Dorsola is a gray-and-white bottlenose dolphin, about 6 feet from nose to tail. Through the technical marvels in his timeline, he has a hovering device implanted in his body - the rings of the device connect on either side and extend over his back, in front of and behind his dorsal fin. Through a force not visible to the casual observer, this device keeps him elevated above the ground by about three or four feet. From the ring connections midway up his body extend two telescoping mechanical arms with a set of flexible "fingers." Evidently, this gives the dolphin the ability to grasp objects and do other things most dolphins can't do.

You notice also that the normal leathery sheen of the dolphin's skin is masked somewhat by a thin layer of water, held to his body by a force field. This transparent covering helps to keep his skin wet and refreshed while he's above water, but it leaves open his face, his blowhole and the urogenital opening near the base of his tail - for obvious reasons.

Dorsola may seem quite limited in this form, but he is a rather powerful telepath - he communicates with those around him by "broadcasting" his thoughts as a stream of mental images. The process for this isn't too much unlike the more natural process of echolocating, which he does quite a bit as well. Because of his unique ability to communicate in this way, he has served as a translator for a number of different races. The more people he attempts to talk to at once, the more broken his speech becomes, as the greater energy required causes him to "optimize" his communication as much as possible.

This dolphin is also an intermediate telekineticist - he can pick up and move heavier objects by concentrating on them and focusing his well-developed energies. (Imagine Luke's Force training in "The Empire Strikes Back" - this is very much how Dorsola works.) When a particularly strong emotion or instinctual response occurs, the force field that covers his body will glow in various colors. Blue usually indicates a defensive posture, magenta means anger, green denotes a happy or contented state, red/orange shows that he's hurt in some way, and yellow indicates fear and caution. Finally, Dorsola is capable of surrounding himself (and anyone within two feet of him) with a protective force sphere that repels attacks and flying objects. He can only maintain this protection for very brief periods, as it drains his energy quickly, but usually a few seconds is all he needs in order to get away.

While above ground, Dorsola hovers by means of his bodysuit, which employs an anti-gravity energy field. He is capable of controlling his elevation and orientation with merely a thought, and he moves around much the same way he would in water. He is unable to go up stairs without assistance, but he can safely travel down them. When he wants to travel underwater (where he can move more efficiently), the device around his body simply switches off, giving him full freedom of movement. While he has mechanical arms that are controlled cybernetically, he prefers not to use them, as they are pretty delicate and not very strong - they are ideally suited to manipulating small tools, pressing buttons and typing on keyboards, etc.

Dorsola was my second mainstream furry character (although not really furry, he qualifies as one). My first was Joey McKangaroo, but that character was laid to rest when I went to college. Back in 1992, I actually drew the image you see above (in the Vital Statistics section) and all over my site - it's the one and only animal drawing I've ever drawn that I'm willing to show to people. Back then, it was just a drawing, but while I was in college, my interest in dolphins was resparked by a great poster I picked up in a comic book shop. I eventually created the character of Dorsola the Dolphin as a replacement for Joey.

When I was first introduced to SPR Muck, I tried to bring Dors into the MUCK as a full-fledged character. I quickly learned how difficult it is to play a non-morphic dolphin in a land-based environment - despite his mental powers, he couldn't really do much more than talk and react to other furs. I eventually decided to create a different character to take Dorsola's place for roleplaying - Kiefer the Kangaroo - and Dorsola became my non-furry alias used elsewhere on the Internet. (For instance, I'm known as Dorsola in the emulation and pinball simulation communities.)