Tobias

Summary Stats

• Name: Tobias
• Species: Titan Leopard Moth
• Height: 100 meters
• Wingspan: 150 meters

Disposition:

• Towards civilians: generally tolerant
• Towards government agents and representatives: suspicious and grudgingly cooperative
• Towards military agents and organizations, generally uncooperative, occasionally hostile
• Towards other titans: territorial. Tolerant so long as his home range is not threatened or disturbed. Usually responds to threats with a graded response from threat displays, disabling attacks, or lethal attacks.
• Intelligent, capable of improvisation and tactical decision making. Affinity for science.

Preferred habitats

• Airport
• South suburban drive in movie theatre
• Lone Isle nuclear power station
• Asher Point State Park

Capabilities

Offensive capabilities

Close Combat

• Direct impact and wrestling Those who thing a moth is a delicate creature even at Toby's scale will find they are mistaken. Toby's wings can deal hefty blows especially if they are used with the leading edge in maneuvers like clothesline strikes. He is also quite capable with all six limbs in combat. While less driven by straight punches or body checks, he often manages to use his opponents momentum against them with grapples and throws much like a martial artist.
• Toxic wing scales Almost only ever used against other titans and some macro scale targets, some of the scales on Toby's wings are loose and can be shed on the wind towards a target. These scales can cause delirium, heavy sedation, and even render targets unconscious. They could, in theory, also be lethal if overused, but Toby rarely goes so far both to preserve life but also to ensure he hasn't used up his entire store of scales as they do require time to regenerate.

Moderate Range - Up to 500 meters

• Lightning class static electric attacks from wings Toby's wings normally build up huge electric charges in flight especially in dry air. However, he can also store this charge and use it to deliver massive electrical attacks. This is usually used with flight to keep recharging his wings which suggests it is more of an efficient storage of static and less of a true bio-electric generator. His charge capacity is though to exceed cloud to ground lightning strikes by almost an order of magnitude.
• Wind Gusts If Toby lands and digs in, he can use his wings to generate enormous wind fields that can reach hurricane force. Because these are dangerous around buildings and effects large areas, he does not generally engage in this behavior unless driving back a large number of smaller targets
• Hypnotic suggestion Toby's spots are more than just iridescent; they can be eerily mesmerizing especially against larger targets with weaker minds. When the use of this skill may work, he will rely on it as a gentle means of dissuasion against invaders or just those mistakenly thinking the territory is unguarded.

Long Range - Up to Tens of kilometers

• Accelerated particle ‘antennae beams’ One of Tobias's most dangerous weapons, it allows him to attack from a very long distance. While the range can be over ten kilometers, the most effective, accurate range is closer to 3-5 kilometers. This distance is often part of his altitude as he is prone to using it for strafing runs and warnings to anything less than titan class. At less than a kilometer, the energy output remains near maximum and can be devastating to anything it strikes be it another titan or the local city, so he does not use this often in town.

Defensive Abilities

• Immune to nuclear weapons Common to most titans, Toby can withstand the pressure, heat, and radiation involved in the use of nuclear weapons. In fact, Toby has a form of acceleration field that seems common to his kind that causes radioactive decay to accelerate. This significant finding has not been explained by physics, but it is measurable. Most titans will readily absorb xray and shorter wavelength energy that seems to "suck the radiation out of anything including an exposed reactor core"
• Titan armor: near invulnerable to conventional weapons
• Supersonic flight Both useful for transit but also to get out of danger, Toby can, at high altitude, reach supersonic speeds. Other flying titans are also known to possess this skill, and by comparison Toby, as a moth, may be on the slow end as legendary titans have been known to reach hypersonic speed.
• Reactive camo When Toby is still, usually when landing and observing with his wings folded, he can cause his body scales to change their refractive index and make him blend in almost invisibly with his surroundings in the visible light range.
• Reincarnation Less of a defensive skill and more of a backup option, Toby has the means to reincarnate in a new generation of titan moths. No one knows for sure if he has a dormant egg waiting. It is known that some legendary titans of his line have had such backup eggs regardless of gender. However, it may be more accurate to say gender means less for the titans that it does to anyone else, and the assignment of maleness to Toby does not mean he necessarily follows those expectations. Reincarnation generally only happens after a death, and it restarts as a larval state that can grow rapidly but still needs at least weeks or more to reach their imago form again.

Weaknesses

• Other titans The biggest threat to Toby is another titan. Their damage output and combat abilties are often on par with his. Some even have powerful attacks with ranges that rival his antenna beamsor use modulated forms of radiation that are harmful even to something that normally consumes radiation. Having another titan ground him if an extremely dangerous situation that limits his defensive and offensive options. Most times, Toby must hope to succeed with deterrence by aggressive posturing or by use scales or hypnosis. Many times, however, a dialog and an escort is enough as combat between titans rarely ends well for the local area or either titan.
• Titan emulator giant robots One of the few anti-titan technologies titans care about. These are as bad or worse than another titan because they may come in multiples or could be deployed without care about them surviving combat.
• Attuned psionic or magic weapons Ever present on Terrtez is the use of magic or magic like abilities. A small but powerful spellcaster could conjure opponents or outright disable a titan. However, the cost of failure in such an attack is great as almost any attack from a titan tat comes back will be lethal. Some cities have specialized macro defense mage cores. Others have found effective shrinking technology to reduce the size and damage of macro scale threats. Experiments on titans, who seem to carry their own aura that is already known to effect radioactive decay and energy absorption, don't always respond to either tactic due to their unique composition. Asher Point has its own 'immobilizer' energy system that saps power from targets to disable them. It has not been fired at Toby , but it has been used in his presence so he knows about it. Such a device could disable even a titan like him.

Narrative

Introduction

You know, these things always read like a shopping list. Typical of any government record, there’s nothing in here about saving their assess from a nuclear meltdown of their own making nor is there even a word about the annual county fair free flight rides. Even if they don’t write it down, there’s a whole crew of folks old and young that aren’t going to soon forget being able to fly around their city on the back of a titan. Not just a titan, their titan. Thanks to a little experimentation, I finally have the means to write my own thoughts, and I have a few folks who will make sure they aren’t buried in a vault as soon as I save them.

When you live in a world that has titans, it is necessary to have some means to protect yourself from their rampages. We have stable titans like myself, mid to large size exotic titans like a few of the gooroos, and we have the extremely rare multi-log shapeshifters like Gwendolyn. Gwen and I see eye to eye and not just when she whims to be as large as I am. I have to respect her and the strength of character she has. She won't let anyone force her into service in the macro scale military. Unfortunately, I can't scale down like she can and wander off, so I had to have a stable way of living.

I didn't really intend to become the Asher Point defense unit, and I feel no shame in saying that a nuclear meltdown might have been the only way region would have known I was there. At my size, a burger and fries isn't going to be supersized enough to hold me over, so you need something with more punch. Like some others of my kind, we're attracted to sites of intense radiation so much so that nuclear testing gets more than just moths to show up. Lone Island has some technical operator caused issues, and the resulting fallout would have been dreadful if I hadn't settled atop of it. I got a meal, they got precious time to fix the problem. Sadly, government and military officials don't usually see this as altruistic behavior because they know something about our biology. If you ask Mike down at the Shake Shack though, I'm a frickin' hero.

I loved in the Asher Point mountains for ages relying on camouflage such that my larval state was more or less a cryptid. There was always sign but never real evidence, and the game amused me. The charade continued long after my metamorphosis, but flying unnoticed became more challenging. Being primarily nocturnal, I was able to dodge detection until the new airport went in. I am sure they knew they had a titan in the area, but they didn't appear capable of tracking it. I might have gone on like that for decades if the pale blue glow from the plant didn't draw me in.

Its not as though food was the only thing that kept me in the area, and I would be lying if I said there was no compassion or concern for the people on my behalf when I saw what was happening at Lone Island. I enjoyed watching them with a similar wonder that their children watched tiny insects, except that we get to skip the part of pulling their limbs off. The one thing they made me realize is that I don't like being alone. Even when unnoticed or hiding, I like having company. Munching on as healthy dose of gamma rays is what it took for us to make our introductions, but once I was seen, there would be no going back.

Out of the forest, into the city

Negotiations

I happen to be large enough that you could just about fit an entire football field on my back, and my antennae could be used for field goal posts. At that scale, the initial response is one of panic, and I knew that was going to happen, so I tried to remain as chill as possible regardless of what they brought to bear against me. Staff go running for the hills, the military shows up, and they have to start the dangerous calculation of what type of titan I was. Were I just a giant moth, almost anything would work to chase me off such as artillery or flame units. Next up the line are mythics, and those are exotic, like gooroos, but not impossible. My affinity for radiation, however, was what the wise officers understood to be a marker of a true titan. True titans are tough enough to not only withstand nuclear blasts but can consume their energy, and that pretty much means the rest of the arsenal short of another titan or high magic is useless. Sensing a fight they couldn't readily in, they resorted to the next tactic: diplomacy.

In hindsight, I should have been more threatening, but my intentions were genuine, and I was not used to dealing with government issue negotiators. Once we established that we could directly speak to each other, explaining my presence was easy, but getting they to believe I did not cause the meltdown was a problem. I had to be creative with that, so I told them to run the plant's logs and timestamps and the airport's radar records. That solved one problem and created another. My role in the Lone Isle meltdown was confirmed, but now they knew I could not only speak directly with them, but they also knew I was intelligent enough to think logically and potentially tactically. I had cast myself into Gwen's bucket where suspicion was always high, and no one was ever convinced you weren't plotting against them.

Then, the press started showing up, and I guess I could say it was a bit of sweet revenge. They couldn't stop me from talking to them, and I could easily move a wing and block them from chasing off the press. The most amusing thing that came from it was the 'name the moth' since my actual name was utterly impossible for them to speak. Tobias won out, and soon enough everyone over the air was calling me Toby. They asked about where I was from, why I appeared now, and what I was doing. Those were all very easy questions to answer. Then the hard one came: what will you do when this emergency is over? I wasn't sure, and I had no good answer. It was probably my most vulnerable moment, and one I should have been more mindful. The leading questions were two fold. First, where would I go, and of course leaving wasn't to happen. This region was my home, and there was no reason I should abandon it now. That brought the second: would you stay here as the city's guardian? The question made me nervous because it meant involving myself deeply with the city and its people as well as its policies. I didn't commit, but didn't have to. I said I would consider it, and the story ran on its own from there. Its probably the only time I winced along with the government goons and military mooks, but it was done. The city didn't have a defender yet, usually regarded as too remote to need one, but it was sure to change now as other large folk love to test the territory of titans.

A few weeks later when I had bled the radiation dry and repairs were progressed far enough for me to move from my position, a small group of agents approached me. These ones were titan specialists. They understood exactly who end what they were engaging, and this was not their first guardian recruitment. I might be able to shrug off a nuclear blast, but the binding of red tape is something that the intelligent mind is far more readily bound by. We negotiated home ranges, landing sites, and even secure locations where they could drop spent fuel rods for my consumption. I was able to lay out one directive I wanted and would not do without: I wanted to be able to interact with the people and let them interact with me. Furthermore, before I would sign off and commit to their demands, I wanted to see how the people received me. I knew it would be a mixed bag, but if there was anything good that came of it, I wanted it. The so called meet and greet event would be held at the airport.

Meet and Greet

Finding a spot for me to land took planning. Compared to the largest passenger plane in the world at the time, I was a third longer and with twice the wingspan. To make it even more complicated, the area was not built to handle the downdraft from a titan that is capable of vertical take off and landing, so I had to land in the surrounding flatlands and walk the last bit in. I wanted to look less imposing, one things the mooks and I agreed on, so I needed enough room to lay prone and just prop myself up on my upper arms. At least, when all the little details were taken care of, I had something to look forward to.

I wasn't sure if I was going to have angry protests waiting for me when I went to meet everyone. I guess I forgot that being with a city defender has been a concern of theirs for some time. I also forgot how magical it could be for someone so small to meet someone so large and touch them. I suppose I would be the same when meeting some of the legendary titans. There was a line waiting when I was settled. While that meant I could see just how many were coming out to see me, it might be hard for them to make the experience person, so I suggested that I just stay very still and they could wander around me as they liked. That was when I was given a reason to protect this place. I was swarmed! Many wanted to touch my wings, others wanted to actually speak to me. Some were thankful for what I did at the plant, many wondered how long I had been living nearby, and a god many more were just excited and awestruck to be so close to a live titan. What was going to be a few hours ended up being a whole day affair, and I didn't mind at all. By the end, we managed to let a few sit atop of my back. I didn't realize this wasn't normally a thing for titans or defenders, but the more who came out to see me, the more they seemed to call in friends and family to do the same.

By evening, when the crowds cleared and I was given clearance to fly out again, I had made a decision. This was going to be my city, and I was going to make sure that these people would always want to see me as they did today. I made very clear I would only take on a defending role even if that may extent out far around the city. I was not going to be a serial number or a private military weapon to be turned on anyone at their whim. Once that was established, the real work had to begin. Battling anything out in the valley, well outside the city boundaries would be easy, but we all knew there would be in fighting at some point. Even more important, as a city defender, I would be part of the normal emergency response including more standard recue work that might even include wildfire management in the mountains.

I had just one more requirement that would seal this deal. I knew that there was a large county fair every year in the late summer, and I wanted to do this again. However, next time, I wanted to take them flying. I've usually had the longest line at the fair ever since.

Hands on Training

So, with good reason, the metro area wasn't really up for serving as the training site of a first time defender, so I was forced to agree to training in a more remote location. I'm glad I have wings and, after a bit of paperwork, a valid flight identifier. As annoying as that was, it was much more pleasant to know I could set a flight plan and the only thing aimed at me might be cameras. In addition, it was my first time around other macro and titan class entities. Titans are quite rare, so there wasn't much for company there, but there were plenty of macro class folks. Some of them came with macro scale pride and attitudes as well, but one giant racoon was anything but like them. I could tell she had a lot of pressure on her to perform. Maybe she came from a long line of guardians or maybe she was the first in the family, but I could tell she was quite strong not just in body but in mind. From our uniforms, for those who had ones that fit, her name was Tia. We ended up fast friends and perhaps the real reason either of us succeeded with our sanity intact.

The training area was appropriately massive, and it consisted of multiple replica metropolitan areas that were maintained, and routine repaired, by a terrifying horde of construction robots. I had a lot to learn in terms of maneuvering in the city and knowing how much the buildings could tolerate in terms of being brushed against or bumped. The streets were made for their cars, so cornering was always a challenge, and when we started to grow accustomed to it, they started adding enemies and tactics to the mess. I admit that I learned a lot from those lessons, and they've helped me keepo fights out of city centers many times. But then there was the real challenge.

At our size, a twitch could crush a car. Its almost impossible to pluck someone up directly and not risk crushing them. Tia was having a terrible time with the test dummies, so much so that, even with one of the milder instructors, she was sweating, trembling, and nearly driven to tears. I had similar problems, and I am glad I let everyone crawl on me rather than me picking them up myself back at the meet and greet. We sat off to the side while on break, and I held her hands for a while. I got her to tell me about her city, which proved much larger than mine and even hosted multiple guardians, and I relayed some of the stories of my city and the mountains surrounding it. It got her mind off the task for a little while, long enough that when I brought it up that we used each other's hands for scooping practice. Without the risk of doing damage, it was easier to get the motion down and then try to do it as gently as possible. It sounds like a silly task, but its saved people from rooftops and natural disasters, and that is just in my hands.

Tia and I had a bit better luck with the rescue carry task as it went into the afternoon. We ended up pairing together for practice, and that casual relationship made everything easier. We eventually had a little friendly rivalry, especially when performing the defense simulations against other trainees. We spent most of that summer training to respond to everything from natural disasters, enemy invasions, macro invasions, and even the very rare risk of a legendary incursion. Tia and I unofficially agrees that we would bail each other out of a legendary assault. Even a full titan would struggle against one of them, and though she was only a macro level, I would rather her at my side than a whole nation's army. We also agreed that we needed to visit each other's city. At the time I am writing this, I'm trying to get her booked to visit for the county fair. On paper, I am trying to show we big folks are personable and have relationships like anyone else, but what I really want is to see a bunch of kids camped between her ears for a walkabout ride.

So here we are

That brings us up to today. I've had a few years now worth of work as the city guardian, and it hasn't been idle work. Thankfully, I think I have found more work aiding construction and fire crews than I have had to deal with big risks and high damage issues like invasions. There's a lovely cave them excavated for me where the Lone Isle plant leaves its spent fuel rods. Titans tend to cause accelerated nuclear decay and have superior energy capture abilities which basically translated to the fuel rods losing radioactivity rapidly and I soak it all up safely. Apparently this isn't too uncommon when a titan settles in to work for a city.

Tia and I try to visit each other once a year. Its more of a trip for her, but she likes the trip through the mountains. She usually comes around the time of the fair so we can enjoy the crowds, and I tend to come see her in the spring. She turned out to be the first macro of her family, coming to be one by mysterious means, and the other two lizards they had tended to give her a bit of a cold shoulder. Getting cuddle space under the wing of a titan moth did a fine job of shutting them up. I also told her that, should something happen because of how she came to be, that she needed a punching bag, that she knew how to find me.

On hard task, however, has been making sure no one is trying to take advantage of some of my unique skills. Tackling someone, blowing them out of town with hurricane force winds, or even using a myriad of iridescent spots to entrance and deflect aggressors is not too worrisome to most, but I can do more. Generating lightening or casting off toxic scales is enough to get you on a special government list. Being able to use your antennae to produce weapon grade particle beams strong enough to rip wholes across a city and knock a giant monkey on his backside, now that is the kind of thing that gets you stuck with a 'military advisor' that neither wants to be with you, and you could sure do well without them. Such is the cost of coming from one of the old lines. I don't think I could handle alien titans like my ancestors, but I still have some of the old blood in my veins.

At least no one has found out about the family reincarnation thing yet.

Scientific Theory

Radiation Handling

There are smaller titans than Toby and there are some macros his size, and superficially it is difficult to tell the two species apart. Many argued if there was a difference at all or if it was simply semantic until one concrete, testable property was discovered. Unlike macros, who are partially transparent to x-rays like their common counterparts under 3 meters in size, even the smallest titan is complete opaque to x-rays and even gamma rays. This is consistent with their ability to absorb and store radiation, and it defines their biology and ecology.

Titans as radiation absorbers and emitters

It is important to note that the radiation opaqueness of titans is not due to reflection of the radiation but rather extremely efficient absorption Most titans are not close enough with society to allow for testing, but work by scientists working with Toby have been able to test varying intensities and wavelengths of radiation over his body including the narrowest cross section of his wings to the thickest part of his torso. Returned radiation is quite limited even in the thinnest portions of the wings. While xray or gamma ray scanning is not useful in observing the interior anatomy of a titan, modified forms of ultrasound have revealed a vastly different biology. Although Toby resembles a moth, his internal anatomy is far more like a large fission reactor and a means of capturing and converting fission byproducts like gamnma rays and neutrons into energy for the rest of his body. His need to breath is less like ours, but his circulatory system operates in a similar manner with highly radioactive fluid being moved instead of carrying oxygen like our blood.

While not yet observed with Toby, enraged titans are known to become radioactive as they boost their metabolism and engage ins energy based attacks. The only attack mode Toby displays like this that has been measured are what most refer to as his antenna rays. In truth, they are more like gamma ray lasers or particle accelerators that rain down highly energized beams that are dangerous even to a titan. In times when he emits these beams, spikes in radiation are detected especially in the antennae but also across his body indicating the use of a deeper source of energy for such attacks consistent with measurements made near other energy emitting titans.

Energy absorption is required to replenish energy from such attacks, and this may involve ingestion of radioactive material or exposure to other external energy sources. The exact mechanism by which this energy is stored is unknown, but it may be possible that it is used to create radioactive isotopes from other more common, stable isotopes. If possible, this would represent a rechargeable reservoir of high energy particles that sustain them.

Titans as nuclear moderators

A longstanding debate involves the unusual property that decay and fission events are more rapid near a titan. The largest example of this phenomenon involved a titan extracting a operating core from a nuclear power plant and holding it close for roughly an hour after which the core was cold. No extraction of material was seen although extensive thermal damage was found on the core remnants.The cold core status remained a mystery. The absorption ability of the titans can account for the uptake of the energy, but the acceleration of decay cannot. It is possible that the body of a titan can act as a neutron moderator such that it returns enough neutrons that it can cause the acceleration of nuclear fission. Their ability to endure a runaway fission event leaves them with little concern about causing one, but evidence suggests that they prefer to have a steady input of energy rather than a burst.

Alternative theories include the presence of a quantum interaction that contributes to nuclear instability and thus accelerates decay with the possibility of inducing instability in otherwise stable nuclei. The means of testing this on a titan, however, have not yet been developed, and the hypothesis remains untested.