Azereiah — Roleplayer Guild

Miranda Song

Name: Captain Song

Age: 24 (122)

Species/Body: Synthetic Human | Ex-Spacer

Current Appearance: As an Spacer, she never particularly appreciated her appearance or those of the rest of her kind. When mind uploading technology came around, she chose the appearance of her great-great-great grandmother, from before the migration to space.

Her synthetic body is formed in the image of a 24 year old Korean woman. Standing at 5'6" and 130 lbs., she isn't exactly robust in stature or shape. Neck-length, straight black hair is typically pulled into a bun or ponytail and hidden under a POLICE cap - including when off-duty. She's cursed with a wide, round face, with low and extremely prominent cheekbones - and that's exactly the way she likes it. She doesn't consider herself attractive, and chooses not to be conventionally attractive.

Notable features: Her eyes. Black scleras with yellow irises - a constant reminder to herself that she isn't entirely human anymore. A marking on the back of the left hand - 32.

Alignment: Lawful Good

Personality at a Glance: She cares very little for morals, ethics, philosophy. What she does care about is the law. She recognizes that the law isn't perfect, and that there's more than enough corruption in her neighborhood's government to fill an entire nation, but it's not her job to question how things are done - only to uphold the law and protect the innocent.

She's the sort of person to ignore kids spraypainting rude signs in underpasses or doing drugs in alleyways - but anything vaguely theft-related or violent catches her attention immediately, and is usually met with a tackle - and, failing that, a hail of precisely placed bullets.

History & Current Job: Miranda Song has been a police officer for over a hundred years, now. Her first, organic body lasted until she was 60 - which is unusually long-lived for an Earthbound Spacer, even with replacement organs and reinforced bones. The brain was still fully functional, though, and due to her service record, she was recommended by the Goodtown Police Department for immediate mind uploading the instant she fell ill for the last time. She would be the first officer in the lower levels to be gifted with this new form of 'immortality'.

Unfortunately... She is not the original Miranda Song. There have been thirty-one iterations of her synthetic body before the current one, and each one has died in the line of duty. Four drug overdoses while undercover. Ten vehicular accidents. Fifteen brutal and violent murders. One death under strange circumstances not easily identifiable. One MIA body. She's seen the records of her many deaths, and by the gods, she doesn't want to run into that problem again. She might not be the original, but she certainly is still a person, damn it - and she wants to keep it that way. Still, the one MIA body worries the hell out of her, and her worst nightmare is to find another version of herself trapped in some sort of prostitution or drug ring.

John McKenzie

Name: #2

Age: 1 (19)

Species/Body: Wireless Avatar

Current Appearance: A flying robotic body with four spiderlike legs for ground operation. The entire contraption is roughly 3 cubic feet, and includes a pair of heavily cylindrical thrust devices mounted to the sides. In the center of the chassis are a swiveling camera 'eye' and a very, very large machinegun. To the sides of the front of the chassis are two small and weak manipulator arms, designed for pressing buttons, opening doors, and giving more important people their coffee.

Alignment: True Neutral

Personality at a Glance: Lacking.

History & Current Job: John was unfortunate enough to have survived enormous cranial trauma on the first day of his job with the Goodtown Police Department. He was on patrol at the time, exactly one year ago, when he gave chase to a burglar he caught attempting to steal cardiac implants from a local clinic. One bullet and blood everywhere - but he hung on, despite much of his brain having been structurally disrupted. The surgery to prevent death was performed immediately, and the remains of his brain have been replaced with advanced neuroprosthetics, which more or less have converted him to a simple thinking computer.

He is still sentient, but the damage to his brain was so severe that no neuroprosthetics that had been invented yet could restore his personality. Emotions are still present, more or less, but they are in a much baser form than they had been. In an attempt to give him something vaguely resembling a life, he was equipped with an IFF chip that set his allegiance via hardware to that of the Goodtown Police Department.

Currently, he works as Captain Song's bodyguard.

The World

The world was shrouded in darkness. A massive Dyson Sphere covered the Sun, channeling all energy via extremely high power relay satellites back to the Earth, Mars, and the various moons of Jupiter and Saturn, for the purpose of fueling enormous Starforges - facilities that produced matter from energy to sustain growth in a barren system. As a result, there was no natural light in the solar system save for that of stars, which was faint at best.

Massive cities dotted the landscape of Earth, towering into the sky, daring the gods to challenge them. The oldest and richest cities at New New York, Kyoto, Moscow, Dubai, and London even reached into space - marvels of modern engineering. Lights shone out in all directions from these cities, but they couldn't compare to the light of the sun that graced the land even at night before the Sphere came up. The areas between cities had crumbled, withered - all natural plantlife on the planet that demanded light had succumbed to starvation, and water almost never appeared inland due to a lack of rain. Even the winds had mostly died.

Outside the Cities, the land was nearly pitch dark and completely hostile. The scraps of the city dwellers, thrown into enormous landfills, had given rise to a new pecking order. Hideous mutant beasts roamed the darkness, feeding on scraps and on one another. Cannibalistic wildlife was rampant. While there was non-animal life Outside, it predominantly consisted of various strange and disgusting fungi and extremophilic microbes. Bioluminescent life was rare, but not unheard of - and usually signified death to those who called the Outside home. A few very rare fungal 'trees' could be found, growing out of the filth of the junkyards' organic wastes and giving off a soft bluish-green glow, and communities of Outsiders would frequently spring up around them, though they wouldn't last long. There simply wasn't enough material to drive off the wild beasts for long.

Inside the Cities, however, life was strong, vibrant, chaotic. In most places, social classes were organized by height, with the homeless often surviving off of fallen scraps and living in ancient shells of buildings on the surface, and the rich living in decadent palaces atop the towering constructs. There was grass - flowers even - and many, many trees, growing from the planters that had been haphazardly placed along every reinforced walkway, every road. Moss, ferns, vines - everything - hung down from the towers. The Cities felt more like rainforests with metal trees than anything, and the citizens took great pride in their supposed dedication to life, never giving a thought to what things were like Outside.

City dwellers were often clamoring over one another to express their individuality, trying to prove who was the 'toughest' or the 'nicest' or the 'prettiest', and blended into one uniformly grotesque mass of cosmetic body modifications and cheap cybernetics, most of which didn't even operate as well as the original parts. Each district of each city had its own smell, its own flavors, and most of them weren't particularly good. To drive the value of money and power up, most of the manufacturing companies intentionally sold subpar products to those who couldn't afford to eat well. Cheap flour was cut with sawdust, 'cheese products' were a single covalent bond away from being inedible plastics... Even the meat wasn't quite real on the lower levels. But it was more genuine there, with less political maneuvering, less corruption.

In the upper levels, formalities took precedence over genuine behaviors, and visual modifications to the body were seen as disgusting. The food was formulated to perfectly satisfy each person's individual tastebuds, and fine cloths woven out of engineered synthetic fibers made up a fashion style that hearkened back to the turn of the 20th century and the outbreak of the first World War. They lived in a completely different world from those below, never having to care for anything beyond which petty insults had been thrown about that day. While some altruistic sorts did exist, who sought to help those below them, the majority felt they were above the rest of society (if you'll pardon the expression).

Vehicles by-and-large consisted of trains, trams, monorails, and elevators. Privately owned vehicles were only present in the top few miles of the cities, where excessive roads winding between the city plates and towering structures were deemed unsightly and done away with. Construction vehicles existed, of course, but those were operated exclusively by government contracting agencies, and losing track of one of such vehicles was a capital offense, as the last time one had gone missing, it turned up in the hands of a revolutionary group that proceeded to send the six mile tall Bank of Moscow headquarters toppling over the outer walls and into the Outside, killing two million people.

Earth Human: Your average, every-day, run-of-the-mill human. I certainly hope you're acquainted with them already.

Goblin: The need for maintenance workers who were light and agile enough, yet strong enough, to do work within the City's ventilation, sewage, and hydration systems prompted research into genetic modifications. First-generation Goblins were effectively just normal humans with intentionally induced Dwarfism, but subsequent generations gradually grew to have sharper night vision, larger ears, longer and stronger fingers and toes, and tougher hides. So far, there have been six generations of Goblin gene pools, and many of the members of the first generations were still alive and well, leading to some intraracial squabbling over originality and perfection.

Average height: 4'0". Average weight: 70 lbs.

Ogre: Manual laborers, designed to be simple-minded, asexual, and extremely strong. The Ogre has been present for hundreds of years, and is responsible for much of the early construction of the great towering cities. Biological ethics boards decried the development of such a creature, declaring it immoral and cruel to try to remove so many important aspects of humanity. But profit took precedence, and the project took off rather quickly. It turns out it's easier to just breed more creatures than to program AI to understand complex instructions without going rampant. All Ogres come from a similar genetic stock, though they are artificially bred with some variation to prevent identity issues from damaging their productivity. Typically, they lack any sort of hair whatsoever, and are roughly as muscular as a bear would be.

Average height: 6'7". Average weight: 450 lbs.

Marsian: Standard humans exposed to several generations of lower gravity. They have a thin, stretched out appearance, and stand roughly eight inches taller than Earthlings. While they can handle Earth gravity reasonably well, they generally grow rather exhausted very quickly. The average Marsian lifespan is 10% longer than that of Earthling humans, and they are now just barely biologically distinct enough to qualify as a separate species, even though interbreeding is still possible.

Average height: 6'10". Average weight: 170 lbs.

Moonite: Those who inhabit the surface of any satellite. Their appearances are typically a more extreme version of what one would see in the Marsians. Lightly blue-tinted skin and thicker blubber than average ensure that the Moonites are well-suited to the freezing environments of the fringe settlements. If the Marsians qualify as a distinct species, then the Moonites almost certainly do.

Average height: 6'11". Average weight: 200 lbs.

Spacer: Not a biologically distinct species, as breeding in microgravity has proven to often be extremely dangerous for long term colonization. Regardless of this, they have the most 'alien' appearance of all of the unmodified human species, and tend to creep people out. One is only a Spacer if they were born and raised in microgravity, and has suffered all of the problems associated with it. Spacers tend to die fairly quickly without medical intervention, on account of cardiovascular, pulmonary, and digestive problems.

Average height: 7'2". Average weight: 150 lbs.

Outsider: Those Earthlings who have grown up on Earth, technically, but are from outside the cities. Life in the darkness has made them sensitive to light and given them extremely pale skin. The oldest Outsider bloodlines have, like the Moonites, developed thick layers of blubber rather than ordinary fat, and have slightly larger eyes than an ordinary human. Aside from the skin quality and the size of their eyes, though, they are totally indistinguishable from ordinary humans. Generally, Outsiders live in a sort of vaguely tribal, scavenger style society, with extremely little access to modern technology. Expect one who enters the cities for the first time to be mystified.

Synthetic Human: Indistinguishable in all ways from other forms of human, except for two: The nervous system is entirely made up of artificial neurons, and their features are sometimes perfected down to scientific accuracy, depending on the wishes of the user. Extremely rare.

Wireless Avatar: A very wide category of machines. These are one of the two possible body types that one who has undergone mind uploading may interface with. Unlike the more beautiful and well constructed Synthetic Human, these are more of war machines, and come with the benefit of preventing the user from actually dying should the body be destroyed. They are disliked, generally, because operating such a body creates a significant lag between the body and the brain, delaying responses and slowing thinking. They are also vulnerable to hijacking, if a sufficiently skilled technology expert so chooses, on account of accepting external signal inputs. Perfectly humanlike wireless avatars exist, but are very rare because they are thought to be 'extraordinarily unnerving'.

Cybernetic Hardware: Exactly what it says on the label. This category covers all large artificial prosthetic devices, and is extremely common in the middle and lower levels.

These prosthetics range from simple cosmetic features (cheap replacement parts) to internal organs to even silly and stupid things like cat ears. If somebody has the money for it, they can get it, more or less - and thousands of shops exist along the lower stratums of the cities where custom cybernetics are built from the ground up for relatively low prices. The installations are a bit more expensive than the purchases, of course - especially when swapping out internal organs.

Cybernetic Nanotechnology: Improvements made to the body on a microscopic level are the result of a massive quantity of nanites flooding the bloodstream. Individual modifications are possible via downloads of nanite programs, and the nanites function effectively as a hive mind to complete instructions. Very expensive and uncommon, as nanotech cybernetics are difficult to police. With such devices, a person may use their entire body as a hidden weapon.

The most common variants of nanotechnology are for medical purposes, and serve the function of tearing apart illnesses via brute force - bacteria, viruses, and cancerous cells alike. Less common applications include bioluminescence, radio wave emissions for data transfer, minor electrical discharges, and localized heating and cooling. The rarest applications are much more violent, according to citywide rumors.

Mind-Uploading: Still in experimental phases. A few volunteers have undergone radical neurological modifications - specifically, replacing every single neuron with an artificial variant. After the modification of the nervous system reaches total completion, even all the way down to the toes, the cells begin transferring their functionality one-by-one via wireless signal to an externally hosted processor, maintaining a singular stream of consciousness throughout the entire process. The person's mind, once uploaded, is different from what it had been while housed in an organic body, and lacks influences such as hormone production and selective memory. Mind-uploaded individuals still retain their desires and biological urges, though, and utilize synthetic bodies - or avatars - to continue their existence in society. Generally, a person who is considered 'unnaturally attractive' is, indeed, unnatural, as they possess a Designer Avatar. Those who have undergone this process are extraordinarily rare. A Mind-Upload's personality is determined by the specifications of their chosen Avatar, and as such, they can swap personalities by swapping bodies. Unfortunately, it's not usually wireless, so generally the Avatar being killed also kills the consciousness of the user. While there are wireless bodies available, they are not commonly used outside of military and demolition work on account of 'brain lag' and the potential for the body to be hijacked by a hacker.

Long-range communications & energy transfer: Exactly what it says on the label. Humanity has perfected nearly instantaneous communications via lightweight wormhole technologies, and that includes the transference of energy that can be converted to usable electricity on the receiving end. The waystations for this FTL technology, however, are extraordinarily large, generally being several dozens of miles in diameter. As such, they only exist in the form of artificial satellites and megaconstructs on planetary and satellite/moon surfaces.

Spacecraft: As nice as it would be, wormhole technology does not yet permit for the transportation of matter. Top scientists theorize that it would take a further five thousand years to achieve that level of technological development at the current growth rate, by which time it wouldn't even be necessary on account of humanity merely being a single massive hivemind computer. Because of this, rocketry is still a flourishing field. Antigravity doesn't yet exist, but thrust can now be maintained in a manner that roughly imitates it, and ships often leave orbit by brute forcing their way through the atmosphere rather than taking the much more efficient orbital arc pattern that dominated space travel until the year 2300.

The Job

A group of terrorists, the Icarus Initiative, has been widely publicized by the media in recent days. They claim to want to change the world, to want to destroy the Solar Collective that owns the Sun and all power production in the system. Small-scale bombings have been happening at power waystations near cities, causing small-scale brownouts, and the Icarus Initiative has started making threats to bomb the Transfer Stations #4 and #7, which provide solar energy to the entire tower-city of New New York. Rumors are flying around society of the Icarus Initiative having obtained nuclear weapons, and the bottom levels of New New York have become a propaganda battlefield.

Those with their heads screwed on straight recognize that cutting power to the city would do nothing but rapidly cause the death of over four billion of its citizens, with the other several hundred million scattering to the Outside. Prospects for long-term survival only cover 0.1% of those in the city, and a panic is rising. As bad as things are for people, nobody particularly wants to die over it, and rewards are being offered by the thinly stretched police force for information regarding the heads of the Icarus Initiative - or, even better, the heads of the heads of the Icarus Initiative.

There are no real restrictions on who can join the hunt, so long as the hunt is completed before catastrophe strikes. Any age group, any race, any species, any social class. It doesn't matter - and the reward for success is both fame and enough money to sent a bum from the trash-covered bottom level to the upper palaces of the nobility, if they feel the inclination to do so. The recruitment is, as of yet, small in scale, and old-fashioned paper flyers have been posted on bulletin boards throughout the city where anyone can see them and take a copy. The first business meeting for the would-be Hunters would be in a hipster-operated coffee shop on Level 3A, which was only six hundred feet above the ground, at the cross of Cunningham St., Biker's Lane, and The First Ascent. Apparently Starbucks had managed to grow into a police-sponsored meeting place.

All events in this RP are set to occur in and around New New York. The number of possible locations within the city is pretty intense, so if you can think of a place, it probably exists there.

Rules and General Info

I'll try to be as reasonable as possible here without ruining everything for everyone.

1: If you want to get involved with the RP, you post your character sheet in OOC first and mention me. You DO NOT start posting without getting your CS accepted, and you DO NOT post your CS in the Characters tab until accepted.

2: I'm okay with it taking a while between players' posts. However, if it's more than a few days, I will auto your character in as limited a fashion as possible to keep them with the group. If you're going to be gone for a while, let me know so I can put your character on a bus or something until you get back. If you completely disappear with no warning, you may return and find that your character has spontaneously combusted or otherwise been removed from the story.

3: I don't care about romance. You can do it if you want, but anything even vaguely sexual or overly detailed needs to be done via fade-to-black or total ambiguity (For instance: Character A was seen leaving Character B's room the next morning.). Keep the fun stuff in PM. Please. For the children.

4: Post length is mostly irrelevant. I personally very much enjoy long posts, but I recognize that people don't always have the time or the inspiration to write a full length novel for every post. All I ask is that if you post, you further the story or provide useful information. The absolute minimum is contributing to a conversation or performing an action, and even then, I'd prefer if you had at least a few sentences for descriptions and details.

5: If you're uncertain of whether a given form of technology exists, ask me. If it's reasonable, I'll at the very least attempt to find a way to shoehorn something similar into the lore in some way that's not totally contrary to how reality works.

6: No fucking Sues. This might be a high tech world with high end cybernetic enhancements and genetic modifications, but that doesn't make people good at everything. If you want to make a clever and creative character, then you'll have to at least be as clever and creative as that character in reality - because you had better declare every reason why your character would know something unrelated to their actual profession in your character history, and you had better declare everything in your post. Don't just pull things out of your ass - that won't fly here.

7: No fucking godmodding.

If you break the rules in the IC tab, I will have the Mutant Containment Agency drag your sorry ass to the lab against your will, where they'll perform horrifying experiments on your character for the good of science. And no, there isn't any possibility of rescue.

Here's your base character sheet. Post it in OOC and I'll accept it. Or not. Be reasonable with it, okay?

Name: 

Age: (16-200)

Species/Body: (From provided list)

Current Appearance: (Pictures okay, detailed text descriptions preferred)

Alignment: (Lawful, Neutral, Chaotic || Good, Neutral, Evil)

Personality at a Glance: 

History & Current Job:

[b]Name:[/b] 

[b]Age:[/b] (16-200)

[b]Species/Body:[/b] (From provided list)

[b]Current Appearance:[/b] (Pictures okay, detailed text descriptions preferred)

[b]Alignment:[/b] (Lawful, Neutral, Chaotic || Good, Neutral, Evil)

[b]Personality at a Glance:[/b] 

[b]History & Current Job:[/b]

A note: This is Casual despite the extensive lore. I just happen to be good at shitting out text like a gas station burrito. My standards for posts are pretty low - went over that in the rules. Just don't be a dillweed, 'kay?

If you can think of a character type that fits the races, I don't care if it's a robot maid catgirl with a katana and daddy issues - it'll probably fit, just by merit of there being so many possibilities when dealing with a high tech city of over a billion people.

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