15 years of brutal planet-spanning warfare, countless billions buried beneath irradiated soils, and the hungering gaze of powers whether great, risen, and fallen eager to carve up the remains of the shattered Frontier Worlds. 15 years of terror and mayhem not without precedent but without equal in the last century. On the crown jewel of the Frontier Worlds where this foul tragedy sputters its dying breaths as the vengeful Frontier guardians turned exiled insurrectonists the Carnazir, the corporate expansionist Unified Celestial League, the revoutionary collectivist alliance of the Zrovreni Solar Revolutionary Pact, and the remnants of the Dolsilvec Regime that once ruled the planet prepare to divide what had been conquered a thousand times over.
None of that is on your mind when you hear the blaring of the emergency alarm in the stealth transport. That's not supposed to be going off; the aircraft of the Gnosis Eater Sect are not simply pinged by any army's targeting systems; nobody had the tech for that. None of that matters as you open the cockpit door just in time to see the glas shatter and hear the crunching of helmet and bone. You recoil backwards as a cloud of vaporous gore washes over you, fragments of the pilot's braincase plinking against your armour. The flight controls have been torn open by a high velocity projectile and the vessel is falling.
There's only one explanation: somebody stabbed you in the back. A shot that clean isn't by accident. That somebody doesn't want you completing your mission. Whatever's in those laboratories, whatever they blacked out the entirety of Caracosa, the most dangerous and violent part of the planet even in the tail end of the civil war, where-
No time to think about that either. Your shock-absorption padding and stabilizer implants shake off the jolting impact of the crash, tearing the plane apart but you, your combat exosuit, and your weaponry survive. Miraculously, your teammates fare better and through their visors and death-mask armour, you can feel the same confusion and boiling, seething anger within. You break from the melting wreckage, your plasma repeater spraying a wave of armour-devouring death down the street and through biomass barricades, rewarding you with screams of dying foes. Not even five minutes and they already knew your crash position; do they know where the laboratories were hidden too?
A ping on your HUD. You duck back behind cover, your barrel hot and the cooling system stressed to its limit. The squad leader has gotten a fix on the laboratory location. The liaison has just pinged it to you along with the meet-up point. Problem is, you can hear heavy armour grinding down the nearby hillside and the distant hum of void-artillery charging up. Cover's minimal, the bastards are relentless, and you don't have the supplies for a desperate barricade defence or counterattack. The rest of the team, hand picked by the Gnosis Eater Sect, are cursing as mags and batteries run dry, just as another wave of squads pours through the cover you just blew apart.
You have to break from cover, armour-piercers ripping across your shoulderpads, secondary charges detonating mere feet from you and knocking you off balance. A six-fingered claw grabs you by the shoulder, pulling you up as your squadmate retaliates with void-borne power shooting out of their monstrous, insectoid body. It's brought a quarter of a minute at best; the most you can afford as you take the small lead and rush towards the wilderness creeping through the edge of these city ruins. Through every shot fired, half broken wall ducked behind, and foot of ground you sprint over, the shock you once felt solidifies as anger before morphing into determination.
The bastard who set you up was confident this would be how it ended. The laboratories contain information and archaeotech they would kill to acquire and you know the aftermath of the war will be worse if these bastards get their hands on it. There will be no safe escape for you if you fail; you will be hunted as prey by friend and foe alike. You grip the weapon harder: the barrel's fully cooled.
This won't be your end but whoever thought they could sabotage your mission this easily will be in for a very rude surprise.
The Mission
In the military sci-fi RP Into Perdition's Jaws, you play as a soldier selected to be part of an elite special forces group, drawing from any of the four major power players in the region or a third party contractor as well as from the Gnosis Eater Sect who assembled them. Your objectives are simple: touch down in Carcosa, link up with the Sect's hidden research laboratory, and extract both high value personnel and alien technology of unknown origin ("archaeotech") before a mysterious robotic enemy who's been systematically raiding Sect bases beats you to it. Unfortunately, you crash land when your transport is shot down, knee deep in enemy-occupied territory, and the first base is far away given you're not exactly at your drop-point.
No matter to whom your allegiance has been sworn, you have been thrust into a scenario where your allies and enemies may at times be indistinguishable. The firefights and assault operations may be straightforward but you will be tasked with manoevering a risky series of fragile alliances, delicate ceasefires, and the fact that your unknown enemies have eyes hidden amongst those you would call friend and foe alike. You won't survive without making some allies but be wary of the hidden knives waiting to sink into your back. Strange creatures call this region home and even during the war, freak eldritch phenomena have broken out, only adding to the list of troubles you will have to contend with.
Your goal as ordered by your superiors was the safety of the labs, their personnel, and the archaeotech within, but as you play you will unravel the workings of a larger conspiracy and the hidden truths that the Sect has gathered, stached away even from their own personnel. Black ops teams from the great powers prowl in the shadows while the mysterious machine warriors will ensure you will never truly feel safe. Choose your friends wisely and your enemies carefully. It was assumed you wouldn't survive for damn good reason but get to the bottom of this and you may have a chance to put the backstabbers' heads on stakes.
The Rules of Engagement
1) Be good to one another; work things out and respect one another. Do not hesitate to ask for my assistance!
2) Don't godmod or metagame! Only work with what your characters know! They may be powerful but treat their power with respect to the setting and vibe of the RP!
3) Try to post weekly. If you're having trouble or will be delayed, please let us know in the official discord (hyperlinked below).
4) Make sure your characters fit with the setting and atmosphere. This is a pretty wild setting and I do allow a lot of leeway but always go through with me to make sure it'll flow smoothly.
5) You are allowed to contriubte lore if you wish; go over it with me, think of a way for it to be implemented in the RP, and if it all works out I'll gladly add it to the setting.
6) As I am the GM, I'll have the final say on all these decisions but I am willing to hear you all out.
Personnel Dossier
Please submit your character sheets under the Characters section of the thread.
DISCLAIMER: YOU ARE ALLOWED TO CONTROL UP TO THREE CHARACTERS INITIALLY. THIS MAY CHANGE WITH TIME.
NAME::
SPECIES: (Human, alien, machine? You are allowed to create your own species too).
AGE: (Please do not put in creepily underage characters.)
FACTION ALIGNMENT: (Are they with the Gnosis Eater Sect? The Dolsilvec Regime? The Unified Celestial League? The Carnazir? The Zrovreni Solar Revolutionary Pact? An independent agent or from another faction altogether?)
HEIGHT/WEIGHT (OPTIONAL):
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: (Reference images not mandatory but helpful)
BACKGROUND PRIOR TO BEING SELECTED FOR THE MISSION: (A paragraph minimum. Who are they, where did they come from, why are they fighting, all that good stuff.)
REASON FOR MISSION RECRUITMENT: (Why were they selected for such a dangerous mission? It is advised to include their greatest strengths here. A paragraph minimum.)
WEAKNESSES: (Minimum of four. Can be physical, psychological, strategic, training-related, etc.)
SKILLS AND TRAINING: (What are some things your character was taught, programmed to know, genetically inherited, etc.? Things such as first aid, hacking, survival, tracking, alien languages, demolitions, martial arts and so on are included here. Training is essentially how your character fights; are they a long range sniper, a close-in assault trooper, a sneaky saboteur?)
LOADOUT: (This includes your weaponry and any equipment you are taking with you. You are allowed a maximum of three ranged weapons starting out and two melee ones. Other weapons such as grenades, timed explosives, and mines you can larger number of. In the case of gear such as portable turrets, drones, and living creatures, you are typically limited to at most two. Typically non-combat equipment such as medits, repair tools, tracking devices, and so on you are allowed more leeway with. Armour and such unsurprisingly is typically limited to one... unless say, you're some bizarre multi-bodied organism or something. Remember, you can acquire more weapons and equipment with time.)
AUGMENTATIONS: (Does your character have any notable upgrades to their default bodily capabilities? These can include cybernetic, ethereal, and biological implants or devices of note as opposed to general performance enhancers that grant them additional abilities, enhance their default bodily capabilities, or even network with their gear and armour. If your character is partially cybernetic, a lab grown bio-entity, naturally possessing ethereal internal components by default and so on, these would be the last major augmentations they acquired.)
ETHEREOLOGY: (Is your character capable of manipulating unearthly currents of power from the dimension known as the Abzu? Maybe even those from The Abyssic Plane? This is the series' version of magic. If so, describe how they care capable of doing such. Provide a few examples of this if possible and the role it fulfills for them.)
PERKS: (Perks are special abilities that are unique to the species your character is. Each species has three and you are allowed to have all of them. They can include having certain weapons only they are capable of using, creating specialized minions to assist you in battle, or increasing your proficiency in piloting certain vehicles among others. You may also have one additional perk of your own but it must not overlap with a pre-existing one for any of the major species)
The species loadout guide has been completed while the character sheet section on ethereology has been slightly edited to be more narratively friendly than just focusing on two particular spells they possess.
The RP is going to start tomorrow. If anyone else wants to join in, now is a really good time as there is only a single character slot left as previously stated (after one of our own had to leave due to other obligations).
