DruSM157

A Stellar Tomb

Very interesting, I really like this take on an android!

A Stellar Tomb

The opening post of the story is up to give some context on the world, how I write for anyone who doesn't trust me as a writer, as well as some context on how everything goes to hell.

For those interested, the actual IC story begins six hours BEFORE this scene. And at that very moment when that scene occurs, all the player characters will be in one place. But that's my job to get them there. Anyways, again, any questions, comments or concerns, I'm happy to address and answer here in the OOC!

A Stellar Tomb

---

Project Kepler Control Room
Research Labs, September 17th

---

Music

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents."-HP Lovecraft

The control room had gotten darker. "Fuck." Alvin Miller grunted with his teeth clenched. The Board was constantly up his ass for updates on the project. They always expected results, and those results had cost him an entire team of physicists last week. It took a lot of alcohol to forget their faces. Now he was staring at a holo-screen that read: WARNING. INSUFFICENT POWER FOR TEST.

"When's the next resupply?" He asked one of the men obfuscated by a console.

"Two weeks sir."

Two weeks wasn't good enough. Not long enough to hold the board at bay, not long enough to keep them off his ass. His predecessor had run the labs for six years. Six whole years of research and development and testing...and Gaius fucking Mochus had used him for target practice when he marched up asking why they hadn't "cracked the code yet." Alvin was approaching his fifth year with only minor gains. And with the loss of life mounting with each test, the pressure got worse.

"What about re-routing power? Can't we connect to the main station grid? Just a five-minute window won't do too much damage. Maybe some brownouts and..." he was quickly interrupted by the newly christened safety inspector. The previous one had gouged his eyes out last week.

"Sir, we run on our own generators for a reason. The closed circuit keeps us from making any drastic issues with the main sta-"

"I fucking know the protocols!" Alvin roared, throwing a metal clipboard over the inspector's head. "In six hours, the heads of the companies are coming in for an inspection! If you want to fucking keep your heads up, we need results! Five fucking minutes!"

The room was filled with a terrified sense of quiet. The 5 CEOs NEVER traveled together. If they were all coming to inspect the Kepler Device, it only meant one thing: Twenty Years had taken too long, and they were deciding to pull the plug. Essential personnel would probably be shuffled around to other stations, but they'd leave the majority out on this rock at the solar system's edge. They may cancel any supply ships and leave them all to starve slowly, or they could scuttle the entire station with the people in it. Bodies could be easily cleaned, after all. This was normal in the world; they were all just a few mistakes away from hell.

Technicians began working, and a call was sent to the Underside, informing them of the work. After a few tests, it seemed they had their power situation under control. "Alright, we're lowering the spectrum of the system by fifteen percent. If anything starts to come through..." he grimaced. "Hold until the probe is back. We've lost seven probes...and we need results. Just keep on standby." The others looked grim as he gave his instructions.

"Begin in three...two...one..."

***

Throughout the Sprawl, lights began to flicker. Several hydroponics pumps shut down. Air scrubbers began to grind to a halt. Warning systems began popping up everywhere about a power outage. Even in the underside, engineers and technicians began to scramble. Whatever had drained the power was continually doing it. There would have to be some kind of manual shut off, or the entire station would go dark, and with it, life support. Twenty thousand people could be dead within a few hours. Suddenly, the world itself began to groan.

***

"KEEP IT FUCKING OPEN!" Miller was fighting with a hazmat suit. The probe had gone through, but now there were issues in the testing room. He HAD to fix this. If he didn't...well. Better to die doing this than to be a fucking trophy for a rich asshole, right? Miller sealed the control room behind him as he approached the aperture, the probe making its way back...slowly.

It was coming back far too slowly.

Miller grabbed the emergency line and began to pull. At first, there was resistance, as if something was pulling back. But it slowly came towards him with each tug. "Come on...you...mother...fucker!" The metal of the probe was peaking through the portal; however, it was covered in some substance. [color=yellow]"WHEN IT'S THROUGH,"[color] he bellowed through the intercom, "CLOSE IT!"

But there was no answer from the control room. When he looked at the glass, he couldn't even see inside. It was as if something was covering the observation glass. "CLOSE THE-" As Miller turned around, he screamed.

A Stellar Tomb

"I thought it said "liberate me"-"save me." But it's not "me." It's "liberate tutemet"-"save yourself." -Event Horizon

Kepler Space Station

---

Humanity's migration into space is reaching the end of its first century; since then, interspace travel has become the biggest drive for humanity. For now, the only way to seed other planets is by vast, expensive colony ships with only a 60% chance of arriving on an Earth-like planet intact and with its colonists all alive. And then the hope is that the planet is suitable for life. Because of this, countless corporations have invested in various scientific theories. That's what the Kepler Space Station, located in the orbit of Neptune's moon Triton, is focused on.

The Technology

Space folding technology creates a wormhole that simultaneously folds two points in space to allow near-instant transmission of a ship thousands if not millions of lightyears apart. The technology is still in the early stages of development and testing, but so far, the workers on Kepler have been hopeful.

The station is enormous and backed by various megacorporations in the solar system. So far, the population in the space station numbers twenty-thousand people living on all levels. They range from blue-collar workers to white-collar executives and scientists. To quote Janus Corp, one of the five major corporations that run the station, "Kepler needs everyone to help bring us to the future."

Of course, it's not all perfect. The five megacorps do not live in harmony. Each has its agenda against the others, and each desperate person wants to be the sole holder of this space-folding technology. And, of course, there's the problem with the technology; specifically, it tends to drive the people operating it and testing it insane.

You are a worker on the space station. It is September 17th, 2199. And everything you know is about to end.

The World

---

This is not a utopian future. This world is ruled by oligarchical corporations acting as private governments. The fact that Kepler is governed jointly by five of these corpos is almost unheard of, but they have combined their enormous wealth to create the most advanced research space station city in the solar system. Its location being exceptionally far from Earth allows the corporations even more freedom to do whatever they please. The only thing making life somewhat bearable is that each corpo keeps the others in check, never allowing one of their more extreme ways of governing to become the status quo.

The Corpos that control Kepler are:

Janus Shipping Corp
Main office: Armstrong, The Moon.
Background: Janus Shipping Corp is focused on manufacturing, shipbuilding, and colonial travel. Therefore, it makes sense that the Kepler Project would rank high among its priorities.
Attitude: Cost-Effective. Janus will lie to their workers, calling them a family and then cutting vacation time and holiday pay. Janus' motivations are always profit-driven, unafraid of the human cost to achieve those profits. The ideology exists somewhere between Henry Ford and Jeff Bezos in levels of horrible corpo overlords.



Vira-Legat Bioengineering
Main Office: Titan Station, Saturn
Background: Vira-Legat is a research organization based on life extension, transhumanism, and cloning. Its main drive is the chance to experiment on possible alien flora and fauna using the Kepler Project.
Attitude: Amoral. There is no ethical problem with the ruling board of Vira-Legat, whose oldest member is 195. Their goal is to achieve a new evolution of humanity where their leaders can exist in a state of immortality regardless of the consequences. Over the past 50 years, there have been over three thousand lawsuits against the company, all dropped via bullying, payoffs, or assassination.



Tachibana Logistics
Main Office: Neo Osaka Dome, Mars
Background: Tachibana Logistics is a corporation based on computer and Android systems. During the past 115 years, Tachibana has developed multiple android models to act as assistants and workers in long-range ship voyages and dangerous work environments. The Kepler Project means more need for both computer systems for ships and android workers for unknown environments.
Attitude: Cold. There is an expectation in Tachibana's work culture. Your company is your life; your family is secondary, if not wholly unnecessary.



Atlas Mining Corporation
Main Office: Olympus Mons, Mars
Background: Atlas is less a single company and more of a monopolistic power-grab of companies that goes back hundreds of years, all under the control of a single family. Once the first Martian colonies were established in the early 2080s, Atlas attempted a power grab for all of Mars. Still, due to EarthGov and other corporate interventions, they were left holding only 1/4th the territory of the planet. Atlas also mines 98% of the rare minerals in the asteroid belt. The Kepler Project promises more material to own, and Atlas wants first dips.
Attitude: Entitled. The expectation in Atlas is to treat the CEO Gaius Moschus as a new God, as he is a bloodline descendant of Atlas' founder (to which there are tens of thousands who could claim that Gaius was just the richest and the one who killed enough in the last power grab). Everything you do is for the CEO; if he arrives, know he is the most intelligent, handsome, and elegantly perfect human in the Solar System. Everyone else is just an idiot for not seeing it.



Grummer Orbital Systems
Main Office: Grummer Offices, Bellus Station, Venus Orbit
Background: A mixture of old earth PMC, military organizations, weapons manufacturers, and scientists, Grummer was the first to develop station security equipment, including automated sentries, non-explosive ammunition to be used inside of an airtight station, ship-based weapons, and, course, orbital canons. The Kepler Project promises the unknown; for those who relish in combat, the unknown means war.
Attitude: Fascistic. You serve the Grummer system. You are expected to die for the Grummer System. Thankfully, Grummer has to play nice with four other Corpos, meaning that the usually prison-like structure of a Grummer Station does not apply to Kepler. But any upper-level members (seen with pristine black uniforms) would love a reason to execute the ruling boards and instill their martial law.

The Station

---

The Station is divided into 8 districts:

Command
The highest point of Kepler is where the 5 Corpo Boardroom, Station Security, and command center are.


Upper Residential
Upper-Class Apartments


Lower Residential
Standard and Lower Class Apartments


The Forest and Hydroponics
Outdoor space with fake weather; under the park is the hydroponics area for food and water production and recycling


The Gate
The main docking area and cargo area of Kepler


The Sprawl
Multiple Shopping Districts in central Kepler


The Underside
Engineering, Gravity Well, and other important station systems


The Labs
{RESTRICTED AREA}

You

---

Hey, it's you, the player character! Who are you, anyway? Are you a low-class engineer who works in the Underside? A food technician who grows tomatoes in hydroponics and makes sure the various fish aren't getting sick? Are you a reporter that the Corpos want for breaking into their offices, and you're now hiding out in a friend's office at the Sprawl?

It doesn't matter who you are. Everything is going to go to hell.

But before everything goes to hell, let's find out exactly who you are.

CS

N a m e

“Character Quote”

image

Name

Age
(Due to the horror content of this RP, please, should the character's ages be 18+.)

Gender

Company (Which of the 5 Corpos do you work for?)

Personality
Give me something to go on about your character's inner workings.

History
What did they do before they arrived in Kepler? Or, have they been here their whole life? Kepler WAS established 20 years ago.

Fear and RegretWhat have you done that haunts you to this day? What is your greatest fear? Do not include these with your character sheet that you post, this section will be DM'd directly to me after you are accepted.

Now the OOC Stuff

A Stellar Tomb is an existential horror RP in the vein of many great films and games, such as Event Horizon, Signalis, Solaris, Dead Space, etc. There is a greater focus on storytelling, psychological themes, horror, and our place in the universe than on action and adventure. This is a mystery, and the characters will have to work with and sometimes against one another to solve it and perhaps survive.

So, who am I? I'm Drew, aka DruSM157. I've been here for a long time, writing and disappearing. I'm back, so I'm in that writing phase. My stories fell off in the past because I got stuck with an "I don't know what to do now/I don't know where to push the plot" mentality. This go-around, I have a plan.

I am ultimately looking for a small group of writers with this RP to make it more personal and focused. Plus, I hope I can make it a little bit scary. My only expectation in writing is that folks let each other know if they are going to be absent over multiple days, especially if we are writing a lot. If things die down to a crawl, I may ask everyone if they are still interested in continuing or if we need to end; I do not like wondering if people still want to write.

Anyway, that's all there is to it. If you have any big questions or concerns, let me know! Also I will usually have certain ambient music to go along with IC posts so watch for hiders. I tend to try and match the scene with the soundscape when I can.

Ambient Music

Drew's testy place.

"I thought it said "liberate me"-"save me." But it's not "me." It's "liberate tutemet"-"save yourself." -Event Horizon

Kepler Space Station

---

Humanity's migration into space is reaching the end of its first century; since then, interspace travel has become the biggest drive for humanity. For now, the only way to seed other planets is by vast, expensive colony ships with only a 60% chance of arriving on an Earth-like planet intact and with its colonists all alive. And then the hope is that the planet is suitable for life. Because of this, countless corporations have invested in various scientific theories. That's what the Kepler Space Station, located in the orbit of Neptune's moon Triton, is focused on.

The Technology

Space folding technology creates a wormhole that simultaneously folds two points in space to allow near-instant transmission of a ship thousands if not millions of lightyears apart. The technology is still in the early stages of development and testing, but so far, the workers on Kepler have been hopeful.

The station is enormous and backed by various megacorporations in the solar system. So far, the population in the space station numbers twenty-thousand people living on all levels. They range from blue-collar workers to white-collar executives and scientists. To quote Janus Corp, one of the five major corporations that run the station, "Kepler needs everyone to help bring us to the future."

Of course, it's not all perfect. The five megacorps do not live in harmony. Each has its agenda against the others, and each desperate person wants to be the sole holder of this space-folding technology. And, of course, there's the problem with the technology; specifically, it tends to drive the people operating it and testing it insane.

You are a worker on the space station. It is September 17th, 2199. And everything you know is about to end.

The World

---

This is not a utopian future. This world is ruled by oligarchical corporations acting as private governments. The fact that Kepler is governed jointly by five of these corpos is almost unheard of, but they have combined their enormous wealth to create the most advanced research space station city in the solar system. Its location being exceptionally far from Earth allows the corporations even more freedom to do whatever they please. The only thing making life somewhat bearable is that each corpo keeps the others in check, never allowing one of their more extreme ways of governing to become the status quo.

The Corpos that control Kepler are:

Janus Shipping Corp
Main office: Armstrong, The Moon.
Background: Janus Shipping Corp is focused on manufacturing, shipbuilding, and colonial travel. Therefore, it makes sense that the Kepler Project would rank high among its priorities.
Attitude: Cost-Effective. Janus will lie to their workers, calling them a family and then cutting vacation time and holiday pay. Janus' motivations are always profit-driven, unafraid of the human cost to achieve those profits. The ideology exists somewhere between Henry Ford and Jeff Bezos in levels of horrible corpo overlords.



Vira-Legat Bioengineering
Main Office: Titan Station, Saturn
Background: Vira-Legat is a research organization based on life extension, transhumanism, and cloning. Its main drive is the chance to experiment on possible alien flora and fauna using the Kepler Project.
Attitude: Amoral. There is no ethical problem with the ruling board of Vira-Legat, whose oldest member is 195. Their goal is to achieve a new evolution of humanity where their leaders can exist in a state of immortality regardless of the consequences. Over the past 50 years, there have been over three thousand lawsuits against the company, all dropped via bullying, payoffs, or assassination.



Tachibana Logistics
Main Office: Neo Osaka Dome, Mars
Background: Tachibana Logistics is a corporation based on computer and Android systems. During the past 115 years, Tachibana has developed multiple android models to act as assistants and workers in long-range ship voyages and dangerous work environments. The Kepler Project means more need for both computer systems for ships and android workers for unknown environments.
Attitude: Cold. There is an expectation in Tachibana's work culture. Your company is your life; your family is secondary, if not wholly unnecessary.



Atlas Mining Corporation
Main Office: Olympus Mons, Mars
Background: Atlas is less a single company and more of a monopolistic power-grab of companies that goes back hundreds of years, all under the control of a single family. Once the first Martian colonies were established in the early 2080s, Atlas attempted a power grab for all of Mars. Still, due to EarthGov and other corporate interventions, they were left holding only 1/4th the territory of the planet. Atlas also mines 98% of the rare minerals in the asteroid belt. The Kepler Project promises more material to own, and Atlas wants first dips.
Attitude: Entitled. The expectation in Atlas is to treat the CEO Gaius Moschus as a new God, as he is a bloodline descendant of Atlas' founder (to which there are tens of thousands who could claim that Gaius was just the richest and the one who killed enough in the last power grab). Everything you do is for the CEO; if he arrives, know he is the most intelligent, handsome, and elegantly perfect human in the Solar System. Everyone else is just an idiot for not seeing it.



Grummer Orbital Systems
Main Office: Grummer Offices, Bellus Station, Venus Orbit
Background: A mixture of old earth PMC, military organizations, weapons manufacturers, and scientists, Grummer was the first to develop station security equipment, including automated sentries, non-explosive ammunition to be used inside of an airtight station, ship-based weapons, and, course, orbital canons. The Kepler Project promises the unknown; for those who relish in combat, the unknown means war.
Attitude: Fascistic. You serve the Grummer system. You are expected to die for the Grummer System. Thankfully, Grummer has to play nice with four other Corpos, meaning that the usually prison-like structure of a Grummer Station does not apply to Kepler. But any upper-level members (seen with pristine black uniforms) would love a reason to execute the ruling boards and instill their martial law.

The Station

---

The Station is divided into 8 districts:

Command
The highest point of Kepler is where the 5 Corpo Boardroom, Station Security, and command center are.


Upper Residential
Upper-Class Apartments


Lower Residential
Standard and Lower Class Apartments


The Forest and Hydroponics
Outdoor space with fake weather; under the park is the hydroponics area for food and water production and recycling


The Gate
The main docking area and cargo area of Kepler


The Sprawl
Multiple Shopping Districts in central Kepler


The Underside
Engineering, Gravity Well, and other important station systems


The Labs
{RESTRICTED AREA}

You

---

Hey, it's you, the player character! Who are you, anyway? Are you a low-class engineer who works in the Underside? A food technician who grows tomatoes in hydroponics and makes sure the various fish aren't getting sick? Are you a reporter that the Corpos want for breaking into their offices, and you're now hiding out in a friend's office at the Sprawl?

It doesn't matter who you are. Everything is going to go to hell.

But before everything goes to hell, let's find out exactly who you are.

CS

N a m e

“Character Quote”

image

Name

Age
(Due to the horror content of this RP, please, should the character's ages be 18+.)
Gender

Company (Which of the 5 Corpos do you work for?)

Personality
Give me something to go on about your character's inner workings.
History
What did they do before they arrived in Kepler? Or, have they been here their whole life? Kepler WAS established 20 years ago.
Fear and RegretWhat have you done that haunts you to this day? What is your greatest fear? Do not include these with your character sheet that you post, this section will be DM'd directly to me after you are accepted.

Now the OOC Stuff

A Stellar Tomb is an existential horror RP in the vein of many great films and games, such as Event Horizon, Signalis, Solaris, Dead Space, etc. There is a greater focus on storytelling, psychological themes, horror, and our place in the universe than on action and adventure. This is a mystery, and the characters will have to work with and sometimes against one another to solve it and perhaps survive.

So, who am I? I'm Drew, aka DruSM157. I've been here for a long time, writing and disappearing. I'm back, so I'm in that writing phase. My stories fell off in the past because I got stuck with an "I don't know what to do now/I don't know where to push the plot" mentality. This go-around, I have a plan.

I am ultimately looking for a small group of writers with this RP to make it more personal and focused. Plus, I hope I can make it a little bit scary. My only expectation in writing is that folks let each other know if they are going to be absent over multiple days, especially if we are writing a lot. If things die down to a crawl, I may ask everyone if they are still interested in continuing or if we need to end; I do not like wondering if people still want to write.

Anyway, that's all there is to it. If you have any big questions or concerns, let me know! Also I will usually have certain ambient music to go along with IC posts so watch for hiders. I tend to try and match the scene with the soundscape when I can.

Ambient Music

Sup, its ya boi POOHEAD189

I for one welcome our new Poo overlords.

Ah what am I saying I never post in here anymore.

Oh wait I just posted-

Pariah Online: A Voyage into the Intangible Aether

Sometimes I'm not sure who is more moody: Graves, Benkei, or Rael.

@TGM

I'd say it's a tank thing but Graves screws that up

Persona ~ Alone at Sea (PERSONA WITH A BOAT 𓊝)

<Snipped quote by DruSM157>
You liking 5 is your fatal flaw outside of your secret southern accent.

@TGM

I have become tilted.

Persona ~ Alone at Sea (PERSONA WITH A BOAT 𓊝)

<Snipped quote by stone>
Shush you.

@TGM

As someone who really likes every game because I have spent too many years of my life playing them:

Pariah Online: A Voyage into the Intangible Aether

Location: Mystic Prophecy Chapterhouse, The City-State of Thorinn, Aetheria

---

Children of Letria. Before the glitch, Benkei would have probably stalked everything about the guild, figured out the best players, and determined if they were worth dealing with anyone worth a shit in the game. The fact that they had some beef with Mystic Prophecy probably spoke to why they didn’t immediately come to mind; after all, Mystic was one of the best.

”We can go on ahead Alja,” Benkei told his companion, giving her a half-hearted smile. ”Is there anyone that would be willing to speak with us? Maybe we could drop your name to provide us with a little more help through their doors.” Benkei nodded to his brother and Rael, and was half-preparing to turn when he eyed Luci again. Shit.

There was so much he wanted to tell her. He’d thought about Aaginim a lot in the past few weeks. He thought about how he could never live up to him, how if he had survived, the efforts at bringing together players would have been so much easier. He was the kind of person who could draw so many together, he could have made an entire kingdom under his banner.

Kazuma was no such man. Benkei knew this all too well. Aaginim was someone to aspire to be, but he was nothing more than a lonely kid. But it didn’t mean he didn’t have to try. ”I’ll never be the kind of leader he was. I don’t even know if I’m the right person to try and bring people together. I’ve been so shitty to so many people in this game, trying to be the best. But I’m going to try my best, regardless. I know that it will never be as good as his best, but I have to try.” It felt good to get that off his chest. If there was anyone to think of, to aspire to be at this time, it was Aaginim. Even if he could never be the hero, if he strived hard enough, maybe he could still make some difference.