Falling Skies: In our Final Hour

[R31GN]

@Everyone else, don't get too comfy, character reviews are on their way.
>EvilLaugh.mp3

@vietmyke

I am both hype and terrified. And just a bit aroused.

[Hexaflexagon]

But remember Myke is only cruel because Myke loves us. Well Myke used to love us. Now I think he just likes to watch us squirm because he is a perverted bastard reasons.

[Whoami]

Myyyke! Can I make a Coalition character? Perhaps a defector or a captive, or maybe even just the bad gal! Like a general or somethin'?

[Naril]

I'm taking bets for how many times Myke is going to shout "NONE OF THIS WORKS THAT WAY."

Personally, there's around 4200 words in the sheet, so I'm betting at least once per 100 words or so.

[Hexaflexagon]

@Whoami
Oh no! Evil Whoami sounds terrifying.

@Naril
Eh you would be surprised. If Myke likes one thing above all others it is well written Technobabble that and logistics for some unexplainable reason.

[Whoami]

Jargon is the quickest way to Myke's heart.

[vietmyke]

I do love my techbobabble. And my logistics, sometimes even more so than the techbobabble. Only sometimes.

[Whoami]

Point proven.

As for my question~~? ;P

[vietmyke]

Maybe avoid the coalition character

[Whoami]

Will do. I'll get to making a character and PM it to you. I have some fun ideas.

[Athinar]

@Athinar I'll be completely honest with you: I'm not incredibly enthused about this character...

The Things

Maybe its the whole celebrity thing, but something about this character just screams "I'm the main character!" which is very much not something I'm looking for. I'm looking for an average joe soldier, with character depth and room for development to make him/her unique and engaging, but not the constant center of attention.

His personality is a vague, sorta humble, sorta I-get-along-with-everyone kinda deal, and while there is nothing wrong with being humble or amicable, his personality just seems kinda... 2-dimensional. Half of the personality blurb is just exposition from the viewpoint of another character, and while I appreciate the cleverness of making the 'psychological analysis' look like an analysis made by a doctor, there's just not enough substance in it for me to get a good picture of Michael's personality other than sorta humble, sorta agreeable.

Same goes for his background information- again, the whole logged conversation thing is very clever and in character with the idea of a soldier's dossier, there's no meat in it. He was born, he did this, he joined the army, he was good at the army, now he's here. There's no substance to the tiny paragraph dedicated to his actual background. He was born on earth to a wealthy family? Cool, who is this wealthy family? what sort of power or pull do they have in the UEE? How did he become interested in acting? How did his career take off like it did? Why did he go enlisted instead of Officer Corps? How did he prove himself as a soldier? I have none of the answers to these questions, just the fact that "he did the thing" - as my longtime Falling Skies players like to say.

In short, this character has no real depth to him.

@vietmyke

Ah, poo. Oh well. I'll keep some ideas, but nix the celebrity status and ad some more depth. Be back in a bit.

[Whoami]

Lione, Killian

Age
23

Gender
Female

Nickname
Direwolf

Rank
Corporal

Role
Reconnaissance, Mobile Warfare, Sabotage

Psychological Analysis
Killian is a model soldier: strong, brave, unquestioning, and effective. Corporal Lione's sense of duty goes above and beyond, she is the first to step up to a tough mission and the last to leave if things so south. Killian is remarkably quick on her feet, it's because of this that she is often selected for scouting assignments and infiltrating. Killian does well to bond with her team and takes is as hard as anyone else who loses a comrade on the battlefield. Nevertheless, Killian moves on and focuses. Her tenacity often turns into stubbornness when a fight isn't looking good. Her father, Prestor Lione, a high ranking officer in Cerol's High Command echelon, has high expectations for Killian. But for whatever reason, Killian is always at odds with her father. Killian hates it when other soldiers take it easy on her, simply because her father is a powerful man. The corporal is tough as nails, and she can take a blow, mentally or physically, and keep dishing it back.

Military Record
The Lione family has served in militaries even before the birth of the UEE. Strict doctrine and daily training within the family has led to the Lione's raising some of the finest foot soldiers in the UEE. The Lione family line is large, with plenty of marriages connecting their name to others. Many of the senior members of the Lione family are high ranking military officials, many training facilities are overseen by a Lione family member in order to spread their doctrine.

Killian's father is a colonel and her mother is a navy admiral. Her branch of the family has lived on Cerol since its colonization. Since the age of thirteen, Killian and her three siblings were drilled hard by their parents. Marksmanship, disciplinary practice, communications, camouflage, all of it and more was forced on the four brothers and sisters instead of regular teenage things. Her father was always known to be the hardest and most unforgiving sons of High Praetor Armatus Lione. Even at such a young age, Killian understood her sole purpose: she was bred for war.

True to the Lione name, Killian excelled in training when she had enlisted. She was more on the aggressive side when it came to mock battle exercises. Killian had joined the military from the very bottom, her father had told her that a true Lione to command by earning it, not by studying for it. Nobody could doubt her skill in a fight, she made an excellent storm trooper. Some issues arose when Killian's gun blazing attitude began to work against her squad during mock battles. She was kept in training for an additional three months to learn to work more as a team and not shoot first ask later. When her father heard of the news that she hadn't cleared training when everybody else did, he was furious. There was a long night of scolding and arguing, and since then, Killian and her father speak only on a professional level. Her father admitted to being too hard on her, and he told Killian that he still valued her as his daughter more than a Lione soldier. Killian never accepted his apology.

The additional months of training paid off for Killian. She learned restraint and came out of the boot camp as a better soldier. Her sheer ferocity in combat had diminished unfortunately, but it was a necessary sacrifice to make room for better coordination and teamwork. After all, a wolf is nothing without its pack. After her extended training process, Killian was assigned to 8118th regiment and placed in the regiments force recon battalion where her skills as a prominent fighter would not go to waste. It was the perfect position for a newly recruited Lione soldier.

Killian had been in the 8118th for four months before the invasion of Cerol. She had only had one short term deployment to a neighboring solar system to handle a group of unruly mercenaries. It wasn't a difficult task and Killian felt that it was hardly trial by fire worthy. Once the invasion had begun, Killian was thrust into a constant fight for survival. Her mother had been at an admiralty council aboard Ulysses station when it went down, she assumed she was dead. But the fighting kept the grim thoughts of her mom's death out of mind; she'd only be able to mourn for her if she lived.

Killian's squad was deployed to an estate not far from Leis once the Coalition had made planetfall. They were tasked with securing a governor's family and bringing them back to the capital where they would be safe. For now.

Equipment
ACS SpecOps Carbine
APP-3 Pistol
Plasma Edged Alloy Combat Knife
4x Electron Grenades
2x Personal BioGel Canisters
2x Radar Spikes
(Small spikes deployed into the ground that link to the squad's hud. They provide enhanced situational awareness.)

[Kimiyosis]

Hold the phone, what?!
There's a ground version now?!
Is there a spot left still?!

[vietmyke]

First round of character reviews!

@Reaper

The thing

So much overwatch. Overall, I see nothing glaringly wrong with this character. Personality is well developed, if not reminiscent heavily of the actual Mercy from Overwatch, (with last name directly ripped from Overwatch may I add). I assume the BASTION's shield is sort of like Reinhardt's energy shield, yes? I assume the shield will be relatively small- enough to cover her crouching body over a patient, but not a standing assault trooper. The only thing I'd really request is to change up the name a bit, because even though I know this character is inspired by Mercy, I want to pretend to myself that it is an original character. Perhaps give her a french surname/make her french, so the idea of her always saying "Merci" can be the reason why people call her Mercy

@R31GN

The Thing

I already gave you the whole talk about cybernetics I believe, so I'll skip that part. Conrad's personality is the sort of snarky, sarcastic sound that I like a lot- almost representative of a certain Japanese woman in another Falling Skies RP Cough@Reaper. I'm gonna assume the UEE gave Conrad a pardon for his 'crimes' when he enlisted with their military.

Urk, this is gonna take some fact checking of my own- because I'm terrible with dates, and I've probably retconned this like half a dozen times, but I'm pretty sure the date of the siege of Cerol is 2899, towards the very end of the 29th century. - and while I had originally written the war as starting at the start of the 29th century... 100 years of war with very little military development sounds a bit... far fetched... so I'll say the war's been going on for at least 20-30 years, long enough that an entire generation has been born into an era of war, and the UEE have had enough time to start developing and mass producing MAS of their own.

Thats a very long round-about way of me saying, Conrad has probably been born into the galaxy in a state of war. That might mess around with your first paragraph in your history.

Other then that, maybe give Conrad a PDW or sidearm besides the flaregun.

[Kimiyosis]

@vietmyke
Wait, considering it's you, it's more of a whoever has a more suitable CS, right?

[vietmyke]

@Kimiyosis aye

[R31GN]

@R31GN

The Thing

I already gave you the whole talk about cybernetics I believe, so I'll skip that part. Conrad's personality is the sort of snarky, sarcastic sound that I like a lot- almost representative of a certain Japanese woman in another Falling Skies RP Cough@Reaper. I'm gonna assume the UEE gave Conrad a pardon for his 'crimes' when he enlisted with their military.

Urk, this is gonna take some fact checking of my own- because I'm terrible with dates, and I've probably retconned this like half a dozen times, but I'm pretty sure the date of the siege of Cerol is 2899, towards the very end of the 29th century. - and while I had originally written the war as starting at the start of the 29th century... 100 years of war with very little military development sounds a bit... far fetched... so I'll say the war's been going on for at least 20-30 years, long enough that an entire generation has been born into an era of war, and the UEE have had enough time to start developing and mass producing MAS of their own.

Thats a very long round-about way of me saying, Conrad has probably been born into the galaxy in a state of war. That might mess around with your first paragraph in your history.

Other then that, maybe give Conrad a PDW or sidearm besides the flaregun.

@vietmyke

Timelines and me don't get along too well, but I'll take another look at that backstory and see what I can do about it.
Honestly, I was thinking of making it a running gag with Conrad that his cybernetic fingers were just a bit too big to fit in trigger grips, especially since he's got the whole 6 million dollar man thing going for him already, but I'll toss a Bullhamer in with him.

[Reaper]

First round of character reviews!

@Reaper

The thing

So much overwatch. Overall, I see nothing glaringly wrong with this character. Personality is well developed, if not reminiscent heavily of the actual Mercy from Overwatch, (with last name directly ripped from Overwatch may I add). I assume the BASTION's shield is sort of like Reinhardt's energy shield, yes? I assume the shield will be relatively small- enough to cover her crouching body over a patient, but not a standing assault trooper. The only thing I'd really request is to change up the name a bit, because even though I know this character is inspired by Mercy, I want to pretend to myself that it is an original character. Perhaps give her a french surname/make her french, so the idea of her always saying "Merci" can be the reason why people call her Mercy

@vietmyke

I haven't actually read Mercy's backstory that carefully. We're all conscripted into the military/civil defense force for two years of service here and medical officers are selected from people who qualified for medical courses in university so...

On the shield: Yes, it's "half-cover" in XCOM terms. You could quite safely crouch/prone behind it, but standing up will expose a lot of you to shoot at. Though I had more of an armor plate in mind in terms of shielding than an actual energy shield. Think of the energy shield as more of there to stop shrapnel from mortar rounds and the like. No point just having an energy shield if a sniper just has to wait for it to drop and take a shot.

[Whoami]

@vietmyke@reaper, This is something I've been meaning to show you guys but constantly procrastinated.

Geneva Convention on medical personnel

In other words, medical personnel, military or civilian, are protected by international law and it is illegal to cause harm to such figures even in the midst of combat. Would be interesting if that was a thing in this RP. Of course, the personnel in question is exempt from this law if they try to cause harm to the enemy.

EDIT: Or the Coalition can say screw that and go on a murder-rampage across the galaxy.

[Kimiyosis]

Working on CS~

@vietmyke@reaper, This is something I've been meaning to show you guys but constantly procrastinated.

Geneva Convention on medical personnel

In other words, medical personnel, military or civilian, are protected by international law and it is illegal to cause harm to such figures even in the midst of combat. Would be interesting if that was a thing in this RP. Of course, the personnel in question is exempt from this law if they try to cause harm to the enemy.

EDIT: Or the Coalition can say screw that and go on a murder-rampage across the galaxy.

@Whoami

Not only that, even if they are armed, they are not protected under the conventions.