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Hidden 6 mos ago 6 mos ago Post by Stern Algorithm
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Welcome to "Apotheosis of the Leviathan", an idea that is like a mix of Ultraman, Pacific Rim, and Godzilla, with a layer of Neon Genesis Evangelion's philosophical transhumanism. I have tried running this idea before under the names "The Central Dogma of Xenoarcheology" and "The Stars Cast Down Their Cold Gaze", but both ended prematurely, so I hope this one will stick.

To set the post quality and posting frequency expectations, I tend to be casual to advanced and expect similarly from my players. I am slow at posting and can take weeks to respond depending on how busy I am. Rules are the typical Guild rules. This RP will explore dark and mature themes, but since this is a public thread, obviously don't do anything that would set off the mods. If your characters develop relationships, fade to black. Even though there will be giant biological entities beating the tar out of each other (and yes, killing each other), please don't go into explicit detail regarding gore; enough to get the intensity and horror of violence across, but not enough to elicit nausea.

Anyways, I'm not the most professional GM and don't have everything laid out all nice and neat. If I need to, I'll add more rules and such as they come up. But anyways, onto the lore!

Glossary of Terms:

Public Timeline of Major Events Concerning CETM:


You will play as a member of CETM as part of one of the four projects. However, Project Olympian is off-limits to players as the Hyperian-Human merged character is privy to spoilery information. I don't expect you to have a fully-formed character idea from the get-go, so please discuss with me what you want, and I'll see how it fits within CETM.

I am leaving details of CETM and the branches somewhat open. As players join and their characters and ideas get incorporated, I will update this post.

Now for a preliminary CS (replace FFFFFF with your preferred color hex):


Hidden 6 mos ago Post by Stern Algorithm
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Pinging all players who have explicitly or implicitly expressed interest: @mattmanganon, @baraquiel, @The Irish Tree, @Gisk, @Foster, @Dragonfly 9, @Vixere.
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Hidden 6 mos ago Post by Gisk
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@The Irish Tree@Stern Algorithm

Are we trying to make a unified vision of how the mecha for Project Colossus work? I know we were talking about the reactor core having some kind of intelligence, but I wasn't certain if that's meant to be universal.
Hidden 6 mos ago Post by The Irish Tree
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@The Irish Tree@Stern Algorithm

Are we trying to make a unified vision of how the mecha for Project Colossus work? I know we were talking about the reactor core having some kind of intelligence, but I wasn't certain if that's meant to be universal.


I imagine that maybe different organizations while unified under Colossus got the same tech, they'd build different kinds of machines. I'm not picky about it, since if we're starting off as semi-real robot pilots then the mechs will start as clunkers anyhow.
Hidden 6 mos ago Post by Stern Algorithm
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@The Irish Tree@Stern Algorithm

Are we trying to make a unified vision of how the mecha for Project Colossus work? I know we were talking about the reactor core having some kind of intelligence, but I wasn't certain if that's meant to be universal.


<Snipped quote by Gisk>

I imagine that maybe different organizations while unified under Colossus got the same tech, they'd build different kinds of machines. I'm not picky about it, since if we're starting off as semi-real robot pilots then the mechs will start as clunkers anyhow.


Going off of the alien core idea, to reiterate from the timeline, two Hyperians have visited Earth, dubbed Hyper Man and Hyper Man X. Hyper Man arrived ages ago to monitor humanity, but during the first extraterrestrial incident 20 years ago, his ship was damaged beyond repair. The ship's core, dubbed the Hyper Core, was removed by humans for study and the first giant mecha was built around it, this is the prototype unit. Hyper Man X arrived 4 years ago, relieving the original Hyper Man of his duty and allowing him to return home on X's ship. Study and reverse engineering of the Hyper Core allowed humans to finally create a replica, dubbed the Talos Core, and a second giant mecha was built around it. So there are two mecha, the first has an advanced alien reactor but the mecha itself is older, and the second has an untested, man-made core, but the mecha itself is slightly more advanced than the first. So going off of this dynamic, one of you would be the veteran pilot using the older mech and one the newbie using the newer mech.

That's the basic idea I have for now anyways.
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Hidden 6 mos ago Post by Gisk
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In light of these new details, I would prefer to take the Talos Core, for a variety of reasons. However, I can work with either, and if you have a strong preference either way we can talk it over. If we can't decide, worst case scenario we can ask the GM to flip us a coin.
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Hidden 6 mos ago Post by The Irish Tree
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@The Irish Tree

In light of these new details, I would prefer to take the Talos Core, for a variety of reasons. However, I can work with either, and if you have a strong preference either way we can talk it over. If we can't decide, worst case scenario we can ask the GM to flip us a coin.


I’m a-okay with taking the Hyper Core!
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Hidden 6 mos ago 6 mos ago Post by Gisk
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Great!

@Stern Algorithm

I take it the mecha have been in development, and the pilots have been testing them and running simulations, but they haven't been revealed and haven't been tried in combat yet. Is that right? Or maybe the older one has been in service, and the new one is about to be deployed.

Also, do you have a preference for how the mecha fight, what kind of weapons they use, or what style of mech they are?
Hidden 6 mos ago 6 mos ago Post by Stern Algorithm
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I take it the mecha have been in development, and the pilots have been testing them and running simulations, but they haven't been revealed and haven't been tried in combat yet. Is that right? Or maybe the older one has been in service, and the new one is about to be deployed.

Also, do you have a preference for how the mecha fight, what kind of weapons they use, or what style of mech they are?


The Hyper core mecha will have fought a handful of kaiju with mixed results since mecha technology would have been fairly new at the beginning. Sometimes Hyper Man would have had to swoop in to finish the job.

But the Talos core mecha is much newer and hasn't seen combat yet.

At least that's my idea for now, I'm flexible.

As for combat preference, my initial idea (again, flexible) is that the Hyper core is initially designed for space travel, and the Hyperian's are masters at manipulating energy fields. Their ships need to designate what is 'self' and what is 'other' in order to figure out what to transport long distance when folding space. Whatever is designated as 'self' is covered in a protective field to shield it from the rigors of hyperspace travel. So I was thinking that the Hyper core covers the entire mecha in a protective field, making it good at essentially punching and kicking. But the Hyper core is very stingy at relinquishing energy for other uses. So ranged weapons for the Hyper core mecha would need to use conventional weapons (ie. things launched using their own energy/fuel, so munitions and explosives).

The Talos core then would lack this ability to coat its mech in a protective field, but is designed purely for outputting massive amounts of power instead. This makes it physically less sturdy, but able to take advantage of the latest in human-developed energy weapons, so lasers, bean swords, etc.

You would have a bruiser and DPS build, essentially.
Hidden 5 mos ago Post by The Irish Tree
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<Snipped quote by Gisk>

The Hyper core mecha will have fought a handful of kaiju with mixed results since mecha technology would have been fairly new at the beginning. Sometimes Hyper Man would have had to swoop in to finish the job.

But the Talos core mecha is much newer and hasn't seen combat yet.

At least that's my idea for now, I'm flexible.

As for combat preference, my initial idea (again, flexible) is that the Hyper core is initially designed for space travel, and the Hyperian's are masters at manipulating energy fields. Their ships need to designate what is 'self' and what is 'other' in order to figure out what to transport long distance when folding space. Whatever is designated as 'self' is covered in a protective field to shield it from the rigors of hyperspace travel. So I was thinking that the Hyper core covers the entire mecha in a protective field, making it good at essentially punching and kicking. But the Hyper core is very stingy at relinquishing energy for other uses. So ranged weapons for the Hyper core mecha would need to use conventional weapons (ie. things launched using their own energy/fuel, so munitions and explosives).

The Talos core then would lack this ability to coat its mech in a protective field, but is designed purely for outputting massive amounts of power instead. This makes it physically less sturdy, but able to take advantage of the latest in human-developed energy weapons, so lasers, bean swords, etc.

You would have a bruiser and DPS build, essentially.


Sounds good to me. What style visually are you thinking the mechs should sort of follow? I figured that the Hyper mecha should be bulky, but wasn't sure if that should go the route of "classic rounded" robots or something a bit more modern but with armor and big punchies.
Hidden 5 mos ago Post by Stern Algorithm
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Sounds good to me. What style visually are you thinking the mechs should sort of follow? I figured that the Hyper mecha should be bulky, but wasn't sure if that should go the route of "classic rounded" robots or something a bit more modern but with armor and big punchies.


Yeah, aesthetically, I was thinking the Hyper mecha would be more bulky and the Talos mecha more sleek, but I'm not going to insist too strongly on the actual look, since finding the perfect faceclaim, especially for a machine, can be very difficult.
Hidden 5 mos ago Post by wikkit
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wikkit hi

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I'm sorry that I'm a bit late in expressing interest, but if you're still doing this I'd like to join. Would a kaiju character that has a human form be an acceptable character choice?
Hidden 5 mos ago Post by Stern Algorithm
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I'm sorry that I'm a bit late in expressing interest, but if you're still doing this I'd like to join. Would a kaiju character that has a human form be an acceptable character choice?

No worries, I think there may be fewer players than I initially counted, so there should be room to join.

As for a human form kaiju, I suppose it depends on what you mean. The intention is that all player characters are humans. If your character is part of the Titan Project, then your character has some means of controlling a kaiju. Some examples include:

  • You could control the kaiju like a video game, using a controller with rudimentary commands, and using the cameras deployed during an operation or mounted on the kaiju to get a third-person or first-person view of the battle (Classic mecha Gigantor AKA Tetsujin 28 is controlled this way).
  • You can have a VR headset with a haptic control suit (ie. you're wearing a suit that senses your motions and relays those motions as commands for the kaiju to mimic, while the kaiju has implants like cameras and microphones so you can see and hear what the kaiju sees and hears).
  • You can be a developing telepath who mentally controls a sedated kaiju.
  • You can be Ultraman-like (or Incredible Hulk-like) in that your body physically grows and mutates to take on the form of a kaiju because you were experimented on and given kaiju DNA.

As for the kaiju itself, it can have a humanoid shape (stand upright, bipedal, two arms, round head, etc.), but cannot look completely human. The Hyperians are, by Earth definitions, humanoid kaiju.
Hidden 5 mos ago Post by The Irish Tree
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My apologies for taking a while to get my concept out there. Still trying to cook up a pilot.

@Gisk You mentioned having a particular pilot in mind, would you care to share a few details so I can sort of contrast them with my pilot?
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Hidden 5 mos ago Post by Gisk
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Jean-Marie Allard-McCulloch, she's 18, the daughter of Dr. Helen McCulloch, who is the head of Project Colossus. Her father was Obelix Allard, a weapon designer who worked for the project. Obelix was killed in a Kaiju attack(very possibly one that directly involved the Hyper Core mecha, I had in mind that he might have physically visited the battlefield to see his designs in action).

She's been around the project since she was a child, so your character might very well have some familiarity with her. She was chosen as the pilot for the Talos Core mecha(which I might just be calling Talos, I haven't decided) after sweeping the competition in simulator trials. She's never actually faced a Kaiju yet, as of the start of our story.

I'll copy/paste what I have written so far for her personality, but it's by no means final.

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Hidden 5 mos ago Post by Stern Algorithm
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@The Irish Tree

I should point out that @Gisk consulted with me concerning their character, and Dr. McCulloch will be an NPC. If you want to discuss ways in which important NPCs will be part of your character's backstory, let me know.
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baraquiel Angel of Moe *:・゚✧

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Sooooo sorry this took forever to finish! Lemme know if there's anything I need to change. Hope y'all like him! ^-^



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Sooooo sorry this took forever to finish! Lemme know if there's anything I need to change. Hope y'all like him! ^-^



Great! Your character is accepted. Feel free to put him in the Character tab. Also, FYI, I see that the images you are using are from discord links. Unfortunately, Discord has recently made it so that discord links to images are no longer permanent, so the images are missing.
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Hidden 5 mos ago Post by baraquiel
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baraquiel Angel of Moe *:・゚✧

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@Stern Algorithm thank ye! Will put them later after work. Also yikes on the pics. I just saw them on Pinterest and sent them to myself on Discord? Is there a way to make a Url for downloaded pics to load them here?
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@Stern Algorithm thank ye! Will put them later after work. Also yikes on the pics. I just saw them on Pinterest and sent them to myself on Discord? Is there a way to make a Url for downloaded pics to load them here?


Someone recommended imgbb to me as an image repository.
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