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 Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2012 4:20 pm
Hi all! I don't have any fancy splash image or text tricks, so I'm just gonna be straight with you. Here's my roleplay idea. I'm trying to gauge interest to see if it'd be worth setting up. Let me know if you have any questions: I'll answer them and include it in the Q/A. Okay, here we go!PremiseIn the 21st century, a man named Jiaro Sungu discovered the power to conquer all of Africa, and then Europe, and then Asia. His weapons were hundreds of enormous creatures he called Mutima. They resembled terrifying caricatures of African beasts hundreds of meters tall, and destroyed all who opposed him. No weapons, not even nuclear weapons, seemed to have any effect on them. No one knew where they came from or how Jiaro Sungu controlled them. But there was no question that he did, all of them at once, and without any trouble at all.
Three years after the emergence of Jiaro, the Eidolon initiative, organized by the United States, unveiled soldiers who would fight against him. Soldiers armed with Mutima of their own, trained in a secret compound called Area Jex I. And in the last huge metropolis left on Earth, New York City, some people are discovering they are able to project Mutima as well.
Players can play soldiers from the Area Jex I who are sent to eliminate Jiaro Sungu, or one of the characters in New York City. Eventually their paths may cross, as the U.S. government gradually discovers Mutima threats on home soil. The soldiers will encounter conflict as they fight to take down the new King of the East, and the characters in New York City who discover their own Mutima ability will have trouble staying out of trouble as well.
I am open to discussions and questions about this idea, so please don't hesitate to ask! smile
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Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2012 4:34 pm
Questions and Answers
Q. What are Mutima?
A. Without explaining too much, they’re creatures that can come in all sizes, resembling any kind of animal found on earth. This can include mythical beasts, though the kind of person who could summon such a creature would have to be quite peculiar. They have the ability to speak to humans. They are usually incomprehensibly large, taller than most buildings. They are able to destroy all in their path, or leave everything intact in their wake. How they manage to be delicate at that size is still a mystery. Those who live near the Mutima swear that obstacles pass right through them.
Q. Do Mutima have powers?
A. Like energy blasts or fire breathing? Not typically. Birds can fly, fish can swim, cheetahs can run fast. If it’s a chimera or a dragon or a sphinx, we’ll talk. Otherwise, the Mutima are limited to the natural abilities of their inspiration.
Q. Pronunciation, plural and shorthand for Mutima?
A. Pronunciation is moo-tee-mah. Plural is “Mutima” and the shorthand would be “Muts” pronounced “mutts.”
Q.How does one control them?
A. So far, all the scientists have been able to figure out is a general answer. Dr. Alex Vancen discovered a particle field around subject Blackpaw, the only Mut ever studied, that reacts instantaneously to all mental stimulations, and reaches across the world, presumably to Jiaro. She hypothesizes that this ansible-like field gives Jiaro real-time communication capacities with Blackpaw, perhaps all Mutima, at all times. A form of telempathy, if you will. Why the Muts obey Jiaro is another matter.
Q. What does the world look like?
A. The year is 2034, or 3JE (Jiaro Era). Jiaro Sungu has conquered the African, European and Asian continents. Surrounding islands have been left alone for now, and are bastions for refugees displaced by the enormous transition of power. Most of the countries, after witnessing his power, surrendered without a fight. After each country surrendered, Jiaro installed Mutima within two hundred kilometers of villages to serve as arbiters. All problems, if large enough, find their way to a Mutima, and all of Jiaro’s decrees are delivered by one.
The most extreme law of his reign has been to abolish cities and rebuild society as small “village clusters” spread over vast kilometers of land. No more skyscrapers. The fiat currency is food. He has forced citizens to farm or trade for necessities, but otherwise has not actively made an effort to combat technology or convenience. There is a rule, however: you can only surround yourself with technology you or someone in your village understands. Otherwise it breaks down. There is no system of experts employed by the state. Toilets and lights are maintained by independent sewer workers and electricians who are suddenly very popular.
So far, North and South America have been exempt from Jiaro’s reforms, but the residual impact has been enormous. Other countries, like Japan, have almost crumbled from the sudden lack of an economy, and turned immediately inward, cutting all ties with the outside world. The lack of oil and the need for self-sufficiency fueled extreme innovation in the U.S., leading to one hundred percent clean energy from hydrogen and thorium. Humanitarian efforts have been huge, and the number of immigrants to the U.S. has increased many-fold. Racial tensions have faded for now while a seemingly insurmountable threat looms on every horizon. Western society is at once extremely compassionate for the lives of the apparently oppressed population across the sea and utterly insulated from it. New York City shines like a lighthouse to that other world, a ray of hope and prosperity guiding the people who have been thrown back into the dark ages back to familiar shores.
Except New York City has problems of its own. Technology abuse, dense populations, drugs, corruption, an unquenchable thirst for power. If a gang so much as heard a passing rumor about a potential Mutima, they’d pounce like antsy kittens on the unfortunate victim. And there are many new gangs as a result of the ever-growing population of all varieties of immigrants try to reforge their identities in their new home.
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Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2012 9:30 am
And now, a little backstory for your reading pleasure...
The Luba people of south-central Congo worshipped a god named Kabezya-Mpungu. They believe that the almighty god Kabezya-Mpungu created the sky and the earth and of course two human beings who were gifted with Reason. When all of this was done, Kabezya-Mpungu told his children the Sun, the Moon, Darkness and Rain, what to do for the world in his absence. He was leaving. In his place, he would give the humans Mutima, or Heart: a longing for God that would bring them to all ends.
Much later, long after the god had gone, the West came like a flood and wiped Kabezya-Mpungu from the memories of many people in Katanga. Deep mines split the earth where fertile farms had once fed hundreds of families. Now the families ate with the money they made from working in the mines.
Jiaro Sungu was an unremarkable Luba man who carved wood and liked to fish when he could. He worked in one of the mines, digging for diamonds in the black earth. While he dug, he thought about many things. White men, village women, the many kinds of animals, and above all he thought about his longing for something he did not know. He felt it everyday, this nameless desire, and every swing of his pick-axe filled him with more. Soon it hurt him so badly that he could not go into the mines, and he lay in his bed in anguish. Elders visited him from all over; none could divine the cause. It was not sickness they had ever seen before, not in his body or mind.
So they called the wisest elder of all of the villages in Katanga to come to his home. Her name was Deudo Luksa, and she was the oldest woman Jiaro had ever seen. She had no teeth so she sucked her gums, and her skin had the same texture as a yamroot. Her lineage could be traced back to the first kings of the Luba, and everyone knew that the old spirits still spoke to her because they were familiar with her blood. The moment she drew aside the beads and saw him laying on his furs, feverish and thin, she clicked her tongue and agreed with the Sun and the Moon, Darkness and Rain. This was no sickness of body or mind. It was a sickness of his Heart. It was crying out for Kabezya-Mpungu, crying and crying. But Kabezya-Mpungu, she told him, was gone where no human could see him. There was nothing she could do.
This knowledge did not make him feel any better. Instead it tormented him to know the nature of his pain, yearning for a god like he yearned for his parents, long dead. He suffered for days, weeks, telling himself that the god was gone, and that the world was changed, and that the mines were his life now, and that he needed to get better. None of it worked, but on the hundredth day, an enormous lion the size of a nearby hill appeared beside Jiaro’s home. It ripped the mine apart and disappeared. The next day a monstrous leopard gutted the refinery. And then a wild dog knocked over the steeples on the coal factory in the next town. And on and on.
Across the sea, the government of the United States struggled to understand what was happening. Africa was conquered. Europe was surrendering. Asia was next. They collaborated with the remnants of the surrendering world to discover the secret to Jiaro’s power. As a result of a daring and deadly secret mission, they managed to trap and transport one of the smallest Muts, a creature resembling a black-footed cat measuring only 13 meters long 4.0 meters high, to a base in the middle of the Utah desert, codenamed Area Jex I. After extensive experimentation, the force behind Jiaro’s power was partially discovered, and the Eidolon initiative was drafted to experiment on soldiers in order to learn more.
Engineers created a machine called Genesis, which took up an entire quadrant of Area Jex I, and used it to extract Muts from certain soldiers. The soldiers were at first chosen for their physical strengths, but they all died. Then they were chosen for their intelligence, but they all went mad. The scientists tested often-- so many lives were lost-- but they also tested efficiently--so not as many as could have been, they reasoned. Finally a brilliant physicist named Dr. Charlotte Vancen discovered a new kind of particle-wave in the aura around the black-footed cat Mutima. It was found in humans too, in much smaller quantities. She called it Anim. In essence, it was the passionate drive behind our reasonings. The personality of our intuition. She hesitated to call it the particles of the soul.
What followed was the discovery that large quantities of Anim found in a human's aura correlated with their capacity to project the Mutima beings. It required complex machines to detect Anim and hours of interpreting data to measure the Anim levels in one person, even with the most advanced computers.
Therefore, the generals and advisors leading the project decided it was still cheaper and faster to continue testing on random soldiers until a viable candidate was found. The lives of the few, they reasoned, were worth the lives of the many. Dr. Charlotte Vancen's discovery of Anim meant nothing more than a footnote. It wasn’t until a year later when Area Jex I finally found viable candidate. Hundreds of lives had been forfeited by that point. And then, by happy luck, a few more were discovered shortly afterward. But the desert is full of the bodies of soldiers who gave their lives for the chance to stop Jiaro Sungu. Was it worth it?
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Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2012 10:05 am
Great job on the concept; I really like that this is set in a post-modern time period, but... erm, we've already a running summoner RP, if you want to check that too.
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Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2012 10:10 am
Sure, I'll check it out. What's it called?
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Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2012 10:16 am
Wait, nevermind. I found it. It's quite different from the concept I have here. It's possible this idea could still be a successful summoning roleplay in its own right? I hesitated to call my idea a summoning roleplay, but alas, that's rather what it comes down to. It's more like a battle of gigantic beasts and the various dramas in a post-modern world. If only there was a genre for that. Pokemon, maybe? LOL
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Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2012 10:19 am
No; I think that because it's different it can absolutely be ran at the same time.
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Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2012 10:32 am
I always feel awkward joining an established roleplay like Gaia Breach. Recently I integrated into a roleplay well along in its story, and it's been a process of back-reading and editing my posts for details. While I don't mind doing that for that roleplay, I think it'd be easier for me to start an RP of my own.
If anyone is interested in playing this rpg, that is, haha sweatdrop
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