Waylon

Mechwarrior: Disposable Heroes

<Snipped quote by Waylon>

Nice! Wanna join the Discord Server, btw? I think there's a link to one in the OOC OP.

@Letter Bee

Tried the link but it doesn't seem to work for me. Even got the Discord app for this, and I'm more of a Telegram guy lol.

Mechwarrior: Disposable Heroes

Character Name:
Beauregard McKeough

Callsign:
Hugh (“You know what? Just call me by that handle anytime, I don't mind. Really sad that nobody calls me Beau anymore these days.”)

Character Archetype:
Good Old Boy

Character’s Guiding Motto:
“It's five o'clock somewhere – 'cept when it's raidin' time!”

Character’s Fatal Flaw:
Heavy drinker (“I'm responsible though... I swear!”)

Character’s Expertise:
Reconnaissance, Stealth, Survival

Nationality/Allegiance:
Capellan Confederation Supporter caste, loyalist (“I ain't a diehard patriot though, more like better the devil you know”)

Background:
When twelve-year-old Beau McKeough learned that he would be learning to pilot a 'Mech, he leapt in excitement right then and there, as rambunctious young boys are wont to do.

As soon as his father and older siblings told him what for exactly, however, that excitement quickly died down.

The reason he was to pilot a 'Mech, they told him, was twofold: for him to learn the family trade (for the McKeoughs owned and ran no less than the biggest timber company on Espia) as well as to render, in the words of the Ministry of Social Education, “some kind of volunteer work that can be interpreted as having made some contribution to the state,” which in the case of young Beau was to clear out swamps and forests using a Lumberjack gifted to him from the McKeoughs's fleet of IndustrialMechs.

Despite the dream having been turned into a chore, Beau nevertheless performed quite well at land clearing, even picking up a good deal of land surveying and speculating from the senior members of the government crew to which he was assigned. Upon turning 15, Beau passed his citizenship evaluation with flying colors and joined the older members of his family as a bona fide member of the Capellan Supporter caste, which counted among its number captains of industry and trade in addition to educators, economists, and members of the judiciary.

Such was Beau's performance in service of Espia that he was offered a spot at the Capella War College – which he promptly declined, stating that he knew that the chances of ever going home to one's home planet are slim to none should one become an officer, and that spending most of his boyhood day in and day out in the dank cockpit of his Lumberjack had left him burned-out and jaded as far as piloting was concerned. Desperate for a change of scenery, Beau matriculated at the University of Balya Gora (UBG), purportedly to major in civil engineering but actually to party like an animal and enjoy himself like he never did before. For not only was the “Bee Gee” Espia's number one institute for higher education, it was also the place where the best and the brightest from all over the planet got together to get drunk, get laid, and pursue a different kind of “higher learning” altogether. Nevertheless, in between the partying and the studying and the having to assist his siblings at the McKeough Timber Co. headquarters, Beau managed to graduate with honors and was given a sinecure by his father.

Beau had just completed his first year of graduate studies in geological engineering via distance learning with Sian University when news of the Capellan withdrawal broke out. Upon hearing this, Beau immediately rushed to the McKeough headquarters, where he found his parents, his siblings, their extended family, and their most trusted retainers and employees all gathered in the boardroom.

Steeling himself against the tears, Beau's father announced to all present that already he could sense where the wind was blowing, that he could feel it in his blood, for even on long-ago Terra the McKeoughs of ancient Ireland were no strangers to the never-ending cycles of calamity and upheaval. It was for this reason that the elder McKeough, in agreement with senior members of the family as well as members of the board, management, and the employees' union as well, decided to sell the company before the inevitable backlash from the increasingly-restive Servitor underclass would reduce everything they worked for into piles of worthless ash.

Before dismissing everyone for the final time, the patriarch added that while he would like nothing more during this difficult time than for his family and closest friends to accompany him to the Espian outback to lay low, perhaps it would be just as good for them, if they so wished, to go their separate ways and survive independently of one another to the best of their ability, for that was how the McKeoughs survived wars, famines, and genocides throughout the millennia; so long as a mere handful or even just one of them remained standing at the end of it all, the family could always begin anew.

With that final family reunion having adjourned as quickly as it had begun, Beau went over to his parents and informed them of his decision to find a way to stay and fight for his home, if not for the Confederation at large – but not the conspicuously unwieldly and corrupt planetary government, which as a university student he had grown to hate. After getting their blessing, Beau drove to the McKeough hangars out in the boondocks to retrieve his Lumberjack and got in touch with some politically-active loyalists he knew from university, who then put him in touch with a cell of the Capellan Citizens' Combine which during this time had not yet been subsumed into the Espian Free People's Movement.

To his horror, Beau found out that the leader running his cell was none other than Margaret Bo, an erstwhile UBG student council president. Hailing from the Directorship caste ("more like the Dictatorship caste, haha") and notorious for being a veritable Machiavellian queen bee even during their Bee Gee days, Bo didn't pass up the chance to poach him for her own cell, for he was the closest thing to a seasoned 'Mech pilot she could get from a pool of mostly civvies. Furthermore, she demanded that while serving under her, Beau should relinquish all claims to his first name, for there could only be one Bo/Beau in her cell – namely, herself.

With his first name taken from him and finding it irritating for others to either mispronounce his surname or lazily call him some variant of “Mac,” “Mackie,” or the slur-sounding “Mick,” the pilot eventually settled on just being called “you” by the others, which in time became “Hugh”: his callsign as well as the name he went by from that moment on.

Despite their working relationship having gotten off to a rocky start, the cell leader reluctantly agreed that in exchange for his unquestioning service to her excellency and as a hazard pay of sorts, as the cell's only pilot he was to be allowed to keep a moonshine still in his trailer as well as some grain and all the liquor looted from their raids in lieu of pay. After all, he reasoned, his job during raids and ambushes was to draw to himself as much enemy gunfire as he could take if they weren't close enough for him to hit with his chainsaw. “Booze helps to calm my nerves when we're not raiding, besides I'm literally a dead man walking now ain't I?” was his excuse to her. "I believe I'm entitled to that at the very least."

Margaret Bo was more of a bureaucrat than a field commander, but Hugh didn't mind her hogging all the credit each time they scored a win against the regime they both hated, so long as he got his agreed-upon share of the spoils and was permitted to drink to his heart's content in private. Bo, being uncompromisingly domineering and a teetotaler to boot, continued to secretly resent him for this; at the same time, the Capellan Citizens' Combine and the Espian Free People's Movement began to closely associate with one another.

Unfortunately for Hugh, Bo was also ambitious – so much so that after being told that she was considered for a higher position in the Free People's Army, she thought it would be a good idea to seal the deal by seizing the pilot's stash of alcohol to give to the FPA honchos as a gift, and as a grandiose show of authority, to subject him, her top (and only) pilot, to "long-overdue disciplinary action" – all the better to remind all concerned of the pecking order.

Hugh found out about this and reckoned that it was high time to get out of dodge. Later that night, he loaded into his cargo bay all the worldly possessions he still had with him, including his still, his stash of alcohol, and just to spite Margaret, an old jukebox from the cell's mess hall that he figured was a Bo family heirloom.

After convincing the guards that he was on a solo covert mission to take the stuff in his hold to some potential allies (which was still technically true, he told himself), Hugh hopped into the cockpit, powered up his Lumberjack, and strode off in search of the source of that exotic moonshine he got from the black market whose label was stamped with nothing but a green knight's helmet. That fine hooch had been on his mind ever since his first sip.

“Pretty sure it's those mercs from offworld who made that good shit,” Hugh thought to himself as an ancient Terran song* started to play on his stereo. “Gotta be.”

Battlemech:

Hugh pilots a dull-gray Lumberjack, originally an LM1/A, which with the grudging approval of Margaret Bo he paid the technologically-inclined members of their cell a significant amount of liquor to upgrade with looted weapons. The souped-up ForestryMech now sports an LRM-10 in place of one of the dumpers, additional armor, and machine guns instead of its signature lift hoist. Painted on the 'Mech's left chest plate is the iconic green Capellan Confederation emblem, now weathered. And in case anyone's wondering, it still rocks its chainsaw.

*The song

Jk, actually it's this one below if the last one wasn't good for your immersion:

Mechwarrior: Disposable Heroes

@Letter Bee

Not to worry, I'm currently writing this subfaction of the rebels my character's from to possibly be at loggerheads with Andrew's in significant ways.

President Lincoln

So glad to see you're still alive, Mr. President!

Mechwarrior: Disposable Heroes

@Letter Bee

Yup, I'm aware of that. Might make things a little more interesting, don't you think? And the cell Andrew's in might not necessarily be in lockstep or even in constant communication with the cell I'm thinking of having my character leave, because this RP's lore describes the FPA as a "hodgepodge of cells"... Not to mention that so far it looks like the people running the rebellion are a bunch of jerks themselves anyway 😁

Mechwarrior: Disposable Heroes

@AndyC

Since it looks like you're in between missions, I'm thinking of playing an IndustrialMech pilot who defects to the mercs from the FPA because his cell leader rubbed him the wrong way. What do you think?

Mechwarrior: Disposable Heroes

@AndyC

This still open?

𝙽𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛 𝙵𝚊𝚍𝚎 𝙰𝚠𝚊𝚢

@DeadDrop

Consider me interested in this one too, but I think I gotta catch up on this one's lore first to do it justice.

How politically incorrect is this RP allowed to be though? I'm thinking of making a foul-mouthed pimp character.

𝚂𝚃𝙰𝙺𝙴𝙳 - 𝙸𝚍𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚒𝚏𝚢, 𝙸𝚗𝚟𝚎𝚜𝚝𝚒𝚐𝚊𝚝𝚎, 𝙴𝚕𝚒𝚖𝚒𝚗𝚊𝚝𝚎

Although The Exorcist had always been his favorite piece of fiction, not even in his wildest dreams did Father Stone see himself as Max von Sydow, wearing a hat with his clerics and arriving at a house that didn't look like a home at all.

The young Jesuit thought for a moment that perhaps Father O'Malley was playing a joke on him – but only for a moment. From what Father Stone knew and heard about O'Malley, it seemed as though there was never a time when the old priest wasn't serious. The few times that O'Malley bothered to write him back and the even rarer occasions that they spoke to one another face-to-face, it felt as though John O'Malley always carried with him an anchor around his scrawny, ancient neck that threatened to wrap itself around his neck too.

Ever since the day O'Malley became his mentor – if what he did could be considered “mentoring” – Alex Stone always wondered where that anchor would take him, were it allowed to simply fall.

And isn't falling the most natural thing in the world for an anchor to do?

Come to think of it, it wasn't disquiet that he was feeling at that moment. If anything, it felt more like a homecoming, even though he's never been here before.

“Should I feel bothered by that?” Stone asked out loud, before realizing that he wasn't the only one anymore standing outside the premises. There was a rider now, not too far from where he stood, and whoever they were, he hoped they didn't hear him talking to himself through that helmet.

“Pardon me, uh, miss,” he said, approaching the rider as her helmet came off, “are you with whoever's in that house over there?”

---

---

𝚂𝚞𝚖𝚖𝚊𝚛𝚢, 𝙻𝚘𝚛𝚎, 𝙿𝚎𝚛𝚔𝚜
Father Stone considers the house he was sent to just as Ximena arrives, and makes contact with her.

𝚂𝚃𝙰𝙺𝙴𝙳 - 𝙸𝚍𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚒𝚏𝚢, 𝙸𝚗𝚟𝚎𝚜𝚝𝚒𝚐𝚊𝚝𝚎, 𝙴𝚕𝚒𝚖𝚒𝚗𝚊𝚝𝚎

Alexander Stone

_{Fr. Alexander Stone, SJ
◄ 29 ▎ MALE ▎ 5'10" ►}

_{P R O F I L E}

If not for an unquenchable desire to get to the bottom of things, Father Stone wouldn't be a professor of philosophy, or a Jesuit. Heck, maybe not even a priest at all. Those who know him well, such as his confreres in the Society of Jesus and his fellow academics, make it a point to keep their dealings with him dull, perfunctory, and as brief as possible; those who do not, such as those unfortunate enough to be his students and confessors, find themselves regretting afterwards that they piqued his interest by opening up to him more than they ought to have. It is for this reason that none of Fordham University's frequent churchgoers would ever want to confess their sins to Father Stone lest they run the risk of having him ask them a litany of inconvenient questions – a predicament he finds himself in even now as a chaplain in Loyola University Maryland.


_{D A Y S - G O N E}

With the exception of his mentor and fellow Jesuit Fr. John O'Malley, now at an age when men of the cloth typically hang up their vestments for good, nobody in the world actually knows why Alex Stone decided to become of all things a son of Ignatius Loyola, let alone why he's always been the way he is.

What people don't know is that the sometimes cold, yet often inquisitive young priest was once Little Alex, a sanguine and carefree orphan of the Saint Gerolamo Center down in Baton Rouge.

Except perhaps for the older Jesuit and others with him whose names Alex never learned, nobody else knows that one fateful December, it wasn't a who that took his friends away every other night or so – but a what.

A what that lusted after the flesh of young children, but not in the way most people thought. And definitely not in the way the muckrakers reported it, and would continue to report it, in the years that followed.

A what which, for some reason, needed things like torches, wooden stakes, and a medieval-looking sword to be put down for good.

Alex didn't have the words back then, but he knew.

Knowing that the child knew, and concerned about what he might divulge out of childish carelessness, O'Malley and his companions arranged for Little Alex to spend the rest of his boyhood in an institution for orphaned boys up in Quebec City of all places. Needless to say things were difficult there, and having to learn French from absolute ignorance because that was all the people around him spoke (more like insisted on speaking) was the least of his travails.

Nevertheless, Alex endured, and when he came of age he went to great lengths to find out where in the world the old priest was, and saw to it that he received a letter containing but a single line:

Je veux être comme toi.

_{M E M O R I E S}

- Fr. John O'Malley, SJ: Alex's savior (“second only to Our Lord”). Sponsored Alex's studies first at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley and later in Fordham, where he received a PhD and later was ordained a priest of the Society of Jesus. Otherwise distant in more ways than one and unresponsive to letters, leaving Alex to his own devices despite knowing that the young man must be brimming with all manner of questions pertaining to the occult and then some. Told Alex only the bare minimum about the existence of hunters and cells, particularly the one in Baltimore, but only after the younger priest finally wrote him about his "Long Dark Night of the Soul" in great despair. “In five years' time, if you're still alive and I'm still alive by then, I promise to tell you everything,” were O'Malley's words to him before they parted ways once more.

- The Society of Jesus: A Catholic order of priests and brothers worldwide, and the closest thing Alex Stone has ever had to a family. Renowned for their erudition bordering on the heretical and sometimes even blasphemous, yet completely oblivious to even the possibility of a world of darkness except for a scant few like O'Malley – and now Stone himself as well. While he enjoys genuine friendships with the older members in addition to those he attended seminary with, Father Stone can't help but feel irked by the fact that he is sometimes jokingly referred to throughout the Society as “Fr. Alex Jones,” owing to his predilection for conspiracy theories, paranormal podcasts, books such as David Paulides's Missing 411 and The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty, and TV shows like The X-Files – but most definitely not “bombastic and buffoonish claptrap” like Infowars.


_{C R E E D}

Inquisitive


_{D R I V E}

𝚅𝚎𝚗𝚐𝚎𝚊𝚗𝚌𝚎



_{E D G E S & P E R K S}

- Library

- Who They Are

- Sense the Unnatural