The year is 2176CE and the Skyllian Blitz is over. Two months after the attack on the human colony of Elysium by batarian raiders and mercenaries paid off by the Hegemony, war criminals are still sought by the Systems Alliance and numerous outstanding bounties are out for the taking for private contractors and mercenaries looking to make themselves a considerable amount of credits and stake their reputations amongt the stars. Reaching out into corners of the galaxy beyond the Alliance’s reach, these groups, veteran organizations and ambitious upstarts alike, vie for the same prize.
Among these upstarts are a group of strangers, drawn together by a captain looking to put together a crew to take on these lucrative contracts. Captain Jerrell Luzami, salarian smuggler extraordinaire, has put out a classified for a number of specialists who are willing and able to work long hours for little pay in uncomfortable working conditions aboard an aging volus trader, the Borealis. The promise of the eventual payoff is alluring, especially to those responding to the all-too enticing No Experience Required, Will Train Right Applicants byline that jumps out at the bottom of the classified in monochromatic orange. This is a chance to start new, for someone to make a name for themselves, or to leave behind a troubled past. Some of the new crew are experts in their fields but have nowhere to call home; others simply scraped together enough funds to buy their own gear. Their reasons for being there are their own, but at least they are bound by a common goal.
However, the day the crew assembles and prepares to embark on the journey that will one day cement their legacy amongst the great mercenary groups of the 22nd century or pitifully bury them in the annuls of time, an unexpected tragedy breaks upon them like a cheap bottle of champagne across the bow, leaving them leaderless and utterly to their own devices with only an inherited ship holding them together.
And so, their story begins.
OVERVIEW AND STANDARDS
A Dervish and Hellis roleplay
Welcome to Mass Effect: Borealis! This game will be a heavily character-driven story that aims to combine serious character moments with light-hearted levity and humour and plenty of room for developing individual stories along with high-octane action sequences. The story centers around a group of upstart mercenaries who are left to their own devices with little more than a ship and a list of contracts to their name as they struggle to figure out how to run their outfit and get around the larger-than-life personalities they suddenly find themselves partnered with. While the game will start off with the premise of hunting down war criminals and other ne’er-do-wells for credits, the crew will eventually look to expand, get a better ship and equipment, and generally going from a disorganized collection of nobodies to a sought after group for some high-profile missions that almost certainly skirt legality – or punch a blazing hole right through it.
How this will work is while this is a largely GM driven game, you will still have lots of say as players, and characters, for how things move forward to the as of yet unnamed outfit; the characters will submit a name for the team, and I will literally be picking it at random to start, and character actions will guide how things start to unravel for the team. They will start to pick up rivals for their jobs, and depending on how things go down, they might find themselves on the wrong side of the law they originally were being bankrolled by. Ultimately, we the GMs want you guys to feel like this is as much of your story as ours, and all we ask is you be active participants in for the long haul.
Posting standards won’t be rigid, but we do ask that you try to show up in the OOC and be an active participant that way to show you’re still interested. If we do not hear from a player in a two week time period, they will be considered dropped out of the game. We understand life can be busy; all we ask is to be given notification if you’ll be away for a bit. We do ask that you do try to get an in-character post up within a two week period, although we will keep the plot moving if we’re being held up by a small number of players just to keep things moving along. I’m sure each and every one of you have experiences of games grinding to a halt because one player is holding up the plot, we’re going to try to not let that happen.
So, if you are interested in this, please be the kind of player who intends to be involved with an RP for the long haul; we could potentially have this going on for years or indefinitely if there’s an investment, as I have had in prior games of mine. If you’re the kind of player who joins a game but has a habit of dropping it on a whim, please move along. The colossal graveyard of failed roleplays exist because of players like you and GMs that refuse to enforce standards and I’m not putting up with that. That said, if you have to drop because you just aren’t enjoying it or something came up, I totally get it. All I ask is you give it a solid effort and talk to Hellis and I if you have concerns, ideas, or would like to suggest how to make the game more enjoyable. Honestly, we don’t bite! We want this to be something fun that people can feel like it’s a fun, low-pressure roleplay that doesn’t require a huge commitment to enjoy.
Being in advanced, obviously acceptable spelling and grammar and punctuation are expected, but don’t feel like you have to be an English major being graded or anything. We all make mistakes, and a lot of people roleplay to improve their writing skills, so welcome aboard! Just please proofread your stuff before posting and make an effort and we’ll all be BFFs. All that’s expected for length is somewhere in the neighbourhood of 2-3 paragraphs, and collaborations are more than welcome – there will be links to a couple Titanpads for anyone to use, although if you go that route, please try to finish the collabs in a timely manner and try not to tie them up so others can use it. Just leave a disclaimer at the top for what the status of a collab is at (e.g. who’s involved, if it’s still a work in progress, if it’s finished and can be erased, etc.) so anyone taking a look can quickly see what’s going on.
There will be an application deadline for interested players, and we are aiming to take on 10 players/ characters, although that number may increase or decrease depending on active players/ after-the-fact submissions that completely blow us away. Hellis and I will review the sheets and make our selection. What we’re looking for are detailed character sheets that give us a good idea of who the character is, a rough history, and an adherence to lore with good internal logic and ultimately comes across as someone who’s believable as a character who has flaws and motivations that give us the impression that you’re interested in telling this character’s story rather than typing out a video game. Long story short, some scrappy little thief with a barely functional Elkoss Combine pistol who’s on the run from his uncle in C-Sec is probably going to win us over more than Generic Balding Space Marine Justicar Battlemaster with a kill list longer than the Citadel, equipment that costs more than the Destiny Ascension, and despite being a remorseless psychopath is really a nice guy underneath it all who just wants to be loved. I mean, if you can make that last one believable, go nuts, but you get the idea. We want you to tell the story of someone you clearly have an interest in roleplaying more than just being a collection of skills and weapons who occasionally grunts out non-committal one liners.
Once enough interest is gauged, we will be getting the OOC up!
