[OOC] No Turning Back - Into the Abyss

[Sep]

Going to give the characters a pause while I work on the intro to the IC.

[boomlover]

@BrassOtter gimmie GIMMIE GIMMIE !!!!

[Rawk]

@Sep

I added the approved CS to the Character tab.

Also, my intro post will have him already established as the "Head of Security", and I assume that everyone has been on the Ark for at least 10 years prior to the start of the story?

[RedLeather]

@Sep

I added the approved CS to the Character tab.

Also, my intro post will have him already established as the "Head of Security", and I assume that everyone has been on the Ark for at least 10 years prior to the start of the story?

@Rawk

We're starting a liftoff

Edit: I was confused, ignore this

[Sep]

@Rawk Not necessarily ten years, varying degrees of time. Some will be brand new to the ship, some will have been there since there was a ship to stay in. Longest possible term is 9 years, that's how long Lockes been on board. Some of the engineers/technicians can have worked on it longer but it wasn't viable to stay on till that point.

Also guys I did a thing, I'm reasonably happy with it but I've also re-read it about 50 times so I also hate it.

Any criticism is accepted, so are any compliments.

[vietmyke]

@Sep

I added the approved CS to the Character tab.

Also, my intro post will have him already established as the "Head of Security", and I assume that everyone has been on the Ark for at least 10 years prior to the start of the story?

@Rawk

If he's head of security, anyone who's crew, staff, or military will probably know that without needing to be on the Ark for 10+ years

[Sep]

If y'all have any questions/serious concerns (like if you think the post sucks) or anything like that catch me in the discord or throw me a mention here.

[RedLeather]

Are we good to go on our own posts?

[Sep]

@RedLeather Oh right, yeah.

IC is now open folks. Have fun, also as before all your posts don't need to be as long as mine, I just have ground I (personally) want to cover while introducing Locke.

[boomlover]

@Sep ill cook up something tomorrow.

[vietmyke]

I'll work on something when I get home

[Draken]

Player Name: Draken
Character Name: Karen Anderson (No relation to pilot T. Anderson)
Character Age: 34
Character Gender: Female
Nationality: Roslin Federation

Appearance: A plain Caucasian woman a slightly round face and straight, light-brown hair barely past her shoulders. Karen prefers to leave it out, but frequently uses a ponytail while working. She's no model, but is of a reasonably healthy weight and holds good posture without fail.

Profession: Biologist; Her primary job aboard the Vitae is the general maintenance, management, and observation of the Eden terrarium. However, the primary reason she was chosen is for her experience in Xenobiology, hence she is familiar with, and has access too, research facilities.

Strengths:
Strong working understanding of biology as well as past experience with research on alien life (see bio).
Excellent manager and general coordinator of small task forces.
Good at viewing phenomena from unusual angles and considering unusual proposed solutions/hypotheses.

Weaknesses:
Highly receptive to suggestion and persuasion. (Easily influenced/manipulated.)
Poor instructor. She struggles to keep in mind what requisite knowledge is required for her explanations.
Hates missed opportunities. In particular, she loathes to leave behind a specimen that may never be found again, such as an alien species.

Personal Effects:
Her Doctorates in XenoBiology (a field thrown together after the Three Day's War; most students dropped out)
A stuffed turtle from her childhood
A photo of her parents.
Small bookshelf with all published works on Xenobiology (including a couple written by herself). (Bookshelf is not full, particularly since some works are classified.)
A shelf with a dozen complex board games, plus a small poker set and chess set, neatly arranged and categorized.
Trinkets. A slightly unreasonable number of tiny statues, tokens, and curios.
Half a dozen pieces of simple, durable jewelry, made only of metal (no plastic or gems).

Bio:
Karen's mother was a low-ranking officer in the Roslin Federation's military, and her father an engineer with them. As such, she grew up with fairly strict discipline, but encouragement to always find out "why" and "how". Her mother died in duty when she was 14 in the Three Day War. Karen took this pretty hard, floundering emotionally and academically. She ultimately found her footing when she began to obsess over the Devastators. She kept up with all the research that was allowed to reach the public. Taking a military scholarship at 18, she went to college with the full intent to get a degree in Xenobiology and work out exactly what makes the alien monstrosities tick.
In college, Karen did well academically, but floundered socially. It wasn't until she was entering her third year that board games helped alleviate the obsession that was slowly eating her alive. With a small collection of friends to interact with, she grew less intense and more friendly. Her academics, ironically, rose slightly, due to her stress levels returning to normal. By the time she graduated, Karen was a clear choice to continue as a post-grad in Xenobiology.
During grad school, Karen, as a student with a military scholarship, was allowed to/had to take an internship doing research on the chunks of Devastator hulls left after the war. By this time (2205), almost all concrete discoveries had been made, and most work was in the hypothetical and extrapolation. While slogging through her coursework, Karen worked hard with her internship, despite most of her assignments being to dig through existing records to fact check and bring in information wanted by true researchers. However, this allowed her to see and hear information significantly above normal clearance. Early in her second year, Karen ventured to make a suggestion during a meeting, a plausible explanation on how sufficient energy couple be gathered in deep space to run a biological ship. Some of the researchers were already reaching similar conclusions themselves, but were pleasantly surprised that she was able to see that far into the situation. Thereafter, Karen was a slightly more active participant, as some researchers liked to think of her as some sort of pupil of theirs.
Straight out of grad school, Karen landed a job working with them. In particular, she was a personal assistant to one of the higher ups, and generally functioned as an encyclopedia (due to lugging around what nearly was an encyclopedia) and occasionally filled in for her superior at small meetings. Before long, she was attending in her own right, and by 2210 she was an authority on the matter, though not so much as to be a public figure.
In 2214, Karen was quietly invited to work on one of the Arks, being there to work with any and all alien life encountered. Though she felt pained that the earth would be abandoned, she recognized that her expertise was practically needed and basic instinct required her to choose survival. Besides, she owed it to her mother to make sure that her sacrifice was not in vain. While her research slowed, Karen had a simple job during the Ark's construction: planning and managing Eden, a near perfect terrarium. It was to essentially become her downtime project, and a chance to observe evolution on a tiny scale. When asked by friends why she'd disappear for days at a time, she'd jokingly say she got caught up doing "fevered gardening". The one person she brought into stasis was her father.

Code Word: My favorite kind of pizza. (Pineapple)

[Sep]

@Draken she's good to go.

[Rawk]

<Snipped quote by Rawk>

If he's head of security, anyone who's crew, staff, or military will probably know that without needing to be on the Ark for 10+ years

@vietmyke

...I think you misunderstood my question. I was merely asking how long everyone had been on the Ark between the time of the Genesis Project going public and the start of the story. Just so I'd have a reference point to spring from.

But I think @Sep answered it anyway ;)

[vietmyke]

well, if it helps, pilots like Sara have probably been part of the Genesis project for a while, but weren't directly assigned to specific arks until a month or so ago- keeping some thousand good pilots sitting on standby for years at a time sounds like a waste of hours, where they could be pilotting supply shuttles to ferry supplies for building, or protecting supply lines like Sara was.

Edit: I did a thing! I also made several assumptions about the Ark's hangar and air-corps. No one else is really a part of the air-corp, other than perhaps Anderson- but he's a different sort of pilot, so I felt I could make some assumptions and world building.

Edit 2: the EVA harnesses I keep referring too is the bulky looking armor Sara is wearing in her picture, it is essentially a mini jetpack that lets pilots move while in vacuum, so they don't drift aimlessly away if they are out of their craft. It's armored enough to resist some small arms fire, but not to the degree of military armor, and it has enough air for about 6 hours of EVA. But chances are, if youre out there that long, there's a bigger problem at hand.

[Sep]

@vietmyke twas a nice post. I especially liked the part about the Adnirals speech. But that is just me.

[Sep]

Phone derp.

[Rawk]

Edit: I did a thing! I also made several assumptions about the Ark's hangar and air-corps. No one else is really a part of the air-corp, other than perhaps Anderson- but he's a different sort of pilot, so I felt I could make some assumptions and world building.

@vietmyke

I thought your descriptions painted a fairly vivid picture of the hangar interior. Well done.

That being said, @Sep, as we go along in the story, building out our own assumed descriptions, could they be added to a new or existing tab for reference? For instance, @vietmyke's Ark hangar description could be included in the "Ark" section, obviously :)

[Sep]

@Rawk I did have images and brief descriptions up for reference, obviously kf it's someones area they can modify it to their tastes (touch the bridge at the risk of your own life).

I'll get around to modifying the respective hider for the hangar.

[vietmyke]

@Sep my description was less a change of the hangar than a embellishment on the current design of, mainly just adding some quality of life pieces and logistics for the craft

Also switched her from the 5th squadron to 7th, for the pure fact that her armor in her picture has the number 7 on it.