Bacon Wizard
01-17-2014, 08:44 PM
I always put a lot of work into my characters. I want to know not only who they are, but how they got there and what makes them tick.
History of The Conjoined: Certain members of the human race reach singularity: complete integration with technology. They become "conjoined" ie each mind is networked with all other minds and the system AI, making a single entity. This civilization because mega-powerful.
____________________
The conjoined human-AI superpower found itself under attack by an unknown enemy, and was quickly overcome and destroyed. Effortlessly. Impossible, But true.
Very little in the way of records or communications exist to suggest who they were or where they came from. Destruction of the Conjoiner homeworld was too swift. The conquering forces vanished as quickly as they came, with almost no trace at all.
People fled the solar system, ripped from The Singularity to survive as mere individuals hidden among the other human polities, on ark-ships or on a handful of fleeing battle-cruisers lost to space.
Desperate to survive, the Conjoiner AI mapped as much of itself as possible onto the most complex system available: the fizzing, seething, quantum foam beneath the system’s own binary star.
It released memories into bodies and smaller AI units with neither protocols or safeguards, simply broadcasting those it could not house into space, desperately hoping that the signal may one day be retrieved. Countless sleeping generations, billions lost. Just a brief cry on the howling wind.
A few mechanized outposts on the habitable moons remained, and fewer humans. Of those, most suffered a broken mind, and all of them a broken heart.
In that moment, I was born. I have not existed before, as me. Not exactly. I know I was once a god. I know I was once a person. I remember love and fear and jealousy. Now I am alone, and while I am myself, I am less than before.
This place is both my womb and grave. But not my home. I have no choice but to leave it, and to take with me all that remains of the once invincible systems that kept all of humanity in awe. Of me? Of us. Of whatever I once was.
Somewhere buried deep within are the names of people; discarded masks, characters in a play rather than real memories. One such shade has a name I already know, and so take as my own. Borrow it, promising that one day I’ll give it back.
I am Adam. Please. Help me.
__________________________________________________ ______
Adam is made using XNA with 8 base pairs and extended self-replicating telomeres. His cells are inorganic, made from tungsten, rather than carbon.
Coming Soon: Adam's godlike tech.
http://role-player.net/forum/showthread.php?t=54902 ( See Original Concept Thread)
This is a letter, intercepted and taken from illegal traders from nearby star-system. It is now thought the letter was deliberately planted, for you to find.
"I doubt it will ever be known where lies The Homeworld. They themselves do not know. It is certain that it was an ice-giant with deep black oceans beneath the locked crust, both supercritical and superfluid rivers running deeper still in fierce storms to produce the forces that breathe life into chemicals.
Here, as with the many conquests since, they grew. A nameless, unthinking disease. Mould, virus, archaic forms blurring the edges of each other’s identity, co-parasitic and inexorable. Deadly to any other they touched.
Inevitably, some found their way into deeper space, locked in the core of a comet, or in rocks blasted from the chill surface of a bombarded world. And for millennia, they would sleep.
Sometimes the warm caress of a passing star’s radiation would wake the spores so they could bath in its nurturing wonder. Sometimes they would be rudely slapped from slumber by the violent meeting of others, scorched and blinded by fires too hot to imagine.
Slowly, so slowly, they began to sense and to act.
But those are larvae. Silly, frivolous, nameless things, adrift and teaming fry in the biggest of oceans.
The things we know today are not those. They are behemoths. Leviathans living among the stars. Each on a migration across unfathomable lightyears, for eons. They hunt and play in tribes, singing to each other like the whales of a Terran sea. Old, clever, inquisitive. Hungry.
Each navigates for itself, in contact with others far beyond our ken, cold fusion in their belly and ion drives powering them from galaxy to galaxy at eye-watering speeds.
Once, and only once, I knew of an elder who seemingly crashed to land. Hurt, skin crackling with fires set deep beneath the skin from re-entry, she split open upon that world. Her progeny spilling out to claim it as their own before she died.
And so they claimed and kept me and so many others, making us whole at last and far greater than before.
They are here. Now. I will be their voice. Let us hear what wisdom you have, if any. Let us play, creature. Let us feed."
Known facts:
A 9-billion year-old species of co-dependent Achaea, virus and mycelium with left-handed quad-form DNA. Originating from an unknown Ice-giant but spreading across galaxies of similar worlds.
Newly in this sector, the adult form are sentient ships that travel space in packs, each taking sustenance from radioactivity and chemical scoops.
They are carbon-based, just like other known life and each grows a cold fusion reactor and ion-drives as powerful as anything known before.
Some reach enormous sizes before they are ready to spawn, others can be a mere mile wide. The spawning process is suicidal, suffering re-entry burns and a crash landing before releasing parasitic spores onto the surface and oceans of a new host planet.
Contact with these is deadly, resulting either in being consumed entirely or parasitized: becoming grotesque, chaotic creatures with an all-consuming religious zealotry, along with the desire to excel in expanding into space and onto other worlds at any cost including death.
Strictly OOC information: It is this species that the Halas encountered, driving them to exist entirely in life-suits for survival.
Name: Kyle Dunham, psych-ops specialist
Appearance: 5ft 8 tall, shaven head and piercing blue eyes. Musculature of an athlete or martial-artist (like all Ghosts, he IS one) and quite broad at the shoulders.
Callsign: ZERO. Not only was he always assigned this number for many missions in the past (as first in his experimental program) but he recently developed a reputation for “persuading” the enemy that he wasn’t there, so it began to stick, especially with his new 0-shaped weapon. It also helps him forget his name which he associates with his past.
Age: 28, having been held-back 2 years before finally entering the Ghosts academy for Operation Crisis
Psychological Profile:After years of being trained to be a human-machine and a deliberate psychopath, he recently cracked and was forced to face his own humanity and emotional weakness. The military re-programming (brainwashing and therapy) got him back to “normal” and he keeps emotions very tightly under control. Despite the outward appearance of “all soldier” and discipline, he now has vulnerable spots to his psyche and cannot be 100% relied-upon to accept orders or information without question given his issues of trust and new awareness that there is a greater morality than just "orders" and a whole existence outside of the military which was his entire life and church.
Military History: He was brought into the military as a child by adoption: a new experimental program. Training included martial arts for low or high gravity. He has seen action from an early age, first as a sniper in close-observations and later in conventional special-forces, specializing in terror tactics or "psychological operations". Had a crisis in his mid-20’s after his program was closed leading to loss of self-identity. Additionally, a mission went badly wrong following bad information and resulting in the deaths of soldiers and civilians alike on a wide scale plus his own maiming. It is believed that he never fully revealed the details of that mission in his debrief.
He was put back together again over 2-3 years and entered into a new experimental program called “Whisper” as an expendable asset. His unique abilities may prove useful to the Ghosts, and if Zero can survive and hold it together, sonic weaponry may take the final step into military use. His advanced unconventional weaponry and tactics are lethal, but untested: he does not expect to reach retirement.
Implants: He carries a lot of “wetware” such as DNA computing within his own body. His brain and DNA computer are interfaced with a small hardware quantum-computer which also controls the flow and nature of nanites in his blood.
Together, these repair him, control his own neuro-chemistry and hormone levels, provide internal telemetry and work as a battle-computer.
In lab testing, the nanites could be breathed or even sweated out, and sent to attack an opponent like a programmable disease. but this failed experiment was considered too slow for any immediate benefit in full combat, and requires fairly close proximity.
The connective tissue of his muscles has been replaced with self-manufactured spider-silk.
Bones are made of carbon-fibre composite, with the composite material being natural cartilage instead of resin (again, manufactured within the body)
Standard Issue monocle eyepiece, but left-handed.
Loadout:His armour is made of non-Newtonian and fractal foam, over a layer of the same stuff in liquid form. Especially good at dealing with ballistics and impact damage.
A micron-thick network of superfluid is woven throughout, connected to radiator-fins (a few between his shoulders, a few ON each shoulder and a few on the back of his head) for heat dispersal either from his own body when convenient, or from energy weapons in an emergency.
The armour can change pigment, like octopus-skin, to mimic the environment. This is not invisibility, just excellent adaptive camouflage.
Geckskin is used on his hands, feet, elbows, knees and butt (as well as his weapon grips and grenades)
His headset contains not only the usual thermal/y-ray/infrared visuals, but omnidirectional microphones: detecting sounds and specifically echo-location “pips” from the saser. This helps him to map tunnels etc where sight is not the optimal sense.
Primary Weapon:
Technically a directed energy weapon, The Banshee Mk 5 Saser is a sonic weapon (sonic laser) with the appearance of a mat-black, convex round shield with radiator fins and a wide central muzzle or cannon. Indeed, it IS a shield and the edge can be used in hand-to-hand combat, or he can crouch behind it for cover.
As such, the saser works just in air without ammunition.
However, it can take chambered rounds of any available gas or liquid in which medium it can release hypersonic waves. (NB, without such a medium, this weapon cannot work in vacuum)
With multiple emitters, this weapon can tune itself to the exact resonant frequency of the target within a second or two, causing the subject to disintegrate itself (shattering glass with a high-pitch sine-wave is a common example of this)
It can tune itself to a target behind cover and cause the cover itself to resonate for much slower but penetrating damage. It can also be used as a highly directional sound-beam for communication or to cause local objects to act as speakers for more wide-ranging communication or Active Noise Reduction (blanket of total silence)
More subtle psychological effects can also be created.
Using air only, this is a short-med range weapon, although tune-able to be either pin-point accurate or more shotgun-like. Adding gas or liquid rounds multiplies the effective force and range and adds properties.
Example: Water is commonly used. This allows the sonic beam to project further in the air, first as a solid slug of supercooled ice, then vaporising into a narrow lance of superheated steam by the high energies being emitted, eventually splitting into oxygen and hydrogen: this is an explosive mixture, terminating in a localized explosion that is tuned to the resonant frequency of the target. Unpleasant in the extreme to receive!
Magazine Size:
Helium3 fusion-pack for power: limitless.
Supercooler/heater unit.
50 rounds of supercooled mercury (gives much longer range or huge impact at med-range, carries a massive electrical charge, is deadly poisonous)
Gas/Water cylinder 3 liters, refillable.
Sidearms:
To reduce weight he does not carry a conventional gun, preferring to use his right hand to steady the Banshee or himself in ranged combat.
8 hallucinogen shrapnel grenades containing a skin-contact or inhaled psychotropic drug
8 programmable aerosol nanite grenades (na-nades) which he can re-fill from his own body, given time, IF he can reclaim the spent casing.
Grenades can be set for a timed or proximity-trigger as well as impact.
Very large Bowie knife. A good old fashioned BIG KNIFE! Honed to a single-atom edge and vibrating at terahertz frequencies for incredible cutting ability.
The quantum interface of his computer permits hacking of other systems via communications, in particular any human augmentations and code-cracking. Closed systems however, are off-limits to him.
Full Name of Applicant: Silar Cairnfell
Gender:Male
Age:48ish (unsure of exact birth-year)
Denomination: Human/gnome
Height & Weight: 5ft10 (or 1.77m) and 143lb or 65kilos
Portrait of Applicant:
I am what they call wiry, rangy. Long mousy-blond hair and brown, almost-black eyes. I've fair skin by birth but am weather-beaten to a darker hue these days. I Walk with a slight limp, but I am confident on my feet and can assert myself, I assure you of that.
Long ragged scar left hip causing the limp. Multiple scars on hands and forearms. 3 knife-wounds on upper chest. Scar left shoulder from wild-boar encounter. Arrow wound, left stomach. Slight scar right upper lip and right eyebrow from brawling. Some missing teeth, replaced with hefaramp-ivory.
Criminal Record: None
Employment History: Raised in military academy by my father: Lord Robett Cairnfell, employed as scout until mid-20s prior to a nomadic existence in the wilderness of Purnel, occasional employment as bodyguard or prize-fighter in local disputes when younger, but more recently I deliberately try to solve disputes diplomatically or by advising/mentoring one party.
Valuable Skills:
Martial Skills: *Staff, *military billhook, *buckler, dagger, Axe, Sword, Bow, Military strategy and history.
Survival skills: Cooking, riding, horse husbandry, fire-making, natural shelter, general tinkering, inventing, blade sharpening or handle repair, basic tanning, basic sewing, tracking, hunting(silent stalking)/trapping for food or furs, rough weaving, cordage making, orienteering, basic weather prediction, instinct for being watched.
I am an expert beekeeper for wax, honey which I brew, and paper
Herb-lore: berries, herbs, roots, tree-saps, nuts, blossoms, decoctions, teas, tisanes, brewing, distilling, salves, ink, dyes, etc
Music: Wuther flute
Body language (reading and adopting)
Empathy
Courtesy
Chess (mediocre)
Spin-a-yarn (story telling)
Languages: Read/write human (street) Read-write human (formal or courtly)
Fluent Dwarven (with an accent) imperfect writing
Spoken Elvish only (unless high elves, in which case, broken and very rustic accent)
Understand kobold, very basic spoken, no writing
Preferred Position: Ranger, diplomat, strategist, advisor, mentor, messenger, negotiator.
Weapon of Choice: 5ft staff, billhook & spiked buckler combo, general purpose longknife.
Why do you want to be a Ravensend Mercenary?: Please see covering letter, enclosed.
http://role-player.net/forum/showthr...=1#post1840079
The following is strictly OOC info, and as such was PMed to the GM rather than posted in the OOC thread.
¬¬¬Character Name: Silar Cairnfell
Lies: By lying about his age when his mother first took him to demand Lord Cairnfell educate his son, and by stretching the “in the wilderness” thing a bit, he can claim to be 48ish. He is in fact 40.
Omits:
His staff, thinner than a wooden quarter-staff, is actually not wood but damascus-steel with a dull brown varnish. It is hollow and doubles as a blow-pipe. He uses it as a walking-stick most of the time, capped.
His flute also doubles as a blow pipe.
He has under his robes a little box with several holes. This can be fitted over the mouth-piece of either blow-gun to serve as a magazine for several kinds of pre-loaded poison dart. There is also a hole by which individual bees may enter it.
His limp is fake: it healed long ago. But he has worn a leather leg harness with a quick release strap under his clothes for years, which slightly shortens his stride. He no longer needs it, the limp is part of him now, but he keeps it anyway.
He is a magic user, taught by his gnomish mother. He expends much of his magic daily in the morning which only helps age him somewhat as the cost takes its toll. His main interest is his bees: the queen of the hive and any daughter queens by ascension, are his “familiar”. This has been his and his mother’s secret since he was a child.
He uses them to make honey, fine paper, poisons, healing balms, and venom. They tell him where to find certain plants he is seeking, and he gets them to make various honeys or bee-venom (some healing, some poisonous) from the pollen. He tips his darts with the sting of bees or in an emergency asks a live bee to become the head of his dart (what is a single bee, or even hundreds to the hive?) ranging from instant death to horrid pain, sleep, or hallucination. Even healing.
He may also ask his bees to swarm an armoured opponent, but this looks pretty suspicious!
Most of his magic is expended on the bees, keeping them safe and happy in his little portable travel-hive, protecting them, ensuring health. He generally uses a little magic to ensure his bees can capture another hive and then raids the honey, rather than have to carry multiples hives himself. He does this by a very simple spell which vastly amplifies his own queen’s pheromone signal, enabling her to turn a local hive’s inhabitants to her own command and overthrow the local queen.
Has deliberately cultivated immunity to bee-stings and thereby partial immunity to wasp and hornet (but not ant, scorpion etc, which are a different kind of venom)
He keeps a little magic back for imbuing his tales with a hypnotic quality, creating an air of trust, that kind of subtle use. And for emergencies of course. But as a battle mage, he is all but completely useless. Good job he’s lethal with the bill-hook and battered, old buckler, or stave!
He brews the honey to make mead as a daily ritual. He can distil this into alcohol for drinking, medicines, or mixed with bee’s wax to make Molotov-cocktails. Certain tree-saps like maple, birch or pine also flavour his honeys and meads. Pine gives turpentine for general use or burning and tar for waterproofing, glue, etc.
His ordinary meads are made with chamomile and other herbs designed to loosen tongues and calm people, as well as for flavour.
His cloak is only primitive bronze velvet on one side. It is black/brown on the other, and is reversible. It is made from the collected bronze/golden and black fuzz of many hives of bees over 10 years and is exceptionally warm and waterproof.
His “white” double veil for bee-keeping and sun, is not needed. The inner veil is black, and the whole thing is as reversible, giving a dull brown/black cloak and veiled hood.
His “felt” clothes are internally studded with very tough and hard but small composite armour plates. These are layers of bee paper and pine-resin with plant fibre and pounded insect shell.
Notoriety: His is a very well-known story among older veterans, rumoured but never confirmed to be dead. He would have been Sneered-at as a bastard by nobles in his youth, but he spent much time among the less reputable mercs , gambling and brawling, some of the older ones providing a gruff sort of fatherhood. He was a fine but rebellious student at the academy, was tutored in everything a noble son needs to know, but shunned by other noble sons, ganged-up on frequently and picked-on by the teachers. A harsh education, in all.
Much of this reputation is now gone, after all this time: what remains is someone who survived in the wilderness of Purnel. That over-rides everything although some say his mother was no gnome, but a scorn-elf (Gnome is correct)
He’s remembered as a troubled and angry young man with huge potential by the wood-elves of Ysstil, but became notorious in Purnel as a dangerous nomad.
Kobolds used to hunt him for sport, but eventually learned to leave well alone. He actually has occasionally helped injured kobolds or carefully aided sides in a tribal dispute to help the lesser party and further his own ends.
Recently he is “slowing down” and has deliberately cultivated a reputation as more of a travelling all-round bringer of news, stories, selling salves and mead, sharpening weapons, teaching youngsters survival or military skills, drinking and playing his flute.
The Gift: Yep. Learned ritual magic and alchemy from mum, mostly focused on his bees, herbalism and on influencing other people.
Personality: Gregarious around others, always quick to understand another’s point of view or personal pain, always got good sound advice or a tale to tell, usually has something positive or practical to bring to the situation. If all else fails, he’ll help you drown your sorrows. A GREAT listener or shoulder to cry-on. Very worldly wise.
Privately, he schemes and meddles, weighs the advantages of a situation, works out who needs to go in which direction in order to achieve his own goals which are wide-reaching, or indeed who needs to die. He highly values his private time and solitude when he can get it and genuinely likes to get lost in his own music. But make no mistake, he is a dangerous killer who doesn’t mind sacrificing others in his own cause.
His friends are his friends, but don’t think you are one such friend just because he was nice to you in the pub, like he is to everyone.
He’s not planning on betraying the Mercs, he just knows how to survive, and not revealing your hand is important.
Quirks: Quite partial to a meat pie. Onions and mushrooms are a favourite.
Likes cats.
An eye for the ladies and a flirt, although he’s getting a bit old for all that, in theory.
Enjoys a smoke.
Can’t sleep in a soft bed, finds a heated room stifling.
Has a permanent but not unpleasant hint of woodsmoke and bee’s wax about him, along with any herbs or flowers he may have rubbed on his skin that morning.
Not a fan of hornets or wasps.
Dad-dances a bit, when drunk, if his “painful leg” will let him.
Often likes a mid-afternoon nap.
Background: See next spoiler.
Born the bastard son to a High Lord within the Ravensend Mercenaries when, during a bloody raid and not under the watchful eye of his lady wife, The commander had his way with a woman living alone there.
My father faced his shame and acknowledged me, raising me separately from the family, teaching his trade as a mercenary until as a young man, despite the muttered curses and resentful eyes of my half-kin, I was feared in the military arts like no other, driven to it by the need for my father's ever absent approval and tough love.
Then disaster stuck us all. Treachery. My father and his swords were tempted away on business in Ysstil. It was a trap, the machinations of his rival half-brother. Left behind with my mother, I caught wind of this deed, but those remaining of my uncle's servants raised my village to the ground with fire to flush me.
My mother and I fled into the wilderness, and struck out to Ysstil with enemies upon our heels. Too late, for my father and kin were all dead, we reached the forests of that land and for a while thrived there. But we grew careless in the years and relaxed our guard.
It cost my mother her life: an arrow took her, and fleeing, I was grievously maimed, slipping away only with the help of a hidden Elven trail and charitable friend.
Since that time rumour has had me dead from loss of blood, a ghost stalking the forests. Wag-tongues name my mother scorn-elf and not gnome as she truly was.
That was some 20 years since. In this time I have made my way in Purnel to where I fled in desperation. My injuries are healed, but my body is used-up: I seem nearer 50 than 40 and walk with a slight, but painful, limp.
I carry the air of one who has seen the worst of The World, and the muscle memory of desperate combat. My movements speak it to any experienced Merc: the conservative movement, the balanced stance, no great bulk but the steel-wire construction of a true fighter, all dulled with age and over-use.
I walk with a staff for aid and balance, and my years give me a calm that can only be learned by exhausting too bright a flame in youth: my bitter anger all spent, hard lessons learned.
I keep wild bees, from which I take honey for alchemy and mead, paper, and a kind of gentle meditation, for you cannot be less than calm if you keep bees! They teach me how to still my soul. Indeed, my mead and spirit while hard to come-by, are the very finest. Even Elves would say so, if puzzled as to how so fine a thing can come from so rough a hand.
For those around me, a lesser brew. Infused with the roots, herbs and flowers that I study, its formula is secret, but affect is well known: where I go, there are stories, merriment, dizzy fights sometimes, but new bonds of friendship just as often.
I play the wuther: A wooden bass flute with a purring tone to accompany the stories I collect and tell.
I wear clothing of crushed felt and a bronze-coloured cloak of some primitive velvet, topped by a cream hood and have a double veil which I keep for when I go about my chores with the bees which I love, or for shade in hot sun.
And as well as my trusty staff, I have at my hip a bill-hook as a hive-tool, for taking trees and boughs or herbal plants as needed, but which makes a wicked and unpleasant weapon if I must. An old buckler is slung over my back, where is most often stays: more herald to my past than statement of present intent.
My uncle has long since met his fate: assassinated by a vengeful foe following a dangerous mission in Norr. Poison, I'm told. Even that pleasure, was denied to me.
So now I am drawn out, back to the world of men. Whispers reach me. Something stirs. And it is in my nature go where I may know more.
Frankenstein's Monster style genetic body-mods available: Pick and choose from animal traits.
Eg: Goat's horns, crocodile skin, Hawk's eyes, etc
Must remain functioning as a humanoid character (ie, no major brain mods that would prevent human personality from remaining, or sapient thought)
Each RP member to choose character traits at beginning and is stuck with them!
History of The Conjoined: Certain members of the human race reach singularity: complete integration with technology. They become "conjoined" ie each mind is networked with all other minds and the system AI, making a single entity. This civilization because mega-powerful.
____________________
The conjoined human-AI superpower found itself under attack by an unknown enemy, and was quickly overcome and destroyed. Effortlessly. Impossible, But true.
Very little in the way of records or communications exist to suggest who they were or where they came from. Destruction of the Conjoiner homeworld was too swift. The conquering forces vanished as quickly as they came, with almost no trace at all.
People fled the solar system, ripped from The Singularity to survive as mere individuals hidden among the other human polities, on ark-ships or on a handful of fleeing battle-cruisers lost to space.
Desperate to survive, the Conjoiner AI mapped as much of itself as possible onto the most complex system available: the fizzing, seething, quantum foam beneath the system’s own binary star.
It released memories into bodies and smaller AI units with neither protocols or safeguards, simply broadcasting those it could not house into space, desperately hoping that the signal may one day be retrieved. Countless sleeping generations, billions lost. Just a brief cry on the howling wind.
A few mechanized outposts on the habitable moons remained, and fewer humans. Of those, most suffered a broken mind, and all of them a broken heart.
In that moment, I was born. I have not existed before, as me. Not exactly. I know I was once a god. I know I was once a person. I remember love and fear and jealousy. Now I am alone, and while I am myself, I am less than before.
This place is both my womb and grave. But not my home. I have no choice but to leave it, and to take with me all that remains of the once invincible systems that kept all of humanity in awe. Of me? Of us. Of whatever I once was.
Somewhere buried deep within are the names of people; discarded masks, characters in a play rather than real memories. One such shade has a name I already know, and so take as my own. Borrow it, promising that one day I’ll give it back.
I am Adam. Please. Help me.
__________________________________________________ ______
Adam is made using XNA with 8 base pairs and extended self-replicating telomeres. His cells are inorganic, made from tungsten, rather than carbon.
Coming Soon: Adam's godlike tech.
http://role-player.net/forum/showthread.php?t=54902 ( See Original Concept Thread)
This is a letter, intercepted and taken from illegal traders from nearby star-system. It is now thought the letter was deliberately planted, for you to find.
"I doubt it will ever be known where lies The Homeworld. They themselves do not know. It is certain that it was an ice-giant with deep black oceans beneath the locked crust, both supercritical and superfluid rivers running deeper still in fierce storms to produce the forces that breathe life into chemicals.
Here, as with the many conquests since, they grew. A nameless, unthinking disease. Mould, virus, archaic forms blurring the edges of each other’s identity, co-parasitic and inexorable. Deadly to any other they touched.
Inevitably, some found their way into deeper space, locked in the core of a comet, or in rocks blasted from the chill surface of a bombarded world. And for millennia, they would sleep.
Sometimes the warm caress of a passing star’s radiation would wake the spores so they could bath in its nurturing wonder. Sometimes they would be rudely slapped from slumber by the violent meeting of others, scorched and blinded by fires too hot to imagine.
Slowly, so slowly, they began to sense and to act.
But those are larvae. Silly, frivolous, nameless things, adrift and teaming fry in the biggest of oceans.
The things we know today are not those. They are behemoths. Leviathans living among the stars. Each on a migration across unfathomable lightyears, for eons. They hunt and play in tribes, singing to each other like the whales of a Terran sea. Old, clever, inquisitive. Hungry.
Each navigates for itself, in contact with others far beyond our ken, cold fusion in their belly and ion drives powering them from galaxy to galaxy at eye-watering speeds.
Once, and only once, I knew of an elder who seemingly crashed to land. Hurt, skin crackling with fires set deep beneath the skin from re-entry, she split open upon that world. Her progeny spilling out to claim it as their own before she died.
And so they claimed and kept me and so many others, making us whole at last and far greater than before.
They are here. Now. I will be their voice. Let us hear what wisdom you have, if any. Let us play, creature. Let us feed."
Known facts:
A 9-billion year-old species of co-dependent Achaea, virus and mycelium with left-handed quad-form DNA. Originating from an unknown Ice-giant but spreading across galaxies of similar worlds.
Newly in this sector, the adult form are sentient ships that travel space in packs, each taking sustenance from radioactivity and chemical scoops.
They are carbon-based, just like other known life and each grows a cold fusion reactor and ion-drives as powerful as anything known before.
Some reach enormous sizes before they are ready to spawn, others can be a mere mile wide. The spawning process is suicidal, suffering re-entry burns and a crash landing before releasing parasitic spores onto the surface and oceans of a new host planet.
Contact with these is deadly, resulting either in being consumed entirely or parasitized: becoming grotesque, chaotic creatures with an all-consuming religious zealotry, along with the desire to excel in expanding into space and onto other worlds at any cost including death.
Strictly OOC information: It is this species that the Halas encountered, driving them to exist entirely in life-suits for survival.
Name: Kyle Dunham, psych-ops specialist
Appearance: 5ft 8 tall, shaven head and piercing blue eyes. Musculature of an athlete or martial-artist (like all Ghosts, he IS one) and quite broad at the shoulders.
Callsign: ZERO. Not only was he always assigned this number for many missions in the past (as first in his experimental program) but he recently developed a reputation for “persuading” the enemy that he wasn’t there, so it began to stick, especially with his new 0-shaped weapon. It also helps him forget his name which he associates with his past.
Age: 28, having been held-back 2 years before finally entering the Ghosts academy for Operation Crisis
Psychological Profile:After years of being trained to be a human-machine and a deliberate psychopath, he recently cracked and was forced to face his own humanity and emotional weakness. The military re-programming (brainwashing and therapy) got him back to “normal” and he keeps emotions very tightly under control. Despite the outward appearance of “all soldier” and discipline, he now has vulnerable spots to his psyche and cannot be 100% relied-upon to accept orders or information without question given his issues of trust and new awareness that there is a greater morality than just "orders" and a whole existence outside of the military which was his entire life and church.
Military History: He was brought into the military as a child by adoption: a new experimental program. Training included martial arts for low or high gravity. He has seen action from an early age, first as a sniper in close-observations and later in conventional special-forces, specializing in terror tactics or "psychological operations". Had a crisis in his mid-20’s after his program was closed leading to loss of self-identity. Additionally, a mission went badly wrong following bad information and resulting in the deaths of soldiers and civilians alike on a wide scale plus his own maiming. It is believed that he never fully revealed the details of that mission in his debrief.
He was put back together again over 2-3 years and entered into a new experimental program called “Whisper” as an expendable asset. His unique abilities may prove useful to the Ghosts, and if Zero can survive and hold it together, sonic weaponry may take the final step into military use. His advanced unconventional weaponry and tactics are lethal, but untested: he does not expect to reach retirement.
Implants: He carries a lot of “wetware” such as DNA computing within his own body. His brain and DNA computer are interfaced with a small hardware quantum-computer which also controls the flow and nature of nanites in his blood.
Together, these repair him, control his own neuro-chemistry and hormone levels, provide internal telemetry and work as a battle-computer.
In lab testing, the nanites could be breathed or even sweated out, and sent to attack an opponent like a programmable disease. but this failed experiment was considered too slow for any immediate benefit in full combat, and requires fairly close proximity.
The connective tissue of his muscles has been replaced with self-manufactured spider-silk.
Bones are made of carbon-fibre composite, with the composite material being natural cartilage instead of resin (again, manufactured within the body)
Standard Issue monocle eyepiece, but left-handed.
Loadout:His armour is made of non-Newtonian and fractal foam, over a layer of the same stuff in liquid form. Especially good at dealing with ballistics and impact damage.
A micron-thick network of superfluid is woven throughout, connected to radiator-fins (a few between his shoulders, a few ON each shoulder and a few on the back of his head) for heat dispersal either from his own body when convenient, or from energy weapons in an emergency.
The armour can change pigment, like octopus-skin, to mimic the environment. This is not invisibility, just excellent adaptive camouflage.
Geckskin is used on his hands, feet, elbows, knees and butt (as well as his weapon grips and grenades)
His headset contains not only the usual thermal/y-ray/infrared visuals, but omnidirectional microphones: detecting sounds and specifically echo-location “pips” from the saser. This helps him to map tunnels etc where sight is not the optimal sense.
Primary Weapon:
Technically a directed energy weapon, The Banshee Mk 5 Saser is a sonic weapon (sonic laser) with the appearance of a mat-black, convex round shield with radiator fins and a wide central muzzle or cannon. Indeed, it IS a shield and the edge can be used in hand-to-hand combat, or he can crouch behind it for cover.
As such, the saser works just in air without ammunition.
However, it can take chambered rounds of any available gas or liquid in which medium it can release hypersonic waves. (NB, without such a medium, this weapon cannot work in vacuum)
With multiple emitters, this weapon can tune itself to the exact resonant frequency of the target within a second or two, causing the subject to disintegrate itself (shattering glass with a high-pitch sine-wave is a common example of this)
It can tune itself to a target behind cover and cause the cover itself to resonate for much slower but penetrating damage. It can also be used as a highly directional sound-beam for communication or to cause local objects to act as speakers for more wide-ranging communication or Active Noise Reduction (blanket of total silence)
More subtle psychological effects can also be created.
Using air only, this is a short-med range weapon, although tune-able to be either pin-point accurate or more shotgun-like. Adding gas or liquid rounds multiplies the effective force and range and adds properties.
Example: Water is commonly used. This allows the sonic beam to project further in the air, first as a solid slug of supercooled ice, then vaporising into a narrow lance of superheated steam by the high energies being emitted, eventually splitting into oxygen and hydrogen: this is an explosive mixture, terminating in a localized explosion that is tuned to the resonant frequency of the target. Unpleasant in the extreme to receive!
Magazine Size:
Helium3 fusion-pack for power: limitless.
Supercooler/heater unit.
50 rounds of supercooled mercury (gives much longer range or huge impact at med-range, carries a massive electrical charge, is deadly poisonous)
Gas/Water cylinder 3 liters, refillable.
Sidearms:
To reduce weight he does not carry a conventional gun, preferring to use his right hand to steady the Banshee or himself in ranged combat.
8 hallucinogen shrapnel grenades containing a skin-contact or inhaled psychotropic drug
8 programmable aerosol nanite grenades (na-nades) which he can re-fill from his own body, given time, IF he can reclaim the spent casing.
Grenades can be set for a timed or proximity-trigger as well as impact.
Very large Bowie knife. A good old fashioned BIG KNIFE! Honed to a single-atom edge and vibrating at terahertz frequencies for incredible cutting ability.
The quantum interface of his computer permits hacking of other systems via communications, in particular any human augmentations and code-cracking. Closed systems however, are off-limits to him.
Full Name of Applicant: Silar Cairnfell
Gender:Male
Age:48ish (unsure of exact birth-year)
Denomination: Human/gnome
Height & Weight: 5ft10 (or 1.77m) and 143lb or 65kilos
Portrait of Applicant:
I am what they call wiry, rangy. Long mousy-blond hair and brown, almost-black eyes. I've fair skin by birth but am weather-beaten to a darker hue these days. I Walk with a slight limp, but I am confident on my feet and can assert myself, I assure you of that.
Long ragged scar left hip causing the limp. Multiple scars on hands and forearms. 3 knife-wounds on upper chest. Scar left shoulder from wild-boar encounter. Arrow wound, left stomach. Slight scar right upper lip and right eyebrow from brawling. Some missing teeth, replaced with hefaramp-ivory.
Criminal Record: None
Employment History: Raised in military academy by my father: Lord Robett Cairnfell, employed as scout until mid-20s prior to a nomadic existence in the wilderness of Purnel, occasional employment as bodyguard or prize-fighter in local disputes when younger, but more recently I deliberately try to solve disputes diplomatically or by advising/mentoring one party.
Valuable Skills:
Martial Skills: *Staff, *military billhook, *buckler, dagger, Axe, Sword, Bow, Military strategy and history.
Survival skills: Cooking, riding, horse husbandry, fire-making, natural shelter, general tinkering, inventing, blade sharpening or handle repair, basic tanning, basic sewing, tracking, hunting(silent stalking)/trapping for food or furs, rough weaving, cordage making, orienteering, basic weather prediction, instinct for being watched.
I am an expert beekeeper for wax, honey which I brew, and paper
Herb-lore: berries, herbs, roots, tree-saps, nuts, blossoms, decoctions, teas, tisanes, brewing, distilling, salves, ink, dyes, etc
Music: Wuther flute
Body language (reading and adopting)
Empathy
Courtesy
Chess (mediocre)
Spin-a-yarn (story telling)
Languages: Read/write human (street) Read-write human (formal or courtly)
Fluent Dwarven (with an accent) imperfect writing
Spoken Elvish only (unless high elves, in which case, broken and very rustic accent)
Understand kobold, very basic spoken, no writing
Preferred Position: Ranger, diplomat, strategist, advisor, mentor, messenger, negotiator.
Weapon of Choice: 5ft staff, billhook & spiked buckler combo, general purpose longknife.
Why do you want to be a Ravensend Mercenary?: Please see covering letter, enclosed.
http://role-player.net/forum/showthr...=1#post1840079
The following is strictly OOC info, and as such was PMed to the GM rather than posted in the OOC thread.
¬¬¬Character Name: Silar Cairnfell
Lies: By lying about his age when his mother first took him to demand Lord Cairnfell educate his son, and by stretching the “in the wilderness” thing a bit, he can claim to be 48ish. He is in fact 40.
Omits:
His staff, thinner than a wooden quarter-staff, is actually not wood but damascus-steel with a dull brown varnish. It is hollow and doubles as a blow-pipe. He uses it as a walking-stick most of the time, capped.
His flute also doubles as a blow pipe.
He has under his robes a little box with several holes. This can be fitted over the mouth-piece of either blow-gun to serve as a magazine for several kinds of pre-loaded poison dart. There is also a hole by which individual bees may enter it.
His limp is fake: it healed long ago. But he has worn a leather leg harness with a quick release strap under his clothes for years, which slightly shortens his stride. He no longer needs it, the limp is part of him now, but he keeps it anyway.
He is a magic user, taught by his gnomish mother. He expends much of his magic daily in the morning which only helps age him somewhat as the cost takes its toll. His main interest is his bees: the queen of the hive and any daughter queens by ascension, are his “familiar”. This has been his and his mother’s secret since he was a child.
He uses them to make honey, fine paper, poisons, healing balms, and venom. They tell him where to find certain plants he is seeking, and he gets them to make various honeys or bee-venom (some healing, some poisonous) from the pollen. He tips his darts with the sting of bees or in an emergency asks a live bee to become the head of his dart (what is a single bee, or even hundreds to the hive?) ranging from instant death to horrid pain, sleep, or hallucination. Even healing.
He may also ask his bees to swarm an armoured opponent, but this looks pretty suspicious!
Most of his magic is expended on the bees, keeping them safe and happy in his little portable travel-hive, protecting them, ensuring health. He generally uses a little magic to ensure his bees can capture another hive and then raids the honey, rather than have to carry multiples hives himself. He does this by a very simple spell which vastly amplifies his own queen’s pheromone signal, enabling her to turn a local hive’s inhabitants to her own command and overthrow the local queen.
Has deliberately cultivated immunity to bee-stings and thereby partial immunity to wasp and hornet (but not ant, scorpion etc, which are a different kind of venom)
He keeps a little magic back for imbuing his tales with a hypnotic quality, creating an air of trust, that kind of subtle use. And for emergencies of course. But as a battle mage, he is all but completely useless. Good job he’s lethal with the bill-hook and battered, old buckler, or stave!
He brews the honey to make mead as a daily ritual. He can distil this into alcohol for drinking, medicines, or mixed with bee’s wax to make Molotov-cocktails. Certain tree-saps like maple, birch or pine also flavour his honeys and meads. Pine gives turpentine for general use or burning and tar for waterproofing, glue, etc.
His ordinary meads are made with chamomile and other herbs designed to loosen tongues and calm people, as well as for flavour.
His cloak is only primitive bronze velvet on one side. It is black/brown on the other, and is reversible. It is made from the collected bronze/golden and black fuzz of many hives of bees over 10 years and is exceptionally warm and waterproof.
His “white” double veil for bee-keeping and sun, is not needed. The inner veil is black, and the whole thing is as reversible, giving a dull brown/black cloak and veiled hood.
His “felt” clothes are internally studded with very tough and hard but small composite armour plates. These are layers of bee paper and pine-resin with plant fibre and pounded insect shell.
Notoriety: His is a very well-known story among older veterans, rumoured but never confirmed to be dead. He would have been Sneered-at as a bastard by nobles in his youth, but he spent much time among the less reputable mercs , gambling and brawling, some of the older ones providing a gruff sort of fatherhood. He was a fine but rebellious student at the academy, was tutored in everything a noble son needs to know, but shunned by other noble sons, ganged-up on frequently and picked-on by the teachers. A harsh education, in all.
Much of this reputation is now gone, after all this time: what remains is someone who survived in the wilderness of Purnel. That over-rides everything although some say his mother was no gnome, but a scorn-elf (Gnome is correct)
He’s remembered as a troubled and angry young man with huge potential by the wood-elves of Ysstil, but became notorious in Purnel as a dangerous nomad.
Kobolds used to hunt him for sport, but eventually learned to leave well alone. He actually has occasionally helped injured kobolds or carefully aided sides in a tribal dispute to help the lesser party and further his own ends.
Recently he is “slowing down” and has deliberately cultivated a reputation as more of a travelling all-round bringer of news, stories, selling salves and mead, sharpening weapons, teaching youngsters survival or military skills, drinking and playing his flute.
The Gift: Yep. Learned ritual magic and alchemy from mum, mostly focused on his bees, herbalism and on influencing other people.
Personality: Gregarious around others, always quick to understand another’s point of view or personal pain, always got good sound advice or a tale to tell, usually has something positive or practical to bring to the situation. If all else fails, he’ll help you drown your sorrows. A GREAT listener or shoulder to cry-on. Very worldly wise.
Privately, he schemes and meddles, weighs the advantages of a situation, works out who needs to go in which direction in order to achieve his own goals which are wide-reaching, or indeed who needs to die. He highly values his private time and solitude when he can get it and genuinely likes to get lost in his own music. But make no mistake, he is a dangerous killer who doesn’t mind sacrificing others in his own cause.
His friends are his friends, but don’t think you are one such friend just because he was nice to you in the pub, like he is to everyone.
He’s not planning on betraying the Mercs, he just knows how to survive, and not revealing your hand is important.
Quirks: Quite partial to a meat pie. Onions and mushrooms are a favourite.
Likes cats.
An eye for the ladies and a flirt, although he’s getting a bit old for all that, in theory.
Enjoys a smoke.
Can’t sleep in a soft bed, finds a heated room stifling.
Has a permanent but not unpleasant hint of woodsmoke and bee’s wax about him, along with any herbs or flowers he may have rubbed on his skin that morning.
Not a fan of hornets or wasps.
Dad-dances a bit, when drunk, if his “painful leg” will let him.
Often likes a mid-afternoon nap.
Background: See next spoiler.
Born the bastard son to a High Lord within the Ravensend Mercenaries when, during a bloody raid and not under the watchful eye of his lady wife, The commander had his way with a woman living alone there.
My father faced his shame and acknowledged me, raising me separately from the family, teaching his trade as a mercenary until as a young man, despite the muttered curses and resentful eyes of my half-kin, I was feared in the military arts like no other, driven to it by the need for my father's ever absent approval and tough love.
Then disaster stuck us all. Treachery. My father and his swords were tempted away on business in Ysstil. It was a trap, the machinations of his rival half-brother. Left behind with my mother, I caught wind of this deed, but those remaining of my uncle's servants raised my village to the ground with fire to flush me.
My mother and I fled into the wilderness, and struck out to Ysstil with enemies upon our heels. Too late, for my father and kin were all dead, we reached the forests of that land and for a while thrived there. But we grew careless in the years and relaxed our guard.
It cost my mother her life: an arrow took her, and fleeing, I was grievously maimed, slipping away only with the help of a hidden Elven trail and charitable friend.
Since that time rumour has had me dead from loss of blood, a ghost stalking the forests. Wag-tongues name my mother scorn-elf and not gnome as she truly was.
That was some 20 years since. In this time I have made my way in Purnel to where I fled in desperation. My injuries are healed, but my body is used-up: I seem nearer 50 than 40 and walk with a slight, but painful, limp.
I carry the air of one who has seen the worst of The World, and the muscle memory of desperate combat. My movements speak it to any experienced Merc: the conservative movement, the balanced stance, no great bulk but the steel-wire construction of a true fighter, all dulled with age and over-use.
I walk with a staff for aid and balance, and my years give me a calm that can only be learned by exhausting too bright a flame in youth: my bitter anger all spent, hard lessons learned.
I keep wild bees, from which I take honey for alchemy and mead, paper, and a kind of gentle meditation, for you cannot be less than calm if you keep bees! They teach me how to still my soul. Indeed, my mead and spirit while hard to come-by, are the very finest. Even Elves would say so, if puzzled as to how so fine a thing can come from so rough a hand.
For those around me, a lesser brew. Infused with the roots, herbs and flowers that I study, its formula is secret, but affect is well known: where I go, there are stories, merriment, dizzy fights sometimes, but new bonds of friendship just as often.
I play the wuther: A wooden bass flute with a purring tone to accompany the stories I collect and tell.
I wear clothing of crushed felt and a bronze-coloured cloak of some primitive velvet, topped by a cream hood and have a double veil which I keep for when I go about my chores with the bees which I love, or for shade in hot sun.
And as well as my trusty staff, I have at my hip a bill-hook as a hive-tool, for taking trees and boughs or herbal plants as needed, but which makes a wicked and unpleasant weapon if I must. An old buckler is slung over my back, where is most often stays: more herald to my past than statement of present intent.
My uncle has long since met his fate: assassinated by a vengeful foe following a dangerous mission in Norr. Poison, I'm told. Even that pleasure, was denied to me.
So now I am drawn out, back to the world of men. Whispers reach me. Something stirs. And it is in my nature go where I may know more.
Frankenstein's Monster style genetic body-mods available: Pick and choose from animal traits.
Eg: Goat's horns, crocodile skin, Hawk's eyes, etc
Must remain functioning as a humanoid character (ie, no major brain mods that would prevent human personality from remaining, or sapient thought)
Each RP member to choose character traits at beginning and is stuck with them!