HeySeuss

Star Wars - Rancor Company

I shut down my interest check to hook on with this one. I figure, pool the effort. I am not sure what form to take with the character/squad. If you want, I can set up a discord channel for the RP as well.

Star Wars: Rebel Scum

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Actually, owing to the similar RP in advanced, I'm gonna just chill on this. Sep's already got something very similar and I didn't check that thoroughly when I posted.

Star Wars: Rebel Scum

_{The Rebellion doesn’t look so glamorous from the mud-side…}

TL;DR Summary

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• Discord Chat for the RP. - to plot, collaborate and otherwise make things interesting.
• Star Wars Universe, but I decided to go with a Starship Troopers feel to this RP.
• Shockingly, this RP was written before Rogue One came out. See previous attempt.
• 0BBY (Before Battle of Yavin, or that is to say -- Episode IV)
• Rebellion Era - Far from Yavin, far from Scarif. Closer to Nar Shaddaa. Downside? Fringers. Upside? Far from Alderaan and open mic night at the co-op.
• 1st Platoon, Charlie Company, 2nd Uslam “Liberators” Regiment, is a unit without a home planet, as the Uslam Liberators were forced off-planet during a vicious crackdown by the Empire. The unit has since become part of the fleet, as a strike force. Not all the new faces brought in to replace Uslam natives are from there; the new guys come from all sorts of places.
• The platoon is currently billeted aboard the Corellian Corvette Intruder attached to whichever Roving Line or Sector Force requires its services; the platoon specializes in a number of different operations that require a quick reaction force of specialist infantry. It primarily operates in the Outer Rim and near Hutt Space.
• The characters are members of this outfit, from a variety of backgrounds and formed as an ad hoc fire brigade intended to be able to provide an extra punch; a lot of its recruits are former bounty hunters, smugglers, pirates and assorted other fringe and Outer Rim native types, with a diverse skillset and hardy but also a degree of discipline problems. These are not Imperial Stormtroopers. They aren’t big on parade marches, but at least they can shoot straight.
• This is an RP about a military unit in Star Wars. So that means your badass bounty hunter is probably not a fit -- that kind of person would go to Alliance Intelligence. A Jedi survivor of Order 66 wouldn't be slogging around with a platoon of infantry -- he'd be giving them orders. After all, in the last war the Jedi fought, they were called "General." Every character will have gone through basic training with the rebellion; a Mando would find that training to be a joke and an insult, and there's no way they're taking orders from some amateur aruetii Alderaanian officer that was a kriffing pacifist in college last year while they were disintegrating bounties in Hutt Space. There will be NPC's that are not in the unit, but they're just that -- NPC's.
• Specifically, no Jedi/Sith, no Mandalorians, no Human Replicant Droids.
• The characters' decisions will affect the outcome.
• Collaborative GMing; I have final say, but I want to encourage people to have ideas on side quests and so forth.
• Multiple characters allowed

In Character Info

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The Republic has fallen and the Empire has risen in its place, having undermined and manipulated its way into power -- what seemed rational and logical turned out to be a manipulation. The Jedi are gone, the law no longer protects and the military no longer defends. The Empire has turned everything into an instrument of oppression under the New Order.

Still, there has always been resistance, even through the dark times. The young take up the fight against the tyranny, filling the ranks of the opposition to the Empire with a generation that does not justify the Empire by claiming that the Republic was more corrupt, worse and so forth. Some are idealists, others have their backs to the wall. The Empire creates its enemies -- the harder it squeezes, the more people consider banding together against the Empire. And now the Empire's enemy has a name.

The nascent Rebel Alliance is generally unable to mount more than harassing attacks against the much larger Galactic Empire, but it has the advantage of surprise -- the Empire has to defend the entire Empire, whereas the Rebels can disperse their forces and often can strike where they care to, though if they are caught in one place too long, they are crushed. It has to, by necessity, wage a grim and dangerous guerrilla war in the shadow of the Empire's might, wagering their lives and freedom for small victories in a long, long war that has anything but a certain outcome.

All the same, when sector forces and fleet assets get in trouble, and need a hard target cracked, they need a little something extra, a strike force with the skills, training and specialized equipment to handle something that takes more than a moisture farmer militia. That's where 1st Platoon, Charlie Company, 2nd Uslam "Liberators" Regiment gets called in. The natives of Uslam, a mining planet in the Outer Rim decided to rise up in support of the Rebellion, but were crushed. The survivors of its military units that got off-world in an evacuation were put into ships as security crews and boarding forces, to make landings. They became part of the disparate fighting forces of the Rebel Alliance. Replacements from other planets filter in, and yet the Liberator ethos prevails -- hard-nosed, cynical and ready to do whatever it takes to fight the Empire, stormtrooper by stormtrooper, ship by ship, planet by planet.

They have one of the crappiest jobs in the Rebel Alliance and it sometimes feels like 1st Platoon is the only platoon in the whole damn Rebel Alliance and everyone else is in Supply, Intelligence and Starfighters. They don't get the glory like the Starfighter boys do, but without them, there is no alliance.

Out of Character Info

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This RP will center around a specific unit within the Rebel Alliance, but it involves a lot of small sub adventures for a group. For the sake of convenience, I have decided to set it up so that the characters are assigned to the same group and on the same ship, supporting their leader. I have certain ideas on how to start off the RP and for various nemesis character types, but I am open to other people's ideas -- in fact, I'd like to provide enemies that people want to fight, and find interesting. I'd like to keep the whole thing going, and I've tried to craft a scenario where smaller operations feed into the overall large-picture; moral decisions -- who to recruit, and what actions to take that may bring some groups closer while alienating others, akin to the relationship system in a lot of RPG's; praising one character pisses off another.

So what kind of characters do I have in mind for this? These are the infantry of the Rebel Alliance, the guys that carry a rifle and do the fighting in the mud, with blood on their boots. They aren’t as clean-cut as Stormtroopers, and there are plenty of aliens in the ranks, but they can shoot straight even if they aren’t as easy to lead. The veteran characters of the unit are from Uslam, a planet that just got beaten down by the Empire. The survivors were in what was a baptism by fire for most of them, and got their teeth kicked in by the Empire. Uslam’s rebel uprising was put down and the regiment was forced off planet, broken up and put into small ships all over the Fleet, platoon by platoon. The replacements are coming in, but Rebel training isn’t the best and they’re learning on the job. Still, the fight won’t wait and you go to war with what you have, not what you want. That, ironically, is what Supply likes to say along with ‘figure it out.’

Pacing-wise, let's aim for a couple paragraphs a go, keep it moving. Also, this RP will start fairly quickly, so there will not be a weeks long screening process once in OOC.

@mdk@supertacticalderp

Shadowed Apotheosis

@Rekaigan@Mike73@Aristo@Xenocyanide@Vietmyke

The First Tree

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Athosvid reached for the sun that no longer nourished it. It wasn't on a mountain so much as it was the mountain, an imposition on the skyline from miles away, jutting out of hilly forest of still-living lesser types of trees. The sky was impossibly blue and the sunlight pierced through Athosvid's leafless branches to cast skeletal shadows over their side of the path. The sun was out at full brightness, and it obscured the features of Athosvid, leaving it a dark titan that loomed over them. The day was beautiful, but the fossilized tree left Arikes cold inside.

Perhaps once it was living, if legend rang true. It seemed as if the nightmares were true-- the Trokals, the destructive force of magic. There were scars on the landscape, jagged gaps in the alpine canopy that revealed bare rock beneath, where impossible force had instantaneously stripped a thriving ecosystem away. Kryneans had many legends that arose around the Athosvid, tales of deities and creation with the tree at the center of it. But Arikes knew it as a rock, hardly remembered from a childhood before the Vukash came and took this place for their own with blade and spell.

This time, the trek was no traditional pilgrimage to make an offering, but he'd brought an offering along out of respect for his grandfather rather than the spirits it supposedly went to. Those were the dreams of a society that wanted to believe in something beyond what they could see. Arikes could understand it; reality was awful, fantasy was a comfort. He didn't believe in miracles, but magic existed in a horrifying, sanity-breaking way and benefited the Vukash only. That realization beat the hope out of him. He wasn't even sure to hope that the Madman's Seed was real, even though he felt the unnatural warmth, and a shiver of fear and wonder mingled as he touched it. Loras died handing it off to him, and so he carried it at his hip, but he tried not to think of it, even as it made it's presence felt with heat at his side. He found handholds, along the climb up, in the rough, barklike rock of Athosvid's exterior.

If it weren't for watching the false prophecy of Bozander lead them all into folly and destruction at Trona, he'd perhaps have been broken by watching the expedition, bedeviled by a new type of Trokal, fierce and more intelligent than the other troop types and scorched by magic when the pursuers caught up to them. They turned, they fought and were overwhelmed by the surprising new foes and a cunning Vukash battle-mage that herded them into ambushes with the creative use of fire. The bastard seemed to know the tactics and countered them -- the baited path was poisonous. There was no turning back, they were being run down.

It took a degree of ruthlessness to leave those behind who could not or would not keep up, but the ones that could still move had to. They moved along the stream bed of the Cycander river all the way up to the slope of the heights that Athosvid sat on, in an attempt to deter the scents. All the way up, Arikes was left thinking, in a silence marred by splashing and grunting as they struggled with their individual loads, that they'd gotten too complacent and the Vukash found a new way to take total advantage.

In this sort of cheater's game, survival itself was the prize; the people they left behind were dead or enslaved already, but staying there with them wouldn't have done any more than repeat the folly of Krona, which was to fight them openly, rather than stabbing them in the backs or overwhelming them with numbers.

Leading up to Athosvid were a series of what seemed to be stairs, but smoothed down by more than centuries, in the stone. It was sufficient to get a grip, but the height and the howling wind, the sight of the forests they'd come through far, far below them was vertigo-inducing, and every gust brought on a visceral fear of being swept away, even in the calmest of weather.

His limbs were crying out their weariness, the lack of sleep made his eyes feel like they were seeing from a distance and not too well, and he felt himself apart from the proceedings, and yet he trudged up and up these steps, around and around the trunk of Athosvid. He knew the place well, but he last trod these steps in a very different time. He tried to remember the lore his grandmother filled his head up with when he was a giddy little boy gamboling up these steps, but could only recall snippets of it, enough to put together the sacrifice of herbs and incense. This was how he diverted himself from the cries of his muscles as they strained, with the pounding feeling behind his eyes that beat a tattoo of 'curl up and sleep.'

The summit was the top of the trunk, where it branched off into many different directions. There was succor from the wind's force, but not its howl, and there was a chill in the air this high up. But here was the altar that his ancestors sacrificed to, without ever experiencing more than coincidence, compared to actual magic wielded by the Vukash. Their cries were unheard, their myths did not come to life. But they'd clung to the hope of the madman's seed this whole time, and if they were going to die hunted, without a chance, they might as well die in good scenery, or so he'd quipped a few thousand feet down.

He steeled himself for the disappointment; he'd seen the fools sacrificing to gods that did not exist, imploring spirits that did not exist, inventing rituals that did not work. He'd been there when Bozander conned himself into wealth and fled when the armies that followed him looked for actual miracles on the battlefield that he could not provide. Here now was something that had more of a substance, but was it just another trick?

He placed his sacrifice on the altar along with the seed on top. It came out of the bag glowing and with a warmth to drive the chill from their bones. When it was set atop the cloth bundle for the sacrifice, it burst into a bright green flame, one that shot out onto a stony branch and outlined a door; it did not open so much as the flame formed a rectangle and within those boundaries, Athosvid disappeared, giving access to an interior they only knew about from the rantings of a madman.

The portal yawned before them, the wind finding its way into it and creating a howl down the corridor. That loomed before them, dark and imposing, fearful.

Arikes looked back and toward the others, eyes wide of their own accord.

Spiritum

Awesome, I am going to wait for others to reply to this one, since I was fast on the draw last time. :)

Shadowed Apotheosis

@Rekaigan@Mike73@Aristo@Xenocyanide - Now that Xmas is over, I think we should finish character sheets. I put deadlines on stuff in Trello and am prepared to get a post moving (have one mostly written) that we can work with.

At the very least, if you have character names, can you post up WIP sheets here as well as update in Trello? We also, as a necessity of establishing the first post, need to figure out how the expedition to the Athosvid went down. I think we are all in agreement that a really nasty fight happened, probably ambush by Trokal pack-hunters which may well have been something they had not encountered previously and would explain why so many died to get there.

Thoughts?

Spiritum

Let it Rock

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The body Gideon studied was pretty well mangled, but he could make out the gear, "Dressed like Vangar military, class A uniforms," Gideon noted coldly as he crouched down; the boots gave it away. Those were in no way combat boots. The simplest way to check things was to reach into the corpse's collar area and pull out the ball chain from the neck of the poor, mangled bastard laying there, mercifully dead. The weapons were useless, but the dogtags were surprisingly intact, "Leutnant Ritter here was definitely Vangar Army." Still, Gideon wasn't a bastard, he tucked the dogtag back into place for the graves registration types that would eventually, he hoped, bury the man.

There wasn't much hope that they would be rescuing anyone out of this wreckage. For one, it was a military transport of some sort. For two, there wasn't much chance of survivors. Three, if someone did survive, that awful truck would kill them on a bumpy country road just trying to get them out to a regional hospital. They had no way to call for a medevac. They were marking bodies.

The place all around them was broken up pieces, chewed up earth, destroyed landscape from the collision. He'd never seen magical devastation on this level or even heard of it in any sort of historical context; it was a whole piece of living ground just wiped out, and there were still plumes of Mist left over in the aftermath. The heat buffeted them from the fires still burning here and there and there was a terrible smell of fused plastics and metal, and something more coppery and savory; cooked human flesh. That was a new smell for Gideon, something his brain catalogued with brutal efficiency and marked, 'experience trauma later.' While Setzer tried to talk to the old man, Gideon watched, still and tense.

"Wonder what they were doing here, dressed for a party like that?"

Setzer tried his best with the old man, but one look said that the best they could do was give him morphine, and that wasn't exactly a supply Gideon had handy. It wasn't part of a first aid pack for hiking and there wasn't time to go trying to scrounge it out of this wreck...though it seemed that almost nothing actually was there intact.

Except, of course, some sort of pod. Setzer was the first to it, and took an arrow for the effort. Gideon, as the voice was shouting out warnings, didn't really feel inclined to play, but also didn't have much to play with. But he did have a rock he could pick up.

"FRAG OUT!"

It was dark and everyone was keyed up. When he threw that thing, he threw it in that pod just like a grenade, and ducked just like he was trying to avoid a blast, pulling Setzer with him. He didn't bother to use magic for that bluff, because it was hardly needed and might have given away that it was a trick -- the thing clanged into the hatch enough like the real thing that a trained person would react the way anyone trained or experienced would react to a grenade; they'd find ground.

His side knew it was bullshit and bluff, but Gideon also figured that this person had no idea, and she was shooting at his buddies, he had to do something.

Shadowed Apotheosis

Arikes of Krynos

Name: Arikes of Krynos
Age: 27
Sex: Male
Kingdom/Place of Origin: Krynos

Appearance: Blond-haired, his is worn long with a beard as is the fashion of fighting men to help cushion the helmets they wear. He sports a lamellar breastplate and greaves over a padded gambeson, along with bracers on the arms, but eschews mail as too heavy. Otherwise, he wears furs and other clothing items as necesary to stay warm. His helm is of the Krynean (Corinthian-style) but with hinged cheekpieces and other inovations to keep it from being too uncomfortable to wear all the time.

Skills/Abilities:

- Melee Combat
- Some archery, basic.
- Stealth and concealment in the field.
- Haggling and bartering.
- The care and provision of larger forces.
- Shoeing horses and mules.
- Encampments.
- Firestarting, land navigation and basic survival on land.
- Horsemanship.

Equipment:

- Axe and shield. The shield has a cutout for a man on horseback.
- Lamellar breastplate, gambeson, greaves and bracers. It's a set from salvage and cobbling together, but it's a good enough ensemble of weaponry.
- A short stabbing sword of the Krynean type that was in vogue before the Vukash invaded. It is not the most effective weapon against Trokals and much more powerful weapons are needed to generally kill one of those, something with more chopping power.
- A dagger, the sort you can cunningly conceal.
- Rope, candles, flint, steel, fishing line and other survival needs.
- Jewelry and other wealth, on his person and wearable. A ring through the ear, rings on his finger and bracelets on his wrist. Buckles, cloak pins and other decor. These days, anything you leave behind might as well be given away.

History:

Arikes of Krynos was born the grandson of King Pyrodes, and to wealth and want for little. Already, the Vukash were on the horizon, invading and plundering, and the tales were wild and terrifying, but dismissed ass the rantings of superstitious barbarians eager to salve their defeat with excuses. All the same, as war came on the horizon, Krynos mobilized, unwilling to give up the gains it had made since Pyrodes united the tribes into a nation and created a formidable force of warriors able to hold their own and even modestly expand their kingdom.

In a series of short battles, the Krynean royal family was destroyed in the field; Pyrodes, his son Cycander and a number of other relatives. Arikes' elder brother Gero was the heir apparent and he fled with the Royal Household and treasury toward Dara. Not yet of age, he was a regency in exile, with his small council controlling the considerable wealth salvaged from Krynos.

Arikes was given training as befitted a member of the Royal House, though he and his brother were given very little actual oversight of the day to day workings of the exiled regency. Even though Gero came of age, there was hesitancy toward ceding all the powers of a king over to him and he was inclined to let the council carry on as before, albeit in Dara. Here, Arikes learned the All-City's ways and ran with merchants sons and other kids in the streets, though he was also put through training at arms and taught by a host of weapons masters that gave him the skill he'd need to fight the Vukash.

During this time, the preparations were made, including the City of Dara's forces and various mercenaries, to create a host and retake Trona, the capital of Krynos in a full scale, conventional battle with a host that was unprecedented. A man, Bozander, convinced many that he was able to tap the power of magic; there were witnesses who claimed miracles were done. Morale was high and the army marched with Bozander at the head. Arikes commanded under Gero, though he was trained but green, and a child of the streets of Dara.

Bozander was another charlatan that people put their hope into, and he disapppeared as the day of battle came. The armies, demoralized, engaged the Vukash in the field, who actually had battle-mages to call forth their devastation and Trokals, eager to feed upon the flesh of their foemen. Gero fell at the head of his host and it fell to Arikes to rally what he could and fight a retreat and maintain discipline on a march back, relying on the advice of the hardened captains that he had at his disposal to give him sound counsel.

Upon falling back, he learned the true cost of Trona; the flower of several kingdoms lay dead and charred on the battlefield, picked over by the Trokals and other warriors of the Vukash. With them was the treasure of those kingdoms, including what remained of the Krynean treasury. It was an optimistically all-or-nothing gambit that left the Kryneans penniless and Arikes without means beyond the men he'd fought and lost alongside. Bozander had a price on his head; one set in vengenace against the man that cost so many their all. Jal Shieldbreaker headed up the party that hunted Bozander and collected the immense prize for bringing the man in alive, screaming, to Dara, and from thence to whatever painful torture awaited. In that time, more kingdoms fell that much more easily against the Vukash because Bozander's con.

With the Bozander bounty, led by Jal Shieldbreaker, they founded the Banner of Flame, a mercenary company that began to undertake caravan guard and raiding operations in order to turn coin in the war without losing their lives in the process. Arikes spent years fighting in their ranks where he was respected but not revered as royalty; that was gone, ashes on the field. In the wake of Trona, there were many suicides among the Krynean nobility that survived the debacle.

A strategy, by consensus, was devised to strike the Vukash where they were vulnerable and stretch them over their new holdings, and this worked sometimes and othertimes did not. Smaller forces, in the hundreds of men, would strike and then run, sail or ride away, hoping not to draw pursuit. Different variations on the method existed, depending on terrain and abilities of the people undertaking the raids, but the effect was similar -- the Vukash spread their forces and were constantly chasing forces around.

In time, the Vukash developed countermeasures, but a successful company was able to overwhelm Trokals in small groups, plunder as necessary and sell loot back to those groups interested in the corpses of Trokals and other Vukash artifacts. There was money to be had for the wary and prudent, but not for the fiery hard-chargers that chased the glory. In this hard-scrabble, hard-bitten sort of war of sustenance, Arikes served. There were a few open field engagements, but these often were money-up-front affairs with a lot of money offered for such a risk to armies. People risked much on the very idea that they would survive to collect pay. The last one the Banner of Flame participated in saw the death of Jal Shieldbreaker and the dissolution of the Company.

He was approached, with others, after this for a special expedition, scholars that had to reach a ruin in Krynos. Arikes knew the lands, despite so many years in Dara, and its geography. He'd been in Krynos before, and he knew others that could guide them even more expertly and he guided the hiring agents to them for his fee. The fee they offered was worth the risk.

(Insert Expedition history here, but yes, they got hit by Vukash pack hunters, wolf-derived Trokals and others.)

Personality and Psychological profile:

Arikes has been hardened by war, and his way of dealing with it is to spend money on his pleasure and wring pleasure out of life. He is loud, profane and friendly enough, but he is also willing to initiate violence. First and foremost, he is a survivor that intends to carry on. He is no stranger to assasination and is, as befits a raider, pillager and guerrilla fighter, soft on his feet. He is no footpad, but the state of the world has given him the skills in being such. He is also a drinker, a carouser and a gambler, all too willing to indulge in pleasures that might not exist the next day. He is brave, but it's a devil-may-care brave that acknowledges that the Boatman gets paid his due in the end. He survives, but does not expect to die in his bed.

Prior Run-Ins:

Spin off a story about an interaction between the character above and your own. Please be sure to make it an incident worth referring to during the RP. Feuds of some sort are particularly appreciated here.

Shadowed Apotheosis

The sheet for Arikes of Krynos is added.

Roleplaying 'Productivity' Applications

I don't recommend Hemingway App for everything. It's a useful little tool and I like to use it as guidance rather than rely on it.