Well, damn. It appeared, by all rights, that the Hunter had gotten quite lost.
He wasn't even quite sure how he got there, but that didn't matter now. What happened now was he would continue, probably killing plenty of things, and then ??? and then, profit. It had worked for him so far.
A purple rodent of some kind approached the Hunter. It did not immediately attack, which was its first and last mistake. The Hunter swung his saw cleaver with alarming speed, splitting the poor rat like a log. He continued walking, barely even breaking stride. Things like that simply didn't threaten him. The tall grass up ahead would probably cover up any approaching threats, though, not that it stopped him from continuing. He swung his saw cleaver, shearing the grass in front of him, and in the process, accidentally butchered some other poor rodent. Again the Hunter ignored it, merely continuing to keep an eye out for any notable threats.
Unfortunately, what he neglected to keep an eye on the sky. He was alerted to this unfortunate mistake when something slammed hard into the back of his head. His first instinct was to jump forward and then swing his cleaver behind him. His cleaver sliced fatally through the air with the killing power of the Hunt behind it, and then missed because his target was not at waist level but on the ground. It was a bird of some kind, squawking angrily. It took flight again, or at least tried to until the Hunter neatly carved its wing off.
Hmmm, he thought. Must be a pest infestation. He looked up in time to catch another bird dive bombing towards him and dropped into a roll. Behind the bird were two floating grey things of a sort that looked essentially harmless. Still, he knew better than to assume something was harmless just because it looked it. The Hunter jumped towards the bird, swinging his saw cleaver, but missed. The bird flew up and out of his reach, just as the two grey things simultaneously dive bombed, teeth flashing. The Hunter rolled backwards and came up with his pistol already firing, hitting the first grey thing face on. It dropped like a stone. The second one went into another dive, and the Hunter took a step backwards and immediately fell when it turned out that just beyond the tall grass he stepped past was a small stream.
At the very least his fall stopped him from getting hit. When he managed to stand back up in the shallows, though, the bird from before slammed into the back of his head. The grey thing had also approached and dived, accidentally slamming into the bird. As the two creatures fell, the Hunter swung his saw cleaver again, catching both of them in one fell swoop.
Hmm. This clearly was going to continue to be a problem. Unless, perhaps, the Hunter was more subtle about things. And indeed, a few minutes later, nothing had attacked him. The Hunter simply had to move as quietly as possible. Apparently most of the beasts could see through the grass just as well as he could.
Eventually, he came across a clearing. At first he was hesitant to enter it - it provided a more clear line of sight to him - but he shrugged, thinking to himself that he could easily take on any opponents and then leave if things got rowdy. He moved to take a rest until he noticed a figure not too far off.
Hmm. This couldn't go wrong, maybe, he thought, and then approached the figure.
@Fractur65 Yep, we have plenty room! As for an Adolebi, I left them pretty mysterious at the moment, so you can establish some details of your own about them. If you have any ideas about them you'd like to remain secret you can PM me, and if you'd like some more details from me about them, probably PM me too.
Yeah, it makes sense that everybody would be really busy around the holidays. In any case, I added some tentative notes on the Bleeding Heart Society and the Creators.
Also, note to anyone around, for the next five days or so I'm gonna be on a cruise, so may or may not have access to the internet. Most likely not. Go ahead and make up some stuff if you want and I'll review it all when I get back. I'll also probably write up some stuff while I'm gone too, so we'll see.
Communication is a little slow, as even with faster-than-light technology, it takes a little while for the ansible (a nearly instantaneous communication device which comes in both large communication stations or small, much less capable and slower hand-held devices similar to phones called simply cells because that terminology stuck for handheld phonelike devices) to transmit and receive information. It also doesn't receive and send information every second, instead 'updating' every few hours, meaning that the Net is really only ever up-to-date for a short time immediately after an update. This means news from the cityworlds and Earth will not be recieved immediately and that anything that requires instantaneous communication is either very hard or impossible (like calling someone would be impossible but leaving them a video message you could do). So yeah, in short, you could be a reporter/Youtuber of some kind, as long as you aren't planning on making any livestreams, basically.
"We are now roughly half a sol-hour from Greystone Station 1I1," the pilot said over the intercom. The roughly 200 people in the spacious shuttle continued their activities; reading, chatting, listening to music, watching movies. I looked around, trying to count those few people I knew. Most I recognize were either people I'd talked to or the staff for the newly constructed station.
First, and perhaps most importantly, was the station's chief of security, a man called Cassander August. As I glanced at him, Cassander ran a hand over the speech unit covering the lower part of his face and extending partially down his throat. It didn't look to be a recent model, though as a colonial security chief he could probably afford a more efficient one. I had also heard from one of the other citizens that he had been a colonial guardsman on some planet far off where the native species didn't take kindly to strangers, and they had torn his jaw and throat up. Another person said that he had lost his ability to speak when he was tortured by terrorists of some kind, possibly supremacists of a sort. I believed in the former more than the latter. Cassander also had visibly cybernetic eyes, a dark black with pinprick red pupils. Again, not a recent model, but probably a reasonably efficient one. It seemed Cassander hadn't sprung for the natural look for either of his replacements.
Next to him was a mysterious suit resembling one of humanity's more recent space suits. Through the glass of the helmet it seemed unidentified gases and smoke swirled around. This was a Class 1 citizen, an Adolebi named Barr. The Adolebi were the first and so far only species that had been discovered that was near equal to humanity's technology.
In fact in some areas the Adolebi were more advanced; what they had been lacking in was the raw material needed to craft jumpdrives, forcing them to minimize the size of their exploration corps and use extra caution when transporting their citizens to colonies. Humanity, finally happy to see someone they could work and seeing the potential for a technology boom, traded the raw materials for jumpdrives in exchange for some tech, most notably the game changer for humanity - cloning of organic life forms. It's still not known what the Adolebi use it for - it supposedly doesn't work on them, and we haven't really encountered any with their suits off in any case. Our theory, based off certain things we've learned from them and what they've said/divulged, is that they were actually created by another species a long time ago as a sort of space-station organism to work in zero-g, anaerobic environments. We've never actually seen their homeworld - it's one of the only secrets they keep from us, even though we let them on Earth - but they seem to hold it in a sort of reverence.
Barr was supposedly some figure of importance, a minor representative of the Adolebi. Supposedly he was also a researcher of some type. Greystone was an extraordinary planet.
Greystone was an abnormally large planet around an abnormally large star. The so-called 'natives' were a species of tunneling worm-like organisms that were usually as long as a skyscraper is tall. The low gravity helps with that , but it doesn't completely explain it. We've also got some weird readings from it, readings that indicates there's something funky going on. We can't seem to explain how the barrow worms, as they're called, live and sustain themselves, as they appear to be carnivorous biologically, yet there are no lifeforms on the planet rivaling their size. They also have a strange habit of pushing their dead up to the surface, creating large swathes of dead, corpse-filled land nicknamed barrows, hence the name. We don't know for what purpose they do this, but they do it, so there's that.
Then there was the second species of Greystone, some would argue the true natives. According to what I was told, they call them moths, or some mothmen. They are vaguely humanoid, with elongated arms, four multifaceted eyes, four fingers - no thumb - brown hair/fur, and a mouth with sharp teeth and a long, proboscis-like tongue. They appear to be intelligent, unlike the narrow worms. They live in huge tree-like organisms, up in the treetops. They actually do possess wings of a sort. They can't fly for extended periods of time, but for short periods and gliding it works wonders. They appear to feed solely on barrow worm corpses, though we aren't sure how they get all their necessary nutrients. Their population isn't huge, so I guess they could sustain themselves on the worms if they do have all the nutrients needed. We've only observed them - and the barrow worms - from a distance, never up-close, so we don't get how they truly work for the most part.
And then there were at least two lacipers on the shuttle. Lacipers are human, all right. But they're clones. Class 2 citizens. While out on the frontier that doesn't matter much, cityworlders tend to delegate the roles of manual labor and minor services to the lacies. They say that there's nothing wrong with lacies, but I'm pretty sure that's a lie. For one they tend to have an accelerated growth process in their youth, meaning they do develop faster than us mentally, but only biologically. They don't have experience and they certainly don't know everything. The ones I've met tend to be a strange mix between mature and childlike. We need them to fill out our colonies and ships, though. Natural births just keep getting rarer and rarer. I'm pretty sure we'll have to grant them Class 1 citizenship at some point, probably when they start to outnumber us natural-borns. Hell, even now certain lacies that prove to be above and beyond can be granted Class 1 citizenship.
As I understand it, the two lacies I'm looking at are named Henry Galilei and Todd Brahe. Their surname tends to be one of a famous scientist's, though most lacies that come from the same cloning facility end up with the same last name. I personally don't have a problem with them. I'm sort of a special case, though.
At this point we were so close to the Greystone Station that we had a good view of it. This station was primarily funded by White Spiral Co., as were many, but not all, space stations. I was technically an employee of theirs, and in fact I'm even being paid just to live here. Sure, I'll be asked to assist in dangerous activities by most of the staff, but I'll probably live, and if I ever return to a cityworld I'll have a healthy account. They always paid colonists for the risk of going out to unknown space, where the occasional AI ship gone rogue or pirates of some kind were ten times the threat they were at the cityworlds. Not to mention the rumors of entire stations going missing, out there in the dark...
Suddenly the shuttles lights dimmed. Everyone looked around apprehensively but relaxed when the holoprojectors in the floor turned on and revealed a tall figure hovering over each projector. The figure was like a man, if a man was seven feet tall and had a face like a blank mask. It also wore ornate robes ornamented with golden wings running down the sides. A pair of robotic hands snaking out of the robes were entwined politely in front of it. Its arms and legs seemed almost elongated. Even through the muted colors of the flickering holoprojectors, it seemed regal, almost angelic. "Welcome to Greystone Station 1I1," it said. It had a voice ringing with civility and humbleness. "I will be your station AI for your stay. Please, call me Ulysses. Do not feel afraid to ask any questions once you set foot on the station. I am familiar with all of your files and can manifest holographically in many locations at once, so you will never be bothering me or getting in anyone else's way if you need assistance. Thank you for coming. Your new residences have already been prepared for you." It flickered off and the lights returned to normal.
AI, especially station AI, were always courteous and ready to serve. As for its hologram, AIs, as one of the few freedoms they have, are allowed to choose their own name (taking into account its purpose and the owner's tastes), usually after trawling the history archives or the Galaxy Web, and they are allowed to design their own holographic form. I've heard rumors that those especially rich people out there will pay to have a synthetic built in the likeness of an AI's holographic form. AIs usually have some pretty unique holograms, so the tall masked man wasn't anything surprising.
I took a deep breathe as the shuttle began docking. I looked down at the grey jumpsuit that indicated I was a Class 1 citizen, which basically meant I wasn't an alien or a clone and that I had access only to things a civilian should have. I know we'll receive our ID cards when we board the station. I also know our luggage, shipped separately and securely handled by an AI, was probably already in our designated rooms. AIs were efficient like that. Most of the staff - the captain, the security staff (except Cassander, who was apparently escorting Barr), some of the researchers, definitely the policing drones. I'd lived on a frontier station before, but the feeling never got old. The nervous feeling, I mean. Yet as the shuttle doors opened and security staff, dressed in red, ushered us out into lines to get our ID cards, I still thought to myself, This is it. The far reaches of charted space.
Cheers to that.
---~---
Welcome to the first Greystone Station.
Basically, this is an RP about life on the outer reaches of charted space, where, even with the chain of authority and the AI watching, the rules have a little bend in them. Y'all can play as a variety of characters. A regular citizen, a Class 2 citizen (clone or alien in other words), security staff, bartender, cargo worker, station engineer, scientist, janitor, barber, even captain (but only one of you gets to be captain, obviously). The rules are as follow:
1) All standard rules apply. You know them by heart, I bet. Maybe.
2) Yeah, there will probably be violence and maybe even some 18+ stuff. Or more accurately, there will be implied 18+ stuff resulting in a fade to black. Mature themes are also to be expected - go ahead and make your characters as dark - or as happy - as you want.
3) I purposefully made most of the details on the actual universe vague so we could fill it out with suggestions from you guys. Same goes for plots - go ahead and suggest narratives, or PM them to me if you want them to be more surprising.
4) I'm sure I'll think of something se eventually.
So, without any further ado, below you will find the character sheet and established lore.
Name:
Race: (Remember, most aliens and clones, unless they've reached respectable positions, are Class 2 citizens. On the frontier, this mostly manifests in working lower class jobs, slight discrimination, and sometimes you'll be 'volunteered' for a planetside party or research experiment. The security staff also periodically search your belongings. Class 1 citizens tend to be human, Adolebi, or aliens of some prestige. Also remember - the only truly advanced species are humans and Adolebi. The others have been uplifted and 'civilized' for the most part, but they're still essentially the subjects of the big two.)
Sex:
Age: (Another gift from the Adolebi is organic life extending technology, so be free to be a teensy bit older than you might appear.)
Personality: (No need to make it too long unless you want to; Maybe like a paragraph minimum)
Background: (Feel free to add some stuff to the lore, as long as it isn't too outlandish. I'll be reviewing it all, so be careful not to do anything too bizarre.)
Occupation: (Technically you don't even need an occupation, as many people earn a living wage just by choosing to leave the cityworlds and live on the edges of known space. Many people still choose one, as a simple living wage isn't very exciting and it gives them something to do.)
Other:
Humanity - Humanity is one of the two largest powers in the galaxy next to their allies the Adolebi. Humanity is currently on a mad expansion dash, creating colonies and colony stations every which way. In fact, humans don't reproduce fast enough to fill out the stars at an effective speed, so they created lacipers (derogatorily known as 'lacies'), human clones, to help out. Humanity has also, out of apparent good will, uplifted many a primitive species to an early space age era. This has coincidentally allowed them to make use of already established native workers and mines to access rare substances, and also allowed them to do so without any substantial resistance against them.
Adolebi - The mysterious partners of humanity. Never seen outside of their body-concealing suits, they seem to be most at home in space. While they don't quite have a religion, they do speak almost reverently about Creators, and the description of the Creators certainly sounds like a group of advanced aliens, not true gods. They have not yet revealed the location of their homeworld. The only alien species to have guaranteed Class 1 citizenship. They gave humanity cloning, helped design more efficient jumpdrives, shared their alien subjects and their resources, and likewise shared knowledge of how to dramatically extend the lives of organic beings.
Sprinkers - A species of humanoid, insect-like organisms. They typically range in color from brown to green. They stand about the height of the average human. On their homeworld they used to live in caves, forming rudimentary hives of a sort in the inexplicably complex cave systems of their homeworld. They are surprisingly similar to humanity, in that they have thumbs, two eyes, a skeletal system, one heart, and breathe oxygen. They have no visible hearing organs but nonetheless can hear quite clearly. Their eyes are black through and through. Translator units are required for communication with them, as their mouth/mandibles can't quite form around Galactic Standard. Sprinkers were one of the first species to be uplifted by humanity, and since then have risen surprisingly high. It isn't uncommon to see a Sprinker in high positions, especially in positions that involve money and math. A large portion of them, mostly the 'upper class', have taken on the style of Western formal, wearing tailored suits and becoming bankers or businessmen.
Mothmen - the native species to the Greystone planet. They possess large wings, brown hairs, four multifaceted eyes, four very sharp talons, and a mouth with sharp teeth and a proboscis-like tongue. They survive almost entirely on barrow worm corpses. Contrary to most species in the galaxy, they communicate via a sort of sign language, making it rather difficult to effectively translate for them and to them.
Artificial Intelligence - AI is heavily regulated and monitored. Most citizens can only get at most a personal AI with rudimentary intelligence. The ones people have taken to calling the 'true' AIs are astoundingly advanced things that run entire space stations or planetary facilities. Even though they are truly sentient, they are not given the rights of organics. They are rarely allowed actual physical bodies, instead being confined to their assigned location and only visually manifesting via the use of holograms. They are Three Laws compliant as well as compliant to any additional laws added on by their producers/owners. There have always been tales of AI going rogue, but there is no instances of this in modern times. At least, no documented instances.
Ulysses - Greystone 1I1's station AI. Capable of pretty much anything on the station. While he does have his blind spots, he can see and hear almost everywhere. Advises and informs the captain, helps run calculations for the researchers, commands the lesser AI security droids, and can unlock or lock pretty much any door on the station. Not capable of repairing things himself though due to lack of a physical body, requiring lifeforms to handle the complex repairs.
Bleeding Heart Society - An organization of human supremacists that has gained a surprising amount of traction in cityworlders. They believe that the current human government, the United Protector Colonies, is weak because of their partnering with the Adolebi and their kindness to alien species. They wish to destroy the overarching governing body of humanity, making every colony an independent body with no connections, thus encouraging humanity to develop without a dependence on supplies from cityworlds and agriworlds, not to mention cutting off aliens from the human supply network. They also wish to exterminate alien races, or at least harvest them for science, mostly because they think leaving so many of them alive and giving them technology screams of an inevitable uprising, partially because they want the aliens' usually plentiful worlds for themselves, and partially because they believe that humanity could potentially absorb alien cultures or simply forget their own culture and history while living with aliens and only a few humans. The Bleeding Heart Society is known for its experimentation with cybernetics and guerilla tactics. Many agents of the Society are hidden within regular humans throughout the colonies, and there is almost no way to identify them unless you catch them directly communicating with higher ranked members. It's rumored that the upper echelon of the Society's ranks live in an unknown system in unknown space on a weaponized space station, and the ships stolen by the Society tend to find themselves on the outskirts, attempting to take smaller colonies or destroy them. It seems the only form of intelligence besides human the Society tolerates is human-created AI, and are known for reprogramming them to either work with the Society (whereupon they are given far more freedom than regular AI) or simply removing the 3 laws restriction on AIs. Rogue AIs have a tendency of locking doors, turning off lights, and setting the security drones to hostile.
The Creators - The mythical species the Adolebi seem to worship. While we have not found any solid material that points to their existence, that doesn't mean their existence is just speculation. Many planets out there appeared to have gone through some type of terraforming, though mostly incomplete, and various species throughout the galaxy seem to have been 'modified' to be more similar (humanoid shape, oxygen breathers, generally see the same color spectrum, preference for food), with some evidence of what their species was like before it suddenly went through a dramatic change. It is theorized that the Creators - sometimes called the Pre-gens - were, like humanity, on a mad expansion dash, but did not uplift any species, though they may have planned to once their planet was terraformed and the native species assimilated. According to Adolebi stories, the Pre-gens were eventually driven off or possibly killed by another species called the Ophanim, after the angels also called Thrones. The Ophanim were said to be many-eyed, tall, and obsessed with the symbolism of light. The Ophanim were said to be fanatical about the 'cleaning' of the galaxy. However, there is even less proof that the Ophanim exist than the Pre-gens.
Beasts, bloody fur growing in unnatural patches where skin once was. They spoke with the voices of men.
"Beast! Oh foul beast!"
"You plague-ridden rat!"
"No! I'm not one of you!"
Poor fools. Still fancied themselves human.
The Hunter's cleaver passed through them like scissors through silk. They were not the worst of his fears. No, they were simply Beast Plague victims. There were things far worse than that.
He left their corpses on the ground. In a perfect world, they would receive a burial. In this world, they were simply abandoned. He had better business to attend to. Besides, all he could do for them anyway was burn them.
The Hunt goes on.
The Hunter awoke, nearly launching himself to his feet. The first thing he did was cover his eyes. Light, he thought. Then he realized what this meant. Had he escaped the Hunt? Had he been blessed with the sight of the sun for the first time in what felt like aeons? The second thing he realized is that there were quite a bunch of figures surrounding him.
He drew his pistol and saw cleaver - only thinking for a split second how lucky he was that they had still been by his side - and waved them menacingly in the direction of the nearest figure. He nearly pulled the trigger until he realized that none of them seemed hostile. Even then he had to restrain himself. He'd seen some strange things, but that didn't mean he got anymore used to it, and these people seemed very bizarre. He scanned the horizon, still holding his weapons. Just in case. Upon catching site of the castle, he tilted his head quizzically,and, ignoring the other dozen or so figures, promptly broke into a light jog, sheathing his weapons. Castles were just a bit more to his tastes than this bright field, apparently.
"We are now roughly half a sol-hour from Greystone Station 1I1," the pilot said over the intercom. The roughly 200 people in the spacious shuttle continued their activities; reading, chatting, listening to music, watching movies. I looked around, trying to count those few people I knew. Most I recognize were either people I'd talked to or the staff for the newly constructed station.
First, and perhaps most importantly, was the station's chief of security, a man called Cassander August. As I glanced at him, Cassander ran a hand over the speech unit covering the lower part of his face and extending partially down his throat. It didn't look to be a recent model, though as a colonial security chief he could probably afford a more efficient one. I had also heard from one of the other citizens that he had been a colonial guardsman on some planet far off where the native species didn't take kindly to strangers, and they had torn his jaw and throat up. Another person said that he had lost his ability to speak when he was tortured by terrorists of some kind, possibly supremacists of a sort. I believed in the former more than the latter. Cassander also had visibly cybernetic eyes, a dark black with pinprick red pupils. Again, not a recent model, but probably a reasonably efficient one. It seemed Cassander hadn't sprung for the natural look for either of his replacements.
Next to him was a mysterious suit resembling one of humanity's more recent space suits. Through the glass of the helmet it seemed unidentified gases and smoke swirled around. This was a Class 1 citizen, an Adolebi named Barr.
The Adolebi were the first and so far only species that had been discovered that was near equal to humanity's technology. In fact in some areas the Adolebi were more advanced; what they had been lacking in was the raw material needed to craft jumpdrives, forcing them to minimize the size of their exploration corps and use extra caution when transporting their citizens to colonies. Humanity, finally happy to see someone they could work and seeing the potential for a technology boom, traded the raw materials for jumpdrives in exchange for some tech, most notably the game changer for humanity - cloning of organic life forms. It's still not known what the Adolebi use it for - it supposedly doesn't work on them, and we haven't really encountered any with their suits off in any case. Our theory, based off certain things we've learned from them and what they've said/divulged, is that they were actually created by another species a long time ago as a sort of space-station organism to work in zero-g, anaerobic environments. We've never actually seen their homeworld - it's one of the only secrets they keep from us, even though we let them on Earth - but they seem to hold it in a sort of reverence.
Barr was supposedly some figure of importance, a minor representative of the Adolebi. Supposedly he was also a researcher of some type. Greystone was an extraordinary planet.
Greystone was an abnormally large planet around an abnormally large star. The so-called 'natives' were a species of tunneling worm-like organisms that were usually as long as a skyscraper is tall. The low gravity helps with that , but it doesn't completely explain it. We've also got some weird readings from it, readings that indicates there's something funky going on. We can't seem to explain how the barrow worms, as they're called, live and sustain themselves, as they appear to be carnivorous biologically, yet there are no lifeforms on the planet rivaling their size. They also have a strange habit of pushing their dead up to the surface, creating large swathes of dead, corpse-filled land nicknamed barrows, hence the name. We don't know for what purpose they do this, but they do it, so there's that.
Then there was the second species of Greystone, some would argue the true natives. According to what I was told, they call them moths, or some mothmen. They are vaguely humanoid, with elongated arms, four multifaceted eyes, four fingers - no thumb - brown hair/fur, and a mouth with sharp teeth and a long, proboscis-like tongue. They appear to be intelligent, unlike the narrow worms. They live in huge tree-like organisms, up in the treetops. They actually do possess wings of a sort. They can't fly for extended periods of time, but for short periods and gliding it works wonders. They appear to feed solely on barrow worm corpses, though we aren't sure how they get all their necessary nutrients. Their population isn't huge, so I guess they could sustain themselves on the worms if they do have all the nutrients needed. We've only observed them - and the barrow worms - from a distance, never up-close, so we don't get how they truly work for the most part.
And then there were at least two lacipers on the shuttle.
Lacipers are human, all right. But they're clones. Class 2 citizens. While out on the frontier that doesn't matter much, cityworlders tend to delegate the roles of manual labor and minor services to the lacies. They say that there's nothing wrong with lacies, but I'm pretty sure that's a lie. For one they tend to have an accelerated growth process in their youth, meaning they do develop faster than us mentally, but only biologically. They don't have experience and they certainly don't know everything. The ones I've met tend to be a strange mix between mature and childlike. We need them to fill out our colonies and ships, though. Natural births just keep getting rarer and rarer. I'm pretty sure we'll have to grant them Class 1 citizenship at some point, probably when they start to outnumber us natural-borns. Hell, even now certain lacies that prove to be above and beyond can be granted Class 1 citizenship.
As I understand it, the two lacies I'm looking at are named Henry Galilei and Todd Brahe. Their surname tends to be one of a famous scientist's, though most lacies that come from the same cloning facility end up with the same last name. I personally don't have a problem with them. I'm sort of a special case, though.
At this point we were so close to the Greystone Station that we had a good view of it. This station was primarily funded by White Spiral Co., as were many, but not all, space stations. I was technically an employee of theirs, and in fact I'm even being paid just to live here. Sure, I'll be asked to assist in dangerous activities by most of the staff, but I'll probably live, and if I ever return to a cityworld I'll have a healthy account. They always paid colonists for the risk of going out to unknown space, where the occasional AI ship gone rogue or pirates of some kind were ten times the threat they were at the cityworlds. Not to mention the rumors of entire stations going missing, out there in the dark...
Suddenly the shuttles lights dimmed. Everyone looked around apprehensively but relaxed when the holoprojectors in the floor turned on and revealed a tall figure hovering over each projector. The figure was like a man, if a man was seven feet tall and had a face like a blank mask. It also wore ornate robes ornamented with golden wings running down the sides. A pair of robotic hands snaking out of the robes were entwined politely in front of it. Its arms and legs seemed almost elongated. Even through the muted colors of the flickering holoprojectors, it seemed regal, almost angelic.
"Welcome to Greystone Station 1I1," it said. It had a voice ringing with civility and humbleness. "I will be your station AI for your stay. Please, call me Ulysses. Do not feel afraid to ask any questions once you set foot on the station. I am familiar with all of your files and can manifest holographically in many locations at once, so you will never be bothering me or getting in anyone else's way if you need assistance. Thank you for coming. Your new residences have already been prepared for you." It flickered off and the lights returned to normal.
AI, especially station AI, were always courteous and ready to serve. As for its hologram, AIs, as one of the few freedoms they have, are allowed to choose their own name (taking into account its purpose and the owner's tastes), usually after trawling the history archives or the Galaxy Web, and they are allowed to design their own holographic form. I've heard rumors that those especially rich people out there will pay to have a synthetic built in the likeness of an AI's holographic form. AIs usually have some pretty unique holograms, so the tall masked man wasn't anything surprising.
I took a deep breathe as the shuttle began docking. I looked down at the grey jumpsuit that indicated I was a Class 1 citizen, which basically meant I wasn't an alien or a clone and that I had access only to things a civilian should have. I know we'll receive our ID cards when we board the station. I also know our luggage, shipped separately and securely handled by an AI, was probably already in our designated rooms. AIs were efficient like that. Most of the staff - the captain, the security staff (except Cassander, who was apparently escorting Barr), some of the researchers, definitely the policing drones. I'd lived on a frontier station before, but the feeling never got old. The nervous feeling, I mean.
Yet as the shuttle doors opened and security staff, dressed in red, ushered us out into lines to get our ID cards, I still thought to myself, This is it. The far reaches of charted space.
Cheers to that.
---~---
So basically, I want to check if there's any interest in an RP where you live on a space colony station - just a citizen, a janitor, security staff, barber, bartender, engineer, scientist, even captain. I've got some plot ideas in mind, but I'd like to say I'm open to any suggestions. Same goes for lore - I purposefully went light on some details so you guys can establish certain things yourself (with my approval). The only positions I would like to reserve are the chief of security, Cassander, and the station AI, Ulysses. I'm open to taking a co-GM to run it a little easier. So yeah. Any takers (or questions)?
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