- Posting Speed
- Speed of Light
- Multiple posts per day
- 1-3 posts per day
- One post per day
- 1-3 posts per week
- One post per week
- Slow As Molasses
- Online Availability
- I have a college schedule that ebbs and flows but constantly covers everything. I'm rarely able to predict when I'm on
- Writing Levels
- Adaptable
- Preferred Character Gender
- Male
- Genres
- Sci-Fi, specifically Cyberpunk, is where I like it best. I can do Fantasy as well.
Welcome to the open sign-up thread for Song of Sunrise
For OOC planning and discussion, rules, asking questions and other such things you can join the official Discord here!
As a last note, knowing me, I'm SURE this is going to be filled with typos and grammar mistakes... So, in advance, sorry about that. I'll edit it as we go.
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The late 21st century was an unparalleled state of strife and conflict. Dwindling natural resources and global warming on Earth lead to numerous resource wars, genocides and general chaos. Many were deeply afraid that the starving superpowers that had once protected the world would turn on one another with their terrible arsenals of nuclear weapons. The scientific community of Earth knew that the only possibility of survival for the human race was to expand outwards, into the stars, and sate humanities hunger with what could be found in the stars.
At first, space exploration was limited to unmanned drones being sent only within Earth's solar system. It was not enough. Earth needed clean water, badly. Thousands of people were dying of thirst, and even the many drones being used could only hold small amounts of collected water on their return trips from Mars. Even when the various space programs of the world joined together to solve this problem, it was still not enough, it was never enough.
More permanent measures were acquired. Colonies and industrial operations on foreign worlds, to further speed up the process of extracting resources. The question was who would they send... Those that went out of the solar system would, likely, never come back. They could send people out of the solar system, but sending people back would be a massive waste of resources that they could not afford. Anyone that was sent, well, they would stay there for the remainder of their lives. The answer was through lottery. A large team of colonists, thousands strong, were selected from a pool of qualified individuals at random. They would be Earth's saviors, whether or not they were willing to do so.
The second obstacle was choosing where they would go. Several planets around the Tau system were enticing, but in the end most scientists agreed that the Wolf system was the best candidate, with multiple planets that could be considered habitable. However, it was a full 13 light years away from Earth. Using conventional means of space-travel, it would take centuries to even reach the system. Centuries they didn't have. The answer was to become unconventional. Instead of using a standard method of thrust, the colony ship was loaded up with an experimental Faster Than Light (FTL) engine. Shortening the travel time from centuries to mere months. The colonists were loaded up into the ship, the I.S.V. Voidwalker, and put into cryosleep in order to save resources required to keep them alive.
Unfortunately, it didn't work. Even using normal methods of space travel, accidents were frequent and travel was hazardous. Thus it was a surprise to no one when, due to a miscalculation, the Voidwalker missed the Wolf system all-together and careened off into the void. The colonists were never woken from cryosleep as the ship sailed into the emptiness of space, Earth assumed their life was over and forgot about them. They were lost.
Until they found Void.
Imagine suddenly being violently shaken awake out of cryosleep, cold and sick, only to look out the nearest portcullis and see that you are far away from the world you intended to colonize. In an entirely different solar system, thousands of light years away from Earth. This was how the colonists of the I.S.V. Voidwalker awoke, years after they had been sent from Earth, in a solar system thousands of light years away from Earth.
In order to drastically and quickly slow down the ship from it's immense speed, the pilot sling shot the ship dangerously close to the sun, burning and damaging several of it's instruments and vital components before crash landing on a habitable planet. As the colonists collected themselves after their extremely rough landing, they named the planet "Void" after their own destroyed colony ship. The colony itself being named "Point Void."
Void, despite being habitable, was an extremely dangerous place. Void was teeming with life. An atmosphere abundant with oxygen and H2O, the planet was covered completely in rain forests and jungles. The heat became unbearable around the planet's equators, up to sometimes 150 degrees Fahrenheit. A lack of large lakes or oceans meant the water was always evaporating into the atmosphere, and made it so that sometimes it would rain on Void for whole weeks at a time. The wildlife was so varied and evolved so quickly on void that whole species of animals and insects would be created and go extinct within a matter of years. The colonists even developed a running almanac for the annual wildlife of the area.
Regardless, the colonists did their best to colonize this new strange world. Without connection to Earth, they had no way of telling where they were or what they should do. They couldn't even tell how long they had been adrift in space, or how far away from Earth they were. All they could do was dig in, expand their colony, and hope Earth (if it still even held life) would inevitably come and rescue them.
That day didn't come for centuries.
As the colonists of Void struggled to make their new home, Earth struggled (and inevitably succeeded) to keep their home alive. Assuming that the I.S.V. Voidwalker was destroyed and their investment wasted, they rolled back their ambitions and began again to use FTL travel in exploring and exploiting their own solar system. The short distance and the immense power of the FTL powered ships meant that accuracy was no longer needed, and resources could travel between Mars and Earth within a matter of minutes instead of weeks. Resources like water were brought in by the tons, and for the moment, Earth managed to stabilize itself for just long enough to start reconsidering it's expansion to outside of the solar system.
With stability intact and resources abundant, the governments of Earth finally decided a more unified effort would be more prudent moving forward and interacting with the universe. If not only because a unified, Earth government would be better suited to manage several extra-terrestrial colonies. The result was the formation of the Unified States of Earth, or U.S.E.
More expeditions were launched, and FTL was continually developed into a new system of wormhole based travel. Allowing U.S.E. to cover distances with even greater expediency. They colonized dozens of star systems within the span of a few, relatively, short decades. Raw resources and salvage flooded into the Sol system (usually at the expense of these colonies) and created a veritable utopia on Earth. Where diseases were cured in minutes, pain and suffering were obsolete, and life was nearly limitless. U.S.E. expanded more and more, became ever stronger, and it was in the height of their power when they discovered Void.
U.S.E. was absolutely stunned when they discovered Void, and the native inhabitants of Void were equally shocked. It had been centuries since the I.S.V. Voidwalker had left earth's atmosphere. In that time, to the colonists of Void, Earth gradually had just become a foreign memory. To the younger generation, Earth wasn't even considered real anymore. The descendants of the colonists gradually just thought Earth had been a myth. That there was only just Void and it's jungles. When they were discovered by U.S.E. and learned Earth still existed, they were astonished.
In equal measure, the U.S.E. could not believe that the colonists of the ancient I.S.V. had not only survived but successfully colonized a planet so far away from their home. It meant, technically speaking, that Point Void was the oldest colony that Earth every created- and they never even knew it was there! Unfortunately, this was where things rapidly started to break down.
At this point, the natives of Void hadn't considered themselves a colony anymore. They considered themselves to be totally independent from the rule of U.S.E. or Earth at all. They had built this great civilization on Void all by themselves, with no help from Earth, so how did Earth have any right to declare themselves the owners of Point Void? In contrast, Earth and the U.S.E. saw the colony as their own. It was, after all, founded by colonists they had sent out in the first place. They believed that the colony was always theirs, it was just lost for a time. Plus, Void was too symbolic of a thing to get up. Many people believed Void was Earth's first and oldest colony, and it would send a terrible message if they could not control it themselves.
Thus, war soon ensued. U.S.E. was quick to take control of Void and it's many communities in entirety but it could not suffocate the fires of revolution. Rebellion after rebellion rocked the planet as the natives fought against the U.S.E. occupation. U.S.E. responded by tightening it's grip around Void like a vice, the planet looking less and less like a peaceful utopia and more like a military dictatorship with each passing day. However, it only made things worse, as more and more native rebels joined up with the cause.
All of it came to a point in the February of 2321. In the early weeks of the month, rebels had suddenly launched a unilateral offensive against U.S.E. institutions all across the planet. As a result, the rebels managed to take control of several orbital weapons being built by U.S.E. on the planet and turn it against them. Launching several strikes against the U.S.E. fleet orbiting above Void. Hundreds of thousands of U.S.E. troops were killed, and U.S.E. had essentially lost control of Void entirely. Earth needed to find a way to salvage the situation and save face, before the outer, fringe colonies of U.S.E. (in somewhat similar conditions of Void) got any bright ideas. They needed a sudden and extreme way to bring silence to the planet.
The answer was brought forth by a Doctor Ade Brantley, a chemist who won the Nobel prize for his work on Void and the Atmospheric Weapons System (A.W.S.) The design of the machine was very basic in nature. Using a huge abundance of Oxygen, Dr. Brantley's machine would change the atmospheric condition of a planet and raise the Oxygen level to a volatile degree. The U.S.E. approved the construction of the weapon, way before their issues with Void even began to occur, but it was only now did U.S.E. ever saw a reason to use it. On February 28th, 2321, the I.S.V Keplica entered low orbit around Void. Using the A.W.S. attached to it's hull, it began to pump massive levels of oxygen into the atmosphere.
Somewhere else on Void, a rebel prepares to take the fight to the U.S.E. troopers manning a checkpoint in his home town. His ears have been popping for the last few minutes but he doesn't know why. He prepares his Molotov in the crowd of protestors around him. Lighting the gasoline smother rag at the bottle's rim, he suddenly throws it with all the strength he can muster at the U.S.E. troopers across the barricades. He watches with trepidation as the Molotov sails through the air. He notices with some curiosity that the air around the lit fire bottle seems to be almost crackling as it goes. Right at the apex of it's arc, his curiosity turns into fear as suddenly the entire neighborhood around him is ignited in flame. Within the minute, the city. Within the hour, the entire continent.
They say that the fires of Void only lasted a few hours, but the damage was beyond measure. Within the time span of a good meal, the entire planet was lit aflame at once with fire, like a burning star. In what became known simply as The Scorching, the oxygen in the atmosphere had ignited at once, and in the few places where the fires had not yet reached, the oxygen was rapidly sucked out of the air, leaving occupants to silently choke to death in minutes. Hundreds of millions of people died before the day was done. Those who were extraordinarily lucky managed to find themselves anywhere where safety was assured. Bunkers, bank vaults, even basements... And even then, few managed to survive for days afterword once the oxygen in Void all burned away. Only those in huge military installations and underground facilities managed to survive long enough to set up basic hydroponics and oxygen production.
The surface of Void, now, resembles a ghostly apparition of the civilization that once was. The fires weren't long enough to cause any structural damage to Void's buildings and cities, not immediately anyway, and left huge shells of buildings behind. The lack of Oxygen meant most oxygen dependent species of Void all but died out. All that remains are fungi and spores living on Carbon, silicon based life forms that consume the Earth's silica, and other such animals and species. The large lavish jungles are now burnt down to a crisp, and huge clouds of ash and dust make for dangerous storms.
It's been 2 years since The Scorching that destroyed the surface of Void. The bunkers that Void's survivors live in vary in size depending on what they were built for. Some airtight basements hold 5-8 people, but other much larger complexes like sealed subway tunnels and military bunkers can hold hundreds of people. Most of these bunkers are connected through a complex system of homemade, natural and abandoned maintenance or subway tunnels. However some bunkers, to this day, remain isolated and unconnected from other survivors.
Human life, however, has an uncanny ability to continue where all others are extinguished. The inhabitants of Void, resilient as they are, refuse to be snuffed out in such a way. Instead they adapted. These bunker communities are in desperate need of vital resources such as food, water and electricity. In order to fill those needs, brave souls volunteer as scavengers and are given small supplies of oxygen to temporarily brave the desolate surface of Void in search of supplies. In return, these Voidants are allowed to keep whatever they find in the surface that isn't necessary for life in the bunkers. Items like weapons, technology, gadgets or anything else that could increase their survival on the surface.
However, these Voidants are not alone. The U.S.E, after The Scorching, actively tried desperately to erase Void from it's records. Denying that there ever was a colony, let alone that it was destroyed completely. Thus the small U.S.E. fleet stationed in Void's orbit is actively trying to starve and suffocate these remaining survivors on Void, in order to keep the secret from escaping the planet. As well as preventing outsiders from entry into the planet. However the U.S.E. doesn't want to waste the immeasurable resources to permanently install military positions in the planet. Unso they use highly trained military units called Interceptors (Interlopers are what Voidants call them) that hunt down Voidants to prevent them from salvaging supplies.
This is where your story begins. Whether you be a Voidant, desperately trying to survive as long as you can in a broken world, or an Interceptor trying to finish off the natives of Void once and for all.
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Character Creation
Characters can be made using whatever template you feel using, but must include a Name, Age, Biography (at least 2 paragraphs in length,) Appearance (Can either be a real picture, realistic portrait/drawing or a verbal description. No anime please,) and must specify if they are a Voidant or an Interceptor.
Here's a provided template in case you don't want to or cannot come up with your own!
Name:
Age:
Appearance:
Role: (Voidant/Interceptor)
Backstory:
Skills:
Weaknesses:
Goals and Motivations:
Gadgets and Gear:
Misc:
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Rules
These are also listed in the Discord, but I'll list them here in case your not a Discord person (though I heavily suggest you join the Discord for RP planning and discussion!)
- In general, follow all the rules and guidelines put forth by the Iwaku website, which may or may not cover these rules already.
- Not knowing the rules is not an excuse to break them.
- No harassment and/or bullying of other RPers
- No spamming
- No godmodding or killing other characters without permission
- No trolling (making joke characters, etc)
- Violence is okay but don't go too overboard
- Have fun!
The Legate
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