This RP will stay open to new players. We are not going to close it, so please feel free to join!
NB: We are NOT accepting any more characters from custom species or with supernatural powers at this point. Gunslingers or other western stereotypes - go nuts!
Also, consider joining the Discord Community. It's a great place to brainstorm.
The year is 2085. You are a former prisoner. You have been dumped on the planet of Caldera-3, a dusty, rugged, lawless frontier world that has been largely left to its own devices while galactic war rages around it. You have nothing to your name save for the clothes on your back. You'll need to find some way to make a living to survive and maybe even get off the planet...
WELCOME!
Hello and welcome to Graveyard Orbit, an RP where you will play as a prisoner who has been dumped on the world of Caldera-3 when the crew of the prison transport moving you decided to abandon their posts in the midst of a brutal galactic civil war. You might be a human mercenary, an alien rebel or maybe just someone in the wrong place at the wrong time who got swept up in a police raid. Either way you're on Caldera-3 now with no way off the rock for the time being.
This RP is open to latecomers. There will be plenty of ways to walk into the thread just, perhaps, not as one of the prisoners from the original cast.
SETTING
The year is 2085.
At the start of the 21st century humanity thought it was alone in the Universe. However, once humanity had tentatively put a toe outside of the Sol system it quickly became apparent how wrong that idea was. The Milky Way, it turned out, was teeming with life, much of which was potentially hostile. Earth had, for millennia, been under the protection of the ‘Federation of Civilised Worlds’, allowing humanity to develop at its own pace, untroubled by other peoples.
All of this changed, however, when an Earth vessel exploring the Sol system accidentally discovered a wormhole to the Andromeda Galaxy.
On the far side of the Wormhole were other races and space faring nations including a massive military dictatorship known as ‘Kiellar Command’; their close neighbours the egalitarian, but autocratic, ‘Gollar Confederacy’ and; the terrifying, predatory ‘Ragon Empire’ which threatened to consume all of the Andromeda Galaxy and, potentially, use the Wormhole, and Sol System, as a gateway to fresh conquests in the Milky Way.
While Earth remained neutral in the war that followed, unable to do much more than observe from the sidelines, the Federation used the Sol Wormhole to support the Kiellar/Gollar alliance in destroying the Ragon Empire and ending the threat they posed to the peoples of both galaxies. It was a bloody war and in the aftermath Kiellar Command began to gradually collapse under the weight of internal dissent, dissolving into an ever-shifting patchwork of successor states, mostly ruled over by warlords.
Meanwhile, Earth’s position at the ‘Gateway to Andromeda’ has made the planet quite wealthy, as it is the sole gateway for trade between the galaxies. It has, however, also meant that is has begun to be flooded by Andromedan refugees. Travelling the other way, human mercenaries have often taken part in the fighting in former Kiellar space, supported by Earth Governments interested in gaining some real experience in galactic warfare.
The chaos in former Kiellar space routes means that merchants tend to travel through these systems in convoy with an armed escort. Earth’s wealth is largely driven by these intergalactic trade and Earth has begun to take part in convoy duties and has also seized control of the uninhabitable system on the Andromedan end of the wormhole, taking over the old Kiellar Battlestation/customs post that guarded their side of the route.
The Mazdhul Republic: Where you come in...
The Andromeda galaxy is a mess.
One of the larger stable States in the Former Kiellar Republic, for the last decade at least, has been the ‘Mazdhul Republic’, ruled over by Marshall Urnas, controlling around two dozen worlds. However, two years ago, Urnas was assassinated by an anarchist group and that stability abruptly ended. Initial infighting between his top Advisors gave the perception of weakness to the neighbouring 'Republic of Sedathnas' who promptly invaded. While, as it stands, the Mazdhul forces are now (mostly) unified under Admiral Tindrurr, they are still dealing with other threats. The planet of Arisatia (which has a majority population of the human-like 'dhasath'... as opposed to most other planets that are majority kiellar) has revolted and driven most Lazdhul forces off the planet, while anarchists still partially control several worlds.
You are a prisoner on a Mazdhul prison ship. You may be a human mercenary, you may be a member of the ‘Arisatian Legion’, an anarchist (note that anyone who advocates for any form of representative democracy is regarded as an anarchist), a Sedathian soldier or you may be a civilian caught in a raid, at the wrong place at the wrong time.
However, fortune has smiled on you!
Rather than going to a Mazdhul labour camp, the crew of your prison ship have decided to desert their navy and have dropped you off on the sparsely populated planet of Caldera-3 (rather than shooting you and dumping your body in space - quite kind of them). You have nothing but the clothes on your back and the other prisoners from the ship to rely on, but you’re still alive.
Caldera-3
Caldera-3 is a relatively arid planet (only 48% of the surface is covered in water) with a few scattered settlements in the mid latitudes where it isn't too hot. The planet is suitable for growing plants that aren't too water dependent and raising animals which is what most of the population (of less than half a million across the whole planet) do. There are some rare minerals to mine though these are mostly found in the unpleasant equatorial regions. Mining settlements are climate controlled and supplied by train lines running to the single spaceport at the town of Dustline Station.
That being said, the ground is open enough in many parts of the planet that a smaller ship can put down without too much difficulty.
As most of the population of Caldera-3 are quite poor and the planet is isolated, fuel for vehicles is fairly rare outside of Dustline Station and people will ride a variety of animals, mostly horses and camels imported from earth by early dhasath settlers. Electricity is usually available from solar and wind generators. Television and radio stations exist but tend to be low-tech and only broadcast in their immediate area.
Settlements are generally self-governing and don't typically try to project power more than a few miles. Sheriffs and ad-hoc posses tend to be the main form of law enforcement outside of Dustline Station. Roads are dangerous, some populations have taken to raiding and most people are armed.
As for where you are... you have been put down about 400 miles West of Dustline Station near the small town of Cinder Ridge (population 1,270). There is no television, radio station or Sheriff in Cinder Ridge but there is a distillery and two saloons. The people have their priorities.
LORE
Technology
As this is sci-fi, there are a number of pieces of technology that will be mentioned in the RP. Here is some info on them:
Skrim Drive: The Skrim Drive is the basic FTL drive used by all species in the galaxy, allowing them to phase across to hyperspace where an object can travel faster than light. Opening a hyperspace window requires a lot of energy and several minutes to 'spin the drive up'. Skrim Drives are prone to overheating and longer hyperspace journeys will need to be made in hops. That, along with the speed limitation means that most journeys between stars will take days or weeks and movement between galaxies is believed to be impossible.
Most ships can detect a hyperspace window opening or closing a few minutes before the ship utilising their Skrim drive moves through it.
Translator Nanites: Translator nanites, injected into children at birth and which inhabit an individual's brain, allow people to understand most, though not all, alien languages. Translator nanites self replicate, which is useful since nobody knows how to make new ones or, really, how they work.
Energy weapons (Blasters): Most weapons used in warfare are energy weapons. Units that are not connected to a generator (such as handheld weapons) will require a battery pack that usually allows for around 100 shots to be fired before needing to be swapped over. A person struck by an energy weapon can expect serious, deep burns with a high chance of death if the discharge travels through a major organ. There are several variants of these:
Sidearms: Basically a pistol. There are numerous variants of these, they are less accurate and tend to have smaller battery packs so either trade for less shots (High Energy Blaster-Pistols) or less stopping power (Low Energy Blaster-Pistols).
Standard Blasters: Function much like an assault rifle.
Ragon Guns: Designed jointly by the Gollar and Federation during the War for Andromeda, to kill the notoriously durable ragons, these weapons are designed to expend all the power from a (smaller) battery pack in a single shot, dealing massive damage to a target. This is overkill against most species and, since the war, the civilian market has been flooded with these weapons as galactic militaries return to traditional blasters. Typically these are either bolt or lever action. Caldera-3 has a lot of these.
Heavy Blasters: Very large blasters with extended battery packs (sometimes housed in a separate box carried as a backpack) and better heat sinks. Typically only used by militaries.
Shields: Large ships are always fitted with energy shields to prevent damage from space debris as well as weapons from other ships. Shields on surface vehicles etc. have been experimented with but are too heavy to be practical.
Body Armour: Body armour exists though isn't widely used. It can minimise injury from handheld weapons rather than completely absorbing the energy from a shot.
The Main Species of Caldera-3
Humans As I'm assuming you are a human so I'm not going to write too much here.
A sizeable human population is present on Caldera-3 - pioneers who set forth looking for a new life or criminals fleeing from the law
Biology: The dhasath look like humans though they trace their ancestry to the Andromeda galaxy and are regarded as an old-medium aged race (having taken to FTL travel some 450 years before humanity).
Dhasath have less phenotypic divergence than humans and mostly look like Eastern Mediterranean/Middle-Easterner/Iranic people. So while all dhasath look like humans, not all humans look like dhasath. While humans and dhasath are indistinguishable to look at, species with a strong sense of smell can tell them apart, usually finding dhasath to be sweet smelling.
Dhasath have the same lifespan as a human, though they are fully mature by age 14. A dhasath pregnancy is shorter than a human one (six months) and they produce ‘litters’ of, on average, 2.5 children. All of this means that, given good conditions, dhasath populations can explode.
In addition to this, dhasath require very little water to survive (coincidentally they very rarely sweat) and can survive extremes of both heat and cold that would kill a human. In periods of stress, dhasath females will stop ovulating.
As a byproduct of their evolution for harsh climates, dhasath produce chemicals in their blood and saliva which can induce euphoria in other species if consumed. This had led to myth of dhasath being able to mind controlling victims with a kiss, though this is just a myth.
Unusually, humans and dhasath can produce viable hybrids. Genetic tests indicate that dhasath and humans might have diverged from one another around 1 million years ago, though nobody has a particularly good explanation as to how this happened. The current working theory is that this might have been the work of some long dead precursor civilisation though if it was, all traces of their existence is now gone.
History and Culture: The ‘Dhasath League’ was a power in the Andromeda Galaxy in the 1600s that was destroyed by the fledgling Ragon Empire, though some legends suggest the dhasath are even older than that, a ‘phoenix species’ who rose from the ashes of another Empire now lost in to the sands of time.
After the destruction of the dhasath homeland, the survivors mostly fled into kiellar space, settling on a variety of worlds though their population remained in decline until the War for Andromeda when the Ragon Empire were defeated and the dhasath were able to reclaim their ancient home-world of Doona'tay (which is now the heart of the 'New Doona'tay Republic').
Dhasath tend towards religiosity and almost universally follow a religion known as 'Makerism' (A monotheism that believes in a 'Maker', who is good, and 'the Enemy' who constantly tries to pervert and undermine the Maker's work). Makerism is unusual in that it constantly adds new scripture to cannon, interpreting the experiences of the dhasath people through a religious lens and with the assumption that the dhasath are the chosen people of the 'Maker'. In the times of the Dhasath League, Makerism was centralised, though since the destruction of the League it has evolved separately on each planet. Makerists on Doona'tay, for instance, hail Marshall Vilia (the dhasath commander who reconquered the planet during the War for Andromeda) as a Messiah, while most others do not.
Dhasath are the majority species on Caldera-3, making up about 55% of the population.
Appearance: Kiellar are a moderately tall race, with males averaging about and females about 5’8’’ and males about 6’2’’ with generally slim builds. Their skin tones are similar to those of humans, as are the colours of their (almond shaped) eyes. Kiellar hair is similar in shade to human hair, though it is noticeable finer and body hair is sparse.
NB: If you want to make a kiellar character and want to use a picture, Shadowrun Elves make good models.
Biology: Kiellar have an average lifespan of about 200 years. While an individual Kiel will reproduce slowly (gestation period is one year), kiellar remain fertile for most of their lives and that, coupled with their natural resistance to disease, means that the kiellar population as a whole can multiply quite rapidly – it is not unusual for a kiellar couple to produce over 20 offspring in a lifetime, with over a century between the youngest and the eldest.
Kiellar, additionally, have strong night vision.
History and Culture: The kiellar began exploring their home system in the 1100s. Initially a group of waring Nation States, the kiellar became eager terraformers, turning inhospitable moons into habitable planets before over the course of the next century.
Strife, however, quickly broke out between the colonies, with some seeking independence from their home nations, which in turn ignited a wave of brutal wars across Relenar. Out of the ashes of this rose the ‘All Kiellar Republic’ which which sought to unite the waring Kiellar nations into one system-wide Republic. At first it seemed like a fantasy, however, the Republic continued to win until, by the time the kiellar discovered hyperdrive technology in the 1300s, the whole system was united.
The discovery of alien life came as a shock to the kiellar who, to that point, had assumed they were the only intelligent life-form in the universe. The Kiellar Republic began to trade with some of their interstellar neighbours, however, the kiellar culture was expansionistic and, bit-by-bit, the kiellar began to absorb their neighbours.
The first major setback occurred when the kiellar encountered the Dhasath League who destroyed the Kiellar Fleet, forcing the Republic to pay war reparations. This, in turn, paved the way for the military to seize control of the Republic, claiming the defeat was the result of corrupt politicians. The Kiellar fleet was rebuilt and the Second Dhasath war was a minor (and very unexpected) Kiellar victory, with the League handing over several mining stations and border outposts, but retaining all their inhabited worlds.
Following on from the Second Dhasath War, and the subsequent destruction of the League at the hands of the emergent Ragon Empire, Kiellar Command rapidly became the dominant power in Andromeda, conquering and enslaving innumerable other races, though as they did, increasingly large proportions of their military were required to keep their subjects in line. The Ragon Empire attempted to exploit this weakness during the War for Andromeda and Kiellar Command would have collapsed were it not for the intervention of the Gollar and Federation.
Their victory in the War for Andromeda, however, did not reverse any of the internal divisions in Command and, following on from the war, Kiellar Command has disintegrated into a morass of waring states controlled by rebels or military cliques.
Kiellar are the second most populous species on Caldera-3, making up about 35% of the population.
Other Species: We are in space and you can app for another species, but I won't accept new species if they're more than 1/3 of the accepted cast. We can discuss species concepts if you want to do this.
THE RULES
In summary, 'don't be a dick'. But here they are if that comment is confusing:
Decisions My word and the word of all Co-OPs is binding. If you don’t like a decision, you can, of course, ask for us to reconsider it. Once. If we made a decision you don’t like, complaining for pages and pages is not going to endear you to anyone. Not me, not the Co-OPs and not your fellow writers. On that note, I intend to run this thread as an anarcho-communist cooperative. This is an unnecessarily complicated way of saying that my word DOES NOT overrule theirs. So don’t ask me to overrule one of the others. I won’t.
Post Quality I don’t have a problem with short posts but please use proper spelling (I don’t care what regional variant), grammar etc. Ideally also try to include a 'hook' when you write a post, which is to say something that gives other people something to respond to. If your post is something along the lines of 'Bilbo Baggins stayed in his room and read a book while the world was ending', don't be surprised if nobody responds to you.
Posting Commitment Nothing is worse than making an RP only for it to die. Please try to check in to see if there is room for a post every 24 hours or so. If you find yourself unable to post for extended periods of time, please let us know on the Discord or in the OOC thread. If it looks like you've abandoned a character in the middle of a fight scene I might decide to kill them off, if I'm feeling particularly malicious.
Posting Speed On the flip side, blitz posting can also be infuriating. So, especially during the important scenes, I recommend giving your fellow players a reasonable time to make a reply. We all have real lives. That being said, if someone leaves everyone waiting for over 48 hours, feel free to carry on the scene without them.
OOC thread Manners Nothing annoys me more than bad manners on an OOC thread and in the Discord channel. Swearing, passive-aggressive sniping or any other rude behaviour are not welcome on the OOC. You will be warned once. If you can’t control yourself I will ask you to remove yourself from the thread.
IC thread Manners Remember, we are writing a story together, not trying to win.
Character Death Player death is possible in this RP, though will be quite rare and easily avoidable. Please don’t write that you have killed another character unless you have OOC permission from the character's owner to do it. Beat them into a pulp or take them prisoner, but don’t kill them. Having said that, if someone does something really stupid (such as this), I reserve the right to announce your character has got themselves killed. Likewise, if someone goes inactive without explanation and cannot be raised, I may decide to kill their character off.
Keep it tasteful Yes, this is an 18+ RP but please try to keep things tasteful. Generally speaking if there isn't a narrative reason for writing stuff other people will find offensive, don't write it. We'll ask you to correct, warn and/or ban depending upon how far outside the realms of common decency you are and whether we think you're taking the piss or not.
Banning Players I really don’t want to be doing that but reserve the right to do so if you cannot follow the (hopefully, rather simple) rules above.
APPLICATION FORMS
The moment you have been waiting for!
Feel free to write up more than one character.
When filling in an application form, please delete everything in parentheses.
Character Description
Name: Species: Sex: Age: Reason for being on the ship: (feel free to be creative! NB: Sedathian soldiers are probably going to be kiellar) Appearance:(Feel free to describe with text or put pictures in here)
Strengths and Weaknesses
Skills: (Is there anything you are significantly better at than most other people? If you include something, make sure it is backed up in the background) Weaknesses: (Is there anything your character is really rubbish at? Not essential you put anything in, but can be fun)
This looks right up my alley. It seems like the Kiellar are very politically unstable compared to how long they live for. I'm guessing there are still plenty of (elder) Kiellar alive that lived through the Ragon war??
Name: John Dusk Species: American Sex: M Age: 27 Reason for being on the ship: Captured during a multi-party ambush on his unit. With no clear chain of custody and human personnel treated as expendable assets, he was processed as an alien combatant and transferred aboard a Mazdhul prison ship. Appearance:
Strengths and Weaknesses
Skills: Military training, alien civilian interaction training, marine survival training, familiarity with energy weapons. Weaknesses: Overcommits to protecting others, struggles with morally grey alliances, limited understanding of alien politics, not adapted to frontier “everyone for themselves” mindset, under-equipped vs locals.
Background:
Backstory: John was raised in Northern California and enlisted in the United States Marine Corps at nineteen, driven less by necessity and more by a genuine belief in the fight for freedom and democracy, partly influenced by his father’s own service. Over the years, he saw deployment across multiple regions on Earth and even assisted in security operations involving the relocation of Andromedan refugees. He often found himself looking up at the sky with a sense of curiosity. It amazed him how only a few generations ago humanity believed it was alone, and now beings from another galaxy were coming to Earth in search of a better life.
Throughout his service, Dusk built a reputation as a steady and reliable Marine. He believed that soldiers were meant to do more than fight, that they were meant to protect others and represent something larger than themselves. It was a belief that earned him respect from some, and a reputation for being overly idealistic and even obnoxious from others.
When Earth began expanding its involvement in Andromeda through convoy escorts and support missions, Dusk volunteered. The assignment was presented as a continuation of what he already knew on Earth: protecting free trade routes, safeguarding civilians, and helping maintain stability in regions affected by conflict. It sounded like the same mission, just on a larger scale.
The reality was something else entirely. Andromeda was a battlefield far more fractured than anything back on Earth, with conflicts that rarely followed any recognizable structure. Convoys were attacked by forces that could be allies the next week, as Kiellar warlords constantly turned on one another. Alien civilians often viewed human involvement with suspicion rather than relief.
Dusk adapted as best he could as he worked escort details, assisted with refugee movements, and tried to apply the same principles that had guided him on Earth. Even as the situation grew more unstable, he held onto the belief that his presence still mattered and that there was still a line worth holding.
That belief changed during a convoy operation in former Kiellar territory as an attack came suddenly with multiple hostile elements striking at once, jamming communications and disabling escort ships within minutes. Dusk’s unit attempted to hold the line, fighting to protect both the cargo and the civilians, but they were quickly overwhelmed. Most of his unit was killed in action.
The enemy was not a conventional force as there were no markings or insignias on them. The attackers executed wounded Marines without hesitation. Miraculously, Dusk himself escaped any serious injury but was restrained and had a bag thrown over his head, everything went dark soon after.
When he regained consciousness, he found himself no longer a soldier but a prisoner.
He was brought before what was described as a “Judge,” though the process bore little resemblance to anything he recognized as justice. He was processed without representation and without any consideration of his status as part of a UN-sanctioned mission. Instead, he was labeled an “Extragalactic Asset” and transferred to a Mazdhul prison transport. To them, he was simply an alien combatant caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Now, John finds himself in a situation unlike anything he has ever faced. There is no command structure to fall back on, no orders and no guarantee that doing the right thing will lead to anything but trouble. He doesn’t even know if Earth is aware of what happened to him.
But he does have one mission now; To survive and to find a way back home.
This looks right up my alley. It seems like the Kiellar are very politically unstable compared to how long they live for. I'm guessing there are still plenty of (elder) Kiellar alive that lived through the Ragon war??
Many of them would actually still be in fighting ages. Kiellar age isn't directly linear to human aging (this is to give them the steotypical affectations of a long-lived elf without making them exceptionally long-lived).
The political upheaval is as a result of the death of a factionalized military government with instituionalized slavery that ruled over diverse space slowly breaking (and later quite violently shattering) under the strain following a very close existential war.
My version of the events only has the full blown warlord period going on for 30 to 40 years at IC start (if not less) unless, of course, DB would like to countermand me here.
I wouldn't say Kiellar themselves are especially fractious with each other, but the legacy of the All-Kiellar Republic and later the Command is certainly one of violence. The culture is usually of a militant bend, but not always expansionist in character.
Many of them would actually still be in fighting ages. Kiellar age isn't directly linear to human aging (this is to give them the steotypical affectations of a long-lived elf without making them exceptionally long-lived).
The political upheaval is as a result of the death of a factionalized military government with instituionalized slavery that ruled over diverse space slowly breaking (and later quite violently shattering) under the strain following a very close existential war.
My version of the events only has the full blown warlord period going on for 30 to 40 years at IC start (if not less) unless, of course, DB would like to countermand me here.
I wouldn't say Kiellar themselves are especially fractious with each other, but the legacy of the All-Kiellar Republic and later the Command is certainly one of violence. The culture is usually of a militant bend, but not always expansionist in character.
Name: Skrass'theth Ahkellas "Skrass" Species: Ragon Sex: Female Age: 138 Reason for being on the ship: Terrorism, Opposition Mercenary Action, Possession of Controlled Substances, Eating People (allegedly) Appearance: A typically massive specimen of her species, Skrass is slightly more lithe than a female of her age. She possesses a more angular face, with a short snout. Her black scales gain a blue tint towards her front, and her hide is marked by a large number of small scars that are hard to notice from far away.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Skills: Medical Acumen: Skrass has decades of medical experience in legitimate and illegitimate capacities. She has a considerable grasp of biochemistry and anatomy, which she puts to use regularly.
Huntress: Working in the darkness hones certain skills. Skrass knows how to track prey, how to hide and how to plan on the fly. She has a surprisingly tactical mind for someone who never actually had a command role.
Living Weapon: A ragon created for battle, Skrass can tear people limb from limb even deprived of her combat stimulants and bio-enhancements.
Weaknesses: Big Dumb Lizard: Skrass may be tactically cunning but she lacks vision, or the ability to plan ahead well, and tends to find herself outmaneuvered.
Odd One Out: While Skrass might be considered marginally more approachable than the typical Ragon, she was not a social butterfly before being reprogrammed. She won't be the one brokering a deal, especially with Kiellar.
Fuelled by DNA: Due to her genetic modifications, Skrass is gluttonous to a degree that actually matches her species' reputation. Her tendency to eat sapients has been mercifully blunted by psycho-conditioning.
Background:
Backstory: Born into the scientist-clades of Clan Ahkellas, Skrass was originally assigned to be a doctor, and was taken into training from a young age. She was a good student, but not a particularly diligent one, preferring exploring the woods of her home world of Y'Kresch. Working as a medical student, she was very promising, her apprenticeships in everything from the creche to emergency response to research yielding positive results.
She was a loyal member of her clan, and would eventually be stationed as an assistant to the matriarch's personal doctor, a position which was indicative of her rising star in her field. She would serve this role for a few years, taking the time to play socialite among the higher clades and picking up a penchant for poetry. She would also lay her first eggs, and form her own network. It would come as a world-shattering shock when she was suddenly removed from her position after discovering an abnormality in an emergency scan of the matriarch. She was reassigned to a military role as a combat medic, something she had never been prepared for.
She would take some time to recover, not immediately meshing well with the warrior-clades. She would submit herself for genetic modification, something typically reserved for warriors, and would scramble to learn how to work under fire. It was only after she saw her first deployments that she would become confident, realizing that she could fulfill herself in a much more primal manner.
She never truly adapted the warrior clade ethos, but she did see the joys of the hunt, the territorial gratification of securing resources for the Empire. By the time her skills had caught up to her perceptions, she had been reassigned twice, and had inadvertently killed a patient through overly-aggressive application of medicine. Were it any culture other than the callous darwinism of the Empire, she would have been stripped of her position, or facing charges.
Instead, she would be rotated back home after over a decade of combat. Her accolades and reputation would net her standing, and a considerable number of interested friends from a life long lost. Taking up a research role and becoming a mother again would inevitably ensue, and she was able to adapt to the cutthroat world of clan politics well. While far from the heights of the clan matriarchs, she was a social operator, and a much more direct threat than the typical researcher.
So, when she overstepped, she would be sent back to the frontiers, and she would survive, return, and renew her machinations, sometimes even getting her revenge. But when war with the Kiellar came, she was on the wrong part of this phase, being 'honored' with an imperial position in the Dhasath Occupation Zone. While the local food was good, the KC was a formidible foe, and the rising spiral of her status would be flattened into increasingly brutal warfare as the Command rallied their efforts. Skrass would find herself betrayed by her Empire in their surrender, left under the authority of the DPG.
Skrass, like many Ragon, would be kept under close watch by Kiellar peacekeepers, and as she chafed against her clan, non-Ragon would absolutely not control her. So she would be a person of note in the Ragon Resistance, savaging the peacekeepers, and terrorizing the citizen-livestock who now ruled over them for over a year. The Command took their job seriously, and cracked down hard, capturing and imprisoning her.
Prison would change her significantly, not many were very sympathetic to sapient-eating terrorists, and so Skrass was made an example and an experiment. Isolated regularly, hypno-conditioned into docility, and regularly starved, it was a torturous affair. Her rebellious spirit would finally be broken on the will of the Command, and she would forever resent them for it. So when the Command began to break down, she took the opportunity to work for a splinter group as a mercenary. This was not the most lucrative work, but it did earn her freedom for almost a decade before being captured by the Mazduhl.
Personal effects: Metabolic Implants: The only things they couldn't take from Skrass was her cybernetics, and even then, they tried. Normally they would be loaded with a variety of cocktails that could be injected into her directly, they have been stripped of anything more than life-sustaining chemicals. For now, its chief purpose is functioning as a biomonitor and controller to support her own altered biology. This backwater world has inadvertently put her life on a timer.
Name: James Castleton Species: Human Sex: Male Age: 32 Reason for being on the ship: Arms Dealer; extradited from UN custody to avoid diplomatic incident.
Appearance: A large shouldered man; James looks the part of the dashing space captain a lean muscular 1.9 meters. Light brown hair in a carefully managed crew cut. He possesses stormy grey eyes that are sit underneath thick eyebrows that seem dull but with a hint of intelligence within.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Skills: Former SEALS(Sea, Air, Land, Space) Operator. Decent business man. Knows their merchandise. Weaknesses: Always looking for an angle. Opportunistic in the short view.
Background:
Backstory: Born in Huntington, Indiana; James Castleton grew up with his eyes set on the stars. Life in a small town paling in comparison to the slowly opening expanse of the universe. His enlistment into the US Navy's space portion leading into his eventual selection for the newly established SEALS(Sea, Air, Land and Space) program. Passing selection in the middle of the pack; James found his first few years boring. Millions of credits worth of gear and training to float around on UN convoy's doing nothing.
Seeking his way out; James managed to secure a transfer away from the SSOCCOM. A few favors, a bribe of some alien goods he had picked up, and he managed to secured an officer's commission and a position on a UN corvette. A low start to what would snowball into a lucrative business venture. His rising star with the US/UN space navy securing him more access and freedom for his growing side business; arms dealing. A friend in procurement; and another in logistics saw him skimming off UN gear and weapons. Wealth and trust eventually leading into more lucrative deals and trades.
Eventually, establishing a lucrative arms network "The Borealis Network"; which began a wild proliferation of Human and Andromedan personal weapons along UN convoy routes. Notoriety and wealth increasing with such consolidation. Commander Castleton however eventually fell from grace. He had the misfortune of selling to the anarchist faction of the Mazdhul Republic. With said weapons having been used in their uprising. A focused investigation eventually found him as the prime ( and definitely guilty) subject. A diplomatic incident that the UN quickly washed their hands of by giving him to the tender mercy of said Republic.
An uncomfortable week in an interrogation room eventually ending with him being thrown on a prison ship bound for less tender mercies of the Republic prison system.
Name: Bandit Species: Android (COS-EVA model) Sex: Female Age: 19 Reason for being on the ship: Burglary Appearance: A headless robot, 5’10” in height, forged of gray-green metal. Her chassis has a notably feminine shape, most obvious around her narrow waist, wide hips, and upper legs (her lower legs are digitigrade). Both her legs and arms are too long proportionally, giving her an odd, gangly shape. Each hand has two fingers and a thumb, and her legs terminate in thrusters that can function as peg-legs. Instead of a head, she just has a large circular port as a neck, somewhat resembling a bomb collar. Inside is a dark void; cold air and squelching sounds come from within. In fact, most of Bandit’s interior has been completely overgrown by her blue tissue, and if enough damage is sustained to her robotic exoskeleton she can bleed cyan blood. She wears a long, tattered light brown cloak in the style of a stereotypical drifter, which can cover her body down to the knees but not disguise her headlessness. Bandit does have an optical sensor in the front of her ‘neck’ which can rotate as needed, but it’s not visually obvious. Her synthesized voice is obviously female, but very off-kilter and loopy-sounding.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Skills:
Agility - Bandit is light on her feet and very fast. She can run up to 40 mph and jump two stories high. Her grip is strong enough to allow her to climb a variety of surfaces with minimal footholds. This alone allows her to circumvent all kinds of obstacles and defenses, and find creative hiding spots
Utility - Designed as an extravehicular extraction machine for work in the vacuum of space or within the bowels of the Superorganism, Bandit comes equipped with all kinds of handy doodads, including a clamps, grappling hooks, energy saws, welders for emergency repairs, and so forth. Despite their unremarkable appearance, her forearms are essentially large space-age pocket knives. There are also the thrusters in her lower legs, not strong enough for in-atmosphere flight, but good for jumps and dodges. Of course, using her utilities requires extra energy. She can be quite creative with what she’s got, though
Sustainability - Bandit was designed to run on the common battery packs used in blasters, which can be found practically everywhere there are people. These sustain her internal life support, self-repair, and weapons systems alike, so if there are plentiful packs she can operate without limits
Weaknesses:
Weak - Bandit lacks physical strength and stopping power. She can’t lift, carry, or destroy much, and her frame isn’t too sturdy. She has no long-range options and is vulnerable to being shot
Cowardly - The importance of Bandit’s mission demands that she prioritize her own continued existence at all costs. This has manifested as a strong aversion to combat (and dangerous situations in general) and an inclination to run and hide at the slightest sign of trouble
Greedy - Bandit is disastrously covetous when it comes to money. After all, if she’s not great at violence and trying to take heads physically offers a lot more trouble than it’s worth, her best bet to finish her mission is to buy a head, and heads cost lots of money. She’s an unrepentant kleptomaniac and will happily steal anything that even looks valuable on the off chance she can sell it, if she thinks she can get away with it. Heists are her favorite thing
Background:
Backstory: Twenty years ago, Kiellar prospectors of the starry frontier struck gold in an unnamed asteroid field in barren, backwater space. Unlike the major discoveries of the wild west eons before, however, this wasn’t black gold, but blue. While sampling asteroids for telltale traces of precious metals, a space drilling crew stumbled upon far stranger within a shell of ancient stone: an alien creature, immense in size and bizarre in biology, adrift in a state of cryptobiotic hibernation. Evolved in space without any need for iron-rich hemoglobin to carry oxygen, the creature’s tissues were radiant blue. The drillers, perturbed by heightened anxiety and unnerving dreams in the days and weeks following their find, were only too happy to sell off the mining rights to their find for some quick cash, never imagining what their discovery was worth.
Deep Space Solutions, a rather unregulated Kiellar organization formed for the research and exploitation of obscure cosmic resources, established a facility on the asteroid and began extraction. Over the course of the next year, they extracted many tons of specialized tissues from the stellar beast that had come to be known as the Tiongedol Belt Superorganism, named after the Kiellar prospector who first found it. The mining teams ventured deep into the unpredictable biology of the creature itself, careful (at first) to never dig so greedily that they might disturb and awaken the Superorganism. Most of the harvested material, such as meat and bone, would be sold to a variety of cosmic buyers, but DSS had their own designs for the rare and exotic neural tissue painstakingly extracted from deep within the Superorganism. Establishing a partnership with Autonomica Unlimited, a robotics manufacturer, led to the Neural Tissue Automata project and the creation of several different models of ‘wetware’ androids with literal bleeding edge supercomputer technology that made use of the Superorganism’s live brain matter to function on the level of human beings. Of these, the Calderan Orbit Superorganism Extra-Vehicular Automaton model, or COS-EVA, was designed to serve at the DSS facility to support ever faster and more efficient operations.
Unfortunately for the companies and people involved, it wasn’t long before the NTA project resulted in unintended consequences. The wetware androids were developing like living beings, very much to the alarm of the AI-wary Kiellar populace. As they developed their own personalities, these androids nursed a universal fascination with the Superorganism (despite most never laying optics on it). They tended to consider it their mother, and themselves its daughters, and over time their interest turned into an obsession. As their Kiellar masters took more drastic measures to suppress the androids, they became increasingly rebellious, and many of those not returned for disposal or scrapped became violent. The Wetware Scare permeated far enough through space to warrant intervention from Mazdhul authorities. Wetware was declared illegal, the androids were marked for extermination.
In a desperate attempt to survive the target put on their backs, DSS enacted their own purge. The heads of all androids were removed before their ejection into space, and the Superorganism facility was abandoned, the creature itself left to continue its solitary slumber in the cosmos for eternity.
Since then, the whole matter (poorly documented and very vulnerable to exaggeration in retelling) has faded from the public consciousness. Few wetware androids remained, but Bandit was one of them. She drifted in space for years before getting picked up by scavengers, and since then she’s been causing low-level trouble in the system nonstop. Without her head, she’s been oblivious to practically all of her past. She knows only her raison d'etre: find a head, and everything else will follow. At all times, she is subject to an inexplicable pull toward a point in space she cannot quite identify, and certainly not reach. Recently, she was captured in the midst of petty theft, and for the first time in years someone recognized Bandit as a Wetware android. Once word got out, a call quickly came in from an interested party that claimed they would decommission her properly. As such, arrangements were made to transport her alongside a number of prisoners to a designated rendezvous point, only for Bandit to end up dumped on a no-account planet: Caldera-3.
Question before I work on my app: How do we feel about psionics or the use of nanobytes for combat or stealth purposes? Apologies if this was answered.
Personally I don't mind psionics in the setting but I've seen it done badly. I'd rather keep the nanobots out, mostly because you're a prisoner and fancy gadgets will have been taken off you... but again it depends a bit on what you want to do with them, which I appreciate is a super-vague answer!
What exactly are you thinking of? I'm keen to keep things reasonably grounded and to avoid anything that will cause 'power creep' in the cast.
I was thinking of a character who is essentially an Oracle or someone who can see the future. I am happy to talk limits and all that and if that's too much I can just have a telekinetic character. I am happy to put systems in place to ensure they aren't a "power creep"
How specific would you want this oracle to be? If its just muttering weird stuff indicating that an event is coming up that's fine... if it's predicting the outcome of an event that's a bit harder in an RP setting... but I can for sure drop some hints about plot beats that will happen. This is a relatively well planned RP by my standards.
I might advise keeping telekinesis out. I'm not 100% against it, but it feels it would be hard to implement when everyone else is normal. With stuff like this, where its outside of the box, I will get a consensus from all the Co-OPs before making a call so it can take a bit longer (which also applies to your app @Lugubrious - I want to get everyone's opinion before saying yes/offering feedback).
I've been debating whether or not to get involved... Perhaps I'm foolish.
Character Description
Name: Molybdenum
(Unidentified Foreign Organism) Molybdenum is a rare sentient alien. His consciousness is a fragment of his home planet's gaseous boron atmosphere and has been separated away from the main body within a containment suit that houses a fossilised skeleton of a fugitive. If the gas is diffused out of the suit, his localised consciousness will cease to be (death).
Sex: N/A Age: The resident skeleton is thought to be upwards of 200 years old. But his localised consciousness has only been separate from the main contingent for under 2 years. Reason for being on the ship: The Kiellar rebel pirate captain known as Lorthrac crash landed on Molybdenum's home planet at an unknown time around the fragmentation of the Kiellar command. He is believed to have died on impact. When official contact was made with the planet, survey drones identified his mostly fossilised skeleton based on dental scans when it was seen moving around seemingly trying to communicate with the automated drones. The Dhasath exploration ship found this very strange but realised they could cash in his bounty. In order to preserve the skeleton's mobility they captured it in a slightly modified brig EVA suit and they shipped him off planet hastily. He was transferred onto the next suitable Mazdhul prison transport ship. The sentience known as Molybdenum only formed sometimes after the Containment Suit was placed around Lorthrac's remains. All he has known so far are the bowels of a prison transport ship. He has some very vague understanding of where he came from. Appearance: A clunky humanoid spacesuit. The helmet is fused into the sternum plates. The tinted visor is normally black reflective, but in the right light you can make out skull clouded by dark gas. Within the mouthpiece of the visor is an gaslock that houses translator nanites and a Comms system to facilitate his communication.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Skills: The relative pressure within his suit is several atmospheres of Caldera-3 meaning he is capable of lifting massive weights. He doesn't need to eat or drink. His "skin" is as durable as a spacesuit, because that's what it is. He is a very fast learner and highly adaptable because he has had to learn how to survive a completely alien environment for the past 3 years. He is naturally space proof in his current state, and he doesn't need to worry about suffocating or drowning. He also doesn't possess any organs or tissue to be affected by radiation or thermal stress (the main worries of energy weapons, though the kinetic energy may still knock him about, and the massive blast from Ragon weaponry would probably blow a big hole is his suit.) Weaknesses: Massively susceptible to puncture damage. If his suit seal is broken, he will die within seconds. He spends more than half of his time in a catatonic sleep-like state. He is an alien living in an alien world, his social skills are incredibly basic; he doesn't understand simple concepts like currency or ethics. In fact, he struggles to understand most abstract concepts like pain, death, individuality, empathy, and he is completely unaware of the scale of the universe.
If you aren't looking for this sort of character, I get it. If anyone knows the inspiration, I'll be very impressed with how niche you are.
Name: Bandit Species: Android (COS-EVA model) Sex: Female Age: 19 Reason for being on the ship: Burglary Appearance: A headless robot, 5’10” in height, forged of gray-green metal. Her chassis has a notably feminine shape, most obvious around her narrow waist, wide hips, and upper legs (her lower legs are digitigrade). Both her legs and arms are too long proportionally, giving her an odd, gangly shape. Each hand has two fingers and a thumb, and her legs terminate in thrusters that can function as peg-legs. Instead of a head, she just has a large circular port as a neck, somewhat resembling a bomb collar. Inside is a dark void; cold air and squelching sounds come from within. In fact, most of Bandit’s interior has been completely overgrown by her blue tissue, and if enough damage is sustained to her robotic exoskeleton she can bleed cyan blood. She wears a long, tattered light brown cloak in the style of a stereotypical drifter, which can cover her body down to the knees but not disguise her headlessness. Bandit does have an optical sensor in the front of her ‘neck’ which can rotate as needed, but it’s not visually obvious. Her synthesized voice is obviously female, but very off-kilter and loopy-sounding.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Skills:
Agility - Bandit is light on her feet and very fast. She can run up to 40 mph and jump two stories high. Her grip is strong enough to allow her to climb a variety of surfaces with minimal footholds. This alone allows her to circumvent all kinds of obstacles and defenses, and find creative hiding spots
Utility - Designed as an extravehicular extraction machine for work in the vacuum of space or within the bowels of the Superorganism, Bandit comes equipped with all kinds of handy doodads, including a clamps, grappling hooks, energy saws, welders for emergency repairs, and so forth. Despite their unremarkable appearance, her forearms are essentially large space-age pocket knives. There are also the thrusters in her lower legs, not strong enough for in-atmosphere flight, but good for jumps and dodges. Of course, using her utilities requires extra energy. She can be quite creative with what she’s got, though
Sustainability - Bandit was designed to run on the common battery packs used in blasters, which can be found practically everywhere there are people. These sustain her internal life support, self-repair, and weapons systems alike, so if there are plentiful packs she can operate without limits
Weaknesses:
Weak - Bandit lacks physical strength and stopping power. She can’t lift, carry, or destroy much, and her frame isn’t too sturdy. She has no long-range options and is vulnerable to being shot
Cowardly - The importance of Bandit’s mission demands that she prioritize her own continued existence at all costs. This has manifested as a strong aversion to combat (and dangerous situations in general) and an inclination to run and hide at the slightest sign of trouble
Greedy - Bandit is disastrously covetous when it comes to money. After all, if she’s not great at violence and trying to take heads physically offers a lot more trouble than it’s worth, her best bet to finish her mission is to buy a head, and heads cost lots of money. She’s an unrepentant kleptomaniac and will happily steal anything that even looks valuable on the off chance she can sell it, if she thinks she can get away with it. Heists are her favorite thing
Background:
Backstory: Twenty years ago, Kiellar prospectors of the starry frontier struck gold in an unnamed asteroid field in barren, backwater space. Unlike the major discoveries of the wild west eons before, however, this wasn’t black gold, but blue. While sampling asteroids for telltale traces of precious metals, a space drilling crew stumbled upon far stranger within a shell of ancient stone: an alien creature, immense in size and bizarre in biology, adrift in a state of cryptobiotic hibernation. Evolved in space without any need for iron-rich hemoglobin to carry oxygen, the creature’s tissues were radiant blue. The drillers, perturbed by heightened anxiety and unnerving dreams in the days and weeks following their find, were only too happy to sell off the mining rights to their find for some quick cash, never imagining what their discovery was worth.
Deep Space Solutions, a rather unregulated Kiellar organization formed for the research and exploitation of obscure cosmic resources, established a facility on the asteroid and began extraction. Over the course of the next year, they extracted many tons of specialized tissues from the stellar beast that had come to be known as the Tiongedol Belt Superorganism, named after the Kiellar prospector who first found it. The mining teams ventured deep into the unpredictable biology of the creature itself, careful (at first) to never dig so greedily that they might disturb and awaken the Superorganism. Most of the harvested material, such as meat and bone, would be sold to a variety of cosmic buyers, but DSS had their own designs for the rare and exotic neural tissue painstakingly extracted from deep within the Superorganism. Establishing a partnership with Autonomica Unlimited, a robotics manufacturer, led to the Neural Tissue Automata project and the creation of several different models of ‘wetware’ androids with literal bleeding edge supercomputer technology that made use of the Superorganism’s live brain matter to function on the level of human beings. Of these, the Calderan Orbit Superorganism Extra-Vehicular Automaton model, or COS-EVA, was designed to serve at the DSS facility to support ever faster and more efficient operations.
Unfortunately for the companies and people involved, it wasn’t long before the NTA project resulted in unintended consequences. The wetware androids were developing like living beings, very much to the alarm of the AI-wary Kiellar populace. As they developed their own personalities, these androids nursed a universal fascination with the Superorganism (despite most never laying optics on it). They tended to consider it their mother, and themselves its daughters, and over time their interest turned into an obsession. As their Kiellar masters took more drastic measures to suppress the androids, they became increasingly rebellious, and many of those not returned for disposal or scrapped became violent. The Wetware Scare permeated far enough through space to warrant intervention from Mazdhul authorities. Wetware was declared illegal, the androids were marked for extermination.
In a desperate attempt to survive the target put on their backs, DSS enacted their own purge. The heads of all androids were removed before their ejection into space, and the Superorganism facility was abandoned, the creature itself left to continue its solitary slumber in the cosmos for eternity.
Since then, the whole matter (poorly documented and very vulnerable to exaggeration in retelling) has faded from the public consciousness. Few wetware androids remained, but Bandit was one of them. She drifted in space for years before getting picked up by scavengers, and since then she’s been causing low-level trouble in the system nonstop. Without her head, she’s been oblivious to practically all of her past. She knows only her raison d'etre: find a head, and everything else will follow. At all times, she is subject to an inexplicable pull toward a point in space she cannot quite identify, and certainly not reach. Recently, she was captured in the midst of petty theft, and for the first time in years someone recognized Bandit as a Wetware android. Once word got out, a call quickly came in from an interested party that claimed they would decommission her properly. As such, arrangements were made to transport her alongside a number of prisoners to a designated rendezvous point, only for Bandit to end up dumped on a no-account planet: Caldera-3.
