Welcome to Gaia! ::

General:


◾ This RP will be somewhere around "lazy lit" to "lit" because I don't really know what those mean anymore.
◾ After submitting a reserve or getting your profile approved, you have either one or two days to submit the profile or make your first post, respectively.
◾ One week of inactivity without notice will result in your character being killed off, but only if someone else expresses interest in playing that role.
◾ If you have any questions about the RP, make them known! I'll use your questions to add information to the "Extra Info" post.
◾ Use the OoC thread! We will need to discuss the plot / RP in general, and if you don't participate, you don't get a say in what happens.


Characters:


◾ You can have as many characters as you can play, but they cannot all have the same roles.
◾ Real photographs will not be considered for profiles. You may use illustrations or a written description.
◾ I am totally okay with minor god-modding against NPCs during combat. We are elite pilots, and we can do some crazy things.
◾ PM all profiles to me with the subject line just being the title of the RP.


Formats:


◾ The use of a posting format will be left up to the player, because in this RP, they are not required.
◾ If you use one, the minimum size of a post on Gaia is 970px. Please ensure that your layout fits into a post as small as this.*
◾ You already know the drill about overly large / small font sizes and bright colors.
◾ If your layout uses extensive "coding" please make it into an image.

Because while I can assume that my 1280x800 screen will be the smallest we have, I will feel like an a** if someone comes along with an even smaller one.

Open positions on the FT FG Vienna:

◾ Chief Engineering Officer
◾ Chief Security Officer
◾ Fighter Pilots
◾ If you can think of it, you can have it.

Open positions on the FT SC Faraday:

◾ Captain
◾ Navigator
◾ Scientists
◾ If you can think of it, you can have it.

Not all of these positions need to be filled, and many of them probably shouldn't be. This RP will primarily be focused on space combat and have a scale larger than just the one ship – so if you choose something like a general crew position, you may get bored fairly quickly. That said, I will do my best to find things to do for every type of character.




The "Enlisted With" section denotes the branch or agency to which the character belongs, and will normally be the same as the affiliation of the ship to which they are assigned. However, in this RP you can mix and match affiliations, such that you could have a civilian assigned to a Navy ship. This is due to the dire circumstances in which the characters find themselves, and so is only applicable to characters who join the RP while it is already in progress. Those who join at the outset must have their character and ship affiliations be in agreement. Fighter pilots will additionally append ", Fighter Corps" to their affiliation.




If you wish to submit your own ship, it would be highly preferred if you could provide it as a 3D model or an isometric photorealistic image. The ship cards in the "Meet the Taskforce" post all have relatively the same lighting and positioning and I would like to try keeping them that way. I'm also not super keen on ships from big, well-known universes, e.g.: Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, etc. You can most definitely submit a ship design from wherever, I just want you to be aware that I may reject it. If you want a list of ships that I will instantly accept, you can pick any Terran utility ship or combat vessel smaller than a destroyer from either of these two lists.

If your ship has more than the listed yes-or-no features and you wish to add one, just add it to the profile when you send it in, and it will retroactively be applied to the rest of the ship profiles. This is only valid for general features that many ships are likely to have.

1: An LDA (linear displacement array) is a type of weak shield that was used before sheath shielding was invented. They are small, use very little energy, and recharge within seconds, but they can only protect against one threat at a time. They're commonly employed on fighters and smaller craft with tight energy limitations preventing the use of sheath shields, but which have enough agility to simply avoid being hit. Larger ships are also still equipped with LDAs, where they are used to absorb hits before the heavier shield does.

The Vienna and the Faraday have entered the Tauri—Fornacis jump corridor. The Serenity must have jumped a few moments later, because she can't be seen on the optics. The jump will take a little bit under twelve hours to complete, during which time the crews can meet and get acquainted with the new arrivals, or get some much needed sleep (for those who have already been at their stations for several hours). It should be nice and uneventful.

In the Tauri system, at the edge of the Tauri—Fornacis jump node, the installation Altima is under construction. Altima is intended to become a lightly armed and armored trading post, servicing the miners who ply the asteroid-rich Fornacis system. The FT DD Vladivostok is currently stationed at Altima, and will be for some time, to oversee and defend the hulk and its workers. The FT FG Vienna and FT SC Faraday have joined the Vladivostok while they await the rest of their crews, at which point they will make the jump into Fornacis. With any luck, they will find some useful artifacts, or perhaps an undiscovered jump node that will lead them to more interesting places.

FEDERAL TERRAN INTELLIGENCE

████████████████ TAMARA ALAJLANI << _

Things were fairly quiet in the Tauri system, on the new frontier of the Terran Federation. Even being as close to the front lines as they were, the neighboring systems of Lyncia and Tabit had barely seen any fighting, and the links out of the cluster were far too weak to support an enemy battle group coming through them. Captain Alajlani felt cozy and well protected out here, stationed around the Fornacis jump node and the proto-station Altima alongside the DD Vladivostok, and the assignment could almost be likened to taking a vacation. She'd only been out here for one week so far, but already felt so much better than she had over the entire past year. Granted, she was spending most of her free time playing card games with the destroyer's crew....

As of right now, her official orders were simply: Wait. Her frigate, the Vienna, had recently been assigned to an expeditionary force with the research ship SC Faraday, which had just recently completed a sensor refit in spacedock at Procyon. It was slated to arrive in Tauri later on in the day, accompanied by the Vienna's two new fighter squadrons: the 88th Moebius Interceptor Squadron, and the 216th Scorched Stars Assault Squadron. Together, they were being sent into Fornacis, on the hunt for some shiny new alien toys for Federal Intelligence to play with; whatever it was that they'd discovered on Tauri VII-B had really gotten them worked up over these artifacts.

Of course, this was all strictly classified at the highest levels. Only the people directly involved with the project even knew of its existence; Tamara herself knew only that there was some kind of artifact, and that much she'd only been told about because she was on the task force responsible for finding more of them. She didn't know what it looked like, and certainly not what it was supposed to do ... she'd never even been permitted to visit the Jötunheimr base where they were apparently keeping the thing, and it was located less than ten AU from her current position. Intel was apparently so desperate to keep their find a secret, that they slammed an asteroid into the moon they had found it in, then mined the debris field with half of the Cerberus sentry guns ever produced. Even their own people were kept away; if you didn't approach the base along a very specific vector, flashing a very specific single-use identification code, you'd be blown out of the sky before you got within two thousand klicks. So, no. She had never thought about trying to sneak a peek.

Anyway, speculation was all fun and good, but it really boiled down to one very simple fact: either they would find something in Fornacis, and be able to make their own inferences from it, or they wouldn't. The Sákhaya alone were already different enough from humanity that it was impossible to fathom what else might be out there. And that was certainly a very exciting prospect, despite how long and boring the overall mission profile sounded. So, yes. She was more than willing to babysit the science cruiser for a month or two, no matter how much she knew she'd be complaining about it later.

But while she waited for the rest of her task force and the official go-ahead for the mission, there were still important matters to attend to. Two heavy freighters had just jumped in on the perimeter of the construction site. One of them turned to move towards the cargo depot near the station, but the other one hailed her.

FT FR Market Forces: This is the freighter Market Forces calling the frigate Vienna. We're carrying the supplies you requisitioned.
FT FG Vienna: Good to see you, Market Forces. What do you have for us?
FT FR Market Forces: Let's see.... We've the usual. Food, water, fuel. Oh, and a shipment of the new Maxim cannon. Sound right?
FT FG Vienna: That sounds very right, captain. Our cargo dock is waiting for you.
FT FR Market Forces: Roger that. Coming in.

ＬＯＡＤＩＮＧ⋯
██████████████████████████████████


"Ughh...So borring.." Ezar would say aloud, though he was the only one that could hear himself. Over his own comms he could hear one of his squadron asking, 'You ever wonder why we are here?', and go on some elaborate deep stuff. Before Ezar could say something to the philosophical pilot, he could hear the comms switch to a open channel from 88th. Ezar would then put his feet on top of the controls, as he was trying to relax in his Fighter.In which he set the controls to autopilot, since there wasn't many actions beside escorting. His hands would slide over to the comms, as he would then speak to 88th and Farday. "No word from Vienna over here 88th. But nothing to worry about probably.." Ezar would say as he let out a yawn over the comms. He would then stretch his arms, as he looked over to his side to see the Farday, and 88th in the distance. "What some dream this is..." He would sarcastically mumble to himself, and put his hands over his head. Ezar would hope for more 'excitement' as that was his sort of thing. Escorting some ship is very much of the opposite of that.

One of hands would reach down to the controls, as he switched it to manual, and began to move sway his fighter around a bit out of boredom. Then would proceed to make 'firing noises' from his mouth, as if he was a little boy. Looking at the abyss of stars, and doing nothing else drives a man bored. So far to pretend to shoot stuff in a actual fighter, that people dream to be in. "How long was it again to reach Vienna?" Ezar would ask as he opened up the recent comms again, and was hoping for a 'not too long' answer.