Haeo — Roleplayer Guild

Grave Trench
@Oni chan@Kuroyomihime

Grave Trench took a brief breath as the system transitioned him to the combat zone.  He hadn't met any of his teammates in person or online before but he knew a couple of their usernames and had looked up a little background on them.  After all, this was a pick-up team of people who didn't meet before the event.  There was a good chance of friendly fire unless somebody could identify who was who.

The Assembly was a dark maze of deep shadows, industrial robotics, an extensive conveyer system and ample warehouse machinery.  He grinned for a moment in the shadow that hid him from view.  It was so half-assed, just like every other game.  No industrial area like this would have escaped being picked clean, inhabited, or destroyed in a real post-apocalyptic environment.  Still, par for the course.  This was his battlefield and he wasn't against simple AI mobs this time.  These were other players.  The smile faded quickly.  He needed to find his teammates.

Just as he was trying to figure out where to begin his search the sound of a bullet splatting against metal pulled his attention.  It had been less than ten meters away, just on the other side of the conveyor belt behind him.

He moved quietly, lowering himself to the floor and peering into the dark from deep within the conveyor belt's shadow, his black attire helping to conceal him and the unusual outline of his P-Bolter disrupting the shape of his body.  A single impact like that probably meant a concealed shooter with a suppressor.  The shot hit the far side of the belt.  The target was there and the shooter was somewhere beyond them in the shadows, probably close.  Grave lined up his rifle and spotted a subtle movement, it was no more than the movement of a deep breath or perhaps the shifting of a boot in preparation for another shot.  It was enough.  He was about to fire.  Then he saw the boots that were even closer, much closer.

This set of boots belonged to the target of the first shot, they had to.  Once he focused on them, he caught a glimpse of what was in the player's hand.  Well, that made his search easier.  The only notable player he could find information on who wielded a sword was also his team leader.  He shifted his attention back to that brief moment and whispered, barely a breath past his lips, but the acoustics in a place like this would carry it far enough.

"Grave Trench, Kiss Shot, possible target 1 O'clock low."

Then he fired, three shots aimed at the feet and a shadow that might be an exposed elbow.  He couldn't see the head of the shooter from his position, his angle was too low.  But, then again, the shooter probably couldn't see him at all.

Real World Character

Name: Jason Cockren

Age: 34

Gender: Male

Appearance:  Handsome and in good shape, Jason does attract the occasional unintentional second look from the ladies.  He has gray eyes and dark blonde hair with a pale complexion softened by a subtle tan.  He stands at 5’9” and weighs in at 168 lbs.  He usually wears button down shirts in a variety of solid colors and is neither pierced nor tattooed.  He does wear glasses, but only when he is tired and his eyes need the extra help.

Short Bio: Jason Cockren was born in one developed country and then raised in six others, moving 23 times in 18 years due to his father’s… occupation.  Craving stability, he focused on his education and accumulated the skills that he needed to live independently.  He stayed behind when his family moved for the 24th time.  He was 19, employed, single, and decided two things very quickly.  First, his family was likely to try to keep in touch and use him as a contact for their moves.  Second, he didn’t want any part of that… ever.

He moved one more time, to Japan.

Since then he has remained a productive member of society but has been wary of becoming too entangled with other people.  As a result, he played many different games during his free time.  A few of them were MMO games, Gun Burst Online among them.  However, he has never been very aggressive and has consistently struggled in PvP combat.  His PvE skills are unquestioned as he is able to accurately predict the behavior patterns and skill effects of most AI or simple program driven enemies.  This allowed him to hunt solo in very dangerous dungeons and unlock some incredibly rare drops.

Yet, he is beginning to lose interest in GBO.  While there are new dungeons being designed and implemented, most are raid dungeons that require a team to enter, the overall focus of the game seems to have become more narrowly centered on PvP play and tournaments.  He was going to quit quietly but he felt that he hadn’t really given the game a fair chance just yet.  So, he signed up for a PvP event.  If it succeeds in rousing his interest, he may even change his mind about quitting.

Gun Burst Online Character

Name: Grave Trench
Gender: Male
Appearance: 5’11” tall and 179 lbs, Grave Trench is not the smallest target in the field.  His mature features and neatly trimmed beard give him a very wise appearance.  He wears high end mid-weight body armor under a uniform jacket.  His pants are sturdy, black and functional, with armor plates and aluminum mesh sewn in to provide a little protection for the front and back of his legs and crotch.  He also wears black boots, black gloves and a beanie, to cover his bald head.

Level: 90

Specs:
1: Quick Draw
15: Quick Reload
30: Scavengers Instinct = Highlights locations where ammunition and crafting components can be found.
45: Structural Analysis = Provides a core structural integrity report on any fixed structure, including the locations of critical load bearing structures.
60: Dash = Allows extreme and sudden bursts of speed when sprinting in a straight line.
75: Assassin’s Edge = Double Critical strike damage with any bladed weapon.
90: Target Analysis = Provides a basic status report on any hostile target, showing HP, visible weapons, and armor/shield data.

Skills:
- Handgun Proficiency = 1000
- Rifle Proficiency = 1000
- Gunsmithing = 1000
- Parkour = 650
- Chemistry = 800 (This skill allows the crafting of Medical items from mob drops.)
- P-Bolter M-1 = 650
- Close Combat = 1000

Signature Weapon/Combat Style: 

Primary: "Graham's Longinus" 7.62 Cal crafted custom semi-automatic rifle with low profile scope, round accelerator attachment, and armored frame.  Round accelerator increases impact force of rounds fired.  Dual under barrel fixed bayonets and single under stock fixed blade (curved).  60 round drum magazine.

Side-arm: 14mm long barrel hand cannon with collapsible stock.  4 Round magazine.

Exotic: “P-Bolter M-1” Plasma bolt LMG.  Minimal linear recoil and very tight shot group.  Random chance that a given bolt will skip off or burst in a small explosion on contact with a non-target object.  This weapon cannot be carried in inventory outside safe zones.  120 shots per capacitor charge. 

The “P-Bolter M-1” has a firing capacitor and a main power cell. The power cell must be charged from a city power grid. It cannot be recharged in the field. It holds enough power to empty five firing capacitors. However, the weapon requires the gas charge from the capacitor as well as the energy from the power cell to fire.  Each capacitor holds enough reactive gas for 120 shots. 8 shots per second = 480 BPM.

The Charge Compressor can be equipped on the thigh, or low back, preventing other gear from being carried there. It replaces the reactive gasses used in making the plasma lance by drawing in and filtering surrounding atmosphere. It takes 30 minutes to recharge one firing cell and the charger only fits one. This charging rate is unaffected by specs or stats but is dependent on the wearer being in an air atmosphere.  Charging ceases underwater or in areas with pervasive atmospheric contamination.

Preferred combat style:
Mid-Range rifle engagement interspersed with intense and fluid melee combat, often without switching weapons.
Heavy weapon reserved for situational use and chokepoint defense.


Inventory: 
1 x Chemist’s Kit
5 x Med Injector
1 x Gunsmith’s Kit
2 x Crafted Combat Knife (14mm derringer)
10 x Monster Bait (Attracts random creature type monsters to the area when used.)
1 x Survey Scope (5x zoom, one eye only)
1 x Charge Compressor
2 x Compressed Gas Capacitor
Credits: 345,000
Photonic Crystals: 1200
Other

The wind cast ripples across the tall grass that covered the deck of the aircraft carrier.  It was tilted at about 30 degrees but Grave Trench didn’t mind.  He was crouching just upslope from the bridge tower and the evening sun kept him in shade.  The large spiders that had turned this area into their colony had a solid habit of dropping valuable materials used in Med Injectors.  Most players preferred to buy their meds, but Grave Trench had been hunting this area for the past several hours.  Staying uninjured in this kind of area was almost impossible.  Only the most specialized characters could pull that off.  

It wasn’t that the spiders were all that powerful.  The actual challenge was that when the nest was disturbed, the dominant spider would order the whole nest to swarm the area.  That meant that hunting parties couldn’t use explosives without getting overwhelmed.  Then again, the zone did a mob behavior reset every five hours.  The last one finished 2 minutes ago.

He shifted his weight and pulled his P-Bolter M-1 from his back and settled it on his shoulder.  This wasn’t his first time hunting this spot and he knew that the Master of the nest dungeon spawned in one of three chambers.  He knew the coordinates of those chambers.  It took a moment to line up the shot.  The tunnel that opened at his feet led deep inside the nest.  It was the straightest shot between his location and the Master’s room.  If this worked and he attracted the attention of the whole nest, he could handle them all as they funneled through this one tunnel.  

He depressed the first trigger and felt the weapon’s vibration as a hum in his bones while the indicator in his peripheral vision transitioned from uncharged to ready to fire.  Then he took a breath, checked his line of fire, and pulled the second trigger.  The shot was a little anti-climactic.  There was less vibration than an LMG class weapon usually delivers and almost no recoil.  The smell of ozone was strong, the muzzle was hidden by a continuously oscillating blue flash, and a bright stream of plasma bolts flew down the tunnel to skip off the walls and explode with just enough force to shake the dust from the tunnel ceiling.  Drifting red damage sparks glittered in the dark where a couple lucky hits had brought down patrol spiders.  He took a moment to pop out the capacitor and swap it with the one in the charge compressor on his left thigh.  He had learned not to start this kind of event before having both charged and the Master and his swarm should be coming soon.

His caution paid off.  The spiders on the surface raised their forelegs to the sky and shrieked before jumping off the ship to rampage over the surrounding field zone.  He lined up his sights along the same line as the first burst as the deck under his feet began to tremble with the movements of an entire nest of giant spiders.  Unlike the gardener spiders outside who immediately try to swarm the surrounding field zone, the spider types inside would follow the shortest possible route straight to him.  With most attacks that would mean all the nearest entrances to the dungeon zone would be active exit points and the spiders would be coming from many directions.  However, this was both the most direct tunnel and the furthest one from the center of the nest.  It was an expressway that connected every level of the nest straight to Grave’s location.  They all used it.

He waited as the glowing green eyes of the leading spiders came closer and closer.  The indicator read ‘ready-to-fire’.  The first spider came within ten feet.  He fired.  The tunnel was suddenly transformed from a dark hole dotted with the glowing eyes of an unstoppable swarm of charging spiders into a narrow kill box where one spider after another was cut to pieces by tightly controlled pulses of plasma bolts.  It would be another 8 minutes before the charger would finish recharging the cell he used in his first burst.  By that time, he’d be done with these monsters, but the Master would be another story.  He knew the tunnel was clear when the last few shots lit the walls all the way to the bottom before harmlessly bursting on the tunnel floor.

He secured the P-Bolter on his back and readied his rifle, sighting down the tunnel.  He needed to be able to move and the heavy weapon wouldn’t allow that.  He waited ten seconds.  Then he started firing.  His first shot disappeared into the dark.  The second struck sparks from something partway down.  The third hit something closer.  The fourth made the distinctive sound of a critical hit and something in the tunnel popped up a “Dead” indicator before dissolving into damage sparks.  The body had been destroyed by something passing through and smashing it.

The Master was coming.  He kept shooting, watching the damage sparks as they marked the Master’s progress.

Bam!  80 meters.
Bam!  76 meters.
Bam!  72 meters.
Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! 40 meters.
His rate of fire was four shots per second.  The Master was advancing four meters per shot.  Contact in three seconds.  He kept shooting until one second to contact.  Then he lunged forward, dashing and jumping across the tunnel mouth and another ten feet past it before the crashing sound behind him indicated that the Master had arrived.

“Master on deck!” Grave announced with a distracted smirk as he spun around and brought his rifle to bear.  The Master had the same movement profile as its minions.  It could run quickly in a straight line and would jump if its target was farther away than 50 feet but its turning rate was comparable to an underpowered tank.

Grave stayed just out of reach, firing only when he could hit a critical zone.  The fight was fairly one sided.  Grave only had to reload once before the master finally trembled and collapsed, yielding to digital oblivion until its next resurrection.  Grave Trench collected the loot and then made for the road that led back to the city.  He would be busy making Med Injectors later.  But, for now, the hunt was over.  It was time to get back to reality, there were bills to pay.

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