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Thornwood Asylum For The Criminal Insane- A Villain Roleplay. (Closed Indefinitely)

"No," Janet immediately said, though still kept his eyes off of him, "I will not give you a single hint without boundaries being set first. This is not my first interaction with something like yourself - the last one wore tights and had horns, but demons don't seem to change much through the years."

She turned around and looked past the disturbing sight of his smile to look up at the huge display against the wall - unfortunately, it was only wired to display in very simple colors, shapes and text, but if things haven't changed too much there should be...

Ah. There we go. BBC text news service. Hadn't changed much at all since 1999. Janet quickly tapped the remote's buttons as she tried to read through some of today's headline articles. She wasn't going to be left in the dark as to what had changed.

"If you wish to work under me at all, create a contract that states the terms of our work together, exactly what a 'piece' entails and allow me to read the text of said contract in its entirety without altering its contents ex-post facto." A brief blow of bubbles came out from under the oxygen-supplying mask over her face. "If I can get that out of you, that'd be just wonderful."

Mechwarrior: Disposable Heroes

Dinner And A Show

3023 - Andiron, Circinus Federation - Outskirts of Redder's Haven, 14:30

If anyone was asking, Jim and Crocker were still manning the machine gun emplacement.

The two of them sat on the edge of a hill overlooking the devastation that today's battle had created. In Jim's hand was a long pipe, and under Crocker's rear was an ammunition bin filled with ice and cans of beer - the cheap local shit, of course. Infantrymen don't make enough money to afford imports. Despite what they would claim in the (very loose) after-action reports the Black Army insisted upon, they had left their post naught but twenty minutes after the fighting started.

You see, they were used to trying to shoot out waves of bandits armed with rocket launchers and sticks of dynamite. That came part and parcel with the territory of working within the Circinus Federation; it almost felt normal to engage in those boots-in-mud level fights that had barely evolved in the last thousand years of warfare. They'd sit in nest and do what their meagre pay told them to do.

When multiple dropships appeared overhead, bearing the bright red fist of the Lyran Commonwealth, though? They waited long enough to see battlemechs rolling off of the ramps before deciding it'd be better to just watch.

Smoke trailed up from the field below them as many vehicles now lay as pyres, mostly from Black Army garrison vehicles. Jim added to the miasma with his own puff, blowing rings into the air. "Reckon we should go back now?"

"Nah," Crocker shook his head and took his helmet off. "Give it until they're gone. Gotta act like we were held up by the Steiners, can't just get back home in one piece without an explanation."

"Well...ain't much time now." Jim held up a pair of binoculars, the original glass-on-glass kind, and squinted past the smudges. "See that 'mech in the field, 'bout a quarter mile out?"

"There's a lot of 'em, Jim."

"The Hunchback, one with the big gun on its shoulder."

"...Oh yeah." Crocker leaned forward to try and scope it out with his own vision. A broadly-built machine in the shape of a man, doubled over on its back and lying still in the dirt. Several large holes, still glowing red-hot, permeated its front side. "What about it?"

"Pretty sure that's the garrison commander's. Neely, the skin-and-bones guy."

Crocker briefly sputtered as a little beer went down the wrong pipe, but he conquered it and shook his head. "Maaaaan, Neely's a bastard! He owes me, like, 50 skulls. Great that he kicked--"

"No, no, he ain't bit it."

"He ain't?" Crocker leaned over to Jim's side, as if he'd get something more from his vantage point. "You sure about that?"

"I can see his pasty white ass right now. He's climbing out of the Hunchback." He passed the binos to his buddy for Crocker to confirm it. Hard to make out on a first glance as he fiddled with the focus, but there he was! Commander Gavin Neely, 52 years of age, his long and wiry limbs showing like a white flag of surrender as all he had on was a cooling vest and a pair of modest shorts. The commander was climbing down the top of his downed Hunchback like he was scaling a cliff, hands and feet stuck into gaps in the armor. He was taking his sweet time, too. Rather than just roll off into the mud, he clinged to the side of the Hunchback's head for dear life.

Crocker stiffled a chuckle. The rumors from his days in training must be true - the man they chose as a Mechwarrior was terrified of heights.

Jim nudged his side. "Pass 'em back. The scope on the MG's just as good." Crocker gave a sigh, but handed them back and went down to the dirt to watch the stupidity unfold. "Guess that the ejection seat don't work."

"Great, ain't it?" Crocker smiled as his face pressed to the ground.

"Shame we can't tell no one. We're supposed to be fightin' and dyin' out here."

Crocker shook his head. "Fuck, man. Nobody'd take him seriously if they saw him like this. I--"

"Hey. Hey. Look up."

Crocker did, his neck cracking a little as he strained to push his machine gun's butt into the ground further...before simply looking with the naked eye. From the smoke rose a much taller machine, its front side scored with laser fire, and Crocker had no fuckin' idea which one this was supposed to be. Outside of being able to tell a Locust and a Hunchback apart, he wasn't paid for threat identification like this. Still, the round, oval shape sitting between legs and long arms reminded him of an egg. Eggmech.

He figured much the same as Jim did - the pilot of the Eggmech was here to finish the job. Neely would be spared the humiliation of their story, one way or the other. He looked back down into his scope. The commander was still climbing so slowly that he might even be unaware! He could drop down just a few feet now and land on the jutting ammunition bin of the of the Hunchback without a problem. Even as the Eggmech was all but looming overhead, he still clung...

Crocker realized what he was holding and had an idea. He aimed a few feet above his commanding officer, accounting for drop, and sent a small burst in his direction.

"Jesus, Crock," the rebuke came immediately from Jim, who had jostled as the gun burst right in his ear. "The hell are you firing for?"

Crocker merely smiled and nodded. "He's off."

...Jim returned to his binoculars. The rattle of bullets must've finally scared the bastard off from his perch. He was on the ground! Barely conscious and certainly terrified now, but he had a fighting chance at escaping if he simply found some other battlefield husk to hide under. It'd only take the indiscretion of the Eggmech's pilot to...

"Hey, look up again. The Steiner's...kneeling?"

That it was. One servo-driven knee was planted into the dirt, one was braced against an arm, and the round mech rested still above the fallen Hunchback. A few seconds later, the two of them could only watch in silence as the hatch on top of the enemy machine opened. Its pilot - only Jim being able to tell it was a woman, as his binos were indeed better - climbed out in similar dress to their commander, tossing the bulky neurohelm down into the cockpit. She shouted something that was only audible as a whisper down at Neely. An insult? Usually these Lyran fuckers were far too proper and pompous to throw insults at one another.

With much less worry for her own self, Jim and Crocker watched as she made her way down the Eggmech's side in quick order. Touching down to the ground, she ran for the Hunchback's side where Neely was only just now climbing out of the mud. In her hands...

"...Hooo-leeee shit Jim, she's got a sword!"

"Did we get invaded by Dracs or something?"

"I don't fuckin' know, but--no, wait, she's got two of them!"

Against any good sense the Steiner pilot had run over, still shouting at the garrison commander in flight, and threw a sword at him. No, no, not at...to him? To him???

"...Crock..."

Jim's amazement slowly turned to glee.

"I think she...wants a goddamned sword duel with the commander."

Crocker looked up at Jim, jaw agape...before realizing that this was something far more special than an embarrassing story. This was a regiment legend in the making. His eye moved back to the scope, and wouldn't leave it for some time.

"Jim, I don't give a shit if we get in trouble." He fought back laughter. Neely grabbed the sword, shaking in his boots as he slowly turned to face the Steiner warrior. "Whether he wins or loses, we gotta tell the boys about this."

"Especially if he loses."

Mechwarrior: Disposable Heroes

Duchess Ingrid Daschke

Oversized Character Image

As depicted wearing the military uniform of her noble house, which is what she's going to wear in most occasions. On the shorter side.

Character Name: Duchess Ingrid Daschke

Callsign: Ramrod, assigned to her by the others. She thinks it means "ramrod straight" but it just refers to the size of the stick up her ass.

Age: 30

Character Archetype: Stuffy Noblewoman

Character’s Guiding Motto: "Fachwissen ist der Grundstein des Rittertums!" (lit. Expertise is the cornerstone of Chivalry! There's a very long and boring story about how this came to be the family's motto as a result of their actions during the Age of War. It's in German because they take their familial LARPing very seriously.)

Character’s Fatal Flaw: Complete unwillingness to bend princples. Acting the part of a proud knight is important in every single action and interaction, even if there's no honor left to defend.

Character’s Expertise: Decorum, Swordfighting, Diplomacy.

Nationality/Allegiance: Lyran/House Daschke (defunct)

Background: House Daschke effectively no longer exists. When it did exist, from the early 25th century until about two years ago, it was a minor noble house ruling over the small Lyran Commonwealth planet of Poulsbo on the Marik border alongside the (comparatively) more famous House Astra. Despite their relative obscurity, the planet's proximity to FWL space meant that it did see action often during the Succession Wars and proved itself at least somewhat useful to Lyran national interests. As the second-in-line to the family title, she still insisted on being trained to the same degree that the heir presumptive, her elder sister did. She excelled...but that didn't do anything to affect her position in the family at all. She was committed, however - even if that meant she'd be stuck as retainer to her sister for the remainder of her natural life, she wanted to see House Daschke proliferate and expand.

House Daschke did not proliferate and expand, mostly because it was successfully scattered to the four winds after a sudden and unexpected betrayal by House Astra. To condense centuries of political intrigue into one sentence, the other nobles of Poulsbo saw House Daschke as being far too sycophantic toward the interests of House Steiner in opposition towards the near-independence minded nature of Poulsbo's population. The events of the takeover were confusing at best, and at the end of it, Ingrid was left running for the hills and presumed herself to be the sole living member of House Daschke - thus, Duchess apparent.

So far were these hills that she managed to end up at the complete opposite end of the Free Worlds League. Most of her ancestral funds had been spent in a failed attempt to regain Poulsbo with no progress made and little else to show, so she basically just threw herself at the first mercenary command that would take her - Gawain's Green Knights, joining within the last year.

Vehicle: An OSR-2C Ostroc given the edgy pet name of Susser Todd, the pride of the Daschke family line. Previously well-maintained through prior generations despite the 'mech's relative rarity, it's probably in worse condition now that Ingrid's been piloting it without the support of a noble house.

Mechwarrior: Disposable Heroes

Character Sheet, Sauerkraut Flavored

Oversized Character Image

As depicted wearing the military uniform of her noble house, which is what she's going to wear in most occasions. On the shorter side.

Character Name: Duchess Ingrid Daschke

Callsign: Ramrod, assigned to her by the others. She thinks it means "ramrod straight" but it just refers to the size of the stick up her ass.

Age: 30

Character Archetype: Stuffy Noblewoman

Character’s Guiding Motto: "Fachwissen ist der Grundstein des Rittertums!" (lit. Expertise is the cornerstone of Chivalry! There's a very long and boring story about how this came to be the family's motto as a result of their actions during the Age of War. It's in German because they take their familial LARPing very seriously.)

Character’s Fatal Flaw: Complete unwillingness to bend princples. Acting the part of a proud knight is important in every single action and interaction, even if there's no honor left to defend.

Character’s Expertise: Decorum, Swordfighting, Diplomacy.

Nationality/Allegiance: Lyran/House Daschke (defunct)

Background: House Daschke effectively no longer exists. When it did exist, from the early 26th century until about two years ago, it was a minor noble house ruling over the small Lyran Commonwealth planet of Poulsbo on the Marik border alongside the (comparatively) more famous House Astra. Despite their relative obscurity, the planet's proximity to FWL space meant that it did see action often during the Succession Wars and proved itself at least somewhat useful to Lyran national interests. As the second-in-line to the family title, she still insisted on being trained to the same degree that the heir presumptive, her elder sister did. She excelled...but that didn't do anything to affect her position in the family at all. She was committed, however - even if that meant she'd be stuck as retainer to her sister for the remainder of her natural life, she wanted to see House Daschke proliferate and expand.

House Daschke did not proliferate and expand, mostly because it was successfully scattered to the four winds after a sudden and unexpected betrayal by House Astra. To condense centuries of political intrigue into one sentence, the other nobles of Poulsbo saw House Daschke as being far too sycophantic toward the interests of House Steiner in opposition towards the near-independence minded nature of Poulsbo's population. The events of the takeover were confusing at best, and at the end of it, Ingrid was left running for the hills and presumed herself to be the sole living member of House Daschke - thus, Duchess apparent.

So far were these hills that she managed to end up at the complete opposite end of the Free Worlds League. Most of her ancestral funds had been spent in a failed attempt to regain Poulsbo with no progress made and little else to show, so she basically just threw herself at the first mercenary command that would take her - Gawain's Green Knights, joining within the last year.

Vehicle: An OSR-2C Ostroc given the edgy pet name of Susser Todd, the pride of the Daschke family line. Previously well-maintained through prior generations despite the 'mech's relative rarity, it's probably in worse condition now that Ingrid's been piloting it without the support of a noble house.

Mechwarrior: Disposable Heroes

<Snipped quote by Letter Bee>

...While the setting has its darker moments, it doesn't really veer into full-blown child soldier levels of dark.

@AndyC

not until the clan invasion at least

Mechwarrior: Disposable Heroes

@Th3King0fChaos If you want a good melee-focused 'mech, you could always claim the Hatchetman.

@Letter Bee The absolute most common 'mechs are the Locust, Wasp and Stinger - but if you want something larger, the Shadow Hawk, Wolverine and Griffin are all pretty commonplace. You can find them in pretty much every force around.

Also this is me saying "interested", I've been waiting for a Battletech RP for a long time.

Thornwood Asylum For The Criminal Insane- A Villain Roleplay. (Closed Indefinitely)

Professor Perfection, as Mr. Q might have caught her, was standing beside a low control panel in the conference room. Her technology was always ahead of the curb, yes, but given how far removed they were from the 1970s...it was far from current. Command line interfaces and simple processing power; lines drawn with light against a black background instead of pixels on a screen. If they were going to be working out of here for any length of time, Janet was going to have to replace these...

She sighed. After Mr. Q spoke, she turned her pedestal around from the tiny screen and past him, wheeling around with a tiny remote in her hand. "You must have been waiting some time to ask that. If I were to guess, you simply wanted to ask me as a prelude to divulging your own designs for the world."

She briefly looked at him, trying to gauge his constant self-assuredness. It was the one and only time she looked directly at him this conversation.

"Very well-rehearsed designs." She rolled over to the side of the table, placing the remote and immediately beginning to disassemble it. Honestly, 70s Janet, making a device that needs to be broken open to change the batteries...what were you thinking? "I've had much time to think about it. The first and most obvious goal would be to exact revenge and personally kill some of the directorial staff of Thornwood. I have no idea how far you and your friends managed to get on that front before breaking out."

She tosses a piece of casing behind her as a couple more metallic graspers snake out of her pedestal, reaching for unseen drawers beneath the wide table and pulling out more 50~ year old technological bits. "However. I realize that such a goal is short-sighted and ultimately caused by my pent-up frustration getting the better of me. I can put it aside for now."

"Otherwise? I know it is uncharacteristic of me to say this, but I will admit that I am on my back foot." She begins to quickly re-assemble the device, improved hopefully. "I need to see what has changed in the past few decades. I need to rebuild a small empire that has almost assuredly been picked clean by the jackals I'd call my colleagues during my internment. Can't blame them. Weapons, machines, all sitting around in bunkers like this one, and usually far less well-kept of a secret."

She holds the remote upward, and inspects it. "I suppose figuring out your existence is the first step. What are you, exactly. Clearly fantastic in nature. The sort who lords over others with casual violation of physics. A self-described magician? An otherplanar entity? Go ahead and describe yourself."

Going Viral: A Digimon RP

Perhaps

Thornwood Asylum For The Criminal Insane- A Villain Roleplay. (Closed Indefinitely)

The place they were taken to was nothing more, from what they could see, than a dusty old hole in the ground. A lift behind them rose about a hundred feet up to the surface, to a hatch buried underneath the ground and left untouched for decades. In front of them was a steel blast door, wide enough to fit a truck through - despite being larger than the lift down - seemingly devoid of any means of entry.

Janet's brow furrowed. It'd take a little bit of sleuthing to figure out which one of these this was...to save on material costs, she tended to build these bunkers to a blueprint rather than be unique. While Mr. Q tended to the fallen girl, she replied "Potentially. Don't rush me," and trundled off to the side of the door.

Behind a layer of cobwebs on the door was a simple cipher in white paint, a coded identification mark that she had inscribed herself upon the bunker's completion. Nothing to connect the base with her specifically, of course, just there to sort it out . She read its meaning out loud: "Type A PPMB. Rated for nuclear non-penetrating munitions. December 10th, 1973...North Dakota."

There was a bit of satisfaction, hard to detect at first, in her voice as she explained. "There's nowhere else in the continent remote enough to build these things. Everyone goes to Alaska or Canada first." She tapped on a hidden panel, flipping open a very retro-looking keyboard, and she began to type in a long code. "Our enemies are far too used to going up north for hidden bunker busting. Do you recall a super by the name of Immortal Jones? Regeneration, bulletproof skin, that sort of small-minded brick of a man. He had to go to Alaska so often that he worked out a deal with airlines just to take economy flights up to Juneau. Our colleagues are rarely original."

She briefly wondered what happened to Immortal Jones. Probably was in his 60s by now. Hopefully too decrepit to be a bother.

The bunker doors slowly opened with a grinding squeal, protesting after being asked to move for the the first time in almost 50 years. "There is an operating table in here. Room 23. Medical supply should be fully stocked. Don't expect anything comfortable."



Down the concrete-lined walls of the bunker, lights turned on one by one with a fluorescent whine - some failing to do so due to sheer age - and their new home away from home was opened up to them. Long, undecorated hallways lit up with faded lamps that colored everything a sickly yellow, leading to dozens of doorways without any identifying marks beyond number - storage, reserves of various pieces of equipment that would've been futuristic in the 70s, narrow bunk rooms for living personnel, file cabinets and such. There were a few doors leading to living accommodations for visiting allies of hers. They weren't large, looking more like hospital dorms than the luxurious arrangements of a visiting villain, but they had beds and that's enough to call a place home.



There was only one place that wasn't spartan. A wide room meant for meetings between like-minded individuals, still ascetic in furnishings but nowhere near as functional. On one wall was a sweeping map of the world, still bearing all the hallmarks of an older time: the USSR was still existent, Africa's all but unrecognizable, many details are slightly different.

Thornwood Asylum For The Criminal Insane- A Villain Roleplay. (Closed Indefinitely)

In the course of her career, if you could call it that, Janet had many different escape routes: through the sea, flying over mountains, hiding in dens of ill repute. None were so brazen as appearing in broad daylight, in front of dozens of panicked civilians, surrounded by other villains covered in blood and in the middle of an amusement park.

Janet wondered if this was some kind of genius maneuver, beyond her own knowledge and experience, or not.

Oh well. She was free, for the moment. Her longest stay in prison thus far, 25 years (give or take some months), had finally come to a close. Freedom, for whatever value it had, was secure for just a minute. With the rest of her fellow escapees being gravely wounded, cowering over those wounded people rather than leaving them behind, already leaving the grounds or concerning themselves with gluttony, it was clear that she needed to act fast if she wanted this freedom to be anything but momentary.

Two others, one young and pierced, and the other crooked-toothed and finely dressed, walked over to Kailani. Inroads had already been made here, so Janet was ready to make use of them.

"Excuse me." She wheeled over to the three, ignoring Kailani's violent consumption of an entire stand that had probably been sitting in the park for decades. A piece of pretzel slapped against her pedestal's side and slid off. "I'm afraid I'm behind on current events. If any of you are the orchestrators of today's exfiltration, then thank you, but let's skip further gratitude."

"You would most likely know me as Professor Perfection. My reputation should precede me. If it does, you should know that I'm more than capable of getting us back on our collective feet, given time." She looked up at Mr. Q, specifically. The wounded man's disappearance, his "entourage" going alongside him, would speed up her timetable at least. "I do not have any inkling about what your next move will be. However," she glanced to the side at Abby, "I can give you somewhere to operate out of for the time being. I doubt any of you have contingency bases pre-prepared. What I lack is a means of transportation."