BCTheEntity

Warhammer 40K: Beyond the Law - A Mercenary Adventure [MATURE] (Open for business, apply within.)

@TemplarKnight07 Good post. What I will say is, Harvin specifically doesn't have the chainswords out at the moment. You shouldn't run with sharp objects, after all.

Into The Dark: Tales of Maroleth

@Lacks Uh, sure, I guess. Sett's probably going to be a touch upset when that gets said, obviously, but yeah, go ahead.

A Tolkien based RP: Out of the Past

@Jbcool Yeah, I've been... slow, on that front. My bad. I'll try and get something done for it tonight, maybe sooner.

Capes of Denver: A Worm RP

Alessa Heather: PRT Headquarters

'Lyn...' Alessa smiled as she said this; it was short and sweet, as they say. Before she could really offer anything else in response, Dean said something about Tulpa "being stuck with us"- though she seemed perfectly happy to be there, from what Alessa could tell- swiftly followed by Sonar ushering the Wards out of the room, apparently in response to an unauthorised presence of some sort. It turned out, once everybody made it to the training room, that said presence was a hovering drone - not massive, but big enough, and judging by how nearly everyone else in the area reacted to its presence, up to and including Decoy himself, potentially dangerous. For her part, Alessa wasn't quite sure what she ought to do, especially when Tulpa announced that it had no weapons at all on it.

...and how could she know that? Maybe she was just trying to lessen the tension, but if she was telling the truth... did that mean her power was Thinker-based? There wasn't exactly a metric for surety there, since she'd only just met Evelyn a couple of minutes ago. In any case, Alessa couldn't think of anything to do that might alter the situation right now - even if the drone was armed, she could probably melt it into slag in but a moment, or at least its internal components, if Decoy didn't hack the thing into submission first - so for the moment, she kept her mouth shut and her eyes peeled. Maybe the Protectorate would let... Ruben, was it? ...go free in spite of his trespassing. Maybe.

---

Raymond Haywood: Icehouse Hideout

'Water would be good,' Headhunter offered, murmuring a quiet 'Thank you' to the Broker once the glass was received. Pulling his scarf down just enough to sip at the glass of liquid in his hand, he listened as the Broker introduced each member of the team - noting that the specifics of Raymond's own ability had been subtly left out of the listings, where every other cape in the room save the Broker himself had had theirs announced accordingly - before going over the rough purpose of the gang, namely to pretend to be a low-level gang which secretly had its fingers in a great many pies. Or at least a more significant purpose than the public would believe.

He bristled somewhat at the announcement that his power would not be put to best use, but remained silent through the Broker's list of rules until they came to their conclusion, before stating the most obvious point in a quiet tone: 'I should ask why you've hired an assassin to engage in non-lethal warfare. I do appreciate the inclusion, of course, amongst other things, but the nature of my skillset would seem to be... counterintuitive... to your stated goal of acquiring living parahumans.' Not, of course, that he couldn't adapt to a less lethal method of operation. It'd just mean his strongest weapon would end up reserved for particularly hard-to-damage targets. And, well, it was always simpler to pick your poison when one assumed no maximum limit to power was needed.

Hybrid: Of Transhumans and Modern Magic

@Kafka Komedy Yeah, probably. As a fair warning, and with regards to the picture you supplied in particular, chimeras rarely utilise cybernetic limbs due to how there's not really been much input toward designing them for chimera users, in much the same way that bionetic enhancements on humans are often either watered down or overly dangerous due to insufficiently strong biology. Unless Star Fox there has access in some form to a source of cybernetic limbs designed for him specifically, the legs would have to be normal legs, not robo-legs.

Hybrid: Of Transhumans and Modern Magic

@Kafka Komedy Given the nature of the setting, I'd say a combination of cyberpunk and biopunk, with placement on the sliding scale based on the faction you're talking about.

@BlytheChi And I'm glad to hear that.

I've updated the initial post with some more information about magic, by the by, which basically explains why magic hasn't been quite prevalent in human society until recently.

Hybrid: Of Transhumans and Modern Magic

Setting

A few decades into the future, humans on an alternate Earth perfect bioengineering and develop a process to infuse animal DNA into humans to create chimeras, which are treated as subhuman for a while despite their superior physical abilities, and biomods to enhance their capabilities. At some point, dragon fossils are discovered, and intact DNA is extracted, allowing for the production of Draconids, at first classified as just another form of chimera. Chimeras eventually rival humans in number, and start rioting to gain more rights, ultimately developing into a full-blown war after the chimeras carve out large areas of territory for themselves; in response, humans begin investing heavily into electronic and mechanical technology in order to keep up more efficiently. However, the Draconids shortly decide as a collective that they’re better than “the rabble”, declaring war on both humans and chimeras and acquiring substantial chunks of their own territory. Somewhere along the way, some insectoid exoskeletons are discovered, and a group of Draconid necromancers decide to resurrect them as minions; they are subsequently slaughtered, and a race of zombie insects begins spreading like wildfire through everyone’s territory, the threat coming to be known as the Husks. Thus, a four-way war is currently occurring, with a lukewarm sentiment between humans, chimeras, and Draconids only because the Husks represent a much more notable threat in their eyes.

Races

Humans - Baseline humans, similar to the real world. Tend to work with a lot of technology, up to and including exoskeletons akin to power armour and reasonably advanced AI, to keep up with the extremely superhuman chimeras.

Chimeras - Humans modified with DNA from up to three other animals, becoming highly superhuman in the process. Prefer their natural weapons as a consequence of changes to mindset and their own strength, but are also likely to utilise biomods to further augment themselves.

Draconids - Humans modified with dragon DNA, an extinct race almost unique for certain magical properties. They all possess wings capable of magically-assisted flight, and magic-based breath weapons corresponding to the type of dragon they acquired DNA from; they are very physically powerful, but due to magical inclinations and extreme pride have a lot more mages than other races.

Husks - Extinct parasitic race resurrected as zombies; now spreading across the environment, killing people and using their corpses as hosts to create new Husks. Extremely variable external biology due to nature of infection, with insides converted into necrotic goo.

Technology

Biotech is a lot more powerful than in the real world, developing roughly in tandem with standard IRL technology, and it is possible to modify a being’s DNA on a massive scale to, for instance, alter a person’s gender, create human-animal hybrids with notably superhuman abilities, or generate biological technology to augment what is already possible. Artificial technology is about what you might expect from a few decades of advancement from modern standards - that is, massive interconnection, perfected cybernetic augmentations, high-quality AI (albeit with certain restrictions that keeps them from being truly sentient or as qualitatively intelligent as humans and other biological races for the time being, though there may be extremely rare exceptions), and overall greater sophistication, in particular many advances in offensive and defensive technology derived from wartime conditions, though the latter two are mostly concentrated in human territories.

Magic

Magic exists in this setting, and though it is prevalent in the world, it is very rarely used. There are many reasons for this: many people simply lack the capacity to use magic under normal circumstances anyway, but adding on to this, a group called the Ordo Obscurum was keeping its existence under wraps until just a couple of decades ago, when internal conflict led to catastrophic devastation that the group could not hide, leading to the reveal of magic to the general public and the Ordo Obscurum's dissolution for want of purpose and loss of membership. As a consequence of this and other damaging events, magic has a reputation as a force primarily geared towards destructive rather than constructive purposes, and not without good reason, as many mages have noted substantial extra effort is needed to get magic to do most things beyond destroying objects. Notably, most mages are not all that powerful, having about the destructive capacity on their own of between a pistol and a few pounds of high explosive - very dangerous on a personal level even with modern technology, but not exactly W.M.Ds, and even those few with more power than this tend to max out well before the greatest known evokers of history, capable of obliterating an entire city at a time. One city. This is perhaps for the best: beyond a certain threshold, magic tends more and more toward twisting to purposes that actively detriment the user, with a recent example of such being the Draconid ritual that resurrected the Husks as undead creatures. Overall, the rate of magical use is around 1 in 100,000 amongst humans, chimeras, and Husks, but 1 in 1,000 amongst Draconids for reasons of hubris and innate magical power.

Dragons, and Draconid Similarities

Dragons were large creatures, with adults ranging anywhere from the height of a small house to that of a skyscraper in length alone, which are extinct in the modern age. Which is surprising to some, since based on analysis of their DNA, they were near-unique due to possessing native magical abilities not directly based on individual magical strength as in humans and other modern sapient races. Based on those semi-passive traits which have been passed on to their “heirs”, the Draconids, they were likely capable of flight in spite of the square-cube law, and could breath great quantities of magical energy as a sort of breath weapon, as dictated by scale colour. The colours and associated breath weapons, and so the types of modern Draconid, are as follows:
Red - Fire breath, wide cone. Scales range from dark red to bright crimson.
Blue - Ice breath, see above. Scales range from dark blue to icy turquoise.
Green - Acid breath, narrow cone. Scales range from very dark green to brightly acidic green.
Yellow - Lightning breath, narrow cone with slight redirection capacity. Scales range from dark gold to bright yellow.
Orange - Petrifying breath, narrow cone. Scales range from very dark orange to medium orange.
Purple - Hallucinogenic breath, wide cone. Scales range from dark purple to light purple.
White - Laser breath, directed beam. Scales range from cream to blindingly white.
Black - Necrotic breath, wide cone; very rarely variegates to disintegrative breath, directed beam. Scales range from coal to pitch black.

Warhammer 40K: Beyond the Law - A Mercenary Adventure [MATURE] (Open for business, apply within.)

So yeah, Harvin's just running for his life now. What's that? You say he should fight the power armoured, power sword-wielding madman who tried to use a plasma gun as a melee weapon? Ha, no. Besides, now everyone else can prove they're more effective mercenaries than Harvin! fight the miniboss and not be upset that they didn't get a turn.

But seriously, feel free to have Harvin and the captain come across your characters as needed. Shit's cray. And, well, Harvin doesn't think he can take out the guy himself, so...

Warhammer 40K: Beyond the Law - A Mercenary Adventure [MATURE] (Open for business, apply within.)

After that initial encounter, it had become oddly quiet as far as pirate slaying went. Some showed up, maybe one or two at a time, and were summarily killed, but none presented as much of a threat to Harvin as that initial blockade had. Frankly, he was unnerved, and those few pirates that did reveal themselves after the other mercenary's split tended to be greeted with yet another screech of fear, and a generally terrible death by crushing force. That said, it ultimately transpired that Harvin was heading in the right direction as far as completing the mission went: he found himself before a pair of fairly large doors, maybe twice his height and apparently sealed closed. They seemed... well, tough. Plasteel, definitely, maybe even adamantium if he was unlucky... but if he was lucky, maybe he could... extending one pair of chainswords from his arm again, he turned the weapons on, and after some hesitation, rammed them into the metal as hard as he could, the noise of grinding metal and revving motors echoing loudly through the facility. Inexplicably, the weapons didn't break, and with something almost like a smile on his face, he dragged the blades through the doors until what sounded like a loud lock breaking apart resonated from them. Then, withdrawing and retracting the chain weapons, he forced the fingers of his robotic arm into the newly-formed gap in the doorway, and pushed with all his might, forcing the right-hand door open.

Almost immediately, a burst of white-hot energy flew out of the newly-formed opening, barely missing Harvin's limb; with a squawk, he withdrew his arm from the opening, then with another charged through the doorway, flinging himself to the ground as another blast of heat passed over his head. Scrambling to his feet, he found himself almost face to face with a human of clearly significant age, grizzled and scarred, with a (bemused) scowl on his face, an odd-looking gun in his hands, a sword of some sort on one hip, and a body covered in...

'Wha- WAI- WHAT?!' Harvin yelled in a shrill, cracking voice, slowly figuring out just how much power this opponent actually had, in particular what had just narrowly missed turning him into superheated vapour. 'Izzat power armour?! Why do you 'ave a... that's a PLASMA GUN! WHAT?'

'Call it loot, call it captain's personal gear,' the man responded, now smirking at the mercenary's distress, 'it don't matter none why or how I have it. What matters is how much of a headstart it gives you on bein' vaporised before the reactors blow.'

'The- what?' Harvin glanced over the guy's shoulders, and his eyes widened at the bank of red-flashing screens, and what looked like... temperature gauges? 'Wait, what did you do?!' he asked in a panic, though the only answer he received was the captain levelling the gun at him again. Shrieking again, he somehow managed to bowl himself out of the way of yet another plasma shot's trajectory the moment before it was fired, before unleashing and unloading at the captain with just about every laser and SP weapon in his arm, screaming the entire time. Once again, the vast majority of shots missed, these ones destroying a lot of the hardware keeping track of whatever destruction the man had been planning on unleashing; this time, though, even the clean hits were absorbed or repelled by the man's armour, and he continued to laugh as he fired a fourth shot from the gun, this one fortunately aimed to lead Harvin by too much, and instead melting yet another monitor down to slag. It was mere seconds, though, before Harvin himself ran dry on ammunition; the SP casings were ejected, and the majority of the weapons retracted automatically, as a number of automated systems in the arm worked to reload every gun as quickly as possible.

Not fast enough, of course, and Harvin knew they would be all but worthless against this guy's defenses anyway. Forced to make a snap decision as the captain re-aimed in preparation for another shot, he decided it was worth the cost to finally unveil his trump card. From the palm of his hand, the barrel of his prized Angelus Bolt Carbine showed itself, and with a thought fired a single, Marine-caliber bolt round a fraction of a second before the fifth plasma burst could vaporise his flesh.

As it happens, firing what amounts to a high-yield fragmentation grenade in a rather confined space is not usually a good idea. Harvin missed hitting the man directly, but the explosion nevertheless threw him several meters to the floor, and the few intact reactor monitors were summarily destroyed by the blast. Harvin himself, being relatively far from the shockwave and partially shielded by his arm, survived relatively intact, though he still stumbled and yelled wildly at the heat and force rolling over him. With that said and done, Harvin took a moment to figure out how trashed the place now was... the answer was "very". It'd be a miracle if the reactors weren't still going to blow up, as Harvin suspected, but at least the guy would blow up... fewer of them? Large explosions tended to be catastrophic either way. For now, Harvin barely thought about it; glancing at the captain to see that he was still alive and moving- 'HOW?! DHK-!' -Harvin charged the pirate, attempting to strike with his arm again, only for a foot to plant itself right in his groin, winding him and knocking him down. Positions were promptly reversed, and the pirate straddled the cyborg mercenary, trying to beat him with the plasma gun, an assault only fended off by Harvin's own artificial arm.

'Are you STUPID?!' Harvin yelled over the attack as metal sparked off metal. 'You're gonna blow US BOTH UP!'

'I'll crush your dumb face before that, jackass!' the pirate responded, continuing to strike a few more times before getting the picture and kicking Harvin's protection away. Another fatal shot to the face was avoided only because Harvin repeated the pirate's own tactic, kicking out with both feet and sending him flailing down as he fired wildly into the walls, the gun now making a threatening whine that only increased in pitch and volume over the next few seconds. The mercenary panicked once more, screaming loudly as the need to get out of there before he got exploded flooded his mind, and he praised the Emperor as he passed through the doorway.

Less so as the pirate followed him, aiming the still-complaining plasma gun for a seventh and final shot, then suffering an attack of rationality at the last moment and flinging the malfunctioning weapon back into the room, taking cover behind the single intact door as the gun returned to the Omnissiah's welcoming grasp in a solar flare of impossibly high heat. This was felt by Harvin even several meters from the door, and surely only survived by the captain because of his own protection behind the thickly-armoured door and personal energy field; if anything was intact in that room before then, it sure as the Warp wasn't anymore.

For a brief moment, both Harvin and the pirate captain allowed themselves to relax, Harvin in particular making the sign of the Aquila and muttering 'Bugger me!' under his breath. Then, the moment passed, and Harvin stood again, revealing all four chainswords and revving them threateningly. It was only fair, after all, since the captain now had no ranged weapons, and all of Harvin's save one were ineffective... and he didn't trust his accuracy with that one, in his state.

The captain laughed at that display. He drew his own sword, hefted it, then pressed a button on the handle, coating the otherwise-standard edge in a field of searing, blue-glowing energy that made even Harvin's weapons seem somewhat pathetic by comparison.

'...er... that's a power sword,' Harvin stated, his chainswords revving down to zero.

'Sure is.' The captain smiled viciously.

A moment passed before Harvin retracted his chainswords fully, turned on his heel, and ran from the captain squealing like a madman, up to and including shrieked cries for help. The captain took pursuit just a few meters behind, screaming obscenities about how he was going to kill the mercenary with the weapon. And so it went.

@Jbcool@Quinntessential@DrunkasaurusRex@Hank@TemplarKnight07

Into The Dark: Tales of Maroleth

@The ZAX And done. Feel free to do more talking as desired.