Adventure Prologue: Gameworld Introduction

[vanir]

This thread is going to be for setting the opening scene of the adventure, as a Prologue to the game start, and for PCs to get a feel for the gameworld setting by playing around individually and fairly informally within the starting system of Koros before formal game start. It is also to provide a little background information about the environment, the galaxy and the star systems which PCs should be aware of.

I'll repost with the opening scenes and players will be able to include themselves individually at their leisure as their PCs are finalised. Do not feel rushed, actual game start is still quite a bit of writing away, days at best. But it'll give an opportunity for players who complete their characters ahead of others to have a little fun with them, plus give me the chance to create the opening scenes of the gameworld prologue so that we're all on the same page and can visualise where in the universe we are.

This is not the game start thread. Nevertheless OOC comments should be parenthesized, eg. (OOC - this is an out of character statement).
PCs should be cleared as completed by me before jumping in.
Cheers folks, enjoy

[vanir]

Screen crawl:

A new age of exploration and adventure has arrived in the galaxy.

With recent development of rudimentary interstellar craft travel times between the colonial worlds have tumbled from the use of generation ships, to the Colonial dimension-drive, the Devaronian tumble-drive and the Corellian/Duros hyperspace-cannon. Journeys which once took centuries or millennia now occur within weeks to years, starship crews safely hibernating using new carbonite chamber technology developed at the Deep Core colony Koros Major.

The evil alien Rakata Empire has collapsed, the slaver species plagued by an exotic virus believed engineered by rivals from deep within unexplored territories, beyond the Galactic Frontier. What other terrible threats the worlds of the civilised galaxy are to face, from the depths of wildspace is not yet clear.

It is a time of resurgence among the human colonies and friendly alien worlds, with priorities of reconnecting with lost colonies and mapping a network of trade routes between all the major population centres of the galaxy, as well as scouting unexplored regions. Planetary governments spare little expense to these ends and mission crew recruitments have led to a loose new culture of space travellers, scouts and explorers populating newly constructed starports and space stations. The most elaborate of these are among the planetwide megalopolis of Notron, the homeworld which originally sent many of the generation ships that created the colonial worlds.

At the Deep Core colony of Tython, mysterious Force users, proto-Jedi Knights known as Ashla are undergoing an exodus under instructions from their enclave Masters. A small group of Ashla travels to Koros Major upon invitation by the planetary administration, recruited through the enclaves to assist in a mission to establish a trade route between Koros and Notron...



For Ashla PCs with the Force power Hibernation Trance:
You are dreaming, you feel warm and comfortable. You are among the Ashla of the enclaves upon Tython, sensing their inspiration, bathing in the warmth of the Force, aware of loving invigoration from the quantum interactions of the very stars themselves, the photosynthesis of the local plantlife, the curiosity of foraging creatures in the wilds supports you personally, like an old friend. You are one with everything. This place is timeless and you belong to it as it belongs to you.

A gentle hand touches your shoulder, a warm breath upon your cheek.
'It is time to awaken,' a soothing voice sighs, as you yawn comfortably restless and rise like a chicklet exploring beyond its shell for the first time.


For all PCs without the Force power Hibernation Trance:
You are bathed in a hollow darkness embedded with sharp, rolling pain. Everything is black, your very bones ache, you cannot breathe, you cannot hear anything, you are restrained and confined, buried and sunken. This is death, worse. It is lingering undeath. This unnatural place is frigid, shaded monsters spiked with iced razor pelts lurk among the recesses of vision you do not have, if only you could open your eyes to see them and quell the rising tides of bile and fear dwelling within you. You are becoming frantic.

The dark veil periodically lifts and your eyes strain through clouded vision to see childhood friends, family members and giantlike adults silently milling about an empty chamber, soundlessly arguing, tearful, frustrated and visibly disturbed. You try to call out to them but your voice strangles noiselessly in your throat, you try to reach out to them but some horrible power holds you fast, motionless and terrified.

A piercing howl shatters the silence, causing you to wince as your ears recoil and body convulses. A shocking burning sensation touches your face and begins to spread throughout your body with all the sensation of being dipped in molten iron. A blinding light stings your eyes, removing your sight. Your ears are ringing, you cannot breathe. Suddenly you are deep beneath a salty ocean, drowning and helpless for an instant before, with pure elation you find your arms, flailing them immediately for the surface, ready to gulp for life giving air. Lungs bursting, you finally breach the waves, blinded and senseless but for the return of sound. Voices surround you.


/ Cut to: Exterior, colonial exploration-survey ship The Starjumper...

A bulky, corvette sized cruiser folds its way through spacetime, contracting lengths along its relativistic path and causing the stars and other stellar bodies to elongate into almost infinite streaks, its mighty dimension-drive humming as the vessel chews tremendous conventional distances over the course of minutes. In terms of interstellar travel however, it is a slow, lumbering beast.

In the blink of an eye a planetary system suddenly looms upon a direct collision course, the vessel headed directly towards one of its terrestrials as others streak past, The Starjumper shuddering violently as it struggles to decelerate before disaster. As bulkheads creak with g-forces and the engine complex whines, inertial dampeners struggling to compensate, the craft dramatically slows to a virtual stop, reverse-thrusters blazing as it injects itself among some interplanetary vessels still tens of thousands of kilometres shy of the planet. In the extreme distance a large space station can be seen floating in orbit above Koros Major. Automated systems ignite the sublight drives as the cruiser begins its crawl towards its final destination at conventional speeds.


/ cut to: Interior, colonial exploration-survey ship The Starjumper, hold-module B - hibernation chamber...

Soft lighting and blinking consols illuminate a spacious hold section adorned with over a dozen carbon-freeze pods lain in two rows, with a bank of equipment lockers to one side; as a preprogrammed control system activates the crew recovery process and brings up the main interior lighting. Gradually, each of the carbonite pods begins to revive their occupants except three of the six ship-crew pods, which are already unoccupied.

A bulkhead section with an entry door beeps, it opens and a roughly hewn, solid looking crewman enters from another section of the ship, well equipped with a heavy sidearm and wearing a tan utility jumpsuit, a ship's name patch stitched to the shoulders. He scratches his military-cut/shaved scalp and walks over to check on the pod defrosting process, checking an interface consol and the pods themselves as he then scratches a stubbled chin.

One by one waking figures climb awkwardly out of the carbonite pods. You are among them.

A near-human with an athletic, but slight build climbs out of one with natural agility, in his underwear, slapping his bare feet on the metal deck. He yawns and shakes his unkempt blonde hair with a bitter expression on his angular features, tilting his head and straining to open one eye towards the uniformed crewman.
"Okay Thorn! I officially hate those things more than a screeching Devaronian Bandara!" he proclaims loudly.

An attractive, toned human woman with a brunette ponytail steps out in a bright blue sleeveless one-piece. She puts her hands up to cover her face as if both shielding her eyes from the light and recovering from a headache. She sits upon the edge of the pod and spends a few moments gathering herself. Thorn, the uniformed crewman/gunner glances surreptitiously in her direction with obvious attraction, admiring her form for a moment before checking himself and redirecting his gaze back to the interface consol. Still rubbing her face, if she noticed she gives no sign of it.

From the final crew pod a tall, thin human male with dark hair climbs out, staring at the deck for a long minute and blinking his eyes, before walking in a determined stride directly to the stowage lockers. He codes in a PIN and it opens, from it he draws a gun-syringe with a med-capsule already loaded, which he shoves against his arm and pulls the trigger. He smiles with a sigh of relief, and appears suddenly intoxicated.

Ashla PCs with hibernation trance depart their pods feeling awake and refreshed. Other PCs leave theirs feeling uncomfortable, unrested and with mild symptoms of infection, including a cold sweat and shaking.
All PCs initially find the bright lighting too harsh to tolerate, after a few moments however it is reduced to mere spotty vision, causing you to blink frequently to see properly. A strange sensation quickly rises, first it seems you are about to vomit, but instead a sudden and violent hunger grips your body. Your digestive system needs food and drink.

The entry door to the chamber beeps and opens and a heavily moustached middle aged human of slight build enters at a stroll, wearing a casual flightsuit of shirt, leggings, boots and utility jacket. On his belt is a 9mm sidearm, at his boot a knife handle. Embossed on his jacket is the ship's patch and a label above one pocket, which reads, 'Captain'. He stops next to Thorn.

"Go up front and help Missa," he instructs him.
"Sir!" the gunner snaps with militant acceptance, then turns and exits to the corridor outside.

"By the rivers of Keres, Jenra. Put some clothes on would you?" the Captain parodies to the brunette, "The ship's head'll be overcrowded with you walking around like that."
His satire gains a hiccup'd laughter from the near-human.
She darts them both a sarcastic smile and promptly sticks a middle finger up at them, then walks over to the lockers shaking her head and twitching an eye.

The Captain turns to face the PCs.
"We'll be at Koros Command Station in about an hour, should give you time to get cleaned up and have some breakfast before we dock. Planetary shuttles can take you to Cinnagar City from there.
You can report to Iron Citadel administration facilities on the planet whenever you're ready to start getting organised for your mission. I understand it will not be an immediate process anyway so you might as well take your time and visit some of the sights.
There's a large museum and several notable academies at Cinnagar, as well as plenty of market traders and shops for just about anything. The new starport quarter is already a den of questionable characters and loose women, but I don't know if you mentalists go in for that sort of thing. I like it, but you might not.
Anyway I'll leave you to your preparations. Come to the ships Mess whenever you're ready."

This is not the beginning or game start of the adventure. It is merely an opportunity to informally RP around the starting planetary system of Koros a little bit to get to know your characters and have some fun, whilst individual Players complete their PCs and final preparations and writing are done to then officially start the campaign.

So, meanwhile, once you have completed your PC, and it (and your equipment/background proposal) is reviewed by me in the "Completed Characters" thread and okayed, then at that point...post away.

[Guardian_A]

Sammel staggers our of his carbonite pod, blinking to try clearing his eyes even as he shies away from any nearby light sources, "Anyone up for a game of cards?" He asks as he finds his locker and opens it. With shaky hands, he begins to dress, double checking his 9mm caseless before holstering it and reaching for his cards. A sudden surge of nausia washes over him, leaving him desperately looking for a bucket for a brief moment before it passes.

As the nausia passes, he finds his stomach clenching with hunger. Listening to the captain, he blinks a few more times, trying to clear his eyes as he grabbs his last few belongings uncerimoniously and heads for the ship's mess.

[vanir]

Captain Vale leaves after his speech.

The jovial near-human follows Sammel to the locker row, where the female brunette, Jenra is just finishing getting dressed, doing up her grey, worn utility jumpsuit (with a "Specialist" rank embossed) and sliding a bootknife into its sheath. She tosses her ponytail and turns to leave just as Sammel is opening his locker, the slight near-human coding into the one just beside his.

"I've heard about you Jed'aii guys, I'm an experience spacer you know," he boasts somewhat innocently, proudly puffing his small chest out.
"I'm Malka, jack-of-all-trades and expert fodder-kicker. If you need some fodder kicked I can kick it," he laughs.
As his locker opens you notice he has an impressive hoard of useless tech parts and tools, broken datapads and disassembled PTP-links.
"So you're a card-shark?" he asks as he dresses.

Further along, the dark haired crewman who injected himself earlier has dressed himself in a blue jumpsuit with "Medic" rank embossed. He's now washing a fistful of pills down his throat with a liquor-flask and looks even more stoned than before. It doesn't exactly endear his medical judgement to you if he actually had to perform surgery, but his casually confident demeanour does give the impression he could probably dress a basic combat wound whilst blind drunk. And probably does.

Other passengers also make their way to their respective lockers and re-equip themselves before each also makes their way through the starship's habitat section to the Mess.

[Guardian_A]

With one hand, he smooths back his raven black hair, "Hi Malka," Sammel says with a half smile, "Name's Sammel," He offers the other man a hand, patting his pocket where he stored his sabbacc deck with the other hand, "Cards just pass the time." His wistful smirk tells a different story.

[vanir]

With childlike earnest, Malka grins widely at Sammel as they both get dressed, in the background the other passengers doing the same.
The closest is a tall, broadly built human who boarded shrouded in plain dark robes carrying bags of equipment, he now dresses himself into a suit of elaborate Link-mesh Armour integrated with a blue/black hooded robe, and clips a powercell to his belt, to which he attaches and sheaths a wicked looking vibroblade. This one keeps to himself with a stern expression. If he was at all affected by the carbon-freeze he doesn't show it.

Malka puts on the utility jumpsuit of the crewmembers, no ranking signifies he's just a regular crewman and the fresh creases in his grey suit suggest he's a recent recruit.
"Oh we should definitely have a game in the Mess," he beams, bright eyed.

Two other Ashla, one human-looking and the other a blind near-human, plus another unremarkable human accompanying one of them also get dressed as Sammel, Malka and the Medical Officer leave for the Mess.
They walk the corridors of the large ship, past a medbay and onto the food storage and galley, beyond it to the Mess where the Captain and Jenra are already laying rehydrated and heated meals onto a long table.

"Coffee," the Medic remarks, almost speaking to himself.
"Get it yourself," Jenra flatlly replies, still carrying over a bowl of mash and one of buns in each hand, to the table for everyone.
Captain Vale looks up as you enter and points out some seats.
"Help yourselves to some food gentlemen. The mash is reconstituted, the eggs powdered and I don't even know what that green-brown ooze is supposed to be, but the coffee is good."

"What, you don't like the steak and beans, Captain?" Malka laughs as you walk on over.
"That's not steak," the Medic remarks with distaste, raising an eyebrow, "Crushed bugs and cereal maybe but not meat from any animal I'd eat and I don't even trust the beans."
"Try to control yourself Berias," Jenra muses, "It's just ground offcuts and beans in gravy. It's not going to kill you."
The Medic, Berias shrugs.

Shortly behind you the others follow once they're dressed and equipped, all but the two crew flying the ship finally seated together eating, drinking and carousing in the Mess.

[Quetzacotl]

As Aaron steps out of his carbonite pod, he stretches shortly lke after awekening from a good nights sleep.
Seeing how the others around him look like they're uncomfortable, even sickly, he's thankful to his instructors that urged him to learn how to put oneself into a trance when doing this kind of travel.
Still, he got hungry... very hungry. He feels like he hasn't eatin in weeks.

Only wearing some shorts and his blindfold, he went to his locker to put on some clothing, when he hears someone say "Anyone up for a game of cards?".

Aaron remembers that he has seen him right before takeof, but doesn't remember anything else about him. "Not before I got something to bite!"

He leaves the rest of his belongings in the locker and proceeds to go to the Mess.

[Guardian_A]

Sammel takes his time eating, seeming to enjoy the meal. As he eats, he pulls his 9mm caseless, going over the weapon with practiced hands as he checks the gun and does some basic maintenence if needed.

Sliding his gun back into its holster, "Interested in a quick game of cards?" He asks as he produces his deck with a flourish. He glances towards Aaron to see if the man might still be interested in playing.

[Quetzacotl]

Aaron sits down with the others. Hearing the Captain talking about the food, he says "As long as it is edible, I would eat anything right now".

He takes some of the 'green-brown ooze', as the captain called it as well as a mug of coffee.

After finishing his meal, he answers to Sammel "Sure. The name is Aaron, by the way. Aaron Marr." while holding out his hand to him.

[Guardian_A]

With a warm smile, Sammel takes the offered hand, giving a firm, yet short handshake, "Sammel Hei, its a pleasure to make your acquaintence Aaron Marr." Sammel takes in the others around the room to see if anyone else is interested in playing a short game before setting down and shuffling his cards. Finally setting the deck in front of Aaron, "You deal my friend."

[Quetzacotl]

You can see a quick faint smile on Aaron as Sammel shakes his hand, that vanishes almost as fast as it appeared. "You can just call me Aaron."

Aaron takes the deck. He says "Very well" and starts giving out cards for the first round.


{OOC: Have no idead about card games in the SWU... or in general ^^ so I won't be able to get into any detail at all ^^}

[Guardian_A]

Sammel takes the cards he is delt and barely glances at them, "So, tell me about yourself?" He inquires with obvious curiosity.

Seeing the other man looking at his own cards as if unsure of what to do, Sammel tries to be helpful, "You havent played cards much, have you?" He dosnt wait for a reply before he continues, "Keep your pairs and drop everything else below an 8." He takes his own advice before looking over his own cards and deciding whether or not to drop any additional cards. "Once you've done that, take a look at what you have left and trust your gut."


(OOC: I was just going to use the card game for background noise while the characters get to know each other a little bit.)

[Quetzacotl]

"Well, not really much to tell". Aaron looks as his Cards, hearing Sammels adive. "You make it sound so easy." He heeds Sammels advice and discards all cards below 8 that he doesn't have as a pair. "You could say that I'm a hunter. If it's lost, hiding or difficult to find, or if nobody should realize that someone is there, then I'm the one send for that." Trusting his guts, he discards another Card that he believes to not be fitting to his hand. "How about you?"

[Guardian_A]

"Interesting," Sammel says, "Me, I'm just a small town kid who had a knack for reading people." He lets a broad smile crease his features as he accepts three new cards. "I'm along for the ride because I'm good at sizing up situations and getting people to talk to each other."

Playing out the rest of the hand, Sammel tosses a couple of good cards into the discard pile, ruining a winning hand before showing his cards, "I've got nothing," He shruggs while he waits to see the winning hand he already knows Aaron holds, "Tell me more about your hunting? How did you get started?"

[Quetzacotl]

"Reading people, huh..." Aaron shows his cards, that don't look that good as well, but still beat Sammels deliberately bad hand. "I got a little more then nothing. Beginners luck, I guess." Again Aaron shows a quick faint smile. He starts to shuffle the Deck.

For a bystander, it looks like Aaron is always looking at the same point, never moving his Head. Though he can't look behind him, as a Miraluka, he can focus on his peripheral vision, which allows him to look at his cards, the table and Sammel, without moving his head, similiar to a human only moving his eyes, but less stressfull.

"Well, as a kid, I was already particularly good at hide & seek, to the point that the rest of the kids didn't pose a challenge. Being a Miraluka," Aaron pointing to his Blindfold, "I could always sense the force. We would be blind without it."

He then moves his head, seeming to directly look at Sammel and smiles again, not as faint and quick as the last times. "Yeah, getting people to talk to each other. I can see that. I don't usually talk that much." He moves his head back in the old direction, looking at the table and then proceeds to give out the cards for the next round.