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Hidden 5 yrs ago Post by Ashgan
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Ashgan

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Preamble
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Humanity

2078 C.E.—With their first macro-scale faster-than-light voyage, humanity, under the auspices of Origin, a government for all, broke the universal speed limit. Able to escape overpopulated local systems, pioneers from Sol, Tau Ceti, and Gliese colonized and exploited every habitable world in their ever-expanding bubble of influence.

3028 C.E.—Evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence was, for the first time, unexpectedly discovered at a distance of 370 light years from Sol after an exploratory vessel scanned exospheres in the star Maasym’s gravitational well. Amongst a handful of barren planets was an enormous machine: Presumed the abandoned habitat of a long-since extinct alien civilization, the mechanical planetoid was nicknamed Derelict.

3030 C.E.—Derelict’s siren song enticed corporations, scavengers, and religious fanatics alike. They strove against one another until Derelict’s ravaged surface was chaotic and awash in a pal of blood redder than the light of its star -- that is until Origin, urged by the high-minded notions of ethics and scientific inquiry, sent an armada including no less than three Apocalypse-class battleships to ensure a modicum of the law was upheld and the machine-planet’s history left intact.

Mankind delved ever deeper into Derelict’s crust, but strange disasters kept impeding the bold and the greedy alike in descending too far. Meanwhile, heedless of their own safety, the cultist zealots disappeared into its dark labyrinths as if beckoned by a latent will in the abyss.

And then the machine quakes started.

The litany arrived shortly after the first tremor. Nobody remembers who said it first. Yet, afterwards, whenever a profiteer started their shift and descended, they whispered: “Sleep, Grand Automaton, That We May Plunder.”


Overview
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This game takes place on a planet-size machine in orbit around the star Maasym, 370 light years from Earth. Discovered by an exploration vessel shortly after the invention of faster-than-light transportation and dubbed Derelict, due to its apparent inactivity, it quickly developed into a frontier of humankind’s theft, lies, and exploitation. Yet, the deeper they delve, the more of Derelict’s automatons they encounter and the more it seems the machine world is not quite as dead as everyone would have liked to believe.

While the original purpose of this thread is to provide @Circ and myself with a platform to play out this story, interested parties are more than welcome to make their curiosity known. Additional roleplayers are absolutely welcome.


Locations
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Orbital Station

This is the place humans mingle before their excursions into Derelict. Replete with cantinas, corrupt police, bankrupt refugees, medical services, and hotels, this is the cultural hub: that shining beacon in the cold dark nothing where wares are pawned, backs are stabbed, people make it or break it, and in good old capitalist fashion nothing is ever really free.


Exploitation Shaft

Metal is why people flock to Derelict. Not because of its mystique or to gawk at the remnants of a dead alien relic, but metal. Self-healing, durable, incorruptible, and unable to be synthesized thus far by humanity’s brightest scientists. Moreover, the deeper one ventures into the machine world’s core the more potent the metal. Such a rare material translates into space elevators, battleship hulls, body armor, and -- most importantly -- cold hard cash. It is the reason so many profiteers, academics, and zealots alike descend into Derelict’s exploitation shaft and plunder as much as possible.


Rules
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Technology, Powers, Etc

Stunted by vanity, humanity’s evolution yielded a species not dissimilar to what roamed Earth in the 2020s. Appearances being surface deep, advancements in medicine and genetic engineering gave people the opportunity to live twice as long and doubled human potential in virtually every aspect: strength, cognition, dexterity, and so forth. Hardware augmentation remained rare due to social stigma and those who pursued such tended to be desperate or outcasts. Magic remained the currency of fools and charlatans. Everything is ultimately controlled by mega-corporations and Origin, humanity’s Earth-centric government, from weapons of mass destruction to meal rations and, with the advent of nigh-instantaneous faster-than-light travel, their regimes are enforced with brutal efficiency.


Player Interactions

Be respectful to one another as this is intended to be a cooperative effort rather than a fight.

Expect mature in-character content.

While there is no minimum post length, strive to render a complete scene that is descriptive, engaging, and advances the story.

Proof read with a focus on quality over quantity.

Embedded graphics, if present, should complement the written word rather than overwhelm the screen.

Standard RPGuild rules apply.


Character Sheet
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Name
> real name, nicknames, or callsigns.

Physical Description
> gender, age, height, weight, colorations, tattoos, markings, clothes, items typically in their possession; essentially anything another person would notice when they see your character.

Purpose
> trade skills, political alliances, and overall reason for being at Derelict

History
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Hidden 5 yrs ago 4 yrs ago Post by Circ
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Circ

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Looking forward to this @Ashgan. Also, if anyone else stumbles across this and thinks it is interesting, feel free to express your interest! :)

Other Notes


FTL: Fastest FTL drives so far are Origin Navy's battleship drives, developed within the last year or so, which can traverse 100 ly in approximately 30 days. Assumption is that they are 2x as fast as commercial grade FTL available on most other ships in the setting.

Communication: there is a galactic internet that works on the basis of quantum entanglement between satellite pairs. Due to limitations with quantum entanglement, only 1-1 pairing is feasible. As a result, an infrastructure of planet-to-planet pairs has been introduced, with planets that contain multiple pairs (like Earth contains Earth-Mars, Earth-Titan, Earth-Centauri b) letting the satellites in orbit around the same planet communicate via line-of-sight lasers. Thus latency (via laser comm) is introduced and varies based on the number of hops. So, on Derelict, due to the number of pair-hops, it could take up to a day to send/receive information from Earth.
Hidden 5 yrs ago Post by Admiral Moskau
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Admiral Moskau An Admiral of the Binary Seas

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Strange, but lovely, pardon the lurking.
Hidden 5 yrs ago Post by Ashgan
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Ashgan

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By all means, feel free to lurk :P What good is text, after all, but to be read?
And in the event that you feel like participating, let us know and we can talk about how to integrate you. Since we've barely begun, there are still a lot of good opportunities to make that happen.
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Hidden 5 yrs ago Post by Circ
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Thanks for the interest, @Moskau Spieluhr!
Hidden 5 yrs ago Post by Parzivol
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I'll be posting a character sheet momentarily for review/general viewing. I'd like to ask what level artificial intelligence has reached, though. @Ashgan @Circ
Hidden 5 yrs ago Post by Circ
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I'll be posting a character sheet momentarily for review/general viewing. I'd like to ask what level artificial intelligence has reached, though. @Ashgan @Circ


Thanks for applying! Artificial intelligence is advanced, but no "singularity" moment yet or danger of skynet/matrix stuff. That said, it is able to do every day tasks better than a human being (driving, cooking, filling out forms, advanced computation). If Derelict "awakens," that will definitely change, and we will be encountering some machine super intelligence.
Hidden 5 yrs ago 5 yrs ago Post by Parzivol
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I played with the idea of a corporation attempting to send out a semi-autonomous android for experimental purposes, intent on using an unmanned force to harvest resources from the derelict. Hopefully this falls within the range of, "Non-Terminator," threat levels and stuff. It's a machine that simulates personality and can be a character through that. Let me know what you think. @Circ @Ashgan


Hidden 5 yrs ago Post by Circ
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@Parzivol Excellent profile and a very thorough description of the various devices assigned to the satellite. I like how you add more depth to the environment with the inclusion of MRS and its various business arms, from private to security sector business. All in all, I think this will be a great inclusion to our SGA RP and look forward to your first post. :)

Feel free to move your profile to the characters tab.

If you want, you can join our discord (although I'm not sure how long this link is good for): discord.gg/GMyga3
Hidden 4 yrs ago Post by Nate1008
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Oh! Hi Circ! I would like to hop into this too. Assuming this is not dead yet...
Hidden 4 yrs ago Post by Ashgan
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Ashgan

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Yo there, @Nate1008. It's absolutely not dead, we just handle OOC communication via Discord. Feel free to hop in and chat us up!
Hidden 4 yrs ago Post by Nate1008
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ok. Thanks!
Hidden 4 yrs ago Post by Nate1008
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I am finished my prototype CS! What do you guys think? If anything is not within the rules, guidelines, setting, e.g, please tell me and I will work to fix it. Thanks!
Hidden 4 yrs ago Post by Ashgan
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Yo Nate. I’ve a few points I want to address regarding your CS. While nothing strictly breaks the rules or setting, there are elements I would like to see you expand on:

-A little bit of extra info on NRC would not be amiss. The character sheet is a little Spartan in terms of information in general and, since the character is a robot, it would perhaps make sense to focus less on the unit and more on the manufacturer. Perhaps explaining the acronym would be a fine start ;)

-Age and sex on a robot? Age I can at least understand if we count its years of service, although I would vehemently argue that a 24 year old robot is certainly not cutting edge anymore today. Even if he’s been upgraded over that time, I feel like serious concerns could be had over the viability of a company’s robots if they have kept the same basic chassis for almost a quarter of a century. I’m not saying that’s not possible, but they would certainly raise some eyebrows and have to prove themselves against the myriad criticisms and questions from both their customers and rival competitors.

-This one’s more of a personal and vague one, and might just be down to the sparseness of information in the sheet, but I wonder in what ways the character would be fun to write. You seem to describe an apathetic drone whose purpose is limited to protecting designated targets. That would make a fine NPC, but you’re choosing this as your main. Am I missing a detail here? And I want to stress I don’t say this in a mean-spirited way; I’m wondering for your sake. I want everyone to have fun in this.
Also bear in mind that we do live in a setting where AI is regarded as dangerous and is heavily regulated by the government. That doesn’t mean that companies aren’t necessarily trying to develop that kind of illegal tech anyway and perhaps disguise their efforts to the public, but it’s something to be aware of when deciding how intelligent your android should be. For reference, MRS (Parzivol’s corp) is very much walking that legal tightrope, and probably has a number of secrets in their basement they don’t want Origin to see while A10, his robot character, is smarter than it makes people think it is.

-You are free to ignore my last point, but I wanted to briefly address it nonetheless as it is my personal bias: I’ll be honest and say that I feel we may want more human characters than robots right now. But I also felt a bit apprehensive when Parzivol submitted his robots, and he has absolutely sold me on his concept since. Thusly I don’t want to stop anyone from doing the same thing again if it is their wont.

Posting this in the thread for ease of reference but if there's any point you want to further discuss, feel free to hit me up on Disco if you want.
Hidden 4 yrs ago Post by Nate1008
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Ok. I will still stick with the robot thing, but I will make the necessary changes. Thanks for the feedback!
Hidden 4 yrs ago Post by Verticus
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Verticus Adamantine

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I'm looking at this. Hear me look at this.
Hidden 4 yrs ago Post by Ashgan
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Ashgan

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@Verticus I'm happy to hear that :D If ever the fancy for doing more than looking strikes you, feel free to reach out to Circ or myself; we'd be happy to provide you with a Discord link to talk business.
Hidden 4 yrs ago 4 yrs ago Post by Verticus
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