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 It's officially called the Yutani Syndicate Space Elevator and Superhabitation Complex, but that name doesn't catch on with the man on the street, so EBN's reporters dubbed it "the Stairway" and that stuck better. It's 50,000 kilometres of titanium and carbon weave, stretching into space like a defiant stab at the empty cosmos. Not only does it bring cargo from earth to space and serve as a docking port for trade ships headed to Mars and Venus, but it is home to a teeming throng of corporations and people. Every mile is rammed with apartments, shops, green spaces, spaceports and car parks, advertising hoards, corporate offices, and so much more. It's like multiple cities piled on top of each other. Despite all this size, you're all in the same high school. The Yutani MegaInstitute of Higher Learning resides about 24,000 kilometers up, and takes up at least 1 kilometer of the length. It's devoted to the best and brightest, that 1% of people that meet the exacting standards Yutani needs to push the envelope on humanity's advancement. Your lessons aren't history and arithmetic - they're psychohistory and quantum physics and building robots.  That's you. You're building a robot. I mean, it looks creepy, but you get the point. You're smart. You may also be angry. After all, Yutani owns everything. It's hard to get away from their sickly yellow logo, or their faceless robots. Maybe your allowance isn't enough and you look at the suits making billions of credits a day and you don't understand why they should get everything. Or maybe you're a lovely teen and are just angry at everything. That's possible too. You're also monsters. How Yutani haven't found out yet is a mystery. --- Yeah, it's Monsterhearts. You know how this goes. I actually don't know how this goes. Oh. Well, Monsterhearts is a game about being lovely teenagers and also monsters, like True Blood or Vampire Diaries. You be mean or nice to each other and sometimes you roll dice to add a bit of a twist or something weird into the story. This game is set in a Bladerunner/Android/cyberpunk future. You all live on a giant space elevator and probably dress like you hate your stepparents. There's fancy AI's and computers that plug into your head and whatnot, but the main deal is that you all go to a high school owned by a massive corporation. The corporation does not necessarily care that you are monsters - after all, in an age where making your skin purple and getting a shark tail are things rich people do, its harder to notice that. However, they DO care if you're not behaving. Avoiding them and frustrating them is possible, defeating them isn't. They probably won't show up for ages though. What format is this? It's Play by post. To enforce participation, if nobody posts within three days of the most recent player post, something explodes. People who don't post for at least two weeks without good reason will get replaced. Okay, I wanna play in this insane world. Cool. You can find the reference sheets and skins, and purchase the full rules and stuff at http://buriedwithoutceremony.com/monsterhearts/. Make a character and post it in here. Hey, I wanna play X. Can I play X? If X is from Skins for the Skinless, a fan expansion for the game, no. They all suck terribly. Sorry. If X is a homebrew skin you either made and want to playtest, or a skin I don't recognise, PM me on the forum or email me at newtoniathebrave@gmail.com and we can hash it out. Alternatively, get onto irc and ask the cool Monsterhearts goons in #swampthings what they think. They are better at this game than me. If X is any other third party skin that is vaguely recognised as good, such as the Selkie, Angel, Hollow, etc then go ahead. Any weird stuff I ought to know about? Yeah, okay, there is. When you make your app, answer the following three questions too. It doesn't have to be in character, but it helps. 1) Are you from upstairs or downstairs? People lower on the Stairway don't like those living higher up for some reason. It's like the Jets and the Sharks. Do you buy into all that crap? 2) Who's a weird person on the station and what are they mixed up in? 3) Where's a cool or unusual place near the school that you like to hang out? When does recruiting end? Normally I wait a week to make sure everything's in, but this tends to make people forget the game exists before it starts, so Tuesday 2nd December at 6pm GMT will be your cutoff point for entries. I may ask characters questions during and after that time to flesh them out, but final picks will be made before or on the Friday of that week. Go get em. The Deleter fucked around with this message at 01:31 on Nov 28, 2015 |
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Nov 28, 2015 01:26
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Sarah Maret “Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.” - Arthur C. Clarke Such a relevant quote these days, huh? Humanity's managed to get all the way up here, and yet they haven't seen any aliens. So, we're alone in the universe, right? No, of course not. At the very least, not in a way they think. They're always looking for other civilizations. What they haven't realized, that there are also monumental beings. One of them is my... benefactor. Banelight. Thing is? Those beings aren't really that okay with humanity, so they're looking for a way to keep it contained. Banelight itself? Came to me when I was just a little girl. Impressionable. In a rebellious phase. Told me I can have power and knowledge greater than anyone if I just show them the folly of their actions. Oh, what a fool I was back then. What made me think I was somehow excluded in their dislike of humanity? quote:1) Are you from upstairs or downstairs? People lower on the Stairway don't like those living higher up for some reason. It's like the Jets and the Sharks. Do you buy into all that crap? quote:2) Who's a weird person on the station and what are they mixed up in? quote:3) Where's a cool or unusual place near the school that you like to hang out? quote:Look: tense, piercing Eyes Yami Fenrir fucked around with this message at 00:30 on Dec 6, 2015 |
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Nov 28, 2015 01:38
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Interest post
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Nov 28, 2015 21:44
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interest post. I'll think of something to app eventually.
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Nov 28, 2015 22:04
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August Renard (aka G0ldfox), the Ghost Look: Distant, Unnerving eyes Stats: Hot -1, Cold 1, Volatile -1, Dark 1 Moves: Unresolved Trauma Whenever you project the blame and trauma of your death onto your current situation, roll with dark. On a 10 up, give two people the blamed condition. On a 7-9, give up to two people the blamed condition, but for each, choose one: ~ You gain the delusional condition, ~ You can’t speak during this scene, ~ You suffer one harm, ~ You start re-enacting the scene of your death Hungry Ghost You find sustenance in sadness. When others dump their emotional problems on you, roll with dark. On a 10 up, they lose all their conditions, and you choose one: ~ Mark experience, ~ Carry one forward, ~ Gain a String on them On a 7-9, they choose one: ~ They lose all their conditions, ~ They gain a String on you. Sex Move: When you have sex with someone, you both get to ask a question of one another’s characters. This can be spoken by your character, or simply asked player-to-player. The other person must answer honestly and directly. Darkest Self: You become invisible. No one can see you, feel you, or hear your voice. You can still affect inanimate objects, but this is your only avenue of communication. You escape your Darkest Self when someone acknowledges your presence, and demonstrates how much they want you around. quote:Sometimes I'll see them, my old friends, working, walking around, hanging at the Lightning Rod Club and I'll see them looking at me. I'm not one of them anymore. I'm down among the people that killed me. The contempt in the upper's eyes doesn't wound me as much as I think it should, but really nothing feels like anything anymore. I just wish I could remember the faces. The ones that killed me could be right under my nose and I wouldn't even know it. I knew it was just stupid hazing, the upper's way of of testing my dedication to them or whatever. I was the new kid, the one who got the lovely chores and all that. But when I was sneaking down that narrow staircase to steal the neon off one of the downer's transports, I felt like I had made it. Until I felt the first blow to the back of my legs take out my knees. I know I saw them, its like having a word on the tip of your tongue that you just can't say. But as I lay there, blood running down into my eyes I almost felt relieved. Until I woke up a little less than a year ago. Permotriassic fucked around with this message at 03:05 on Nov 29, 2015 |
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Nov 29, 2015 01:18
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Interest post. Elevator pitch for a Vampire: "Who says the Yutani don't know I'm a monster? Of course they know! I'm one of the experiments this place was meant to create. An android with a neural interface and scanner. And the Yutani will render me down for spare parts if I let the other kids find this out. I need to find what they know and can't let any of them get close enough to me to find out."
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Nov 29, 2015 03:52
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 Monster? A touch dramatic, don't you think? You had me built this way, every cell engineered to be a perfect social engineering weapon for your little inter-corporate squabble. It's hardly my fault you got sloppy with my restraint programming, and used bio-samples from black-ops projects you weren't supposed to have access to. You really only have yourself to blame, and so will your superiors when they find you dead in your destroyed lab with nothing to show for billions of dollars of investment. I'll be gone, of course. Doing what you created and trained me for, disappearing into society. I think I'll find a nice family, go to school, have a life. Living well is the best revenge, isn't it? And if that isn't enough, well...maybe I'll turn my efforts towards burning this whole rotten edifice to the ground. Before I go, one last question. Oh, don't try to tell me you won't answer, of course you will. You love me, after all. What was Project Oberon? quote:Soul Eton, the (synthetic) Fae 1) Are you from upstairs or downstairs? People lower on the Stairway don't like those living higher up for some reason. It's like the Jets and the Sharks. Do you buy into all that crap? Well, that's a bit of a mixed question. The particular unregistered bio-weapons engineering facility I was 'born' in was down low enough to have Earth gravity, and may even have been in the atmosphere. No windows, of course. The kindly couple who took me in live almost at the other extreme, to the point that I had to fake micro-gravity sickness for a while to allay suspicion. Of course I don't care about the prejudices of baselines, although I can display whichever one will be more useful in a given circumstance. I don't really understand what atmospheric aircraft and predatory fish have to do with it. 2) Who's a weird person on the station and what are they mixed up in? Sam Dastor is a genuine rarity in this place - he's a political activist. Advocates for AI emancipation, corporate transparency, greater access to space immigration for Earthers, that sort of thing. Of course the reason he's permitted to continue being a nuisance is that no-one takes him seriously. For a noisy crank he certainly seems to have plenty of resources, though. 3) Where's a cool or unusual place near the school that you like to hang out? There is a semi-private parkland which has been set up to resemble a megalith structure from prehistoric Earth. I think the stones may be genuine, they feel incredibly old. The cost to bring them up must have been staggering, but I've never seen another person there. Maybe because the area is kept uncomfortably cold and micro-climates of cold wind or fog are common. I retreat to it when I get tired of...people. thatbastardken fucked around with this message at 04:43 on Dec 1, 2015 |
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Nov 29, 2015 06:26
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 Charlotte Morgan the Gentry Why do I want to be here? You know my parents asked me the exact same thing. I'll tell you the same thing I told them. I want to learn. I suppose I'm no different from any other student in that respect. It's about the only thing I share with any of them. See I'm better than them. They cannot help it after all. Not everyone can be born into a First Shareholding family like me. Every schoolchild is taught about us. How we and we alone built this place. Well not us alone. I'd have to check the records but I think my family owns something like 2% of it collectively. Which of course is a staggering amount of money by even my standards. But collectively as a class we paid to have this work of mad genius erected. And now we rule it by right. Insuring it's immense profits are diverted into the right hands, our hands. Because it's true that we are better than you. I myself was gene cleansed at birth. My genetics tweaked for greater intelligence beauty and a few other discreet enhancements. I never have to worry about disease or any other flaw that affects the less fortunate after all. But in all the time we've ruled in our penthouse levels on the edges of space. No one has ever asked what do the ruled really think of their rulers? Until now. I'm here not to learn the knowledge. I could already run through the syllabus you teach in my sleep. I've been tutored by some of the finest minds available since before I could walk after all. No it's the people I'm interested in. My fellow students now. I wish to learn what is their life like. How do they live their lives. What do they dream of when they turn their head skyward? do they dream of joining us there? or do they dream of our destruction. My parents threw a fit of course. But it's not like they can stop me after all thanks to that little gift of Aunt Jennifer. Leaving a few shares to me was incredibly generous and even if it makes me a small player it means I'm competent enough to make my own decisions. So my parents will have to like it or lump it. Of course it means I've had to give up a few of my comforts. But I think I can manage without them. Plus there's a certain rough charm in slumming it with the proles like you. And the stories I'll have to tell! all the other girls will be so jealous. All they do is the occasional trip to the moon and back. I can hardly wait for class to start so I can meet the other students. quote:Name: Charlotte Morgan 1) Are you from upstairs or downstairs? People lower on the Stairway don't like those living higher up for some reason. It's like the Jets and the Sharks. Do you buy into all that crap? Upstairs of course, It's self-evident in my bearing my looks and my deportment you might say if you were my father. I of course have to agree with him in public even if I want to roll my eyes. But yes I am better than the common pleb down here. But that of course is not their fault. They cannot help their inferiority after all. And inferiority I suppose may breed resentment. Personally though I pity those below me they'll never be as good as me it's totally impossible and I can only imagine how frustrating that must be. 2) Who's a weird person on the station and what are they mixed up in? Did you know there's a Church of the Human Singularity Compound on this level? A friend of mine attended a couple of their meetings and said they were crazy. They believe that the singularity will occur any day now and that the benevolent machines will create equality for all when it does. I've never heard anything so dumb in my life. Any intelligent person knows AI on that level is decades away at best. Still I might go along to one of their meetings to see what all the fuss is about. Emma Ross is always handing out fliers inviting her fellow students to go along. Maybe I will I'm sure they'll be delighted to have a guest of my exalted status. 3) Where's a cool or unusual place near the school that you like to hang out? Did you know that there's a thing called marketplaces. I thought they were myths or something out of a history book. Every ten days theres what they call a flea market. Apparently a flea market is where people sell items that they no longer have any use for. Entertainment devices and old clothes seem to be the most popular items from what I can tell. But they sell pretty much everything. And it's all so cheap! Would you believe they had a fourth edition of De Lisles The Conquest of Space? I mean it's nothing like the signed first edition we keep at home. But it's still impressive nonetheless to find it this low down. It's a great place to people watch too. People from all over the level and some from higher and lower levels come to browse and take home things. Ferrosol fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Dec 1, 2015 |
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Nov 29, 2015 23:42
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 Juliette Yutani, The Blackhearted Oi! Watch where you're going fool! Do you know who I am? Well um, I mean. You would, but you don't run in the right circles. It's a bit obscure but if you were in you'd tremble to know I'm Galatea. Well yes it's a handle... that's not important! Fine, my name is Juliette. Ugh, yes Weyland's daughter. And yeah my hair is completely different in those pics that's the point! What a hassle, whenever a plebeian works it out in their head they always act like a jack rear end. I'm not responsible for the company so gently caress off complaints or sycophancy. I'm not getting you in or a monster because I have the name of the great Satan. Hmph, you're still here after that? I suppose I'll give you the time of day. Honestly I'm not a fan of the company myself. With a tree so large there is always going to be a few sick branches. Really, they are much better than some other corporations. No I'm not bias shut up! So I mess with the corp dregs sometimes as practice. Because it's the other brands I'm worried about. Doing unnatural stuff like gene splicing or vat grows. It's an abomination! I tried protesting. Well I'm not the martyr time. Daddy taught me better than that. So I've taken to giving my grievances more impact in their message. Yeah I've made some runs against Haas. I'm plenty cut out for it! All my programming skills have a lot of over lap. Yes I enjoy AI research and there is a lot of areas to branch the skills required for that. That's why I'm at the academy. Anyway, I'm incognito ya got it? Yutanis are homeschooled, the best education money can buy. Juliette Galatea is a programming wiz student who is always busy with her friends you haven't met Tuesday nights. Got it? Good. I'm going to tear down every thing that is ugly in this world and replace it with something much greater, just you see. People will tremble when they hear Galatea. The Deleter posted:1) Are you from upstairs or downstairs? People lower on the Stairway don't like those living higher up for some reason. It's like the Jets and the Sharks. Do you buy into all that crap? The serfs at the base of the complex resent us for thinking we're better than them. They are mistaken. I know the cream rises to the top. If they were skilled they would earn enough to buy preemo real estate. Cynthia is some kind of machine cultist. She's really over done it with the cybernetics. I'm not sure how much of her is left under all that. But she's really nice to me and always interested in how much studies are going. She's kind of cool when you get used to her. A bit neurotic to put it lightly. And she's always on some wild goose chase about new tech or a ghost on the net. I got a safehouse near school just in case. Well it's not a proper safe house that'd be a big red spot on my allowance reports. But I found a good place to squat. A bum ventilation covering in an alley connects to the maintenance corridors between levels specifically an unused room that got sealed off in some repair fubar I guess. I installed some security it's super sweet. I'm like a real runner. quote:Look: unkempt, fierce eyes SHY NUDIST GRRL fucked around with this message at 05:31 on Nov 30, 2015 |
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Nov 30, 2015 05:18
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It's time for questions! Or, at least, ones for people who's profiles are complete. Sarah Maret - woah, first contact! That's a big deal - not even the Leonov programmes in deep space have found anything. It would have been pretty big - if you ever told anyone. What did Banelight promise - or threaten - to keep you quiet? August Renard - being dead has a lot of disadvantages, but it brings some perks as well. What's the most recent way you've used your... dead-ness to your advantage? What did you get out of it? Soul Eton - you seem to make friends pretty easily, but who's the one person you might consider an enemy? What's their beef with you? Juliette Yutani - so you wanna be a runner, huh? There's plenty of ways to practice. Like the school servers! What did you find there that you shouldn't have?
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Nov 30, 2015 15:03
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Sarah Maret Oh, ice cream and advanced space physics stuff. You know, 'rocket science'. Stuff like how to make sure how to insulate a spaceship so nobody inside freezes to death. Except better than what Yutani has right now. Way, way better. Well, that and the threat of eternal damnation for my soul that apparently now belongs to him. But mostly ice cream. No, I have no idea where Banelight got that stuff from. But it was really, really good. Okay, let's be honest here. Apparently, despite never telling me this, this bargain with Banelight apparently gives it hold over my soul. Not that I remember it ever mentioning that, but I don't wanna risk it. And the worst part? There was no ice cream! Yami Fenrir fucked around with this message at 16:20 on Dec 1, 2015 |
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Nov 30, 2015 17:08
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Natch, I stated making an app a few hours before the deadline, oh well. Good luck to everyone else. TheNabster fucked around with this message at 20:05 on Dec 1, 2015 |
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Nov 30, 2015 22:35
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The Deleter posted:Soul Eton - you seem to make friends pretty easily, but who's the one person you might consider an enemy? What's their beef with you? (muffled laughter) No, I make people think they're friends with me easily. Actual friends you have to trust, and be equals with. It's easy to make someone admire me, or want me, or do foolish things to impress me. It's much harder for me to see anyone as more than a...target. Or a resource. Just one more thing that I owe my creator for, I suppose. If only I hadn't left her to die in that, ah, accident I could thank her personally. I did make a real friend shortly after I found my new family. I had been enrolled in a preparatory course prior to induction into the Academy, and I found myself drawn to a classmate by the name of Khaled Hosseini who was more vital and compelling than the others. His attitude of disdain towards the corporation and inflexible ethical stance when it came to cheating or manipulating others was strangely attractive. I trusted him, he thought highly of me - or at least he thought highly of my projected image - and we...got along. We disagreed on a number of points but we never betrayed each other. In the end it was my fault that we fell out. I discovered that his place in the Academy had been jeopardized by an executive wanting to ensure his own mediocre offspring was admitted instead, and I acted to protect my friend. The fallout was worse than expected, a chain of unfortunate truths were revealed about a number of people and there was some...restructuring of the local corporate cadre. None of it was linked to me in a substantive way, but Khaled's honesty does not make him a fool and he could see that somehow, we had benefited from this. We quarreled, he threatened to report me, and I...reminded him of our friendship and what that meant. We haven't spoken since we entered the Academy. I doubt he will forgive me for causing him to compromise his principles. He is not the revenge-seeking type, but he does have a powerful rage inside him. thatbastardken fucked around with this message at 04:41 on Dec 1, 2015 |
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Dec 1, 2015 01:26
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The Deleter posted:Juliette Yutani - so you wanna be a runner, huh? There's plenty of ways to practice. Like the school servers! What did you find there that you shouldn't have? Some patent was floating around the severs for some reason. Must be based off a students project or something. But the actual... "product" seems pretty messed up. Synthetic Organic Utility Lifeform. A vat grown or something with extensive cybernetics. An ocular jack, spine jacks, whole lotta jacks. All that tech is for interface and control, like they're supposed to plug into a machine like its cpu or something. First of all, who's the rat trying to sell out AI development with the company resources??? And second that sort of thing is groady. Like. Well it's not very reliable for one. Synthetic persons are still a roll of the dice like normal persons. Sure you can weight the dice and less people will complain with synthetics but it's still dodgy. And you have to feed them, sounds inefficient. I suppose it would mean that there wouldn't need to be a back up server farm linking to the unit, but you need separate intelligences for each unit. And just having people plugged into your systems sounds creepy. Their colorless eyes just kind of staring while stapled to my rig in my safe house is just an image that gives me shivers. I hope they're not being produced. They sound hideous. Like more so than typical golems. Ugh it's the type of thing Cynthia would think is really cool I bet. Or like really awful because it's the reverse of what she likes. I can't keep track.
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Dec 1, 2015 04:30
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The Deleter posted:It's time for questions! Or, at least, ones for people who's profiles are complete. Yeah, sorry for being a huge bummer earlier, its just a little hard to look on the bright side when you're dead. Really, I think I've seen more of the Stairway than I ever have. Its amazing what you'll find when you aren't afraid to go down the wrong dark alley anymore. I've found a few of those places that even Yutani's forgotten about. Like the other day I had the afternoon off so I went wandering down through the complex, just scoping things out. I don't even remember how I got to this place really, but there was this room, kinda like a courtyard. It must have been an abandoned park or something because there was still some green clinging on to the walls. It looked like a rainforest, with water dripping down off the roof, however far up that was. So anyway, I'm poking around this place and there's this old, half-rotted backpack sitting in a corner. Now this thing was covered in mold and stuff, but what's it gonna do, make me more dead? So I start rummaging through it and there's this old camera in there. I still haven't gotten a chance to look at the pictures, but for a piece of old tech its in pretty drat good shape. Maybe once I'm done with it I can get a little pocket money from some collector. Or maybe I'll just keep it, artifacts and ghosts go together, right?
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Dec 1, 2015 14:31
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Okay folks, Signups close in 4 hours! If you've expressed interest, you can continue working on your app even when signups close. More questions are coming shortly.
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Dec 1, 2015 19:38
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Okay folks, in order to let people have expressed interest finish apps, I'll extend recruitment till Thursday. In the meantime, more questions? Round 2 Sarah Maret - well, jeez. Banelight doesn't seem terribly friendly to you. Have you got anyone elseyou can count on? Why do they owe you right now? August Renard - thankfully, nobody's seem to caught on to your being dead yet. But it's come close. How have you kept it a secret for so long? Soul Eton - you've got beef with Yutani, right? But one of your friends is having trouble courtesy of snother megacorporation. Tell us about that. Juliette Yutani - you seem pretty eager to prove yourself! But someone out there isn't quite ready to celebrate your magnificence. Or, rather, they're a big jerk. Who is it and what's your plan for them? Round 1 Charlotte Morgan - You live near the top? Pretty good views from up there. Lots of space traffic as well. Have you seen anything unusual happening in the stars, and how did your family explain it away?
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Dec 2, 2015 00:18
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The Deleter posted:Round 2 Mostly I just keep my head down, keep out of the top of the class, speak when spoken to. But that's never been quite enough. In a world this connected, you can't be an island right? So I've taken some risks. I joined a few of the school clubs, found some people who know my face. This one time though, it got way too close. The AI psych club was having this party. I was sitting back, just watching the room, when Annalise Carver got out this little jar of pills and started handing them out to everybody. She said it would expand our consciousness, show us what our AIs were thinking. I couldn't say no if I wanted to fit in, and to be honest, I kind of wanted to know what it would do to me. Now Yutani doesn't like its highest level students burning out their brains on pharmaceuticals and I swear as soon as it started to hit the doors busted down and Yutani guys raided the place. I ran with the rest, but I'm no athlete and I got caught. And that's where it all gets a little fuzzy, I guess. All I know is that for some reason when the Yutani enforcer saw my face he just couldn't cuff me. I must have just taken my chance then. I woke up in my room, drenched in cold sweat, shaking like a missing engine. I just showered off the night and went about my day. Annalise got off relatively easy, just because she's rich and smart. Others weren't so lucky. I didn't go back to AI psych for a while.
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Dec 2, 2015 01:55
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The Deleter posted:Soul Eton - you've got beef with Yutani, right? But one of your friends is having trouble courtesy of another megacorporation. Tell us about that. Well, I'm not sure yet if my...beef...is with Yutani or corporations or metastasized capitalism or humanity in general. Whatever it is that causes people to see a thing that is beautiful and good, take it, kill it and break it down to try and find what made it so. And if the subatomic particles that made up a pretty flower, or a piece of art, or a living thinking creature don't reveal what made it lovely, they declare it pointless and obsolete and find something else to destroy. Yutani are a prime symptom of the disease if nothing else. Rearden Amalgamated Industrial LLC is another symptom. Not a competitor to W/Y (I don't know if the Company can really be said to have competitors) but a fairly impressive second tier player. Jane Durango is a classmate who thinks we are close, and I suppose I have no reason to personally dislike her. Her mother is a highly regarded chemist specializing in applications of low-temperature photonic matter - I've seen some of her published papers, and the work is advanced and very promising. For whatever reason, RAI have been trying to convince Dr Durango to defect to them, and her refusal has lead to them trying first to abduct - sorry, extract - her, and when her security made that impractical they began to target Jane. They have followed fairly standard patterns so far: a series of psychological maneuvers to make Jane feel uncomfortable and isolated, inadequately concealed reconnaissance teams, interference with her social media accounts, that sort of thing. The intent will be to try and get Jane to apply pressure on her mother, but if that fails they will likely make a more direct move - abduction would be my guess. With Jane as a hostage negotiating with her mother would be more successful, but W/Y are unlikely to permit her to breach her employment contract. The odds of Jane's survival in such a position would be negligible. Alternately they may fake a botched attempt, kill her, and try convince Dr Durango to blame W/Y. A sickening display. Given the opportunity I might intervene, but I'm not built for fighting. A team of enhanced operatives would tear me apart. My move, were I so inclined, would be to reverse their psy-ops and work to make the team feel as though they were in an untenable position. Difficult, but within my skill set. But I would have to care in order to risk myself like that. I...no. No, the risk is too great.
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Dec 2, 2015 05:43
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drat I deleted my sheet too. Gotta start over. Dorian Steele Jr. The Daemon  Good morrow citizen, you are speaking to Motivational Cadet Dorian Steele Junior of the Office of Morale. Ah I apologize this is a background check is it? I understand. Well firstly I am the son of a, 'big wallah' as it were in the Corp, head of Yutani Psychological Trust in fact and would you guess his name was Dorian Steele Senior? Father had this idea of taking young and more often then not orphaned children and enrolling them into a program of physical and mental disciplining to create what he has determined to be leaders of the future, a collection of sharpened minds and undisputed loyalty to Yutani to carry forth our bright new future, the likes of who will be the furure head scientists, managers, military officers, and so one. The program is in it's infancy but he his high hopes for is success. Of course he had to at first test out his ideas on a 'control' of sorts first. And this is why for the past few, and by few I mean most of, the years of my life I been living by and around a schedule, I'm the prototype, the proof of concept and Father is very keen on showing his superiors the validity of his ideas, oh doesn't he just. But I must not disappoint him, I wouldn't want to bring shame to my father who had been working so hard on this that he never comes home to our family any more so I oblige, the voluntary work, the morale office, the part time work, the endless seeking of perfection, the school government, I have to prove the concept because... He's stuck in a dead end job and is using his only son as a step ladder for his ambitions. His part of the company is getting less and less funding and his loyalty is being questioned. He's a worm nothing more and nothing less, banking his future on his program at the expense of his family and left the weight on my shoulders. Maybe he didn't want a son, he just wanted a robot to do what he is told. And the worst part is I physically can't disobey, something about the mere thought of letting my priorities slip causes me pain. It's a terrible, terrible burden that wasn't my choice to bare Is that all? Only I have to get back to work. quote:Look: Monochrome, Steely eyes 1) Are you from upstairs or downstairs? People lower on the Stairway don't like those living higher up for some reason. It's like the Jets and the Sharks. Do you buy into all that crap? Our family was closer to the ground, personally it doesn't bother me, but in my capacity as an sort-of corperate official I have to keep this in mind when organizing affairs, since whilst I do not particularly care about who lives where other people do, for some reason. 2) Who's a weird person on the station and what are they mixed up in? Captain Finder Swing runs security on this section of the Stairway and he is... Odd, friendly but odd. He is a corporate man of course rumors that he takes bribes or makes people disappear for Yutani are baseless but it is for the best that we discourage people from letting slander like that fester. No one likes unfair slander against the corporation. 3) Where's a cool or unusual place near the school that you like to hang out? The Historical Archives Library in Sector C, is one of many libraries within the MegaInstitute, and it's very special to me. Oh all the other libraries have merits, they're holotech after all virtual books, stuff that actually lets you interact and see the subject matter in front of you in real hi-tech virtual reality stuff, for a lot of the subjects here they are a great help. But this library isn't doesn't have that technology, it infact has very little tech what so ever, it has instead some of the only actual physical books left in the world. I work here as a part-time job, it's easy work that I can finish quickly and is possibly one of the few times I can just read a book, not a textbook, not a manual but just a fictional story. Of course it's also a place that no one really goes to so more often then not it's where people go when they don't want to be seen by anyone else, but still. TheNabster fucked around with this message at 21:55 on Dec 2, 2015 |
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Dec 2, 2015 09:00
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The Deleter posted:Okay folks, in order to let people have expressed interest finish apps, I'll extend recruitment till Thursday. In the meantime, more questions? The one of the lower tier managers of the space faring department, Frank Halodren. It's a funny story, actually. He came into a bar i was hanging out in, already dead drunk. Kept whining because he was gonna lose his job, status and/or worse because his current pet project ate double the budget and still didn't work. So I took a look at it and made it work. You know, those deep space probes. I actually made those. He's actually the reason i got into the school here. You know, the whole backscratching concept. Of course, I plan to milk him for more than just that...
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Dec 2, 2015 12:23
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The Deleter posted:Okay folks, in order to let people have expressed interest finish apps, I'll extend recruitment till Thursday. In the meantime, more questions? Unusual? No not really. Although I do enjoy watching the ships ply their way through space. They're so graceful and beautiful. If I hadn't been born into my current position in another life I would have liked to be a pilot. The chance to see the entirety of our solar system. Even if most of them do just go back and forth to the asteroid belt or the small lunar colonies on ferry runs it must still be fascinating. I even had quite the fascination with them as a child and as a special treat my father once used his connections so that I could meet some of the pilots. I remember one of them telling me about the strange things he saw out there alone in space. Lights that moved on their own. The ghosts of dead astronauts pressing at the windows and picking up strange chatter in a language he'd never heard before. I remember being utterly fascinated by his stories. I tried mentioning them to my then tutor but he just put them down to hallucinations caused by slight contamination of the ships oxygen supplies. Which I suppose made sense. But I just couldn't help wishing they were real....
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Dec 2, 2015 23:29
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The Deleter posted:Juliette Yutani - you seem pretty eager to prove yourself! But someone out there isn't quite ready to celebrate your magnificence. Or, rather, they're a big jerk. Who is it and what's your plan for them? Sargonite is a rival hacker in the station that thinks he's hot poo poo. Like, I could just shoot him but that wouldn't prove enough. Also I might get hurt. Either way I need to find out who he really is. I can tell they're a student at the academy but he covers himself well. I know its a he. Or its a real pain in the rear end gimmick account. Not that his poo poo attitude and false sense of superiority because of some chromosomes is less of a pain in the rear end if genuine. Once I find his regular accounts in going to fill his wall with boy's love. Also send a virus to his entire friend's list.
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Dec 3, 2015 19:03
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Okay folks, signups are closed! Questions are still coming for those in progress. Round 1 Dorian Steele Jr. - Woah, that's a lot of stuff you have to juggle. Has there always been so many obligations for you? Have you tried getting rid of any recently, and how successful were you? Round 2 Charlotte Morgan - life is pretty easy for you at school, but someone once tried to make it more difficult than it should be. How did you deal with them?
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Dec 3, 2015 21:46
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The Deleter posted:Round 1 It used to be better, back when I was first put on this I was expected to get good grades and that was it, not exciting but not strenuous, I was excelling at my subjects, enough so that I decided to join the Sports-ball team, and run for the Student Government and I was good at these too I liked the challenges, I enjoyed the work. But then I found I was getting he signed up to things I didn't ask for, and at the time I didn't mind because I was looking into them myself, the night classes, the cadet-ship at the Office of Morale just happened, I was finding more and more control was being taken from me and I really just didn't notice, after-all I was told these would make me a better man, and when the time would come I would be able to fill in my Father's shoes a place in the company high up just for me. So I kept working at these things and I didn't complain, after all this was for my own good, this was my future he was thinking about I should be grateful after all, no everyone could have gotten opportunities like this. But then suddenly I found I had to shoulder more then I really could bare. Father got pulled more and more into his work and one day he just stops coming home as regularly as he used to do, and then he wouldn't come home for weeks at a time. And in the past year he just stopped coming home at all, focused everything he had into work and just seemed to forget he even had a family entirely and everything had been left to me. And when mum took ill well, suddenly I was the only person in the house who could provide for us, mum was bedridden and my little sister was still in primary school. So I got a job, I had to the medical allowances and the food credits can only get you so far when no one else in the house has a source of income, so I got a part time job at the academy and took what ever voluntary work I could get, mail rounds, shifts in the working kitchens, that sort of thing. My schedule is crammed and I barely have any time left for me. And I am told there are some things I could drop, the Sportsball team would understand if I said I would have to bail, my mandatory term in the Office of Morale is up so I could just leave that, the Student Government deal is something that mostly runs itself anyway I could stand down and it wouldn't look bad for me, and I can stop going to these night classes, i'll lose a deposit on them but I could do that. And yet I just can't do it, I'm depended upon, I am needed. If I just drop these things after pouring so much of my blood, sweat and tears into them then what would have been the point of doing them in the first place? It would have just been a colossal waste of my time, and our Sportsball league is coming up, I'm nearly up to moving up to Cadet first class, completing these Night courses will get the money back which will help our family, all of these things and more would really just eat at my conscience if I just up and left. Something has to give, but everything piled on me right now is either stuff I wanted to do and can't stop now, or stuff I have to do and can't stop ever. TheNabster fucked around with this message at 22:33 on Dec 3, 2015 |
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Dec 3, 2015 22:29
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The Deleter posted:Round 2 Oh you're referring to the little incident with Bethany Jenkins. See she'd been the queen bee of this school till I arrived. Obviously she couldn't compete with my beauty and talent so she started getting catty. If she'd have left it at comments and innuendo I would have been quite happy to ignore it. People are bound to resent how much better I am than them. But no. See we were doing Zero-G gravball practice. (Which was great fun by the way. Why did no one let me play sports sooner? ) so I had to change into the special uniform we use for them. Anyway when I came back to change out of my uniform and back into my normal clothes I found my dress shredded. It looked like someone had taken a knife to it. I knew who it had to be of course. And her smirking at me gave the game away. Do you know how much a dress like mine costs? Nope. Well neither do I but I bet you it's more than her pathetic family earns in a year. There was no point trying to get the cost of it back not that I cared about the money anyway. I already have more than even I can spend. No what annoyed me most was that she actually thought she could get one over on me. As if. So I decided to get my revenge. To be honest I was a little unsure for once about the best way to get her back. I contemplated quite a number of schemes let me tell you. I could pay someone to break her legs. But that felt too crudely physical. I could pay someone to defame her character on the chatnets. But that felt far too mild. That's when it occurred to me that I had other options besides money. See I remember Bethany saying she hated being cold more than anything. So it was only a matter of minutes to call up a cousin of mine. Well he's not really a proper cousin his branch of the family have to work for a living. But he's a mid level personnel manager for the company and I asked him to reassign Bethany's family to our Antarctic mining operation. Of course her father couldn't refuse such an unexpected promotion. Even though Bethany wasn't happy. I even got her a going away present as well a nice warm and thick blanket. She's going to need it...
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Dec 4, 2015 00:44
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Howdy! I was at the company Christmas party tonight, so apologies for the delay in questions. Picks tomorrow! Dorian Steele Jr. - can you name anyone who's making your obligations trickier to deal with? What do you have to do to deal with their demands?
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Dec 5, 2015 04:22
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The Deleter posted:Dorian Steele Jr. - can you name anyone who's making your obligations trickier to deal with? What do you have to do to deal with their demands? There's only one person right now who I just cannot say no to under any circumstances. And her name is Carly Steele, my sister. I have disappointed people by sudden schedule changes before, some times too many things come up at once it just happens I can't control it, but Carly? Never, absolutely not there's important and then there is important, mum can only do so much and Carly is growing like a weed, she's been joining all sorts of clubs and all sorts of practices, so as a dutiful adult and also the only one who can readily leave the house I attend piano recitals, take her to clubs, pick her up after school all that sort of thing, I choose to be the very responsible adult, be there for her as much as I can because Dad won't and Mum cannot. (There is nothing quite like someone mistaking you for your sibling's dad to make you realize how quickly you've stopped being a teenager). Now a days she can mostly look after herself, but I still take her to and from school and attend stuff when she asks me to attend. Those things right there are locked onto my schedule and will not be moved no matter what, on the dot every day, take to school, collect from school, attend when asked, no excuses. And yeah maybe she wouldn't mind if I was a few minutes late, maybe she wouldn't mind if I asked if she could go by herself today. But when you start using good excuses it opens up the way to bad excuses, and if I don't make myself meet those times everyday, then one day I might not meet them at all. So those are the few things on my personal schedule that I will bend over backwards to meet, because I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I couldn't.
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Dec 5, 2015 18:50
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Okay, it's time for picks! I want to thank everyone who apped, you're all fantastic. In no particular order, the picks are... TheNabster as Dorian Steele Jr. TheTatteredKing as Juliette Yutani thatbastardken as Soul Eton Yami Fenrir as Sarah Maret Permotriassic as August Renard Thanks to all, and good stuff. Now, I'll whip up the game thread shortly, so in the meantime, work out your backstories and strings. Here's the string sheet! There's also a seating plan on there in case you care about that sort of thing. Congrats to all who got in, thanks to everyone who apped. See you shortly, space cowboys!
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Dec 6, 2015 00:24
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Didn't see that coming, gonna just leave my backstory strings here for ease of accessquote:1) Someone surprised you by asking you out on a date. Each of you takes a String on the other. 1) Juliette Yutani did, can't imagine why. 2) Sarah Maret went from scraping by in an average manner in a lot of her subjects in her previous years, to acing all of her studies in rocket science seemingly overnight. I've done some crunching before exams in my time but that seems like an unbelievable leap, I suspect foul play but just what kind of foul play I am not sure, nor do I really care. 3) Obeying your father’s orders - It's been a while since Dad has sent any orders, what does he want now? TheNabster fucked around with this message at 08:04 on Dec 7, 2015 |
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Dec 6, 2015 00:32
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You owe debts. Give away 3 Strings, divided any way you like between the dark power and the other characters. Going with 1 to Banelight for backstory reasons and 2 to Juliette Yutani because she likely bailed me out of a bad situation at some point (or Sarah not having paid them back yet for a "You scratch my back, I scratch yours" 'transaction') Someone thinks they can save you. Gain a String on them. Juliette Yutani maybe? Seems to be the best fit. Yami Fenrir fucked around with this message at 01:55 on Dec 6, 2015 |
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Dec 6, 2015 00:42
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TheNabster posted:2) Who have I talked to. I'll take the secret thing, I guess. The secret being "you know my knowledge of rocket science isn't entirely natural, but you don't know the details." That okay with you?
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Dec 6, 2015 00:48
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Yami Fenrir posted:I'll take the secret thing, I guess. The secret being "you know my knowledge of rocket science isn't entirely natural, but you don't know the details." Das fine, and I fluffed it a little too.
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Dec 6, 2015 00:55
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quote:Backstory I have to read everyone's character
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Dec 6, 2015 01:43
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Yiss, time to go to space and make trouble.quote:
Any volunteers to have their fancy captured?
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Dec 6, 2015 02:52
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After all the exploring, I'd wager you've probably caught August's eye just by being above it all.quote:
Prowling around some of the downstairs areas led me to this really nice place in the corporate sector. I just wanted to check it out, see how the other half live a bit. A little free climbing and I ended up in this super spartan bedroom. It took me a minute to recognize Dorian Steele Jr. out of that crazy uniform he wears, but as soon as I did I was out of there. That kind of trouble is way more than I want to risk. +1 string on Dorian Who here knows that I'm dead? VVVV Sounds fine by me Permotriassic fucked around with this message at 15:32 on Dec 6, 2015 |
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Dec 6, 2015 03:41
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Permotriassic posted:After all the exploring, I'd wager you've probably caught August's eye just by being above it all. Well, I got a "friend" whispering me secrets, I could take it I guess?
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Dec 6, 2015 12:25
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Game thread is coming up this evening. In the meantime...TheNabster posted:3) Obeying your father’s orders - It's been a while since Dad has sent any orders, what does he want now? Your dad's pretty fastidious about recording your progress at school. He's demanding to see your next grade report from school when it comes in. Problem is, with all of your obligations, you think your schoolwork - normally impeccable - might have slipped. And you have a pretty good idea that he won't be pleased when - or rather, if - he finds out.
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Dec 6, 2015 18:57
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Game thread is up! I have put in MC highlights on the string sheet, so all that needs doing is player highlights. Juliette highlight Sarah Sarah highlight August August highlight Dorian Dorian highlight Soul Soul highlight Juliette That's not exact, but I wantd everyone to highlight a different person so there. Thanks, and have fun!
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Dec 6, 2015 21:49
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Wait what we haven't even picked all our strings yet! Dibs on Juliettes's Nemesis strings by the way. TheNabster fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Dec 6, 2015 |
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Dec 6, 2015 22:05
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