Luminous Beings

Superhero rp

I'd be interested in a superpower RP.

From Excile

Yay. This should be fun.

How far ahead is the technology?

From Excile

Name

His birth name is Drago Arsov. His new name is Ezekiel Light.

Age

33

Nationality

Russian-American.

Appearance

Were Ezekiel in a movie, he would be cast as the scary, buff henchman that follows the evil mastermind around. Ezekiel stands at 6'3 and has the brawn of someone who's done very hard time. His hair is kept cut extremely short, although Zeke is thinking of growing it out. He has weary dark brown eyes and dirty blonde hair. He moves slowly, as if he's in no particular hurry to get wherever it is he's headed, and has developed a rather unnerving practice of smiling at everyone he sees. His skin is tanned-not too deeply, but he's no stranger to working outdoors, and it shows both in his build and his pigmentation. Zeke's hands are callused and scarred from said work, and the insides of his arms are littered with faded scars. These are difficult to see, given the multitude of tattooes that cover his body. These range from completely macabre to mind-numbingly cryptic to remorseful. On the back of his hands are tattooed a long list of names; his arms are completely engulfed in sleeves of gang marks, tally marks, skulls, and similar imagery. His back has the most elaborate set of tattooes, with two phoenixes circling around the edges of his back and a great many Bible verses transcribed in the space between. His face has only one tattoo-three tear drops running down from each eye. The edges of his lips are marred by a Glasgow smile, reaching halfway up his cheek. The front of Zeke's chest is rendered to appear as if his chest is being ripped open by a skeleton, with blood running out from the wound. Zeke does not care for the markings of violence, sin, and the Devil's work any longer, and prefers to wear long sleeves if at all possible. He does, however, always leave his hands uncovered. Zeke normally wears a small rosary beneath his shirt, where it brushes against his skin, and has two semi-faded piercing marks in his lower ear lobes from where he once had piercings. On his right bicep, there is a mark from where he was branded, but it has been a great many years and the mark has begun to fade. He wears a wedding ring on his right hand and a pink, plastic ring with a Barbie design on it on a string around his neck.

Added appearance
Height
6'3
Weight
240
Blemishes Scars, tattoo's, birthmarks etc.
Listed most of them, I think.

Year locked up 2090 - 3000
2097 onwards.

Sentence given
Life

Crime committed
Apox was his second sentencing. He has been in and out of prison before for drug possession, murder, and rape. He was sentenced to Apox for a triple homicide and arson.

Personality
Zeke is a man simultaneously capable of great compassion and great cruelty. In his younger days, he was known for his ferocity and brutality, displaying equal amounts of physical strength and emotional numbness. After he discovered religion, he became a changed man, one who strove to work towards a peaceful and righteous life. Following the death of his family, he seems to have found a middle ground: he no longer enacts vengeance as callously and totally as he did when he was with his gang, and yet he can no longer bring himself to love as openly and freely as he once did, either. His scar-struck smile hides a great deal of guilt, remorse, and genuine desire to change himself. Zeke was once an addict, but has since put drugs, alcohol, etc behind him, yet finds his penchant for violence harder to cast away. He has attempted to live as a pacifist but has seemingly been unable to. Zeke, now striving very desperately to be a moral man, finds himself tormented by what he's done, and the guilt has made moving forward difficult. He's become something of a quiet man, preferring to be by himself and contemplate issues on his own. He prefers to avoid personal attachments, having learned the very hard way how those can end up, and generally prefers to be independent. He feels isolating himself from others is perhaps the best course of action-in this way, he cannot bring harm to anyone. Since his wife and daughter were taken from him, and since he has returned to earth from prison, he no longer has anyone left. His quest to be
alone may well be realized. Zeke does, however, have a very fierce temper, one which he works on controlling. If enraged, he generally loses all self-control and goes ballistic: old habits die hard. A habit that carried over from his teenage years and years of marriage is his loyalty-Zeke is extremely loyal, as well as true to his word. He attempts to live honorably, and would rather suffer than compromise his morals-albeit, at times, he was tempted, and returned to illicit activities to ensure the welfare of his family. He now seeks atonement and simply to understand himself, and perhaps put his demons to rest. The empty world he has awoken to seems to be the perfect place for this.

Biography
Zeke's life is one that's been dotted with tragedy, a great deal of which came from his own hand. Born to an impoverished family, Zeke quickly found psychological and financial solace in the gangs that prowled the streets. There was a sense of family which was absent in his own home-both parents were working constantly, and his brothers and sisters were in and out. He now realizes that foster care was the reason for this, but Zeke as a small child did not know this: he merely knew that the people he loved very dearly kept vanishing on him, but his new big brothers never did. Zeke, as so many have, fell down a rather dark path. Within a few years he'd become a prominent member of the gang, feeding off the admiration and praise his new brothers gave him. He dropped out of school, continued to help support his family financially, but this became increasingly difficult as he began spending more time in juvy than out. Slowly, he grew distant from the members of his old life-at least until a rival gang decided to send "Ivan" (as his politically correct brothers had taken to calling him) a message. His little brothers got roughed up, his older sisters...roughed up a little worse. Zeke was absolute furious, and went to exact vengeance. It was cold. What had been done to his family, he did to his attacker's: ten-fold. The police couldn't turn a blind eye, and he found himself in federal prison. Cut off from both his true family and his surrogate, criminal brothers, Zeke's life was empty. He found solace in religion, taking comfort in the idea that a killer and rapist and pusher could still find peace. The more he studied and learned (and trained-there was a great deal of free time for Zeke in prison, and he spent a good deal of it lifting weights), the more remorse he began to feel for his actions. The people he'd killed, the families he'd broken up. The women he had assaulted, to avenge his family. It haunted him, and when Zeke walked out of prison some years later (let off on probation for the genuine change of heart he'd displayed, the information he'd given on his rival gangs, and the fact he was so young when he'd come in), he was a changed man. Still troubled, but no longer drawn to a life of violence.

Well, that's not totally true. It was still there-talent begs to be used, and a man as heavily tattooed as Zeke, with such a violent criminal record, found difficulty getting employed anywhere. As much as he despised it, Zeke was forced several times to turn to criminal activities to simply stay alive, but he was truly trying to get on the right path. He eventually succeeded, earning a custodial position at a company. He found janitorial work very soothing: there was no danger, no stress, no responsibility. He could clean things up all day and talk to people and there wasn't any killing or need to be harsh. Eventually, Zeke would find love-he'd find it and take it to the altar, and then hold its hand while it gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. Zeke's life finally seemed to be coming together, and he'd even re-established contact with his family (who had mostly disowned him following his rather abhorrent response to what happened). Unfortunately, Zeke found that children are expensive-and for a janitor and an entry-level clerk, expensive was sometimes not an option. Zeke quietly began to hit up his old contacts, doing the occasional job when he couldn't get work as a bouncer or something similar. Unfortunately, it was one of these jobs that would lead to his tenure in Apox: he inadvertently drew the enmity of an up-and-coming gang, who targeted Zeke's family.

He lost it. Zeke found out very quickly where the gang's leader lived and proceeded to drive to said leader's house, soak the bushes in gasoline, and burn the motherf*cker to the ground. Zeke stood in the road, blood boiling, ready to quite literally tear someone to shreds, should they run out the front door, and relished the screams from inside. For a moment-he quickly realized he was not hearing the screams of the man who killed his family. He was at the wrong house. Zeke tried futilely to get in and drag people out, but he'd done his job too well: there wasn't much he could do. Zeke turned himself in in a matter of hours and was spared the death sentence because of it, instead sent to Apox. He's spent the time then struggling with his faith, writing countless letters of apology, and questioning his life in general. He seeks redemption but isn't quite sure if he's worthy.

Other
Has a soft spot for children, women, and animals. Loses all sense of morality when his loved ones are threatened.

Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy?

Did any new races/forces emerge as a result of the Worldbane?

Sup errybody. Also, newb question

Word. Thanks, I appreciate it!

Sup errybody. Also, newb question

Hey, I'm He Who Walks Behind (any Dresden fans?) I was on the old site as "SilentEpiphany" but I was only in an RP or two, so I doubt anyone will remember me. Looking forward to having some fun here!

Also, is there a section for OOC threads? Because I've heard OOC threads referenced but only seen Interest Checks. Am I missing something painfully obvious?

Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy?

I like this idea. Count me in.

Near Future Mercenary RP

I'm no expert on military stuff but I know a middling amount about guns/military stuff, and this seems like an interesting concept. Dibs on the medic or some other support role (although, I was in a military RP once where somebody played as the team's attack dog, I think he had more fun than the rest of us combined)

Darksol Serum (Casual/Advanced) (Lots Of Things Gone Horribly, Horribly Wrong)

"The Real Shade" said

Everything smelled like disinfectant and it was so terribly bright.

The poor man, crucified on a stainless steel table (said table was very carefully and very subtly rounded to allow blood to drain off more easily-one must never forget the clean-up when it comes to torture) and whimpering very softly, tried to take in as much of his surroundings as he could. The harsh fluorescent lights kept him from seeing much-he'd been hooded up until this point, and the abrupt change was like staring into the sun.

If the sun smelled like disinfectant.

He pressed against the cold bands that kept his wrists, ankles, hips, and neck firmly attached to the table and eventually gave up. Most did. There was a quiet buzz of white-jackets and bulletproof-vests as they readied themselves for the test, with an even mix of polished black shoes and scarred combat boots alike walking across the tile floor. More than a few watched from the relative safety of the balcony, and a few cameramen who never imagined this as a possible venue for their skills recorded the atrocity. Only four people seemed entirely unperturbed by the chaos around them, comfortably watching the lab rats scurry around. Well, three of them did. The littlest merely played with her teddy and ignored the world around her.

The teddy smelled like disinfectant.

There was a quiet, and the man started to scream. It wasn't unlike the horror movies, where the music grows more and more intense, reaching a crescendo, but you're not worried until it gets quiet. That's when the scary monster jumps out. A few people came over and began swabbing the crook of the man's arm (with, dare I say it, disinfectants) and someone spoke idly into a recorder, a singular voice lost amidst the movement, the subtle click-clicks of rifles being flipped to "FIRE". A few red beams drew upon the man's face and torso, careful to avoid the other personnel in their line of fire.

Someone put a needle to the man's vein, swollen and bulging under the pressure of the elastic band on his bicep, and broke the skin. The man was thrashing, twisting and turning as much as he could, letting out a few blood-chilling screams as the syringe's contents were emptied into his bloodstream. The observers didn't seem too perturbed by it-they were too used to it by this point.

They emptied the needle, and the scientists quickly drew back into the observing rooms, watching their creation unfold from behind the safety of bulletproof glass. The guards inside, vital areas covered with ceramic plates and a Kevlar weave, raised 10 gauge shotguns and machineguns. More red dots danced on the man's chest and torso, but no one put their fingers on the trigger. Not yet. The viewers fell silent, leaving only the agonized whimpers of the test subject to fill the quiet of the sterile, eerie chamber.

Perhaps a minute went by before he got quiet. He started convulsing, foam leaking out of his mouth and his eyes trying to force their way out of his socket. His skin very quickly began to darken and char, as if invisible fires were running up and down his arms and legs. Within a matter of minutes, his tissue began to grow necrotic, eating down to the bone, and some form of foul sludge began dripping off that stainless curved table and draining down into the pipes below. His skin entirely gone (and the sinew on the way out), the man seemed to gain his second wind, struggling at the bonds that held him to the table, pulling his arm out of socket and snapping one of his legs with the force he exerted.

"Open fire."

the voice cut through the screams and the rather awful sound of liquefying flesh. Authority has a way of cutting through the bullsh*t and making itself known; absolute authority even moreso. A moment later, the room was full of thunder, light, and gunpowder as what was left of the subject was further eviscerated. Maybe twenty seconds of sustained gunfire passed before they stopped. The guards, with practiced motions and desensitized professionalism, moved out of the room. HAZMAT suits came rolling in, spraying every possible surface and washing everything down the drain with pressure washers.

After a little while, the gunsmoke was sucked away by the air vents, and the smell of disinfectant came back in.

---

Welcome to DARKSOL SERUM. For those of you looking for something optimistic, full of teamwork and happy endings, why the hell did you keep reading past that first paragraph?

This RP is a twist on the standard "you got amped up on super-power juice" RP. As you may have ascertained, the people being administered the eponymous serum aren't exactly consenting to it. A pretty penny of the DoD's budget is going towards a black site, one whose sole goal is churning out reliable and effective superiority. Imagine not needing to train your soldiers; imagine your homeland being invaded and a few gallons of liquid into the water supply being all you needed. Every man, woman, and child, would be capable of fighting for the cause with more ferocity than warfare has ever seen-and if you could rig it to stop working after a few weeks, you'd have a nice, easily controlled civilian populace afterwards, to boot.

Of course, that's only one side of it. The team that took down Osama bin Laden, the old war heroes like Hathcock and Murphy? Well, they were all great men. But imagine if they hadn't been constrained. Imagine if hours of PT and marksmanship training weren't even necessary. Imagine if you could groom soldiers now and keep them ready to kill for their country decades down the road.

You can see why the Pentagon was willing to put a few trillion into this project.

But, so far, it's turned out...less than stellar results. Owing to the nature of the project, Darksol's testing demands rigid security restrictions. Any threats, any talk of escape, and the subjects have to be taken care of-after everything the US has undergone with the NSA's espionage being leaked, imagine what would happen if this got out. Of course, no word has escaped yet.

Your character will be amongst the latest batch of subjects. What, exactly, the serum has done to you is up to you. Its effects are totally unpredictable-it could cause something entirely beneficial or just mutilate you like the fellow in the OP. However, because I doubt you want to RP as a cadaver, we'll assume you lived through the process. You woke up with only vague, fuzzy memories of what happened in a cell. It's not luxurious, but it's not bad. There's a bed, a toilet, and a grate in the door you get food through. You won't be totally in control of your new abilities yet-remember when you had a growth spurt and you tripped over everything for a week or two until you figured out how your new spine worked? No? That was just me? Well, try and sympathize. Assuming you live past the first tests or two, you'll move towards mastery of your powers.

Oh, yeah. The tests are just getting started. See, they know what the serum can do, but they can't have unpredictable soldiers. They run a plethora of tests (all of which are never reviewed by the ethics board) and analyze what effects the serum has compared to regular people. Does it cause psychosis? Can it be contained, altered, directed? The DoD has no interest in soldiers it can't control-and anyone displaying powers on par with demigods is usually offed before they have a chance to realize what they can do.

You, of course, have several options. You can roll over and die-because, despite what they tell you, there's no way you're walking out of the facility. Play along with the tests until you die in one of them or meet a nastier fate. Alternatively, you could try and break out. Lastly, well, there's always the choice of trying to join the ranks of your oppressors. Jussayin, you might want to stop looking at Stockholm Syndrome in such a negative light for this RP.

I forgot to mention who you'll be tested by! Director of the Darksol Initiative, Doctor Isaiah Steele. Steele is equal parts brilliant and callous. A certified sociopath and wunderkind, he graduated from college more than a few years early, and is pretty close to a Ph.D in most scientific disciplines. He has produced some tangible results for the DoD, but not enough. Pressure is increasing for him to produce results that the government can actually use, and not just a bunch of failures (all of which wind up in urns at the bottom of the sea). So, he's getting a wee bit desperate, unfortunately for you. Assisting him are his three children-Chloe Steele, Olivia Steele, and Drago Steele. You'll learn to hate them soon enough.

You have a great many tools at your disposal. There's raw intellect-not even Isaiah is omniscient. There's a way to outsmart him, if you're conniving enough. Of course, the combined firepower of your fellow subjects would be a match for any military in the world, let alone the contingency the facility can throw at you. More elaborate means exist. Seduction. Manipulation. Blackmail. The Darksol Initiative is full of secrets, many of which will prove useful to you in one way or another.

The only thing for sure is this-if you do nothing, you will die. Whether you want to try and save your fellow prisoners or if you'll throw them to the wolves to save yourself is up to you. I'll set no limits on violence against the other characters-so shank them in the showers or hamstring them in the first experiment if you so choose.

---

Some general points.

1. You are clueless about the facility. The layout, the number of people working there, everything. You were sedated in your own home (or out alone on a walk, so on and so forth) and brought in while unconscious. No vague memories of what the entrance looked like, no fuzzy recollections of how to get out. You'll have to adapt based off of what you learn from navigating the facility, what you can weasel out of the guards, and what the Steele clan lets slip. What details I will give you will be important, and it'll be up to you all to piece them together and figure a way out.

2. You only get one shot. The Darksol Initiative, as you may have noticed, is not living up to any ethics codes. If you speak out against the program, suggest dissent or revolt-hell, if you piss off one of the kids enough-you're liable to be killed. Choose your battles, and choose your chance to try and escape even more carefully. The guards won't hesitate to gun you down if they think you're trying to escape. There are three hundred million other people they can use for this subject-you have no special qualifications.

3. Oh yeah-you have no special qualifications. Remember, they abducted you to get you here. So your character can be good at something, but they can't be famous. You can be a soldier, but you can't be the most decorated soldier in the Army. You can be a scientist, but not a Nobel Prize winner. See, if important people went missing, then people would get suspicious.

4. Your powers come with consequences. Whether it's as simple as not being able to expend energy you don't have or something far more complex, your powers do not come freely. The more powerful your gift, the more severe the cost of using it. Think carefully about your power, and look at what your fellow RP'ers have chosen. You may find that relying on natural wit and trickery will get you further than flashy gifts-or perhaps freedom lies with being able to hurl thunderbolts and move mountains. Regardless, going for Superman-level powers will bring about crippling repercussions. You may find a situational power, or one that requires creativity to employ effectively, to be far more useful than a strictly violent ability.

5. While you may not be as limited as one, you're still human. And so are your captors. Aside from the whole superpowers thing, I'll be enforcing a lot of realism in this RP. If your character is a pyromancer, don't go throwing around fire in a contained room. You'll roast yourself from the inside out. Likewise, you need to portray the human psyche realistically. Stress, fear, hunger, thirst, libido, the need to survive-all of these are very real impulses, and your character should endure them accordingly. Of course, the guards, scientists, and personnel of the facility aren't emotionless, either. You may find psychological warfare more effective than physical combat when it comes to breaking free.

6. Things are going to get really dark. If the OP didn't give that away, I'm aiming for some messed up stuff here. Mature content, violence, sexual content, etc, lies ahead. If you're not down for that, no worries, thanks for reading this far. But in a facility that's hidden from the entire world, one that's effective immune from things like laws or morality, well, a lot of things can happen. Using the darker elements of the facility to your advantage may prove useful, but you may well have to sell your soul to do it.

----

So, what am I up against?

Well, your antagonists can be divvied up into two groups: the Steele family and the average mooks guarding the facility. Of course, the Mooks aren't to be dismissed so readily-given the nature of the project, these guards are all highly trained, heavily compensated, and have some pretty major incentives to do their job well. Attempting to challenge them in a firefight would be akin to taking on a SEAL or a Delta operative-of course, a majority of them are just that. Most possess high-powered weaponry, and keep at least one firearm on their person-riot shotguns and high-caliber submachineguns are popular for the guards operating in close quarters, while the perimeter is guarded by ghillied marksmen wielding .50 cals (and a few have recoilless rifles, because you can't ever be too sure). There are several helicopters assigned to guarding the facility (meaning even if you can fly or teleport or something pesky, you've got a few bothersome flies to swat down before you're in the clear) and a decent contingency of ground vehicles, ranging from Humvees to Jeeps.

In other words, you're in for a hell of a fight if you try and bust out.

Your second group of captors would be the Steele family. Calling them the brains to the facility guards' brawn would be inaccurate, because the Steele family likely matches the mooks in terms of raw firepower. Four of them run the show: patriarch Isaiah Steele, daughters Chloe and Olivia, and son Drago. Each are renowned for differing characteristics and qualities that make their presence miserable. Isaiah approaches his subjects with cold indifference and a drive to understand the serum's capabilities. Olivia, being quite young, is rarely given charge of experiments, but is often present. She's erratic, not entirely in charge of her faculties, and shows more than a few signs of trauma. Drago is lecherous, manipulative, and more than willing to offer safety in an experiment for the services that some of the lovelier subjects can offer. And finally, there's Chloe, who seems to view everyone-her family, the subjects, and the guards alike with equal hatred; misanthropy at its finest. Finding what makes them tick and what you can use to curry favor with the family will prove useful. While the lower-tier guards are unlikely to be swayed, you may find the Steele family far more fickle-perhaps, if a less...volatile...group was in charge of the experiments, results would've been achieved.

For better or for worse.

You'll also find near constant surveillance of what's going on. Cameras are all over the damned place, and you can kiss your privacy goodbye. There is, notably, not much interference with what happens, which has led some to question to what extent the cameras are really monitoring you. Sexual activity, talk of rebellion, violence, etc between prisoners has occurred under a camera's watchful eye and nothing has been done. This could perhaps be a sign of the psychological studies going on or, perhaps, lax behavior on the workers' part.

I mentioned earlier that the facility has a great many secrets. This is certainly true-eavesdropping on the guards, who, professional or no, get bored and talk to each other like guards anywhere, will reveal tons of information. Many quietly discuss the sanity of the Steeles, some of the stranger occurrences of the facility, or other goings-on affecting the project's development. Superstitions are commonplace amongst the guards as well.

So, yeah, anybody interested?

Survival |Dystopian|

This looks really interesting.