Gyiyg

Gyiyg is an extraterrestrial being from an unknown world. He arrived in-game on August 6th, 2011.

age: ~80 Earth years (equivalent to a young adult)

origins: Mother/EarthBound

app link: Application.

hmd: How's My Driving?

played by: [Kanaza]

contact: In Laqetti (AIM), eightfoldyuber@gmail.com

Setting
Mother takes place primarily on Earth, in the United States, around the late eighties and early nineties. That said, it is practically a kitschy parody of what the United States is supposed to be like: immaculate lawns, sleepy little towns, a big city or two, crooked politicians and police, weird cults, ghosts, zombies and random cryptids. A rare few possess psychic powers, referred to as PSI; dinosaurs live beneath the Earth's surface, and there is a village of odd little creatures called Mr. Saturn. Song has a power of its own, and prayers will be answered, though not always in the way one expects.

Then there are the extraterrestrial invaders from an unknown world. As the series never shows us the planet or any of the invaders (besides the character in question), there is no information about either that is shown; instead, the characters deliver exposition about both. Nonetheless, this is what is known.

Gyiyg is one of these invading aliens; however, he is something more than that. He was raised by an Earth woman, Maria, when he was very young. She and her newspaper reporter husband, George, had been abducted in the early 1900s by the alien species Gyiyg belonged to. Although they were of different biologies and cultures, Maria loved Gyiyg as though he were her own child. For his part, in his own way, he loved her too.

However, trouble brewed in the form of George. The aliens had not only technology far superior to that on Earth, but had also developed powerful PSI, which Gyiyg would later come to master himself. Worse, they intended to invade Earth. George studied their powers without their permission, then escaped back to Earth two years after his abduction and performed research there. Maria never escaped their clutches and died while in their care.

Once Gyiyg matured and gained great control over his powers, his people gave him the task of invading Earth, partially due to George's actions. Although he did not want to betray the woman who had raised him, he suppressed those feelings, detaching himself emotionally from his memories of Maria, then began to plan.

About eighty years after Maria and George were abducted, he began the invasion. He unleashed the Starmen — mechanical creations of his people — and clouded the minds of humans and animals to attack others. He even had adults abducted and trapped on Holy Loly Mountain. However, the great-grandson of George and Maria — Ninten — and his friends stood in his way. Ninten had psychic powers, as well as his friend Ana, though they were inferior to Gyiyg's.

Finally, after a long quest, Ninten, Ana and Lloyd reached the summit of Holy Loly Mountain, where he confronted them. They could not harm him within his machine; worse, his powers were strong, assaulting them at every turn while he explained to them why they needed to perish. Victory seemed to be at hand. Until they did something very unexpected indeed.

They sang Maria's lullaby.

Though he tried to deny it, the lullaby touched his emotions and he remembered the love he had once felt. The love that ached and hurt him so badly. Although he begged for them to stop, they refused and continued with the song. Before long, he surrendered and retreated to his UFO, swearing to get revenge. The evil influence on the world disappeared.

The price of their victory was that their song destabilized him permanently. His control over his emotions slipped. Although he had never been quite sane before, his mental state began to deteriorate. Over the years, he fell further and further into madness.

Personality
As an extraterrestrial raised by a human woman, Gyiyg had essentially two upbringings and two very different philosophies. On the one hand, he has seen humanity's goodness, his mother figure — Maria — showing him love and compassion; but he has also seen humanity at its worst in what he perceives as her husband George's betrayal, this fact pointed to by his people as proof of the race's inherent inferiority. The schism between these two views has led to no small amount of difficulty for the alien. He managed to draw a compromise between the two points of view: humanity is vile and thoughtless, but it may be able to learn and grow into a greater species. This belief colors his interactions with humans; he treats them as lessers, tossing insults at them, but he can be convinced that a select few may be worthy of his attention and time. Yet perhaps he will never truly understand humans.

Gyiyg's goal was to conquer the Earth; his first attempt failed due to three human children. Their victory — both being driven off by his dead mother's song and the shame of losing to human children — destabilized the alien further than before, driving him mad. He is a troubled being, having a difficult time coming to terms with the emotions of others. Expressions of love and songs used to cause him near-physical pain, bringing up memories of Maria (and he may have killed her); now, he still dislikes these things, though he can control himself somewhat better than before. However, his lack of mental stability make him both frightening and dangerous when upset, scared or angry; he may destroy in a blind rage, or he may just babble thoughtlessly to himself. When in this state, his thought processes and emotions are a complicated jumble that he is incapable of sorting through. He loses awareness of his surroundings and even himself.

He views himself as unwanted by either humans or his own people. He had no family, and so was taken in by a human, but she died and left him as well. This abandonment has made its mark; he has robbed children of their parents, because he believes that if he had no parents, neither should anyone else. In that way, he behaves like a spiteful, angry child. That said, he still has a clear attachment to the woman who raised him; he was willing to spare Ninten's life and take the boy with him on his ship, out of some sense of kinship and obligation. When Ninten refused, the rejection angered him, but he felt no need to plead with him. The boy had made his choice, and Gyiyg was willing to show him the consequences.

However, in spite of his problems, he takes pride in his intelligence and strength. He is demanding and manipulative with a vengeful streak; he has eyes for little else but his goals and will sacrifice nearly anything else to get whatever it is he wants. He harbors an obsessive need for control, whether it be a situation, an organization or the people he associates with.

At this point, he does not know about the prophecy the Apple of Enlightenment gave. However, when he learns of it, it becomes an obsession that consumes him. He attempts to avert it through time travel, both destroying the Earth in the future and hiding in the distant past.

The prophecy is vague about who it refers to, but when the alien — Buzz Buzz — travels back in time to alert the boy, his warnings and gift turn Ness into the chosen boy. Once Gyiyg finds out who is out to destroy him, he takes further and further desperate measures to stop them, trying to stop them from reaching places that have information about him, kidnapping people important to the heroes, sending troops to attack Ness's hometown.

In the end, this obsession led to him destroying his own body, just so he could defy the prophecy.

On an unrelated note, Gyiyg's species has no concept of gender. Maria arbitrarily assigned him as male, as humans are wont to do, but he isn't actually one or the other.

Abilities & Weaknesses
Gyiyg is a powerful psychic, and so possesses a variety of interesting powers.

He can generate fire, ice and lightning with his mind (called PK Fire, PK Freeze and PK Thunder respectively), and can send them at his enemies; aiming the lightning is difficult, though, so it misses fairly often, hitting nearby objects instead. He can temporarily lull enemies to sleep with Hypnosis. His other purely offensive power is PK Flash, which creates a blinding burst of light that may make a target teary-eyed, confused, paralyzed or even knock them unconscious (but he has no control over which effect it has, if any). His powers are so overwhelming that those he faces cannot even grasp how he is attacking.

In addition, he is talented with telekinesis, which he mostly uses to hover and glide, redirect projectiles and use objects as weapons or barriers; it is implied that he can cause poltergeist disturbances, making objects attack people, though they lose their power with enough damage and cannot be made animate again. He also possesses telepathy, capable of communication and even of invading the subconscious minds of others (such as in dreams) to attempt to get them to do his bidding. That said, he cannot coerce someone through force; he must take advantage of their inner evil, the darkness within, and convince them to follow his commands. It is possible to completely reject him, and a psychic or strong-willed person may be able to keep him out altogether.

Although Gyiyg's abilities seem to reach targets on Earth while he is in space in canon, his range has been restricted upon his arrival; telepathy and poltergeist disturbances have been reduced to the city or zone he is in at the time. Invasion of others' subconscious minds, however, is limited further still. He must be in the same room as his target in order for that to function.

For all his vast power, though, he has his weaknesses. To begin with, he is essentially invincible in the games, but this is only because he is in a protective machine in Mother 1 (in Mother 2, he destroyed his own body, so there was nothing to attack, really). Outside that machine, it can be supposed that he is rather frail (or he would not have used it to begin with); he is about the size of a ten-year-old human child, and he does not fight well without his PSI (he has sharp claws and teeth, but given his small size, he is not going to be killing anyone with them). He is easily overwhelmed at close range, provided one can actually get close. And although his defenses against psychic intrusions and attacks are formidable, he is vulnerable to attacks that confuse their targets.

His most crippling weakness, however, is his emotions. Sincere expressions of love (prayers, caring words, some songs, but especially Maria's lullaby) disrupt his thought processes temporarily; if continued, it renders him completely unable to focus on his PSI, forcing him to surrender or retreat. On the other hand, his powers grow in strength when he is upset, angry or frightened, but his control over said powers lapses. He misses more often, hits the wrong target, uses the wrong power or may even do nothing at all.

Character Relationships
None so far.