Never leave the walls... That's what they always told us. Books from outside were prohibited, the majority of people wanted absolutely nothing to do with the world beyond those fifty metre-high walls. We had everything we needed inside - farms, factories, markets... We all wondered how much more there was at some point in our lives, but it was never long before they were squelched by talk of the Titans. Among our parents and their parents before them, there were those brave enough to leave the walls for the good of us all. The Survey Corps represented everything people wanted to be, everything people were too afraid to talk about, and everything they pretended not to think about; the children who still held onto those dreams of seeing the outside world dreamed of joining as their only route out of these menacing walls. Of those children, many of them didn't even try to enlist in the military, even fewer graduated from the Training Corps, and fewer still survived their first mission.
Even the members of the most famous group of soldiers, "Levi's Squad" as they were referred to, went into battle with no expectation of survival. Another regiment, however, was less talked about than even the work of the majority of Survey Corps soldiers. The 72nd Expansion Battallion was founded during the approximate century of peace that mankind experienced after the walls were completed. Their mission was not only to research, capture, and eradicate Titans beyond the walls; in fact, they were deployed for extended periods of time, sometimes months on end, with no form of communication back to their home. Their job was to scour distant lands in search of some lost form to counter the Titans, find a location safe or free of the monsters' influence. Many of the soldiers know that finding a new location is rather unlikely, as is finding a countermeasure to the seemingly omnipresent beasts, but what else can they do apart from their duty? With what little life they get to have, these people get to see more than any other. Their survival rate can be shockingly low, based on the size of their deployed troops per mission, but they see more than just the forests and plains beyond the walls. They go farther, faster, than anybody else. They see the dilapidated metropolises that some believe to be only legend, the ruins of ancient civilizations, the wastelands ravaged by the Titans, and the untouched, natural land which has seen nothing but peace since man's extinction. Nobody, save for the select few who are crazy enough to join, know whether these sights are truly worth what they must endure to find them.
The few new recruits who flock to the squadron seem to think so.
Alright guys, so that's a little bit of backstory to what we were thinking - it keeps the roleplay a bit more varied and prevents us from copying the anime's plot. We will start near the end of our characters' training as cadets, they'll, by whatever means, move into the 72nd Battalion, and follow them during their missions and return home. The year will be about 850 at the start of the roleplay and they'll deploy for their first mission just before the fall of the Wall Rose. When they return home, there's is nearly no way of them knowing what state their home will be in upon return.
So, that's the basics, I have to head to work now, I'll edit this post later with my own character(s).
