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[Spiderking50]

You and your fellow crew mates are the are freelance spacers. You take up odd jobs, go to odd places, and do odd things. Sometimes you get paid, sometimes you don't, that's really just how it goes. This game would be a strange combination of FTL, Doctor Who, space things and high fantasy. Right now its just a sort of idea I have in my head and I'm just wondering to see if anyone would be interested in me setting something up a space meets fantasy game. People could play as aliens or whatever they wanted really (as long as they can explain it well enough).

Sign-up/declaration of interest:

Name:
Species: (Should be explained well, can also be high fantasy)
Job: (Pilot, engineer, gunner, captain, that sort of thing)
Backstory: (Can be long or a single word.)
Special talents:
Other things:

EDIT: You don't have to sign up right now, you can just simply say you're interested.

[Parsely]

Name: James Kurader
Species: Human, and handsome, too.
Job: Captain
Backstory: Jimmy doesn't remember his parents. He grew up fending for himself in the big city, and learned many a valuable lesson from his life on the streets. He was a common vagabond for much of his early life, but he's grown wiser as he has gotten on in years. Eventually he started saving money, and he eventually bought his own starship. He's still hung onto his old starfighter, from the days when a small ship that was fast enough, and lucky enough, could beat a spread of missiles.
Special Talents: He's got more charm than a snakeman, and old-fashioned gunslinging is his passion. He's ambidextrous and has very quick fingers. All of these abilities tend to get him out of as much trouble as they get him into. It meshes perfectly with his philosophy: "things always find a way of working themselves out." He's not particularly good at it, but he can fly a ship in a pinch. The smaller the better.
Other Things: Has a radical but slightly old starfighter. It's small, but it's his baby. His newer ship is called the Lion's Pride. More than anything else, it's got space, and very advanced computers, but the engine and armament are lacking. Thus it acts as a sort of mothership. He carries far too many guns by force of habit. Four six-shooters with wooden handles. One on his chest, another on his lower back, and two on either hip. He keeps a short-barreled automatic shotgun strapped on the outside of his thigh, and a small semiautomatic handgun that fits in his boot for emergencies. He's got lots of trick shells for the shotgun. He has a short memory, so he tends to write clever names on the sides of the cartridges.

[Askot Bokbondeler]

Name: Rro
Species: Humanoid Alien. Furry, tall and strong, with small horns on his knuckles.
Job: Hunter, Mercenary, Bouncer
Backstory: Was born on a frontier world, into a primitive warrior culture. Was captured as a slave, and after acquiring his freedom engaged in different criminal and legitimate activities across the galaxy, usually working for someone else.
Special talents: Exceptional fighting skills, both with primitive and advanced weapons. Expertise in wilderness survival in earthlike planets.
Other things: Can speak many languages, none of them well. Has trouble with gadgets and tools with complicated interfaces.

[SeriousConcentrate]

I think I'll write up a character when I get home.

[USEC_OFFICER]

I'm just poking my head in to say that I'm thinking of joining this thing. Or at least see which direction it's going in.

[Draignean]

((Huh. Well that was longer than I expected. I also may have mixed a lot of Douglas Adams into the setting.))

Name: Sweejezus (Swee, for short)

Species: Non-humanoid Aberration. See Attached File.
Job: Mechanist, Bio-Sculptor
Backstory: Sweejezus, named for the sound made by the would-be space marine who initially encountered him, is... eccentric. He was created on a black market clone tissue farm bootstrapped to a backwater asteroid. The farm was designed to supply replacement limbs to blood mages, a lucrative business when one considers the prodigious rate that blood mages use up limbs. The owners of the farm attempted to further increase their profits by dodging the flesh tariff and passing off the cryo-frozen crates of transplant ready appendages as class A meat popsicles.  Unfortunately, a random inspection found that the limbs were 16% too low in sugar to be packaged as class A meat popsicles, and would have to be resold as class B product. The ensuing audit revealed the lack of tariff markings on the official ledgers, and the space federales subsequently raided the smuggler's main base of operations with high-powered weapons and a squadron of fairies with exo-suits and breaching charges.

Unfortunately, while several other clone farms were seized and repurposed as government assets*, the location of the farm that Sweejezus would be born on was lost in a tragic filing accident which claimed the lives of three bagels, half a jar of lox, and a law-enforcement mug full of extremely hot coffee. This left the cloning vats to languish without additional commands for several years. Most of the cloning vats generated hypergrowth tumors which destabilized their micro-biomes and subsequently died horribly. Swee's tank, however, became something unique. The clone tissue grew inside of the cloning vat itself, forcing itself inside microscopic fissures and bonding to the innards of the tank system. The cloning vat's suite of self-repair nanites were unable to remove the fleshy growths, and eventually grew so fed up with the thankless work that they began to integrate with the tissue instead of destroying it. Thus, Swee was born. Swee was not a hybrid of mechanical and organic, rather he was composed of system of growable organic components and a system of growable mechanical components, a symbiosis.

Archibald Drevinthraxx the God-Blooded** was the one to accidentally find, name, and release Swee. Archibald was (and perhaps still is) a gnome with severe delusions of grandeur, a tenuous link to reality, a love of action movies described as 'clinically obsessed' by his psychiatrist, and a trust fund capable of buying a small moon and painting it with orange polka-dots without batting an eyelash. Archibald, flying the closest thing to a space fighter the authorities would allow someone with his mental stability to purchase, and wearing the closest thing to military grade power armor that black market contacts would sell, stumbled upon the secluded bootstrap facility and promptly attempted to claim it as his own fortress. Unfortunately, Archibald found the quivering mess of infantile flesh and circuitry that would eventually become Swee and promptly proceeded to simultaneously swear and become quite sick inside his power armor. The sound, the only voice that Sweejezus had ever heard, was enough of an attraction that Swee enveloped the convulsing Archibald.

Had Archibald not purchased a black market suit of power armor complete with a neural interlock to a black box, things might have gone very differently. As it was, the nanotech in Swee ate into Archibald's armor, and the biological components began constructing an interface between the exposed electronics and Swee's central nervous cluster. The result was that Swee tapped into the terrified and very, very regretful Archibald. The result was the beginnings of sentience. Swee was not Archibald, but it felt the same things he did. Swee felt sickened, Swee felt scared, Swee felt alone, and most of all Swee wanted to get out of this place and go back to its shuttle, snuggle its sheets up to its chin, and watch episodes of Antagorean SiegeBreaker until he fell asleep. This was, in essence, what Swee did. Archibald, having had several hundred small nervous breakdowns at this point, and at least two or three large ones, hardly objected. This set the pattern for the next three decades.

Archibald gibbered insanely within Swee. Swee sat in Archibald's spaceship and watched hundreds upon hundreds of hours of action films filled with enormous explosions, hideous alien entities, screaming maidens in perilous situations and equally perilous clothing, and literally millions of commercials for every product imaginable. This was how Swee learned of the world. Action movies had been pivotally to Archibald life, but they were the only thing Swee knew about life besides the vague flashes of insane feelings and emotions that still floated across the neural link. Archibald's 'fighter' was eventually found by the Pernicious Elk*** a group of devoted paramilitary eco-groupies who believed that all life was sacred, and that anyone who believed otherwise should be killed and raised as a grotesque example of their hubris.**** The rest, as Swee is fond of saying in various heroic accents, is history.

Special talents: Biological Interface: Can devour and redesign biological/mechnical objects, creating symbiotic systems of flesh and metal that serve the same function as they did before, but are much more susceptible to Swee's influence. Particularly good with ship systems.
Other things: Impossibly bad at combat, driving, romance, or anything commonly depicted in action movies. When given weapons, Swee will attempt to grow enough appendages to operate them all at once, and will insist upon firing them all simultaneously from the hip. He will often do so while jumping through the air, standing on top of perfectly good cover, or in an effort to destroy some explosive terrain object. Swee is also sexually attracted to engines.

*In an interesting twist, the captured facilities now produce actual Class B meat popsicles as part of a space-gov sponsored 'Lunches for Learning!' program for underprivileged children.

**Name Officially changed. Original name: Sewpie S. Denlly. 87th in line to the Denlly fortune.

***The Pernicious Elk attempted to register under several other names, notable the Red Tree, the Brotherhood of Preservers, and the Guardians of Life. Unfortunately, all of those names were under copyright. The Pernicious Elk is the result of several thousand attempts to stake an independent title, and they still share the copyright with a goblin punk band in the Betajax system.

****Devoted, not particularly internally consistent or given to introspection.

Spoiler: Pernicious Elk member induction file, #4,332,245.2 (click to show/hide)

New member is grayish pink in appearance, roughly humanoid in typical resting position. This appears to be due in large part to the suit of gnome sized power armor that appears to have been incorporated into its structure in lieu of skeleton. Status of the power armor's occupant is unknown, but the new member does occasionally mention what it refers to as 'a little voice in its mind'. Fuck, but this thing is creepy. I feel like showering just looking at it. [Redaction by High-Elk McMarna] Subject speaks in a variety of voices, and it rarely speaks in anything other than direct quotes from action films.

New member possesses several abilities. When given material, it can grow mechanical or biological objects at will. More incredibly, it can convert existing mechanical or biological objects into hybrid objects. Dear lord, whose goddamn idea was it bring it on board?! It could eat into any part of this spaceship and spread! Fucking hell, it could spread into the electrical system and asphyxiate us all, bore into the reactor and drown us in radiation! [Redaction by High-Elk McMarna] These hybrid objects appear to function as normal when the new member leaves them alone, and can often be 'killed' by disabling their organic component, thank God. [Redaction by High-Elk McMarna] However, the member evidences unnaturally high levels of control when in direct contact with a hybrid object.

I know all life is supposed to be sacred... But this shit shouldn't exist. Recommending immediate termination before it kills us all. [Redaction by High-Elk McMarna]

Spoiler: Pernicious Elk Propaganda Film Reel, redacted cut (click to show/hide)

Beginning playback...

A grainy, black and white hologram blurs into focus. Swee is in the background, seemingly hard at work on an engine core that's covered in the same symbiotic bio-mechanical material as his own body. The focus blurs into the near picture, revealing a man and woman in clean, trendy clothes in front of a status display that shows all dials in the optimal position. The woman taps the display with a smile and turns towards the viewer.

"Look and see what space-gov has done! This poor creatures was found on an isolated asteroid, left to die without food, water, shelter, education, voting privileges, social security, guaranteed healthcare, food stamps, or worker's compensation! It is one of the innumerable billions left behind by space-gov's selfish ways, cast as valueless because it doesn't have the right combinations genes as the species that are deemed to be civilized! Yet, look at it, and can you truly say that it's different from any other form of hard working intelligent life?"

The receiver pans down, refocusing on Swee and the engine. Swee has both hands on the engine's surface, and appears to extending tendrils of bio-mechanical tissue to work on the engine. The camera zooms in to the process, showing Swee bring his body unusually close to the engine. The next time a voice cuts in, it belongs to the man.

"Yes, truly this creature deserves the same rights as any of us, rights it has been long denied. Observe as it... as it... What is he doing?"

The camera zooms in on Swee again, blurring out and jerking away just before he comes into focus. A split second later the woman's voice comes back on, irritation oozing despite the distortion.

"Damn it, Swee! On your own time! We can't show... THAT! If can't show it, we can't use this for, for... ANYTHING! Fuck it, shut that thing down, shut everything down! I said stop the goddamn rec-"

End of playback.

[Pencil_Art]

How long did it take you to write that?

[High tyrol]

interested

[Draignean]

How long did it take you to write that?

Not sure. Somewhere between an hour and an hour and a half. 'Twas fun to write if nothing else.

[Spiderking50]

Everyone is accepted so far. Especially Sweejezus, +1 for the good writing. I dig it. I dig it a lot. Can i get a physical description of what he(?) looks like now? I want to make sure what I'm imagining is on point.

[SeriousConcentrate]

(Draignean will probably recognize this character. )

Name: Firewatch
Species: Manitari
Job: 'Diplomat', 'Explorer', 'Scientist' (at least, as far as her race is concerned, she's these things. More advanced races would probably consider her a bit of a dangerous doofus)
Backstory: A youngish Manitarin who is slightly more civilized than many of her race - which means she doesn't try to kill and eat most lifeforms she runs into immediately. She first made it into the stars by accidentally launching a ship that had been abandoned (the owner was eaten) on her homeworld, and she spent almost a year figuring out how to operate the thing. In fact, she's actually pretty intelligent for her species and taught herself many things, including figuring out how to read and speak some languages from materials on-board the ship. (Admittedly this was eased by the fact these materials had been brought in an attempt to teach her primitive race and so had many pictures and were easy to understand, but nevertheless.)

As for her appearance, her skin is a light blue fibrous material similar to the outer skin of tough jungle vines, and her 'hair' is a purple mushroom cap with light yellow dots from which several red fronds hang down to her shoulders. Similar fronds hang down around her shoulders and arms down to her wrists, forming a sort of capelet. Her eyes are a pure red with no distinguishable pupil, iris, or sclera. She generally leaves her torso bare so as not to smush her fronds and instead just wears pants, shorts, or a skirt of some sort. She likes bracelets, necklaces, anklets, and other shiny things.

Special talents:
-Pheromones: Firewatch can emit sweet-smelling pheromones that can lull people nearby into an agreeable trance-like state. She can also emit pheromones that can manipulate emotions in other ways, such as increasing aggression or a feeling of exhaustion. These tend to not work so well if people are wearing things like masks or helmets to filter air.
-Melee Combatant: Firewatch is fairly skilled with a number of primitive weapons and weapons that are similar; for example stone swords are somewhat like plasma swords, just heavier.

Other things: Like all Manitari, Firewatch is sexless despite possessing female secondary characteristics. She just noted that female pronouns were generally used in pictures with a body type similar to her own. If she wanted to reproduce she would just kill something and leave spores in it to grow.

[AlleeCat]

Name: Feliciti

Species: Nekomata

Job: Pilot, Hacker, Tech Specialist.

Backstory: Gainax IV is home to not one, but four different sentient "shifter" species, along with separate subspecies that still fit into the same categories. The Nekomata, or Cat Shifter, is one such species, along with the Inumata, or Dog Shifter, Kumamata, or Bear Shifter, and the Kitsunemata, or Fox Shifter. Though these species all generally prefer their humanoid form, they have the ability to alter their form to that of an earth-like quadruped. Some, like the Nekomata and even certain subspecies of Inumata, can even adjust their size and mass on command, with certain limits, of course.

In their human form, Nekomata are humanoid, with the exception of digitigrade legs and clawed hands, along with pointed ears atop their heads and a tail whose length depends on the subspecies of Nekomata. Their arms, legs, ears and tail are covered in a thick layer of fur, which matches the natural color of the humanoid hair on their head, while their torsos and faces are mostly devoid of hair. It is extremely rare for a male Nekomata to grow facial hair in his lifetime, though not unheard of.

The Nekomata are, besides the Inumata, among the most technologically advanced civilizations in their home sector, even going so far as to colonize other stars, and blend in with pan-galactic civilization at large. It is not uncommon to see Nekomata wed to other species, and Nekomata culture even encourages inter-species partnerships. However, Nekomata tend to have very short attention spans and lose focus easily. Most have what some humans would call a "form of ADD." This does not stop them from accomplishing incredible achievements in their relatively short 30-40 year lifespan. Most Nekomata are artists and wandering inventors, and will often take several mates before settling down with the one the find most interesting. Polygamy is also greatly encouraged in Nekomata society, whereas Inumata are strictly monogamous.

Feliciti is a relatively young Nekomata at the age of 14, two years above adult age for her species. She has jet black hair and fur, and a long tail, with generally short fur. In her cat form, depending on her preferred size, she resembles either a black housecat, or a cougar. She is generally curious, even for a Nekomata, and enjoys learning new things, which is why she decided to leave her home planet of Gainax II and begin wandering the world. She is fairly laid back, and will often hide at the first sign of trouble to let someone else do the fighting. When she's behind a computer screen or at the helm of a starship, however, she becomes as fearless and bold as any war hero, although much more reckless, as well. She hates clothes, (another trait common to her species) and generally only wears the bare minimum for the purposes of common decency, preferring a tanktop and shorts if she has to wear anything at all. She is currently in love with her ship, The Lion's Pride, and will get pouty if her budget can't cover its usual repairs, which happens often.

[Draignean]

Everyone is accepted so far. Especially Sweejezus, +1 for the good writing. I dig it. I dig it a lot. Can i get a physical description of what he(?) looks like now? I want to make sure what I'm imagining is on point.

Swee is basically amorphous, a mass of cloned organs and limbs enmeshed with rampant circuitry and hardware. The two interface completely, but neither have much in the way of structure. Without something to cling to, he's basically a very slow and technologically apt shoggoth.
If you're more of a Deadspace than a Lovecraft person, you can think of him as the result of a boneless necromorph undergoing a high-speed collision with a RadioShack.

Because of his interface with Archibald, his typical biomasss is stretched over a suite of mostly-consumed gnomish power armor. So he's short, squat, thick, and horrible. Not that this will prevent him from using action-movie pickup lines at any available opportunity.

(Draignean will probably recognize this character. )

That I do. Watch out for Lava!

[SeriousConcentrate]

* SC mines it out from above him. :I owaitshit

[AlleeCat]

I hope you guys don't mind that I gave us the ship and its name.
Also, my character concept is Hoban Washburne meets Radical Edward meets a werecat. Then again, I put a little Ed into every one of my characters, because I so adore her.