Something Sinister Slumbers in the Sands of Sargon
Welcome to Arknights: Something Sinister Slumbers in the Sands of Sargon, or Arknights: 5S for short. In this RP, you will be playing as elite Rhodes Island operators or external affiliates/partners of Rhodes Island (Original Characters only). The events of this RP will take place in year 1105 of the Arknights calendar, which is seven years after the County Hillock Incident, the most recent Arknights main story event, which puts us well past any of the events and side stories with known dates so we do not overlap with ant canonical events. Inspirations for this RP include the Indiana Jones franchise and the Stationary Security Service (SSS) gameplay mode in Arknights where you keep going deeper and deeper. The RP will take place mostly in Sargon, but Sargon is a great land with many features, from deserts to rainforests, and even Durin underground cities.
I chose Sargon because, for the time being, not a great deal has been provided as far as canonical lore, allowing me to take some liberties. The RP will start off on the premise that one of the Lord Ameers of Sargon has agreed to a business deal with Rhodes Island, buying RI's oripathy medication and allowing the opening of a local RI branch office. But not all is well in Sargon, foreign powers lust greedily for the hidden wealth of Sargon's ancient civilization and will stop at nothing to unearth horrors best left buried. A serendipitous discovery will lead to a wild race for forbidden power and it will be up to you to prevent the worst case scenario.
So prepare your equipment modules and say goodbye to the landship, it's going to be a dangerous ride.
And for those of you who are interested, but don't know what Arknights is, Arknights is a popular gatcha tower defense mobile game with surprisingly deep worldbuilding and lore. The world of Terra is inhabited by anime animal people who live in nations reflective of the nations that exist in the real world. The world has a mix of pre-modern and near-future technology. The world is defined by the super-material Originium, which is used in all forms of modern technology as a source of power, and is used to channel Originium Arts, this world's sci-fi magic. However, Originium, as a mineral, can grow, shift, or turn into dust and spread around. This movement of Originium causes various natural disasters called Catastrophes, but worst of all, it is possible to be infected by Originium, resulting in contracting a disease known as Oripathy. Those who have contracted Oripathy are referred to as the Infected, and are shunned by society. Oripathy is a death sentence, shortening the Infected's lifespan, however it also boosts one's ability to cast Originium Arts without the need for an Originium device. Because of the Catastrophes that Originium can bring, the people of the world have developed Mobile Cities, turning their cities into gigantic collections of mobile landships, allowing them to preserve their infrastructure while moving away from impending Catastrophes. Most major civilization centers are on the Mobile Cities, though there are poor villages and nomads that wander the wasteland that just take their chances. The world also seems to be inhabited by various mysterious, god-like entities that work from the shadows and manipulate people's lives. One such entity has taken over the entire ocean, making it extremely dangerous for normal people. There is also the mystery of what Originium is, the existence of ancient technology, a possible precursor civilization, and something to do with space travel.
Much of the canonical Arknights story revolves around the Infected fighting for their rights, cities trying to avoid catastrophe, societal upheaval, the conflict between the rich and the poor, the history of war between nations, the looming inevitability of another major war, and fighting against or resisting the influence of the afore-mentioned god-like entities, especially the one in the ocean.
Here are two wikis to browse if you have questions, but I am also open to answering anything to the best of my abilities.
- Fandom Wiki
- Gamepress Wiki
- I am also including a link to a timeline of events in the world of Arknights. Most of the stories take place between the years 1097 and 1102.
- I found this video which does a pretty good intro/summary of the depth of the world of Arknights.
There is a lot of lore that I will not be touching on; there are many stories in Arknights and the world of Terra, and I am just carving out a tiny chunk of it. As mentioned above, this RP will take place primarily in Sargon which you can read up on in the link. Suffice to say, Sargon is inspired, for the most part on the Middle East, North Africa, and strangely enough, the Aztec Empire. The Rhodes Island I mentioned previously is the protagonist group of Arknights, a 'pharmaceutical company' comprised of a single landship that functions like a paramilitary corporation. Their purpose is to do research to cure Oripathy, but also to resolve conflicts surrounding the infected. They generally treat infected better than the rest of the world and hire both infected and non-infected. They also partner with other nations and companies, so your character does not have to be from Rhodes Island.
Below I am providing an empty character sheet template. I have colored segments with the color code: FFFFFF, so you can simply do a find and replace of FFFFFF with your color hex code of choice. Please also replace or delete everything in triangular brackets <>. I hope it's clear which you should replace and which you should get rid of entirely. I hope the CS is not too complicated.
You will probably need some game assets:
Class and subclass pictures
Skill pictures
Faction pictures
For the clinical analysis stats, the ratings are as follows: Defective, Flawed, Normal, Standard, Excellent, Outstanding, and N/A. I generally won't restrict this, but if you want a range, if we assign defective to 0, Flawed to 1, Normal to 2, ... and N/A to 6, the strongest operators generally have around 20-25 points total. N/A, the highest rank (meaning unmeasurable) is extremely rare, and characters who have it only have one stat rated at N/A and will have another stat that is Flawed or lower. Normal is what a normal civilian is capable of, Standard is what a standard combatant should be capable of. These ultimately don't matter, they are just to give your character flavor, but I know there are people who probably care about stuff like this, which is why I'm including these measurements here. My example character (an NPC) only goes up to 18, and there are 6-star characters (the rarest and strongest playable characters in the game) whose total rating adds up to less than 20. Ultimately, your character can be strong because of their equipment or skills and not necessarily because of their raw stats.
