In the city of Seattle in the year 2082, human beings are born without lungs. The only things that sustain your beating heart are food, drink, and silence. Over the course of your lifetime, you are only able to speak ten thousand words. Then that's it, you are dead. Game over.

Looking for someone to blame? Don't bother! No normal person in this society questions why they were born the way they were. Their lives are managed perfectly by The Progenitors, ruling from what used to be known as Columbia Tower in downtown Seattle but what is now known as the Black Spire, or just the Spire. The majority of the other skyscrapers have been torn down (some appear to have been destroyed by some unknown cataclysm) to make way for farms and ranches. The common folk, especially the lower class, live in the multi-level apartment complexes of the few skyscrapers that remain. The more well-to-do live out on the farms and ranches in beautiful homes with manicured green lawns and the best access to the finest technology the Progenitors provide. They do, after all, provide the city with food. Why shouldn't they be treated with favor?

There are a select few who make Vows of Silence. They have formed a coed monastery on the outskirts of town, a rarity to have such a big structure so far away from the Spire. Their order is known as the Tacuit Autem (Silent Ones). They are the chief producer of textiles for society. The Progenitors provide education through rigid classrooms, but they don't mention the Tacuit Autem beyond these few facts. To join the Tacuit Autem is considered by many to be a cowardly act, not living life to its fullest.

The city is surrounded by a glowing pink soundproof forcefield. "To keep the Loud Ones out," say the Progenitors. The Loud Ones are mutations, creatures whose sole purpose it is to hunt by emitting piercing sonic waves that can physically damage a human brain. Then, once you have been sufficiently rendered defenseless, they swoop in for the easy kill, clamping their jaws full of serrated teeth around your neck, severing you from this world.

Unfortunately, everyone in the bubble has been born with juvenile arthritis that has persisted since birth. Their hands are prone to paroxysms of intense pain if they try to use American sign language to communicate, or if they do anything with their hands beyond light gripping (i.e.: pulling, tugging, pushing, twisting). As a result, even the farmers and ranchers have to be provided with special machines from the Progenitors to help with harvesting, castration, and soil tilling among other related duties.

Think you can live forever? Nice try! The silence eventually drives those with low fortitude to commit suicide...or find a way outside the forcefield, which might as well be suicide given that the outside is surrounded by howlers. Sometimes, if you're lucky, a howler might just slip through.
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I'm thinking that one person (maybe two people but no more), likely co-GM(s), may have the privilege of RPing as a Progenitor due to the fact that they clearly have secrets they keep from the general populace. If anyone is interested or has any questions, feel free to reply below or PM me! If this thread garners a sufficient amount of interest, I'll post an OOC bit for it. Which section would y'all prefer I post this in? I am torn between Free and Advanced given the unique one-liner nature of the dialogue options.



GOAL: One overarching question your characters CAN ask themselves is "Why do the progenitors keep so many secrets? Are there any other cities like ours? Why do we have to live like this?" One way or another, at some point, they should discover (or it will be revealed to them) that breathing existed. Then the question becomes: "why did our ancestors do this to us?"

Mute RPing...

This will be a challenge.

@Lady Selune

Yes, but words are considered as precious. If you speak, it's the one way people in this society know you truly mean what you say. However, you can still deceive....for the price of your vitality.

I didn't think of the consequences of people being BORN. Should they be grown in test tubes Brave New World (Aldous Huxley) style? Or should they have normal viviparous births, with young infants and children using up a good portion of their word count as they mature?

EDIT: Is this also more of a nation RP? This went from me taking a cutesie one liner "words are oxygen" and creating an entire society based off that premise. This is turning into Divergent in my head. :/

@Mistiel This is brutal, but gives clearance for some really beautiful prose.

The night was quiet, and his apartment empty, as always, broken only by the sound of crickets in the park. So curious, Jonathan mused, that we should hold our own voices so dear, yet these most pitiful of beasts sing with the heart's purest joy and carelessness. Are they not to be pitied, living such short lives, to such little fulfillment? Maybe, maybe, but then, they can sing. Jonathan could not. Was not be, then, deserving of greater sympathy, as he, too, would live a very short life, objectively. But so would everyone. All of them would live quiet lives, void of song, of the music of conversation. Jonathan longed for nothing more than a single hour to simply talk to his heart's content, there was so much to be said, his heart felt full to burst. But he'd already used close to four-thousand words, and he wasn't even twenty-five.

And because he couldnot sing, could not shout, could not scream curses at whatever nameless sick god was responsible, he locked his bathroom door, sat on the floor, and sobbed until the warm tendrils of morning sun crawled through the blinds to brun his hungover eyes.

I knew I should've Googled to see if this was a thing. Of course I'm not the first one to think of this! Why would I be? Waaah ;-;

Seriously, that is some sexy verse though. The tingles!

@Mistiel I didn't google it yet. Is it a thing?

I like the idea, but I have to wonder- why don't they communicate via written or digital means?

This is a really cool idea. Do you think a person could become super rich if they held a concert once a year or something? Use up words to sing out loud for their enjoyment and for the enjoyment of others, while selling the tickets at a stupidly over priced price because they are selling bits of their life? Yet people would buy them anyway just to hear the music and words, inspiring youths to find ways to sell their own words, leading to some young deaths as they fall victim to the intoxicating world of singing. They sing their final words, their fortune not even having a chance to be spent. :P

@UraharaSteph Art would be one hell of a thing, but there would likely be few artists. Who do you know that uses hardcore drugs for the greater good? No one kills themselves for others.

@Mistiel I didn't google it yet. Is it a thing?

I like the idea, but I have to wonder- why don't they communicate via written or digital means?

The digital means can be explained by the Progenitors not making cellphones, laptops and the like publicly available. Writing brings on pain and swelling from the juvenile arthritis everyone was born with since birth. However, it stands to reason that maybe some character discovers a laptop of say, a former University of Washington medical student, and somehow happens upon knowledge that answers the question of "why are we the way we are?" Although if holding a pen brings on swelling, perhaps typing does as well. Hard to say....that seems like a topic for a consensus vote.

@Mistiel Gotcha. So, I assume literature would be treasured for its rarity?

@PrivateVentures

Oh yes, especially anything that predates the Progenitors! Those books would be viewed as dangerous, borderline sacrilege to some. As a matter of fact, the Tacuit Autem burn any books that they find that predate the Progenitors. (The Tacuit Autem are basically tacit - hehe - supporters of not speaking at all. They're colossal pussies, for lack of more eloquent phrasing.) Reading provokes discussion, which would be taboo to them.

@Mistiel So let's say we have a character who holds the last copy of the Kama Sutra...

@Mistiel So let's say we have a character who holds the last copy of the Kama Sutra...

That depends on my earlier comment replying to @Lady Selune:

I didn't think of the consequences of people being BORN. Should they be grown in test tubes Brave New World (Aldous Huxley) style? Or should they have normal viviparous births, with young infants and children using up a good portion of their word count as they mature?

EDIT: Is this also more of a nation RP? This went from me taking a cutesie one liner "words are oxygen" and creating an entire society based off that premise. This is turning into Divergent in my head. :/

EDIT x 2: The Progenitor teachers either require or strongly encourage students to speak at times, BTW. This is a bit unfair considering that the teachers get to teach via Powerpoint and specially written textbooks.

@PrivateVentures Oh yeah, if there were many or even more than a handful of artists, then they wouldn't be able to make as much money off of it ;P So only the truly devoted to the arts would pursue that, unless someone REALLY wanted riches above their own life, which I doubt many would.

@Mistiel But would they not still engage in sex as a primary means of bonding? Without verbal intimacy, phsyical intimacy is really all you have left, and if there was no more sex, due to test tube babies, and such, I feel like the suicide rates would skyrocket due to neurotransmitter imbalances causing severe depression and anxiety without a cure, and due to the isolation, Seattle would be hard pressed to aquire a number of pharmaceutical ingredients.

EDIT: Unless you continued Seattle's trend of marijuana usage.

@Mistiel But would they not still engage in sex as a primary means of bonding? Without verbal intimacy, phsyical intimacy is really all you have left, and if there was no more sex, due to test tube babies, and such, I feel like the suicide rates would skyrocket due to neurotransmitter imbalances causing severe depression and anxiety without a cure, and due to the isolation, Seattle would be hard pressed to aquire a number of pharmaceutical ingredients.

EDIT: Unless you continued Seattle's trend of marijuana usage.

You make an excellent point. Viviparous births it is! This brings a whole new meaning to Fluttershy's lullaby LOL!

@PrivateVenturesWouldn't people just use sign language or written communication? Or they could learn to communicate through body language.

But yes, I agree that people would probably have a lot more sex, and without birth control (because technology is collapsing) the birth rate would sky rocket.

@MistielInteresting idea, though I'm in several other RPs and not sure if I could join.

@TheUnknowable As I explained in my original post, sign language is impossible because of a genetic defect in that everyone has the same level of juvenile arthritis, developed from birth (just one more reason for an astute character to be a teency bit suspicious of the Progenitors as time goes on). As for the body language thing, the Progenitors preach that actions speak louder than words. (Gee, I wonder where we've all heard THAT before? ^.-)

"Actions speak louder than words" is the basis for the entire roleplay, really. Except that words do have value and that they should always be used with care (hence my signature quote).

@MistieloK, I missed that part.

Does anybody have any inspirations or ideas for art for an initial picture of the city? If a gracious Photoshop owner is willing to like...swap the Seattle Columbia Tower and the Space Needle (optional) into the middle of a bunch of farms (with a couple of apartment high rises clustered around the Columbia Tower {also optional but would be more realistic}). I really only need/want the one picture for the beginning of the RP, like most RPs seem to have. Would it be easier to swap in a bunch of farms around the Seattle cityscape?

Oh, and I'd need like a pink forcefield-esque filter over the sky. Either that, or just take a zoomed out shot and put a translucent pink bubble over the city (not stopping for water?).

I don't know if you'd expect RL money as payment, but I have a $10 iTunes gift card I haven't used yet. Could give you the code for that I suppose. :/