Quest Abandoner

The Eye of the Needle (where Fantasy and Sci-fi collide)

“You’re only five minutes late. Go check the chief - she’s hurt.”

"Sorry, I got held up in customs," Dr. Ibarra replied, the attempt at humor half-hearted and hollow. She hefted up her medical bag, apparently christened as the ship's new medic, and set to patching the chief engineer's bleeding head.

---

The next several hours were a blur. Dr. Ibarra and the rest of the engineering department scrambled around the broken ship repairing whatever systems were currently threatening to kill all the passengers. By the time they were no longer in immediate danger, Itxaro was covered in blood, soot, and sweat. The emergency stimulant she'd taken had long since worn off, and Dr. Ibarra barely made it to the medical bay to receive proper treatment for her wound. The floor was slick with blood, the room crowded with wounded crew and civilians seeking some kind of aid from the overburdened medical staff, but she was lucky enough to get a proper stitch job on her leg by a droid. Not the best bedside manner though.

Itxaro escaped it into the rec room and collapsed onto an empty couch next to a hot tub - a fucking hot tub, she simply couldn't believe the decadence of these corporations - and rested her exhausted body for some time, but her mind continued to race. She felt equal parts horror and relief at the mission's failure, and the relief only made her feel sick to her stomach. The ship was trashed, the FTL drive seemingly a failure, and she could soon return home. Disappointed, yes, with only a fraction of the knowledge she'd set out to obtain, but home nonetheless. She'd gotten to know the surviving engineering crew by name only during the frantic repair, but they all seemed brilliant in their own fashion. Wish we had the chance to work on a USASR ship together instead of this fucking death trap. She was silently fuming about the hack job the Tamerlane Corporation had done, splicing alien warp drives onto a human vessel, and she assumed with a dramatically shortened project timeline that left little room to prevent accidents like this. Don't know what I expected from capitalists, but certainly not this level of incompetence, she thought bitterly as she closed her eyes.

---

Itxaro barely had a chance to rest before a call for all ship personnel was made. She cursed and hauled herself to the conference room, squeezing between crew into the dimly lit and hazy space. Itxaro was surrounded by faces only known to her through minimalist Tamerlane dossiers, but she quickly focused her attention on Kadıoğlu as she began to speak; the woman had a commanding presence, that much was sure.

As Kadıoğlu's speech continued, Dr. Ibarra felt a sinking feeling that she wouldn't be seeing Cuba anytime soon. She didn't claim to be a great read, but Itxaro believed the commander was hiding something from them. Why bother with repairs when we should just be evacuating, waiting for a rescue? Shouldn't someone have arrived by now? Whether this deception was intentional or not, Itxaro understood. Sometimes the truth hurt. Itxaro wouldn't make her suspicion known - not now, anyway. However, something had been gnawing at her since she'd boarded the ship, and when the commander opened the floor to questions she was the first to step up, quickly introducing herself before addressing Kadıoğlu.

"Commander, whoever attacked the Jotunheim is well-organized; do we have a contingency plan in place if they arrive before help comes?" Dr. Ibarra, normally confident and boisterous, felt self-conscious addressing the crowd of strangers, though she tried not to let it show. Of the three languages in which she was fluent, English was the weakest, and she was unaccustomed to the formal and rigid command structure she assumed the Jotunheim's adhered to. That, and ship-bound firefights had haunted her dreams for the past ten years. Not exactly an easy topic to talk to a crowd about. "I'd like to suggest some kind of defense perimeter with armed guards, whoever is able. Maybe we can rig up a simple security system if resources allow." How much an impromptu militia would help against the vicious fighting force she encountered at the airport would help Dr. Ibarra didn't know. At the very least they might be able to alert the others since most of their sensors were down.

The Eye of the Needle (where Fantasy and Sci-fi collide)

[Stavanger Interplanetary Spaceport]

---

Mierda, this fucking place is cold.

Dr. Itxaro Ibarra knew it was a ridiculous thought. Of course it was cold; they were practically in the Arctic Circle. But did it have to be cold inside too? Already, Itxaro was bundled in so many layers she felt like she was wearing a bulky, old-fashioned EVA suit. Even still she shivered, arms clutched to her chest. Fuck it. Nothing to be done. She hurried down the stark white and grey concourse, bulging canvas sea bag rustling on her back. And there's another thing. Why is everything so damn sterile? Isn't it white enough outside? Accustomed to the vibrant colors and neo-Aztec architecture popular throughout the USASR, the bare nordic design was yet another reminder to Dr. Ibarra she was an interloper. She supposed the ship, the Jotunheim, would be more of the same. Oh well, at least I'll only be on it for the foreseeable future, Itxaro thought ruefully.

Truth be told, she didn't want to be here. Not in Norway, not with the Jotunheim. But what choice did she have? Continue to pick through the scraps of Yenge tech? Or work on a functioning faster-than-light drive, and bring that knowledge home? The choice was painfully obvious to her, but that didn't mean she had to like it. Frankly, it was a miracle she was here at all; the previous FTL specialist had disappeared, likely kidnapped by rival factions seeking to reverse-engineer the already imitated FTL drive. Dr. Ibarra was Tamerlane's second-stringer, and would receive on-the-job training before their first dry run. She'd had the opportunity to review very abbreviated specs of the drive, but Tamerlane was protective of their proprietary FTL technology, so she possessed only a working knowledge of it.

Itxaro pulled on her chunky headphones to quiet her racing mind, and the world around her fell silent for a moment. Then, the sound of shuffling feet and tinny overhead announcements were drowned out by her playlist. Dr. Ibarra tugged her fur-lined hood over her head and pulled the drawstrings shut, narrowing her field of vision to a pinhole but trapping body heat. Not like there's much to see in this shithole anyways. The spaceport around her faded away, her only link to it a single eye peering out while her mind wandered to more pleasant pastures.

Itxaro's daydreams of French knights and English archers clashing on the fields of Agincourt to the score of Andean synths were interrupted when several people sprinted past her in a frenzy. Huh, flight must be leaving early or something, she reasoned. Then, through her tiny porthole to the world, Dr. Ibarra saw red flashing lights switch on from various sirens on the wall; her headphones blocked out the noise, but she knew something was wrong. Some ship malfunctioned, maybe a fire somewhere. Still calm, Itxaro quickened her pace.

It wasn't until her right leg collapsed under her that Dr. Ibarra decided something was up. Her headphones slipped off as she fell hard to the ground, and suddenly her ears were no longer filled with music but screams, alarms, and the cracking of gunfire. Some distant, some dangerously close. Dr. Ibarra tore off her hood and examined her leg. Blood flowed freely from her upper thigh, the fabric and flesh ripped by the stray round. A graze, but a damn good one. She looked behind her down the long concourse and saw spaceport security as they fended off an unseen foe; they were being torn apart. Itxaro felt her heart pound into her throat and the pain in her leg dull as adrenaline flushed through her body. Acting on instinct, she regained her footing and half ran, half hobbled to the Jotunheim's hangar bay, high-powered rounds shattering the ceramic tiles under her feet.

Even with her brain pumped full of fight-or-flight chemicals, Itxaro had a pretty good idea of what was happening. Corpo thugs, some nation's special forces, or fucking terrorists were gunning people down, and they were here for the Jotunheim. What else could it be? Why she chose to head straight for their objective, Itxaro didn't know. She could have just hidden in a bathroom and been fine, but something in her monkey brain tolde her ship equals safety. Maybe she already thought of it as home. Dr. Ibarra stumbled into the hangar bay, now filled with thick smoke, the smell of cordite, and the roar of engines and frantic gunfire. Fuck it. Itxaro could barely even the silhouette of the ship, but charged ahead anyways, ducking low for all the good that would do.

[The Jotunheim]

---

Dr. Ibarra surged onto the ship when the doors opened, propped up by the press of bystanders caught in the firefight who also sought safety in the Jotunheim's metal womb. She was unceremoniously thrown to the floor when the crowd entered the ship and fanned out, bouncing her head off the deck and wrenching her bad leg. Several frantic refugees trampled the wounded engineer, their footfalls cushioned by her heavy sea bag. Itxaro scrambled back to her feet, head reeling, and was corralled with the rest of the civilians to the ship's living quarters. She flung herself into the first room she could, a bedroom of some kind. Itxaro didn't spend much time appreciating the ship's interior design, instead shrugging her bag off and propping herself against a cold bulkhead to examine her injury. The bullet had grazed her, but the wound was deep, located on her inner thigh four inches down. It looked less like a gunshot wound, and more like she'd been slashed with a serrated blade, the flesh and skin viciously splayed open. She remembered one of her comrades suffering from a similar injury, and remembered watching him bleed out in zero-g within minutes as she helplessly clutched her mangled arm.

Itxaro pushed the memory from her mind as she set to work, feeling the ship vibrate to life under her. "It missed the femoral artery. If it didn't, I'd be dead," she soothed herself aloud. In a distant part of her brain, Itxaro knew the ship was moving, but as the adrenaline wore off and blood loss-induced lethargy set in, she didn't really care. Dr. Ibarra futilely tugged at her pant leg with her right hand when she realized she had a fucking robot arm, which she used to roughly tear the tattered fabric off her throbbing leg. Perhaps a bit too roughly, as pain spiked up and down her body and her vision was blurred with tears of pain and frustration. She tightly bound the bleeding wound in her own garment, absently noting the new fashion trend she had inadvertently created: the half short, half pant. She'd workshop the name later, maybe sell the patent to a corpo. Make billions.

Through her ringing ears and the ship's engine, Itxaro detected a faint voice speaking. "Puedo sentir la gravedad en mi pie-" Dr. Ibarra tore the headphones from around her neck, still piping out music, and threw them across the room to her sea bag as she unleashed a flurry of curses. In response, the Jotunheim began accelerating, sending the sea bag and headphones sliding across the floor back to her. Itxaro stowed them in a floor compartment, eager to avoid any more flying missiles, and took a moment to compose herself.

The bleeding seemed to have stopped, for now. She was safe, for now. Dr. Ibarra half-expected soldiers to burst in through the airlock, firing down the tight corridors of the ship; she'd seen this once before, and the memory sent a sickening chill down her spine. Now the ship was really gaining speed, and she realized they were taking off. She remembered seeing the runway filled with taxiing spacecraft. Fucking pilot better know what they're doing, or the thugs outside are the least of our worries.

Itxaro drunkenly staggered out of the room, unsure if her dizziness was from blood loss, an adrenaline hangover, or a possible concussion. She started navigating towards engineering, the only place she could make much of a difference, though in her condition it was doubtful. She stumbled down the stairs, taking no notice of the red smear she left on the wall she leaned against as she walked, nor the warm blood filling her boot.

“Passengers, strap yourselves in for a bumpy ride. We are attempting to exit the fjords.”

Itxaro instinctively flung herself through an airlock in response, and felt her stomach drop when her eyes focused and began scanning the room. An escape pod. With a sickening feeling of deja vu, Dr. Ibarra tore a first aid kit from the wall and fell into a crash couch, frantically strapping herself in. The ship was suddenly rocked by an explosion. Breaching pod, Itxaro thought nonsensically, knowing that wasn't even possible in atmosphere. She opened the small red box and found exactly what she needed, an aerosol coagulant and sealant. Itxaro removed the makeshift bandage, mopped up the excess blood with a grunt, and hosed down the wound, which formed a sickly yellow coat over the area; the bleeding did stop though. Itxaro started searching for her next item when the ship began a new cacophony of booms, as if the engine were stalling; but this wasn't like any thrust drive she'd heard before. Oh god, did they fire up the FTL drive?

"BRACE! BRACE!”

A familiar weightlessness washed over Itxaro before gravity returned. Freefall. Apparently the FTL drive hadn’t powered up after all, which was good; there’s no telling what kind of havoc an FTL drive could wreak on a ship while in atmosphere if the vessel wasn't designed for it. But also, bad. Because they were now falling back toward the Earth. Dr. Ibarra laughed bitterly. She’d narrowly avoided death in that cramped escape shuttle all those years ago, but it seemed fate had caught up with her. What happened next was a blur. She clung to the medkit with a death grip as her body was whipped around in the crash couch, caught in an invisible maelstrom.

When the ship finally came to a shuddering halt and the emergency lights flickered on, Dr. Ibarra took a few deep, shaky breaths. So she didn’t die. Fuck you, fate. Never believed in it anyways. With a fumbling hand, Ixaro rummaged through the contents of the medical bag until she located the emergency stimulant injector. Dr. Ibarra carefully shot the syringe into her good leg and depressed the plunger. She felt a pleasant thrumming in her head as her blurry world came into sharp focus. She unstrapped herself and stood up, pleased she hadn't sustained any more injuries in the crash aside from what would soon be pretty purple bruises.

Itxaro limped towards engineering medical kit in hand, knowing it was too late to do any real good, but she could still shut down systems, administer first aid, or extinguish fires. She pulled open the door with her prosthetic hand and was met with an engineering room in ruins. Itxaro considered saying something real funny, maybe, Wow, she runs smooth, doesn’t she? Dr. Ibarra held her tongue, though, when she spotted the charred and contorted body of an engineer on the grated deck. Shame and sadness shot through her simultaneously. She tore her eyes away from the crumpled body and directed her sharp eyes toward the others. Did they even know her? Had the company supplied them with her file? She supposed it didn’t really matter right now. Her words were shaky but calm, accompanied by a flowing Cuban accent. “I'm Dr. Itxaro Ibarra, the new FTL specialist. What can I do to help?”

The Eye of the Needle (where Fantasy and Sci-fi collide)

Dr. Ibarra

Name: Dr. Itxaro Ibarra

Species: Human

Age: 35

Appearance: Dr. Ibarra stands at 6'1 and weighs 175 pounds; tall for a woman, but not unusual in the 23rd century. Itxaro begrudgingly exercises, the motto "A corpo worked out today, did you?" still burned into her brain from primary school. As such, she is in decent enough shape, but by no means an amazing athlete; her recent penchant for cigarettes has made sure of that. Itxaro's left arm and shoulder are noticeably more toned than the other from lugging around the weighty prosthetic; which begins at a stump just after the elbow. Her hair, which had been going prematurely grey at 25, has since been dyed a muted white.

Dr. Ibarra packed relatively conservative clothing for her time aboard the Jotunheim, a departure from her typically vibrant and stylish wardrobe. She currently sits somewhere between academic and blue-collar worker, opting for clothes that are muted in color and fully cover her body. When on duty in the engineering bay, Itxaro wears the typical jumpsuit and ties her hair back to avoid getting caught in any machinery.

Augmentations: It can hardly be called an augmentation, but Itxaro's dominant hand and forearm have been replaced with a bionic metal prosthetic. Though significantly stronger than her organic limb, the replacement is heavier than modern, cutting-edge augments, and suffers from the occasional breakdown. These glitches can be easily resolved by Dr. Ibarra, which is part of why she keeps the older model. That, and being grafted with expensive prosthetics is something of a cultural faux-pas in the USASR.

Occupation: FTL Specialist

Key skills:

• Mechanical Savant: Dr. Ibarra is a titan in her field, one of the leading engineers in the entire USASR. Her knowledge of all things mechanical is vast and deep, and Itxaro is able to quickly pick up on abstract concepts she has never encountered, which is largely why she was chosen as the previous FTL specialist’s replacement. Itxaro specializes in theoretical FTL drives, and was pretty pissed when the Yenge blew up her spot with their vastly-superior tech. Dr. Ibarra thought she was damn close to a breakthrough. While she has spent much of her career as a researcher and designer, Itxaro is still comfortable wrenching on a ship's drive deep in a crawlspace or in an EVA suit. Still, she finds the entire field of engineering horribly boring.
• Medieval Enthusiast: While Dr. Ibarra is a genius when it comes to anything mechanical, her true passion is medieval European history, with a specific focus on how common peasants lived in their day-to-day life. In her spare time, Dr. Ibarra reads massive tomes on ancient blacksmithing techniques, cooking methods, architectural plans, and any other literature she is able to obtain from that distant time and place. Itxaro also joined a medieval European martial arts club in school, dueling with a variety of weapons, and even now occasionally competes in local amateur tournaments when her schedule allows. She placed 5th in the last one, and was pretty happy about it.
• Socialist Philosopher: Like all Cubans in the 23rd century, Dr. Ibarra is extremely knowledgeable concerning Marxian economics, eco-socialism, Ziotiomatian interplanetary class dynamics, Falcónist markets, and so on. This is a useful skill in space, right?

Personality: If you met Itxaro on the streets of Havana, you'd never guess her line of work. She is excitable, fun-loving, and gregarious. She loves to dance, joke, and flirt. Itxaro is quick to make a friend and, on occasion, quick to anger. Itxaro is kind to those she seems worthy of kindness, generous with her time and affection, and has a deep love and camaraderie for all working people, the proletariat, all over the world. At the same time, she holds almost nothing but contempt for the wealthy, the bourgeois, who she believes are leeches that are responsible for the state of the world today. Itxaro is passionate about many subjects and has an insatiable curiosity for history, music, ecology, botany, and economics. So-called "hard sciences" rank very low on this list of interests despite her innate talent in the field of physics.

If encountered outside of the USASR, however, you would walk away with an entirely different, and entirely false, perception of the engineer. Bitter experience has taught Itxaro to hide her true self, and present a facade to those outside the fold of the socialist world. Latin Americans have always faced ethnic stereotypes and flat-out racism, but this discrimination became even more rampant once most of South America was able to present a united front against their former colonial masters. Itxaro discovered as a teenager at an international science exhibition that a coquettish and mercurial Cuban girl is an easy target for spiteful foreigners. Rather than endure ridicule and harassment, she created a stoic, calm, and professional version of herself that she wears like a mask to protect herself and work with those outside the USASR. This defensive wall plays into the stereotype of the joyless, cold socialist, but Itxaro finds those insults easier to bear than ones directed at her personally.

Beneath the disguise, and under her cheerful personality, there is a fear in Itxaro. The intensity varies, but the anxiety is always with her; sometimes it is a runaway elephant, big and panicking, threatening to paralyze Itxaro. Other times it is small and gnawing, burrowing into her as she tries to sleep. Itxaro's bright mind is constantly running, and when idle, the fear strikes. It is a relatively recent development, an aftershock of her near-death experience. She has tried to intellectualize it, tried therapy, but it continues to eat away at her. She’s gotten good at hiding it.

However, deep in Itxaro, there is a hard streak, a rocky outcropping in her character as tough as stone. It is a cultural holdover from the early days of the USASR, when times were bad and people had to buckle down and do whatever rough business their country required of them. Itxaro is able to call upon this hard streak to push through whatever her she feels compelled to do for the socialist revolution. She used it to forsake her ambitions and become one of the leading FTL engineers. She used it to put her career first over her broken marriage. She used it to hold together her ragged stump of an arm for six days in zero g. Now, Itxaro is calling upon her hard streak once again to travel far from home aboard the Jotunheim.

Backstory: Dr. Itxaro Ibarra was born in Havana, Cuba, the heart of the 150-year old Union of South American Socialist Republics (USASR). The federal union was formed after the People's Republic of China capitulated to the United States in 2113 after a 30-year cold war between the two superpowers went hot. The proxy wars were largely fought in resource-rich Africa, with both countries redirecting most of their economies toward the conflicts; their allies made only a token contribution, instead opting to watch the superpowers burn themselves out. The war came to a conclusion after a brief but brutal direct confrontation between both countries in Alaska, followed by a decisive cyber-attack by the United States, which paralyzed the Chinese military and the country's infrastructure. China was balkanized into a variety of smaller puppet states controlled by corporations and European countries, while the US was forced to privatize most of its economy to private enterprise. The end of US hegemony gave way to the age of the megacorporation, which saw the hyper-exploitation of most of the global south. Cuba, one of the last countries without a megacorp presence, was able to back a series of revolutions over the next 30 years in South America to expunge the megacorporations, leading to the creation of the USASR.

Dr. Ibarra grew up in Cuba's countryside, the daughter of an agricultural worker and a philosophy professor, surrounded by siblings in their modest home. At a young age, it became apparent that Itxaro was a mechanical genius. Both of her parents gently encouraged her to advance her education in engineering, but it was Itxaro who made the decision to study engineering at the Universidad de la Habana. While her interests lay practically anything else, Itxaro knew she was given a gift, and to instead spend her life writing awful poetry or studying picked-over ruins somewhere in Europe would be a total waste. She had the chance to help her country, and she took it without regret or hesitation.

Itxaro quickly became Dr. Ibarra, flying through university at a pace rarely seen. Itxaro chose to specialize in faster-than-light travel, the Holy Grail of technology, but also developed a deep familiarity with multiple ship systems, since an FTL drive would work in tandem with many. Since the 22nd century, Cuba had been a leading innovator in space travel, more out of necessity than anything since the tiny island nation was isolated from the corporate world and had few natural resources available; the only way for them to access the raw materials they needed was to go up. The USASR had established a variety of colonies throughout the solar system, but their ships were beginning to lag behind, so the government began subsidizing further breakthroughs in space travel. Dr. Ibarra left the university with a PhD in theoretical engineering and FTL physics, joining the USASR's robust space program.

Because so many of their space-faring resources are off-planet, Itxaro was immediately shipped to a shipyard hidden in Saturn's rings, far from prying corpo eyes. She spent the next several years with a team of engineers, scientists, and pilots testing, testing, and failing. It seemed like there was a missing piece to the puzzle, but the collective wisdom of the human race couldn't find it. Dr. Ibarra advanced to the head of the team, and after what seemed like a lifetime in cold space, they were on the verge of a breakthrough. The moment of truth was cut short when breaching pods shattered the thin skin of their habitat, sending in squad after squad of corporate mercenaries who grabbed whatever crew they could and executed those they couldn't. Dr. Ibarra and a few others managed to reach an escape shuttle, but the mercenaries had rigged the shipyard to blow; just before they cleared the blast zone, Itxaro's former home exploded, disabling their shuttle with shrapnel and sending it hurtling into deep space.

Dr. Ibarra spent the next countless days clutching her crudely bandaged bloody stump of an arm, watching helplessly as her friends slowly succumbed to similar wounds. They didn't send out a distress signal until a week had passed, knowing the mercenaries would come to finish them off. By then the shuttle had traveled so far that it took the nearest USASR patrol ship another three days to recover them. Out of the nine survivors, just two had survived.

After recovering, Dr. Ibarra returned to Havanna just in time to learn that their efforts were wasted; a spacefaring species called the Yenge had beaten them to it, crashing into their solar system and promising to share their secret of faster-than-light travel in exchange for a safe harbor. Somewhat disillusioned, but not dissuaded, Dr. Ibarra returned to the Universidad de la Habana as a professor now, sharing her successes and failures with the next batch of scientists, as well as researching whatever scraps of Yenge technology the USASR's spy network could gather.

Just as Dr. Ibarra became content with her position, she was contacted by an agent of the USASR's space program; a corporation, Tamerlane, had fused Yenge and human tech to create the first drive capable of faster-than-light travel. The previous FTL specialist had vanished, either picked up by a competing corporation or disappeared of their own accord to sell the secrets, and Tamerlane was desperate to fill the FTL specialist slot before their deadline. So desperate that they were willing to accept a USASR citizen.

The Eye of the Needle (where Fantasy and Sci-fi collide)

Hi all! Tossing my hat in for the ship’s crew, let me know if you have any questions. Thanks!

Dr. Ibarra

Name: Dr. Itxaro Ibarra

Species: Human

Age: 35

Appearance: Dr. Ibarra stands at 6'1 and weighs 165 pounds; tall for a woman, but not unusual in the 23rd century. Itxaro begrudgingly exercises, the motto "A corpo worked out today, did you?" still burned into her brain from primary school. As such, she is in good shape, but by no means an amazing athlete. Itxaro's left arm and shoulder are noticeably more toned than the other from lugging around the weighty prosthetic; which begins at a stump just after the elbow. Her hair, which had been going prematurely grey at 25, has since been dyed a muted white. Dr. Ibarra's wardrobe is decidedly less college professor, more college student, a mixture of loose casual clothes and form-fitting athletic wear. However, when on duty in the engineering bay, she wears the typical jumpsuit and ties her hair back to avoid getting caught in any machinery.

Augmentations: It can hardly be called an augmentation, but Itxaro's dominant hand and forearm have been replaced with a bionic metal prosthetic. Though significantly stronger than her organic limb, the replacement is heavier than modern, cutting-edge augments, and suffers from the occasional breakdown. These glitches can be easily resolved by Dr. Ibarra, which is part of why she keeps the older model. That, and being grafted with expensive prosthetics is something of a cultural faux-pas in the USASR.

Occupation: FTL Specialist

Key skills:

• Mechanical Savant: Dr. Ibarra is a titan in her field, one of the leading engineers in the entire USASR. Her knowledge of all things mechanical is vast and deep, and Itxaro is able to quickly pick up on abstract concepts she has never encountered, which is largely why she was chosen as the previous FTL specialist’s replacement. Itxaro specializes in theoretical FTL drives, and was pretty pissed when the Yenge blew up her spot with their vastly-superior tech. Dr. Ibarra thought she was damn close to a breakthrough. While she has spent much of her career as a researcher and designer, Itxaro is still comfortable wrenching on a ship's drive deep in a crawlspace or in an EVA suit. Still, she finds the entire field of engineering horribly boring.
• Medieval Enthusiast: While Dr. Ibarra is a genius when it comes to anything mechanical, her true passion is medieval European history, with a specific focus on how common peasants lived in their day-to-day life. In her spare time, Dr. Ibarra reads massive tomes on ancient blacksmithing techniques, cooking methods, architectural plans, and any other literature she is able to obtain from that distant time and place. Itxaro also joined a medieval European martial arts club in school, dueling with a variety of weapons, and even now occasionally competes in local amateur tournaments when her schedule allows. She placed 5th in the last one, and was pretty happy about it.
• Socialist Philosopher: Like all Cubans in the 23rd century, Dr. Ibarra is extremely knowledgeable concerning Marxian economics, eco-socialism, Ziotiomatian interplanetary class dynamics, Falcónist markets, and so on. This is a useful skill in space, right?

Personality:

Backstory: Dr. Itxaro Ibarra was born in Havana, Cuba, the heart of the 150-year old Union of South American Socialist Republics (USASR). The federal union was formed after the People's Republic of China capitulated to the United States in 2113 after a 30-year cold war between the two superpowers went hot. The proxy wars were largely fought in resource-rich Africa, with both countries redirecting most of their economies toward the conflicts; their allies made only a token contribution, instead opting to watch the superpowers burn themselves out. The war came to a conclusion after a brief but brutal direct confrontation between both countries in Alaska, followed by a decisive cyber-attack by the United States, which paralyzed the Chinese military and the country's infrastructure. China was balkanized into a variety of smaller puppet states controlled by corporations and European countries, while the US was forced to privatize most of its economy to private enterprise. The end of US hegemony gave way to the age of the megacorporation, which saw the hyper-exploitation of most of the global south. Cuba, one of the last countries without a megacorp presence, was able to back a series of revolutions over the next 30 years in South America to expunge the megacorporations, leading to the creation of the USASR.

Dr. Ibarra grew up in Cuba's countryside, the daughter of an agricultural worker and a philosophy professor, surrounded by siblings in their modest home. At a young age, it became apparent that Itxaro was a mechanical genius. Both of her mothers gently encouraged her to advance her education in engineering, but it was Itxaro who made the decision to study engineering at the Universidad de la Habana. While her interests lay practically anything else, Itxaro knew she was given a gift, and to instead spend her life writing awful poetry or studying picked-over ruins somewhere in Europe would be a total waste. She had the chance to help her country, and she took it without regret or hesitation.

Itxaro quickly became Dr. Ibarra, flying through university at a pace rarely seen. Itxaro chose to specialize in faster-than-light travel, the Holy Grail of technology, but also developed a deep familiarity with multiple ship systems, since an FTL drive would work in tandem with many. Since the 22nd century, Cuba had been a leading innovator in space travel, more out of necessity than anything since the tiny island nation was isolated from the corporate world and had few natural resources available; the only way for them to access the raw materials they needed was to go up. The USASR had established a variety of colonies throughout the solar system, but their ships were beginning to lag behind, so the government began subsidizing further breakthroughs in space travel. Dr. Ibarra left the university with a PhD in theoretical engineering and FTL physics, joining the USASR's robust space program.

Because so many of their space-faring resources are off-planet, Itxaro was immediately shipped to a shipyard hidden in Saturn's rings, far from prying corpo eyes. She spent the next several years with a team of engineers, scientists, and pilots testing, testing, and failing. It seemed like there was a missing piece to the puzzle, but the collective wisdom of the human race couldn't find it. Dr. Ibarra advanced to the head of the team, and after what seemed like a lifetime in cold space, they were on the verge of a breakthrough. The moment of truth was cut short when breaching pods shattered the thin skin of their habitat, sending in squad after squad of corporate mercenaries who grabbed whatever crew they could and executed those they couldn't. Dr. Ibarra and a few others managed to reach an escape shuttle, but the mercenaries had rigged the shipyard to blow; just before they cleared the blast zone, Itxaro's former home exploded, disabling their shuttle with shrapnel and sending it hurtling into deep space.

Dr. Ibarra spent the next countless days clutching her crudely bandaged bloody stump of an arm, watching helplessly as her friends slowly succumbed to similar wounds. They didn't send out a distress signal until a week had passed, knowing the mercenaries would come to finish them off. By then the shuttle had traveled so far that it took the nearest USASR patrol ship another three days to recover them. Out of the nine survivors, just two had survived.

After recovering, Dr. Ibarra returned to Havanna just in time to learn that their efforts were wasted; a spacefaring species called the Yenge had beaten them to it, crashing into their solar system and promising to share their secret of faster-than-light travel in exchange for a safe harbor. Somewhat disillusioned, but not dissuaded, Dr. Ibarra returned to the Universidad de la Habana as a professor now, sharing her successes and failures with the next batch of scientists, as well as researching whatever scraps of Yenge technology the USASR's spy network could gather.

Just as Dr. Ibarra became content with her position, she was contacted by an agent of the USASR's space program; a corporation, Tamerlane, had fused Yenge and human tech to create the first drive capable of faster-than-light travel. The previous FTL specialist had vanished, either picked up by a competing corporation or disappeared of their own accord to sell the secrets, and Tamerlane was desperate to fill the FTL specialist slot before their deadline. So desperate that they were willing to accept a USASR citizen.

Hi, I'm new... kind of.

Hello! Another lost spirit here as well returning to the guild after years away. Sounds like we should start a club. Lot of fond memories on this site!

bug strapped to a supercomputer makes their way back home

Hello! Yep, the white wizard himself. Love seeing some Middle-Earthlings rockin’ shades.

There’s actually quite a few AI roleplay bots out there, most of them not very good yet imo. If you’re curious, I think NovelAi and AiDungeon are considered two of the better ones. Of course, RP’ing with actual people is a whole lot more fun, but unless the server crashes, the AI won’t drop out on you. That, and it won’t question any, uhhhh, NSFW story decision you make, which is a big draw for a lot of people lol. Let me know if you check it out, would love to hear your thoughts!

bug strapped to a supercomputer makes their way back home

Hey all,

Oldhead here from probably ten years ago (long enough that I've forgotten my past username lol). I was putzing around with all these newfangled AI chatbots recently, which made me realize three (3) things:

1. Damn, I forgot how fun text-based roleplaying can be!
2. Damn, my writing skills have gone to shit!
3. Damn, these AI chatbots are really dumb!

So, here I am again, ready to meander my way through roleplaying again with actual humans, hoping to improve my abysmal creative writing skills and make some new cool online friends. I remember this being a very close-knit, active, and fun community (though I wasn't particularly active), and I'm hoping not much has changed! Honestly, I just miss the old forum days of the internet, when the world was broken up into 10,000 different little niche websites, instead of everyone conglomerating on Twitter to scream at each other. So I guess pure nostalgia is another reason I'm here!

Anyways, you'll probably see me stumbling around in the casual forum, searching for a nice cozy group working on a sci-fi or fantasy RP. Luv me Mass Effect. luv me Skyrim. Simple as. Discord username is Regime Goon#6932 if y'all are into that sort of thing.

See ya round!