Gisk

Apotheosis of the Leviathan (a mecha kaiju mashup RP)

@The Irish Tree

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.

Personality WIP

Personality: Her father was a loud, gregarious Frenchman, and her mother the most serious Australian to ever live; and they raised their daughter in a rapidly changing Tokyo, the epicenter of all monster activity on the planet.
Jean-Marie is an energetic person by nature, but her mother has worked hard to instill discipline and self control. As a result, she comes off a little tightly wound. She has a nervous energy and tends to fidget, but can apply herself when pressed. The only time she seems to loosen up is in the pilot’s seat of Talos.
Her father always undermined her mother’s attempts at discipline, and Jean-Marie will always have her little rebellions. Like the color of Talos, or her haircut.
Her attitude about the monster attacks is rather blasé, even after her father’s death. Most Meta-Tokyo locals put on a brave face about them, and the whole affair has been normalized for her since she was born.

Apotheosis of the Leviathan (a mecha kaiju mashup RP)

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?

Apotheosis of the Leviathan (a mecha kaiju mashup RP)

@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.

Apotheosis of the Leviathan (a mecha kaiju mashup RP)

@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.

Mecha Kaiju Mashup

My initial idea was to start somewhere between real and super (like wherever Gundam sits on that scale) and escalate to super as the technology develops.

@Stern Algorithm

The cool thing about gundam as an example is that they've been all over the spectrum between real and super robo, so you can kind of point at different places in the franchise for inspiration.

Like, maybe starting with something like Alaya-Vinjana, or psycommu controls; it's mostly a real robot, the thing that makes it special is how it integrates with the pilot, either psychically or perhaps through neural implants. Or maybe spiritually, if we wanna go that direction.

Then develop a "psycho frame" version, that's more integrated and lets the user project some amount of psychic power(or spiritual, or whatever!) through the robot.

And eventually end up with stuff that may as well be magic, like the GN particles in 00. They don't even pretend to explain the technology, GN particles just do whatever it is they need to. They're propulsion, letting the gundam just kind of float around instead of needing thrusters. It produces a field that can absorb attacks, and it can be projected into beam attacks. But also it fundamentally alters the pilots, and makes them evolve at a crazy rate(but there's also a "bad" version of the particles, that will cause DNA damage, but that's okay because the "good" GN particles can heal the damage too).

And if you wanna do combiners, maybe they literally just fuse together at that point. Go full super robo and just have a scientist do some techno babble on the side about how their constituent molecules harmonized briefly to allow the fusion, or something.

Idea

Maybe our robos use an otherworldly, semi-sentient power source that bonds with the pilot, and the furthering of that bond could be the entire impetus for the advancement of their power. Early in development, it's just viewed as a fancy, super advanced reactor, which is necessary for machines of this scale. The robot itself is more or less just a machine(the absolute bleeding edge of technology, bust still), but unbeknownst to the R&D team, the mysterious power sources that they used form bonds with their most frequent pilots, and soon they stop responding to anyone but their chosen pilot. Over time the engineers realize some of what's happening, and lean into it with their development, leading to further advancements.

Mecha Kaiju Mashup

I'm also interested to know more about the mecha branch! I'm actually fine either way, I'm personally more familiar with real robo stuff, but I'm interested in super robo as well(and in fact think it would be fun to explore a new facet of the genre).

an idea (or a couple) yk????

I don't know if you were looking to do a second one, but I'd be interested in The Vultures.

Rerun: Blackguards!

@Red Wizard Sorry, way late answering, but I would like to confirm that I will not be applying after all. Just couldn't write a character sheet I liked, honestly.

Rerun: Blackguards!

Let me run a power by you, as it's one that affects people's minds and I know some would consider that OP in and of itself. I had in mind a fae-touched trickster with a powerful glamour. People are simply compelled to believe what they say. It's not the same thing as an illusion, but it can be used in a similar way. They cannot create an image of a dragon, but what they can do is make you absolutely convinced that one is nearby.

City In Flames: A Night City Story

The foot traffic was normal for this time of day, which is to say there was a steady stream of pedestrians on the catwalk. Hally weaved between them as they made their slow motion way with the herd. She was already almost a hundred meters from the stairs when the Sandy cut off. The world rubber-band snapped back into place, and Hally stumbled with an undignified yelp of surprise, trying not to topple forward.

It’s a testament to the temperament of NC citizenry that only a few passersby reacted to the sudden apparition of a bloody school girl with more than a moderate increase of walking pace. While her fellow man debated over whether or not she was “their problem,” Hally was trying to control a rampant twitch in her left forearm. She had the presence of mind to keep walking, and join the flow of traffic as she examined her arm. The baton almost slipped from her twitching grip, and she realized that there was blood on her hand. Her own blood, it had flowed down her arm from her shoulder, where the blade had cut her. With a mental command, Hally brought up a heads-up-display for her biomon onto her optics, and noted that her pain editor was doing a lot of work. All of the work, actually.

Her fingers fumbled the switch on her baton, and she had to cradle the Tyger Claw’s stolen club in her elbow so that she could work the catch with her right hand, collapse the baton, and put it back in her pocket. From a different pocket, she pulled out a slim pocket medkit and selected a compact airhypo. She pulled back her uniform jacket and shirt(a cumbersome task with the club still in her arms) and jabbed herself somewhere she guessed was near the wound. It was not lost on her that the task would have been easier if she had let herself feel the pain. Instead of doing that, she finally relented and looked over her shoulder, trying to peer past fellow pedestrians to see what was happening down on the street. The Tyger kids were nowhere to be seen, and she almost missed Papa Tyger, as he got into the passenger seat of a Mizutani Shion(she thought it might be the same model she owned). The car drove off, and Hally wondered if she had at least scared them off for the day.

She almost laughed as she turned to keep walking. The bleeding had at least stopped for now, and she would see a ripperdoc soon, but in the meantime she pulled a bandage from the same medpack and slapped it a little haphazardly over the wound. The techfabric of the bandage automatically formed a seal, and applied antiseptics to the wound. She had felt a little silly when she’d packed all her gear for this job. It had been a thoughtful mental list of things she thought she might need, and she had wondered all the while if Morgan Blackhand ever did anything that gonk. But her gear was right. She’d had what she needed, and had even acquired a weapon by disarming a mark in the field. The mark had been a child, and the weapon was, now she looked at it, a cheap thing of heavy 3D printed resin. But she hadn’t done too bad, really. And if the Tyger Claws really were leaving for the day, she’d even actually accomplished something. The kids were safe for a day, and a message had been sent that they weren’t unprotected.

But there was something else. Hally thought back to what they had wanted. They would surely have taken any money a student had, but that wasn’t what they’d actually asked for first. They had been after data. When she had been a student of the original Arasaka Academy, her father had warned her about schemes like this. Targeting the children of wealthy or influential people, collecting any and all raw data they can, picking through it to learn net architecture and encryption types, and try to find vulnerabilities to exploit. Except, of course, the kids going to the new and improved AAcademy didn’t have rich or influential parents to gain access to via netrunning shenanigans. So what was the game? And what was her next step? The solo would call their fixer, right? She opened her a message window in her optics display, and subvocalized a message to Ken.

“Mister Ikari, I have an update for you.”