The Nebulous

Mass Effect: Brink

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Mass Effect: Brink

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Mass Effect: Brink

Things to keep in mind before delving too deep into this, if you've played the games (and read the books)...

- This story will assume that Shepard was a paragon; however, sticking to Drew Karpyshyn's method when bringing up the commander, their gender will remain unmentioned. I find it fun to have to dance around that detail with some creative writing skills.

- We will also assume that Shepard gave their life in the end in order to annihilate the Reapers. Thus, we have the "red" destroy ending that we're building off of. I know there's the scene after the credits (spoiler alert) where Shep's chestplate is shown and the presumed "corpse" draws in a sudden breath to hint at them surviving, but all public accounts relay that the brave commander is, sadly, no more.

- Even though the end of the game (another spoiler alert) portrayed the mass relays as being destroyed, no matter the "color" that the player chose, we are going to exercise some creative liberty and just... ignore that bit.

And that's pretty much all that I ask for you to keep in mind. What follows is my own setup of the political atmosphere in the galaxy and where we will begin our story.

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THE STATE OF THE GALAXY

The Milky Way is like a giant pie; where several territories are the carved out pieces of a whole disgruntled community. On one half, there are the esteemed races of the Council territories, neighbored by the human Systems Alliance. Right down the middle is the “no man’s land” of the Attican Traverse. On the other side of that, the Terminus systems, where territories are divided only by a matter of perspective, and anarchy is the ruling law. Since the Reaper War in 2186, where every major race – organic and synthetic alike – joined together to defeat an invading menace that threatened to wipe out all life, everyone thought that peace had finally come to all regions.

Wishful thinking. The human savior, Commander Shepard, may have forged the strongest alliance the galaxy had seen in a million years to stand against the Reapers, but as soon as they were defeated, political instability and the same xenophobia as before returned within months. Terminus pirates and slavers continue to raid fringe colonies in the Traverse, the asari returned to always staying neutral in the face of conflict, the salarians resumed their spy operations on everyone else, and the turians began to bolster their fleets again in order to keep up with the humans and their boundless arrogance.

Meanwhile, however, there were positive changes that emerged out of the chaos. The krogan have begun to rebuild their home world of Tuchanka and are, for the most part, dedicated to a peaceful co-existence with their neighbors in Citadel space. Across the galaxy, beyond the Perseus Veil, the Geth and the quarians enjoy a long overdue reunion of their races, symbolizing that synthetics and organics can truly live in peace with one another and maintain a prosperous civilization. A few quarians are still bitter (the whole part where they were kicked off of their own homeworld and all...), but new policy by a joint quarian-Geth government is smoothing out the wrinkles.

In lieu of true peace, most of the galactic community has settled for remaining locked in post-war political discourse. The batarians refuse to have anything to do with the Council races, especially the humans (as usual). Overall faith in salarian colonial commitment to the Union has dwindled immensely since they chose to abandon Command Shepard’s cause for an alliance against the Reaper threat when they learned of the commander's plans to undo the genophage. Public opinion regarding the asari has also diminished since it was revealed that they had been hoarding Prothean technology for centuries. And, to top it all off, the galaxy is split over whether or not humans are saviors or demons after Cerberus, the pro-human splinter faction of xenophobic zealots that adapted themselves to Reaper tech, basically declared war on...well, everyone.

Not one standard galactic day passes without some intriguing news update of the political turmoil and state of affairs.

OUR STORY

Kicking off on Omega, our characters are the disgruntled remnants of an old pirate crew. We're not exactly bad guys, but we're no saints, either. Two years ago, we were well-known throughout the Terminus as the "Dashers", a motley rag-tag bunch of gunning, eager, thrill-seekers that were more likely to board a ship for fun instead of greed. Sure, we ran a "privateering" business and definitely needed to keep the goods rolling in for Omega, but as long as we met Aria T'Loak's quota for being her "business partners", she turned a blind eye to the way we handled things. The ice queen aside, we answered to our captain, Declan Calaway; a human with a penchant for suicide missions. Unfortunately, we were caught up in the aftermath of a deal-gone-bad. We had attracted the attention of the Alliance and they had managed to set us up in a sting operation involving another pirate crew in the Attican Traverse.

The ensuing struggle was futile. Our frigate didn't stand a chance against the trap the Alliance had set with a wolf pack and a cruiser. Isn't that special? They had a whole welcoming party for us. The captain eventually ordered everyone to abandon ship and flee. He would give himself up... but refused to let us be captured. In the end, our helmsman, Darcy Mansfield, was the only one that refused to abandon ship. The two of them decided on one final hurrah and aimed her at the cruiser for a direct ram. It was only supposed to be a scare tactic... The Alliance wolf pack flanked them and disabled the helm with a well-placed torpedo. Darcy died on impact, and Calaway was nearly torn out from the resulting vacuum. The Alliance got their infamous pirate, and we lost two friends.

Now, two years later, it seems that the captain has made a return...

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Before I start this, I'm looking for at least two participants. Character creation will be explained in the OOC. If you're interested, just reply here!

Lost in the Infinite

This place sure has changed since its creation back in '07(?).

Well, I have been free-writing continuously and independently since I first stopped with the mainstream roleplaying back in high school. Now, I've got a career, a home, time, and a cat... and coffee! So I'm ready to sit back down at the keyboard and hash out some juicy stories with other people again. And wouldn't ya know it: RpG is still on the front page of Google's index for "roleplaying forum" and other related searches. Good to see that this community is still going strong.

If anyone cares, I was going to put up an interest check in the Advanced forum for a Mass Effect RP. So, if you like science-fiction/fantasy and all that jazz, I'm your guy.

Obligatory somewhat-personal information to get out of the way...

Likes:

-SweeTarts candy
-Cats and dogs
-RTSs and RPGs (video games)
-Politics
-Philosophy
-Deep, juicy plots with a dash of steamy romance
-'Effing the ineffable (to borrow the words of Douglas Adams)
-Coffee with cream and sugar
-Guys

Dislikes:

-Super rich cheesecake
-Creepy crawlies
-"360-no-scoping"
-Politicking
-Dogma
-Plots that wreak of the cliché
-Refusing to think (throwing a shout out to my crybaby homie, and Ayn Rand's fictional character, John Galt)
-Plain black coffee
-Girls

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to start what I came here to do! Please direct any questions to Mrs. Nesbitt.

-Neb