Welcome to Gaia! ::

2. The Monsters

Nobody knows where they come from.
Normals can't see them. They walk among them, selecting victims.
Only we can see them. Only we can fight them.

There are dozens of kinds; they're hodgepodges of impossible biology and technology from all eras of humankind.

They harvest humans and execute them in large rituals. The power generated fuels their creation or their importation. As they are invisible and inaudible to ordinary humans, only we can prevent them from executing a full-scale invasion.

The Bestiary:

1. Ratfish
Appearance: Fish head, lizard torso, rat limbs, rat tail. No mechanical parts.
Size: Large rat
Threat: ... It's an amalgamation of the least threatening parts of a rat, a lizard, and a fish. All it can do is run, as far as anyone can tell.

2. Swarmlings
Fragile enemies that attack in kamikaze waves, with subspecies coordinating and working together. Subspecies will be listed here.
a. Wasplings
Appearance: Wasp body and head. Four slitted eyes on stalks from the head; two crab claws on stalks from the head. Moth wings on top, wasp wings come from the bottom. Has an enormous stinger and no legs.
Size: A mastiff
Threat: Unknown; they have only moved slowly so far, however, and they only need one spirit gunshot, even to the body, to go down.
b. Drilldogs
Appearance: A bulldog with no tail, with the skin at the neck closing around a large drill.
Size: A... bulldog....
Threat: Seems minor so far...

3. Gearbox
Appearance: Cubes with odd numbers of insectoid legs, covered in steam and clockwork machinery, electronics, and other, alien technological forms. They wield buzzsaws, blades, hammers, guns, and occasionally spears, harpoons, and tasers.
Size: A small car in length; perfectly cube-shaped body, so...
Threat: Those buzzsaws aren't decorations.

4. Fighting Back
(AKA the story so far)

We'll be back at the base, soon. But you can see them, can't you? You look out the window and watch them skulking around. Picking their targets and... Oh, s**t! Is that a-

Prologue/Pre-game
Two vans full of weaponrings and new recruits were heading back towards their bases. An enormous... something... smashed in the vans, killing the drivers, scattering their weaponrings and their recruits.

The recruits who survived came to in the street several minutes later - an inexplicably short time to have passed out, but no matter. An ambulance was audible in the distance and the two vans were smashed without having hit anything.

Arc 1: Welcome to the Freakshow
Marten Cartrone and Vincent Tosto were the first to wake up, at least that they saw. Jacobo came to shortly afterward. They discovered a ratfish in the van. Unsure of what it was, the ratfish grabbed a notebook of some sort and escaped down a storm drain. Marten grabbed a handful of rings the ratfish had thrown aside before leaving. Tests produced a knife in Marten's hand and a partially-formed, translucent machine gun nest around Jacobo. The normal humans saw the knife, but not the machine gun nest.

Deciding to leave the scene, the three entered an alley as Michael awakened. Michael followed them and they began to experiment with their rings; Marten discovered another two his rings to be pistols and experimented with firing one. Michael received the other ring. Marten discovered a heavy shield ring to be his last one, and hurt his arm summoning it unaware. Soon after, they were attacked by two of the swarmling varieties - the airborne wasplings and the landbound drilldogs. They gunned down many, but as swarmlings tend to do, they kept coming. Marten, Jacobo, and Michael fell back to a Clubway Sandwich Shop, where they were attacked by a gearbox.

Meanwhile, the paramedics awakened Jarik, only to see the wall of a Clubway inexplicably explode inward. Jarik found a ring on the ground beside him.

6. Your Loyal Companions

Gaia Name: tic_tac_joe
Character Name: Marten Cartrone
Age: 21
Gender: Male
Height: 5'10"
Weight: 185 lbs
Mana Capacity: III (High)
Mana Regeneration: II (Mid)
Unallocated Points: None
Ability: Eyes
Weapon Rings: 1 Knife, 1 Pistols, 1 Tower Shield
Personality: Marten is a very open individual, laughing and doing his best to make others happy. People are warmed by his presence, and so are susceptible to his Eye abilities.
Bio: Marten lost both parents in a plane crash. He was about 10 at the time, and he was put into an orphanage. He underwent counseling, but his counselors were puzzled when he appeared perfectly mentally healthy. He went on to school and graduated, getting a few minor degrees at a community college.
He was going through a brief stretch of bad luck, having just lost his girlfriend and job, when he began to feel strange. Soon after, he saw a six-legged creature with three heads with gears and steam vents on one arm and a disturbingly smooth metal forming the other arm. Soon after, he was asked to come with two men who claimed they were from "Homeland Security."
Skills: Marten is a quick thinker and has a sharp tongue, bred by his rough life in the orphanage. He is odd when it comes to his fighting ability: his skill was gained by watching, not by actually doing. He is not comfortable with his fighting yet.
He is also educated in everything that one learns in high school, both academically and socially. He is a bit farther ahead in things like science and psychology, since he went to college for a little while.
Appearance: Marten was scarred badly on his chest and side from the plane crash, but other than that, he is fine. He has black hair, worn in a buzzcut, and dark green eyes.
Other: Although the psychologists found nothing wrong, Marten himself struggles privately with some issues. At times, he can become very closed off and disconnected.
Arm slightly damaged

Gaia Name: Lucifer Moloch
Character Name: Vincent Tosto
Age: 24
Gender: Male
Height: 6'5"
Weight: 276
Mana Capacity: III (High)
Mana Regeneration: II (Mid)
Unallocated Points: None
Ability: Nose
Weapon Rings: 1 Unidentified
Personality: Socially awkward and most often intimidating, Vincent keeps to himself mostly. He has a short temper, but tries to stay happy.
Bio: Raised to be a vagabond, Vincent was an only child to a single mother on the road. He went to many different schools, giving him a patched education. Vincent never did well in school as he didn't feel the need to do anything as he knew he would be leaving in a few weeks.
After barely graduating high school, Vincent joined the military, not knowing what else to do. He excelled in the military, rising through the ranks quickly. One day, mid-training, he saw a rather bizarre creature, a sort of metal cube covered in gears and open circuitry with seventeen legs with varying number of joints. After going to the doctor, two 'superiors' then took him, saying he was being 'reassigned'.
Skills: Due to his excellence in the military, Victor is a very well-established fighter, with both weaponry and hand-to-hand. He is very strategic-minded, often studying all those around him and his environment to determine threats and possible retreat routes.
Appearance: Staggering over most, Victor has shaggy black hair and thick bushy eyebrows. Many can become lost within his auburn eyes without meaning to, and his deep voice can be rather entrancing. He is built well, complete with broad shoulders. He has scars all over his torso, with a few tattoos.
Other: Although the jury is still out, many believe he is bi-polar and has Sadistic Personality Disorder.

Gaia Name: NativeForeigner
Character Name: Jacobo (hah-KO-bo) Ortegaz
Age: 31
Gender: Male
Height: 6’
Weight: 179
Mana Capacity: III
Mana Regeneration: II
Unallocated Points: None.
Ability: Ears
Weapon Rings: 1 Machine Gun Nest
Personality: Jacobo is socially active and enjoys company, but doesn’t say much when he’s focusing on something. He tends to have a short temper at times, he likes to drink and can hold his liquor very well, and he’s not extremely fond of trusting people. He sometimes acts like a know-it-all and seems to always know what someone else is thinking. He hates to be wrong.
Bio: Jacobo led a very care-free childhood, being born is Spain and moving to the US at the age of 13. He always strived to be the best in everything, both physically and mentally, he could and to learn everything he could. He graduated from high school with honors and went on to college for a few years, focusing mainly on math, sciences, and medicine. He gathered several degrees before eventually applying and being accepted into Harvard Medical. After a short while at Harvard, Jacobo had to give up his dream of becoming a neurosurgeon because of a sudden lack of funds to pay for tuition and school supplies.
He instead turned to the military and excelled in performing a different kind of lobotomy than he intended in the US Special Ops, acting as a marksman and field medic.
After about a year in the Special Ops, Jacobo witnessed something very strange, a creature that appeared to be the cyborg love child of a wasp and a rhinoceros, with beetle- or moth-like creatures that had eyes on stalks alongside wickedly sharp-looking claws. Jacobo was soon assigned a “Top Secret Mission” soon after.
Skills: Jacobo is extremely intelligent in all high school subjects but English, History, and Economics, excelling mostly in Math and all Sciences, including Medicine, Neurology, and anything about the brain and how it works. He is a quick thinker, though his mouth sometimes struggles to keep up unless he’s speaking in his native tongue, Spanish. He excels in medical treatment and can perform simple surgeries (such as removing a bullet) with only a knife or some simple, make-shift tools.
Though he is physically fit, he most definitely is not the best at hand-to-hand combat, seeing as he is almost always kept back for support. This is something he hopes to improve on to get a little closer to being the best. He is, however, an excellent shot; though he sometimes gets too caught up in his thought process to actually fire the shot. He can make the needed calculations to make a shot hit the target (coriolis effect, leading the shot, wind speeds, etc.) in his head, adjust, and fire the shot in only a matter of seconds, depending on the distance and other circumstances.
Appearance: Jacobo has dark, tanned skin and deep brown eyes that seem to brighten and really come out in sunlight. He has short-medium length, dark brown hair with natural auburn highlighting. He is well built, physically, but is rather thin in appearance. He has a small mustache growing on his upper lip that he keeps well trimmed. His ears have dimples on the lobes, causing most people to mistake him for having gauges.
He has a gold hoop earring in his left ear and he always wears a silver cross with red colored jewels making up most of the inside of the main body of the cross.
Other: Jacobo is 100% Hispanic. He isn’t the best speaker of English. He thinks very logically, sometimes stringing several facts together to come up with sometimes ludicrous theories.
Though Jacobo is Catholic and believes in God, he is sometimes critical of religion and does not attend church on a regular basis.

Gaia Name: SirBayer
Character Name: Michael Svenson
Age: 25
Gender: Male
Height: 6’ 5”
Weight: 255 lbs
Mana Capacity: II (Med)
Mana Regeneration: III (High)
Unallocated Points:
Ability: Nose
Weapon Rings: 1 Pistol
Personality: Michael doesn’t work hard. He’s lazy. Although he has a vague sense of duty, he does his best to avoid letting it affect him. He’ll stand up to save a person, maybe, but beyond that, he’s really not going to try to get anything done about it. In fact, he loves to cut corners.
Bio: Michael lead an uneventful childhood. He was always the big guy in class who everybody was afraid of but who didn’t really get involved in much until someone was in danger of really hurting someone else. Then Michael would say “hey, you guys, stop it,” and no one dared think twice about not stopping it. His grades were steady B’s and A’s, albeit ranging towards A’s, but not particularly because he wanted them. The only two things he wasn’t too lazy to do was to go shooting and to swordfight. Shooting was self-explanatory; sword fighting was a class he was offered in high school, taught by a man named Sir Gemini. Michael holds him in very high regard, and frequently mentions him.

In the past few years Michael had been trying to work in construction. During a night shift in which he was absolutely and completely alone, he spotted something that looked suspiciously like Barney. He passed it off as best he could, but it got rather hard when the thing started dancing around underneath him. After seeking psychological advice, his counselor directed him to someone who ‘could help you.’
Skills: Construction, shooting, hand-to-hand/sword combat (hand-to-hand follows; anyone who attempts medieval combat, any self-respecting man of such caliber, would not be incapable of hand-to-hand and disarming combat.)
Appearance: Michael has solid black hair, cut into a mullet and tied back with a long bandage. Think Solid Snake here. He is in contrast clean-shaven and of blocky features with somewhat small, dark eyes. In build he is very large, very muscular, and has almost no fat at all. In armor he is rather scary, since he tends to pull off impossible wraps. (If you don’t know what a wrap is… well, try to hit your opponent’s back with a sword while standing very close to him. If you can’t pull it off, try to figure out how to do it with the back of the blade.)
Other: He has a bad smoking habit. He smokes a lot. He has several packets of cigarettes on him at any given time. He’ll probably die of lung cancer unless something really cool happens, like he stops smoking within the year.
Foot barely damaged
Other foot, heavily damaged - full extent unknown, but it feels bad. Good job, moron, you kicked a bomb.

Gaia Name: kkid16
Character Name: Jarik Holβtein
Age: 28
Gender: Male
Height: 6'2"
Weight: 173 lbs.
Mana Capacity: II
Mana Regeneration: II
Unallocated Points: I
Ability: Nose
Weapon Rings: NONE
Personality: Well rounded education, a strong will, loyal to those that have become his close friends, but will lend a hand to many of his acquaintances if they need help. Quite and keeps to himself most of the time.
Bio: grew up in the German state Gymnasium, gained a university education as well as passing his arbiter, but lacked the drive to pursue an educational career. As such, he was reduced to an agricultural farmer until he earned enough money to purchase plane tickets to America. Once out off the airport, he saw a sort of gorilla- or human-like body with a computer monitor for a head, slumped against a Dumpster in an alley, but payed no attention to it at the time, due to fatigue from the plane ride from Germany. It wasn't until later that Jarik thought about what he had seen. He got a job as a technician for a simple software company upon arriving in America.
Skills: Gained basic skills in biology and physics, which were the two majors in which he studied for his arbiter. He also learned basic farming and agricultural skills from his time working as a farm hand, and then gained computer skills while working as a technician.
Appearance:While only six foot two, Jarik holds an impressive figure. His muscular build enables him to take on most physical challenges and win, which has gained him as many friends as it has caused him to lose. He has a light blond hair that almost appears white, which is offset by his icy gray-blue eyes and large square nose.
Other: Jarik Holβtein is of German descent, and as such his name is actually pronounced Yurick Holssteen. He drinks quite often due to the fact that they don't restrict the age limit of those that can drink in his homeland. As such, you would have to be extremely lucky to find him sober on the weekends. He also enjoys and welcomes any challenges that come his way.

Arc 1: Welcome to the Freakshow

Marten's head hurt like a b***h. He struggled to his feet, brushing dust off his clothing, and trying to reorient himself. Beside him, that really tall guy, what was his name... Vincent or something. Anyway. The tall guy was getting up. He saw a creature like a foot-long combination of a millipede and a roach scurrying away from the scene. There was no sign of what had hit them.

Many of the people he'd been riding with were missing; they'd probably awoken and fled already.

Marten and Vincent got to their feet, taking in their surroundings. They were next to a sign declaring the extent of the city limits of some nowhere-town in... some place in the Midwest. They'd been heading for the last neck of their cross-country recruiting trip down to Arizona for training, when something had crushed the front of the van and ripped the back open.

There was a lot of blood and the crushed body of their recruiter was pressed halfway through the front of the van. The second van was a similar sight a little way back down the road.

Before Vincent could respond, Jacobo groaned beside him. He had appeared to be dead; in fact, he was merely stained with someone else's blood.

Marten held out a hand. "C'mon. We should probably get moving..." Despite it being his suggestion, he definitely did not look like he wanted to be moving anywhere. His head was still splitting.

"Nice to meet you," Marten mumbled absently. "Hmm? Oh, yeah. Water would be nice." He rubbed his temples softly. "I'm Marten. Marten Catrone."