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John Dyne
Jul 3, 2005

Well, fuck. Really?


On the surface, the world is very much like the one you see outside your bedroom window. The same people are walking the same dirty streets, the same animals rummage through the same garbage, and the same mindless crap is shown on the same television stations.

But sometimes, the world just doesn't seem right. Why do certain figures appear out of nowhere and become famous overnight? Why do so many people disappear each year? What is the government really paying for when it shells out $75 for a screwdriver? Why is it that any answer unearthed always leads to another question?

Sometimes you can't see what defines your world. This is the nature of conspiracies. This is the nature of Conspiracy X. No one tells you to not mind the man behind the curtain, because no one tells you the curtain is there.

Behind the curtain lies Aegis, a secret organization at work within the United States government. Aegis has been aware of extraterrestrial presence on Earth for more than forty years, and has had an in-depth understanding of the supernatural for the last twenty. Aegis' self-appointed duty is to monitor alien and supernatural activities and counter those it deems unacceptable.

But Aegis isn't the only shadow group in existence. The National Defense Directorate, codenamed Black Book by Aegis conspirators, is embedded within the American military-industrial complex and has extensive dealings with extraterrestrial agents. Indeed, the NDD has entered into several high-level treaties with the invaders. To Aegis agents, the NDD represents humankind at its most opportunistic and morally compromised.

Once part of the same organization, Aegis and the NDD now wage a secret war of covert operations, abductions, and human experimentation behind a façade of lies and disinformation. As part of Aegis, you are authorized to employ any means in your fight against the NDD and its inhuman allies. The Aegis arsenal combines high-tech surveillance equipment and state-of-the-art weapons with psychic warfare, supernatural rituals, and stolen alien technology. Lies, deception, cover-ups, sacrifice, and force - even terminal force - are part of the job.

The conflict has raged for nearly fifty years, and the stakes are high. Humanity's existence on earth as master or pawn - indeed, humankind's entire existence - depends on your vigilance, and your success.

Be careful who you trust.

----


You have been recruited by Aegis. Maybe you started noticing something subtly wrong with the world. Your phone makes strange clicking noises, you know what someone is going to ask you before she says anything, or perhaps you lost hours, even days, which are completely unaccountable.

Maybe it wasn’t quite so subtle. How did that guy in the suit rip that man’s arm clean off? Your little sister has been missing for years. The police just brushed the case under an already bulging carpet, but you won’t let it go. Or perhaps a routine X-ray revealed a foreign metallic object implanted in your skull.

Either way, you have been exposed to something the government has been trying to cover up for decades. Something Aegis has been trying to fight since Roswell.

So who or what is Aegis? Aegis came together in the face of a single, unprecedented threat: alien invasion. Some might argue that invasion is too strong a term. No large-scale battles have been fought, no armies flood the streets, no flying saucers hover over the White House. Clearly, there is no current invasion in the manner most would imagine from decades of Hollywood coverups. Still, ever since we discovered the truth about aliens among us, we have known that they do not have our best interests at heart. What else could we expect? They are, after all, an entirely different sentient species, with their own morals, beliefs, and goals. They care for themselves just as we care for ourselves. We do not fault them for their ambitions or their needs, nor do we support them. We fight for ourselves, for as a species that is all that we can ever do.

Aegis stands as the United States’ first and last line of defense against the alien menace. Whatever else happens, whatever missions we undertake, whatever else we do, we should never forget that our primary mission is the defense of the nation, and our world, against our foes, whoever they might be. When a new operative, agent, or researcher joins a cell, he swears an oath. He promises to hold his tongue, never to reveal to the public the truth about the war that threatens us all. He also swears to protect that same public from this insidious threat, no matter what the cost, personally or publicly. Make no mistake, joining Aegis is like joining an army. It means that you are willing to put your life, your livelihood, and your reputation on the line in order to save your people and your country.

----


Welcome to Conspiracy X, a game that is at its heart a fusion of the X-Files, Men in Black, and X-COM, pitting you, the agents of Aegis, against the ever approaching doom of humanity at the hands of various alien species, the supernatural, and even the greed and hubris of humankind. I'm going to let the book describe itself here:

quote:

All roleplaying games have at their hearts the “What if . . .?” question. In Conspiracy X, the question is “What if aliens really were present on our planet? What if the government knew this all along? What would they try to hide?” By taking on the roles of Conspiracy X Cast Members, players have the chance to answer these questions and more.

Conspiracy X is a game that combines elements of government intrigue (shady covert organizations, shadow governments, paranoia), science fiction (the existence of aliens, abductions, the paranormal, alien invasions, black magic), and conflict (the war to save the planet from alien invasion, fighting other shadowy organizations and the forces of darkness).

In effect, anything is possible. From investigating Lovecraftian horrors or haunted places where teens are being killed off one by one, to alien invasions, psychic experimentation, and ultraviolent suit-clad agents battling for the survival of humanity, the world of Conspiracy X should challenge, thrill, excite, and inspire players and Chroniclers alike.

Players come from a variety of professions and civilian backgrounds from across the world, including criminals, psychic homemakers, CIA and KGB agents, and even members of hidden organizations like Project Rasputin.

I am making a game for Pre-Heroic/Neo-Talented individuals, meaning you guys are fresh recruits and not fully inundated to the horrible reality of the grand conspiracy. All professions from the core book are open, and I'm going to ask you exactly what sort of game you want to see. Do you want something action-packed, with intense, down to the wire risks and shoot outs? Or do you want something more subdued and investigative, dealing with the tangled web of lies upon lies that forms the grand conspiracy? Do you want to deal with one of the three extraterrestrial threats, supernatural threats, or human threats?

If you really want any of the paranormal qualities, please clear them with me; while I want you guys to have some taste of it in this game, I don't want you to be summoning Lovecraftian horrors from word one.

All in all, I am looking for FIVE people to go down the rabbit hole, with a backstory on how you came to be involved Aegis; what lead to that one fateful phone call that changed your view of the world, and the events that occur in it, forever? I will be keeping recruit open until July 1st. If you need help making your character, you can usually find me in SynIRC in #Acolyte, or you can PM m.

Once picks are made, we'll go ahead and work out the hideout your particular cell has.

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John Dyne
Jul 3, 2005

Well, fuck. Really?
I figure it might be prudent to briefly go over the three alien races, since it's not really in anyone's best interests to go up against all three, and each sort of fits into the action/investigation niche a little bit differently than the others. Assume all of this information is unknown by Aegis and your character. Also I ended up writing about the other two options so there's that too.

The Greys: These are the stereotypical aliens, short little grey dudes with bulbous heads and big black eyes and no mouths. They're an entirely psychic race that evolve from psychic space coral (yes) and eventually relegated everything they do to psionic and psychic means, including reproduction.

Then came humanity, who is latently psychic and unaware of it with zero control over it. Our psychic feedback has been so loud and obnoxious that is has absolutely destroyed the grey's society and prevented them from reproducing for centuries now. They are a physically weak and pacfi race, and their primary interest is teaching us to control our psychic powers or breed it out of us, so we stop cock blocking them.

Currently, they work alongside NDD/Black Book to help bio-engineer humanity's psychic powers. They are aware of and terrified of the Saurians, and are wholly unaware of the Atlanteans due to their lack of psychic ability.

The Saurians: Saurians are shape shifting lizard men that love to fight and kill poo poo and have incredibly advanced technology specializing in just that. According to them, they were the original inhabitants of earth aeons ago, and they want it back. They're perfectly fine with us staying so long as we bow to them as our supreme overlords.

Saurians have brought with them incredibly destructive plasma technology, as well as the means to transform their bodies (including masking their DNA) to disguise themselves as humans; such saurians cannot revert back, and are known as the Men in Black, and fortunately they retain their lizard eyes (even though they can mask their DNA; i dunno either.)

They also work alongside the NDD/Black Book to supply them with weapons and technology, in exchange for their compliance in delivering the planet to the Saurians. The Saurians are aware of and dislike the Greys but don't feel threatened by them, and are incredibly suceptible to their psychic powers. They are also aware of the Atlanteans and hate their guts and will murder one instead of saving their own skins, if the opportunity arises.

The Atlanteans: Atlanteans are a race that looks exactly like humans, but perfect and beautiful in every way; they are the race Giorgio A. Tsoukalos has been driven insane by, as they are behind almost all of humanity's advancements and are responsible for most major events in human history. At one point, they physically interacted with humanity and became the template for every deity that humanity has worshipped, up until 0 BCE. So yes Jesus was an alien.

They really do not give much of a poo poo about us, save for the fact we substain them and empower them somehow with our worship, maybe? Their technology is perfect and sleek and yeah they're basically elves. They're not a very interesting race in my opinion and have way too much bullshit lore, even worse than humanity cockblocking an entire race by simply existng. Though apparently they did have Kennedy killed.

They have not made contact with NDD/Black Book but have made some contact with Aegis. They are aware of and amused by the greys but don't involve themselves with them, and they are aware of and dislike the saurians but try to avoid them.

Black Book: These guys are humans who originally made contact with the greys in the 1940's and decided, hey, let's trick these dudes and beat the poo poo out of them and conquer the planet for ourselves. Then they learned about the Saurians and decided to apply the same plan to them and work both sides at once. They are aware of Aegis and hate it. They are also aware of Atlanteans and have a boner for tricking them just like they have Saurians and Greys, though it should be noted SOME Black Book really do want to go along with those two races' plans for humanity.

The Paranormal: Practically all paranormal activity is created by the latent psychic powers of humanity, and they typically manifest during times of great stress or fear. Every urban legend, every myth, is a reality that has been greated by the gestalt psyche of humanity, and no one region has exactly the same paranormal instances as another.

Werewolves, vampires, and every other monster invented by humanity is a human being that has been twisted and corrupted by these psychic tears in reality. They are every bit as dangerous as myth makes them out to be. Santa is real. The Easter Bunny is real. And they'll probably eat you.

The approach to dealing with psychic corruption depends highly on the type of psychic threat, and this is really the most flexible option and also the most daunting to write for.

John Dyne fucked around with this message at 00:13 on Jun 20, 2017

John Dyne
Jul 3, 2005

Well, fuck. Really?

wiegieman posted:

Dyne, is this a game where we have a lot of different Sciences/Engineering/Medicine skill groups, or just one big one? Because that's a big deal for how smart our smart guys can be.

For the most part they sort of treat the Science and Research as one giant umbrella in terms of your influence, but certain pulling strings and pieces of requisition require you to be a member of their organization to even use them.

In terms of skills, though, you are able to specialize a little more depending on what your focus is in.

John Dyne
Jul 3, 2005

Well, fuck. Really?
Looks like these are all the apps we're getting, so I'll pore over them tonight and tomorrow and post my picks tomorrow night! This is basically last call, since I'll be making picks tomorrow probably around 2 PM CST, so we can get an OP up tomorrow night or Sunday (after we spend RPs.)

e: I will likely make picks around 7 PM CST or so; I've had a few people PM me with interest in the game so I want to give them a chance to get something up.

John Dyne fucked around with this message at 14:14 on Jul 1, 2017

John Dyne
Jul 3, 2005

Well, fuck. Really?
And here's our cell!

Abe Hansen - FBI Field Agent (Dachshundofdoom)
Heny Case - NSA Computer Scientist (VivaMiriya)
Dr. Martin - Ranch Scientist (Wiegieman)
Dr. Pohlman - CDC Scientist (DeathSandwich)
Pavla Vlasova - Rasputin Psychic Agent (Zomg)
Peter Valruki - Some rear end in a top hat (Quornes)


I also tallied up your resource points based on your influence, and hey, what a surprise, the team comprised primarily of scientists has a shitton of science and research points.

Science - 25
Intelligence - 10
Criminal - 5
LEO - 5
Military - 0

These points ARE lost if you don't spend them. If it's something that's restricted, like stuff only available to Rasputin agents or NSA, then you can NOT use the points of your colleagues towards that purchase unless they could purchase it themselves, but if it's simply an Influence type, you can spend any mix of the required influence to purchase it. Also, for all intents and purposes, 'Civilian' resource requirement can be met by ANY resource points.

John Dyne fucked around with this message at 05:36 on Jul 2, 2017

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John Dyne
Jul 3, 2005

Well, fuck. Really?
:tinfoil: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3825749

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