows his love through giving gifts and any mention of plants makes him giddy. He often gets caught up in his farming and forgets about the rest of the world. Pollen struggles to remember details and often gets side-tracked or distracted. One would think that his love of plants and nature would transfer over to animals but one would be wrong. Pollen hates land animals WITH A PASSION and he can be a bit mean to them. Pollen likes to have deep conversations with others to better understand the different styles of life.

## Abilities

### Hobbies and Skills

Pollen is an avid farmer. He has recently collected all the different types of seeds there are to offer and he maintains his farm daily. He supplies ingredients to the Wormwood and has his own stash squirreled away. Pollen also enjoys cooking! His main goal with his spare time is to create and eat every recipe in his cookbook. Due to this, when he can't farm due to the dark - he cooks instead. Pollen has also recently started to fish, so far he has caught plenty and is working his way up to rarer catches.

### Mutations

Although Pollen is definitely a human and not multiple bees merged into a humanoid figure, he does have some less than human abilities. Pollen can fertilize plants in the adjacent area to the plant he's fertilizing with bone meal. Pollen can make animals do "unspeakable things" without a cooldown and he can gather honeycomb and honey from beehives without them getting angry at him. Together, these abilities (not caused by a mutation because he is definitely human) make him a super farmer. Pollen also has the unusual ability to hover in the air for a limited amount of time. Some drawbacks to his abilities is that smoke makes his vision go blurry and gives him weakness and he only has 7 hearts. Despite this, Pollen still has a good time with his totally normal and not caused by radiation human abilities.

## Past

In the process of re-editing due to changes in his backstory.

### Pre-Aberrant

Hidden in the back paddock of a farm lived hive P011. Manned by beekeeper and farmer, Arthur Sheppard, this hive had everything it could ever need. Arthur tried his best to ensure the hive was taken care of, but with his growing age, he was struggling to traverse the farm to reach the apiary. So, whenever his son, Ford, was home from Fallespont University, he would help with the hives instead. Ford was an agricultural biology student and especially enjoyed learning about animal behaviour, so P011 and the other hives were frequently under Ford's examination. Being a normal hive was all P011 would ever be if things stayed normal. But alas, all good things must come to an end.

On June 17th 1993, Ford noted in his journal that something was wrong. He observed that animals all across the farm were displaying behaviour that seemed erratic and panicked. Ford notes that it was akin to behaviour displayed by dogs or cats before a hurricane. Despite this, P011 was not displaying any of the same symptoms as the birds, livestock, pets and even other hives in the area. When cross-referencing with other farmers in the area later on, it would be noted that all animals were behaving in this way as far as the eye could see.

   The following day of June 18th 1993, it had gotten worse. Between cows running havoc, chickens not laying, birds dying and flowers not blooming, no one in the small farming community knew what was happening. Everyone was holding their breath waiting to see what new freak accident would happen next. **Despite this being such a massive problem and cause for worry in the community, it should be noted that this phenomenon was not recorded to have happened in other areas of the world. It is still a debate in this small town on what happened that day was a sign of what was to come or a poorly timed disease of sorts.**

On June 19th 1993, needing no introduction, the Aberrant occurred.

### Present

Over the course of 2 years, Pollen learned a lot about the world. From how beehives supported less bees now to how to mine iron, Pollen learned all he could. Pollens older sister now had a wife and kids and Pollen figured it was time to settle down too. After coming across an abandoned house along the seaside with a small field and a birch forest, Pollen had found a home. Since then Pollen has created an expansive farm on the field and filled the forest with an orchard. He spends his days farming and tending to his pet bees. He's still learning new things everyday and is trying to make the friends he didn't have growing up. Rather than stay hung up on his past and how he cannot truly be himself around others, Pollen dedicates his time to making sure everyone else around him gets to live the happiest life they can.

## Arcs

### Farm arc

Pollens first goal upon arriving to the land was to create a farm with all of the seeds available to him. After discovering a cookbook in the abandoned house, Pollen decided that his other goal would be to create all the recipes he could. Over the course of 2 months, he traded what he could for seeds and discovered new lands for the sole purpose of collecting rare seeds. Using the crops gathered from his farm and the materials found elsewhere, he began to cook everyday. One day, Havamal - who had given Pollen a tour when he first moved in- visited the farm and struck up a deal with Pollen; for 5 diamonds a week, Pollen would provide the Wormhole with a chest full of crops. This sparked Pollens interest and he began to learn more about the 'economy' and the benefits it could provide. While he was still making his farm, Pollen encountered Lotty who for some reason despised tomatoes. Lotty, a friendly phantom, made a deal with Pollen. Pollen would get rid of all of his tomatoes and tomato seeds as well as never produce them again and in return Lotty would provide Pollen with a beehive with "multiple bees in it". Pollen agreed and let Lotty burn all of his tomatoes and tomato seeds in return for a beehive. The beehive had two bees in it which eventually got lost or died. Hearing of this, Lotty provided Pollen with more bees which Pollen created a bee sanctuary for to prevent another tragedy. Throughout this time, Pollen created a diary where he would write down his thoughts, although he often forgot about it so it only has two entries. Pollen would meet many different people throughout this time and always tried his best to be kind to those around him. After a lot of hard work and around 2 months, Pollen had completed his first two goals. He had successfully acquired all of the seeds available and had made all of the recipes he could (although for some reason some of them were impossible to make and so he did not get an achievement.) Now with no sort of goals, Pollen set out to find more things to do.

### In-between Arc

Understanding that he was in-between his old goals and his future still unknown goals, Pollen started grinding. As he got armor, tools and enchantments, Pollen learned of a new activity he had not heard of before; fishing. Deciding that this seemed fun, Pollen began to enchant a fishing rod and fish. Pollen soon discovered that fishing was very overpowered and set out to become a master fisher. During this time, Pollen also started to get more invested into the economy and discovered that he quite enjoyed selling things in order to make a profit. Pollen would talk with Aoki and Vulcan who struggled to believe Pollen was human. They expressed doubt and mentioned that it would be considered weird to not be mutated in Aberrant and that by saying he was human, Pollen was actually being the weird one. This created some doubt within Pollen surrounding whether he should continue saying he is human rather than admitting he was a swarm. Despite all of this, Pollen is still searching for his next big goal and looking for more ways to get involved in the Aberrant economy.