Nebular Delirium (Mature, intellectual, Char-Driven Sci Fi)

[OutlawTorn]

Nebular Delirium

HISTORY & LORE

Mythology of Atmos Prime
In the beginning, there was only Nebulana. A divine entity. A goddess. Going forth, she created the universe, one planet at a time, constantly expanding the vastness of galaxies as we speak. She is everything, everything is her. Her job is never complete, her work, never done. There-in lies the problem which forms the premise of this story.

Problem
Over trillions of years, she has spread FAR too thin. She's losing control, losing her balance. She's created too much, it's evolved too far beyond her grasp. Nebulana, in of herself, is losing control; going mad. This is causing mass instability on a galaxy-wide scale. The very fabric of the universe is frayed, and falling apart.

Blitz radiation fields, imploding stars, broken planetary orbits, stray moons crashing into neighboring planets, phantom wormholes, and rogue black holes... Complete and utter destruction via long-term chaos. Physics itself is breaking down.

Solution
Foreseeing this phenomena from early on, Nebulana put in place, several measures to save her beloved creation from herself.

First, she created Messengers. Semi-divine beings who's purpose was to act as a line of communication between Nebulana and mankind when and where necessary. She created them in mankind's image, assuming they would function best that way. Several Messengers where assigned to each man-fairing planet.

Secondly, she created the Arcanian Artifacts. Seven powerful objects which wield a divine power. Alone, they are merely mystical objects with a unique power (usually over the people or area around it). Together, they possess the power, according to Atmos Prime mythology, to destroy Nebulana, save the universe, or both.

These artifacts are scattered across the very first galaxy Nebulana created. The ground zero of life, where it all began, and where it will soon begin to end.

Other Problems
Over a long, long, long period of time, some Messengers become corrupt, and greedy; drunken with power. Nebulana is, after all, going mad. Order is slowly slipping away. These Messengers assume the roles of gods, interacting with mankind, governing entire races of men with their power. This leads to a civil war of sorts between Messengers, and the bad apples are killed in the conflict, ending the age of gods. Space then prevents any Messenger from harming another... Again, we see her love for her creations.

SETTING & PLOT

Present day. It's an unknown year in the Atmos galaxy, so far from the young, infantile planet known as earth, that it has no baring on this story, whatsoever. To clarify, Earth is not in this story, at all. Not even an option.

Nexus is a powerful, vast interplanetary alliance. Based out of Atmos Prime, they rule the majority of the galaxy with an iron fist.

Ariana Cortez is the elected leader of Nexus, and Ambassador to the Universe. Along with Nexus High Command, Ariana has been studying the phenomena dubbed, "Nebular Delirium", in which the universe itself, appears to be losing it's sanity. Legends have existed on many different planets of the goddess Nebulana, but long have they been forgotten, until Nebular Delirium reared it's ugly head. Now the possibility is being explored. But common folk know nothing of this. They hear rumors of black holes, and such, but Nebular Delirium is something Nexus has kept bottled up at the top, as the knowledge of this would incite mass hysteria. You could be dealing with total anarchy on a Nexus-wide scale inside of a few months. People would lose hope. Mass suicides, riots, looting, etc.

No... Arianna has better plans. She has consulted the Great Library of Nexus on her home of Atmos Prime. There she learned of the seven Arcanian Artifacts from an ancient book of [a now] unknown origin.

Her plan is to collect these artifacts, and use them

Our Roles
Nexus Special Agent Vessel, The Valiant. Home of a tiny crew of Nexus Agents. Highly trained, highly skilled soldiers, each specializing in a given area. There are also several civilian/non-field positions. We're the finest unit in the Nexus fleet. Our job, alongside the Nexus Military rough necks, will be to gather up these Artifacts for Arianna.

Roles
Captain — Taken (Leon Blackthorne)
Pilot — Open
Agent #1 — Taken (Sinamoi "Sino" Servantese)
Agent #2 — Open
(Field) Tech. Specialist — Open
Espionage Specialist — Open
Demolition Expert — Taken (Samantha "Sam B." Briggs)
Sniper — Open
Medic/Doctor — Open
Tech. Specialist — Open
Engineer — Open

Now, I want a small group, so feel free to take on 2 or more Characters. Any Open spots I'll fill myself.

Feel free to ask questions, discuss character ideas.

Something to stress
NO alien characters. We're ALL humanoid. As human as human can be. This story is character driven. It's about people, humans. The brotherhood and bond they share. But also how this job pushes them apart too. We're assassins of Nexus. We are routinely asked to do horrific things, and must complete those tasks without question or hesitation. Not 1 person on this vessel is a badass, cold-blooded sadistic killing machine. We ALL struggle with demons from this job, and deal with them in our way.

Sam Briggs is THE most fucked up, sadistic person in our unit, as she was created to be. But Sam is also one of the most complex characters (that I've created) in this story. Her sadistic bravado is a defense mechanism which hides and protects her true, ever-flawed and broken self.

So keep that in mind. If you wanna play the badass, calm and cool 1-liner extraordinaire, this is the wrong RP for you. I'm looking for flawed, vulnerable, realistic characters to help tell a beautiful, yet entertaining action adventure.

One thing I don't do is Average. When I create a story, or RP concept, a lot goes into it. It has to be special or unique somehow. Offer something refreshing or of substance.

I promise you a rewarding few RPs out of this.

Shout at me. Thanks for your time!

[Flamelord]

Well then, I don't usually venture into the Advanced section of the forum, but hey, I'm always a sucker for good sci fi, so color me interested. Probably for the espionage specialist position

On terms of questions, I suppose the usual. What's the tech base like, does FTL exist and if so how does it work, and how much autonomy do the various member states in the Nexus alliance actually have? Is it like the relationship between the Federal US government and the various states, or like between the constituent members of NATO?

[Ruarc]

I'm interested.

[Stairdweller]

I'm also interested, specifically in either or both of the doctor and sniper roles. I'm curious about your answers to Flamelord's questions; also I should have some character sketches up tomorrow (evening).

[OutlawTorn]

Well it's nothing like NATO. More to the tune of an invasion followed by occupation. Atmos Prime was once a planet like our own. Divided and at war with itself. Thousands of years ago, the planet was, "unified." Basically one alliance of nations took over everything. Nexus was born and over time things settled nicely.

Then Nexus begins attacking other planets. Either taking over by force and installing a new government to rule under the thumb of Atmos Prime, or negotiating their surrender and installing a new government.

The planets which fall under the umbrella of Nexus are subordinates. They are not given political leverage, and that's why Nexus has rose to dominate the galaxy. It's, "Join us, and obey us, or we'll destroy you and take your planet anyway."

Nexus High Command rules everything. A representative of each planet sits on a council that answers to High Command.

Ariana basically rules an entire galaxy.

But the focus is really The Valiant. The locations and artifacts. Not Atmos Prime. The Nexus Military, and other Agent vessels will become another focus later on. And I'll explain after I address the tech question.

As far as tech goes, I'm glad you asked. I want a gritty feeling. No laser weapons. Just a practical, realistic, again, gritty feeling.

And I struggled with what kind of technology the ships would have to travel great distances. I'm not even sure yet so you can help me come up with something.

One idea I had was wormhole technology that would allow vessels to bend time and space, travelling from point A to point B in an instant. The thing I keep coming back to is where the wormholes come from.

I had a few ideas.

Wormholes are created by machines at Nexus Space Stations, and on some Nexus ships (the bigger ones leading fleets and such)

I also played with the idea that our ship could generate wormholes, for the sake of convenience. The catch being once a wormhole is created, it can be accessed by other ships from then on. So opposition would be able to follow if the have wormhole technology.

I also played with the idea that worm tech was stolen from a much more advanced race believed to be from another galaxy. I haven't worked on them for the same reason. Not immediately important, and I want to give my co-writers some input here.

What are your thoughts on, or ideas for wormhole technology?

It's a new idea my friend gave me, so I'm not opposed to ideas from you, even if you have faith in an FTL system. You don't strike me as a stranger to SciFi.

Okay

I'm going to be honest. I've come up with a rough idea for what I want to go down in the plot for the first RP. it's just 1 major event.

Starting out, we don't know what's going on. Ariana has not told us what we are helping her do. After a while, a traumatic event will lead to our crew going back to Atmos Prime, to confront Ariana for answers, and drop off the latest artifact in person. She see's Leon privately (just because it's realistic) and tells him everything. Leon then informs the crew. I have no idea how your characters will handle it, but Leon is going rogue, with his ship, and one of the artifacts.

That's when another Agent vessel will be hired to kill us, on top of the Nexus Military hunting us down.

Maybe some people won't want to go rogue. Maybe an Agent or two from The Valiant might be put on this other ship as a Valiant Specialist.

Hmm... Who knows how many ways that could play out.

[WatermelonTango]

This looks like a great time. I'm certainly interested in either the pilot or tech specialist roles. I never get to drive the big spaceship in these RPs.

[whist]

Very interested, specifically in the Doctor or Tech Specialist roles.

As for FTL travel, I do have a few ideas. You mentioned in your OP that you would like to keep the technology as realistic and 'gritty' as possible. This leads me to think of modern day theories of FTL travel that may have been advanced into actual technology by the time period of the campaign.

The most likely of these is the Alcubierre drive.

Wikipedia said
The Alcubierre drive or Alcubierre metric (referring to metric tensor) is a speculative idea based on a solution of Einstein's field equations in general relativity as proposed by theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre, by which a spacecraft could achieve faster-than-light travel if a configurable energy-density field lower than that of vacuum (i.e. negative mass) could be created. Rather than exceeding the speed of light within its local frame of reference, a spacecraft would traverse distances by contracting space in front of it and expanding space behind it, resulting in effective faster-than-light travel.

Objects cannot accelerate to the speed of light within normal spacetime; instead, the Alcubierre drive shifts space around an object so that the object would arrive at its destination faster than light would in normal space.[1] Although the metric proposed by Alcubierre is mathematically valid in that it is consistent with the Einstein field equations, it may not be physically meaningful or indicate that such a drive could be constructed. The proposed mechanism of the Alcubierre drive implies a negative energy density and therefore requires exotic matter, so if exotic matter with the correct properties does not exist then it could not be constructed. However, at the close of his original paper[2] Alcubierre argued (following an argument developed by physicists analyzing traversable wormholes[3][4]) that the Casimir vacuum between parallel plates could fulfill the negative-energy requirement for the Alcubierre drive. Another possible issue is that although the Alcubierre metric is consistent with general relativity, general relativity does not incorporate quantum mechanics, and some physicists have presented arguments to suggest that a theory of quantum gravity which merged the two theories would eliminate those solutions in general relativity which allow for backwards time travel (see the chronology protection conjecture), of which the Alcubierre drive is one.

It could be said that the exotic matter required for the Alcubierre drive to function has been discovered but is available in extremely limited quantities (which it would seem Nexus would have the means to procure).

[Anima]

I was waiting to read your answer to Flamelord's question, and I'm definitely interested in joining this as a doctor or espionage specialist. I have character concepts for either.

When I have more time, I'll definitely throw in my two cents regarding the method of ship travel.

Edit: Whist, that is a very very interesting idea.

[Flamelord]

Hm, so closest I'm getting is "Warsaw Pact without an opposing NATO or USA". I'm gonna stop analogies now since I doubt there's one that will fit well anyway, and just say that I understand.

Alrighty on tech. So nitty gritty, kinetics and missiles for weapons, with maybe lasers for point defense purposes (Like what they had on the Boeing YAL-1 before the project was scrapped) Not too effective cause space is big, and you couldn't kill a ship with it. Prosthetics exist but are bulky, not smooth streamlined and nearly indistinguishable from flesh and blood. Maybe drone fighters, if those are effective at the kind of combat distances that would be involved.

Great minds think alike apparently, I was going to mention the Alcubierre Drive myself. Besides, perhaps, nBSG point to point travel, however that might work, the alternative I can think of is a 'Mass Effect' type system. Namely, FTL exists, but it isn't particularly fast. So to travel, say, across the galaxy, you have to use these structures we'll call 'Stargates', for lack of a better term. These stargates are large structures with the power and capability to create wormholes between itself and other gates. They're generally guarded by space stations or automated turrets too. It provides choke points that the Nexus could theoretically use to keep sway over chunks of the galaxy. I dunno

Anyway, still interested, either as the espionage specialist (I have good ideas for this), or the engineer.

[Ruarc]

I'll do what I do in League of Legeneds and "fill" a position. I guess I am gravitating toward the medic/doctor, sniper, or possibly the "Agent #2" roles since everyone else seems to be keen on a lot of the others. Would the agent just be an in-the-field operative? Combat specialist, I'm assuming? I just want to know the key differences between that and the espionage specialist, other than the obvious stealth focus of the espionage specialist.

[musicway]

Very interested. Although I'm a bit unsure of what position I can take considering no one has shown specific interest in only one crew position.. or two, if they're having more than one character. Though from what I can see no one has specified that, either. Can we reserve spots? That way those of us coming in now can more easily see what's left over to choose from.

[whist]

musicway said
Very interested. Although I'm a bit unsure of what position I can take considering no one has shown specific interest in only one crew position.. or two, if they're having more than one character. Though from what I can see no one has specified that, either. Can we reserve spots? That way those of us coming in now can more easily see what's left over to choose from.

I'll go ahead and specify interest in the Doctor role, don't want to step on anyone else's toes though.

[Sovi3t]

Double Post , gah

[MrDidact]

I'd be very interested in playing the Espionage role. Double-dealing and manipulation are all kinds of fun.

[Sovi3t]

I am interested , in Pilot or an Engineer Role

Or..Sniper if well those two are taken

[Stairdweller]

I'm most interestex in the Sniper, and I'd rather play only one character than two.

[musicway]

I'd go for one character if I can, the second Agent, if no one else comes back to reclaim it.

[OutlawTorn]

Flamelord said
Hm, so closest I'm getting is "Warsaw Pact without an opposing NATO or USA". I'm gonna stop analogies now since I doubt there's one that will fit well anyway, and just say that I understand. Alrighty on tech. So nitty gritty, kinetics and missiles for weapons, with maybe lasers for point defense purposes (Like what they had on the Boeing YAL-1 before the project was scrapped) Not too effective cause space is big, and you couldn't kill a ship with it. Prosthetics exist but are bulky, not smooth streamlined and nearly indistinguishable from flesh and blood. Maybe drone fighters, if those are effective at the kind of combat distances that would be involved.Great minds think alike apparently, I was going to mention the Alcubierre Drive myself. Besides, perhaps, nBSG point to point travel, however that might work, the alternative I can think of is a 'Mass Effect' type system. Namely, FTL exists, but it isn't particularly fast. So to travel, say, across the galaxy, you have to use these structures we'll call 'Stargates', for lack of a better term. These stargates are large structures with the power and capability to create wormholes between itself and other gates. They're generally guarded by space stations or automated turrets too. It provides choke points that the Nexus could theoretically use to keep sway over chunks of the galaxy. I dunnoAnyway, still interested, either as the espionage specialist (I have good ideas for this), or the engineer.

It's not meant to be molded after any existing political systems or alliances. It's science ficiton, not a proposed futuristic Earth, or anything resembling something along those lines. Trying to find something to compare it to is not going to work well at all for you.

Again I'll stress that Earth plays no part in this story or galaxy, whatsoever. So a scene where your character is listening to Johnny Cash in his/her down time will not work. Referencing uniquely Earth-bound people, places, or things will not work either.

Nexus is a unique and fictional galactic Regime. It's not like the US or NATO, because the planet's under the rule of Nexus were press-ganged into allegiance.

Now, again, Nexus is not a focus of the story, so it really matters not. Either way you look at it.

Sorry for the delay, people. I'm a very, very busy man. The last few weeks I've found myself phoning posts in for Dead Frontier and Legacy Written In Blood from work, just to get them done. That's not a reflection of my ability to do this RP, but a reflection of the time and patients it may take us to write this. If things go well and Neb D actually starts, I'll work on freeing up some time just for it.

Now again, I want a small group, so 8 people playing 1 role each will not work. Show me what you're made of people. I play multiple characters in every RP I participate in. There's nothing harder, or more challenging about it. It's actually easier, and more rewarding.

[Themerlinhawk]

I'm interested and I think I'd be interested in taking on the Doctor and the Engineer roles possibly one more or even some other combination but I defiantly have some strange directions I'd like to take a medically based character in as well as an engineering based character. Something along the lines of forensic pathologist reassigned and re educated as a doctor. Someone who has gone from dealing with the dead to dealing with the living and was perfectly happy with dealing with the dead. I think I could bring something fun to the table with that as I have some experience working with a coroner's office.

My thought process with the engineer was something along the lines of a slightly crazy alcoholic maybe still in morning for an adopted daughter who he is convinced is still hanging around in the form of a ghost that he feels responsible for.

Just toying with some ideas, If you have somewhere you'd like character sketches posted I could come up with a few. Defiantly at the least one for the doctor and engineer, I've been bad about not testing my limits in RPs and I feel like this would be a great jumping off point for me as far as a swim in the deep end.

[OutlawTorn]

Well, we've got one Alcoholic (Leon Blackthrone). The ghost of the daughter thing sounds really weird. I gotta admit it raises a tiny red flag somewhere in recesses of my mind. Things like that can get very played out and annoying, very fast. But having said that, I don't know exactly how you would approach it. Getting hammered and talking to her is one thing, having conversations with an apparition on a regular basis would probably get old and mildly cheesy in a hurry.

But I'm all for different, strange, and otherwise fringe. That's what sets me apart as a writer. I don't do what's already been done.