The Red M - OOC

[Riknas]

The Red M OOC

Interest Check

IC

The Red M is a group of privateers (space pirates) led by Reiker Masan and Richard Corbeaux, commissioned by the Arrian Mining Consortium. As such, Reiker and his crew are paid to commandeer ships not associated with the Consortium, and have their cargo brought to facilities better affiliated with the company. Which is to say, they are paid to raid and plunder ships any ships that are not working for them. As a result, they find themselves taking over freighters filled with mineral wealth, assaulting convoys with supplies precious to any developing colony, and capturing yachts with the rich and affluent on board; they face off against the navy forces assigned to protect the convoys and freighters, the private security forces of the wealthy aristocrats, and sometimes other privateers.

Privateering, while not a low paying occupation, is far from a safe career, and is neither stable nor consistent. Many would-be privateers find themselves arrested or killed on their first missions, while others discover the field of work is too morally gray for their liking. As such, there is always room for new bodies to enter this special line of work.

As a player, you are one of the Red M's newer crew or a freelancer that has recently been hired by the Consortium.

This story will be run and administrated by myself and my Co-GM Jester. That said, we have a slightly different way of approaching the thread application process. We tend to be rather selective, and for now we will not be taking more than five people. As the story continues on, new slots may open up for more characters to join. That said, if we find that a previously accepted player has been inconsistent or providing sub-par posts, we may choose to kill them off and let someone else fill their slot.

That said, here's an example character sheet:

Riknas' Character Sheet

Name: Reiker Masan

Gender: Male

Age: 30

Appearance (Description or picture): Reiker is 6'1" with short-cropped, jet black hair and a moderately muscular build. His eyes are green and is often wearing a para-military outfit over a kevlar-type vest.

Previous Occupation (Brief history if there is none): Ex-Navy Marine for the North American Union.

When creating a character keep in mind that there are multiple roles and jobs that need to be filled in a crew and it would be terribly boring if everyone just played a cowboy gunslinger or fighter, and it would likely leave the team rather unbalanced and at a disadvantage.

Now, rather than having the character's life story, we think we have a more interesting way of doing things. Just to make sure you meet standards, write up an "introduction" post before your character meets/met the rest of the crew. This saves us the trouble of having the beginning of the thread focused on giving everyone the mission. It should explain your character's motivations and follow with them signing up as privateers or for the Red M (if they're not joining, then I'm not quite sure what you're trying to do here). Just place it below your character sheet and things should be fine.

--------------
To keep the story moving along, when posting in the IC, all accepted characters should meet on board Reiker's ship (which will be detailed in the first post).

Please keep in mind that Jester and I will be doing the best we can to keep the story moving along smoothly. As far as factions and technology are concerned, we've already got a pretty firm grasp about how they'll work out, though they are flexible, we would rather you didn't add your own ideas for conflict into the mix. If you have an idea you desperately want to put it then please PM one of us and we can discuss it.

------

World Notes

To help provide some structure and understanding of the setting we have created, here are some notes about modern nations and current cultural dynamics in the story. This should also help act as a tool set to help players create their own characters, or want to know a bit more about the story they are taking part in.

Space Life: While space stations are now able to self-correct their orbits, and planets/moons in our solar system are currently being terraformed to accommodate human life, they are not entirely self-sufficient. While one quarter of space stations no longer need external support, the remaining seventy-five percent of space stations must still be resupplied with food and organic life to help them develop artificial ecosystems, and many locations being terraformed must have processed materials continually delivered to support the colonists and continue altering the land's surface. Each of these colonies are supported by patron nations back on Earth, and while there has been some talk of it, no colonies have tried to declare a state of independence from their parent nation.

Earth: While we have made our way into space and have begun colonizing worlds, moons, and space stations, the Earth itself is not yet united (nor do we think it ever will be). Rather, what we have is an ongoing land grab similar to the discovery of The New World (America) and the competing European nations in the 1500's. Today's interstellar powers are composed of alliances between militarily advanced countries and those that managed to develop their own space programs; in light of a new space race, many minor countries have either joined or been annexed as provinces of the larger countries. As such, many of the countries that we know today still exist, however most of their borders have disappeared as they merged with other ones. The current world powers are as follows:

The European Legion (EL): Over the years the European Union nations became more and more involved with each others internal politics in times of economic and political crisis. Not long after the collapse of the Russian government, the European Union had fully come together to create a united space program and military, renaming themselves the European Legion in the year 2120. Under a united, yet militaristic and heavy-handed government, the European Legion has since come to include Iceland, parts of Russia and the Middle East.

The East Pacific Empire (EPE): As Japan fostered better relations with the United Nations after World War II, restrictions on the Japanese Self Defense Force (SDF) were progressively removed. With the dissolving of the United Nations in 2135, the SDF had once again become the Imperial Military, and extended it's reach into much of the east Asian coast. In the year 2160, the Eastern Pacific Empire was born, spreading south to all the nearby island nations short of Australia, as well as some portions of Russia. No doubt the most queer of the space nations, the people of the EPE are as patriotic as the Japanese Military had been in the second World War.

The North American Union (NAU): After the Canadian Government helped the U.S. reveal a terrorist attack that nearly sparked another civil war, relations between the two countries grew significantly, with the two countries forming the North American Union in 2105. The North American Union now includes Mexico, Central America, Cuba, as well as the other Caribbean isles.

The Chinese Confederation (TCC): As the Chinese space program flourished, so too did the power of the Chinese government. Using the false pretense of creating a defensive barrier from the East Pacific Empire, the still Communist China pressured most of mainland Asia into what was originally called the "Yangon Alliance" in 2176; however, it has long since been renamed the Chinese Confederation. The Chinese Confederation has since come to include some land in the Middle East and Russia.


The Privateer Era: During this space age, the interstellar powers are far more concerned about damaging the infrastructure of their colonies, partially to avoid damaging land they may hope to take themselves, but also out of fear that their opponents retaliate back on Earth. And so, the idea of using pirates to lead a proxy war under corporate banners came to mind. The pirates are given legitimacy with a corporate name, and lead small scale raids on supply ships and freighters, meanwhile the parent nation can deny any involvement with the attack...all the while accepting the ill-gotten profits their corporation led. This idea was first enacted by the Chinese Confederation through the Wuxia Trade Corporation.

The Arrian Mining Consortium: One of the many corporations that have acted as fronts for the Interstellar Powers, along with being the de facto leader of mining operations on Mars, the AMC also funds privateers for the North American Union. The AMC are the current employers of the Red M.

Now, let's get started.
----------------------------------
Edit: Jester's Character Sheet

Name: Richard Corbeaux

Gender: Male

Age: 28

Appearance (Description or picture): Richard is 6'0" with medium length, brown hair and an average, though solid, build. His eyes are blue and he typically wears old combat fatigues from his days in the European Legion.

Previous Occupation: European Legion Commando

[Hymusia]

CS up tomorrow hopefully guys. x

[Werther]

Wolfgang Heinrich Kaiser

Age:

26

Past occupation:

Computer engineer and economist for large company owned by Kaiser family.

Appearance:

Stands M 1.80 and has well build. Gray eyes and dark blond hair. Has rather high cheek bones and that gives him rather chiseled appearance to his face and can look rather unhealthy, even if he has good build. Has rather serious look on his face.

Background:

Wolfgang was born into very wealthy family - Kaiser house. Most of the members of family act like royalty and pursue wealth for their family, but Wolfgang was different. Early on his childhood he expressed strange stance to his family and would usually get himself in trouble. During school he had terrible grades, even if he understood everything that teachers taught much better than his classmates. He graduated with excellent grades only because his father said that he would expel him from Kaiser house if he wouldn't change. Soon, he was enrolled in major EL university and he pursued two major tracks - economist and computer engineer majors. He wasn't really interested in these subjects. He only did so because his father had made him. He started painting during his university time and even once in a while made indirect remarks to his father saying that he is black awe and doesn't really fit in with stuck up royalty that he had been living all his life. Still, he liked expensive things and the only way to get them was his father. Soon after he graduated university he started working in his brothers company that was based around Baltic states and mostly dealt with factories and manufacturing. Like always, bored by this lifestyle he got, he started getting into trouble willingly. Father, being concerned about his son kept warning him, but soon he was met by very unpleasant news :
Hi! I hope you aren't mad at me, considering consequences, but still, you're my father even if you're most ignorant person on the world ( the education didn't really help to enlighten you ) So... I left Europe. Well, I left the planet earth. No, I didn't commit suicide. Heh. I went to see the galaxy. Don't worry, I only grabbed very little of money so I can get around and I grabbed one of your books - Lev Tolstoy War and Peace. I'll see you some what later. You know me. If I get bored by being free lancer I am going to come back at you, begging on my knees. Well, not really, but you got my drift.
I hope my younger brother takes my responsibilities at the company. If he doesn't, you have failed again to raise a socially responsible person. Heh.
Bye.
The message that Wolfgang left to his father was another of his unexpected affairs. His father, being confident that he will come back a week, perhaps month later didn't really expect his son not to return. Wolfgang traveled around the closest planets of earth, wandering darker corners of society and finally found job that might be thrilling enough for him - being privateer. Barely having any experience with weapons and combat didn't hold him back and he contacted Red M and joined up.

This is basically an experiment. Character that isn't gun nut, but rather runaway from dull society that seeks thrills of life beyond his restrictions of his social class.
I don't expect him to be quite archetype for this RP and I will be really surprised if he gets accepted.

[Jester]

I'm just doing a quick bump here.

[Lukas Kelly]

I'll go ahead and give this a bump. It looks interesting enough and it would be a shame for it not to at least start off.

[Aristocrap]

What's the tech level? What kinds of weapons can we expect to see? I'm working on an AMC security officer transferred to the Red M.

[Riknas]

Well, people will come as they come.

That said, the tech level would be most similar to the human weapons in Halo. Obviously we have space ships, but we still use bullets in most of our guns, since they work pretty well. but they have more firepower and more varied ammunition types. Machine guns that have smaller bullets but instead of just being fired really fast, multiple rounds will fire at the same time and create a small spread, kind of like a shotgun. Official military soldiers may employ use of EMP rounds or incendiary grenades; however, such specialized ammunition is expensive and hard to come by. There are lasers, but they're more like cannons for concentrated blasts to break an armored vehicle or blow a hole in a building.

Basically, they're kind of like what we have now, only a lot better and with a few more tricks to them.

[Hymusia]

Just to sty, still interested, working on a cs now with Riknas' help.

[Jester]

Alright, if we could get another interested person, that'd be great.

[ClockworkDaisy]

I Im'd Riknas a question about a character... should I send it too you too Jester?