Mass Effect, maybe?

[Chadwyck]

Okay, so I've been playing through Mass Effect three with my character that I've had for years (I'm so glad that I'm finally going to see the end of it, so shush with your spoilers!) and I was thinking that an RP set in the universe of the Mass Effect games would be awesome. We would steer clear of the main story and be our own little thing, but Shepard could be mentioned as a hero or whatever, I dunno.

I figured we could play it out as a task force that was sent to do other important things while Shepard was focusing on his/her own stuff.

I've got nothing planned other than that, which is why I would like a discussion thread to go on for it. But I do like the idea of like a strike force of various races that does important things. It could even be set AFTER the events of Mass Effect 3, but keep everything general so to avoid spoilers and the like. Essentially just like "yeah, we're all safe and stuff, now it's the future and we're all cool with each other" sort of thing. I dunno, as I said, discuss.

 

[Brendan Savem]

You mean like in the Mass Effect Multiplayer? Interesting...

I wouldn't mind being part of this, although I have only played the second game, and researched everything else. However, there are a lot of ways that a post-Reapers, or even a mid-story, world could go down. Not just on the final choice, but in every choice made in every game. And of course, there is one little problem I won't spoil, but it's sort of a big problem, and it involves a galactic lightshow.

So we would either have to agree on a chosen path for Shepard and his incredibly long adventure, or set the scene as a prequel. I'm not fussed either way. Who knows, we could set this as far back as the Krogan Rebellions, the Rachni Wars, or whatnot. Only downside would be the lack of humans.

 

[Chadwyck]

There's also the option of twisting the story a bit and making sure it worked for whatever the scenario we come up with is. I would like it to be post-reaper just because then we've got the other races to work with as well as humans. Of course, a full human strike team would be boring, so preferably we'd only have a few of them anyway and whatnot.

And I guess it would be along the lines of the multiplayer, I haven't played it yet so yeah XD but the team assembled in the RP would rival Shepard and his crew in strength, they were just either given a different assignment (in a mid-story setting) or are being sent on an entirely new adventure (for a post story setting).

 

[Brendan Savem]

Multiplayer in ME3 is basically a team of soldiers, of mixed races, thrown into missions against reapers, cerberus, and geth in a wave-style firefight. Completing missions boost Galactic Readiness, and you can promote the characters you use in multiplayer into War Assets.

A mid ME3 story does make great sense, since there's an entire galactic war going on. There's plenty of room for a mixed race special team, spectres perhaps, or some other special task force. Maybe even just common soldiers/mercenaries/civilians that got muddled up in some event that bands them all together.

 

[Chadwyck]

Well, having beat the game finally, I see what you mean. That doesn't rule out the possibility of a post-story RP, we'd just need to take a few liberties with it. However, a mid-story is much more appropriate, since as you said there's a whole war going on and whatnot. A task force/group of people doing missions that Shepard was/is much too busy for would be fun, methinks.

 

[Teapot]

I call dibs on a Drell character if this happens. Just sayin'.

 

[Brendan Savem]

How interesting Petey.

I'm still deciding between going as a Turian or a Quarian, although the latter is more fleshed out in my head so far. Though first, we should come up with a starting point. I was thinking of a Space Station, like Omega, that gets attacked by the Reapers. I'm not sure of an overarching plot, but maybe it could involve indoctrinated individuals in high places. Or we could just jump right into the fight and keep on fighting, like the soldiers we are .

 

[Chadwyck]

Petey you called dibs on Drell before me D: oh well, I was deciding between a Quarian, Asari, or maybe even a Geth ;D but Brendan, that's a good idea. Omega would be an interesting starting place, since you don't see it in the game and they do mention it getting overrun with Reapers. We could easily have been on the station when it happened. An overarcing plot would probably consist of something to do with Cerberus, methinks, and indoctrination would be consistent with what was going on everywhere in the galaxy.

Or the overarcing plot could just be that we're like a saboteur group, sent behind enemy lines to try and buy time for the crucible to be built while Shepard is off playing politics.

 

[Teapot]

Well, I don't have to be the only Drell character. I just really want to be one.

Omega sounds pretty good, because we'd have a metric shitton of Things to fight off. Reapers, Cerberus, Vorcha, various Blood Pack mercs that may or may not be on our side, etcetera. It would be interesting to team up and be some sort of arse-kicking task force, especially if we get our own rustbucket ship.

 

[Chadwyck]

I like the task force idea too, and our own little ship of awesomeness flying through the galaxy and owning some reapers. We could even start off as like a random group of people who get recruited by the Alliance/some other government's military after we fight our way off of Omega.

 

[Tangrow]

I'm really quite interested in this ♥

I haven't truly played the games, but I've read an inordinate amount on the world of Mass Effect and its characters, so that will have to do ♥

I'm actually really quite interested in being a hanar (Tentacle swoon). If I can, that would be super fun! But otherwise, I think I'd take a role of salarian ♥

I wish I could add my opinion, but I mostly agree with the ideas spoken here already!

 

[Brendan Savem]

It's Blasto! The Spectre Hanar! Coming soon to a datapad near you!

ahem...

So this comic that I just heard about, Mass Effect: Invasion, apparently tells the story of how Cerberus tried, and succeeded, in taking control of the Omega space station though use of a new type of husk. Sounds like an opportune mess to be involved in, then get out of. And then get rewarded for success.

Also I decided to call dibs on Quarian. An ambitious young fellow that has been on his pilgrimage for a while now, and gets mixed in with the war as a result. I'll work on a full profile later, but that's the general rundown.

 

[Yoshimitsu]

I would also call a Drell. Fuck you for that btw Petey >;o

 

[Chadwyck]

Okay, so the idea that we're running with is the Omega station and fighting our way out of the mess that is going on there. Afterward we can be rewarded via being chosen to be our own awesome group of ass-kickers. I like it. Let's start posting some bios and stuff and hopefully the RP can start within a week or so. Maybe sooner. I'll figure it out, I've got a short story needs finishing before the 20th, so it'll depend. But, no harm in starting the bios and aiming for a date sooner rather than later.

I'll call dibs on an Asari character, I guess, who'll be spending her "adolescent" years looking to join a merc group on Omega, but getting caught up in the action before she joins and gets recruited to the military instead At least, that's what I think I'm going with... Still thinking a Geth would be cool, but that's a bit touch and go with the story so Asari, yeah.

Actual bio coming soon, and I'm lazy so just use the bio layout from the RP character discussion thread.

EDIT: and Tan, I'm trying to figure out how a Hanar would work, since I've never heard of them actually... doing anything, really. If you can figure that out, I wouldn't be opposed to it. Though, from the look of things, we do need a Salarian still, and a Human, of course, since no one's decided to represent mankind.

 

[Yoshimitsu]

I take it back, I call Geth. =|

 

[Chadwyck]

Damn you, El :| it's a good thing I've decided on Asari. Anyway, the layout is as follows, since I stopped being lazy.

Name:

Gender:

Species:

Home: Like, Colony or Home World or whatever

Age:

Physical Appearance:

Armor/Clothing:

Identifying Marks:

Abilities:

Personality:

History:

-------------------

Name: Sheva T'Lanis

Gender: Female, obviously >.>

Species: Asari

Home: Thessia

Age: 203

Physical Appearance: Attractive, as almost all Asari tend to be. Her skin is a light blue shade, and her eyes are a light green/hazel color. She is one of the Asari who has facial markings, lighter colored designs around her eyes.

Armor/Clothing: She usually wears something simple, like a sleeveless top and cargo pants, though she still has her outfit from when she was a dancer - for special occasions.

Identifying Marks: Facial markings around her eyes.

Abilities: A powerful biotic, unrefined marksmanship. Can handle a gun with decent accuracy, but prefers working with her biotic abilities if possible.

Personality: Sheva is carefree, being in her maiden stage she wants nothing more than to find an adventure. Known to be a bit brash and flirty, also short tempered when drunk. Knowing that she'll outlive most other races, she keeps little in the way of close friends, but those that she has know that she is intelligent and fun, if a little rough around the edges.

History: Her mother was one of the Asari Commandos, and it was always assumed that she would follow in her mother's footsteps and join the Asari military. Sheva disliked the idea of joining such a rigid group and decided to spend her adolescent years pursuing something more exciting and adventurous. She hasn't given up on the idea of joining the military someday, since at this stage she can't see herself settling down and having a family.

She took a shuttle off of Thessia and visited several colony worlds before eventually finding her way to the Citadel, and then abandoning the bureaucratic environment for the Omega station, which has been her most recent stop. She worked for a dancer in several nightclubs on the Citadel, but has decided that her legacy on Omega will be that of a mercenary.

She also has a long history of one night stands, with both men and women of several species, which she chalks up to the influence of alcohol and her naturally flirtatious nature.

 

[Brendan Savem]

Technically, Asari are unigendered, as they can play both the male and the female in reproduction, with each other at least. In any case...

Name: Telon’Nara nar Tonbay

Gender: Male

Species: Quarian

Home: Migrant Fleet, specifically the Tonbay

Age: 26

Physical Appearance: Not really applicable, have you ever seen a Quarian?

Armor/Clothing: Standard Quarian Envirosuit, with a pale blue helmet and shoulder pads.

Identifying Marks: The colour of his helmet and shoulder pads, painted due to his allegiance with the Blue Suns.

Class: Infiltrator

Abilities: A technical genius and a great sniper, also uses his tactical cloak to get in close and personal with his combat knife.

Weapons: Tactical Cloak, Combat Knife, N9 Tempest Submachine Gun, M92 Mantis Sniper Rifle

Personality: Ambitious, headstrong, and can be ruthless when he needs to. He always has a soft spot for his own people though.

History: He is 4 years in on his Pilgrimage, having left on it when he was 22. He left the Migrant Fleet knowing that it was slowly running out of ships. To counter that, he believed only one thing was worthy of being brought back to the flotilla for his pilgrimage; the biggest ship he could find. He went to various places around the galaxy, until he was brought into the service of the Blue Suns on Omega, partially forced, partially because they would get him a ship sooner or later. He has done a great number of things in Omega behind the scenes, and one of his few failures was in the assassination of Archangel. Recently, he and his employers have been rubbing against each other, which would probably have ended badly if things didn’t take a very different turn.


Also, there are apparently some Hanar that make effective fighters, though not many. Zaeed in ME2 quotes having almost been strangled by one. Thane also says that they have strong grip and lethal poisons. Who knows, it could be interesting. Or maybe I just want a badass jellyfish to say "This one doesn't have time for your solid waste excretions."

 

[Chadwyck]

Yeah, I know that Asari are unisexual, but according to the official book thing they're official gender is a female, even though they can play both roles.

 

[Chadwyck]

Copy-pasting this here from a message Brendan sent me. I quite enjoy this idea, and I think it's what we're going with. If you guys are still interested get your bios up, I wanna know who's on board and who isn't so I know how to proceed forward. Kthx.

So I was thinking about ways we could connect the dots between escaping Omega and joining a Galactic Task Force. So maybe, during the Omega assault, we get left behind in evacuations and band together to escape in a stolen ship. Maybe the ship could belong to a high-ranking officer in the Alliance Navy, who takes the group to an Alliance HQ. We could then hang out there for a few weeks, which is about the time between Mass Effect: Invasion and Mass Effect 3. Anything could happen in those three weeks, although I would probably put my money on interrogation mostly.

Finally, we get recruited, one way or another, as a special task force. And our priority mission could be to gather intel and resources for the Crucible. This should take us to many places to do our dirty work. And that's all I have so far, any thoughts?

 

[Tangrow]

THIS ONE THINKS BEING A HANAR IS STILL A GREAT IDEA

Name: Arsharvir (Abandons Longevity in Favor of Combat)

Gender: It. Rather unclear. Will be referred to as he.

Species: Hanar

Home: Kahje

Age: Fairly young as most hanar go, but certainly not a child.

Physical Appearance: He looks like a jellyfish and, er, is generally pink. He has tried to wear armor before to distinguish himself from others of his species, but it tends to slide off. He, does, however, hope for otherwise.

Armor/Clothing: This one has no need for decency.

Identifying Marks: He tends to carry at least one gun with one tentacle, as best as he can.

Abilities: As hanar do, he has a strong physical grip good for strangling, and has powerful natural poisons coursing through his tentacles. He has combat skills far surpassing the average hanar, and may be a biotic. (The biotic bit I'm mostly getting from machinima's Blasto video, so I'm not sure if it should be taken as canon. He can do with or without it, either way.)

Personality: Arsharvir is possibly the most impolite hanar you will ever meet. Although, in fact, such a feat is not saying much, he tends not to be as easily offended by others. He can be rather brash and headstrong, and tends to always be alert. He is well aware of his mortality, and will offhandedly speak of death.

Arsharvir, although not as well mannered as other hanar, keeps to the form of speech that all hanar use. He does not take kindly to being referred to as a jelly, and only just tolerates Arsh or Arsha. He outright rebuffs any attempts to speak of tentacles and other suggestive hanar topics (Teehee dat Fornax cover).

History: Arsharvir was born and raised with a select group of hanar trained in a very underground military-type program. The frail nature of hanar posed a problem to this, and many of the group died when faced in real combat. Arsharvir, however, learned. He became incredibly aware of his own mortality, and learned as best he could to move in a fairly agile manner on the battlefield. Once the program was disbanded entirely, however, Arsharvir and what little was left of the group found themselves without a home. They could not truly connect with the life of other hanar, who regarded Arsharvir with distaste and possible hatred by his lack of manners and battle-oriented personality. Because of this, he became something of a drifter, roaming the galaxy in search of combat to end his unwanted existance. He just recently arrive on Omega, after hearing of its reputation.

(I hope this'll work out. Obviously, a lot of this is taken from my mind on my part. Mass Effect never mentions anything about age of hanar, for example. I would love pulling out a battle scene with him, however. He'd act akin to a glass cannon, due to the ability to wield like six guns at once. Armor would be something iffy, however. Maybe he can somehow get teh Alliance to put something together? But now I'm just imagining a Vanguard Hanar and that would be silly.)

(As for the history...still working on it.)

 

[Yoshimitsu]

Name: Phoenix

Gender: Genderless

Species: Geth

Home: Rannoch

Age: Roughly 315360000 seconds

Physical Appearance: Clicky!. Its plating is made up of mostly grey and grey-blue, pieced together from leftover Geth parts.

Armor/Clothing: His armour plating varies based on where on his body he's hit. Due to being made up of leftover parts from various different Geth, he has bits of lower class armour mixed in with top-range - its head and part of its chest are of the highest class, while its limbs are lower-grade metals.

Identifying Marks: It's not a uniform colour like most Geth, its body parts being a mix of grey and metallic or grey blue.

Abilities: Being a Geth, it has remarkable electronic capabilities due to literally being able to plug itself in to stuff. Firewalls and security bypasses are barely a challenge for it, as it can calculate millions of combinations in its head instantly. Additionally, it has remarkable marksman abilities, its systems automatically adapting its aim for things such as weather, movement, poor lighting and so on.

Personality: Borderline non-existant. It tends to be analytical to minute details in its speech and rarely calls people by their actual name, using an alias regarding things such as rank, species, surname or personality. Very very rarely shows emotion due to a faulty chip that was supposed to have fizzled out, its emotion grid barely working but sometimes flaring up at unexpected moments.

History: During the war between the Quarians and the Geth, both sides suffered heavy casualties. A small sect of the Quarians thought to find a way to use Geth technology in order to gain an advantage over the artificial life. Extremely carefully, and entirely in secret, they salvaged pieces of destroyed Geth troops and kept them in storage until they found a way to upload a Geth-like AI into an artificial life.

Upon development of this AI, the Quarians finally pieced together the body. Many parts had to be manipulated, shrunk or expanded, melted down in some cases and reformed in order to ensure each piece fit the next. The resulting body was durable where it needed to be, protecting the data core and central processing unit, with the pieces connected simply but firmly in order to ensure the Geth experiment could rebuild itself if necessary. When the body was constructed, the AI was uploaded.

The AI was uploaded successfully, but the Geth was unresponsive to commands. Fully functional and sentient, but apathetic and unwilling to go to war. It joined neither side of the conflict, and was put away into storage, deemed a failure. The AI had been constructed with several modifications to a typical Geth. A faulty emotional grid had been installed, but died out nearly instantly as synthetic life forms had little need for them. It would occasionally flare up but the Geth had nothing it felt emotional about, and so little came about. It was also given an imagination. While held in storage, it examined its data store, or memory as it later came to describe it. It had been made out of parts of destroyed Geth, and then been given new life. It named itself based on an old Earth myth, and assumed the title 'Phoenix'.

At the end of the war, the Quarian sect turned Phoenix over to the main Geth population. There was little they could do to have Phoenix assimilate into the main Geth consciousness, as many of his systems rejected the majority of the programming. He was linked into the Geth, but felt no compulsion or sense of unity. An anomaly among the Geth, he left Rannoch.