Stairdweller

Hardly Divine: Decadence

Hi there - I am also interested. Have you read Warbreaker, by Brandon Sanderson, by the way? I feel like I sense some slight thematic similarities. You might enjoy it. Also I'm pretty sure it can be downloaded as a free eBook. Legally, I mean.

Camp ThinkerRock

Okay - that's a legit concern. I'll write up a whole description with effwcts and limitations and whatnot for full decision-making purposes.

Camp ThinkerRock

You know when you are reading through an OOC thread, watching the RP develop and hoping it's going to still be open when you get to the end?

Yeah, me neither.

Anyway, 1)Are you still open and 2) what's the feeling on a character with brain-draining power? In essence, the ability to make other people temporarily, effectively stupider?

Camp ThinkerRock (Summer Camp for Superhumans)

Interested, going to the Ooc thread.

Terra Magica (Open/Accepting Players!)

I am interested in this RP; but in the interests of full disclosure I need to warn you that I have almost no time, and can commit to only one RP. I have a character in mind, and am looking for a place to use him. Not sure if that will be here or not, so... I'm going yo be lurking.

Nomads: A Celestial Character Study

Oh, Hello! I didn't notice that the OOC was up. I shall have a character to submit shortly.

ZONES: -system offline-

Lenora Puglisevic

@Horrid

Lenora eyed the anaesthetic pills, attempting to identify exactly what they were. Although her interests were varied, she wasn't anywhere near knowledgeable enough with prescription medications to name the pink-and-black capsules. She wondered if these were related to the medications people were given for day procedures. Nora kind of hoped they weren't that strong - she didn't like the idea of being unable to wake up if someone accosted her in her sleep. Well, her alternatives were limited, and she was already pretty much completely in Somiantis's power anyway, so what was a little coma between friends? She downed the pills with a gulp of water and settled back in the reclining chair.

I'm not going to be able to fall asleep. I only woke up an hour ago. Nora might have felt a little mellow, but not sleepy. Her restless mind refused to allow her to fall asleep naturally, recalling the disastrous encounter with the Ram yesterday and mulling over plans to pick a fight in the cafeteria. She was certain of her consciousness and quite unable to imagine that the drugs would have any effect at all on her.

Until Nora quite suddenly realized that she was, in fact, sound asleep. She was made aware of this fact by the realization that she was -crouching in a coolant-stained, wire-strung tunnel, her dull grey boots submerged in an oily black puddle. The salmon-coloured light of sodium lamps strongly illuminated the concrete conduit, and her nose stung slightly with the familiar tang of artificial chemicals. Zone Three, her home-in-an-adjacent-reality-to-home.

She could feel something living above and to her right, just at the edge of her perception. The cyborg rose to her full height, rotating her neck with a faint crackle and limbering her limbs. In addition to her flesh arm and the skeletal mechanical one, she had acquired a third limb the night before. It was a small welding arm, articulated at three points, and it was bolted over her left shoulder blade, large, hexagonal pins appearing to spear through her grey jacket and into the flesh beneath. In her peripheral vision, she saw the blue-white flash of the welding arc, and smiled. She looked forward to testing it.

Without any other goal in mind, she headed for the living presence she could sense. It felt like a large, complex animal - a Zoner, probably, given that she had never seen anything alive down here except for the Abominations and the scavengers. It wasn't at all easy to get to. The impossibly twisted tunnels made it very difficult to navigate, and Nora had to move out of range of the other Zoner before she could climb up a level and approach again. It didn't help much that her target was clearly moving. She ignored other distractions as she homed in, dismissing the familiar signatures of scavengers moving nearby.

Nora crawled out of a square duct into a long hallway, much darker than the sodium-lit tunnel below. The living thing she had been following was a short distance ahead - beyond that, she had briefly felt the blur of an abomination, and there was something hard to parse moving far below. She approached the Zoner, intentionally letting her feet scuff against the floor to make a bit of warning noise.

"You smell awful," she whispered. The stench was like the penultimate vomit of a fatally poisoned jackal. Her sensitive nose wrinkled involuntarily. "Did we meet in the cafeteria? I am Nora." It was sometimes difficult to link waking people to zone people, and this goat-legged scarecrow plague-victim monstrosity was too distractingly hideous for her to easily identify. Well, he'd probably be hard to forget, too, on the bright side.

She watched in the direction he had been looking in before she approached. A catwalk stretched out into the darkness, illuminated here and there by roving searchlights. This was... new.

ZONES: -system offline-

Nora and Bobby

Tag @Horrid and to a lesser degree @Jabking

Upon waking, Nora contemplated the stolen journal. She had perused it fairly thoroughly the night before, and hadn't found it all that incredibly interesting. Information about Nigel's demon form and notes on Zone two; and Nora was pretty determined to steer clear of Zone 2. It did not sound like her kind of place.

The blonde briefly considered finding Nigel and returning his notebook. She could probably wrangle it into a brownie-point gaining situation, by saying she had removed it from the cafeteria to prevent the service bots from claiming it, or to protect it from further food spills. But Nigel didn't strike her as the kind of guy to show gratitude, and she suspected that she would have more influence over him by now returning the book than by returning it. Her decision was fairly obvious, then: after making her bed and dressing in a clean set of scrubs, Nora tucked the journal away into a desk drawer.

The cafeteria was relatively crowded, so after filling her tray with a bowl of milkless rice crispies and a plate of tomato, onion and pickle slices from the burger dressing station, she sat down in the first empty seat she found. It happened to be adjacent to a thin man in red-and-black Zone 3 scrubs, much like her own. He really seemed to be enjoying his burger.

"We didn't meet yesterday," she said without preamble. "Are you going to Zone 3 today? I think it would be advantageous to form a group. Safety in numbers, it is said."

---

Zone One was more or less as Bobby had left it. Red sky, red sun, red buildings. No flaming red Aggressors at the moment, though; that was a bonus.

He'd entered the Zone through the new portal that led directly into the Foreman's shop, arriving just as another Zoner was leaving. The Denizen seemed kind of busy, so Bobby wandered around the room, looking at schematics and blueprints of some pretty outlandish weaponry. Bobby didn't have a lot of experience reading blueprints - he was really more of a spreadsheet kind of guy - Junior VP of Sales and all.

There was a diagram of a handheld, axe-like weapon with curving spikes pinned to one surface; a more realistic drawing next to it seemed to show it glowing red hot along the cutting surfaces. Another broadsheet showed multiple cut-through views of an enormous drill; there were also numerous things that looked like projectile firearms, and some that seemed to be shooting lasers. He vaguely wondered if he could manipulate a conventional trigger with his long, straight claws.

As he was examining the schemata, the Foreman approached quietly one side, speaking slowly but quite unintelligibly in his alien language. It seemed like a question, but Bobby had no idea how to answer it. He just shrugged his shoulders and cocked his horned head to the side, hoping to clearly convey confusion. The Denizen pointed at one of the diagrams, then gently nudged the human until he was standing in front of it.

This one showed something like a more robust version of a sniper's rifle. The large barrel was ringed with several wired coils - annotated in Denizen squiggles - and there were diagrams of oddly shaped projectiles. And, to his delight, the trigger mechanism seemed to be a squeeze lever without a guard.

"Sweet," he murmured, turning his head to smile at the Foreman. The denizen waved his arms around a bit and then ignored Bobby, moving across the room to go back to one of the cabinets, rummaging around and occasionally throwing things into a pile. Curious, the weredrewsarchus crouched down by one of the walls to wait.

ZONES: -system offline-

Nora and Bobby

Nora watched the Service Bot takedown with a sort of detached interest, making a note of how quickly they responded to put a stop to physical violence. This seemed like it could he useful information in the future - although it would help if she could see a few more examples to come to a conclusion. Maybe she could find a way to instigate another fight without actually becoming involved?

With both of the fighters dragged away to their quarters, Nora mentally declared herself the winner. No surprise there, really. She flipped through the journal a little more before pocketing it and eventually wandering back to her room for the night.

---

@ScarlettWaters16
Bobby was satisfied that the two early-exit Zoners were apparently fine; Jazz seemed a bit tired and upset, while Twinkle was busy chasing down the emaciated cancer patient.

"Look, let me know if you need anything, okay?" he said, trying to come across as fatherly. "I'm gonna head off, but none of us have real far to get away to. My last name's Smith, if you need to find me."

The cafeteria was moderately crowded when he got there, though he missed the fight by a few minutes. He quickly ate a bowl of chilli and another of salad, then headed back to his room to do some callisthenics before bed.

ZONES: -system offline-

*sings along with hair metal*