Christopher Briggs stepped off of the shuttle and into the airlock of Trade Station Alpha. Its name came from the fact that it was the first space station built by humans for trade purposes. My new home. he thought, Too bad it's a piece felgrum.

True, the station was massive, with a volume of almost a cubic kilometer, but with ships docking and undocking almost once a minute, the shear number of people kept most of it from being the pristine jewel of the solar system that the tourist adverts showed. The sunward top of the station, dubbed white sector, had a massive arboretum and flower garden, shopping centers, and all manor of goods and services. The next several layers, dubbed green sector, provided the foundation for the facade of perfection, recycling everything that was used, growing all of the food for the station, and providing most of the goods and services that the thousands of crew demanded. It was also home to the power systems, storing or utilizing the energy produce by the more a square kilometer of high-efficiency solar panels that surrounded the station. The layers below that were the Bazaar, a place where trade happened between the various worlds in the solar system and with other races.

Below that, however, was the gray sector. Gray sector was where the salvage and refining took place. Chunks of asteroids and pieces of space debris would be hauled in and bid on. The winner would rent a smelter, if they didn't have one already, and would melt down the rock, hoping that it was worth what they had paid for it. The refined materials would usually work its way up to the bazaar, where it would be shipped to whoever was willing to pay the best rate for it. The rest would be put into storage, or would be sold to various businesses on the station to be made into any number of over-priced goods that the tourists just had to have. Gray sector was the lowest of the levels, in both the station's artificially created gravity well and in terms of its splendor. It was also where Christopher Briggs arrived, having booked passage on a salvage ship which brought fragments of a pirate ship in from a battle site near Earth. “Hey, you forgot something!” said one of the freighter's crew, then tossed a bag to him.

Don't want to forget that, thought Chris, It's pretty much all I have and I doubt I'll be able to replace it any time soon. “Thanks” he called, but the man was already going back to help unload the salvage. Now, to find Julius and join his crew.

He made his way up to the Bazzaar and started looking for docking bay 324, where his cousin's ship was supposed to be. While counting his way down the bays, he heard shouts coming from a local club. Well, you might as well call it that, as “drug den” didn't quite fit when virtually everything you could want could be legally purchased down here. A clearly intoxicated man came out of “Bacchus' Delight” and immediately started cursing at the passers-by. “Hey you, you spuz-sucking piece of felgrum, why are you looking at me? You wanna fight?”

It took Christopher a few seconds to recognize the man that shouted at him. “Julius?”

“Yeah, that's me, got a problemth with my name do you?”

“It's me!” replied Christopher.

“Yeah, of course you're you. Who else would you be?”

“I'm Christopher.” Julius gave him a strange look, like he didn't understand. “Your cousin?”

“Chris!” he said, when finally realized who he was talking to. “You came! Let me introduce someone to you!” he screamed something in a likely-slurred alien language, and a female Hibros walked out of the bar. Her species was mammalian, something that appeared to be between a cat and a dog, with a long nose, retractable claws, and whiskers. In fact, most carbon based sentient life (non-carbon based lifeforms rarely interacted with humans) fell into one of the classifications of life on earth, sometimes several.

“Nice to meet you,” she said in heavily accented English, “My name is Griszma.” Her body language in a human could be interpreted as a romantic overture, but with an alien, you never knew until you had dealt with them for a while.

“She's my first officer.” He wrapped his arm around her waste, pulling her closer.

“And more." She purred.

“So you two...?” Christopher left the question open, hoping that things didn't just get as weird as he thought they had.

“First rule of being a Spacer little cuz, you're not really one of us until you've bedded an alien.” He patted Christoper on the arm. “Don't worry, I've been with a member of most of the species on this station. If you want, I'll introduce you to a few of my favorites.”

Christopher reflexively took a step back. What's gotten into him? He didn't used to be like this. “No, I think I'll stick with human women for now.”

“Your loss.” Julius turned and walked towards his ship. “Come on, I'll introduce you to the rest of the crew.”

-----------------------

You can be whatever species you want to be. I'll play as Christopher, with Julius being kind of an open character in case I want to move the story along with him.. It will be set on the station at first, but we can move it afterwards to Earth, where I'll introduce you to how screwed up everything is there.

Species Overview sheet:
Name: (self explanatory)
Homeworld: (name, basic description)
Similar non-intelligent lifeforms: (everyone evolves from something)
Appearance: (description)
Biological traits: (blowhole, claws, spit venom, etc.)
Cultural traits: (Religion, customs, etc.)
Specialization: (What niche does your species fulfill in the galaxy?)
Tech: (Basic overview of you tech strengths and weaknesses)

Character Sheet:
Name:
Age:
Species:
Appearance:
Personality:
Skills overview:
Position on crew:
Years on crew:
Bio:

Name: Sasha Belov
Age: 31
Gender: Male
Species: Boring ol' human
Nationality: Russian

Position on Crew: Security detail

Physical Description:Sasha is a very large, muscular man. He stands at 6'7", has pale skin and dirty blonde hair that is kept in a neat buzz cut. His eyes are a gray-ish blue. Sasha has several tattoos, one being the simplified bird seen in this picture. He may be big and scary looking when you first meet him, but that usually wears off as soon as he opens his mouth.

Personality: Sasha's a pretty harmless guy, despite what you may think. Sure, he'll drop a baddie in a second, but he's not the 'eat bullets for breakfast and drink testosterone' type of guy. Level headed, intelligent, hard working, but a bit of a goof. Sasha has a bad habit of giving people irritating nicknames because he's bad at remembering real names. He tends to be a bit of a softy around the people he likes (which are few and far between, to be fair). He's less trusting of others, taking a while to warm up to new people. Until you get past the rough exterior, he comes off as blunt, gruff, and a little rough around the edges.

Skills: He has no powers, but Sasha is a whiz kid when it comes to machines. Computers, engines, microchips, motors, you name it. He's invented a few weapons using this hobby of his. On top of being a huge nerd, Sasha is also military trained, and knows his way around most weapons. He's a good fighter, both weaponized and hand to hand.

History:
Sasha grew up in Kazan, Russia. His mother overdosed when Sasha was 5. He was left to be raised by his father, who fell into depression after the loss of his wife. His father wasn't the kindest, and often times was abusing. After Sasha's mother had died, he had essentially lost interest in being a father. He would often invite his loud and obnoxious friends over to watch soccer games, drink, and play poker while Sasha hid in his room and pretended not to exist. Sasha wanted to get out of the house as soon as he could, and joining the military seemed like the best option. However, Sasha had something of an authority issue when he was younger. His father's poor job of raising him had turned him into a rebellious punk.

After five years of service, Sasha slowly lost some of that punk kid attitude. He liked the military well enough, but around 23 years of age, he was discharged after the diagnosis of a medical condition. A very expensive medical condition. While he still received a little bit of retirement from the army, he needed more to pay for his hospital bills. He was approached by a recruiter for an experimental medical company, looking for test subjects. Or, at least that's what they told him.

Being sick and desperate, Sasha excepted their offer with hope for a cure. He spent the next five years in a lab, being stuck with needles and given experimental drugs that often left him feeling worse than better. By the time Marcy came in to the picture, Sasha was already one foot in the grave.

As a last ditch effort to save their test subject, the scientists gave Sasha a blood transfusion from Marcy's nanobot laced blood. Amazing enough, it did the trick. The technocytes were able to target and destroy the diseased cells in Sasha's body, but because they were designed specifically for Marcy's system, they quickly died. This meant that transfusions had to be performed regularly to keep Sasha healthy.

It was looking like a long, miserable future with for the two of them, both having signed their lives away to science. Once Sasha was healthy and strong again, he decided he'd changed his mind about being a lab rat for the rest of his days. He and Marcy devised an escape plan.

It wasn't flawless, but it worked. The two managed to get free of the lab and fled the country. Sasha being and important asset, and Marcy harboring millions of dollars worth of technology in her blood, they were two very sought after fugitives. Sasha started work as a mercenary to pay for their travels, and keep them on the run. He trained Marcy until he felt she was ready to work by his side. When he heard about the ship needing a security detail, he felt that it was his and Marcy's best bet of getting away from the labs for good. He signed them up, not planning to return to Earth and all its misery any time soon.

Name: Marceline "Marcy" Eberhart
Age: 28
Gender: Female
Species: Enhanced human

Position on Crew: Security detail

Skills/Powers: Marcy was injected with self duplicating nanobots that dwell in her bloodstream. They function as a system diagnostic tool, targeting disease and injury to help heal and/or destroy it. The nanobots, cleverly named "technocytes", can also come to the surface of the skin to form a smooth, hard, form fitting armor that is chrome in appearance.

This armor allows for flexibility, which is great, because that's one of Marcy's strong points. She's a skilled fighter, relying on her speed and agility rather than her physical strength. The armor doesn't weight her down, and allows her to wear just about anything she pleases into a fight.

Physical Description: Marcy is a simple woman with a pleasant face. Her skintone is a pale olive, her hair dark brown. Her eyes are a hazel color.
Her style of dress is typically pretty casual. T-shirts, jeans, sneakers. As mentioned before, she doesn't really have to worry about body armor, so she's gotten pretty used to wearing whatever she wants in the field. It comes in handy when she doesn't want to appear conspicuous.

Personality: A pretty laid back woman, Marcy is happy to let Sasha drag her where ever. Having never really had friends, the bond she shares with the large, sometimes overly protective man is a strange one. Not romantic in any way, but at the same time, very intimate.

She's pretty open to new people, being easy to get along with and fairly friendly.

History:

Marceline was born a pretty average kid. She was the daughter of an inventor and a cybernetics expert, a match made in heaven. Her parents worked on several projects together, the technocytes being one of the many. However, as their funds grew low, they started getting involved in some sketchy deals to keep the lights on. They sold some tech to some guys they didn't exactly do a background check on, and the next thing they knew, the crooks were demanding more.

When Marcy's mother and father refused to deliver, the men had them kidnapped and taken to their boss to 'reconsider'. In a last minute stroke of panicked genius, Marcy's father left his daughter with a chip that had all of their projects stored on it and burned the rest before being captured. Marcy was instructed to take the chip and find a family friend that lived in the next state over, someone who would take her in and keep her parents' work safe.

Marcy never saw her mother and father after that, but somehow, the generic villains found out about the chip and intercepted her before she got to her destination. They looked through the stuff on the chip and found that most of the stuff on it was crap, written in gobbledegook and half baked ideas that only a rocket scientist could make heads or tails of. The technocyte project was the only thing that was complete. So they went to the scientists at the very same lab where Sasha was kept to create these tiny machines and used Marcy as a test subject.

For the first couple weeks after the injections, it looked like the project was a bust. Marcy was kept in their lab for observation, against her will of course, until the technocytes showed their true potential. Marceline remained at the lab, where she met a Spetznaz reject by the name of Sasha Belov. At the time, he was very sick. When the scientists began giving him her blood as some sort of treatment, she was pretty sure he was going to die regardless.

But by some miracle, it worked. It took a while for Sasha to regain his full health, and when he did, he devised a hairbrained idea for escape. Marcy went along with it, because why not? She had literally nothing to lose. They managed to get free and were on the run for several years before they signed of for an open position on the ship. Macy was a bit skeptical about going into space, but seeing as Earth was literally a heaping pile of shit, she figured that it couldn't be much worse.

I'll get a bio up later today, in class right now. I'm thinking that I'll play the Doctor of the ship, if nobody objects?

Will get my CS up in a day or two my net is down atm, dam ISP having issues.

@Evil SnowmanI think the RPGuild is having issues too.

@TheUnknowable Good news the ISP fixed my net. So I'll start working on a chara sheet when I get some free time.

@Metronome@MetronomeApproved. I like the fact that they worked together before joining up with the ship. Your sheets say they work for the station, though.

Edit: Oops, thought two different people posted.

I've got everything but the bio written, is a genetically modified human acceptable?

I've got everything but the bio written, is a genetically modified human acceptable?

yeah, just don't go too crazy with the mods.

I didn't see the name of the ship anywhere. I'll change it.

@Metronome Yeah, it isn't named yet. Julian still refers to it by its make and model if he needs to. Any suggestions for a name? Maybe we can adopt one IC.

Also, how long can we have been crew?

I once ran a space ship RP where the ship was named The Jubilee. Maybe you could use that? Or something similar, like The Revelry.

@greywolf375Julian's had the ship for 6 years, so anything up to that.

@MetronomeI think Julian would like that, as he's a party animal and his favorite place on the station is called "Bacchus's Delight"

@TheUnknowable thanks for the info! Also, I like the Jubilee as a name

Will be shoving my CS up sometime today. Not sure when, depends on how long I procrastinate on cleaning up my home and how quickly I get that done.

Name: Pipipsiwa “Pip”

Age: 11 (Adult)

Species: Mandrake

Appearance: Pip’s body is much like a carrot or potato, a tuberous growth that Pip has modified into a humanoid shape. It has grown two eyes that are entirely blue orbs, and its foliage sprouts where a human’s hair should be. However, instead of protein strands, it is half tentacle, half reed like growths that can be used as extra limbs. In order to accommodate vocal communication (instead of chemical as is the Mandrake default) Pip has crafted an orifice to meet the need as well as to ingest insects or small creatures.

Personality: Due to the sexual-cultural differences of the societies that Pip has ventured into, Pip has chosen to be identified as female, sporting some robust personality traits that seem to coincide with the female gender more so than that of the males. Contrary to most Mandrakes and Mandrake society, Pip is highly energetic, highly curious, and highly active. She is loaded with enough spunk to run a teenager ragged. She has a thirst for adventure and danger. She is an incorrigible match-maker, and keeps strange and sometimes dangerous pets. Due to the extreme difference in species, Pip is ill-equipped for certain social identifications. Inter-species wars and enemies and ownership seem to make no sense and have proven very difficult to distinguish.

Skills overview: Pip has lived the length of her life on this exact ship. While she is a fantastic pilot and a decent navigator, she often fills the role of assistant when it comes down to minor technical work and repairs. Because of her astounding perception, and ability to overcome many injuries, she is often placed on landing teams. Her pay has not gone toward food or housing or or cultural stigma, and therefore she has a knack to spend her money mostly on toys, trinkets, and pets. Thus far she has found particular use of a jet-pack and a concussion blaster.

Position on crew: Pilot

Years on crew: 6

@DesertedApproved. I was thinking of putting Groot on the ship just so we wouldn't all be human, but your version is better.

@everyone: I'll start the IC tonight.

Cool, and just in case anybody is curious, no, the character is not a child prodigy stereotype. The reason Pip can function as an adult is that she actually has duplicated genetic memories from budding from her parent. Likewise, she only looks like she is young because she is trying to fit in with alien societies. Since she is 11, she has grafted herself into an approximation of a humanoid of 11 years old out of ignorance about their behavior and any social customs connected to it. Had she been aware of such social issues, she would have grafted herself as an adult since that is her mental maturity... if you can call it that.