Aphid — Roleplayer Guild

GAMOPETALOUS

gamopetalous (ˌɡæməʊˈpɛtələs)
adj
1. (Botany) (of flowers) having petals that are united or partly united, as the primrose.

You were cold, and tired. Your body ached in a million different places, a million different blades and bombs making your bones and your guts and your shoulders crave the sweet reprieve of sleep. Beneath your exposed flesh you felt the writhe of an organic flooring grumble and contract beneath your back. It sometimes grew hot, drew beads of sweat from every pore on your body and the floor seemed to nimbly climb the contours of your sides, engulfing you in its full-body chokehold as it absorbed and lapped up the taste of you.

And you allowed it.

You grew dumb, and thoughtless. The voice inside your head became incoherent, mumbles of something once intelligible. At times they weren’t your own thoughts, but you couldn’t tell the difference. You were at peace with the state of unawareness, the total ignorance.

But you could recall your bed… you could recall the way you stirred and awoke, feeling your skin crawl with the sensation of knowing it was being run over – every pockmark and abrasion, analyzed. You looked to see the silhouettes around you, the inability to flee confining you. Only your eyes could dart from side-to-side as your heart picked up its pace and that tidal wave of panic drowned you and –

There was a light, then. A blue light. It blinded you. It embraced you, and you gave in. You were okay with that.

It was dark, and silent. Sometimes. Sometimes there was a trill ringing that ricocheted off the walls of your skull – that ran loops around your mind and slipped from one ear canal and into the next, boring holes into your patience and sanity. Potentially boring holes into the lobes of your brain that made your entire head violently shake, but you couldn’t be certain of what was happening.

Sometimes there was light. A faint inkling of that warm, blue hue just out of reach. Not that you could grab it – not a single ounce of you could move. Your arms were like tree trunks, your legs were I-beams. It became an effort to keep your eyelids open long enough just to see the flicker of that light when something moved in front of it.

At one point, you were awake. You watched something watching you. You were okay with that.

A whale sang its song to you.

You went back to sleep.

~*~

You are human.

At some point in our collective timeline, you were born into a world that viewed you as a number but was quick to tell you that you were more than just that. You’re a friend, a lover; a strong-willed woman, an honest man, and maybe a bit of both; a mother or father, brother or daughter, the drunken uncle at a party; you’re an inspiration, an asshole, a mediocre leader, a comedian; you’re employee of the month. You’ll win the race for “best day ever,” and sleep. You’ll want to punch a hole through the face of Earth, and sleep. You’ll forget what you had for breakfast, lunch and dinner and whether you remembered to brush your teeth, and sleep. You’ll get lost in the throes of hate-sex; you’ll get heartburn from overdue bills; you’ll press pillows to your ears to block out the noise of the age-old argument mom and dad still breathed life into long after they knew when it first drew breath – and you’ll sleep.

When the last few hours became yesterday and you’re prepping for today, you’ll sleep. In the end you sleep like all good humans do.

You are human.

Aren’t you?

Maybe it was the night you got piss drunk on Christmas Eve and made friends with the toilet in your grandmother’s basement. Or the night you stayed up late to finish that blueprint for the next terraformed dometown on Mars. Or the night you had an excruciatingly uneventful day on the farm. One night you closed your eyes, and when they flew open to the sound of a mechanical hum, to the touch of gentle fingertips tracing the goose bumps of your forearm, to the realization that you never were alone when you settled down to bed…

But there was that blue light…

There were flashes. Feelings, inside and out. Words in languages you didn’t understand. You were somewhere else, somewhere you weren’t sure was possible. There were things you wanted to say were human, but you couldn’t pretend they were. They were doing things you couldn’t pretend were natural.

And in the end, you woke up.

And when you saw the vision of your village going up in flames only to smell the early telltale sting of smoke seconds later, or made a stylus levitate just a few inches off the work desk with an absent flick of your wrist, or swore you watched a flock of seagulls get caught in a web mid-air for just a few seconds too long because you looked at it, you asked yourself…

“Am I human?”

The blue light in the sky can answer that.

~*~

Greetings, friends!

As you can tell, this RP is going to be about a bunch of “psychogenerative humans”* trying to figure out who they are, why they’re needed, how they're connected and what they should do about it. The basic idea is that a bunch of humans from various points in time were abducted, studied, and returned home. They awoke to discover they possessed superhuman abilities – nothing fancy, just enough to prove something.

But that will all change when they're abducted a second time...

Dun, dun, dunnnnn

(*= fancy term for “superhumans”. Gotta stay classy.)

The further we get into the thick of things, the more will be explained. It may be just me, but I’ve never been a fan of massive info-dumps from the get-go. So… sit tight while I contradict that.

There will be a plot to follow, but you aren’t limited to it or just it. Inevitably you will have to be a part of some of it, but how you deal with it is up to you; what you want to explore with your character is entirely up to you. We’ve got all of outer space to explore and, eventually, maybe all of humanity’s timeline (more on that later). So I’m looking for people who want to add onto the world(s) and help flesh-out this story. Don’t limit yourself; if you have an idea to shape the story, present it. Go with it and make it perfect.

To clarify: there will be time and space exploration. To what extent depends on how we feel about it as a group. We can make it like Doctor Who where all of everything is up for grabs, or we can limit it for the sake of continuity and control. I feel like chronokinesis (ability to control time) can became an available ability, but maybe not right away. I’d like to establish characters before we go slinging all around the ‘verse. Regardless, our characters will eventually teleport through time and space, so long as you would like your character to. But keep this in mind when making your character. You’re 19th Century nun can and will someday see the stars; don’t feel tied down by who your character was.

I’m looking for a group of roughly six-eight people. I’m not going to be strict in terms of a posting schedule. If you’re working on a post, you’re working on a post. You’ll have it posted as soon as you feel it’s ready, and I don’t intend on rushing anyone. So long as I know you’re still a part of the RP and are not holding anyone up significantly, we’re all good.

In terms of your character? They can be anybody, from royalty to an absolute nobody. But let’s be tasteful about it. We’ve all seen Guardians of the Galaxy, and we can all tell you were heavily inspired by Star Lord. That’s great that you were inspired, but make it your own – unique, memorable and plausible. How about we don’t do cliché? We’ve got five hundred years’ worth of interesting people to sift through. Let’s not stick to the same old heroes.

You’re also probably wondering what these “powers” our characters will have are. I wanted to keep it strictly mental – telekinesis, telepathy, precognitive episodes, etc. So, I’m sorry, there’s no super strength or morphing abilities. Just anything to do with the use of the mind that you can think of (but don’t go overboard). We’re going to start off on the weaker side of things, just so that our characters have the chance to grow. Mr. Super can levitate a book, but he probs won’t be able to lift a tanker truck just yet. In time, grasshopper.

Lastly, I’m hoping to have a group of people who take this seriously. We’re going to have fun with it, and I know you can’t really peg “realism” to this RP, but I’d like to still keep it in the realm of strong, mature writing.

And when we’ve got enough interest, I’ll put up the OOC and we can get started. Fingers-crossed I didn’t come off as too much of a pretentious dickhole and scare people away by my demands.

(You aren’t required to post your CS here, but I’m putting it up so you can get started as soon as you’d like)

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