OPEN SIGNUPS RECURRING IWAKU CHAT THE KEEPERS - THURSDAYS @ 2PM-5PM CEN

[Diana]

THE KEEPERS
Feb 15, 2024 at 2:00 PM ​

The S.T.A.R.S. (Survival Transfer And Relocation Station) Project Colonizer ship has set out from Earth to find a new habitable planet. Because space travel has yet to be perfected by humans, it still takes hundreds of years before reaching new systems and galaxies. The majority of the occupants on board must be kept in a cryogenic sleep, only to be awakened when they reach a new world. These colonists are cared for by a small team of people that live out their lives simply for the sake of keeping the colonizer ship functional. Occasionally new people are awakened from the cryo-chambers to take over.

It's been centuries since the colonizer has left Earth and it's coming into the territory of inhabited space. A planet with the perfect conditions for human life is drawing closer. But something went terribly wrong. An unknown lifeform got into the ship and corrupted the cryochamber system, awakening the entire ship of a thousand colonizers before their time.

Captain Wainwright of the ship Debris is dead and the last of the living colonists have crash landed. There is a chance that anyone with cybernetic implants may be infected by a strange techno-alien virus. Who will take on the role as new captain? Can the Keepers help organize the colonists to create their new home -- or have they crash landed on a terrible new world?


The Keepers have discovered that another colony ship had crash landed on this planet long before they did. Called the "Fasties" because they are oddly speedy - will the team be able to protect their campsite and figure out what happened?

EVENT INFO

WHO: Everyone is invited! Character Bios/Pics are not required, but totally encouraged! Post 'em if you got 'em.

WHAT: You are either one of the current generation of Keeper crew that was running the ship before it crashed planetside OR one of the newly awakened colonizers. If you are a person with cybernetic implants, you are at risk of infection. Everyone is now on the planet, how you got there is up to you!

WHERE: Join us in the KEEPERS chat room. You'll find the link to our chats in the CHAT tab when it's time to play.

HOW: This is a ACTION SETTING WITH IMPROVISATIONAL GAME MASTERING. That means the object of this roleplay is to interact with other characters, and from those interactions I will create a plot and story around you. There will be action moments, where strange events will happen and your characters will have to work together to resolve it. With this ChaRP "lol random" behaviors are discouraged -- what your character says and does will have in game consequences, so choose wisely!

My roleplays are always NEWBIE FRIENDLY so even if you are terrible at roleplay or have never participated in a ChaRP before, this will be easy for you to get involved in. :D Ask questions, let me know when you need help. I often give tips and direction out of character in the main chat room when people need a little direction. You can also reference our MINI CHARP GUIDE!

INFO

LOGS

CAST

BONUS

 

[Diana]

RECURRING CHARACTERS​

CAPTAIN WAINWRIGHT

VIRGINIA WAINWRIGHT

MIHARI JIRAE

MAEVE MACALLISTER

SUKARMA LEXICON

JOVAN

 

[Diana]

COOL BONUS CONTENT​

Previously on The Keepers
By @littlekreen

 

[Diana]

Captain of the colony ship DEBRIS, and father to Virginia Wainwright. After becoming infection by a strange technovirus, he damned Mihari Jirae to eject him off the ship to save the rest of the passengers.

Oddly, there have been no mentions of Virginia's mother and her role on board the colony ship...

CAPTAIN WAINWRIGHT

As one of the rare few actually born on the colony ship to Keeper parents, Virginia considers herself one of the "trash children". She'd been in cryostasis for quite some time before the strange virus infestation and following crash landing.

On this strange new world she is struggling with the death of her father, while trying to help organize the creation of this new colony despite the unplanned circumstances.

VIRGINIA WAINWRIGHT

Coming out of cryostasis after the colony ship crashed on the unknown planet, Jovan seems to have clear ideas and ambitions on what needs to be done for the new colony. He's brash, unpleasant, argumentative and a coward. Unfortunately, he's real good at being loud and getting other angry people on his side.

JOVAN

 

[littlekreen]

---

Name: Sukarma Lexicon
Nicknames: Little Mīkāl (old reference), The First Bulwark, The Ghost Relays (keeper legend)
Titles: Black bulwark (Bulwark code-name)
Age: Born before the age of intrasystem travel
Birthplace: Sol, Earth
Gender: Female
Avatar: 160cm (~5'3") 163kg (359lb)

Found out by those following Sukarma from ending of 1st

top to bottom, left side is stern: relaxed pose, space transit, mass driver launch projectile

Species: Biomechanoid Emergent Intelligence, Deep space operations vessel
SubSpecies: Human neurobase, Synthetic silicon-based organic life for other ganglia/biomatter
Body Size

Stem to stern: 130m
Widest diameter: 16m
Compressed wrap position: approximately 90m with 18-20m diameter at the furthest point
Damage: ventral cuticle layer destroyed, Ventral thermal scarring, general forward cuticle damage, moderate avulsion of ventral armor in the secondary layer, ventral docking plate warped by impact, dropship docking sheath lacerations, torsion and stretching of dropship anchors, multiple tool head channels compromised, Retro-vent thermal damage, Engine anchor fatigue, multiple landing gear microfractures, landing gear emergency skid anchor damage, Landing gear toe disjointed, glial discontinuities from multiple concussions, active threat countermeasures impacting executive processing.
Healing: Thermoregulatory strain, engine arm bracing weave distension, tool arm bracing weave distension, minor amputation of tool arm
Repaired: minor folded fusion reactor instability​

internal sections

Engineering

This section, amidships, has most of the important sections related to her internal hardware. It's a small room with the central console at hip height as the interfaces are primarily intended to be AR and expressed through the eigensuit interface. though reserve screens exist on all the walls otherwise displaying status information. Most of the important hardware is accessed through the floor and this is where the emergency thermal dumps are.

Bridge

Not quite at the forward position, due to its importance, it is buried slightly into the center mass. This appears to have windows but they are just re-transmitted external views generated from Sukarma's psyche and as such are augmented live with data she pulls or increase detail depending on what's being observed from where with which tool. Should her intellect be compromised it will be the clearest indicator something is wrong if data starts to hallucinate. The seats in the forward have a full manual control console and the rear pair have some minor deployable displays plus a full independent AR node for the eigensuits to spawn control surfaces. The seats grasp an individual like a glove when one sits on them and hyphae emerge from the edges to arrest motion. There is an emergency control hatch in the floor with independent backup power and air recycling in the event that Sukarma is unconscious and/or the atmosphere is compromised and personnel are not in an eigensuit.

Module rack

The furthest point forward, past the bridge, this contains the various tools and modules used by the tool arms or just general storage for combat armaments. Due to this the room's lock, the secure door does not respond to the captain unless Sukarma is unconscious. There are a few heavy tools for the forward hardpoints such as a telescope, a plasma mining lance, and a railgun. Due to damage to the forward tool arm rails, most of her modules that do not take up internal hardpoints either can't be deployed or can't be operated at full power safely.

Crew bunks

These are stationed crew bunks so they are set up to either be single or tandem. The foam bedding retracts into the wall when not in use and there are emergency medical, oxygen, and supply hardware inside. It has basic amenities such as a fridge, closet, water-less laundry, and computer terminal. The toilet and heated shower are independent rooms accessible by a hull door that are shared between the room pairs on both sides of the hull.

Cargo Bay

The ventral substrate has an operable cargo bay door that pushes through it in independent sectional plates to allow cargo to be on-boarded. Each sectional plate can be opened independently to allow for protected spaces underneath the craft while standing. Most of these toward the forward side are warped and damaged due to crash landing and the support arms need heavy repair to open correctly. In the roof of this area is a tentacle crane on rails controllable by eigensuit or by Sukarma herself as limbs. upon connecting and partly molding to the intended cargo hyphae crawl across it to form a support net. She can do this with people however due to the hyphae grip it's rather likened to the feeling of being swallowed.

Eigensuits

These suits are partly alive and require feeding in their storage tubes as unlike Sukarma lack the internal structures to process nutrients. They have a bare, nascent, independent intelligence that's described as doglike which communicates either through pantomime of the user's limbs or through the AR interface. If the user is rendered unconscious they are capable of directly evacuating but are not very agile and if soldiers don't mind sleeping standing up the suits can stand guard while they sleep. Most already have integrated combat plating despite the substrate's natural impact resistance and self-sealing but the inner organic exoframe layer is designed to be modular.

These suits provide a direct neural contact between the crew, the suit, and Sukarma. The outside has several gold leads that track roughly where nerve bundles pass on the user as well as along the spine. This indirection of direct signaling protects the crew and Sukarma from becoming a singular entity (An end that Lexicon considered strongly inadvisable) as well as giving Sukarma a way to protect and interface with the crew passively while directly operating the suit firewall which protects user consciousness and implants. The boots have built in ruggedized plating and hyphae-track and mag-clamp sole that grips hard or metal surfaces to allow for natural movement in low-g. While the inner exoframe can support its own weight, and move the user around if it has to, it still requires external armatures and hardware to allow for power assist. The power supply of the organic exoframe is varied. The substrate is naturally radiotrophic, gloves have EM induction taps, and the suit can process 'output' from the user. As such, generally speaking, the suit always has a longer functionally operative span than the operator does.

Dropship 1 - Industrial

Body length: 7m
Seats: 1 primary
Damage: superstructure compression, minor cuticle damage, toolhead anchor plate fracture, minor impact damage, rib shock sheath torsion bruise/tearing, satellite ganglion injury.​

Dropship 2 - MPV

Body length: 7m
Seats: 2 primaries, 4 secondary (in cargo area, collapsible)
Damage: engine vibrational misalignment, multiple impact damage, structure rib fracture, cuticle layer lacerations.
​

While she had been an outgoing sort before the death of her mother, Lexicon, the subsequent long years of isolation left her subdued and terse. Though her eyes cast down less from her time with Bulwark helping to deal with the grief. Much of the time still seems mirthless in bare responses of efforts forever wearing a helmet to obscure her nature. Finding meaning in her new family is more loyal to the core of her duty than Bulwark itself. In the words of her mother to both provide sanctuary to innocents against the deepest dark and chastise their demons.

Background:

In some ship depths are suspension gear carefully walled in and squirreled away from the other sleepers their existence entrusted a captain to protect a ship as a reserve should a threat arrive. In the modern era often a set of security or engineering personnel more than human after the rise of cybernetics. Though this one is something more a single hidden sleeper unlogged and unrecorded in ship systems and encased in an armored EVA. The rest of the sealed berth was occupied by a ship. Barely surviving a wake-up as something tampers with the stasis systems Sukarma cuts her way out of the secure cask to get at service tunnels even if she feels terribly sick.

History 1 (events of 1st):

After finding the captain a tense meeting is averted by catastrophe. After helping subdue the locals with Warwick the others went to the bridge to try and avert disaster. Far from the bridge and with a dire constraint told Warwick, and likely others overhearing, of her nature. Evacuating to her hidden berth loaded up whoever would go or simply threw the shell-shocked through the door. As much time spent as she could afford while ripping hardware from the walls with her tool arms sealed the inner door of the cask's reinforced hidden causeway. As the ship shuddered free ash from its orbital burn Sukarma blew the explosive package flinging free the external door and exposing her hidden cask to a view of the planet below and behind a scorching veil of immolating plasma sucking out the air.

History 1.5 (landing):

Magnetoplasma engines erupt in a sprint to full throttle as she pulls ship and self into space the resistant organic cuticle layer grating against the Debris' side pressed by plasma headwind. Others inside not in a pilot's cask frozen in place as hyphae coalesce out of the walls to hold them in place. As she spins free of the entrance her engine tentacles flail to dance around the superstructure of the ship at heavy G. The course of an errant escape pod hurriedly flung free of oncoming superstructure she could take but it could not. Now trapped in the plasma eddy of the Debris' atmospheric headwind dropped into preparing for the fury of fire to come.

Finally ejecting from the gyre with what executive aid she could get from Warwick or others, trimmed her angle of attack under the oncoming shrapnel from Debris, flexed her main engines, and engaged retro-thrust with a glow of molten salt thermal pipes keeping her interior from boiling by the effort. She wasn't a landing craft, this was a one-way trip, as her own impact though more controlled made for a bright blue four-pointed comet on the horizon of the escape pods. Crash skids smash into a plateau and trail a shower of sparks behind her as the rock shudders and quakes from the seismic impact of the Debris. The land starts to sink beneath them as the oncoming plateau edge crumples beneath them.

Eventually to a battered stop under an avalanche of stone and metal charnel. Just enough light filtered through large gaps on seared external cameras to hope she wasn't trapped as her consciousness wavers with heat exchangers and her cuticle layer dumping heat into the atmosphere.

History 2

Any landing you can walk away from being a good landing is different when you're the craft. Torn up but moving forward Sukarma assisted with the many wounded. Not particularly fond of the new fellow Jovan for wanting to throw some of the cyber-tech wearers away. Though their camp was shortly attacked by local fauna taking some of their own before it was finally held down and shot. Sukarma immediately set to arming some security and making something resembling defenses with what still worked in her internal fab units.

 

[Zarko Straadi]

Name: Mihari Jirae
Age: 26
Gender: Female
Orientation: Bisexual
Profession: Engineer, Technoshaman
Bio: During the early era of Solar System travel, the crews of cycleships on long-haul Hohmann transfer orbits to the planets and Asteroid Belt adapted to permanent shipboard life as they brought crews and supplies to far-flung bases. They developed their own culture and customs, and came to call themselves the Cotu (Children of the Universe) Tribe. When humanity began launching interstellar voyages, the Cotu were in high demand as ship designers and Keepers, since they were already fully adapted to life in space.

Mihari's ancestors passed the Cotu ways down to her, and raised her to be a Keeper as they were. She held her Ship to be sacred, and did all in her power to care for Her needs. After Captain Wainwright's death, the role of Acting Captain fell on her. Her tenure was brief, as the ship came under attack, and she was forced to evacuate the crew and passengers and attempt a crash landing.

Now her Ship is dead, and she finds herself trapped at the bottom of a gravity well, faced with the challenges of survival on a planet, an environment completely alien to her.

Personality: Mihari carries an air of mystery about her. For her, science, technology, magic, and spirituality are all intertwined, centered on her Ship, which she revered as a living being. The Debris was not merely a vehicle, or even her home; rather, it was a Whole, of which she was inextricably a part. Now it is truly debris, and to Mihari it is as if the larger part of her self is gone. Deep in mourning, she struggles to hide her pain and be strong for the other colonists, at least until her fellow survivors can arrange for new leadership.



Name: Maeve MacCallister
Age: 21
Gender: Female
Orientation: Lesbian
Profession: Exobiologist
Bio: Maeve was born in the North Atlantic sea city of New Avalon. Once grand and beautiful, New Avalon was overcrowded and run-down. Maeve was a troublemaker and prankster, who ran with a vigilante gang, but she loved the sea and the precious endangered life it contained. Her first job was as a "vat-rat," tending the precision-fermentation systems that provided the majority of the food for the New United Kingdom.

After a near brush with death in a gang fight, Maeve decided that she wanted more out of life. She applied the full force of her grit and determination to her studies, and (barely) managed to lift her grades enough to get into New Avalon University, where she studied biology and ecology.

When the S.T.A.R.S. Program began taking applications, she signed up, and found herself assigned to the S.T.A.R.S.S. Debris. She spent the ship's journey in suspended animation, revived into the chaos of a ship-wide emergency that led to a crash on the ship's destination world.
To her astonishment, the world was inhabited by humans, in addition to a vibrant biosphere of alien life. Being a biologist and not a diplomat, her attempts to communicate with the indigenous people resulted in her being kidnapped and knocked unconscious...

 

[littlekreen]

This document is brought to you with a heaping helping of artistic license to reorganize, rephrase, and reframe the timeline into story format. Please note addendums were made for Zarko's benefit to chapter 58 per the old discussion from the last chat to clarify history.

Previously, on The Keepers

 

[The Mood is Write]

Rumors and mystery swirl around him like a flood. Some say he's been awake since launch, that he's a dangerous criminal who can't be contained, that he can't lie, that he can't touch iron, or that his wounds heal instantly. Some claim he fights with a dagger while others say he can throw balls of fire from his hands, and still more claim he can break metal with his teeth.

WARWICK

 

[Diana]

THE KEEPERS IS NOW SCHEDULED ON EVERY THURSDAY UNTIL WE REACH A CONCLUSION? 8D

 

[The Mood is Write]

EXCITEMENT ABOUNDS!

Also I finally fixed Warwick's thingy in here. 8D

 

[Zarko Straadi]

I'm not sure Warwick wants his thingy to be "fixed"...

 

[The Mood is Write]

I'm not sure Warwick wants his thingy to be "fixed"...

Very true! He'd be heartbroken. xD

 

[The Mood is Write]

I finally fixed Warwick's image 8D