Naril

Priest and Hawthorne Investigations: A Modern Fantasy Adventure (Again!)

This is genuinely a ton more interest than I expected, so I'm going to go ahead and start dressing up the main RP thread. :3 I also have PMs from several of you, which deeply tickles me, which I will be responding to as well. In the meantime, I've also set up a Discord, since that seems to work well: discord.gg/rzYfZQs8

Priest and Hawthorne Investigations: A Modern Fantasy Adventure (Again!)

Well, you know. We’re wizard private detectives, we probably butt heads with the wizard cops quite a lot. That may be a plot point! Hmmmmmm

Priest and Hawthorne Investigations: A Modern Fantasy Adventure (Again!)

Well, that’s quite a lot more than I expected this fast. :3 I’m excited!

Priest and Hawthorne Investigations: A Modern Fantasy Adventure (Again!)

Priest & Hawthorne Investigations

A Modern Fantasy Adventure

An introduction

The moon was a crescent of hard silver light the night Cameron walked into the aging room of his distillery and found a spider the size of a Volkswagen. There were other shapes nearby - cocoons, smaller than a person but not by so much that he thought he'd stick around and take a closer look. Cameron swallowed hard and backed out of the room, afraid that if he rolled the door shut he might wake the thing up. At the same time, though, if he left the door open, the spider might have an easier time getting out, and out is where it could eat him. Deciding that discretion really was the better part of valor, or at least of not being digested, he walked backwards with slow steps past the threshold, out into the humid Texas night. Overhead, a sodium lamp cast harsh orange shadows over the rust-streaked exterior of the metal-sided warehouse, lending only a little extra color by the watery headlights of Cameron's truck, which had been new sometime before the first time humans set foot on the Moon.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket and looked down at the screen, then back up at the door to the aging room. He called up a dial pad, but...who was he supposed to call? The police? Animal control? An exterminator? He imagined the last conversation and let out the first bite of a barking, hysterical laugh, something that yipped out of his mouth and bounced off the corrugated metal wall in a sharp spray of discordant echoes. In front of him, the huge spider shifted, one giant leg coming uncurled from the apparently-sleeping mass with an almost delicate motion. Cameron took a step back, the phone slipping out of his hand, panic welling up behind his eyes while he watched another leg unfold, opposite the first. No longer caring how much noise he made, Cameron scrambled toward his truck, out of view of the door, and started digging in his jacket for his keys.

He was well into dropping them for the third time when he heard another sound coming up the driveway, this time something more familiar. Tires crunched on the gravel road, along with...something else. Cameron turned away from the slowly-unfurling spider, raising one hand against the glare of another pair of headlights, the sound of John Denver's Country Roads wafting into the night. The lights resolved into another truck, just a little newer than his own, and it came to a sliding, skidding halt a couple of meters from the door, spraying gravel all the way to Cameron's boots.

The truck's doors opened and a handful of people piled out, stepping over one another in no particularly good order. In the headlights' glare, Cameron couldn't quite see who these people were, save for the driver, who stepped out and took the few paces over to the man with long, quick strides. He could just make out her blue-green eyes, the curve of a cheekbone, the edge of a suit jacket. She looked at him, then at the warehouse, then back, and she shoved a hand through sweat-dampened hair.

"Hey, so," she said, sounding almost a little sheepish, "I've got a weird question for you." The words came with the rich enunciation of an English private-school education, which Cameron decided he wasn't going to worry about right now.

He looked past the woman, at the shapes of people behind her, then turned his head back back to the warehouse, neck muscles twanging. He tried to speak, but all that came out was a kind of squeak.

"Right," the woman said, "Look - this probably sounds ridiculous, but..." She took a deep breath and pointed at the building, "Is there a huge spider in there?"

Cameron gawped, a proper gawp, the kind that left his jaw hanging loose for a moment. It took him a long, long moment to get enough of his muscles under control to nod and point.

"Okay, thanks." The woman turned and gave a thumbs-up to the people behind her, and they came forward.

Cameron could make out more about the group now, in the hard shadows of two sets of headlights. They didn't look 'official' - no matching suits, no coordinated gait, not even the same kinds of haircuts. One held a shotgun, another had something wrapped around their arm, three objects pulsing with white light orbiting it with no obvious connection to one another. The woman watched with an expression Cameron couldn't read - a wry pull to a corner of her lips, a small roll of one shoulder. She breathed, and the air smelled like thunder.

"Who...who are you?" Cameron managed, after what felt like an eternity.

"Ah," the woman said, "...I'm Lydia. We're from Priest and Hawthorne Investigations."

Behind her, the spider had finished unfolding. It turned in place, long, delicate legs making the kind of thumping sounds on the ground usually associated with earthmoving equipment. One of the newcomers shouted, and the shotgun boomed. Cameron winced and fell against his truck, hands covering his ears. Morgan, for her part, stood steadfast and turned toward the warehouse. The spider shrieked, the sound almost louder than the shotgun. Morgan turned toward the warehouse, then looked back at Cameron. To her left, the metal wall buckled, and a meter of monstrous hairy leg punched through and started slowly rending a tear in the sheet metal.

"I wouldn't worry," Lydia said, reaching into her jacket, "We have this perfectly under control."

-------------------------------------------

Hi there!

Welcome to an interest check for Priest & Hawthorne Investigations, a modern-fantasy RP that I think I want to give another run at. I will be looking for a Co-GM on this, at least for the first couple of months, so, you know. No pressure.

In this story, the players will take the part of people working for the titular Priest & Hawthorne Investigations; a small paranormal-detective service operating out of a large American city. You are people from all walks of life, and have come to PHI by various means - maybe you're a police detective who couldn't overlook something that was obviously a monster attack, maybe you're a Real Actual Wizard but still need a way to make rent, maybe you're a park service ranger who's seen one too many Bigfeet. Whatever the reason, you're living in that liminal space between the mundane and the supernatural, and sometimes helping keep people safe from things that they never knew meant them harm.

The tone of this story is going to be along the lines of Hellboy or The Dresden Files, probably with a dose of Supernatural, The Sandman, The Unsleeping City, and The Dirty Streets of Heaven; and because I don't believe in grimdark, Ghostbusters.

I don't mean to scare anyone off, but I tend to have rather high standards for posts and characters. I'd like this to be quite a small group of people (maybe up to five, - I don't plan to have a character at the moment), and it will not be first-come, first-served. I don't have specific roles in mind, but I would ask that you consider what makes a good team dynamic and a good story. I am, for example, generally not looking for silent and distant loners, violence-crazed psychopaths, vengeance-driven walking armories, or children.

The story will be set in 'the present,' or maybe a 'near-future' if that winds up making sense. The office you'll be working out of will be small, but not scraping-for-the-rent, and has been around for a while - that means that there probably are some kind of interesting things sitting in a back room, but that there isn't an Indiana Jones-style bottomless warehouse of deus ex machina. If you convince me it'll make fun storytelling, there's a very high chance I'll let you do it. For example: The Queen of the Winter Sidhe owes you a favor? I want to know everything about that.

I do have several story arcs in mind, but they're deliberately designed to be flexible and to allow the players to push on the world; I will rarely say "no, you can't do that," since the yes-and of collaborative storytelling is my favorite part. That is to say that this is not intended to be a bring-your-own-adventure sandbox, although I am more than happy (and am expecting to) tailor the world for the characters in it, and to work with players to establish plot hooks.

So, that's the pitch. The IC thread will very likely be the continuation of the introductory scene above, or maybe I'll write something new.

Who's interested?

Man Made Gods-Modern Fantasy/Supernatural RP (Updated Links to Lore pages)

Ooookay, there's a lot of information here, but I'm just wanting to make sure I'm understanding this right:

Our characters are new hires for Apex, an organization that hires and trains people to fight monsters. To facilitate our ability to blast/punch/poke-with-a-stick, we will be teaming up with a kind of empowered spirit (the Daemon), who is also actively employed (not enslaved?) by Apex.

The following things are true about the Daemon:

1.) It is an independent being in its own right
2.) It is aligned with (though not necessarily friendly with) the human player character
3.) It grants power to the human player character in the form of various powers and abilities
4.) That power is granted to the human character when the Daemon is resident within an object (a gun, a handkerchief, the lost shaker of salt) and that object is on the human character's person. This lets the player character shoot fireballs, have super-tough skin, or any number of other effects, however:
5.) The Daemon can manifest itself as a physical presence and act independently from the human character.

Which leads me to some questions - my apologies, I'm sure I didn't see these addressed in the document, but it's possible that the mushrooms are still working.

1.) When the Daemon manifests, does it take its power back from the Handler, or is there now an empowered human and a manifested Daemon?

2.) Is the player-Daemon interaction meant to be "voice in your head, except when the shit hits the fan," or more "buddy cop where the buddy has to hide sometimes because he's a werewolf," or "I dunno man, decide which one you like best?"

I'll probably have more questions soon - but I am intrigued by this and I'm pondering a character(s)....

Falling Skies: Reboot (Mecha, Space Opera)

I'll have something up by tomorrow afternoon! Sorry for the intense delay.

Falling Skies: Reboot (Mecha, Space Opera)

@vietmyke Heya Myke! I am interested; I'm rewriting the character backstory a bit, by necessity. You'll hear from me in the next day or two. :3

Falling Skies: Reboot (Mecha, Space Opera)

Myke, I love you.

That's already my ship. Or, at least, very close to it. <3

I wrote this last time

(Art by Lownine)

INS Artemis

‘In allis verbis, tenere manu mea’

Class Olympus
Function: Strike Carrier
Manufacturer: Athoek Drive Yards
Length: 318m
Displacement: 203,800 long tons
Crew Complement: Crew complement of 800, air wing of 400, Marine compliment of 400, artificial intelligence construct compliment of 1 (backup core installed).

Assigned Groups:
MAS complement: 12th MAS Squadron
Air complement: 114th Aerospace Squadron (‘Stormriders’), 519th Aerospace Squadron (‘Pluggers’)
Marine complement: 8th Battalion, 2nd Marines (‘Delta Victor’)

Description:

The Olympus-class is first in the line of next-generation warships, designed to complement and augment existing battle strategies while opening up new avenues of attack and defense. Unlike older vessels, which are designed to project overwhelming firepower from relatively stationary positions, the Olympus class is designed to dictate the field of engagement on its own terms. The ship has a very large central fusion reactor compared to its displacement, which powers a short-recharge Jump drive and provides plasma flow for outsized conventional thrusters. It is additionally armed with forward-facing hypervelocity rail guns and a full compliment of conventional anti-ship and anti-air weaponry. Captains tasked with commanding an Olympus will know that where compromises have been made, they have tended to affect the ship’s armor plating. These ships will not endure the punishment of larger battleships and dreadnoughts, and tactics should include the understanding that these ships are designed to avoid fire, rather than simply absorb incoming. That is not to say they are not still well-armored, but they are meant to be hard to hit and hard to kill.

These tasks are made considerably easier by the ship’s largest persistent upgrade from traditional Naval vessels, their quantum-core artificial intelligence construct. Many of the ship’s functions, especially data aggregation and command execution, are handled in a way similar to the synthetic personality matrices that will remain in use for the foreseeable future. Unlike the SPM installations, the Olympus intelligence is capable not only of managing data aggregation and shipboard communication, but it is an additional member of the crew (nominally of a Master Sergeant rank), and is capable of synthesizing and contextualizing information and relaying experience-driven suggestions to command staff. In combat, the AI can coordinate firing solutions at marginally faster-than-human timescales for incoming fire, analyze and coordinate target tracking, and many other functions.

Power:

Artemis, like all ships of her class, is powered by a Kandon Dynamics fusion plant buried deep in the heart of the craft. Waste heat is piped via superconductive pathways to exterior hull radiators, or captured to use for shipboard functions. The core is similar to those used in vessels nearly twice Artemis’ tonnage, modified to be stable at comparatively low average power production and with additional stability measures for extremely rapid power ramp-up.

Propulsion: Olympus-class vessels are designed to move around their local volume with considerably more speed than ships of their size typically do. High-temperature plasma diverted from the reactor is capable of moving the ship at 3.5g for an indefinite period of time. The thrusters are additionally equipped with layers of ablative armor that will allow up to 6g of acceleration for no more than 12 hours, after which the ship will be limited to 0.25g acceleration until the armor panels, or possibly the entire thrusters, are replaced. In addition, the ship is equipped with unusually powerful reaction-control systems, and is capable of changing the ship’s direction comparatively quickly - all the better to bring the fixed-arc forward weapons to bear.

Finally, the ship’s Jump drive is capable of moving it up to 35 light years in a single jump, after which the ship will require at least 38 hours of cool-off and recharge time. The drive is, however, optimized for smaller jumps in the light-hour range, requiring as little as 5 minutes of recharge time for the shortest jumps. This is an entirely novel capability, and one that allows an Olympus a tremendous degree of mobility in the field of combat. These short-range Jumps are, however, very hard on the ship’s power system, and even minor damage will render these “combat jumps” inadvisable. In addition, with every Jump the ship must dissipate more and more heat, and it is entirely possible for an incautious captain to overtax the ship’s heat reservoirs and render themselves entirely unable to jump for a considerable period of time - or of destroying the Jump drive entirely.

Weapons

The ship is equipped with full coverage arcs for anti-aircraft and anti-incoming weaponry, ranging from propellant-based mass drivers to small plasma casters to vaporize or physically disrupt incoming ammunition, missiles, or ships on suicide trajectories. These weapons can be selectively controlled by the onboard intelligence, though the AI is not capable of coordinating the entire defense grid unless she devotes her entire consciousness to the task. Large communication arrays can be used for fleet coordination, or used for electronic warfare, jamming, or even direct remote override of any system that (foolishly) accepts connection.

The ship’s primary armaments, two longitudinally mounted (one above the other) hypervelocity rail guns, are in a fixed, non-overlapping profile, and can fire out either the front or rear of the vessel. They are primarily designed to deliver massive, inert slugs of metal at relativistic speeds, but they can be modified (via easily-manufactured sabot) to fire anything that will fit down the bore. Acceleration and desired muzzle speed are nearly infinitely variable, and the payloads can range from battalions of Marines to megaton-class fusion bombs. Artemis is currently equipped with 12 fusion payloads, and deployment requires the joint authorization of the Captain and the ship’s AI construct. In addition, the ship is equipped with four large plasma casters on deployable turrets in a spinal-mount orientation. These weapons are intended for direct capital ship combat, orbital bombardment, or other tasks that require a large amount of firepower.

Defenses

While captains are instructed to consider the ship’s mobility its primary defense system, Artemis is equipped with a high-performance shield system, designed to absorb or deflect most energy weapons. By varying the field, it is additionally possible for electrically conductive incoming fire to be physically deflected, though the degree of course change can be very small. In effect, a heavy-caliber mass driver could be steered to hit a less-critical area of the ship under absolutely ideal situations. Most small-arms fire can be much more easily manipulated, however the field geometry changes required represent an considerable investment of time by either onboard subroutines that could be doing something else, or direct intervention by the majority of conscious bandwidth available to the ship’s AI construct.

The ship’s armor plating is largely conventional, and lighter than a ship of this size would typically mount. The armor has been applied in clever geometries to minimize energy transferred to the plating (weapons tend to ‘skip’ off it, rather than deform or remove it), but concentrated effort, bad luck, or well-aimed heavy weapons will inflict considerable damage. While the ship is designed to be highly survivable, and critical areas (fusion reactors, warhead storage) remain heavily armored, the ship is not designed to be an immovable bulwark.

Flight Deck

The ship’s flight deck is mounted forward, with the hangar bay beginning halfway down the forward “neck” of the ship. Fighter and MAS recovery is handled through a large opening on the “bottom” of the ship, and the “top” is heavily armored and reinforced to withstand crash and combat landings. The ship provides armament, repair, and refit capability for 5 MAS units at once, and can mount 40 aerospace fighters of varying types. There are an additional 3 boarding craft, 2 railgun-launched “breaching pods” for Marines, and a number of personnel shuttles and utility craft.

The hangar is a busy place, and if many ships are undergoing refit or are out of stowage, space can be very tight. Most tools and repair stations fit into panels and storage compartments that rectract or flip out of the hull, and any tools left on the flight deck during combat launches are likely to be swept out with the initial burst to vacuum. Pop-deploy air shelters, oxygen masks, and other accoutrements of an area likely to be rapidly depressurized are in prominent and visible locations throughout the deck.

Artificial Intelligence

Artemis is inhabited by a quantum-core artificial intelligence that has named herself “Ava.” She is professional, polite, but anything but subservient. She is accorded the rank of Marine Master Sergeant, and while she is the primary authority for few things on the ship, she is a respected member of the crew. While she is very aware that she is not human, Ava does have emotions, though they tend to be somewhat more muted than a human’s. She is wholly conscious and self-aware, and has a tremendous ability to process and analyze information, but she is not necessarily more intelligent than a very bright human being. By inclination rather than programmed-in directive, Ava is affectionate and cares quite a lot for the crew, and could not be accused of considering them only as assets to be spent or saved.

Due to the extensive artificial intrusion already present in Captain Sarett’s brain, Ava has an unusual relationship with the Captain. She is capable of displaying information directly into Ava’s field of view, and of relaying information or conversation into her mind without needing a terminal or voice output. This connection goes two ways, is consensual, and either party may terminate or request reconnection at any point. She typically keeps the Captain aware of overall ship function and various administrative data (ETA, fuel reserves, etc) through ambient information (similar to a nonintrusive HUD), but is capable of other tasks. Ava tends to work closely with the ship’s executive officer, but augments, rather than replaces, that officer’s function.

Should the ship’s human compliment be killed or disabled, Ava is capable of returning the ship to friendly space on her own, with a complex series of conditions that must be met in order for her to assume that level of management over the ship. She does not, however, have the capability to replace the entire crew during a combat situation (her total available mental capacity is insufficient to manage all ship systems), and as she has no physical body, there are many maintenance and repair tasks that she cannot perform.

Falling Skies: Reboot (Mecha, Space Opera)

Hmmmm...I never did get to do much with the captain and ship I wrote last time. How do you feel about that character (or flavor of character) coming back, or would you prefer we're all robot pilots? :3

Falling Skies: Reboot (Mecha, Space Opera)

HI MYKE <3