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 The star-liner Opulence pushes through the void, a massive craft nearly a kilometer long, her elegant lines are marred only by the realities of space travel. The ship’s white hull marred by the liftoff and reentry burns - as much as the owners would love her to look pristine, they realize repainting a ship every time it took off and landed is unrealistic. Inside, things are different. The ship is as luxurious as they could make it - as long as they kept the weight down. So every gram of luxury seen in the passenger areas is paid for by cuts in the workers areas - the passengers get the best, the crew live in sheet metal dormitories. Space travel is slow - though faster than Einstein said it had any right to be. Hyperspace jumps at the edge of star systems allow fast inter system travel, but it takes days to reach each one, and the jumps are limited in range, so traveling across the galaxy can take weeks. Jump drives are big, taking up a third to half the ship, so it’s only economical to run large ships. For the poor, space travel is a dream - or in cryo caskets packed into a hold. Colony ships make the run out, drop off new settlers, then head back to pick up another load of indentured servants and hopeful wanderers. For the rich, and the once-in-a-lifetime trips of the middle class, the Star liners exist, running people between the larger colonies and mother Earth - The Opulence runs the White Star lines run between Earth and New Washington. A two month run with her sister ship Decadence running the opposite direction. The six month run is a favorite of the upper class - two months on cruise, two months visiting either Earth or New Washington, and two months returning home. You wake up, you feel the twisting in your guts that tells you that you really should have taken it easy last night - you knew what was coming, but you still had to hit the bottle. As chief of security, you have your own room. Its roomy as crew quarter go, so the bed, toilet, shower and desk and wardrobe only take up 90% of the available space - and there is even enough floor space for you to lie one the floor stretched out. Just. which is a good thing as you hear the three beeps and the Opulances computer speaks in her overly cheerful voice. “All passengers, please assume jump positions - we will be making the jump in 10..9..8..7..6...5...4...3...2...1” The feeling of traveling twenty light years in ten seconds does a number on you, you feel woozy - most people plain pass out, and it’s mandatory for all passengers and non-essential personnel to be in their bunks or the recovery position when the jump hits. You manage to retain consciousness, if not your lunch. Dammit you think to yourself. The chemical toilet is just there - not that you would have risked moving in a jump, people have died doing less. Ah well, at least you are the only one to know. When the nausea passes and you get over the feeling you’ve been stretched, chopped up, forced through a small hole then glued back together by a three year old, you move over to the wash station and start cleaning yourself up. Question 1: What do you see in the mirror? A - His face B - Her face C - Their Face D - Its face (Alien) How did you get so old?, those creases were never there to begin with, but now you looked like you were halfway dead? Question 2: Where did it go wrong? How did you end up here? A - It was the best job you could get after you were drummed out of the police force. B - the money was good, and you always meant to move on. C - The wife took everything, so you took a drunken chance. D - This was the job you were assigned by the jobs board - you gotta do what you gotta do. E - Something else. Well, there was no point in crying about it now. Water under the bridge. The main thing was your stuck in a dead end job in a cabin smelling of your own puke. “All Passengers - we are now seventy two hours out from re-entry to Earth.” Opulance’s voice came over the tannoy. Seconds later his comlink beeped. “Boss, We have a problem” it was Cartwell, his second in command, she sounded worried. “What is it Cartwell, I had a bad jump.” “Sorry about that boss, but we have a succession of life signs in the ambassadors quarters. Captains got Doc Hartwell on it, and wants you down there ASAP.” “Well. poo poo.” is your only reply.     Welcome to Space Cop: Three Days to re-entry. The gimmick of this CYOA is that we have 3 in-character days to solve a mystery, and every second counts. So, I’ll be tracking time as realistically as possible. And we will need to worry about sleeping, eating and basically staying alive on top of the normal issues. Time will be our main currency in this game - doing things well takes time, but it’ll be up to the thread to figure out what’s important, what to delegate and what corners to cut - do we have time to sweat the punk, or do we need to rough him up? Do we read all the documents, or skim them? Setting wise, much is still open, but it’s on the harder side - but I want to see what kind of setting people want Question 3: Aliens? A - They are Common B - They are rare C - They are non-sentient I did think about asking a question about what tone the story should follow on a Scale of action heroes, but I think we can get there organically. That and you would have all voted Naked Gun.
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Aug 2, 2019 06:01
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 05:18 |
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B, B, A
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Aug 2, 2019 06:11
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C/D We'd a sentient Pseudo-Hivemind Clone-Colony of Sentient Insect-Analogues. We're a bunch of really small, perfectly indentical, psychically linked bugs. We're essentially a near-infinitely malleable fluid of exoskeletal motes. Our species is asexual, reproducing when one newly produced mote has mutated, in which case they firm a new entity. We budded off of a sophont hunter, but we watched a lot of old timey human detective noir as we multiplied and developed reason. This has made an impact. When we interact with other sophonts we take the form of a 6'2" Grizzled Human Gumshoe of RNG-determined ancestry, with a moth-eaten trenchcoat and for some reason, a Fez. Every pocket carries a Fifth of Bourbon. B A Blasphemaster fucked around with this message at 06:39 on Aug 2, 2019 |
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Aug 2, 2019 06:36
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D: It's an ugly mug, but it's yours. What's left of it, anyways. Four trunk-like legs, aquamarine-sea green chitin, yellow-orange multi-faceted eyes, mandibles, and B/E: The money was good; enough to get a decent lawyer after this to wrangle the chem-corp responsible for your current appearance. Trying to cheat tariffs by intentionally mislabeling dangerous compounds, pfah. After that though, who knows? A: Aliens are real, and relatively common. You even happen to be one yourself! Odds of John Q. Citizen actually interacting with one? Depending on where they live; they might brush shoulder-equivalents on a daily basis, or be lucky to so much as see one in person. On a luxury liner like this one though; should have a decent chance of meeting all kinds of people. Or scaring the more alien-savvy passengers who can actually tell what your face is supposed to look like. Arcanuse fucked around with this message at 06:46 on Aug 2, 2019 |
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Aug 2, 2019 06:37
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D We are a polymorphic chamelionoid whose physical appearance is under both conscious and subconscious control. In our dreams, we felt old, and thus it manifests on our surface substrate. We currently seem human, but this is mainly because the bulk of the people on the ship are obnoxious bipeds. We are native to Nouuuashntn, and we dislike the way the humans mangle the name of our homeworld. E Wrong? We love this job! Travelling between the stars themselves! Getting paid to experience entirely different worlds and adapt to wholly different environments! Even the atmosphere on the ship itself is that weird and wonderful nitrogen-oxygen mix the humans require. Hell, if not for the damned humans and needing to interact with so many of them so much, We could do this forever. A Yeah, those drat Earthfolk are not just common, they're vulgar and gauche too, and that's just the rich ones.
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Aug 2, 2019 12:03
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Question 1: What do you see in the mirror? B - Her face  Question 2: Where did it go wrong? How did you end up here? C - The wife took everything, so you took a drunken chance. Question 3: Aliens? A- Common. Smarter ones have rights and dumber ones are used for entertainment, food, research, manual labour but there's rumours some sentient species are used for illegal activities and alien rights groups are commonly protesting regarding which species deserve people's rights. Riffing on species conflict sounds better. Sorry but surly drunk Betty White in spaaaace makes me laugh. Also slapstick naked gunning through space makes me laugh as well so I'm going to try and turn this into a comedy whether you like it or not. Outrail fucked around with this message at 14:37 on Aug 2, 2019 |
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Aug 2, 2019 14:19
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DBB
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Aug 3, 2019 21:34
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DAB
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Aug 4, 2019 00:29
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B E: Not too proud to ask your brother for a job, even if it meant seeing that smug grin after all those years. It's a sinecure, a job without any real demands or responsiblities, a place to tuck away the embarrassing older sister of the richest man in the galaxy. A
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Aug 5, 2019 02:51
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sullat posted:B drat, that's a good one. Changing my origin vote from C to E: sullat
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Aug 5, 2019 04:01
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Okay, so we're a female (?) alien who took the job becuase the money was good, but 1 what kind of alien are we? A - A sentient Pseudo-Hivemind Clone-Colony of Sentient Insect-Analogues. B - Four trunk-like legs, aquamarine-sea green chitin, yellow-orange multi-faceted eyes, mandibles, and two one-and-a-half tubes of inscrutable purpose to outsiders you use for hearing. The two relatively mundane arms you have are scarcely noteworthy. C - We are a polymorphic chamelionoid whose physical appearance is under both conscious and subconscious control. In our dreams, we felt old, and thus it manifests on our surface substrate. We currently seem human, but this is mainly because the bulk of the people on the ship are obnoxious bipeds. We are native to Nouuuashntn, and we dislike the way the humans mangle the name of our homeworld. D - A near humanoid (funny faced star trek style.) E - A "Colonist" - your ancestors were human, but due to local pressures and a whole lot of gene editing and some cybernetics, you are something completely different now. F - Something Else. 2 - What is our name? Grey Hunter fucked around with this message at 09:51 on Aug 5, 2019 |
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Aug 5, 2019 07:58
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C "N" short for a really long unpronounceable name with a lot of Ns
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Aug 5, 2019 12:29
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E. And we have a chip on our shoulder regarding the genetically inferior baselines, or 'basics'.
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Aug 5, 2019 13:21
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C
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Aug 5, 2019 13:45
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C
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Aug 5, 2019 13:51
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E
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Aug 5, 2019 13:54
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E
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Aug 5, 2019 17:25
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E. Our name is *Rapid Scissors Sounds*
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Aug 5, 2019 17:48
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Blasphemaster posted:Our name is *Rapid Scissors Sounds* Seconding that name.
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Aug 5, 2019 19:39
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Grey Hunter posted:1 what kind of alien are we? Vote: E - A "Colonist" - your ancestors were human, but due to local pressures and a whole lot of gene editing and some cybernetics, you are something completely different now. Grey Hunter posted:2 - What is our name? Vote: "Tequila Sunrise". I'm going hardboiled on this one. And, what is it with you folks anyways? Why can't we just play it straight every once in awhile?
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Aug 5, 2019 22:11
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I'm now going to assume we look like a short, sour lizardy skinned Betty white.
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Aug 5, 2019 22:21
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CourValant posted:And, what is it with you folks anyways? Why can't we just play it straight every once in awhile? Because I have to play it straight at my job and home life all the time and this is a fun game to escape the straightness of life?
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Aug 5, 2019 22:49
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C
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Aug 5, 2019 23:22
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 It had to be the Ambassador, the one stinking person on this ship who actually meant something, and now he’s dead. There was always the hope that this was a computer issue - the jump drive did odd things to computers, and it was not unknown for things to break - the Ambassador could still be in his jump coma and happily drooling to himself. Your hearts tell you that that is not the case. You grab your jacket, the name “Kishkishksihkish” written on it. No humans could ever pronounce that, so you went by “Chief” or “Boss”. The jacket is old and worn, you never expected to stay, so you never got around to buying a new one - what was the point, this was your last run. It was always your last run. As a Colonist, you did well to even get this high on the chain - most purestrain humans look down on you with pity if your lucky, disgust if your not. As humanity spread through the stars, they found lots of worlds that were livable, but few that were the verdant paradise that earth, well, used to be. So the corporations that fueled the space race took steps to “improve worker conditions and survival rates” - once off Earth, they were out of any international treaties, and first generation spaceflight took years, so it was not like anyone was going to nip out to a colony and check what was going on. The first modifications made to the colonists were small, and mostly done without their knowledge, but with each generation the changes and technology grew at an exponential rate. Now most of those early colonists were not really human any more - their genomes spliced with whatever local and imported plants and animals that the mad scientists working for the corporations thought would make their colonists more hardy. After a couple of hundred years, by the time modern “fast” spaceflight was discovered, the people living on these worlds were unrecognizable, a few even had very little true human left in them. The next few decades were fun, the revolutions, the corporate lawsuits, the formation of the “Post Human Alliance” of colony worlds. Soon, the web of human worlds were able to connect in meaningful ways, and a new map was drawn. Still, that left you in a difficult position, you were built for a different world, and people knew what you were - you were a biped, which ment of human stock, while the real aliens out there were much more weird and wonderful. The difference was that you were a product of a time in humanity's history that most people would rather forget, while Aliens were other, completely unique civilizations. You snap back to the task at hand, looking at your jacket. You could sling it over your shoulders and go, or you could spend five minutes making yourself presentable. Then there was the matter of the route - you could go through the staff quarters, or through the passenger decks - the former would keep you covered, but take longer. Choices choices. Right, I’m going to leave our exact form nebulous for a bit, but we will have three advantages and two disadvantages. Disadvantages have to be disadvantageous now - an average lifespan of 40 is a major disadvantage in life, but not likely to affect us in the next 72 hours. We now come to our choices - every choice will have a time on it, and generally, the slower option will be the safer one - but not every quick option will have a downfall - I just won’t tell you what the safe options are. Our Options are 1 - Go now, or smarten up? A - Go now (0 minutes) B - Smarten up (3 minutes) 2 - get to the ambassadors quarters. A - Go through the passenger areas (5 minutes) B - Go through the service ways (8 minutes) Of course, time is not much of a pressure now - but who knows if we are going to need those minutes later on? Choose wisely.
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Aug 6, 2019 08:31
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AA Passengers are probably all puking their guts up right now, who cares what they think? And it's not like we care about our permanent record at the moment.
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Aug 6, 2019 15:18
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sullat posted:AA Yeah this. Also do you want us choosing our advantages/disadvantages or do you want to assign them ad hoc based on our choices?
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Aug 6, 2019 15:39
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A A hopefully we don't get stopped by passengers and their petty problems
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Aug 6, 2019 15:58
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AA We're a MothMan, like from Bojack Horseman. Duh.
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Aug 6, 2019 16:06
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Grey Hunter posted:Right, I’m going to leave our exact form nebulous for a bit, but we will have three advantages and two disadvantages. Disadvantages have to be disadvantageous now - an average lifespan of 40 is a major disadvantage in life, but not likely to affect us in the next 72 hours. Advantage: Our gene-edited appearance comes off as quite intimidating to the 'pure strain' humans. Disadvantage: Other 'pure strain' humans react negatively to our presence. Grey Hunter posted:Our Options are Vote: B - Smarten up (3 minutes) A - Go through the passenger areas (5 minutes)
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Aug 6, 2019 20:56
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On the move. You throw your jacket over your shoulders and zip it up, then out of the door. While regs say your supposed to keep to the staff corridors whenever possible, you doubt anyone will be feeling up to leaving their rooms this close to a jump. This is the only time you ever see the main walkways empty, you jog down the corridors and hear control come on line. The boys in the control room have the data from the whole ship. “Chief. We have a loss of lifesigns in Honeymoon suite 6, ten reports of serious injuries and three hundred reporting minor injuries and jump sickness. Still no data from the Ambassadors quarters.“ “poo poo just keeps getting better.” you say as you clear the boulevard and slam your hand into the biometric scanner that accesses the restricted upper decks. In the lift you move up the ship. “Send a med team and a sergeant to the honeymoon suite, dispatch the other med teams to the serious injuries. The rest can wait.” It wasn’t the first time that someone had died mid jump - but the honeymoon suite was almost expected - some people couldnt resist the lure of joining the 20 light year club. Normally it was some broken bones and pulled muscles, but every so often it was a broken neck or snapped spine. The elevator opened and he was on the first class area. He turned left and sprinted down the corridor towards the alien adaptive rooms. He grabbed a rebreather from the wall and pulled it on. Most aliens can't breath our air - while most were oxygen breathers, all had evolved to live on different mixes, so to give passengers comfort, sections of the ship had been created to better mimic these areas, so the travellers could spend at least some time outside of their environmental suits. You cycle the airlock and enter the Jack sector. The Jacks - not their real name, which was of course an unpronounceable to humans as ‘human’ was to the Jacks - were neighbours to Earth, and their space ran alongside a good amount of human space - as well as you could draw a map in three dimensional space with non solid borders. While in textbooks there was a nice solid line, in reality both races intersected each others territory quite a bit, as there were many worlds on the border that were only colonizable by one side. The Jacks were mostly friendly, - there had yet to be an interstellar war, but both sides had a small fleet of warships and patrol boats on the border. The idea of invading anything other than a colony was madness, and the few space battles that had occurred in the early days of first contact had been small and mutually destructive - both sides launched their missiles, then waited three hours for them to close range, then both fleets had been equally savaged. After three engagements that resulted in the loss of six fleets, commanders and politicians on both sides agreed that neither side could afford a forever war, and treaties were drawn up. The Ambassador was on the last leg of his journey to take up his position on earth for the next five years, and now this happens. Coming down the other side of the corridor are Cartwell and Heartwell. They were well known to be an item, and had most likely started in the same place. “Boss” Cartwell says to you. She of course looks impeccable, tall, blonde, apparently attractive for a purestrain. Heartwell behind her could also have stepped off a recruiting poster for doctors. “Right, let’s hope this is just a faulty biochip.” you say as you use your hand and the biometric override to cycle the door. The torrent of blue fluid hits your ankles and spills out into the corridor. Nearly ten centimeters deep, it runs out into the hallway and soaks into the carpet in seconds, staining the floor that costs near a months wages for you. Everyone peers into the doorway and Cartwell turns and rushes for the nearest bin before throwing up. The Ambassador is all over the room Literally. . Jacks are large - like green-skinned centaurs with long flexible necks, and someone had exploded the Ambassador. The force of whatever had been used had breached the sleeping pool and that had mixed with his blood and flooded the room. “Good god.” Even Heartwell looked grey.    Yep! We have a murder! Not that this is a surprise - wouldn’t be much of a story without one! 1 - We need to secure the crime scene - do we A - Lock down the area? B - Lock down first class? C - Lock down the whole ship. D - Don’t both with lockdown - whoever did this is long gone. 2 - We also need to start our investigation, do we A - step into the room and start looking (0 mins) B - call up our small forensics team (10 mins) C - Both! (10 mins)
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Aug 7, 2019 09:21
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CC
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Aug 7, 2019 09:26
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CC
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Aug 7, 2019 10:24
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BB
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Aug 7, 2019 13:06
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AB
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Aug 7, 2019 15:01
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CC
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Aug 7, 2019 15:54
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C C
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Aug 7, 2019 17:25
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Grey Hunter posted:Yep! We have a murder! Not that this is a surprise - wouldn’t be much of a story without one! Vote: B - Lock down first class? B - call up our small forensics team (10 mins) The murderer used the jump to mask his crime, perhaps he's still in the area? Also, we need to preserve the crime scene.
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Aug 7, 2019 18:12
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“This is Kishkishkish, Initiate a level one lockdown across the entire ship.” you speak quickly into you com unit. “Chief? Level one? Are you sure?” Level one would seal every door and bulkhead for anyone without a security clearance - only senior staff, security and medical would be able to move. “Yeah, I’m sure, and get forensics up here!” The ships’ forensics unit was a two man team, they normally did work on the kind of petty theft that occurs on any ship, but they were properly trained for things like this. You hoped. “Okay Chief.” seconds later the emergency bulkheads began to lower themselves, and the lights above the other doors went red. ”A Level one security lockdown has been initiated for your safety. You will be advised when it is safe to leave your rooms. If you are not in a safe area, please advise ships security, and an officer will be dispatched to escort you to your room for the duration. There is no cause for alarm.” Opulance’s computer sounded from every speaker. You step into the room, there is no time to waste waiting for forensics to grab their gear, and you want to get on the killer before they have time to stow their gear - if your lucky, they will be trapped in a corridor somewhere with a weapon. You don’t get the feeling you’ll get that lucky. The gore is everywhere, there doesn't seem to be a chunk of the Ambassador more than the size of your fist anywhere in the room. Whatever was used on them blew them up good. okay, this looks like a good point to put in a chance to use one of our advantages do we A - have good hearing B - have good eyesight C - have a good sense of smell D - have limited psychic senses? E - have nothing that can help us here. F - something else?
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Aug 12, 2019 08:09
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D.. You have limited psychic senses. Whether those are strong enough to sort anything useful from the glaring aura of violence is another matter.
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Aug 12, 2019 08:20
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 05:18 |
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D
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Aug 12, 2019 12:23
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