Far Colony [OOC]: Science Fiction Planetary Colonization Adventure/Drama

[HeySeuss]

IC is up.

A cover for a collection of Isaac Asimov's short stories by Peter Elson

TL;DR Summary:

• Science Fiction setting; a just-colonized planet
• Inspired by Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Frank Herbert, Philip Dick and Peter Hamilton; all sci-fi authors.
• The colony is just getting set up; soil detox, water purification and building homes, as well as prefab buildings.
• Rip van Winkle themes; the colonists have been in suspension way longer than anticipated due to unforeseen difficulties. Some of them died in the tanks due to mechanical failure.
• Characters should have useful skills and trades that would come in handy in a working, self sufficient colony. They are trained to be frontierspeople, to set up the colony for later. There are relatively few military types, though they have a militia-type familiarization with personal weaponry; these are engineers, farmers, electricians, technicians of various sorts.
• Technology level is roughly equivalent to what was shown in the Aliens movies, though there is AI, AI-assisted auto-fabrication and other advanced technologies.
• Advanced level RP, but see below; I have a little note on advanced posting standards and the posting for this RP.
• G-Docs and IRC(chat) will be used to help collaboration.
• Role Requests; I have certain roles that I want to fill out, but I also want some flexibility so that more than one character can fill another's role.
• You are also allowed to play several NPC's and semi-PC type characters, or even a second character, if you wish. There is one secret role request that will require an outright character later in the RP as well.
• Character roles are not first-come, first-served; characters will be accepted on the basis of how they fit the plot (though I will bring up concerns in PM, and you may submit first in PM for feedback in private before posting.)
• I doubt this is a problem, or at least I hope this is an unnecessary point: Keep the OOC polite.

Table of Contents:

• The In Character Thread
• The IRC for the Roleplay - This is the chat channel where we can discuss things; a click will take you to mibbit which hooks you up directly. I'm not always here, but my client is open.
• My Contact Info - You can get me through various types of IM as well.

Character Listing

• VICTOR (HeySeuss) - the AI; at the time of launch, the most sophisticated computer and AI system ever devised, intended to assist in all aspects of the colony operation.
• Kasper van Wyk (HeySeuss) - Survey Operations Specialist
• Dr. Neill Scott (HeySeuss) - Colonial Executive
• Professor Jungen von Braun (mbl) - Chief of Information Technology
• Dr. Johanna Livingstone (Zacharius) - Chief Psychiatrist
• Dr. Diana Langlois (Elaftheria) - Chief Medical Officer
• Smith Granderson (mdk) - Colonial Vice Executive
• Aiden Reese(Prometheus) - Head of Security
• Major Kenny Breyman (Doedie) - Executive Officer of Security
• Dr. Abigail McPherson (MST3K 4ever) - Head of Biology

In Character Info:

In 2182, Voyager Industries offers a new life to the bold and the intelligent, the cream of society; others have to pay companies to take them to a new life on an established planet or buy criminals or hire the desperate as slave labor to hack out the wilds and turn them habitable for follow-on colonists, but Voyager instead looks for people with the right skills, talents, fitness and psych profiles to staff their colonies; it's a long term investment. The colonists come to the new planet, carve civilization out and earn their keep as workers, using their industriousness and natural talent to set up the planet for those who come afterward. They are not paid wages, but are given a stake in the planet's profits, a hefty incentive that brings the best and the brightest marching for Voyager's offices.

The trip is decades long in stasis tanks in ships called 'colonial arks' but at the end of the voyage is a new world. They arrive seemingly on schedule but with several systems failures in their colonial ark, things that the maintenance log does not explain. The maintenance staff on ship at the time died, and no one was 'thawed' out to take up their shift for some reason. The colonists emerge on their new planet, expected to build the fundamentals of living with their equipment; set up sustainable food, power sources, habitation and terraforming.

They think everything is going according to plan when they land. They're in for a surprise.

Out of Character Info:

The characters will be colonists on this new planet, very bright, accomplished people (probably young and just finished their educations for the most part, people that have the physical strength and mental adaptability to hack it in the wilds) and then trained by Voyager in basic survival skills, including how to operate weaponry (just in case.) It is almost like military training, but it's more oriented toward how to build and repair things, how to dig ditches and encampments, and the fundamentals of sanitation and so forth. People would come in with skills and educations in various areas, but they'd also be cross-training to learn how to do the jobs of others; the idea is to set up a colony that can sustain itself while expanding for follow on colonists. It is a first; colonies have never been established so far out in space before; most of the colonies are closer to Earth; this colony will be fare more autonomous.

The colony isn't just about survival, of course, it is about marketability; they are trying to make a nice place to live, a space colony version of the surburban American dream, a place you want to spend time, a lifetime, living in. The idea is to provide good jobs, a nice environment, amenities, comforts and the sort of society they want to live in. It's an attempt to create an ideal place to live for their sort of people; the idea is to also find and capitalize upon what native resources exist; stocks of food, medicine and technological parts will need replacing, and that means setting up the means to produce medical compounds and parts, as well as the difficult task of setting up sustainable agriculture on-planet. But the technology Voyager provide and the skills of the settlers should be sufficient for the task and then some; it is expected that there will be coffee shops with wireless internet within the first year of operation, if all goes according to the plan; yet the expectation is that the colonists will move ahead of schedule, because these are energetic and educated people, the cream of the crop, deliberately recruited for their motivation as much as their skills.

In short; they're highly educated people, most of them anyway, with magna and summa honors from graduating college, probably with some postgraduate degrees, possibly doctorates, and they largely are fleeing Earth's bullshit and are trying to start over. Colonization by this sort of person is viewed as a slightly innovative concept, or one doomed to fail, because most colonies are started with industrial goals in mind, such as mining, and the colonists are often deportees and otherwise signed under duress rather than a sense of adventure -- troublesome political groups, ethnic/religious groups and outright criminals are often your typical colonists in the first wave, worked under what amounts to slavery conditions. Voyager's concept is different, billed as the way forward and much rides on the success of this colony.

Of course, there is a twist. The colonists are several hundred years out of date when they finally do land; the trip was supposed to take decades, but there was a miscalculation in navigation; an asteroid or other anomaly got in the way of the ship and the navigation computer automatically corrected course to avoid this, throwing off the ship's arrival time...and disabling some of the drive systems in the process. To make matters worse, the computer system had to switch to a backup near arrival; the clock and calendar do not reflect the true date; as far as the colonists are aware, they're on schedule, though they arrived with dead crew; the maintenance shift that was on duty when the disaster happened died and no other maintenance shifts thawed out; the ship arrived pretty battered, but managed to survive intact enough to do its job.

What the colonists know when they land is that they gotta get to work and wait for the follow-ups, the contact from Voyager Inc, and the infusion of people paying to live on their planet. They don't realize that anything is chronologically amiss at first, because the building of the colony is consuming them; it's a hard, spartan life akin to that of colonists on Earth's North American continent in the 17th century; making something out of a wild and untamed land, living rough and making do without a lot of the creature comforts of modernity; but they signed on for a different life, out of a sense of idealism.

As it turns out, that idealism is out of date and they are an anachronism.

Colony Profile:

Voyager Incorporated started in the early 2100's as a communications satellite manufacturer using the latest in materials and communications technology. However, in 2164, a team led by Dr. Neill Scott used original work by the young MIT graduate to create the Nagashima-Ashley-Scott Communications Array (NASCA) that stretched the boundaries of viable communications between colony worlds of Earth, at the time limited to Mars and the Solar System and very nearby stars, for which communication, limited to light speed, was viable. The technology was initially meant to enable faster communications uplink between extra-solar probes and Earth, but also, as a consequence, made colonization beyond the Solar System viable.This did not speed up the ability of ships to arrive on new planets and return to Earth, but it did allow for faster communication once those links were made.

Before, colonization beyond Pluto wasn't happening because of the loss of contact, but now it was possible...though colonization focused on buying convicts and undesirables from various regimes in an attempt to gain cheap labor that no one would care about, disposable people. Only a few really worried about the welfare of convicts, for the most part, or really concerned themselves with the conditions they worked under in these mining colonies. But what did rankle, particularly in the scientific community, was that their innovations were taking convicts and corporate suits to the stars and benefitting the suits, but the rest of humanity was generally stuck on Earth, or maybe the Lunar or Martian colonies, or perhaps the Jupiter or Saturn moons. The main adventure, colonizing an actual planet on the fringes that could support life, seemed unlikely.

Voyager was doing well though; it monopolized communications technology through NASCA patents and an army of the sharpest lawyers on Earth, and it managed to spin off technologies allowing limited use of faster-than-light travel derived from the initial breakthrough in order to create probes that could stretch further out into space, and report back. When a suitable planet was discovered, with a very primitive plant and insect life only and a soil type that could be made compatible with Earth plants after processing, the Aeneas project was announced, fueled largely by the passion of Dr. Neill Scott, who very publicly signed himself on as the first colonist and took on the role of the Executive of Aeneas...to the secret relief of much of the board of Directors.

Scott, always the visionary, announced the following: Aeneas was a colony by scientists for humanity, a better way forward than sending slaves into space to finish out their lives mining out of some airless rock, and that the Aeneas Project would return on investment immensely by facilitating research beyond Earth's wildest dreams of what could be accomplished back at home. It was a one way ticket, but it brought the idealists marching; there was risk, but the prospective colonists reckoned the price worth paying for a variety of reasons. They had a chance to leave Earth, with all its man-made discontentments and problems, there was the chance to make a better society away from it, the opportunity to engage in unparalleled research and make exciting new discoveries, a sense of mission in one's life work, a sense of calling in finding and taming a new place. That idealism infuses the scientific side of the venture. Even some of the people on the corporate side are buying into the party line, though the company sent minders to keep the project on task. So much was invested in the project, because Scott was a heavy hitter in not only the company, but as a stockholder and to the scientific community at large; he used his influence to purchase the development projects he needed, the technologies he wanted and saw use for. He drove Aeneas from a pipe dream and steered it into a reality.

With great fanfare, a sleepship, a particle sail-driven colonial ark, propelled with technology derived from the NASCA team's breakthroughs and which would carry the colony in stasis, was launched with a cargo of Humanity's best and brightest, its adventurous idealists who were willing to translate word and thought into deed and example.

And it was never heard from again.

Significant Events (Timeline):

• Day 1 - arrival near the planet Aeneas, systems working on backup, many systems are down and on backups. Due to damage to systems, auto-wakeup crew are activated immediately; the return from stasis to normal functioning takes seven days with computer systems monitoring it.
• Day 7 - the first technical and survey teams are woken up to establish the colony. Medical and Emergency Technical specialists quickly try to fix what is broken to stabilize the colonial ark for subsequent operations.
• Day 15 - surface landings and exploration of potential colony sites begin.
• Day 32 - the colony begins building on-planet, once surveys are completed. Construction rapidly progresses through pre-fabricated units.
• Day 140 - half of colonists thawed out and put to work. As the construction progresses, more units within the colony start their work.
• Day 212 - VICTOR, the colony's AI, is brought online.
• Day 223 - satellite net deployed, sending communications back to Earth with progress reports to Voyager Inc.
• Day 267 - agricultural self-sufficiency through hydroponics, including water purification and geothermal/solar power.
• Day 345 - (First day IC)

Character Roles:

This is a list of the roles in the RP that I definitely know I will need, but one does not need to be exclusively these things and good ideas will always be considered; this is a wishlist of the stuff I've thought of.

• The Head of Security - Security is on the colony for two reasons -- to deal with physical threats to the colony, though this is very much secondary to the counterespionage role. Other companies want Voyager's secrets. The Aeneas Project represents huge unknown outcomes and potential breakthroughs that could be worth everything to rival companies...or governments back on Earth. Security's task is made more difficult by the fact that scientists like to share things and that these scientists view Security as largely unnecessary -- Earth's in the rearview, right?
  
• Chief of Agronomy and Farming Operations - The person in charge of feeding the colony; making sure that food can grow on Aeneas, in charge of seeding it with livestock and agricultural crops, the person that is at the forefront of making the colony self sufficient.

• Executive Assistant - VICTOR is useful, but some of the functions of a good assistant involve politics and dealing with the people. The Executive Assistant is an intern and an understudy of the colony's leadership, a bright young person that often finds themselves in the middle of office intrigue by dint of their position...they are also often sent for coffee, but that unglamorous image doesn't change that this person has access to the decisionmakers and works with them and that they are being groomed for a bigger job down the road.
  
• Rival Corporation's Agent - In return for financial consideration or other concessions, this character is trying to ferret out the secrets of Aeneas. Interested parties should PM -- this can be any character, but they will not be known to the other players.
  
• Chief of Engineering - The person that builds and maintains the facility and oversees a variety of operations from picking sites for buildings to manufacturing the equipment that the scientists come up with, though much of that job is handled through VICTOR.
  
• This list is not a complete list -- you can come up with other character concepts as you please. Most characters should be the heads of departments in the place, or second in commands. There are departments for biology, engineering and so forth.

This second list includes suggested character concepts and hooks;

• Security Executive Officer - If the character in charge of security is military, this person should have a police/counterintelligence background. If the character in charge of security has a police background, this person should be military. They should play off each other a bit.
  
• Chief of Operations - A catch-all for the guy responsible for repairs, maintenance and cleaning and so forth, the mundane stuff of the facility. This is not a glamorous job, but it is vital. Stuff needs to be moved, cleaned, dusted, fixed. You can't send a bunch of scientists out and expect them to fix their own plumbing...well, you can, but it's an inefficient use of their time.
  
• Orbital Operations/EVA - Someone experienced in this stuff will be needed to repair satellites and other things of that nature.
  
• Cybernetics and Robotics - An expert in the use of prosthetics and so forth -- Aeneas has cutting edge medical tech and research facilities, it means that a variety of experts are here to work on all sorts of projects.
  
• Biologist/Geneticist/Botanist/Zoologist/Mineralogist, etc... - The science guys. Your character's discipline will probably be extremely important in some fashion.

Character Sheet:

Name:
Gender:
Age:

Appearance:

(Picture or Text; your call. I'm more of a text guy, myself.)

Bio:

(Education, background, how they wound up in Voyager's program)

Psychological Profile:

(Views of human colonization, the company, politics, what back on earth is like, this is all important. Attitudes toward authority and bureaucracy will also be extremely useful here.)

Skillset/Occupation:

(The character's primary skill; weaponry isn't in high demand, because interstellar warfare is not particularly expected when they are launched. Relatively few cops, too, because the sort of people who can't cooperate or abide by the laws and are of a criminal tendency by nature are weeded out hardcore in the psych evaluations. Of course, just in case something unexpected happens, they do exist, but the colonists probably see them as useless mouths to feed.)

Relationships and Acquaintances:

(You do not need to fill this out immediately, but this should include other characters, after you talk it over with various players as the RP fills out, as well as NPC contacts they have in various parts of the colony, mostly to help flesh things out.)

About Posting

The important thing I've learned about roleplaying in Advanced is this; sometimes you need shorter posts in order to accomplish the goal of dialogue. While this belongs in Advanced strictly because of the depth of the setting and the reality that large posts will happen, I am not going to pull my hair out if you post short posts and leave it open for quick dialogue responses -- in fact, I am encouraging this.

This is what it boils down to; if you want to just do two paragraphs a post here to allow for dialogue and responses and then post behind it, do that. Do what you gotta do for a back and forth dialogue. The other option is Google Documents (G-Docs) which I think is an awesome tool for constructing a longer post with dialogue. How you do it, basically, is up to you, but I want to correct a long standing problem in my RP's, which is often that I feel compelled to post big but miss out on characters interacting.

So that's how we'll roll; don't worry about advanced standards, post as you see most fit and most expedient for the goal and the situation. If you don't need a big post, but are gunning for interaction, don't feel that there is a problem with posting short.

[Zacharius]

Oh cool, it's back. I'll make time for this :P

Leaning towards Psychiatrist or Head of Security rather than the research role I've traditionally played,

[Elaftheria]

I saw this in the interest check and loved it. Working on a CS for approval as chief medical.

[HeySeuss]

Name: Dr. Neill Scott
Gender: Male
Age: 51

Appearance:

Dr. Scott is about 5'9" or so, average build with reddish-blonde hair, a strong chin and a high forehead. His ears tend to protrude just a bit. By the same token, his nose is a tad bulbous from the drinking. His hair has thinned over the years, but it has not receded to the point where he needs to comb it over.

While graying a bit, Dr. Scott has the benefit of immense wealth to his name; the time, leisure and even drive to commit to physical fitness so that he is actually about a decade younger, physically, than his biological age. He's in better shape than he was when the NASCA was finally built. He could have gotten the best flesh-sculpting treatments available, especially since he is extensively DNA-therapied for superior cardiovascular health and organ performance, but he never bothered to have his ears fixed, figuring that if the world doesn't like his mug, the world can fuck itself. He's taken to wearing rock n' roll t-shirts and shorts on the colony, reveling in 'freedom from the suits.' He doesn't believe in corporate dress code out here.

Bio:

Scott was born to Scottish parents in the United States, workers in information technology. As a second-generation geek, he was raised middle class but with an awareness of tech and a curiosity that came with the encouragement of his parents. It carried him through high school and a series of honors programs and into a scholarship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he excelled in physics and astroengineering, always intent on expanding the envelope of human communications as the first step in expanding humanity's reach and scope. He quickly became known as not merely a technological maestro, but a visionary leader and a strong team-builder.

His work on behalf of the United States government was bought out by a small technological research and development concern and he, along with the team he led, managed to create breakthroughs that led to more and greater investment, buyouts and eventually, buyout from Voyager Industries. When NASCA finally bore fruit, through the manipulation of particles that could be agitated to move far faster than the speed of light, greatly increasing the ability to send messages out and, eventually, to power solar sail technology to a degree where an extended range for colonial ships was possible, Voyager reaped. Dr. Scott, who was astute enough financially, or at least confident in himself, enough to have stock in Voyager, reaped one of the great hauls of the century financially. Humanity was poised for a leap into a new age thanks to his research.

But over the years, nothing seemed to replace the sense of vision he felt on working on NASCA, the breakthrough communications array he designed. There was spinoff work, but it seemed pale in comparison to the original discovery. He was so rich that he was constantly sought after by opportunists, as well as gold-diggers (which is why he didn't marry) and he became a recluse in Macau, scorning the company of anyone but the obviously self-interested; prostitutes and fellow gamblers and party animals; people he could easily get rid of if they started to piss him off, people whose monetary relationship with him was clear and who were limited in their ability to influence him. During this period, he watched the politicians and 'the suits' take over his discoveries and fritter them, shipping criminals and scum into space while squandering his vision for mere lucre and profit, ignoring the potentials and avoiding the risks.

In 2178, there was a rock bottom in Bangkok with two hookers, one of whom said something that set his mind off, despite the fog of a huge hangover, while watching a morning news show, talking about the Martian Intervention, a massacre, with the most terrible of raw footage; dead children stacked like kindling, slaughter and death all around, troops in exoskeletal armored suits under the auspices of the United Nations fighting mercenaries in the employ of Astral Horizon Inc, the company that ran Mars as a supply point for other colonies, but far too late to save anything. It was business as usual in colonial ventures, but stomach-churning nonetheless.

The Thai hooker said something to the effect of "Why bother? Nothing ever changes."

"The fuck it doesn't!" exclaimed Scott, suddenly pissed off at himself and the world. He had the power in his hands, so he figured, to make a difference, but instead of doing something about it, he settled for Earth's status quo.

Thus was Aeneas born. There was ship construction, but it wasn't hard to acquire the latest-build colonial ark through corporate maneuvering. It wasn't hard to start organizing recruitment and training efforts. It took four years to get everything together and launch, and in that time, Scott underwent extensive therapy and physical fitness sessions to make himself ready for what would come, as a man on a mission. He traded in his influence with Voyager, the corporation, in return for his investiture as the executive of the Aeneas Colony; the board, tired of the pushy Scots-American, were all too happy to take him up on his offer and send him off into space, where he would bedevil them no more.

Psychological Profile:

Scott is an innovator, but more than that, he is a proven leader, a visionary and a strong personality; some find that very hard to take, because he is not shy about his ego. It is often joked that he left Earth because his ego was too large for it, but there is an element of truth to that -- he relishes the idea of being able to run the show himself on Aeneas, and seeing his baby, his technologies, flourish on this place. He treats the project with fatherly regard, but in the way of founding fathers, he can be stubborn and entrenched. He isn't stupid, however, and statistic proof and expertise go a long way toward changing his opinion...but the person doing that changing had better be right. At times, his ability to read people seems uncanny, and some tests that Voyager ran on all colonists came back with interesting results that might indicate unusual brain activity. He had the results forwarded to the Church of Scientology with the following message, "Fuck you."

Unauthorized biographies, and some psychiatrists, have painted Scott as a paranoid meglomaniac and point to his former lifestyle of alcoholism, some drug use, gambling addiction and prostitute patronization as signs that he is not entirely all there mentally and may be unbalanced; though taken to an extreme, these flaws are present in Scott's psychological makeup in varying degrees; he has had a nervous breakdown in the past, though Voyager psychiatric screening showed that he seemed to be coping quite well with things and was focused on the mission and its well-being, and that the focus provided much-needed clarity to keep him going.

Scott is comfortable with his own authority, but tends to distrust organizations larger than him, he hates having his style crimped by others. His attitudes toward Earth was that it was a government of the lowest common denominator, slow, inefficient, overly burdened by bureaucracy and considerations besides efficiency and too entrenched a 'beastie' to ever actually slay. He views Aeneas as a chance for humanity to 'reset' and intends to make the most of it. While he is committed to the betterment of humanity, he makes no bones about it; he's somewhat happy to have left all the 'numpties' and 'bawbags' behind in his wake.

Despite these character flaws, Neill Scott is genial, in a patriarchal sort of way. While he is acknowledged as temperamental, he is also passionate about his people, his project and doing things differently and better. Aeneas is his baby, just as the NASCA was, and he intends to make the most of it for the greatest good. In the end, despite his cynicism about human nature, he is an idealist and a romantic.

Skillset/Occupation:

Graduate and doctorate level education in physics through MIT and a, to say the least, considerable research and development background. Despite all this, he is primarily, these days, a team leader, the guy holding it together. He relishes this role as a reprise of the same sort of energy as the first days of working on NASCA. His managerial skills are considered excellent, though he is not the type that likes to hear excuses about beans and paper clips; he leads naturally and from the front, and has a dislike for insufficiently justified regulation.

Relationships and Acquaintances:

TBD - as characters are approved.

[dreamshell]

This looks really great and I like the emphasis on the science and exploration of colonization and the styles of classic SF authors. I'm tempted to throw my hat into the ring, but unfortunately, I find myself actually feeling a bit out of my depth for a RPG for once! I have plenty of enthusiasm for science, but I'll admit I have little formal education in regards to its many fields and no real familiarity with the academic culture and politics that go along with it.

The closest role I think I could maybe pull off without looking too much like a fool is the duplicitous suit. An underhanded manipulator pushing the company agenda sounds more up my alley, though I may need to give myself a crash course on some corporate argot. Otherwise, I may just follow this for my own enjoyment, which should still be plenty rewarding.

EDIT: I quite like Dr. Scott's profile. He feels like a very 20th-century counterculture SF hero; brilliant, chafing and defiant against authority and something of a lovable curmudgeon. Reminds me a bit of Jubal Harshaw or Lazarus Long, two favorites.

[Zacharius]

​Generally WIP, I'll edit in more detail, but right now I have essays to write and such.

Name: ​Doctor Johanna Livingstone
Gender: Female
Age: 30

Appearance:


Bio:

The young girl Mary Fisher was born to Texan oil worker (a dying, but still lucrative, industry), Brick Fisher and his wife Margaret in the deep south, looking forward to little in the way of social mobility, or at least, with little pressure from her parents to do so. Despite this, she excelled at school, right through to High School where she became increasingly interested in the sciences, specifically developing a personal focus on the human brain and behavior. Even as she was forced into getting a part time job at a local fast food joint, rather than enhance her studies, Mary used this opportunity to not only save for future expenses, but also to conduct her own amateur psychological studies on the myriad of customers she encountered, while equally developing a disdain for the people she encountered.

While she was simply expected to carry on her life in the same line as her parentage, Mary began applying to universities, taking tests without her parents knowledge and forming plans to somehow enroll without them ever discovering, using the general low income of her family to apply to grants, making estimates into the specific numbers of such, which would have eventually led to some investigation as to her claims were it not for the Deep Crust Mining disaster which would spell the end to the American Oil industry and to the life of her father. Quickly followed by the death of her mother, who committed suicide (officially, it wasn't very thoroughly investigated), Mary inherited the remaining assets of her family, which she quickly sold off. With this added finance and some scholarship offers, Mary, now 19, changed her name to Johanna Livingstone, and left to Harvard University to study Psychology. Quickly losing any trace of a Texan accent in her general speech, Johanna reinvented herself as a East Coast local, before studying at NYU School of Medicine to finish her training as a psychiatric doctor. Staying on for a number of years for various research courses, having achieved nigh on record breaking success at an undergraduate level, she was eventually forced to call an end to her education when the entirety of her funds dried up, any funding provided by the university not being enough to sustain the quality of life she had grown used to. This was where Voyager Industries stepped in. Well aware of the potential mental fallout of shooting people into space, they had become increasingly interested in hiring a team of experts in the field, and Johanna was at the time, both an expert and a fresh face in the field. The terms were fairly lucrative, control over her own small team of study and the ability to more than sustain herself. Proving herself, yet again, a strong addition to the process, she was selected to accompany the colonists to the stars.

Psychological Profile:
Johanna's views on all matters generally correlate with what they can do for her, and what is most pragmatic at the time. She is loyal to the company in so far as it has provided her with great opportunities, but she would not risk her hide or station for it, equally, she is not overly tied to any end of the spectrum of authority, as long as she is able to perform her role and it does not impact on her own quality of life.

She cares for her patients, although as much for academic worth as genuine concern, although with time the fire of ambition has been somewhat tempered with care for her fellow humans, not that the later is anywhere near enough to stifle the later.


Skillset/Occupation:
-Colony Psychologist.
-Generally a high ranking member of the colony, as an adviser to general leadership.
-Quite an able marksman/general gun person (Texas hell yeah)


Relationships and Acquaintances:


​WIP

[DEMoGorgon47]

Character Sheet: Character of DEMoGorgon47 for the Colony Vice Executive Office

Name: Dante Luciano Jr.
Gender: Male
Age: 26

Appearance:
(Picture or Text; your call. I'm more of a text guy, myself.)

Bio: Coming from the prestigious Luciano family, proud owners and founders of Luciano Enterprises (think Wayne Enterprises), Dante has lived in a lifestyle of high class and privelage for his entire life. As a young boy he lived in the upperclass suberbs of New York, wtih a pent house within the very heart of New York City's financial district. As a young boy, Dante always had a love of money and power. But coupled with this was a strange natural charm and charisma that lead people to listen and follow him, and his natural brillance it was obvious he would become a large player in his future.. With this perfect mesh of attributes, Dante's grooming for a life in the company was impossible to stop, nor did Dante try to.

With Luciano Enterprises' unofficial monopoly on many of the markets throughout the world, there was no shortage of income to give Dante the very best in all regards. From being tutored by the finest private professors throughout the colonized planets to attending the finest private schools, Dante was always set for success. But coupled with his natural birth privelages, he was blessed with a keen mind, able to pick up on almost any subject with relative ease. By age 18, Dante was a top tier student, with the ability to go anywhere he wanted, and with the money to do so. Eventually he decided upon going to World Univeristy, the finest University that Earth (the most "superior" of all the colonized planets) had to offer. Located in the heart of London. As he was already groomed for a business by his family and background, Dante decided to expand his knowledge base and major in different fields. The first being phsycology. Hoping that with this base he could learn to read people and discover what they were thinking. The second being Political Administration. Due to the almost inevitable fact of having to deal with people of the political world upon inheriting Luciano Enterprises, Dante wanted to be as prepared as he could when facing such adversaries. With his brilliant mind he accelerated through the already accelerated classes and took his master's in both degrees (at the same time completing another minor course in business, just for even more grooming.) As a young, arrogant, and well-educated man, Dante set out to make his claim on world.

While his connections to the family gave him a low-ranking executive job, Dante's own skills were what propelled him through the ranks in such a short amount of time. By his 25th birthday, Dante was within the top ciricle of executives in Luciano Enterprises. The clear youngest by at minimum 20 years, Dante was a radical and a visionary on the board. He pushed the expanding of Luciano from merely shipping to off-planet colonies to colonizing themselves. The board, including Dante Sr., knowing the uncertainty of colonizing, was set against it. But Dante, being the ambitious man he was, had his own agendas. Using money he accumulated from work, investments, and some less than legal means, he began to buy subsidary business under his name. They were small coorperations, but he knew that under the umbrella of Luciano and his leadership he could mold them into much greater beings, possibly even able to compete with the mighter Voyager Company.

But with such a large spending spree (even though Dante continued to make money for the company and himself), it could not go unnoticed for long. The spies of the board that were set in Dante's deparments caught wind of his plan, and the board soon came down on Dante. Seizing his subsidaries and much of his in-business funds. In one fell swoop they sold all his plans off to the fast growing Voyager Company, and with Dante Sr.'s signature at the bottom, Dante Jr. was removed from his position.

Enraged, Dante left the family, taking whatever funds he could and placed them in the ever-loyal Swiss bank, well apart from his family and business's influence. After a year of much wandering, Dante found himself on the doorstep of the company who had taken all his subsidaries: Voyager. Knowing that many of these companies still were loyal to their ambitious buyer, who had helped get them off the ground in many ways, Voyager was more than happy to welcome Dante into their ranks. Under a new business allegience, Dante was soon assigned to oversee the colonization of the planet Aenea, where many of his subsidized companies (now split 50-50 between himself and Voyager) would be assisting in the colonization process.

Psychological Profile:
Dante is extremely pro-colonization and company. While he is part of Voyager, his true loyalties lie in an unknown location (most say to the highest bidder, which currently is Voyager). His political affiliations, like those of most big business men, are those that best serve his big business. All he wants in a leader is to make sure that his money has a say in their policies. He views Earth as the epitome of civilization, and wants to emmulate it on this knew planet. As for authority, he believes in his authority, and is especially resentful to others who try to step in his zone of control (though has no qualms about stepping into theirs). In fact, he often tries to make political and business manuevers to remove the competition and centralize more power upon himself. Bureaucracy is his homeland, and the capitalist system is the flag he waves.

Skillset/Occupation:
Second in Command of the Colony, and the logistics official. He keeps the branches running smoothly and keeps everything profitable. He is also Luciano Enterprises' representative, and thus has considerable sway in colonial affairs (especially because his company helped pay for much of the program). Other than that he has only limited knowledge in other fields such as science and defense. Just the basics, so as to have some comprehension as to what those branches of the colony are doing, how successful they are being, and how much money they need to be allotted.

Relationships and Acquaintances:
Being in a position of such high power, Dante's "acquaintances" are those within that upper tier. And none of them are his friends, as he views them as potential threat to his, and his companies, power. In terms of relationships of a romantic sense, Dante has none. As a strictly business/political man, he cares very little for such feelings as "love" and "passion." However, he does have a large sexual appetitie, often pursuing the most attractive women for his pleasure.

[mbl]

Name: Professor Jungen Von Braun
Gender: Male
Age: 58


Appearance:
5'9''. Not at all muscular, he is about as unfit as it would be safe for a space colonist to be. Not attractive but certainly not ugly to the point that it was noticeable. Blonde hair and very pretty blue eyes that he is often complimented on.

Bio:
Jungen was born a middle-child a lower-class Austrian family. His mother a housewife and his father blue-collar worker making far too little money to properly support Jungen and his many siblings, thus his family lived in poverty. From an early age his displayed an intelligence far above that of his family members, to the point that he was almost outcasted as the family's 'saving grace': the child who was going to go on to do great things and make loads of money and ensure that the rest of the family never had to work again. When it came time for his secondary education, he boarded with his uncle who lived close to a well respected gymnasium (German high-demand highschool, like US prep schools) that Jungen eventually received a scholarship acceptance into. He worked hard and performed amazingly well in the school and graduated at the top of his class, and receiving a scholarship education at one of the most respected Universities in the country, which he used to learn advanced programming, mathematics, and theory.

Over the course of his education, Jungen developed a passion for AI development. With his high level of education he held important positions in many of the most influential projects in the advancement of AI development. After one of his latter projects, he was invited to teach AI development and general programming theory at a respected university (somewhere... location doesn't really matter). His position as one of the worlds leading experts, if not the only leading expert, on AI's made him an obvious choice to manage the most advanced AI to date after the death of Dr. Zupan, even if he did not have much direct influence in the development project.


Psychological Profile:
Jungen was raised and educated under constant assurance by those around him that he was the smartest person they had ever met. This left him with a sort of minor superiority complex that was then expanded upon by going to some of the most demanding schools he knew of, surrounded by the brightest minds of his generation and leaving them all in his dust. He's developed a sort of megalomania: he almost believes he is the most intelligent man in the universe. He is certainly not rude enough to act like a superior know-it-all type, but even surrounded by the greatest scientific minds, people who obviously are well versed in things he knows little about, he will probably consider himself the smartest person in the room by far. Going against his relatively fragile appearance, Jungen's narcissistic complexes leave him with an air of confidence that often lead to him taking a dominant role in conversations. While he may have some delusional tendencies, Jungen is a very logical and likable man.

Skillset/Occupation: Chief of Information Technology
Primarily skilled in programming, but he the knowledge of mathematics and general sciences appropriate to be a person of his station. The focus of his work being AI development and monitoring, he is also versed in psychology and education. Having spent a good portion of his life working in arguably the most complex field of programming out there, he is also a very good puzzle/problem solver.

Also, just from the way his life has gone, he is a strong linguist and is versed in many popular spoken languages.


Relationships and Acquaintances:
N/A Currently

[HeySeuss]

Added new roles; Executive Assistant, Rival Corporation's Agent, Chief of Engineering. I will do approvals and so forth after work is finished, probably in about an hour.

[HeySeuss]

Name: Kasper "Kas" van Wyk
Gender: Male
Age: 32
Appearance:

van Wyk is a sufferer of early male-pattern baldness, and as a result keeps his hair short to avoid the "Michael Bolton" effect of long hair and a ridiculously receding hairline. Other than that, he's a fairly normal fellow, though ruddy and wind-beaten, but not some sort of big musclehead with the weights, but he is in considerable good shape.

Bio:

Born and raised in the Transvaal of South Africa to Afrikaner parents in 2150, Kas van Wyk came of age just when the colonization craze was getting underway, and always had the ambition to do it. Getting into space wasn't too hard; he joined the South African army and then underwent Selection with the Recces, the South African Special Forces Brigade, because the Recces were one of the units often tapped for extra-orbital operations in places like Mars and Luna. He found out quickly that the companies doing colonization didn't want decent folk that wanted rights and had demands; actual colonization didn't happen for people who weren't criminals or political exiles, and so he watched as the scum of the universe headed off into it. Many people felt this way, watching the shitheads ship out while they were stuck on Earth by edict of other shitheads.

Service included:

• Belorussian Emergency Relief of 2170
• Ceres Terror Crisis of 2171
• the Lunar Uprisings of 2173-4
• Israel-Palestine border peacekeeping rotation in 2176
• Yucatan Peninsula Cartel Wars of 2177
• Martian Intervention of 2178 (when the UN went in with a peacekeeping operation on Mars, only to have the security forces of the Martian Management Authority, run by ZFK Incorporated, fire on them; van Wyk was part of the assault forces that put down the security forces.)

van Wyk has served in several combat and peacekeeping operations, including extraterrestrial deployments and notably in the Martian Intervention of 2178. Always plagued with labor relations problems, Zhang-Frost-Kunkel Incorporated, the management company in charge of the Martian Commercial Authority, used a more draconian model of strike-breaking by sending mercenaries to assassinate labor leaders. As things escalated, the ZFG Security Forces used lethal force to make laborers work and the company itself started selling anyone that they suspected of being involved in the anti-Authority Insurgency to penal colonies, illegally. Through the work of a number of reporters, ZFK's activities were exposed, but when told to cease and desist, their response to the UN was a "Fuck you, we have more troops than you do. Come and get us." UN Forces did just that, despite the dare, though military experts warned that the fight would be too bloody to be worth it. There were far more forces on Mars working for ZFK than the UN could really control without bombarding with nukes from orbit, and the UN mandate did not allow for that. ZFK was confident that the UN would back down.

However, UN forces were equipped with brand new-issue armored combat exoskeletons and this unexpected technological advantage shifted the outcome in favor of UN forces, though the intervention did not do much to save those laborers caught up in the dispute. Shortly after the wrapup of the operation, van Wyk opted out of re-enlistment and went his own way, disgusted with what he saw.

When Voyager announced their Aeneas program, van Wyk contacted their recruiters and went in for an interview; while he had some coursework at various South African universities during his down time between service deployments, what sold the recruiters was his familiarity with scientific study procedure, experience in alien and hostile environments and his adaptability. In the end, he'd told them that he was perfectly fine with the idea of signing on as a gofer, a grunt worker and an expendable, though he turned down a job with Security, citing a distaste for doing 'copper work.' He argued persuasively that his experience with extra-terrestrial environments and the outdoors made him a much more natural fit in Survey. After consultations, it was agreed that he would be assigned to Survey; despite his lack of as much scientific background as the others in Survey, his skillset was considered highly useful.

His service with the Recces lasted a decade before he signed on with Voyager; while he was considered an 'atypical' or 'unconventional' candidate by HR, it was noted that his IQ was comparable to the higher end of the baseline established for the colony and that he was willing to take extra university of Free State coursework in preparation of the job; Voyager provided a basic training of sorts for colonists in weapons handling, basic survival and other essentials, but this requirement was waived for van Wyk, who was instead brought in to help improve that sort of field training for the colonists who didn't have a background in various things they'd need to learn relating to basic tasks; they were specialists in their fields, but they needed to know how to weld.

He was assigned to the survey teams, functioning as a deep-ranging explorer of alien terrain, a job that required a degree of expendability not found among the typical brilliant researcher types. Kas van Wyk didn't mind; the job got him out to the stars, away from Earth and all the bullshit; the venal politicians, the corps going at it, the lot. The job is tough; scouting out alien terrain and coming back alive to report it, but so long as you're careful and make sure your equipment all works -before- going back, it's not as bad as the lab-rats think it is.

Personality/Psychology:

Intelligent and resourceful; he understands and accepts the risks of his job, and it may be that he's a bit of an adrenaline junkie. That being the case, the colony provides all the adrenaline anyone needs. Back at the colony, he tries to keep his head down, out of the way of anyone that seems overly in charge, as in corporate brass, so as to hopefully escape their notice and closer supervision; like his ancestors, he isn't much of a company man, and prefers to do the job efficiently and independently. The Voyager HR people that hired him seemed to understand this, and Dr. Scott was given the chance of downchecking van Wyk. Luckily, van Wyk hasn't exactly done much to make himself out as a loose cannon or a rebel; he is of a different background, as an Afrikaner farmer kid and military type, but he meshes well with the scientists for two reasons; he wants to see as much of the world as he can out of a sense of curiosity that relishes the new and unexpected, and he is not the gung-ho type.

van Wyk left the South African National Defense Forces but seems disinclined to continue a military career of any sort; he has made a 'clean break' with it and does not suffer from PTSD. Psychiatric reports indicate that he is, in fact, one of the more stable members of the colony.

Skillset/Occupation:

Survey Specialist. He has a variety of fieldcraft and practical survival skills; South African Recces are well known for being rugged specimens, and while he does not look like an action movie hero, he is good at getting around in rough terrain; land navigation, sample collection, photography and general scouting. He is, of course, good with a gun, but seems to largely prefer not to use one on the local wildlife; he much prefers finding methods of repelling local wildlife that doesn't involve killing it. As far as he's concerned, the military life is well behind him and his job, these days, is that of a xenonaturalist; he definitely considers himself part of the scientific team, and once they got to know him and appreciate his skills, the scientific team took to him as one of their own. While he is not academically trained to the PhD level in the sciences, he is quickly learning from the best in the field even as he imparts to them the skills necessary for fieldcraft and survival in a dangerous environment.

Relationships/Acquaintances:

TBD