Typhon And Ray (Arknights)

Ray, a Rim Billitonian without stable employment who often works in mine safety and security, or as a "pitsinker" in the local parlance. After running into Amiya, the Doctor, and Savage while they were revisiting old memories, she took the initiative to apply to Rhodes Island. As an operator aboard the landship, she participates in a variety of security, combat, and exploration missions. In the well-developed mining industry of Rim Billiton, "pitsinker" was once a common occupation. Traditionally, every day before a mine opens for work, a lone pitsinker is dispatched down the shaft to inspect for hazardous conditions: water seepage, leaks both gaseous and liquid, areas at risk of cave-in, etc, all alongside suppressing any Infected creatures that thrive in mines. To ensure smooth operation, pitsinkers would also need to constantly patrol the tunnels and protect the miners from surprise attacks from said creatures. On paper, they are similar to modern security staff—with a greater focus on specialized knowledge and combat skills—but in practice there are practically zero requirements to become one. For the many vagrant children who lack the strength for long hours of mining work, it is the perfect job to make their way up in the world. At its core, pitsinking really is just going down a mine to check it for poison gas and cave-ins. At times, they will risk their bodies, even their very lives, to seek these answers.

That said, Rim Billiton's mining industry has long since moved on, with much of the work now being performed by machines. The technologies used to monitor and decontaminate the mineshafts are constantly being refined, with the safety of the workers increasing day by day. However, small-scale private mines can still be found all over the country, and some mine owners continue to use the old ways passed down for generations. Operator Ray seems to be of like mind. She doesn't think too much about it or herself and hasn't given her future much thought either. Once, long ago, someone told her that she could make a living as a pitsinker, and she's been doing it ever since. As a fellow Rim Billitonian who's worked in mine security, Savage has given Ray a number of tests, confirming that she has qualifications to hold a security post at a modern large-scale mine. Ray had simply never considered the possibility.

Thankfully, she seems to have luck on her side, having managed to make it through life without major injury. However, perhaps she will be stuck with a pitsinker's mindset for a while yet: isolated, always on high alert, always raising her head to gaze up from the bottom of the shaft at the light from the entrance, not knowing whether she's alive or dead until she's hauled back to the surface and leaves the dark behind her. For quite a while after joining Rhodes Island, nobody paid much attention to Ray. There's no shortage of operators who are very welcoming to newcomers, but neither the movie club, the tea club, nor the culinary club ever sent her an invitation. After all, she's never asked for directions, or even stopped to get her bearings on the landship. This made it very hard for anyone to tell that she was indeed a newcomer, even as she was calmly making her fifth loop on the same route.

They might also not draw the connection between her and that one sandbeast that showed up recently. Sandbeasts are notoriously hard to tame, with many preferring to starve to death than eat in captivity. Thus, most believed that the sandbeast popping up in the corridors had merely crawled in via a ventilation duct, and that in a day or two it would find its way back to the great outdoors. In time, everyone simply got used to it hiding away in comfy corners. It might occasionally chew through a cable beneath a pre-fab board, but they were always fixed in a jiffy, with no one the wiser as to its owner.

One day, thanks to a particular dish on the menu, several operators were discussing the migratory fowlbeasts of Terra in the cafeteria, and eventually reached a confusion as to whether the fowlbeasts that arrived in two different locations were the same species or not. At that point, Ray—who had never spoken a single word to them—slipped into their conversation as though she had known them their whole life and started asking each of the operators where they were from. Upon learning their hometowns, she would explain which species were typical of each region in easy-to-understand terms. This was how they got to know her, with many amazed at her knowledge in this area, as well as her incredible curiosity that she never showed at any other topic. She was the type of child who would flip through a picture book again and again, repeatedly devouring all the animal almanacs in her local library and unintentionally memorizing every last page.

Naturally, everyone quickly realized that the mystery sandbeast was simply hanging out near Ray, and that she was the one fixing the wires it chewed through. Also, half of her single-occupancy dorm room was occupied by a giant sandbox. Not only did she make it herself, but when the landship made a stop in the wastelands, she took the chance to gather sack after sack of sandy soil to fill it.

Typhon the Sami Sarkaz was orphaned when her parents who were hunters were attacked and killed by the Collapsals. She was rescued by the Cyclops Arges as she was on the brink of death while still firmly clutching to her parents' greatbow that was polluted by the Collapsal taint. The scene was forever etched into Typhon's memory who had constant nightmares about the incident, yet the Collapsal corruption she suffered during the tragedy was too great that she suffers from memory loss pertaining to her parents' deaths.

Resolving to find her parents' killers and avenge their deaths, Typhon follows and learns from the Sami hunters and Arges, and eventually become a skilled huntress went on an "eternal hunt" with her parents' greatbow firing arrows polluted by Collapsal taint but kept contained through Sarkaz witchcraft, turning it into a reality-bending, material-rending instrument of war. At some point Typhon was recommended into Rhodes Island by Magallan, where she aids them during their expeditions to the endless icefields of the north.