Peaceless

The Gamer Squad: Escape The Mainframe

Soooo are we waiting for a post from @Eklispe?

No Turning Back - Into the Abyss

Part 2 is up and there is now less of a chance that the cyborg will go crazy and kill us all :)

@Rawk

Ah, the naivete of the young...

No Turning Back - Into the Abyss

Two Sides of the Same Coin | Part I

_{collab with @Rawk}

“Access Granted. Good morning Chief TreVayne”

Noah’s voice followed the various biometric screenings performed prior to the doors of Security Command releasing its locks and opening up with a hiss, allowing Gavon to enter into the busy morning rituals of SecCom chatter amongst dispatchers, communications officers, and field Agents. A mixture of various aromatic coffee flavors filled the room, giving it less of a cold, stuffy, technical station. He straightened his uniform while walking toward the holo-table situated on a raised platform in the center of the room. Deputy Jerrol Haas, the Chief’s second-in-command was manning the station as per his usual shift rounds, and looked up from the screen with an acknowledging smile.

“Mornin’ Sir” Haas gave a nod from across the table.

Jerrol Haas was an unassuming thirty-something man, a person who at first glance may seem more a pushover than a rather intense and calculating member of the team. His average height, thin frame, pocked face, and dark-rimmed glasses gave him the appearance of more the stereotypical “computer jockey” than any leader in a Security division. Where Gavon was more the physical and upfront type, Jerrol would rather stay out of any confrontation altogether if he could help it, gravitating toward an operational position and ensuring all aspects of the Division ran smooth and on time. All things considered, it’s truly a strange, yet healthy balance they’ve achieved.

“What time are you expected to meet with our new ‘guest’ down in Block A?” He finally said, grabbing his small thermal canister filled with some sort of protein-enhanced juice, and taking a quick gulp.

There was a brief pause as Gavon scrolled through various timestamped records and then looked up toward the screen just above his head, which showed footage of the cell. “Shortly after we leave Hyperspace, which according to intel should be within the next couple of hours. Although, I’m not certain what to expect considering she’s a stowaway and there are already too many unanswered questions.”

Deputy Haas snickered. “I think that was the first you referred to the cyborg as a ‘she’.”

Gavon stared at the cyborg’s image as it sat cross-legged and unmoving on the cell floor as though it were in some meditative state. “I suppose so…”

Roughly two hours passed before the Admiral made the announcement of the Vitae dropping out of hyperspace, and so it happened shortly after that, which caused quite an arousal of interest as to what was going on outside of the ship. A large overhead viewscreen lowered along the far wall opening the external camera feed which showed a new galaxy around the ship, bringing with it a hushed reverence amongst the room’s personnel. Natalie walked up behind Gavon and slipped her hand into his, interlocking their fingers while they both gazed out into the abyss, their thoughts resting on the same question as a vast majority of the ship....

Where the hell are we?

---

Footsteps echoed off the dull bluish-gray metallic walls of the brigs main corridor as he walk up to the cell, saluting the guards standing outside the cell before stepping closer to the energy field separating him from the cyborg within. The overhead lighting cast an almost ominous shadow on the strong, defining features of the man’s face, while metal buttons, studs, pins, and fasteners on his dark blue uniform illuminated. His six-foot-one frame stood rigid, shoulders reared back and hands folded together resting on his belt buckle. The last entry of transcripts he read pertaining to the cyborg’s brief communication had been: "Can I get a view of what's outside?", which left him puzzled and intrigued all the same.

“Curious.” He finally said. “I’m wondering why a machine would care about sight-seeing, or is it that you’re hoping to run again?” Gavon’s voice was calm, and demeanor non-threatening, as he assessed the cybernetic female with suspicion. She looked surprised at his appearance, her large, artificial yet expressive eyes easily conveying this.

“That - That’s humor, right?” she forced a smile. From this proximity, Gavon could see a row of matte-white, sharpened teeth in her mouth, either practical prosthetics or the result of some kind of fetishist plastic surgery. This grimace persisted for a second or two too long. “Anyway, please enter my office, Mr. TreVayne. Or should we do this in yours?”

She waited for a response while backing away from the barrier. Some tension disappeared from her stance when a half-hearted grin formed on the security chief’s face. “That is also humor. I assume you consider me dangerous. I am, to the enemies of mankind.” She glanced at her claws, then back at the man. “And today, you are mankind. To put it short, I wish to apply for a job in the Vitae’s security force, under you. It is not a standard way to make such an application, but it has its benefits.”

She approached the barrier again, her fingers steepled at chest-level in an almost ceremonious stance. “You may now ask serious questions - though I will go ahead and answer one beforehand. The point of my movement from Engineering towards Security was a drill of sorts, a test of response in the face of an unknown intruder. There are some improvements that should be made in order to survive a real intruder of my magnitude. I have a list.”

Gavon arched an eyebrow, trying to process the cyborg’s barrage of carefully placed wording, unusual ‘job’ requests, and outlandish justifications as to why she had snuck aboard the ship in the first place, and yet coming up short with any viable answer that could appease such a single-minded and delusional walking microchip. He stared at her dull gray face and pitch black eyes, trying to find any semblance that he was being played for a fool, that this machine was perhaps here as a prank started by Engineering as a means to test the ship’s security integrity. The Chief stepped closer, the tip of his nose inches from touching the bluish glow of the humming energy field.

“Are you fuckin’ with me?” He whispered, a serious tone in his voice, as he took a step back to his initial spot while one of the two guards snickered at the comment. Gavon glanced over at the young man, whose expression quickly reverted to deadpan, before turning his attention back to the inmate.

“That was rhetorical by the way, but it’s doubtful your creator included a ‘sarcasm radar’ into your repertoire. The fact of the matter is, your request -whether legit or otherwise- is denied. I can’t allow a rogue machine stowaway with forged personnel documents to simply stroll up and ask for a position with Ark Security, claiming to have vast amounts of knowledge in how secure or unsecure this ship is.”

To Gavon’s surprise, he didn’t allow the cyborg’s blind ignorance to get to him as it did the first time they spoke, keeping a rather mild-mannered tone of voice through his otherwise reprimanding speech.

“So, what we need is the truth.” He continued, crossing his arms as he stared directly at the machines dead eyes. “All of it. Right here. Right now.”

The cyborg frowned. “Really. You have really set yourself up for the ‘in the beginning there was nothing’ or ‘I was born in the Okinawa province in Japan’ jokes?” she shrugged, inadvertently solving the mystery of her accent. “Forgive me for not taking this chance, I am too distracted by your ‘Machine’ comments. The truth is, that you have no right to judge how artificial I may or may not be, given that your permanent residence as a species right now is a huge floating chunk of steel with engines stuck on its rear.”

That last part was said in a slightly raised voice, as she approached the force field and pointed a finger at TreVayne’s face. Noticing this, she took a second to regain her composure, and lowered her finger and her voice. “Let me break your claim up to its components: Rogue - the chaos I’ve caused was meticulously planned. I suggest you take another look at Noah’s logs for confirmation. I was making a point of testing response times and magnitudes on different zone categories in the Ark - engineering, maintenance, residential, security. I have purposefully avoided the Hub in order to allow you and your forces to contain the entire event. You may use all telemetries gathered for debriefing and improvement. This is not vast knowledge, as you put it - these are results.”

“Moving on. Machine - Do you not have Armani crewmembers on board? Otherwise that would be the epitome of irony. Humanity, floating around in a machine, pointing fingers at augmented individuals and calling them too ‘machine’ to be human? This is a suit, Mr. TreVayne.” She raised her left hand and focused her eyes for a moment. With a slight hiss, long black bolts extended from various points of her forearm, and the interlocking armor plates moved to form gaps. She took off what appeared to be a very armored glove and revealed a small, feminine hand, the skin a grayish color as her face. Long scars ran along the skin closest to the bones, interrupted by metallic protrusions that may have been the connection of the glove to her skeleton. Some wiring showed under the thin skin on the back of her hand, and her fingertips were covered in an intricate copper/fiberglass design, most likely some kind of machine interface.

“I do not have a lot of blood so I will not take this demonstration further. Know that some of us have sacrificed everything, our minds and bodies, to form a tentative shield against the Devastators, only to be tossed aside and rejected by the Genesis Project council. Can you imagine, a young girl doing this,” she gestured at herself, scowling, “convinced it is the only way to save humanity, only to have some coward make an escape plan, abandoning her because she is now not human enough!?”

“As you can see,” the glove bolted itself in place, the cyborg looking away from the Chief of Security, “I have refused to curl up and disappear, along with earth and most of humanity. I have rejected my rejection. I have followed humanity, despite its pointless puritanism, to be the sword to impale our attackers with the same cold ruthlessness they have shown us. The instinct of survival, the will of revenge, the heat of aggression and the compassion I have shown your crew despite their lack of understanding, all this and you dare call me a machine?” She stabbed a finger at his chest, touching the force-field by accident and causing the alarm to blare up. Her features contorted for a moment, but a second later a wicked, toothy smile formed on her face. Suddenly, her stance relaxed, her features calmed. She took a small black device from a hidden compartment in her chest armor, and offered it on her palm.

“As for my forged identity, you will find all of the material I could ‘salvage’ about the Daedalus Project and my history on this data drive. Would that be enough, Tin man?”

No Turning Back - Into the Abyss

Yeah, somehow this particular plot hook allows up to roughly 500,000 new players to join in the middle of anything.

The Gamer Squad: Escape The Mainframe

The worm silently observed the exchange. If this was anything like the PvP he'd experienced - a salad of glitches, cheaters and general imbalance - they would find out very soon what it meant to die in this world. Then again, being in a team was always different, and so far coordination has been pretty good.

With slight reluctance, he began squeaking his way towards the gray gate. His health was full, his mana almost full. He wouldn't be any more ready to what lay on the other side than he was now.

No Turning Back - Into the Abyss

The small box that was the cyborg's prison cell was quiet and motionless. Peaceful. She sat crosslegged in the room's precise center, eyes closed, letting her body rest and, despite the potential danger involved, her mind wander.

Humanity has traded in its home of rock, ocean and sky for one of steel, electricity and engineering. There was no "natural process", no higher power involved anymore. It was somewhat similar to a child becoming an adult - receiving the ability to make their own choices, at the cost of having to make them. She was supposed to be comfortable here. There was no one to say what is natural and what is an "aberration of science", "attrocity against nature" and other such buzzwords used by people mentally incapable of seeing beyond the 'childhood' phase of mankind's evolution. No longer should humanity be limited by the old ethics - they could not afford to be. Their own future, all of it, rested in their hands. It was as if humanity has finally been kicked out of its nest, and has started to learn to fly.

The cyborg felt a crack form in her solid hatred of Project Genesis.

She opened her eyes, letting them slowly adapt to the lighting of the cell. With a soft clink and effortless, fluid motion, her body rose to a standing position. She felt sore, on the inside, as if her own guts were vomited at the devastators when the arks made their escape. In a way, they were. And as she gradually brought her auxiliary sensors online, her thoughts once again challenged her own existence. Was she human? Was she the result of forced evolution? Or simply a tool to let real humans survive in a home they now had to build from scratch?

In the long run, it didn't matter, she thought as she paced forward towards the cell's window. The result would be -

A sudden lurch of the ship sent her head-first into the shield/door of the cell. A loud buzzer went off once on the other side of the door, causing her to jump away from the door. But unlike previous times, this time the security guard simply cancelled the alarm. She wondered if they got fed up of her attempts to touch the barrier. Oh well, an opportunity is an opportunity...

First were EM and IR tests, and the results baffled the cyborg for a few moments until she realized what she was seeing. A strange thought occurred to her - this barrier must appear bluish green to normal people. To her it looked like a gray wall with ever-changing texture. Then, mechanical tests. A metallic palm pressed against the surface of the energy barrier. It felt flat and solid, but in a really weird way. Of course, the alarm blared again, but as soon as the guard looked inside, the PA came on with an announcement of the Admiral. There was a short staredown between the two, until the cyborg smiled and turned to the speaker in her cell.

"Can I get a view of what's outside?" she asked after the announcement, her voice betraying slight urgency.

The Gamer Squad: Escape The Mainframe

William The Worm was too distracted to pay attention to David The Knight. He has been staring at a small floating screen that described his 'character' for quite a while now, at an obvious loss about what to do. One of the biggest problems he always had in these games is getting his levelups wrong in the beginning, making the first few chapters a living hell.

And he never started with a Pyromancer before. Maybe he should have. At this point, his aim with arching fireballs was just as good as the archers', and he kept melting the proverbial faces off his targets. But his mana would run out early, leaving him with no tools to fight. This would probably need to be the first issue he adressed. After an additional thought, he raised his magic and faith to the values he guessed would be needed for the next spell, and put the rest of the points into wisdom. At this level, it almost doubled his mana and added another attunement slot he had nothing to put in at the moment.

After finalizing the changes, he looked at his friends questioningly. They seemed to be in thought about something he missed, and having no real way to express himself, the worm simply waited for the next person to speak.

RPGN Rebirth: Issue #1 10/10/2016

This was a great read, thank you!

And I'll also take this opportunity to respond to the question: As many of us, I was drawn into the world of Play-by-Post by, what else, fan fiction of computer games. In particular, Baldur's Gate. For the young'ns, this game was released around '98 with its sequel shortly after. It was loosely based on 2nd edition DnD (what you would call aDnD), which was a pretty broken system but the first of the "True DnD" experiences. Around the middle of the 2nd game, almost 16 years ago (!) I went into the official forums, planetbaldursgate(dot)com, to ask one simple question: "Is my way of killing dragons considered cheating?"

And as a heated discussion arose about the broken combination between the range of AoE spells and the range of a Dragon's aggro, I noticed the forum had another section - Roleplaying (or something of this nature). In retrospect, I have to say I am the kind of person who would love tabletop roleplaying at first sight, but sadly never had the chance. I think my first chance at real tabletop was around 2nd year in Uni, which was more than 5 years after I started Play by Post. I absolutely love writing and this format makes it easier to scratch that creative itch as a team, without having to actually publish books. I have spent a long time on PBG, and then on some other forums, but a few years ago I somehow lost all contact with my old PbP buddies, and found this place with a Google search. This place, and play-by-post in particular, is an outlet of a constant need that I have to experience other worlds through the eyes of a hero of my creation.

So, I like it, basically. My only regret is that I wasn't forced earlier into DMing, it might've made me actually good at it.

No Turning Back - Into the Abyss

@Peaceless I will murder you both if you hurt my ship.

@Sep

It would be too late, meatbag. GLORY TO THE DEVASTATOR GOD OF DEVASTATION

No Turning Back - Into the Abyss

Alright peeps, just posted the second part of the collab between @Peaceless and I, revolving around the mysterious stowaway cyborg. Sorry for the length, but clearly we had a lot of shit to say ;)

Anyway, the final part should be up by end of week, which will conclude Chiruzu's interactions with Security...at least I hope...

:)

@Rawk

The part where the ship gets destroyed? Yeah I don't think it's that far down the line.