Xanadu

Mass Effect: Renegade

@Star Lord
Mhm!

Mass Effect: Renegade

@Xanadu so, off topic ish but is there gonna be a discord chat?

@Heat

Most likely yes! After applications are done and the final roster is set in stone. I feel it would be shitty to invite people and then have to kick them later?

Mass Effect: Renegade

@Dervish
Gotch'a! Will take a gander soon!

Alright everyone! I have a practice review finished!

So my reviews are broken down into two sections: the play by play and the general summary. The play by play is literally the notes that I'm making as I read the application. This notes will be marked with a <- and will always be written in cyan so that they stand out against the sheet. This shows you generally what's going through my head as I read the sheet and is used to highlight specific trouble points.

The general summary will as it sounds will summarize the general major problems if any that I see. I will tell you where you should focus in on, typically where I see the weakest part of the sheet is. Beyond that I think everything is pretty self-explanatory!

---

@Star Lord's

Marius Faro

<- Starting with Diego Luna as your face claim, I feel personally attacked.
_{M A R I U S F A R O
✹ T H I R T Y T W O ✹ M A L E ✹ H U M A N ✹ E N G I N E E R ✹}

_{A P P E A R A N C E}

---

Marius Faro stood 5' 10" and weighed around one hundred fifty pounds with a muscular frame. He maintained a healthy body and often worked out despite his prosthetic leg. Whenever he wore his armor, the prosthetic leg never stood out and often mistaken as a real leg. <- Is that intentional? Or was that more of a happy circumstance. I only ask because it might tell us more about him as a person. In casual wear, on the other hand, it stood out even though he wore jewelry all over his arms. <- Is there a story behind the jewelery or is that just for the #aesthetic Faro kept his hair at medium length because of his time in the military. And if jewelry and a prosthetic leg wasn't enough, he also had several tattoos all over his body including an arm tattoo. <-Once again, I'm wondering what the tattoos look like. Are they from his military days? Before? After? Appearance also tells a story, helps flesh the character out. Because they can be just an aesthetic choice, but I feel that wastes an opportunity to help flesh out Marius more maybe? Idk.

_{B A C K G R O U N D}

---

_{"The hardest lesson that I learned during my youth was to think for myself."} <- The quote is a nice touch!

Marius Faro was born in Mars' first settlement, Lowell City, a year after the discovery of the Martian Ruins. Both of his parents were scientists that took part in the exploitation of the ruins for remaining technologies. Six months after Marius' birth, his parents' contract with the Systems Alliance wasn't renewed, and they moved to America as a result. <- I'm wondering where his parents came from originally. Cause the European Space Agency officially founded Lowell, so are they from Europe or America and if they are from Europe why go to America? His mother, Alyssa, became a recruiter for the Alliance's science department to provide a better life for her only child. On the other hand, his father remained an independent scientist and accepted a contract to study the newly discovered Charon Relay. While they were working to reactive it, the turians attacked and destroyed nearly the entire fleet. <- This is a lore misstep here. During First Contact, the Turian's didn't attack the Charon Relay, they attacked Relay 314, which is a deactivated relay further from Earth, that the Alliance wanted to use to further expand but is against intergalactic policy because like you don't want another Rachni incident happening. 2149 was when the Charon Relay was activated and the Relay 314 incident was in 2157. Which is around an eight year difference? So I don't know if that messes up the rest of your timeline a bit.

Marius and his mother learned about Franco's fate when a lone starship returned. Heartbroken and angry, Alyssa developed a hatred of turians and wanted them to pay for murdering her husband. Her resentment grew worse when Shanxi fell. Now, she and plenty of people were ready and willing to support an interplanetary war. Unfortunately for them, the Citadel Council stepped in between and forged peace before war truly begun. The council's intervention changed Alyssa forever. She found comfort with Terra Firma, a growing anti-alien political party, and eventually rose to become one of its key speakers.

Meanwhile, Marius struggled without his father during middle and high school. His mother didn't help much other than taking him to one of Terra Firma's rallies. Instead, he tried to find comfort by seeking answers to his father's death. That was when he learned that humans unknowingly violated one of the Council laws by reactivating the relay. It helped him understand why the turians attacked, but it didn't bring him comfort about his father's death. Things only got worse once high school began.

Many of his peers were bothered with the fact that his mother was part of Terra Firma and considered Marius to have the same beliefs. Some students defended him because they had parents in the same political party and openly xenophobe. But, there were those willing to know Marius including Arrutis Isaraka, a turian that transferred because his father was an instructor for the Alliance. <- I like this whole forbidden romance bit, but it would of never happened. The Alliance was terrified of asking for any alien help after First Contact especially the Turians, they whole reason they had to keep what was happening at Jump Zero a secret was the fear of backlash of having even just turian mercs teaching bioitcs how to use their powers. So a turian and his family wouldn't just be openly prancing about Earth teaching with the Alliance. The two formed a friendship at the end of freshman year; however, Marius kept it a secret to his mother. While their friendship kept on growing, his relationship with his mother started to sour.

Eventually, both of them realized that they had feelings for each other and secretly started dating. Marius feared what would happen to Arrutis if his mother found out about their relationship. Meanwhile, more of his peers began to realize that he was different from his mother; but, it still wasn't enough. Marius felt like he wanted to prove everyone wrong and decided to plan something in his senior year. The plan was for Marius and Arrutis to attend Alyssa's rally on the ninth anniversary of the First Contact War to humiliate her.

Of course, the plan was being followed until Arrutis kissed Marius. Alyssa was caught off guard and felt stunned and embarrassed that her son liked the kiss. If that wasn't enough, it happened on the anniversary of Franco's death. Then, a picture of Arrutis kissing Marius went viral on the extranet. It was such a big scandal that Terra Firma denounced Alyssa and discredited her as a member. She never forgave Marius and felt like he dishonored his father for dating his "murders." When he turned eighteen and graduated, Alyssa kicked her son out and told him never to see her again. He initially tried to stay with Arrutis at his parent's place; however, they planned on returning to Palaven and forced them to end the relationship. <---Once again with the two above paragraphs is the same thing. You can maybe rework it somehow? Maybe they met on the extranet and were dating long distance or something instead? I don't know. I'm just spitballing here.

With nowhere else to go, Marius went to an Alliance recruiter to join. He got basic training before being placed in a division apart of the Alliance Engineering Corp. His division was responsible for maintaining defenses of colonies located in the Skyllian Verge against pirates and slavers. Whenever he was on military leave, he attended college in Elysium to get a degree in electrical engineering. Thankfully, Marius wasn't on Elysium when it came under attack during the Skyllian Blitz. That attack made him hate pirates and felt like he had to fight back. When he heard of the upcoming battle on Torfan, he requested transform to the 103rd Marine Division. The chain of command approved the transform, and Yanagita left shortly after. <-- The Alliance is a massive bureaucracy, transfers to different divisions don't just happen because you ask nicely. What skills did he have that were essential for Torfan? Why? Would they approve the transfer?

The Battle of Torfan was a bloodbath for the Alliance while a massacre for the pirates on the moon. Hundreds of Alliance soldiers were killed during the push towards the base. <- Not crucially important, but like there wasn't one single base on Torfan that we know of. Instead it was several strongholds built underground, connected through tunnels and the like. Actually maybe that's why he transfered? Engineer's make good sappers/tunnel rats.... Thousands more were wounded, including Marius, who had shrapnel in his legs due to an explosion. It was his first serious injury that he ever got, but he never regretted the decision to join the Marine Division. However, it was a wakeup call. When Marius got his degree, he decided to retire from the Alliance and left for the Citadel. But, civilian life was difficult for him to get back into.

The Citadel was too peaceful for a military man, like Marius, to spend his remaining life. He also didn't have many friends in the Citadel until he met Sertius Quintis. Quintis was a C-Sec officer that met with Yanagita during his break. Both Quintis and Marius were military men who recently retired from the military and went to the Citadel for comfort. Instead, Quintis joined C-Sec to keep himself busy. After some convincing, Marius applied to the C-Sec's Network Division. It wasn't as fun as being part of the Patrol Division, but he knew that his skill would be best suited to deal with E-Crimes.

For seven months, he did his job for the Network Division to the best of his abilities without question. His superiors were impressed with Marius and gave him pay raises. And Quintis became a great friend to Marius. Life was comfortable enough for Marius until he found himself in danger. Members of a powerful Citadel gang found out where Marius lived and planned on killing him.<-Gang's just don't put hits out on people for the fun of it. What did Marius do to piss them off so much? Did he help bust some of them? What happened here? This is an opportunity to further flesh out his career in C-Sec. Maybe him and Quintis found a lead? I don't know. That's for you to find out and tell me! Fortunately, C-Sec arrived at the scene and saved Marius before he was killed. He was taken to the nearest hospital where doctors managed to save his life, but at the cost of his left leg. <- How did his left leg get injured?

After recovering and getting the prosthetic leg, Marius was honorably discharged from C-Sec and forced into another early retirement. He immediately grew bored and announced the decision of leaving the Citadel for Omega to become a mercenary. Marius tried to ask Quintis if he wanted to come with him because he had feelings for him. However, Quintis tried to convince Marius not to become a mercenary because he thought it would have violated everything he has done.

Marius left the Citadel behind shortly after.

For four months, Marius took on a few jobs in Omega while using several aliases and gained a decent reputation for getting the job done despite leaving behind a mess. And whenever he wasn't working, Marius was doing drugs and hooking up with strangers. It got to the point where it became his daily route. Then, he heard that the captain aboard the Achilles was looking for hired help. Marius accepted the offer in the hopes of breaking his pattern by leaving Omega. And of course, he wanted to be paid a lot of credits.

_{S K I L L S}

---

Marius was a trained Alliance engineer with years of experience under his belt. While in the army, he earned his engineering degree on Elysium and found himself in C-Sec's Network Division. He taught himself how to use both a shotgun and sniper rifle. With the sniper rifle, Marius was an excellent marksman capable of hitting targets far away. <-Sniper's at least in the modern military don't usually just become snipers. They come into the military with marksmen experience that the military then makes sharper. That's kind of the only way, I think I could justify an engineer using a sniper rifle? But then the question would be where did he learn? His mother maybe? Terra Firma does have that gotta be prepared for the eventual alien invasion vibe around them... Yet, he carried a shotgun and a pistol whenever he was on the front lines. For his skills as an engineer, he knows how to repair, restore, and build several things if you give the space and the tools required. His specialty is weapons, armors, prosthetics, and augmentations; but, he does know a few things about fixing ships. Unfortunately, he was a terrible hacker compared to other engineers in the Alliance. It was one of the reasons why the Alliance moved him to the front lines rather than with the other engineers.

Besides combat, Marius found interest in history and took several courses on the subject while in college. Sketching was a hobby that Marius hid from everyone since his childhood. He tried to open up to Quintis, but he was focused on work than having hobbies. <-I like the adding of the hobbies!

_{E Q U I P M E N T}

---

Naginata Sniper Rifle VIII
Hurricane Shotgun IV
Nexus omni-tool VII
Light Freedom armor VI

_{A B I L I T I E S}

---

Flamethrower
Flashbang Grenade
Overload
Shredder Ammo

<sub>PSYCH PROFILE

T R A I T S</sub>

---

Positive

Independent
Loyal
Observant

Negative

Anxious
Flamboyant
Unrest

_{V I C E S}

---

Drugs

_{During the first few months as a mercenary, Marius' anxiety and fears started to overwhelm him until he found comfort in drugs. At first, the classic marijuana helped him calm down. Then, he fell in love with party drugs like Hallex; yet, he stayed far away from red sand. And finally, alcohol was something that he rarely drank and only did it socially. Marius didn't do drugs whenever he accepted work or his skills as an engineer were required. He viewed them as his source of comfort instead of sharing thoughts and feelings with therapists. <-This is good! Though my question here is is this still a casual fun thing that you do sometimes, or is it a full blown addiction. Because you make out that he did a lot of drugs for a serious amount of time, and so if he's addicted to some substances, my question would be what kind.}

Hookups

_{Marius' other significant guilty pleasure was one-night stands. Typically, it happened once he finished with work and only did it with men. He either went to their place or invited them over to his small apartment unit. Just like drugs, he found some comfort with them even if it was meaningless; however, it didn't mean he wanted a relationship. Now that Marius was going to be aboard a ship with other people, he knew that these hookups weren't going to be acceptable. It was when he made a vow to limiting and even stopping hookups, but it wasn't going to be easy.}

_{H A U N T}

---

Observation Deck

_{Even know the Achilles was a small vessel, it had a small observation deck perfect for Marius. The window had a large shutter, which was made out of the same material as the ship, capable of withstanding blasts towards it. Besides the window, there was a round table with comfortable chairs and a large flat screen television. Initially, it was supposed to provide relaxation and relief for crewmembers until Marius arrived. Whenever he was on board, Marius spent his time on the extranet, sketching, tinkering with his leg, or smoking something. However, if someone wanted time alone in the deck or joined him, he respected their request and left towards a different part of the ship. As for the workshop, there wasn't much of Marius' stuff besides a small cactus to lighten up the room.}

_{D R I V E}

---

Marius lost the only family member that he had left because of hatred. He lost the two people that he had ever fallen in love with due to circumstances. The things that kept him going through life were drugs, sex, and combat. Being a part of the Alliance gave him the adrenaline rush that helped him through a rough part of his life. Even being part of Torfan was one of the most exciting moments in his life despite how deadly it was. He attempted retirement at the Citadel but realized that he missed that rush. C-Sec didn't satisfy him at all. It wasn't until he became a mercenary that the rush came back to him. Drugs and having one-night stands helped him contain that need.

But, Marius knew that those things weren't healthy at all. He was afraid of his past coming back to haunt him, fearful of being unable to achieve everlasting love, and petrified of being lost forever. And he thought that it was irreparable.

Alright general summary time!

It's a strong start for a character! There are some problems though which is okay! Appearance section is a little weak. It does the job of describing the character, but I want a little bit more. What does this say about them? Why do they wear what they wear? This goes similarly with the gear and is why, if you look in Kolya's sheet, there is a little blurb after each item. It helps flesh out the character more, helps them feel more realized.

Major problems are in the backstory though. Some elements chronologically don't make sense. Other elements contrast of what we know of the pre-established lore. And other things just kinda state that a thing happens without giving context for it. All in all this your weakest section and I'd say where you need to focus in on the most.

Beyond that though there are some little things here and there that you can see in my comments. That you may want to choose to address.

Mass Effect: Renegade

@Inkarnate@Monochromatic Rainbow@Plank Sinatra@Rtron@Stormflyx@Star Lord@DJAtomika@Dervish@Heat@Jarl Coolgruuf

I think that is everyone...

Alright after consulting with my valuable GM Staff of well.... me. I have decided that CS applications will close on Saturday June 1st at 5:00PM EST. I feel this is fair because it give all of y'all a solid five days to get those concepts finished and polished to a mirror shine. If for some reason, you think that you won't be able to make that deadline I would appreciate it if you reached out to me and explained your circumstance, and if I think it's valid (Spoiler alert: I probably will) then I can extended the deadline a bit for you.

Also you may have noticed there is like 10 of you. I was originally aiming for a cast of eight here. I'm still doing logistics here on my end to figure things out. In a perfect world, I would be able to take all ten of y'all and I'm gonna try and figure out if there is a plausible scenario where that might work. But really it's the merit and quality of your guys sheets that is going to be the deciding factor there. If everyone is so gosh damn good, that I can't reject any of your sheets, I will probably be pushed further in that direction. And if it does come that, I will probably need to recruit a Co-GM or something.... to manage all of y'all but I'll cross that road when I come to it lmao.

Anyway, if you have any other questions feel free to PM them to me.

A practice review is being written up as well, and should be up soon as well. So you guys can get a better idea of what I'm looking for beyond Kolya's sheet. So keep an eye out for that as well!

Mass Effect: Renegade

Having to share a galaxy with Salarians is torture enough.

#leavetuchankaalone

@Dervish

You know the Salarians get a lot of shit for the genophage... but like the only reason they had to make it was because the Turians' "best army in the galaxy" couldn't handle a bunch of angry lizards on their own....

Mass Effect: Renegade

@DJAtomika
Yeah go right ahead!

Mass Effect: Renegade

@Star Lord
People have lives, so probably about laterish next week? Sometime after Wednesday probablyyy Friday. I'll have a more solid idea after I sleep. Lmao.

In intrest of fairness though, to those who are finished earlier, if you want you can ask me for one practice review. This review will not be used against you and will be treated like a normal review except that it just doesn't count. Instead it gives you the option of addressing any problems or critiques, before the real deal. This to counterbalance people that submit later have time to look at other's sheets and other such advantages. And is also fair because it helps the early applicant, but also helps them because they get to see what kind of things I'm keeping an eye out for.

Mass Effect: Renegade

@Stormflyx
This really isn't about you guys. Honestly it isn't. I don't think it's going to happen here. All of you seem like good people. It is something that has happened to me in the past though. So seeing those concerns placed I had to publicly state my opinion on the matter. I'm not here to judge people on the past because that is also a form of exclusivity.

It's not a condemnation. It's a hey guys something has been brought to my attention and I want to address it. Because when someone comes to me with stuff like that I can't just in good faith ignore that.

---

To Everyone

But in the interest of keeping drama to a minimum. I'm gonna put a stop on this topic now. If anyone has further questions or comments they can of course PM me. I don't want y'all to feel unwelcomed or judged. The only way I get better and the RP gets better is by communication
Or if you wanna like I don't know yell at me for how this is unfair and I'm a terrible person that's cool as well! That last one is hopefully just my crippling medically-diagnosed anxiety being a bitch like usual lol.

And of course if because of this anyone wants to no longer participate because they feel the environment is bad or anything else I also understand. And I truly apologize if that is the case. That was not my intention, but if that is the case I'm extremely sorry because no one deserves to feel that way and I understand your decision. Though I would appreciate a heads up.

Thanks again everyone! Sorry for ruining the fun.... :[

Mass Effect: Renegade

@Stormflyx
And I appreciate your effort a lot! I truly do.

The only reason I made this post actually is because I've been talking in PMs with some of the people from your guy's previous group, that expressed concerns about it to me. Agreeing with their points, I felt that I should just address it up front and early so there are no surprises. I believe that everyone actively wants the best for the RP and that everyone wants to write a good story. I just wanted to put it out there so at a later date, if I have to reject an application on this basis, that I feel that I gave a fair warning. Because otherwise I would feel shitty just going nah you can't join because of this or whatever.

It's not intended as an attack or anything. I'm just trying to be as forthright and honest with all of y'all. Because I feel as a GM and as a good person it's my responsibility to at least manage that.

Mass Effect: Renegade

@Star Lord
Hey buddy it's not you lol. I'm fine with people reusing their characters. I'm not fine when a bunch of people that all RP together use all their same characters, because it ends up isolating other players who might have not had the chance to be in their previous RPs. I'm more anti-clique then anything else. I probably should of just worded that post better. But it's late so I'm rambling.